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NUCLEAR
25 Years After Three Mile Island, Concerns Linger
Nuclear Dump Workers Exposed to Vapors
Questionable safety at Flats
Public split on decision at Rocky Flats wildlife area
Congo Authorities Seize Radioactive Uranium Cases
Britain faces Brussels nuclear inspection
Gulf troops' babies 'are 50pc more vulnerable'
Stillbirth dangers are 'no greater' for Gulf veterans: Scotsman
North Korean Leader Meets China Diplomats
Russia's nuclear boss says Iran plans back on track
Number of signatories of nuclear test-ban treaty now at 171
Law of the Sea Treaty Battle Surfaces in the Senate
Yucca Mtn. Waste Site Could Be Delayed
Richard Clarke terrorizes the White House
MILITARY
U.S. Sets Up Base in Afghan Mountains
OP-ED COLUMNIST Ethnic Cleansing, Again
Findings Reopen Rwanda's Wounds
US, India to work on gadgets for 'futuristic' soldiers: report
Kosovo Marks Anniversary of NATO Bombing
Kosovo Smolders After Mob Violence
BAE Appoints Oil Executive As New Head
Military Was Sold Lead-Tainted Fabric for Tents
Taiwanese President Yields to Calls For Fast Recount of Disputed Vote
China Halts Rights Talks With U.S.
New Haitian Cabinet Holds First Meeting
11 Iraqi Police Officers Are Killed by Gunmen
Ambushes in Iraq Kill 11
Official: Yassin Offered Israel a Truce
Sharon in appeal for peace with Arab world
Fear of Reprisals Casts a Pall on Jerusalem
Bush Backs Israel on Self-Defense
Hamas Says It Will Target Sharon, but Not U.S.
Israeli Tanks Advancing Gaza Strip City
Syria Brushes Aside U.S. Sanctions Threat
Gains by Kin in Iraq Inflame Kurds' Anger at Syria
Russia to confront NATO chief over warplanes in Baltic states
Return of Australian troops from Iraq becomes an election issue
Chinese Space Experts Discuss Their Future Lunar Mission Hopes
U.S. Eyed Use of Drones to Nab Bin Laden
C.I.A. Chief Defends Efforts Against Al Qaeda Before 9/11
On 9/11, CIA Was Running Simulation
Palestinians Push for New U.N. Resolution
'Don't Ask' Dismissals Drop in Wartime
Retirees Now Can Work in Defense Jobs at Full Pay
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel Critical of Clinton, Bush
Clarke to Testify on 9/11 Today
For a Day, Terrorism Transcends Politics as Panel Reviews Failures
Report Details C.I.A. Steps, and Missteps, Against bin Laden
Colombia gets results in drug war
U.S. Law Puts World Ports on Notice
White House Irks Senators by Inaction on Immigrants
OTHER
Stem Cell Trials Await Approval
ACTIVISTS
A legacy of truth
Local band rocks campus
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
25 Years After Three Mile Island, Concerns Linger
Story by Chris Baltimore
REUTERS USA:
March 24, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24420/story.htm
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 from pursuing new nuclear plants for more than 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 Three Mile Island "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.
A string of mechanical failures and human errors caused the accident at the Pennsylvania plant after operators with Metropolitan Edison Co. switched off crucial equipment that could have lessened the severity of the partial meltdown.
Early that morning, pumps feeding cooling water to the plant's reactor failed, and 32,000 gallons (121,000 liters) of radioactive, superheated water spewed from a dodgy valve into the domed concrete reactor housing. Without water to cool them, more than half of the reactor's 36,000 nuclear fuel rods ruptured.
Government scientists said the 636,000 people living within 20 miles of the plant got only minor doses of radiation.
The near-catastrophe at the plant perched on an island in the Susquehanna River near Harrisburg effectively halted any expansion of 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.
Meanwhile, activist groups 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.
NRC inspectors in early 2002 found massive corrosion at an 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 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 agency "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)," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "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 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.
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 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 antinuclear 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."
----
Nuclear Dump Workers Exposed to Vapors
SHANNON DININNY
Wed, Mar. 24, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/8268221.htm
RICHLAND, Wash. - Six workers at a research site that once made plutonium for the nation's nuclear arsenal sought medical attention last week after being exposed to chemical vapors wafting from underground tanks of radioactive waste, a watchdog group said Wednesday.
Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation were exposed in three separate incidents on March 16 and 17 while cleaning up tanks containing waste left over from years of nuclear weapons production, according to the nonprofit Government Accountability Project, based in Seattle.
A U.S. Energy Department official confirmed the six were evaluated and later returned to work.
Tom Carpenter, director of the accountability project's nuclear oversight campaign, criticized Hanford officials for not equipping the workers with respirators.
"Not only are the vapors toxic and perhaps lethal, the workers have inadequate protection," Carpenter said. "Hanford put these workers in harm's way - it borders on criminal negligence."
The exposures were reported to company managers in a daily meeting and later to employees in a memo.
Rob Barr, director of environmental safety and quality for the U.S. Energy Department's Office of River Protection, called the exposures a "learning experience" for Colorado-based contractor CH2M Hill, hired to handle tank-waste cleanup at the facility in south-central Washington.
A company vice president said the contractor shares concerns about vapors but insisted scientific evidence showed no threat to workers. "All the technical information I have says we are not endangering anyone," said Susan Eberlein, CH2M Hill's vice president of environmental safety, health and quality.
More than 800 workers at Hanford's sprawling "tank farm" are cleaning up 177 underground tanks holding about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste. Some of the tanks date back to World War II and could contain as many as 1,200 different chemicals.
Contractors have identified the contents of some tanks by sampling, but critics contend no one knows exactly what is in them or what vapors they might give off. Some of the tanks have leaked into ground water.
The exposures come as Hanford officials face state and federal investigations into allegations they have ignored safety concerns to speed cleanup at the facility, considered the most heavily contaminated nuclear research site in the nation.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
----
Questionable safety at Flats
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Denver Post
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~417~2036730,00.html
The contractor handling the cleanup of Rocky Flats must do better at training workers and following safety procedures. But the U.S. Department of Energy, which recently fined contractor Kaiser-Hill $522,500, also must better monitor safety at the former nuclear bomb trigger factory south of Boulder.
Much progress has been made at the facility since a full-court press was launched nearly a decade ago to clean up and close the plant. For example, plutonium pits (the bomb triggers) have been shipped to more secure storage in other states.
That's good - the DOE and Kaiser-Hill deserve praise for what they've accomplished so far. Remember, before the $7 billion fast-track contract was approved in 1995, experts said cleanup would take decades and cost $35 billion.
Yet, a tremendous amount of work remains undone, so it's imperative that the DOE and Kaiser-Hill stay committed to safety. Indeed, public support for fast cleanup - slated to finish by 2006 - is based on the DOE's promise that safety won't be compromised.
Last May, though, Kaiser-Hill workers made several avoidable but worrisome mistakes. One exposed a worker to unsafe levels of radioactivity.
The most troubling episode was a fire inside a two-story "glove box." A trash pile containing plutonium-soaked materials ignited. Instead of immediately calling properly trained emergency crews, workers tried to pour water on the blaze, thereby creating a risk that the highly radioactive material would "go critical," or release an intense burst of radiation. Apparently, workers didn't know the pile contained plutonium - which is alarming, because by that stage of the game, the DOE and Kaiser-Hill should have identified the locations of all plutonium wastes.
The DOE says it "continues to be concerned with (Kaiser-Hill's) recurrent work control deficiencies." Its report describes the accidents with phrases such as "measures were not taken to maintain (safe) radiation exposures," "work was not performed consistent with the technical standards," and "personnel were not adequately trained."
A humbled Kaiser-Hill told the DOE that the company is committed to fixing the problems.
While the DOE ripped Kaiser-Hill for its failings, the public may wonder where the agency's own personnel were when the accidents occurred.
As plant buildings have been closed, the DOE has moved many of its employees off the site. So, agency experts may not stroll around the site as often as in the past, when they could more easily note potential hazards before accidents occurred. And because of budget cuts, an independent federal watchdog called the Defense Nuclear Facilities Board no longer assigns a full-time employee to Rocky Flats.
The DOE's decision to make 50 of its employees part-time safety inspectors is an implicit admission that the agency needs to pay more attention.
The department was right to fine Kaiser-Hill. The government also should remember the slip-ups when deciding on contractor bonuses.
But the DOE should take a hard look at its own decisions - especially its sins of omission. The government is hardly blameless in the matter.
----
Public split on decision at Rocky Flats wildlife area
Support divided among public access, restriction at planned refuge
By Alisha Jeter,
Broomfield Enterprise Staff Writer
March 24, 2004
http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/broomfield_news/article/0,1713,BDC_2495_2719580,00.html
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials took comments Thursday night at a public hearing on the planned Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge - mostly from people outside Broomfield's borders.
About 20 people argued in favor of two alternatives under consideration for management of the site - one that would allow public access to trails, hunting and wildlife viewing and one that would leave the nearly 6,000-acre "buffer" area mostly untouched.
Few Broomfield residents attended the meeting, but a contingent of city officials spoke. Two City Council members, the city's Open Space and Trails director Kristan Pritz and others spoke in favor of the plan to allow moderate public access.
That option is known as Alternative B and is among four options. It calls for extensive public access such as more trails and a comprehensive visitor center. One option - Alternative A - would largely leave the site alone at Broomfield's southwestern border and another would promote restoration of the site to its pre-settlement nature.
"I've lived in Broomfield a very long time and I've seen Rocky Flats go through a number of changes. Alternative B accomplishes what I had envisioned for this site," Councilwoman and 30-year resident Lori Cox said, echoing city officials' comments that the plan offered a balanced option between public use and wildlife preservation.
The Fish and Wildlife Service also supports Alternative B.
"We feel that has been a middle of the road (alternative) from what people have told us," said project leader Laurie Shannon.
Rick Warner, a Broomfield resident who helped clean the Rocky Mountain Arsenal site, called the Rocky Flats refuge site "very dangerous" and said he'd prefer to see the site not visited by people, even saying he was concerned efforts to restore the site might kick up contamination.
"It's better to be on the side of caution than the side of haste," Warner said.
Several people raised concerns for public safety on the site, which surrounds the 300-acre industrial area once used in the production of plutonium triggers for nuclear arms.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is not involved in the cleanup of the site, but officials said the Environmental Protection Agency and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment must certify the land is clean before it is transferred to the wildlife service for a national wildlife refuge, Shannon said.
Other people argued for and against hunting on the site, as well as dog access. Dogs won't be allowed on the refuge, as wildlife workers worry about the animals harassing wildlife and leaving waste, refuge manager Dean Rundle said. The agency also assumed dog access is ample at Front Range open spaces.
Thursday's meeting was the last of four to comment on the refuge's draft conservation plan and environmental impact statement.
Written comment may still be sent to Laurie Shannon, Rocky Flats Refuge, Rocky Mountain Arsenal, Bldg. 121, Commerce City, CO 80022, or via fax at (303) 289-0579. The deadline for those comments has been extended to April 26.
Rocky Flats cleanup
Rocky Flats clean-up contractor Kaiser-Hill Co., as well as overseers from the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the state health department, will discuss cleanup on the site in a public meeting April 14. Upon cleanup, much of the site is to be transferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge.
The meeting will be at the Broomfield Municipal Center, 1 DesCombes Drive, from 6 to 8 p.m.
-------- africa
Congo Authorities Seize Radioactive Uranium Cases
Story by Dino Mahtani
REUTERS CONGO:
March 24, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24428/story.htm
KINSHASA - Authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo seized two cases containing illegal radioactive uranium in the capital, Kinshasa, earlier this month, a senior atomic energy officer said.
The two cases, weighing over 100 kilograms (220 lb), contained a mixture of stable uranium-238 and radioactive uranium-235, said Professor Fortunat Lumu, Congo's General Atomic Energy Officer and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
He told Reuters both cases had a relatively low level of radioactivity but it was "still enough" to cause radioactive contamination if detonated in a home-made bomb.
"We were alerted by state security who seized the cases, and we were able to confirm that they were radioactive," he said.
Some 50 cases of radioactive uranium and highly radioactive caesium have been seized by Congolese authorities in the central African country over the last four years, said Lumu.
Officials say cases carrying radioactive material are smuggled into the country, from where they are traded across sparsely guarded borders to several of Congo's nine neighbors.
They suspect the cases are brought in to Congo for industrial use in the region's oil and mining sectors, bypassing international conventions on shipping radioactive material.
"It is possible that some of the cases brought in for such use are then stolen or traded into the wrong hands, but we cannot say for sure how many times this has happened," Lumu said.
The two cases seized earlier this month were of a similar size to many others smuggled in and could also have been destined for industrial use.
State authority and border controls are often weak or non-existent in the former Zaire, recovering from over five years of a war that involved several of its neighbors.
Most of the illegal cases seized in the past have been discovered in Kinshasa, although identical cases have also been found in neighboring Uganda and Tanzania, said Lumu.
Oil rich Congo Republic is thought to be the most common destination for the nuclear material, with only the Congo river separating its capital, Brazzaville, from Kinshasa in the DRC.
Last week, police in neighboring Zambia arrested two men in possession of a suspected bomb-grade uranium cache, adding they suspected it came from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
-------- britain
Britain faces Brussels nuclear inspection
Wed, 24 Mar 2004
EUpolitix.com
http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/News/200403/78344ad8-2400-4988-819f-55ad692e59e2.htm
The UK next week could face orders from the European Commission finally to let EU safety inspectors check on the controversial Sellafield nuclear power plant.
The commission claims that British authorities have for almost 20 years been blocking attempts to investigate nuclear waste on the Sellafield power plant - most recently whilst insisting on full nuclear checks in Iraq.
And a restricted document, due to be adopted by commissioners next Wednesday, would give London until May to allow inspectors full access to the site, rather than fobbing them off with written assurances as has so far been the case.
Commission sources say that earlier attempts to challenge the UK via a so-called 'written procedure' were blocked by the veto of internal reform chief Neil Kinnock, who said that a May deadline was too early.
The sources add that this "seems a bit strange as they've had ten years."
In particular Brussels objects to the UK's failure to say exactly how much plutonium waste is stored in the outdoor ponds known as B30, and what they intend to do with it.
Radioactivity around B30 is so high that employees can only in safety spend one hour a day there.
The ponds have existed since the 1950s, when no proper records were kept, and the commission has been asking for things to be set straight since 1986 when the site came under the remit of Euratom, the EU nuclear watchdog.
The restricted document claims that a transfer of plutonium is now "highly overdue" and that a significant amount of plutonium "of strategically important nuclear fuel is not properly accounted for".
It further states that "The remaining nuclear material [in B30] is old, unidentified fuel stored in skips or sludge accumulated at the bottom of the pond".
Britain in December 2003 admitted that "it has long been recognised that conditions in B30 mean the safeguard verification activities that can be carried out are limited".
Brussels also says that Sellafield has continuously failed to keep proper operating and accounting records.
If the infringement continues after a May 30 deadline, says the document, it would lead to sanctions on British Nuclear Fuels "proportionate to the severity of the infringements".
-------- depleted uranium
Gulf troops' babies 'are 50pc more vulnerable'
By Nic Fleming
24/03/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/24/ngulf124.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/03/24/ixnewstop.html
Babies whose fathers served in the first Gulf war are 50 per cent more likely to have physical abnormalities than those born to soldiers not sent to the region, according to a study published today.
Increased risks of genital, urinary and renal abnormalities and deformed limbs, bones and muscles were found in the Ministry of Defence-funded survey.
Of 13,191 pregnancies among the partners of male Gulf veterans, 686, or 5.2 per cent, had some form of physical abnormality, compared with 342, or 3.5 per cent, of the 9,758 non-Gulf pregnancies.
Miscarriages were also 40 per cent more common in the pregnancies of wives and partners of male veterans deployed in the conflict.
Female veterans were found to have no increased risk of suffering miscarriages.
The six-year study, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, found no strong link between service in the Gulf and chromosome, heart and nervous system damage in the offspring of veterans or of stillbirths.
Dr Pat Doyle, the epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who led the study, called for close monitoring of babies born to British troops sent to Iraq last year.
Malcolm Hooper, the emeritus professor of medicinal chemistry at Sunderland University and an adviser to the veterans, said: "The findings will be very worrying for them.
"I strongly endorse the call for further studies on those who served in Gulf war two.
"There are grave concerns and significant anecdotal evidence about the inability to sustain normal pregnancies as a result of Gulf service."
Dr Doyle said the study was important, but warned against reading too much into the findings. "I believe our findings on renal problems and miscarriages are important and need to be investigated in greater detail," she said.
She added that although "associations were found between fathers' service in the Gulf war and increased risk of miscarriage and other malformations", the findings should be interpreted cautiously because of recall bias, the potential uncertainty of results based on people's memories.
Terry English, of the Royal British Legion, said: "Anecdotal evidence from veterans has suggested a greater rate of miscarriage and this appears to be the first scientific evidence that confirms this."
Of 53,000 British troops sent to the first Gulf war, about 630 have died and almost 6,000 have claimed war pensions.
A range of causes for the illnesses have been suggested including depleted uranium fallout from munitions, vaccinations administered and tablets taken before the conflict.
An MoD spokesman said: "It is important to note the researchers have cautioned that the findings may be susceptible to recall bias, and that it is a comparison with a control group in which miscarriage may have been under reported.
"Independent researchers and the military medicine health advisory group of the Medical Research Council have said that overall there is a lack of evidence to link reproductive health problems to service in the Gulf."
Mandy Duncan, from Clackmannanshire, has had three children since her husband Kenny returned from the Gulf. Kenneth, nine, was born with deformed ears, constant headaches and needs special shoes.
Andrew, eight, wets his bed and has asthma. Heather, six, is partially deaf and suffers bowel and bladder problems.
Mrs Duncan said last night: "I don't need a study to tell me my kids have been affected by Kenny's Gulf service. I want to know what the Government is going to do about it."
----
Stillbirth dangers are 'no greater' for Gulf veterans: Scotsman
Wed 24 Mar 2004
The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=340262004
GULF War veterans are no more likely to suffer a stillbirth or have a child with deformities than those who did not serve in the early-90s conflict, researchers said today.
The study did find a 40 per cent increased risk of miscarriage among women whose partners served in the Gulf, with some evidence of a higher risk of genital and renal system malformations.
But the researchers said these findings should be interpreted with caution and overall veterans should be reassured that possible exposure to hazardous chemicals and depleted uranium should not affect their reproductive health.
The research, conducted by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, was said to be the first epidemiological study of reproductive health among UK troops serving in the conflict.
Earlier this month soldiers who served in the latest war in Iraq voiced concerns about the health of their unborn babies after other parents blamed anthrax jabs for a cluster of infant deaths.
The latest study, funded by the Ministry of Defence, followed concerns raised after the first Gulf War about apparent clusters of birth defects and miscarriages.
The researchers said there was "no strong evidence" for a link between the father's deployment in the Gulf and an increased risk of stillbirth or chromosomal malformations. Female veterans were also found to be at no greater risk of miscarriage.
-------- korea
North Korean Leader Meets China Diplomats
By HANS GREIMEL
Associated Press Writer
Mar 24, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOREAS_NUCLEAR?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong Il held a rare meeting Wednesday with China's foreign minister as the communist allies discussed the region's nuclear dispute.
Beijing said the session was a "very important contact."
Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing, who arrived Tuesday, is the first foreign minister from Beijing to visit the North in five years. The visit is seen as bolstering the push for a third round of six-nation talks on the North's nuclear programs as efforts to organize working level groups hang in limbo.
As Pyongyang's last major ally, China has taken on the role of host and coordinator of the meetings.
The Chinese diplomat and North Korean officials are expected to discuss a date for the crucial working group meetings, which will seek to nail down details before the next full round of six-nation talks, sometime before July, according to South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon.
South Korea has accused the North of dragging its feet on the working groups.
In Hong Kong, a North Korea expert said Pyongyang may skip the next round of nuclear talks because of the uncertainty caused by November's presidential election in the United States. "What are they going to do there? Now, is anybody going to strike a deal?" said Charles Pritchard, a former U.S. State Department official.
It is unlikely that President Bush will offer a deal before the election, while his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, likely would start a direct dialogue with Pyongyang if he wins, Pritchard said.
In Pyongyang, Li's delegation toured a street market, laid flowers at a statue of national founder Kim Il Sung and met various North Korean dignitaries in a "warm atmosphere," according to the North Korea's official KCNA news agency.
Li also met Kim Jong Il, who assumed control from his father after Kim Il Sung's death in 1994.
Li presented greetings from Chinese President Hu Jintao, KCNA reported. Before Li departed for Pyongyang, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kong Quan described the trip as a "very important contact between our two sides."
Earlier in Seoul, South Korea's Foreign Minister Ban said North Korea likely will attend the next six-nation nuclear talks despite its recent rhetoric over U.S.-South Korean military exercises and the impeachment of South Korea's president.
A recent rupture in inter-Korean relations has fanned concern that the communist North might use the joint war games or South's leadership upheaval as grounds for postponing nuclear negotiations.
The U.S. military describes the annual U.S.-South Korean war games, which began earlier this week, as defensive. But North Korea routinely criticizes them as preparation for an invasion.
The United States, two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan have agreed to convene a third round of talks on North Korea's nuclear program by July. A second round ended in Beijing last month without a major breakthrough.
In the meantime, participants are trying to form a "working group" to nail down details. Ban is scheduled to meet Li in Beijing next week.
The United States insists that the North dismantle its nuclear weapons programs completely and verifiably. North Korea says it will only do so if the United States provides economic aid and security guarantees.
North Korea threatened Friday to boost its nuclear arsenal in "quality and quantity," blaming the United States for the lack of progress in nuclear talks.
-------- russia
Russia's nuclear boss says Iran plans back on track
REUTERS RUSSIA:
March 24, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24425/story.htm
MOSCOW - Russia's plans to finish an atomic reactor in Iran are back on track after a pause that followed a tough new resolution on Iran by the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Russia's top atomic official said.
Earlier this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a resolution that deplored Iran's failure to declare sensitive nuclear technology which could be used to make bomb-grade uranium.
"A certain pause in Russia's cooperation with Iran happened because of an IAEA board meeting where this new resolution on Iran was passed," Alexander Rumyantsev, head of the Atomic Energy Agency, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.
"But the question of construction of the Bushehr power plant in Iran has never been revised."
The row between Iran and the IAEA prompted industry insiders to suggest Russia, wary of U.S. criticism of its nuclear ties with Iran, could ditch the $800 million project altogether.
Iran later vowed to continue to cooperate with the IAEA as long as Washington, which accuses Iran of seeking atomic arms, does not push its case up to the U.N. Security Council.
"Technical cooperation with Iran on construction of the Bushehr nuclear power plant is continuing, and I do not see any reason why we should limit this cooperation," Rumyantsev said.
Russia, a veto-wielding permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, has been locked in months of tough talks with Iran over the project.
The first generating unit of the 1,000-megawatt plant was originally due to have begun full operation in 2003. But as negotiations dragged on, the launch was rescheduled to 2006.
Rumyantsev said "a number of financial issues" had yet to be settled, but did not elaborate.
He did not say whether a key bilateral deal requiring Iran to return spent nuclear fuel to Russia - a measure aimed to alleviate some U.S. concerns - would be signed during his visit to Iran over coming months.
"The Iranian side wants a few months to study what other countries normally do when it comes to returning spent nuclear fuel," he said. "They have, however, said they are in principle ready to sign this document."
-------- treaties
Number of signatories of nuclear test-ban treaty now at 171
VIENNA (AFP)
Mar 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040324163851.if79t69w.html
The Caribbean state of Saint Kitts and Nevis has signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), bringing the total number of signatories to 171, the CTBT office in Vienna said Wednesday.
The office said in a statement that Saint Kitts and Nevis had signed the treaty on Tuesday and that the number of signatories in the Latin America and the Caribbean region "now stands at 27".
But the 1996 test ban treaty had only been ratified as of January by 109 states, the last being Libya that month.
The treaty commits countries which have ratified it to refrain from any kind of nuclear weapons testing.
The treaty appears likely to collapse, however, as all the countries with nuclear capabilities must ratify it in order for it to come into force. The United States has indicated that it has no plans to ratify it.
----
Law of the Sea Treaty Battle Surfaces in the Senate
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
March 24, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-24-02.asp
President George W. Bush and his administration are in support of Senate ratification for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, a top State Department official told a Congressional hearing on Tuesday.
John Turner, assistant secretary of state for oceans policy, reaffirmed the administration's support for the treaty in testimony Tuesday before the Senate Environment Committee.
Senator James Inhofe, Republican chairman of the Senate Environment Committee and a critic of the treaty, cited published newspaper accounts reporting that the Bush administration was retreating from its effort to win Senate endorsement for the treaty under pressure from conservatives who believe it gives the United Nations too much power.
Turner rebutted those reports. "I wouldn't be here testifying before you if there was any retreat or change of position of the administration," Turner said. He expressed the "full support" of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and key national security agencies, he said.
The 1982 UN Law of the Sea Convention became legally binding in 1994 after it was ratified by 60 countries. Now ratified by 143 countries, the treaty has been called by the former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Watkins, "the foundation of public order of the oceans."
It sets forth standards for navigating the oceans by commercial and military vessels, fishing on the open seas, mining the sea bed, laying communications cable, and protecting the marine environment.
The Convention gives direct support to the global moratorium on commercial whaling, it supports the creation of sanctuaries and other conservation measures, and requires Parties to cooperate not only with respect to large whales, but with respect to all cetaceans.
President Bill Clinton sent the treaty to the Senate for ratification, but it stalled on opposition from Senator Jesse Helms, then the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.
In February, the Foreign Relations Committee, now chaired by Republican Senator Richard Lugar, unanimously approved the treaty after listening to testimony from dozens of witnesses during two hearings in October 2003.
"Our hearings revealed broad support for U.S. accession to the Law of the Sea Convention. They also revealed the need for U.S. accession to be completed swiftly," Lugar wrote in the March 8, 2004 issue of "Navy Times."
In its report, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed its belief that the Convention "advances important U.S. interests" in a number of areas.
"It advances U.S. national security interests by preserving the rights of navigation and overflight across the world's oceans, on which our military relies to protect U.S. interests around the world, and it enhances the protection of these rights by providing binding mechanisms to enforce them."
"It advances U.S. economic interests by enshrining the right of the United States to explore and exploit the vast natural resources of the oceans out to 200 miles from our coastline, and of our continental shelf beyond 200 miles, and by protecting freedom of navigation on the oceans over which more than 28 percent of all U.S. exports and 48 percent of all U.S. imports are transported."
"It advances U.S. interests in the protection of the environment by creating obligations binding on all States to protect and preserve the marine environment from pollution from a variety of sources, and by establishing a framework for further international action to combat pollution."
"Becoming party to the Convention also advances the ability of the United States to play a leadership role in global oceans issues, including by allowing the United States to participate fully in institutions created by the Convention such as the International Seabed Authority, the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, and the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea," the Lugar committee report states.
The current urgency over U.S. ratification arises because the treaty is open for amendment for the first time later this year. Turner reminded the Senate Environment Committee that the treaty will be open to amendments, whether the United States participates or not. "It seems to me the United States ought to join now," Turner said.
He said he found it "unbelievable" that the United States might not be participating as Russia and other countries start staking out mining claims on the continental shelves.
At the most recent annual meeting of Parties to the treaty in June 2003, Russia was the first country to submit the delineation of its continental shelf beyond the 200 nautical miles that is agreed under the treaty to be the limit of any country's sphere of governance.
Governments are lining up for sea bed mining permits beyond their 200 mile limits, a process controlled under the treaty by the International Seabed Authority (ISA) based in Kingston, Jamaica.
In the 2002 to 2003 time period, the ISA considered the first set of annual reports by seven registered pioneer investors, as well as proposals for regulations for prospecting and exploration for polymetallic sulphides and cobalt rich ferromanganese crusts.
The Bush administration does not want the United States to be left behind in the rush to mine the seabed.
Turner told the Senate Environment Committee that the United States would not need to change any environmental laws or enforcement practices as a result of ratification.
Also, U.S. ratification would promote the Bush administration initiative against weapons proliferation by promoting cooperation with other countries under a common legal framework for boarding and intercepting vessels, Turner said.
Critics of the treaty fear that the material wealth of the seas would be shared among nations under the jurisdiction of the United Nations.
Conservative columnist Frank Gaffney, an official in the Reagan administration who is founding president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington, DC, writes in the "National Review" of February 26, 2004, "U.S. adherence to this treaty would entail history's biggest and most unwarranted voluntary transfer of wealth and surrender of sovereignty."
But Senator Lugar says that the "basic tenets of the treaty" have been U.S. policy since first enunciated by President Ronald Reagan in 1982. "Over the next dozen years the U.S. won in negotiations on the questionable aspects of the treaty, and signed on in 1994," Lugar says, but if the United States is not party to the Convention when amendments are considered, "U.S. ability to protect Convention rights that we fought hard to achieve will be significantly diminished."
A member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the presumptive Democratic candidate for President in November, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry says "as a longtime supporter of this treaty" he is in favor of ratification.
Kerry as the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oceans, Fisheries and Coast Guard, warned that provisions of the treaty must not limit the United States' ability to pass laws in its own interests. "Congress must also be assured that we will have the flexibility to enact protections here at home in the absence of international action, or that are more stringent than those that can be agreed upon internationally," he said in a statement published with the committee's report.
On security issues, Kerry said, the treaty "strikes a careful balance between the rights of free passage and the ability of coastal states to protect their borders." He said the United States must ensure that ratifying the Law of the Sea Convention "will not interfere with our ability to protect our ocean borders from terrorist threats."
If a ratification resolution passes the Senate Environment Committee, the Law of the Sea Convention goes to the full Senate where approval of a treaty requires a two-thirds vote in favor. The House of Representatives does not vote because it has no constitutional authority over treaties.
The 14th Meeting of States Parties to the Law of the Sea Convention is scheduled from June 14 to 18, in New York.
The Law of the Sea Convention and related agreements are online at: http://www.un.org/Depts/los/index.htm
The Lugar Foreign Relations Committee report with history from the U.S. point of view is online at: http://lugar.senate.gov/sfrc/seareport.pdf
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Yucca Mtn. Waste Site Could Be Delayed
March 24, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Yucca-Mountain.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- If Congress doesn't provide all of $890 million for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project next fiscal year, the facility will not be able to open on schedule in 2010, a top Energy Department official said at a congressional hearing Wednesday.
``Meeting the 2010 objective will require much greater resources than the program has thus far received,'' said Margaret Chu, who as director of the DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management is in charge of the project.
The Bush administration is seeking $559 million, an increase of $155 million, directly for the repository project, including for design and preparation for a license application. The rest of the money would go for developing a plan to transport fuel to the Nevada site and other related programs.
Chu said the department plans to submit its license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in December. It will take several years for the review.
``We are committed to the goal of beginning to receive and transport spent nuclear fuel and high-level (government) waste to an NRC-licensed repository in 2010,'' Chu told the House Appropriations subcommittee on energy and water.
After the hearing she told reporters that without all the money the Bush administration requested, she did not believe the 2010 deadline could be met. She said 2005 ``is a critical year'' for the project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
The repository, if built, will hold 77,000 tons of highly radioactive spent reactor fuel now at commercial power plants in 31 states and government waste from its nuclear weapons program.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the subcommittee chairman, said he's confident that the administration funding levels will be approved in the House.
The Senate could be another matter. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, has vowed to cut Yucca Mountain funding as much as possible. Nevada has filed a string of lawsuits and is challenging the waste project in the courts.
Meanwhile, the Energy Department announced it had hired a new law firm to help present the government's case for a license to build and operate the Yucca facility. The Washington D.C., firm of Hunton and Williams will represent the department before the NRC, according to a DOE statement.
It will replace the Chicago firm of Winston & Strawn, which withdrew from the project in November, 2001 because of a conflict or interest dispute. It was discovered that Winston & Strawn had conducted lobbying for a pro-nuclear group while working for the Energy Department.
Hobson said he worried that adding a new legal team at this late date might force the government to play ``catch up'' against the team of lawyers assembled by the state of Nevada as it challenges the NRC license application.
``This is a major last stand'' by the state against the Yucca project, he said.
-------- us politics
Richard Clarke terrorizes the White House
In a provocative Salon interview, the former terrorism czar fires back at the Bush administration, blasting its "big lie" strategy and "attack dog" Dick Cheney.
By Joe Conason
March 24, 2004
Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/24/clarke_moveon/print.html
Editor's Note: Welcome, MoveOn members, to Salon! We wanted to make sure you saw the latest from former NSC counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke. After Clarke's new memoir blasted the White House for doing "a terrible job" fighting terrorism, Vice President Dick Cheney told Rush Limbaugh Clarke was "out of the loop." In a candid interview with Salon, Richard Clarke fights back. Salon usually requires readers to watch a short ad or subscribe in order to view a complete article, but we thought this story was just too important -- so we're giving you full access without further ado.
NEW YORK -- After more than 30 years of dedicated service, including stints as the National Security Council's counterterrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and Bush, Richard A. Clarke has delivered a scathing assessment of Bush administration policy and personnel in his new memoir, "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror." Clarke portrays the president and his top aides as arrogant, insular and uninformed about the changed world they faced when they entered the White House in January 2001. They did little about the growing peril from al-Qaida, despite urgent briefings from the outgoing Clinton national security team, and remained willfully ignorant despite repeated, even obsessive warnings from Clarke and CIA director George Tenet.
For almost nine months, according to Clarke, he sought approval from top Bush officials for an aggressive strategy against Osama bin Laden. Clarke writes that he could not convince National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to schedule meetings to advance an action plan against al-Qaida. Instead, George W. Bush and his most powerful officials -- Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz -- pursued an obsession with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. When the Sept. 11 attacks took place, their first instinct was to bomb Iraq -- even though Clarke and other experts had long assured them that there was no intelligence connecting Iraq to any recent acts of terrorism against the United States. On Sept. 12, Bush pulled Clarke aside to demand that he search for evidence of Saddam's involvement, which never existed.
Since Clarke's debut on CBS's "60 Minutes" on Sunday, administration officials have been bombarding him with personal calumny and abuse. They have called him an embittered job-seeker, a publicity-seeking author, a fabricator, a Democratic partisan and, perhaps worst of all, a friend of a friend of John Kerry. On Tuesday Bush himself responded to Clarke's charges, insisting "had my administration had any information that terrorists were going to attack New York City on 9/11, we would have acted."
Clarke, an expert on surprise attacks, is not shocked by the ferocity of the White House response. During an interview with Salon on Tuesday, on the eve of his scheduled public testimony before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), Clarke blasted Cheney as an "attack dog" and described the administration's attacks on his credibility as another example of the "big lie" strategy it has pursued since winning the White House. While he is critical of all four of the presidents he served, Clarke draws sharp contrasts between the records of the Clinton and Bush administrations. He compares Clinton's understanding of terrorism as the most significant threat to U.S. and international security and his efforts to combat it to the neglect and illusions of Bush.
You said on "60 Minutes" that you expected "their dogs" to be set on you when your book was published, but did you think that the attacks would be so personal?
Oh yeah, absolutely, for two reasons. For one, the Bush White House assumes that everyone who works for them is part of a personal loyalty network, rather than part of the government. And that their first loyalty is to Bush rather than to the people. When you cross that line or violate that trust, they get very upset. That's the first reason. But the second reason is that I think they're trying to bait me -- and people who agree with me -- into talking about all the trivial little things that they are raising, rather than talking about the big issues in the book.
Why did you write the book now? That's a question they raise. Did it occur to you that this would be an election year and it would be especially controversial because of that, and that these commission hearings were coming up?
I wanted the book to come out much earlier, but the White House has a policy of reviewing the text of all books written by former White House personnel -- to review them for security reasons. And they actually took a very long time to do that. This book could have come out much earlier. It's the White House that decided when it would be published, not me. I turned it in toward the end of last year, and even though there was nothing in it that was not already obviously unclassified, they took a very, very long time.
Were you seeking to make a political impact, in the way that the White House spokesmen have accused you of trying to do?
I was seeking to create a debate about how we should have, in the past, and how we should, in the future, deal with the war on terrorism. When they say it's an election year, and therefore you're creating not just a debate but a political debate, what are they suggesting? That I should have waited until November to publish it, waited until after the election? I don't see why we have to delay that debate, just because there's an election.
Vice President Cheney told Rush Limbaugh that you were not "in the loop," and that you're angry because you were passed over by Condi Rice for greater authority. And in fact you were dropped from Cabinet-level position to something less than that. How do you respond to what the Vice President said?
The vice president is becoming an attack dog, on a personal level, which should be beneath him but evidently is not.
I was in the same meetings that Dick Cheney was in, during the days after 9/11. Condi Rice and Dick Cheney appointed me as co-chairman of the interagency committee called the "Campaign Committee" -- the "campaign" being the war on terrorism. So I was co-chairing the interagency process to fight the war on terrorism after 9/11. I don't think I was "out of the loop."
The vice president commented that there was "no great success in dealing with terrorists" during the 1990s, when you were serving under President Clinton. He asked, "What were they doing?"
It's possible that the vice president has spent so little time studying the terrorist phenomenon that he doesn't know about the successes in the 1990s. There were many. The Clinton administration stopped Iraqi terrorism against the United States, through military intervention. It stopped Iranian terrorism against the United States, through covert action. It stopped the al-Qaida attempt to have a dominant influence in Bosnia. It stopped the terrorist attacks at the millennium. It stopped many other terrorist attacks, including on the U.S. embassy in Albania. And it began a lethal covert action program against al-Qaida; it also launched military strikes against al-Qaida. Maybe the vice president was so busy running Halliburton at the time that he didn't notice.
Did Cheney ever ask you a question of that kind when you were in the White House with him?
No.
Why did they keep you on, if they were so uninterested in what you were focused on? And then why did they downgrade your position?
They said, in so many words, at the time, that they didn't have anyone in their Republican coterie of people that came in with Bush, who had an expertise in this [counterterrorism] area [and] who wanted the job. And they actually said they found the job a little strange -- since it wasn't there when they had been in power before.
Dr. Rice said that.
Yes, Dr. Rice said that. And the first thing they asked was for me to look at taking some of the responsibilities, with regard to domestic security and cyber-security, and spinning them off so that they were no longer part of the National Security Council.
Why do you think Cheney -- and the Bush administration in general -- ignored the warnings that were put to them by [former national security advisor] Sandy Berger, by you, by George Tenet, who is apparently somebody they hold in great esteem?
They had a preconceived set of national security priorities: Star Wars, Iraq, Russia. And they were not going to change those preconceived notions based on people from the Clinton administration telling them that was the wrong set of priorities. They also looked at the statistics and saw that during eight years of the Clinton administration, al-Qaida killed fewer than 50 Americans. And that's relatively few, compared to the 300 dead during the Reagan administration at the hands of terrorists in Beirut -- and by the way, there was no military retaliation for that from Reagan. It was relatively few compared to the 259 dead on Pan Am 103 in the first Bush administration, and there was no military retaliation for that. So looking at the low number of American fatalities at the hands of al-Qaida, they might have thought that it wasn't a big threat.
Dr. Rice now says that your plans to "roll back" al-Qaida were not aggressive enough for the Bush administration. How do you answer that, in light of what we know about what they did and didn't do?
I just think it's funny that they can engage in this sort of "big lie" approach to things. The plan that they adopted after Sept. 11 was the plan that I had proposed in January [2001}. If my plan wasn't aggressive enough, I suppose theirs wasn't either.
Is it true that you're a registered Republican, as someone told me yesterday?
Well, I vote in Virginia, and you can't register as a Republican or a Democrat in Virginia. The only way that anybody ever knows your party affiliation in Virginia is when you vote in a primary, because you have to ask for either a Republican or a Democratic ballot. And in the year 2000, I voted in the Republican presidential primary. That's the only record in the state of Virginia of my interest or allegiance.
Will you tell me whom you voted for in the Republican presidential primary in Virginia in 2000?
Yeah, I voted for John McCain.
[Bush press secretary] Scott McClellan said he was deeply offended that you suggested the Sept. 11 attacks could have been prevented, but I didn't hear you say that.
I didn't say it. I said we'll never know, and I've said that over and over again. We will never know. There were certainly some steps that, had they been taken, would have perhaps resulted in the arrest of two of the hijackers. But we'll never know whether that would have led to the arrests of the others.
McClellan also said that although you criticize the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in the book, you had attempted to become the No. 2 in that department and were passed over -- and that's yet another reason why you wrote this critical book.
They're trying to bait me, and they're trying to get me to answer all these personal issues. You know, the fact is that Tom Ridge opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. George Bush opposed the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And then one day, they turned on a dime and supported it. Why?
As I said in the book, the White House legislative affairs people counted votes. Senator [Joseph] Lieberman had proposed the bill to create the Department of Homeland Security -- and the legislative affairs people said Lieberman has the votes; it's going to pass. They said, "You've got the possible situation here, Mr. President, where you're going to have to veto the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. And if you don't support it now, if you don't make it your proposal, not only will it pass but it will be called the Lieberman bill."
The Lieberman-McCain bill.
The Lieberman-McCain bill, in fact. So that there were two outcomes possible. One in which we have this Frankenstein department, created during the middle of the war on terrorism, reorganizing during the middle of a war. That was possible. It was also possible that a second thing would happen, and that was that Lieberman would get credit for it. And therefore the president changed his position overnight, and became a big supporter of the Department of Homeland Security.
Did you see a memo to that effect? I wondered about that when I was reading the book, because you don't say how you know they gave the president that advice.
No, I don't say ... It was from oral conversations in the White House.
In the first chapter of your book, which I must say is gripping, you give your account of your actions on 9/11, when great authority was turned over to you [by Cheney and Rice]. Is there an issue of disloyalty or ingratitude there? To be honest, it seemed to me that you saved their asses that day.
Well, that's for other people to say. As regards my loyalty to President Bush, I was a career civil servant. I wasn't loyal to any particular political machine. When the president makes a big mistake -- like he has in the way that he has fought the war on terrorism by going into Iraq -- I think personal loyalty or party loyalty has got to be put aside.
Did you speak up about the U.S. going into Iraq? Now, one of the more substantive criticisms of you by the White House is that you didn't say anything about it. You let that go, you kept your job and didn't resign in protest -- or according to them, do anything that suggested you were so strongly opposed to their plan for war.
If they were listening, they would have heard me. I started saying on Sept. 11 and Sept. 12 that their idea of responding to the terrorist attacks by going to war with Iraq was not only misplaced but counterproductive.
Before Sept. 11, I was so frustrated with the way they were handling terrorism that I had asked to be reassigned to a different job. And the job I proposed was a job I helped to create -- a job to look at the nation's vulnerability to cyber-attack. So that job was supposed to be one that I went into on Oct. 1 [2001]; the actual transfer was delayed, of course, because Sept. 11 intervened. But it's important to realize that I asked for that transfer out of the counterterrorism job before Sept. 11, out of frustration with the Bush administration's handling of terrorism.
When I was doing the cyber-security job, toward the end of 2001 and into 2002, I wasn't asked for my opinion on Iraq. I wasn't in a position to give my opinion on Iraq. I was carrying a different portfolio. They certainly didn't come and ask me. But I made it very clear to Condi Rice, although she may choose to forget it, that I thought going into Iraq was a mistake. And I thought if you did have to go in -- if the president was determined to do that -- then it had to be done within the United Nations context.
What is your estimation of Dr. Rice, given that you have known and worked with the past seven or eight national security advisors?
I don't want to get involved in personal attacks on her just because she's involved in personal attacks on me. I think she has a great personal relationship with the president, and that's one of the best things a national security advisor can have. I think she has a great understanding of Russia, the former Soviet Union and Central Europe, which was the area of her expertise before she became national security advisor ... She's very, very knowledgeable about that.
You criticize both the Bush and Clinton administrations, although I have to say the press coverage of your discussion of the Clinton administration varies considerably from what is actually in your book ...
I'm glad you noticed.
I did notice that ... How different were the two administrations in their approaches to terrorism?
Well, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration didn't have an approach to terrorism. They'd never gotten around to creating an administration policy. It was in the process of doing so, but it hadn't achieved that. And it was clear that the national security advisor didn't like this kind of issue; she didn't have meetings on this issue. The president didn't have meetings on the issue of terrorism.
Now the White House is saying, oh, they had meetings every day. But let's be clear about what those meetings every day were. Every day George Tenet, the CIA director, would do the morning intelligence briefing of the president, and he would raise the al-Qaida threat with great frequency. That's not the same as having a meeting to decide what to do about it. That's not the same as the president shaking the lapels of the FBI director and the attorney general and saying, "You've got to stop the attack."
Apparently on one occasion -- of all these many, many days when George Tenet mentioned the al-Qaida threat -- the president on one occasion said, "I want a strategy. I don't want to swat flies." Well, months or certainly weeks went by after that, and he didn't get his strategy because Condi Rice didn't hold the meeting necessary to approve it and give it to him. And yet George Bush appears not to have asked for it a second time.
In fact, he told Bob Woodward in "Bush at War" that he kind of knew there was a strategy being developed out there, but he didn't know at what stage it was in the process. Well, if he was so focused on it, he would have kept asking where the strategy was. He would have known where it was in the process. He would have demanded that it be brought forward. He had a fleeting interest.
Did you have access to the president's daily briefings?
On a daily basis, no; I did see some of them. There was never any system in place that worked to get them to me every day.
Did you see the PDB for Aug. 6, 2001 [which reportedly contained references to an impending attack by al-Qaida]?
I really can't recall it. I think its importance has been overblown. What happens in the presidential daily briefing is that the president asks questions of the briefer, which is usually Tenet on Monday through Friday. And the briefer then takes notes of the questions and goes back to CIA to get papers written to respond to the questions.
In response to the drumbeat day after day of intelligence that there was going to be an al-Qaida attack, the president apparently said, "Tell me what al-Qaida could do." And in response to that the CIA went off and wrote a paper that listed everything possible that al-Qaida could do. It didn't say we have intelligence that tells us the attack will be here or there, the attack method will be this or that. It was rather a laundry list of possible things they could do.
Do you think it's true that the Saudis gained added influence when the Bush crowd returned to the White House?
The Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, had worn out his welcome in the Clinton White House. But he had very, very good ties to the Bush family. His standing, his influence greatly increased when the Bush people came back into power.
Were you aware of the Saudi airlifts of their nationals after 9/11, at the time that they were happening?
What I am aware of is that sometime after 9/11, in the days immediately thereafter, the Saudi embassy requested to evacuate some of its nationals because it feared there would be retribution. That information came to me and I was asked to approve it. I said no, I would not approve it, until the FBI approved it. And I asked the FBI to approve it, to look at the names of people on the flight manifests, and the FBI approved it.
Now, there's a big tempest about this in retrospect. People think the FBI should have done a better job of looking at the names. The FBI could have called me and said they wanted more time, and I would have given it to them. They could have said they want this individual or that individual detained, and I would have said fine. I am still unaware to this day of anyone who left on any of those flights who the FBI now wants.
Were you concerned about your friendship with Rand Beers being used, as it is now, to suggest that you did this in order to help John Kerry in his presidential campaign?
This is the most interesting charge against me -- that I am a friend of Rand Beers, as if that's some terrible thing. Who is Rand Beers? Until a year ago, he was someone who was working for George Bush in the White House. He worked for George Bush's father in the White House. He worked for Ronald Reagan in the White House. But now it's a terrible thing to be a friend of Rand Beers? He and I have been friends for 25 years. I'm not going to disown him because he's working for John Kerry. He's my friend, he's going to stay my friend, we teach a course together [at Harvard]. He works for John Kerry. I don't.
About the writer
Joe Conason writes a twice weekly column for Salon. He also writes a weekly column for the New York Observer. His new book, "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth," is now available.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. Sets Up Base in Afghan Mountains
By NOOR KHAN
Associated Press Writer
Mar 24, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AL_QAIDA_SPECIAL_OPS_CAMP?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
ON THE AFGHAN BORDER (AP) -- Using bulldozers to slice bunkers and a helicopter landing pad out of a mountainside, U.S. special operations forces dug in Tuesday on a peak overlooking Pakistan - fortifying the area for the intensifying battle against al-Qaida and Taliban forces.
Special operations forces - who include Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and CIA operatives - are playing a secretive but leading role in the battle against al-Qaida and Taliban suspects believed to be hiding out in the mountains of Pakistan's tribal areas.
Remote posts like this one near the Afghan city of Orgun, scratched out of a mountainside to house a small contingent of U.S. forces and a larger Afghan militia unit, serve as forward launch pads for the fight.
An Associated Press writer on Tuesday became the first to report from the special operations' observation post since the start of Operation Mountain Storm, a 2-week-old American offensive designed to capture Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants.
Village elders in this hamlet of 45 families in Paktika province said the Americans arrived 18 days ago with Afghan militia. The camp is home to 60 Americans, working with 200 Afghan militia, the Afghan militiamen say. The Westerners wear T-shirts and sunglasses, and most sport beards and mustaches, with pistols strapped to their legs. Rank and file U.S. soldiers must remain in uniform and are banned from growing beards, but special operations forces are not subject to the same regulations.
Villagers see the Americans out building their base and patrolling, at times with allied Afghan militia - helping close the border against what villagers say are frequent incursions by al-Qaida and Taliban.
The U.S. military says its forces also are sharing information with Pakistani troops across the border - intelligence typically coming everywhere from satellites to intercepted radio calls.
On Tuesday, the Americans were erecting 100 yards of wire fence along the border beside their base. They also dug holes, which will become bunkers, to live in while their Afghan allies put up tents.
Workers used construction equipment to level a helipad.
Americans around the camp refused to speak to AP. Relaying their request through Afghan militiamen, they eventually asked the reporter to leave, saying no journalists were allowed in the area.
The U.S. military as a matter of policy does not comment on special operations. But asked about buildup along the Afghan-Pakistan border in the area, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty said: "We do have some positions that are constantly changing. We are constantly rearranging."
On the Pakistan side, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf has said about a dozen U.S. "technical experts" are in his country. Some are located across the border from the special operations post in Miran Shah, Pakistani intelligence officials told AP.
Last week, a Pakistani army spokesman, Gen. Shaukat Sultan, said a dozen or so U.S. intelligence agents were in the country "assisting Pakistan in technical intelligence and surveillance." The CIA declined to comment.
Afghan villagers near the new post said they welcomed the U.S. crackdown, saying they have come under a growing cross-border rocket barrage from Pakistan.
"So many rockets. We are living in fear of rockets," said shopkeeper Shawar Khan in Sisandi, a village near the U.S. encampment.
Both sides of the border around Miran Shah have come under repeated rocket attacks by militants hoping to hit U.S. or Afghan military posts. Authorities blame al-Qaida fugitives and allied Pakistan tribesmen. Taliban fighters are believed to be hiding in the mountains as well.
No uniformed American forces have been seen in recent days along one of the front lines in the U.S. campaign against terror suspects based in Pakistan's North and South Waziristan, locals say.
Across the border and about 45 miles to the south, in South Waziristan, Pakistan's military has arrested scores in its toughest and bloodiest operation against terror suspects in the tribal areas since Musharraf allied with the United States against terror in 2001.
These mountains in Afghanistan are a hot spot as well. On March 5, U.S. special operations forces killed nine suspected insurgents near this stretch of border when a group of 30 to 40 men appeared to try to flank a U.S.-Afghan position here, the U.S. military said.
Village leaders say Taliban and al-Qaida attackers cross the border at will. Asked for proof, they laughed, as if there could be no doubt.
"Everyone can come easily into Afghanistan. Everyone can go easily into Pakistan," said Mohammed Khan, another shopkeeper in Sisandi. "There are no Afghan checkpoints."
"For 2 1/2 years, they are coming and attacking" from Waziristan, said Shawar Khan. "That's why in this area, there are no schools, there's no health clinics, there's no development. Everyone is afraid to come to our area."
Since the Americans' arrival, villagers have stayed inside after dark, saying the U.S. security outweighed the inconvenience of the curfew.
The U.S. and Afghan forces have closed this part of the border, at least, to any attacks, Mohammed Khan said.
"Right now, from this area, it's impossible that anyone can come," the villager said. "But it's a huge border."
Associated Press writer Munir Ahmad contributed to this report from Islamabad, Pakistan.
-------- africa
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Ethnic Cleansing, Again
March 24, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/opinion/24KRIS.html?hp
ALONG THE SUDAN-CHAD BORDER - The most vicious ethnic cleansing you've never heard of is unfolding here in the southeastern fringes of the Sahara Desert. It's a campaign of murder, rape and pillage by Sudan's Arab rulers that has forced 700,000 black African Sudanese to flee their villages.
The desert is strewn with the carcasses of cattle and goats, as well as fresh refugee graves that are covered with brush so wild animals will not dig them up. Refugees crowd around overused wells, which now run dry, and they mourn loved ones whose bodies they cannot recover.
Western and African countries need to intervene urgently. Sudan's leaders should not be able to get away with mass murder just because they are shrewd enough to choose victims who inhabit a poor region without airports, electricity or paved roads.
The culprit is the Sudanese government, one of the world's nastiest. Its Arab leaders have been fighting a civil war for more than 20 years against its rebellious black African south. Lately it has armed lighter-skinned Arab raiders, the Janjaweed, who are killing or driving out blacks in the Darfur region near Chad.
"They came at 4 a.m. on horseback, on camels, in vehicles, with two helicopters overhead," recalled Idris Abu Moussa, a 26-year-old Sudanese farmer. "They killed 50 people in my village. My father, grandmother, uncle and two brothers were all killed."
"They don't want any blacks left," he added.
Most refugees have stories like that. "They took the cattle and horses, killed the men, raped the women, and then they burned the village," said Abubakr Ahmed Abdallah, a 60-year-old refugee who escaped to Toukoultoukouli in Chad.
"They want to exterminate us blacks," said Halime Ali Souf. Her husband was killed, and she fled into Chad with her infant.
Once refugees like Ms. Halime have fled into Chad, their troubles are not over. The only source of water for many border villages is the riverbed, or wadi, marking the boundary between the two countries, and the Janjaweed regularly shoot men who go there to get water or gather wood.
Zakaria Ibrahim was shot dead a few days ago. "He went to get sticks to build a hut," said his haggard widow, Hawai Abdulyaya, who is left with five children.
The Janjaweed regularly invade Chad to seize cattle and attack Sudanese refugees. In addition, the Sudanese Army has dropped bombs on Chadian villages like Tiné and Besa.
These skirmishes are taking place in a sparsely populated land of sand, shrubs and occasional oases. The only roads are dirt tracks barely navigable by four-wheel-drive vehicles - except when the rainy season makes the area completely impassible. (Join me for a multimedia tour of Africa at www.nytimes.com/kristof.)
The U.N.'s Sudan coordinator, Mukesh Kapila, described the situation in a BBC interview on Friday as similar in character, if not scale, to the Rwanda genocide of 1994. "This is ethnic cleansing," he said. "This is the world's greatest humanitarian crisis, and I don't know why the world isn't doing more about it."
Countless thousands of black Sudanese have been murdered, and 600,000 victims of this ethnic cleansing have fled to other parts of Sudan and are suffering from malnutrition and disease. The 110,000 who have fled into Chad are better off because of the magnificent response of the Chadian peasants. Chadians are desperately poor themselves, but they share what little food and water is available with the Sudanese refugees.
"If we have food or water, we'll share it with them," said a Chadian peasant, Adam Isak Abubakr. "We can't leave them like this."
Let's hope that we Americans will show the same gumption and compassion. We should call Sudan before the U.N. Security Council and the world community and insist that it stop these pogroms. To his credit, President Bush has already led the drive for peace in Sudan, doing far more to achieve a peace than all his predecessors put together. Now he should show the same resolve in confronting this latest menace.
In the 21st century, no government should be allowed to carry out ethnic cleansing, driving 700,000 people from their homes. If we turn away simply because the victims are African tribespeople who have the misfortune to speak no English, have no phones and live in one of the most remote parts of the globe, then shame on us.
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Findings Reopen Rwanda's Wounds
French Judge Says Kagame's Orders Triggered Genocide
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 24, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19055-2004Mar23.html
KIGALI, Rwanda - Ever since an airplane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down late on the night of April 6, 1994, the mystery behind the incident has been this Central African country's equivalent of the JFK assassination. Hutus blamed Tutsis, Tutsis blamed Hutus. But at the time, no one was interested in talking. Answering the question is essential to unraveling the history of this impoverished country as it tries to recover from one of the world's bloodiest genocides. The death of Rwanda's president, Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, launched the 100-day slaughter of nearly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
But a recent investigation by a French judge offers a controversial explanation for the killing. It accuses Rwanda's current president, Paul Kagame, of giving the command to shoot down the plane. The accusation prompted a fiery response from Kagame, who was then the military chief of a mostly Tutsi rebel force, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Kagame accused the French, who backed the Habyarimana dictatorship, of trying to cover up their own complicity in the killing spree.
"The French knew about it. They supported it. They provided weapons, they gave orders and instructions to those who carried out the genocide," Kagame told Radio France International last week. "They also took part in the operations directly at checkpoints on roads to identify people according to their ethnic background, by punishing the Tutsis and showing favoritism to the Hutus."
The French government, which had troops in Rwanda at the time, has denied the charges.
With dozens of heads of state from Africa and elsewhere set to arrive by April 7 for ceremonies and conferences marking the 10th anniversary of the genocide, the bitter accusations and counter accusations have deepened the acrimony between France and Kagame's government, reopening one of the genocide's most troubling questions.
The results of the French investigation -- requested by the families of the presidential jet's pilots but kept classified for six years -- were published last month in the French newspaper Le Monde. In the latest twist, the United Nations announced it had discovered a crucial piece of evidence -- the jet's flight recorder -- in a filing cabinet at U.N. headquarters in New York. But within days, the United Nations said the black box shipped from Africa a decade ago contained a 30-minute conversation from a different flight.
That's when Kagame and his top aides, trying to quiet the diplomatic spat, played down the importance of the mystery.
"We cannot be diverted by those who want to make this an issue. I don't think it's important for the survivors to find out who shot down the plane," said Emmanuel Ndahiro, a close presidential adviser. "We should be helping the people who are still alive, not worried about something that happened in the past."
But establishing responsibility for setting the massacres in motion lies at the heart of the passionate debate within Rwandan civil society and among international human rights groups over the causes of the genocide.
"We are not just talking about any plane," said Francois Grignon, the Central Africa project director for the International Crisis Group, a Belgium-based research organization. "This is an important key to Rwanda's history."
Some say Kagame and his rebel movement shot down the plane to spark a war that would enable the Tutsis to seize power and allow the return of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi refugees from Uganda and other neighboring countries.
Others say the astonishing speed with which the genocide started after Habyarimana's death reflected months of planning. Within hours of the attack on the plane, Hutu militias set up roadblocks and broadcast radio diatribes rallying Hutus to kill Tutsis.
Rwanda today is a place where survivors and those who killed and raped are uneasy neighbors. The country is about to launch a nationwide plan to try some genocide suspects in village courts -- known as gacca -- where the accused ask for forgiveness.
On the hilly, tree-lined streets of Kigali, people were tight-lipped when asked about the French report linking Kagame to Habyarimana's killing. Many are reluctant to challenge a government that they say stifles dissent by labeling anyone who questions it a "divisionist" bent on another genocide.
The government now refers to New York-based Human Rights Watch as "Hutu Rights Watch" and accuses one of the group's researchers, Alison DesForges, of being a "genocide apologist." DesForges and other human rights groups accused Kagame of manipulating last year's presidential election by intimidating Hutu and Tutsi opposition candidates.
In the end, Rwandans may never know who fired the shot that launched the genocide. Those trying to educate young Rwandans about the genocide say the edgy uncertainty is part of Rwanda's history.
"We are talking about a country divided throughout its history. The entire country is traumatized," said John Rutayisire, a prominent Rwandan educator in Kigali. "Security lies not in our missiles or AK-47s, but in people's minds."
-------- arms
US, India to work on gadgets for 'futuristic' soldiers: report
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Mar 24, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040324064257.27nhdrqg.html
India and the United States will work together to develop gadgets for "futuristic land warriors" who will carry tracking devices and other communications systems along with weapons, a report said Wednesday.
The new-style soldiers would be used in low-intensity conflicts and carry equipment such as compact radio transmitters, tracking devices, antennas and built-in cooling systems, The Asian Age said.
The development work will start in June and be carried out by India's leading Defence Research and Development Organisation and US laboratories chosen by Washington, the newspaper said.
Indian and US military ties have warmed sharply over the past few years after the two nations were on opposite sides during the Cold War.
The Indian research organisation said Washington has an ongoing "land warrior" project under which new technologies for "futuristic soldiers" are being developed, and that India will launch one soon.
The Indian research group chief V.K. Atre said the high-tech gadgets would require backup power for which miniature batteries would need to be developed.
The Indian organisation will coordinate with the US laboratories. They will work independently and meet up every three or four months to swap notes.
Atre said the United State was also keen to share India's experiences in keeping soldiers fit in extreme climates. Indian soldiers have to endure freezing temperatures high in the Himalayas along the country's disputed Kashmir frontier with Pakistan as well as searing heat.
In addition, the two countries would work together on a project to develop vaccines to counter biological and chemical warfare, the report said.
-------- balkans
Kosovo Marks Anniversary of NATO Bombing
By FISNIK ABRASHI
Associated Press Writer
Mar 24, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KOSOVO_CLASHES?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- Ethnic Albanians marked the fifth anniversary of the start of a NATO-led bombing campaign on Wednesday even as the alliance tracked down suspects behind recent violence that has deepened ethnic hatreds in the province.
The top U.N. official in Kosovo, Harri Holkeri, appealed for a new beginning following the worst violence since the end of war in 1999. He called on people to isolate those who "tried to destroy the whole future of Kosovo."
"They are responsible for severe crimes against humanity," Holkeri said Tuesday.
Kosovo's President Ibrahim Rugova called for people to remember the "one of the most important dates of Kosovo's history." Billboards were erected throughout the provincial capital, Pristina, reading, "Days of Hope - The New Beginning."
In Belgrade, the capital of Serbia-Montenegro, memorial services were scheduled for the Serbs slain in the alliance bombing campaign.
Despite appeals for calm in Kosovo, attackers ambushed a police patrol in the village of Sakovica, 15 miles northeast of Pristina, killing one officer from Ghana and one local officer, as well as one of the assailants, said U.N. police spokesman Derek Chappell. An interpreter was seriously injured.
"This is a very extensive crime scene," Chappell said. "A lot of bullets have been fired."
The red and white U.N. police car was run off the side of the road, its blue light still flashing. NATO-led peacekeepers and police reinforcements arrived at the scene and started searching a small hill with flashlights.
The attack - only the second in Kosovo involving an international police officer - seemed certain to increase tensions that were already high following last week's rioting by ethnic Albanian mobs that left 28 people dead, about 600 injured and 4,000 homeless.
Some 366 Serb homes and 41 churches or monasteries were burned in the rampage that followed the drowning of two ethnic Albanian boys allegedly chased into a river by Serbs.
International officials have blamed the recent spate of attacks targeting Serbs on ethnic Albanian extremists. They also have sharply criticized the province's leaders for failing to directly condemn attacks on Serbs.
The ethnic clashes overshadowed the anniversary marking the first day of NATO's 78-day air war, which was launched to stop former President Slobodan Milosevic from cracking down on ethnic Albanians seeking independence.
Kosovo has been an international protectorate since then, its final status to be decided by the United Nations. For now, it officially remains a part of Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state of Yugoslavia.
The European Union's top foreign policy chief Javier Solana - who ordered the NATO bombing five years ago when he was NATO chief - toured a school burned during the recent rioting in the city of Kosovo Polje.
Solana and EU Commissioner Chris Patten were expected to meet later with local leaders to condemn the violence.
Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has criticized the U.N. mission and NATO, saying they bear "some responsibility" for failing to prevent last week's violence, which Belgrade dubbed "ethnic cleansing" of Serbs in Kosovo.
The extent of the latest violence underscored the depth of hatred between Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, who want independence, and Serbs, who want Kosovo to remain part of Serbia-Montenegro.
It also raised questions about why NATO - in charge of keeping the peace in Kosovo since the end of the war - was unable to prevent it or stop it fast.
While the United Nations administers Kosovo and U.N. police are expected to keep law and order, the presence of nearly 20,000 NATO-led peacekeepers was - until last week - believed to be a strong deterrent to major violence.
A NATO commander in the central part of Kosovo apologized for failing to anticipate the potential for trouble.
"We got it wrong," Brig. Gen. Anders Braennstroem said at a meeting with leaders from the Serb communities near Pristina. "For that, I am very sorry."
--------
Kosovo Smolders After Mob Violence
March 24, 2004
By NICHOLAS WOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/international/europe/24KOSO.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SVINJARE, Kosovo, March 23 - There is not much left of this village. Every Serbian house has been burned - all 136 of them. Smoke still rises from some of the embers of buildings where some 320 people lived until last week, when they were forced from their homes by an ethnic Albanian mob.
The only houses left standing were a group in the center of the village, each with an Albanian flag on the door or roof to ward off intruders.
Yet Svinjare is in a region of Kosovo under the authority of the United Nations. It lies just 600 yards from a camp of United Nations peacekeepers whose task is to protect the people living there.
The village was among dozens of Serbian communities across Kosovo attacked by ethnic Albanians during two days of violence last week, during which United Nations officials now say 28 people died.
More than 400 Serbian homes were ruined, 30 churches were destroyed and 11 damaged, and 72 United Nations vehicles were destroyed, United Nations officials said. They acknowledged that Svinjare (pronounced SVIN-yah-reh) was among the worst cases, though no one died there. United Nations police and soldiers managed to evacuate the village in time.
There were mirror-image scenes in Kosovo just less five years ago. Then, hundreds of villages were burned as Serbian security forces sought to expel the majority ethnic Albanians - some 1.8 million people - from the territory.
The United States government estimates that up to 10,000 Albanians were killed in massacres by the Serbian police and paramilitaries.
In March 1999, NATO forces intervened with a bombing campaign. By June, the Serbian forces withdrew and the United Nations was placed in charge of the province. Some 800,000 Albanian refugees began to return home. Many of them sought revenge against their Serbian neighbors, and once again whole villages went up in flames.
United Nations officials have said that progress has been made and that interethnic violence has declined. But analysts say the underlying cause of those conflicts has never been addressed, even by the United Nations: What should become of Kosovo?
The ethnic Albanians want independence. The Serbs, who make up less than 10 percent of the population, want to return to Serbian rule. Albanian hard-liners, some United Nations officials believe, want to redraw the province's ethnic map again, by seeking to fuel interethnic hatred.
A senior police commander said the apparent failure of the peacekeepers demonstrated how their concern over possible mass violence had diminished as interethnic relations appeared to improving.
"Maybe we were a little bit sleepy," said Lt. Col. Jerzy Szezytynski, the commander of the Polish Special Police Unit in Kosovo, who has worked in the province since 1999. "It was a big surprise for all of us." But he said the United Nations - with more than 3,000 troops in the northern region, bolstered by several hundred police officers - should have been able to stop the violence. "It was a failure," he said.
A spokesman for the French brigade in charge in northern Kosovo, Lt. Matthieu Mabin, said the violence had spread too quickly and across too wide an area. "We can't protect everywhere all of the time," he said. "It's the reality on the ground, very simply."
The United Nations' spokeswoman in Kosovo, Jing Hua, said the United Nations troops had restored order quickly. "The developments here took everyone by surprise," she said, "but within two days they had gained control of the situation."
The situation remains volatile, however. Two policemen were killed late Tuesday when their patrol car came under fire on the main road between Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and Pudujevo, close to the boundary with Serbia.
Svinjare villagers said they were alerted to the possibility of an attack last Thursday, a day after violence erupted in the neighboring city of Mitrovica. That afternoon, a United Nations police car drove at high speed toward the north of Svinjare. Svinjare was the only Serbian village bordering the Albanian-dominated south of Mitrovica, just half a mile away.
The rioting was continuing in Mitrovica for a second day. Villagers said the entrance to Svinjare was being protected by a truck filled with seven or eight Moroccan peacekeepers. Lieutenant Mabin, the French brigade spokesman, said 20 soldiers were on duty.
Pedrag Antic, 49, a former electrician, said he was standing at the end of the village with four other men when the speeding United Nations police car slowed to pull alongside the Moroccan patrol. Within seconds, he said, several hundred youths came into sight, running along the road by the perimeter fence of the French base.
Mr. Antic said he and his neighbors began warning families nearby to retreat into the village. "I can't even find the words to describe how fast they were coming," he said.
Suddenly, he said three armored United Nations police jeeps carrying 12 officers came from behind the youths and reached the edge of the village before them. But the mob continued to advance, and within minutes, he said, houses at the village's northern end were being set alight. In less than 15 minutes, he said, perhaps a dozen houses were ablaze.
"We were shouting at the police to stop them," he said.
Mr. Antic's cousin, Milas Antic, 49, recalled his terror. "I thought we would all be dead," he said.
Pedrag Antic and several other villagers said the United Nations police officers and the Moroccan patrol did nothing to stop the mob but drove parallel to it as the young men threw Molotov cocktails, set more buildings on fire and fired guns. A regional commander of the United Nations police said his unit fired 7 to 10 shots to ward off the group.
The mixed convoy of police and military vehicles drew to a halt several hundred yards into the village, ahead of the mob, forming a roadblock. Villagers said the youths began to pull back.
Meanwhile, as a precaution, soldiers arranged for the village's women and children to be taken to the French base, Camp Belvedere. But then the soldiers told the villagers that they could not defend the village, and that every one would have to leave.
Svinjare had been reinforced by then, according to the United Nations police and the peacekeeping force, with an additional 20 soldiers and 50 Polish antiriot police officers.
"We asked them if they could secure us, but they were trying to convince us they were not able, because they had to go elsewhere," Pedrag Antic said.
The decision to evacuate was taken by the French general responsible for Northern Kosovo, Gen. Xavier Michel, Lieutenant Mabin said, because the French forces were needed elsewhere. He said he did not know where.
"We had a choice between human lives or houses," he said. "It was clear we had to save lives."
The families were loaded onto a bus. "People were crying and yelling," said Capt. Cezary Luba of the Polish unit. Most villagers said they left with nothing but the clothes they were wearing.
The Polish troops were also ordered to leave the village, the police said. The threats to Albanians were spreading; the Poles were sent to help protect groups of Albanian-speaking Roma in a town to the south of Mitrovica. But their commander, Colonel Szezytynski, said there were still enough peacekeepers in the village to defend it. "There were only five houses burning when they left," he said, referring to his men. "When they passed by again all the houses were on fire."
About 100 men from the village made their way on foot to the base, which lies on a hill overlooking the village. So they saw the mob returning, shortly after nightfall, he said, and they saw the fires.
Graffiti left on the scorched walls suggests the Albanians intended to rebuild the village for themselves. "Taken by Qerkim," "Taken by Safeti," and other Albanian names.
The peacekeepers evacuated 204 people to the French camp; they have now been moved to an empty housing project in the Serb-dominated northern side of Mitrovica, on a hill where they can still see their village.
"We really believed KFOR would come to protect us, but you see how it turned out," said Milorad Vasic, referring to the peacekeeping force. Mr. Vasic fled his house with his wife and three children.
"We lived in hope," he said. "We counted on them. They told us they were democrats. We thought it would get better. That's why we stayed."
-------- business
BAE Appoints Oil Executive As New Head
Mar 24, 2004
(AP)
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/BAE_CHAIRMAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
LONDON -- BAE Systems PLC, Britain's largest aerospace and defense contractor, has named oil industry veteran Dick Olver as chairman, the company said Wednesday.
Olver, currently deputy chief executive at energy group BP PLC, will take over from retiring BAE chairman Sir Richard Evans on July 1.
Olver, 57, is an engineer by training and has worked at BP for 30 years. BAE will appoint him as a non-executive director on May 17 before his becoming chairman.
Olver will continue his association with BP, serving as deputy chairman of its Russian joint venture TNK-BP starting in May. He also will work as a consultant for BP, the energy company said.
In addition, Olver is a non-executive director of media and information group Reuters Group PLC. Olver joins BAE as it tries to expand its already substantial business in the United States and profit from U.S. government spending on defense.
BAE has long expressed its openness to a possible trans-Atlantic merger, arguing that European defense groups can't compete in the future without access to U.S. technologies. American defense company General Dynamics Corp. reportedly broke off exploratory talks about a merger with BAE in October.
--------
Military Was Sold Lead-Tainted Fabric for Tents
March 24, 2004
By NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/politics/24TENT.html
WASHINGTON, March 23 - Almost three-fourths of the camouflage-patterned tents, tarpaulins and jeep covers used by the United States military throughout the world are made from fabric manufactured with toxic lead compounds that can cause a variety of illnesses including cancer, according to undisputed evidence in a lawsuit being tried mostly behind closed doors in federal court.
While the chemicals - lead chromate, hexavalent chromium and trivalent chromium - are prohibited by the military in the fabrics it buys, a Pentagon spokesman said last week that tests by the Army have shown that they are present in the tent fabric, though in concentrations too small to pose any risk.
"We determined that even though it was out there, the products were safe for continued use without restriction," said Maj. Michael Shavers, a Pentagon spokesman. "There is no risk to the troops."
Lawyers for the plaintiff who first brought the suit say that an outside expert they hired to review the report believes that the military's tests were inadequate and inconclusive.
Even though the Pentagon says the fabric poses no threat, the company that used the lead and chromium compounds in the manufacture of camouflage fabrics, the BondCote Corporation of Pulaski, Va., is being sued by the government in Federal District Court in Savannah, Ga. It is also the subject of a federal criminal investigation in Virginia.
The Justice Department, according to a document in the case, has proposed a settlement of the civil suit against the contractor by imposing a penalty of $1.7 million. Pentagon officials declined to provide a precise figure for how much business BondCote has done with the military, beyond saying it provides more than 70 percent of the camouflage fabrics used by subcontractors.
The discovery and investigation of the material began after a Virginia resident, Keith Ayers, filed a citizen's complaint 14 months ago against BondCote charging that it was secretly using lead chromate to lower its costs in providing camouflage fabrics to meet military specifications. Most of the filings in the suit have been sealed by the court.
The suit by Mr. Ayers, who had a business dispute with BondCote, was brought using the federal False Claims Act, a law that allows private citizens to sue contractors for defrauding the government. Under the law, sometimes known as the whistle-blower's act, an individual can sue on behalf of the government and, if successful, can be rewarded with a percentage of any settlement.
The law also allows the government to assume control of the lawsuit; that is what happened in the BondCote case. Mr. Ayers and his lawyers are challenging the $1.7 million figure as far too small.
"This was a massive fraud on the military, with the potential for serious illness," said Mike Bothwell, the Georgia lawyer who helped Mr. Ayers bring his lawsuit and who first contacted The Times about the issue.
Mr. Bothwell asserted that Justice Department lawyers had told him they were seeking a modest settlement so as not to put BondCote out of business because they needed the company to remain a viable supplier.
"They told me flat out," Mr. Bothwell said, that if a substantially higher penalty were to be imposed, Stonebridge Partners L.P., the White Plains investment company that owns Bondcote, "will just bankrupt Bondcote and put it out of business."
Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, said he would not comment on any aspect of the case.
Paul R. Thompson, who represents BondCote, said in an interview that the company's annual revenues were about $30 million, with coated fabrics accounting for only part of that. The size of the settlement was reasonable, Mr. Thompson said, because BondCote is a small company with fewer than 140 employees.
The fabrics come in green camouflage and tan camouflage. The lead chromate is used to help the product meet requirements for flexibility and visibility to infrared light.
In a brief statement, Ted Anderson, the president of BondCote, said that extensive testing demonstrated conclusively that the fabric was safe.
"There is simply no truth to the baseless suggestions that the material poses any risk," he said.
In a letter to Mr. Ayers in January 2003, Mr. Anderson asserted that BondCote had not used lead chromate. The company apparently dropped that position after a May 2003 raid on its warehouse by federal agents. The company now says that the chemicals did not pose any threat and that it no longer uses them.
A Pentagon official said that procurement officials said that BondCote had acted improperly, but that there was no real harm done because the tests showed no risk.
According to a Sept. 30, 2003, report by an Army research agency, tests on 20 "lightly worn" tents over three months showed "low-level hexavalent chromium," a byproduct of lead chromate degradation, but at amounts far lower than would cause concern for troops living and working in them during a full year.
A report by a toxicologist hired by Mr. Bothwell said the government report was flawed because only lightly worn tents were tested.
-------- china
Taiwanese President Yields to Calls For Fast Recount of Disputed Vote
By Tim Culpan and Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 24, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18965-2004Mar23.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 23 -- Taiwan's newly reelected president, Chen Shui-bian, acceded Tuesday to opposition demands for a swift recount of Saturday's contested vote and pledged to abide by the results.
Acting on the decision, Chen's Democratic Progressive Party proposed amending Taiwan's election law to make any vote won by a margin of less than 1 percent subject to a quick recount. The revision would be retroactive, applying to the vote Saturday in which Chen defeated his Nationalist Party opponent, Lien Chan, by only 29,000 out of about 13 million ballots.
"I will accept it 100 percent, absolutely accept it," Chen said in a televised address, his first appearance in public since the vote.
China, meanwhile, called on the United States to move more forcefully to make sure Chen's reelection does not lead to any move toward independence. Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing made the request in a telephone conversation Sunday with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing announced.
Since the independence-minded Chen was elected four years ago, attempts to lower tensions across the Taiwan Strait and to take practical steps to improve relations between China and Taiwan have been frozen. Chinese sources with access to official thinking said the Chinese leadership regards Chen as reckless in his determination to pursue independence for Taiwan, which Beijing insists is a part of China that must be reunited with the mainland, by force if necessary.
Lien, backed by Nationalist protesters camping for the third day in front of the presidential office, has insisted on an immediate recount of Saturday's vote to assess what he charged were a number of potential irregularities. In particular, he said, the number of annulled votes -- 330,000 -- was suspiciously high.
Lien also told a CNN interviewer that the shooting of Chen and his vice president, Annette Lu, on the day before the election produced a large sympathy vote for the incumbent and that outside investigators, in addition to the Taiwan police, should look into it. "We lost half a million votes," Lien declared in the interview.
Without citing evidence, he and other Taiwanese have suggested there was something suspicious about the incident, in which a still-unidentified gunman fired two shots, one that hit Chen in the abdomen and another that struck Lu in the right knee. Neither Chen nor Lu was seriously wounded.
Chen, in his address, also said he would agree to "more participation" in the investigation. He said he was just as eager as anyone to find out who did the shooting and why.
Changing the electoral law as suggested by Chen's party would bypass a three-judge panel named to consider whether Lien's complaints justify a recount. That procedure, set in motion according to the law as it now stands, would take several months, judges told reporters.
Lin Chia-lung, Chen's cabinet spokesman, said the law proposed Tuesday could take effect seven days after passage and a recount could be carried out within a few days after that.
Chen's willingness to move swiftly seemed to reflect a desire to put the political turmoil of the last several days behind him and return this island of 23 million to normalcy. With that in mind, he called on the Nationalist Party protesters to leave the streets and allow Taiwan to get back to work.
Lien had no immediate comment on Chen's decision. But his followers in the legislature blocked the proposed election-law revision for the time being, saying it should be tied to broadening the investigation into Friday's shooting. Moreover, Wang Jin-pyng, legislative speaker and a senior member of Lien's campaign team, told reporters that the revision should be rejected in favor of an immediate executive order for a recount from Chen himself.
The dispute over Chen's narrow reelection has overshadowed the outcome of a controversial referendum that was voted on alongside the presidential balloting. Taiwanese were asked whether they wanted to return to negotiations with China and whether the island should buy more missile defenses if China refused to withdraw the estimated 500 short-range missiles based in southern China, just across the 100-mile Taiwan Strait.
In what was hailed as a major victory in China -- and a major defeat for Chen -- fewer than 50 percent of all eligible voters in Taiwan cast a ballot in the referendum, thus rendering it invalid. The Chinese government charged that the real purpose of the referendum was to set a precedent that could be followed to alter the Taiwanese constitution and, ultimately, to hold a plebiscite on independence.
"For Chen Shui-bian, the referendum was a tool to kidnap the will of the island's people, provoke the mainland and carry out his own self-indulgent political gambling," said an editorial carried Tuesday by the official New China News Agency. "The referendum on March 20 was a political fraud meticulously designed by Chen Shui-bian, aiming to split the nation, provoke relations between the two sides and seize power."
The agency comment, breaking two days of silence by the Chinese government, avoided any reference to the presidential vote or the recount dispute. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, called the vote a local affair, seeking to emphasize Beijing's position that Taiwan is not a country but a rebellious Chinese province.
Cody reported from Beijing.
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China Halts Rights Talks With U.S.
Beijing Condemns Move Seeking U.N. Resolution
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 24, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18964-2004Mar23.html
BEIJING, March 23 -- A day after the Bush administration sought a U.N. resolution condemning China's human rights practices, the Chinese government announced Tuesday that it had suspended human rights dialogues with the United States and accused Washington of provoking confrontation.
"The United States should bear all the consequences that might arise from this," Deputy Foreign Minister Shen Guofang told U.S. Ambassador Clark T. Randt Jr., according to a Foreign Ministry statement. "The United States' insistence on provoking confrontation has seriously damaged the foundation of our two countries' human rights dialogue and exchange," Shen was quoted as saying.
The U.S. proposal and the swift Chinese reaction injected a sour note into what have been increasingly good relations in recent months. Ties have been particularly friendly since President Bush in December called on the Taiwanese president, Chen Shui-bian, to call off a controversial referendum that Chinese leaders feared could be a precedent for a plebiscite on a declaration of independence. Chen went ahead with the referendum, but it was defeated in voting last Saturday.
The practical effect and the duration of China's suspension were unclear, but the ministry made it clear only human rights dialogues were targeted. That suggested the broad range of U.S.-Chinese relations -- billions of dollars in economic exchanges, anti-terrorism cooperation and diplomatic coordination on the North Korean nuclear crisis -- was unlikely to suffer. For instance, China also called Tuesday for more U.S. diplomatic efforts to make sure Taiwan did not move toward independence because Chen led the voting Saturday.
The Bush administration, in its latest human rights report, accused China of backsliding on respect for human rights in 2003 after showing improvement the previous year. As a result, U.S. officials had warned that, although they did not so do in 2003, they were likely to seek a U.N. censure this year, citing the stifling of dissident religious and political figures, police killings and torture in police custody.
China warned repeatedly that such a move would damage U.S.-China cooperation on human rights and, in contacts with U.S. diplomats, sought to dissuade the administration from pressing the issue.
As the contacts were underway, China over the last month released from prison three prominent dissidents from a list of seven high-priority human rights cases pressed on Beijing by the Bush administration. The releases were seen as gestures to bolster the Chinese case that the U.N. resolution was unnecessary. In addition, the National People's Congress on March 14 amended the constitution to include for the first time a formal guarantee for human rights, another gesture in the direction urged on China by the United States.
U.S. envoys on Monday nevertheless proposed a resolution condemning China at the annual U.N. Human Rights Conference meeting in Geneva. The resolution would have no binding effect, but would put the United Nations on record as criticizing China's human rights record.
According to the Foreign Ministry statement, Shen complained to Randt that the decision to go forward caught China by surprise because, in the view of Chinese officials, contacts were still under way and the question was still open. "Even as the two sides were negotiating on the issue, the U.S. side went back on its word and suddenly announced its resolution against China," Shen was quoted as saying.
The U.S. Embassy in Beijing declined to comment on the issue. A spokesman said only that Randt was in contact with "representatives of the Foreign Ministry."
The State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said the administration went ahead because the Chinese government failed to carry out specific promises for improvement made during contacts in 2003. "We are concerned about backsliding on key human rights issues that has occurred in a variety of issues since that time," Boucher said.
Aside from individual cases, China and the United States have broadly different views about what respect for human rights entails. In discussing the constitutional amendment 10 days ago, for instance, Premier Wen Jiabao made it clear China still considers stability to have precedence over political freedoms. A week earlier, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said the human rights to a decent standard of living and health care were just as important as such human rights as freedom of speech or assembly.
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New Haitian Cabinet Holds First Meeting
By STEVENSON JACOBS
Associated Press Writer
Mar 24, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/H/HAITI?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Haiti's new Cabinet met for the first time Wednesday to discuss the urgent need to disarm gunmen in a nation terrorized by rebels, street gangs and escaped convicts despite thousands of U.S.-led peacekeepers.
Haitian police officers are among those accused of fueling the turmoil, with a report Wednesday that five officers have been detained on suspicion of killing five supporters of ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide's party.
The National Coalition for Haitian Rights said that according to relatives of the victims, the officers rounded up and executed the men, ages 17 to 24, over the weekend. The officers were detained Monday, but no charges had been filed.
Police have also been accused of brutalizing opponents of Aristide, who fled the country Feb. 29 as a three-week popular rebellion neared Port-au-Prince, the capital. Scores of police were among more than 300 people killed in the revolt; hundreds fled before the rebels, who torched police stations and freed thousands of convicts.
A month later, rebels remain armed and in charge in Haiti's three largest cities outside the capital, while some smaller towns are under the sway of street gangs and convicts. In Les Cayes, on the southeast peninsula, gangs carried out a public execution Monday, U.N. relief worker Fernando Arroyo told The Associated Press.
A 14-year-old boy caught stealing was chased by a mob, which dragged him before an improvised jury that ordered him shot to death, Arroyo said.
In northeast Fort Liberte, there were reports that "a gang of convicts is basically running the place," Arroyo said.
An AP reporter watched rebel leader Louis-Jodel Chamblain, a convicted assassin, acting as judge this week in the northern port of Cap-Haitien, where Aristide supporters and French peacekeepers say bodies still are appearing in the bay.
Chamblain holds court despite the arrival last week of 150 French troops and the return of about 50 police officers.
Arroyo said the "still chaotic" situation was stifling access for aid workers.
Dock workers in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday began loading 1,550 tons of food onto a ship expected to arrived in Cap-Haitien on Saturday to help feed 180,000 people throughout northern Haiti, the World Food Program said. Cap-Haitien port was looted a month ago when rebels seized the town, and the port remains in their hands.
While officials of the U.S.-backed interim government and the U.S.-led peacekeeping force agree on the urgency for disarmament, little is being done.
U.S. Marine Maj. Richard Crusan said troops had collected 67 weapons since they began disarming a week ago.
"Everybody has to be disarmed. Without disarmament, there will be no security," Prime Minister Gerard Latortue's aide, Miguel Auguste, told AP. He said Latortue was working with U.S. and French troops to make disarmament a priority.
Cabinet Minister Robert Ulysse said Latortue met with senior police officials for several hours Tuesday night and would report to the Cabinet.
Auguste also said officials were considering new training and education programs to help reintegrate into society impoverished and armed Aristide supporters.
But he did not address disarming the rebels, led by ex-soldiers of Haiti's disgraced army, whom Latortue has been criticized for hailing as "freedom fighters."
-------- iraq
11 Iraqi Police Officers Are Killed by Gunmen
March 24, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/24/international/middleeast/24IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 23 - In the latest attacks against Iraqi police officers, gunmen on Tuesday killed nine officers riding in a minibus in southern Iraq and two officers parking a car in northern Iraq.
The police officers in the minibus were shot as they drove to work near Hilla, about two hours south of Baghdad, a spokesman for the occupying authorities said.
According to police reports, a car with gunmen hanging out the windows and blasting assault rifles swerved in front of the minibus. The bullets drilled right through the aluminum-skinned bus and into the officers seated inside.
The Hilla area, home to a large American presence, has become increasingly violent. Earlier this month, two American civilians working for the occupation authorities were killed on an empty road near Hilla. Four Iraqi policemen were arrested in connection with those slayings.
The second attack on Tuesday happened in the northern city of Kirkuk, a caldron of ethnic tension among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen. The two police officers who were killed were twin brothers, according to The Associated Press. They were parking a car near a mosque when they were ambushed.
The shootings are not thought to be connected, though they follow a relentless pattern of attacks against Iraqi police officers and recruits that have claimed more than 400 lives.
Occupation authorities say the killings have not discouraged new applicants. For every police job there are six people applying, occupation officials said, and already 70,000 have been hired.
"These attacks have been going on for months," said a spokesman for the occupation authorities, who declined to give his name. "But there are still a lot of people who want these jobs."
Starting salary for Iraqi policemen is $69 a month.
While attacks on American-led military forces have dropped decisively to about 20 a day from a high in November of 50, Iraqi forces face intensifying risks. Of the 200,000 Iraqi policemen, border police officers, soldiers and civil defense troops, most lack heavy weaponry and even bulletproof vests, and many work in stations not protected by blast walls.
In February, more than 50 police recruits were killed in a car bombing in Iskandariya, 30 miles south of Baghdad, as they were standing outside a police station waiting to apply for work.
Also on Tuesday, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief American administrator, made a quick trip to Najaf, the hometown of Iraq's most powerful cleric, and tried to calm worries about the transfer of sovereignty scheduled to take place by June 30.
Mr. Bremer met local religious and tribal leaders for about 30 minutes and addressed concerns about the country's constitution that had been raised by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In a letter made public this week, Ayatollah Sistani wrote that he would refuse to meet with United Nations officials when they arrived to help the country draw up plans for a new government.
In his letter, Ayatollah Sistani wrote that the interim constitution agreed to earlier this month by the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council "enjoys no support among most of the Iraqi people." The ayatollah, who commands the allegiance of much of the country's Shiite Muslim majority, wrote that there would be "dangerous consequences" if the United Nations endorsed the document.
Mr. Bremer tried to allay concerns that the interim constitution would unfairly influence the drafting of a permanent charter.
"On what will be included in the permanent constitution, it will be decided by elected people and not the coalition," Mr. Bremer said, according to a reporter allowed to attend the meeting.
Dexter Filkins contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
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Ambushes in Iraq Kill 11
As Snipers Target Police Effort to Replace Americans Set Back
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 24, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16920-2004Mar23?language=printer
BAGHDAD, March 23 -- Gunmen killed at least 11 Iraqi police officers and trainees in separate attacks Tuesday, striking another blow against the fledgling security services that have been created to eventually take over public safety from U.S.-led occupation forces.
In the desert outside Musayyib, about 35 miles south of Baghdad, gunmen ambushed a bright yellow minibus full of police recruits heading south toward a training academy in Hilla.
According to the U.S. military, nine were killed and two were injured around