Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Anniversary Lessons From Three Mile Island and Chernobyl
Contaminated water shuts Rio uranium mine
Nuclear waste transportation casks would survive
BNFL: Iodine tablets would be ineffectual
Illegal uranium mining in Congo, U.N. wants answers
EU slams Sellafield nuclear plant
O'Dowd calls on BNFL to 'come clean' on Sellafield terrorist threat
India again tests short-range surface-to-air missile
The Ordeal of Mordechai Vanunu, The Man Who Knew Too Much
DPRK 'upbeat' on nuclear talks
US - Led Group Wins N. Korea Nuclear Site Cooperation
White House 'exaggerated extent of WMD breakthrough'
Retired Brass Urge Delay in Antimissile Shield
Generals and Admirals Call for Missile Defense Postponement
Spent Nuclear Waste from Hungary: Legal Issues
Ukraine Says Hundreds of Missiles Missing
Book Alleges Rocky Flats Misconduct
Flats whistleblowers visit Boulder
Asthma near epidemic in Kentucky
Plutonium found in air samples at WIPP
Three Hanford nuclear workers taken to hospital
Six States Want Federal Judge's Ruling on Department of Energy
House narrowly passes $2.4 trillion spending plan
Clarke then . . .
. . . and Clarke now
White House Fights Clarke Fire With Fire
House Approves $2.4 Trillion Budget Plan
Ex-Aide's Book Corners Market in Capital Buzz
MILITARY
Military death toll in Al-Qaeda operation reaches 54, 20 missing
Up to 2,000 Marines to Go to Afghanistan From Gulf
Returnees Struggle On Dry Afghan Plain
25 Dead in Ivory Coast as Protesters Defy Ban
China, Israel march in step again
Israel showcases latest intifada-induced military innovations
Mexico Rejects British Explanations on Cavers
Six British Cavers Taken for Questioning
Comanche's Cancellation Brings Layoffs
China to Examine Hong Kong Government
Vote Results Trigger Violence in Taiwan
Can technology protect us?
European Union Agrees on Plan to Coordinate Antiterror Effort
Poland to Consult Allies on Iraq Troops
EU Leaders Appoint Anti-Terror Coordinator
At prison gate, Iraqi families vent
U.S. Officials Fashion Legal Basis to Keep Force in Iraq
3 Troops Killed in Iraq Attacks
9 Iraqis Are Killed in Fighting With Marines in Falluja
Sharon's Gaza Strategy: Good for Hamas, or Israel?
Strange Motives
'North American NATO' under discussion
No crisis with Russia over NATO extension: US envoy
Purported Zawahiri Tape Condemns Musharraf
US soldiers face charges of prisoner abuse
EU Leaders Want New U.N. Iraq Resolution
In Army Survey, Troops in Iraq Report Low Morale
U.S. Army Finds Its Suicide Rate in Iraq Is Higher
Bush Defends Response to Threats of Terrorism
The Wrong War
Democrats Call Bush's Comedy Skit Tasteless
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
For the Record
Rice Is Agreeable to Return for More of 9/11 Panel's Queries
FBI up for private screens
General: U.S. Wants Canada to Join Pact
Missile Defense for Airliners Is Possible Soon, Makers Say
Judge Won't Dismiss Guantanamo Spy Case
OTHER
White House, Pentagon Sued for Perchlorate Documents
Parks Chief to Better Manage Costs
EPA Orders Cleaner Gas in Denver
ACTIVISTS
25 Killed in Antigovernment Protest in Ivory Coast
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Anniversary Lessons From Three Mile Island and Chernobyl
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania, (ENS)
March 26, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-26-03.asp
March 28 marks the 25th anniversary of the nuclear accident at Unit 2 Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
April 26 is the 18th anniversary of the 1986 nuclear accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Slavutych, Ukraine.
The Ukrainian-American Environmental Association invites the world to take a lesson from these anniversaries of the two worst mishaps in the history of commercial nuclear power.
The must "serve as a continuing reminder of the inherent risks of nuclear energy and the necessity for both Ukraine and the United States to increase reliance on safer, cleaner, more affordable, and sustainable energy efficient and renewable energy technologies," the association says.
Residents living in the vicinity of the Three Mile Island (TMI) nuclear plant would agree. Events are taking place all this week to remember the morning 25 years ago when the Unit 2 reactor at Three Mile Island lost cooling water and the overheated plant came within 30 minutes of a full meltdown. A schedule is online at: http://www.tmia.com/
Unit 2 never generated power again after the accident. But Three Mile Island's Unit 1 is still in operation. Located in Middletown, Pennsylvania TMI-1 is a pressurized water reactor that, at full power, meets the electricity needs of a city the size of Philadelphia. The plant began commercial operation in 1974.
Three Mile Island Unit 1 on the right is still operating, while Unit 2 stands empty on the left. (Photo courtesy NRC) In December 1999, General Public Utilities sold TMI-1 to AmerGen Energy LLC, then a joint venture of PECO (now Exelon) and British Energy, of Edinburgh, Scotland. Exelon Corporation became the full owners of AmerGen in December 2003.
On Sunday, No Nukes Pennsylvania is holding the Annual Three Mile Island Vigil at the North Gate of facility. Speakers will draw parallels between the American and the Ukranian nuclear accidents. They will call for a phaseout of nuclear power worldwide and for increased safety precautions in Pennsylvania and across the United States.
Nils Diaz, who chairs the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the federal agency responsible for nuclear power generation in the United States, says regulatory improvements since the accident are "significant," making all U.S. nuclear reactors safer.
Improvements include - upgrading and strengthening of plant design and equipment requirements, identifying human performance as a critical part of plant safety, immediate NRC notification requirements for plant events, and an NRC operations center which is staffed 24 hours a day.
On March 3, Diaz hosted a workshop on the TMI accident and what can be done to ensure that "the lessons so painfully learned in the immediate aftermath of of the accident remain in sharp focus 25 years later for members of the NRC staff, who share our continuing responsibility to protect the public health and safety and the environment from the potential hazards associated with the commercial uses of nuclear energy."
Diaz stressed that "safety management remains the ultimate responsibility of licensees," the companies that are licensed to operate the 103 commercial nuclear reactors. And he emphasized that "organizational cultures with a strong sense of safety management" are essential for keeping these reactors operating without another accident. To Diaz safety management means "commitment," "technical expertise," and "the people, programs, and processes to implement a safety program effectively."
The NRC offers a fact sheet on the Three Mile Island accident with a summary of events, a report on the health effects of the accident and a list of improvements made by the nuclear industry as a result of the most serious accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant operating history.
"The accident was caused by a combination of personnel error, design deficiencies, and component failures," the NRC states and asserts that it "led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community."
The nuclear watchdog organization Three Mile Island Alert has issued a comparison between the NRC Three Mile Island fact sheet and the events surrounding on March 28, 1979 as they know them.
The group emphasizes that on the day of the accident, Metropolitan Edison-General Public Utilities was operating the Three Mile Island reactor in violation of NRC regulations.
"It should be noted that if the company had operated lawfully, the plant would have been shutdown for repairs and there would have been no accident on March 28th 1979," the comparison document states.
"On May 22 1979, former control room operator Harold W. Hartman, Jr. tells the NRC investigators that Metropolitan Edison- General Public Utilities had been falsifying primary-coolant, leak rate data for months prior to the accident. At least two members of management were aware of the practice," the comparison report states. Later, the company pleaded "no contest" to federal charges of criminal falsifications
"The NRC's role in the accident is one of tacit permissiveness," criticizes Three Mile Island Alert, which warns that "safety conditions and attitudes are returning to the level evidenced by the industry in 1979."
Many of the so called "permanent" changes have been downgraded since the time of their installation, the watchdog group says. It cites a January 2000 investigation by the General Accounting Office, a Congressional agency, which found that NRC inspectors have little confidence in the newly implemented regulatory process. Unless a suspicious condition is deemed clearly dangerous, the new process does not allow the implementation of other than routine inspections.
The current owner of Three Mile Island (TMI), Exelon, is failing to maintain adequate staffing levels, according to Eric Joseph Epstein writing December 16, 2003 in the "Lancaster New Era."
He reports that the plant workers have been removed through attrition, regionalization, forced overtime and consolidation of job functions.
"Since they purchased TMI, the number of workers has shrunk from 804 (1998) to 643 (2002). Contract labor, including security, has supplanted existing full-time positions, and the number of contractor and subcontractor employees has grown from 65 (2000) to 103 (2002)," Epstein writes.
But Bruce Williams, TMI Site vice president, says Three Mile Island is in good shape and that the community should feel safer with a new siren system being installed this summer.
"The additional sirens and upgrades continue to demonstrate our commitment to protecting the health and safety of the public around Three Mile Island," Williams said. "Safe plant operations combined with an emergency preparedness program that is integrated with state and local emergency management organizations provides a high level of assurance to the public."
On the morning of March 28, 1979, the Unit-2 reactor at the TMI nuclear power facility near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, suddenly overheated and the plant came within 30 minutes of a full meltdown. The reactor vessel was destroyed, and large amounts of unmonitored radiation was released directly into the community. During the following week, scientists scrambled to prevent a nuclear meltdown, officials tried to calm public fears, and more than 100,000 residents fled the area.
TMI-2 was built at a cost to rate payers of US$700 million and had been online for just 90 days when the accident occurred. One billion dollars was spent to defuel the facility.
The ruined Chernobyl Reactor 4 (Photo courtesy Chernobyl Tour) Similar to the Three Mile Island accident, the Ukrainian-American Environmental Association says that the Chernobyl accident was the result of "a flawed design in a reactor operated with inadequately trained personnel and without proper regard for safety."
Reactor Four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant began to fail in the early hours of April 26, 1986. Seven seconds after the operators activated the 20 second shut down system, there was a power surge. The chemical explosions that followed were so powerful that they blew the 1,000 ton cover off the top of the reactor. Design flaws in the power plant's cooling system probably caused the uncontrollable power surge that led to Chernobyl's destruction.
The NRC offers a fact sheet on the Chernobyl accident online at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/fschernobyl.html
Ukraine has lost more than $140 billion as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the group says, about $5 billion to clean up the fallout from the accident.
In both countries there is a resurgence in the nuclear power industry. American companies and the Tennessee Valley Authority, a federal agency, are lobbying the NRC for permission to build new generating facilities. The U.S. Energy Department is actively involved in designing the next generation of nuclear power plants.
The Ukraine government continues to seek funding to complete two new reactors as part of the Khmelnitsky and Rivne nuclear power plants, commonly known as the K2R4 project.
But binational the environmental association maintains that renewables are the best path toward safe, abundant energy for the future. Although Ukraine is now getting only about two percent of its energy from renewable sources, wind, solar, biogas, hydropower and geothermal energy have been shown to be theoretically sufficient to satisfy all of the country's energy needs.
For instance, the association says, if 2,700 square kilometers of the shallow waters in the Black Sea and Sea of Asov were used for wind turbines, this would meet the entire electricity demand in Ukraine.
----
Contaminated water shuts Rio uranium mine
Story by James Regan
REUTERS AUSTRALIA:
March 26, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24448/story.htm
SYDNEY - Australia's Ranger uranium mine and processing plant have been shut down after worker complaints of uranium-contaminated drinking water, majority owner Rio Tinto Ltd Plc said yesterday.
Operators aimed to resume mining as early as later in the day, but now estimate it will take until at least the weekend to complete investigations with government regulators into the cause of the contamination.
Operations at the site, 250 km (150 miles) east of Darwin in Australia's far north, ground to a halt on Tuesday when the problem emerged and all non-essential staff sent home, a Rio Tinto spokeswoman said. Government officials were not immediately available to comment.
The number of staff complaining of mild symptoms after showers that may be related to the contaminated water had risen from two to three, Rio Tinto subsidiary Energy Australia Ltd said in a statement.
The mine and plant employ about 200 workers and is owned by ERA, which is 68.4-percent-owned by Rio Tinto.
'ELEVATED LEVELS OF URANIUM'
"We are not sure exactly how this has occurred but uranium got into potable water," the spokeswoman said.
It appeared that an erroneous connection was made between the potable water line used for drinking and washing and the water line used in processing the uranium, she said.
The privately run Environment Centre Northern Territory called on government authorities to investigate the incident.
The centre's researchers said the water was found to contain levels of uranium up to 400 times safe drinking levels, but Rio Tinto said it had been assured by health officials that the contamination posed no health risk to workers and that the water supply in the nearby town of Jabiru was not affected.
"This is not a place to cut corners," Peter Robertson, the centre's co-ordinator, said in a statement. The plant treats low-grade uranium oxide which is then stored in barrels before being shipped to North America, Japan and Europe, where it is enriched and used in nuclear power generation.
Staff coming off the night shift complained of a gritty feel and salty taste to water used to shower before going home, the Rio Tinto spokeswoman said.
"The water was tested and found to contain elevated levels of uranium and higher acidity," she said.
ERA shares closed down four percent at A$3.55 and Rio Tinto shares down 1.5 percent at A$33.90 in a flat wider market.
----
Nuclear waste transportation casks would survive Sept. 11 style attack, regulator says
Friday, March 26, 2004
By Erica Werner,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-26/s_22212.asp
WASHINGTON - The containers for carrying radioactive waste to the planned Yucca Mountain dump in Nevada would survive a Sept. 11 style airliner attack, the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Thursday.
NRC Chairman Nils Diaz told a House subcommittee that officials concluded that after running classified tests. The potential danger of transporting nuclear waste across the nation's roads and railways has been a key argument made by opponents of the Yucca Mountain project.
"Our present findings are that a transportation cask that's been certified by the NRC ... would actually resist the impact of a large aircraft without releasing radioactivity to the public," Diaz said, responding to a question from subcommittee Chairman Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas.
"We have even carried them beyond the aircraft crashes, and we feel confident that the present design of this cask is quite resistant to terrorist attack and will provide substantial protection to the American public," he said.
Diaz also said the casks would survive being stuck inside a burning train trapped in a tunnel - as happened in a Baltimore rail tunnel in 2001 - without a significant release of radioactivity.
The director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Office, Bob Loux, questioned Diaz's assertions in an interview later.
"If the public can't have an opportunity to see casks being tested in all of these testing areas and possibly even tested to destruction so they know where the thresholds are, it doesn't seem to me that any of these tests really improve public confidence," he said.
The Yucca Mountain dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas would hold 77,000 tons of government waste from its nuclear weapons program and highly radioactive spent reactor fuel now held at commercial power plants in 31 states. The Department of Energy wants to open the dump in 2010 and intends to submit a license application to the NRC next December.
Nevada is challenging the project in federal court.
----
BNFL: Iodine tablets would be ineffectual
March 26, 2004
RTE (Ireland)
http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0326/sellafield.html
A senior official from British Nuclear Fuels has claimed that the 3.7 million iodine tablets, distributed by the Government two years ago, would have no beneficial effect in the event of radioactive material being released from Sellafield.
The claim was made during an address to a special meeting of Louth County Council.
Councillors were told that Sellafield is a very robust plant which could retain that capacity despite a terrorist attack.
John Clarke, BNFL's head of environment, said the worst thing possible would be to close Sellafield immediately as the nuclear legacy there needed to be dealt with.
Mr Clarke said Sellafield was undergoing a dramatic shift in operations in which cleaning up that legacy would be the prime objective from now on.
Sixteen councillors, TDs and candidate MEPs attended the meeting. There was a very small public attendance, with only seven people in the gallery.
Ahead of the meeting, the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland said it has not received adequate information about BNFL's anti-terrorism plans. However, because the Government is in what it terms 'sensitive talks' with London, little detail is likely to emerge.
Apart from terrorism, the emission of radioactive material into the Irish Sea is another very sensitive issue.
Last night's RTÉ Prime Time programme revealed EU concerns over a radioactive lake at Sellafield, containing 1.3 tons of plutonium, because of gaps in its inventory and omissions in records.
-------- africa
Illegal uranium mining in Congo, U.N. wants answers
Friday, March 26, 2004
By Dino Mahtani,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-26/s_22204.asp
SHINKOLOBWE, Congo - A mine in Congo that provided uranium for the first atomic bombs is being illegally quarried and the potentially dangerous raw material exported without control, industry experts say.
That rang alarm bells with the United Nations Thursday, and the U.N. nuclear watchdog said it had asked the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo for more information.
"If there is the possibility that large quantities of uranium are being mined and exported, it is disturbing," said a spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency. "The DRC has an additional protocol with the IAEA which puts it under an obligation to report its uranium mining activities as well as its exports of uranium," Melissa Fleming added.
Thousands of self-employed miners are pounding away at rocks and descending into makeshift shafts at Shinkolobwe, one of mineral-rich Congo's largest and oldest mines in the southeastern province of Katanga.
"Our union manages several thousand miners at Shinkolobwe. Our role is to manage the future training of these miners for whatever they end up doing," said Jean Marie Mujinga, site head at Shinkolobwe for the Union for Artisanal Miners in Katanga.
Mujinga said there were around 6,000 miners at the site.
Discovered in the early 1900s and developed by Congo's then colonial master Belgium, Shinkolobwe provided the uranium for the bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the end of the World War II.
Its principal mine shaft was filled with concrete and its uranium concentrator abandoned by the Belgians after the war, under pressure from the U.S. government to remove a potential security threat once Congo gained independence in 1960.
Refined and Enriched
The miners are digging up cobalt and copper compounds, in high demand on the world market, but the amalgamates contain significant traces of uranium, which can be processed into nuclear material in the hands of expert scientists.
"They are inadvertently exporting raw uranium, which could find its way into the hands of countries that are capable of using it," said John Skinner, general manager of Swanepoel Enterprises, a South African farming and contract mining company that has been based in nearby Likasi since the 1930s.
Demand for cobalt - used in paints, batteries, and newer generations of mobile phones - continues to suck compounds containing uranium out of Shinkolobwe. But scientists say that the threat of it ending up in a nuclear bomb is minimal.
Only uranium which has been through several stages of refining and enrichment is usable in the core of an atomic bomb, and experts say obtaining highly enriched uranium is the biggest obstacle to developing nuclear weapons.
"The uranium from Shinkolobwe is mostly uranium-238, and therefore not immediately fissionable," said Professor Fortunat Lumu, atomic energy general officer at Congo's Ministry of Scientific Research in the capital Kinshasa. "It could only be dangerous in the hands of those countries that have, or are trying to develop, expensive nuclear reactors and laser technologies that can process uranium-238 into highly radioactive materials," he said.
Shinkolobwe was once prospected by North Korea, which sent a team of engineers to the site in 1999, only to be thrown out after Washington put pressure on Congo's government.
Nowadays, local residents say, it is Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, and South Korean smelter operators who are buying up the amalgamate compounds for smelting in Likasi - an industrial town not far from Shinkolobwe - or for direct export.
(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna)
-------- britain
EU slams Sellafield nuclear plant
REUTERS BELGIUM:
March 26, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24459/story.htm
BRUSSELS - The government has failed to fully account for nuclear material at the Sellafield nuclear power plant, an EU commission says.
"There has been a continuous failure to produce and keep operating records to permit accounting for all nuclear material in the B30 site at Sellafield," said an official at the EU executive Commission, which enforces laws in this field.
He said European Commission inspectors had been unable to gain full access to B30, a series of reinforced concrete ponds that store radioactive waste under water at the plant run by British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL).
The 20-member Commission is to decide next Wednesday on whether to ask Britain to submit a plan to Brussels by the beginning of May, detailing how it accounts for the waste.
London said it was working with the European Commission to solve the problem.
"Safeguard arrangements for B30 have been the subject of discussion with the Commission dating back some 15 years," a British government statement said, adding that Sellafield received regular Commission inspections.
If Britain fails to comply with the Commission decision, it could ultimately face EU fines.
The Commission official also said the issue set a bad example for the 10 states joining the EU on May 1.
"We can't ask new EU countries to respect nuclear safety rules... impose monitoring... if it is not applied to all states," he added.
----
O'Dowd calls on BNFL to 'come clean' on Sellafield terrorist threat
Friday, March 26, 2004
Politics.IE (Ireland)
http://www.politics.ie/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=4182
Fine Gael TD Fergus O'Dowd has criticised BNFL after the company tried to prevent him raising concerns about a terrorist attack on Sellafield at an information meeting organised by the company this morning.
"This morning I attended an information meeting with representatives from British Nuclear Fuels Limited at Bellingham Castle in Co Louth. I had hoped to raise a number of serious issues with the company, including the lack of transparency in procedures at the Sellafield Nuclear reprocessing facility and the risk of a terrorist attack.
"However, when I tried to raise these issues, BNFL refused to offer me a platform. The company only backed down after vigorous protests.
"BNFL apparently believes elected Oireachtas members should be mute and acquiescent observers of their spoken word. When there is a clear need for more transparency in the British Nuclear industry, this is worrying behaviour for a company with a stockpile of high-grade plutonium on the far side of the Irish Sea.
"Sellafield is only as strong as its weakest link. We need to know that Sellafield can withstand a terrorist attack. Most Nuclear installations are not built to withstand that level of assault. There is clear evidence to suggest that one of the four aeroplanes hijacked on September 11th may have been headed for a Nuclear power facility.
"I believe the solution for Sellafield lies in appointing the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor the facility in a confidential manner, and to set new global standards for the Nuclear industry. These standards should relate to Nuclear material, including the transportation of waste and the physical protection of facilities, and security provisions to prevent materials being stolen.
"However, I was very disappointed with the company's response this morning. As I tried to suggest to its representatives, it is time for BNFL to come clean on Sellafield, and to allow the IAEA full and unrestricted access to the facility and to information about the facility. I welcome dialogue between BNFL and the community in Co Louth, but the real dialogue should be between BNFL and the IAE about the control, management and protection of Nuclear materials. We can't leave this problem up to BNFL, no matter how well-intentioned the company might be.
"It is also time for the Irish Government to wake up and start flexing its muscles on the international stage. The people of Ireland have spent too long living in the shadow of Sellafield: they now need real reassurances that the facility is safe."
-------- india / pakistan
India again tests short-range surface-to-air missile
BHUBANESWAR, India (AFP)
Mar 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040326084810.h4jxbssb.html
India test-fired for the second day in a row Friday a short-range surface-to-air missile that can target aircraft and counter sea-skimming missiles, a defence official said.
The Trishul (Trident) missile was successfully tested from a mobile launcher at 11:02 am (0532 GMT) in Chandipur, 200 kilometres (125 miles) northeast of the Orissa state capital Bhubaneswar, the official said.
Trishul, one of five missiles developed by India since 1983, is powered by solid fuel and can deliver a 15-kilogramme (33-pound) warhead up to nine kilometres (five miles) away.
-------- israel
The Ordeal of Mordechai Vanunu, The Man Who Knew Too Much
By ROBERT FISK
The Independent
March 26, 2004
http://www.counterpunch.org/fisk03262004.html
Any Israeli who bought the 16 February edition of the daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth would have believed that a truly wicked man was about to be released from Ashkelon prison. Each time a suicide bomber blew himself up, the prisoner would celebrate. Worse still, said the paper, the inmate--once a keeper of Israel's nuclear secrets--wants to endanger his country further after his release. "He told me," a former prisoner was quoted as saying, "that he has additional material and that he will reveal secrets..."
Should it be a surprise, then, that the very same prisoner, supposedly celebrating the slaughter of innocents while preparing to betray his country yet again, holds a clutch of awards from European peace groups, the Sean McBride Peace prize and an honorary doctorate from the University of Tromso? In 2000, the Church of Humanism told him: "You are honest, courageous and morally highly motivated, and may the great sacrifice you have made serve to protect not only those living in Israel but all the peoples of the Middle East and perhaps the world." The same man has also been put forward as a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Mordechai Vanunu, it seems, can only be loved or loathed. Indifference to the former Israeli nuclear technician is impossible. For he is the man who, in 1986, took evidence to The Sunday Times of the full story behind Israel's secret nuclear weapons plant at Dimona in the Negev desert, complete with the total number of advanced fission bombs there--200 at the time--and, even more disturbingly, complete with pictures. He said that Israel had mastered a thermonuclear design and appeared to have a number of thermonuclear bombs ready for use. He was subsequently lured by a girl from London to Rome and then kidnapped, drugged and freighted back to Israel by Israeli secret policemen. But in just six weeks' time, after 18 years of imprisonment--12 of them in solitary confinement--the world's most famous whistleblower is scheduled for release. Israel--not to mention the world--is holding its breath.
Will he divulge further secrets of Dimona--always supposing he has any after 18 years of incarceration--or curse the country of which he is a citizen, albeit a citizen who converted to Christianity before his arrest and who wants to emigrate to the United States? Will he emerge a cowed man, anxious only to apologise for the terrible betrayal he inflicted upon his country? Or will he, as his friends and supporters and his adopted American parents hope, become an apostle of peace, one of the greatest of this generation's prisoners of conscience, the man who tried to rid the world of the threat of nuclear annihilation?
The Israeli government is still uncertain how to confront Vanunu's release on 21 April. They are known to be considering--perhaps have already decided upon--"certain supervisory means" and "appropriate measures" to shut Vanunu up. In the second half of January, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with Menachem Mazuz, Israel's attorney general, and the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, and discussed whether Vanunu should be refused a passport. Vanunu would be free to sunbathe on the beaches of Tel Aviv but could not tour the world advertising Israel's nuclear power. It's a sign of how fearful the Israeli administration has become at the prospect of this one man's release that Sharon also summoned to this conference Yehiel Horev's so-called "Defence Ministry Security Unit", the country's internal and external intelligence services--Shin Beth and the equally overestimated Mossad--and a representative of the Israeli Atomic Energy Committee.
Horev, it is now known, wanted to go much further than Sharon. He proposed clapping an administrative detention order on Vanunu--Israel's usual way of dealing with Palestinians whom they regard as "terrorists"--although the meeting apparently came to the conclusion that this would only enhance Vanunu's reputation as a martyr for world peace. There's another way of shutting Vanunu up, of course. He can be publicly freed and then--the moment he starts talking about his work as a nuclear technician--he can be tried again and thrown back into Ashkelon jail--or Shikma prison, as the Israelis call it now.
But the real problem that Vanunu represents is that he will remind the world at a critically important moment in the history of the Middle East that Israel is a nuclear power and that its warheads stand ready to be fired from the Negev desert. He will also remind the world that the Americans, despite battering their way into Iraq to destroy Saddam Hussein's nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, continue to give their political, moral and economic support to a country that has secretly amassed a treasure trove of weapons of mass destruction.
How can President Bush remain silent on Israel's nuclear power when he has not only illegally invaded an Arab state for allegedly harbouring nuclear weapons and condemned Iran for the same ambitions, but also praised--along with Tony Blair's government--Colonel Gaddafi of Libya for abandoning his nuclear pretensions? If the Arab states are being "defanged"--always supposing they had any real fangs in the first place--why should Israel not be "de-nuclearised"? Why can't the United States apply the same standards to Israel as it does to the Arabs? Or why, for that matter, can't Israel apply the same standards to itself that it demands of its Arab enemies?
This is the debate that the Israeli and the American governments wish to stifle. In the United States, where any discussion of the Israeli-American relationship that deviates from the benign is routinely condemned as subversive or "anti-Semitic", discussion of Israel's nuclear power is not something that Washington will want to hear on the Sunday talk shows. Vanunu, it should be said at once, is well aware of all this, of his own importance--infinitely greater than it was when he was a mere junior technician at Dimona--and of the role that tens of thousands of anti- nuclear campaigners expect him to play in the world. Many times, through friends and through his own brothers, Vanunu has said that he has no new nuclear secrets but has the right to oppose nuclear weapons in Israel or anywhere else. "All I want to do is to go to America, get married and start a new life," he says.
No one can doubt Vanunu's conviction. Born in 1954 to a religious Jewish family in Morocco, he immigrated to Israel at the age of nine, performed his military service in the mid-Seventies and began work at Dimona in November 1976 while completing a graduate course in philosophy and geography. Perhaps it was during his travels in Thailand, Burma, Nepal and Australia in early 1986 that he decided he had a moral duty to talk about Israel's nuclear weapons. In the same year, he was baptised at an Anglican church in Sydney. Vanunu had clearly become deeply distressed at Israel's growing nuclear power when he walked into British newspaper offices in September of 1986 in the hope of telling the world the truth about Dimona. He had dropped by Robert Maxwell's Daily Mirror at first, handed over his photographs of the nuclear plant and waited for a reply. Unknown to Vanunu, Maxwell sent the pictures round to the Israeli embassy in London to "take a look at them", supposedly to "confirm" whether or not the story was true. It seems likely that Maxwell had motives other than journalistic integrity in this betrayal of Vanunu. After his death at sea in 1991, Maxwell, who had stolen millions in pensioners' funds, was given a state funeral in Israel at which Shimon Peres praised his "services" to the state.
Maxwell's Daily Mirror ran a "spoiler" story on 28 September, belittling Vanunu and carrying the headline "The Strange Case of Israel and the Nuclear Con Man." The Sunday Times ran with the full story--but Vanunu had already disappeared. Entrapped by a female Mossad agent, he had been lured on to a British Airways flight to Rome and promptly kidnapped. It seems, in fact, that he was seized inside Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Unable to speak to journalists, he carefully wrote out details of his movements on the palm of his hand and pressed it to the window of his prison truck as it took him to court. "Rome ITL 30:9:86 2100 came to Rome by BA504," he had written. He had been kidnapped at 9pm on 30 September at Rome International. Were the Italian authorities involved in his kidnap? Were they present when he was seized? Perhaps Vanunu can tell us.
He is certainly a man of endurance. Once, during his 12 years of solitary, the prison authorities accidentally freed him for exercise before Arab prisoners in the jail-yard had been returned to their cells. Vanunu immediately walked towards them. One of the Arabs, a Lebanese imprisoned for smuggling arms into the West Bank, was among the first strangers to bring word of Vanunu's appearance to the outside world. "Vanunu fell into step with us and smiled at us and it was a time before we realised who he was," the freed Lebanese later told The Independent. "He said it was good to be with us and we thought he was a brave man. Then the guards realised their mistake and we were pushed and shoved away from him, back to our cells."
An Israeli journalist visiting another prisoner was amazed to see Vanunu. "For a short moment I saw a bucolic scene," he wrote, "as if taken from some other reality: a serene man, sitting on a bench in a garden and reading Nietzsche in English. I approached him and extended my hand. Pleased to meet you, my name is Ronen,' I said. I'm Motti,' the most confined prisoner in the State of Israel replied. Before we could continue to talk, screaming wardens rushed over and grabbed him away."
A former prisoner, Yossi Harush, has provided another glimpse of the imprisoned Vanunu in the years after his solitary confinement ended. "During the day," Harush told Yedioth Ahronoth, "during walks, he meets people and talks with them. I spoke a lot with Vanunu. We were friends. He would come to my cell... He has good conditions. He is treated nicely in prison... He has no restrictions on leaving his cell, but he is restricted within the prison. I myself, as a working prisoner, painted a red line that he is forbidden to cross. I was ordered to do that, and afterwards our relationship cooled off."
Vanunu has been regularly visited by an Anglican clergyman, Dean Michael Sellors. It was Sellors who pointed out to him that his release date coincided with the Queen's birthday. "He said that in that case, he'd better get a ticket and greet her himself."
Vanunu has also taken heart in the actions of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, a normally conservative organisation, which has stated that, "any sanctions against Mordechai after release would be illegal and immoral." A chatline on the Hebrew website of the Israeli daily Maariv shows that a number of young Israelis regard Vanunu as a hero rather than a threat. Mary Eoloff, a retired American school teacher who, with her husband, adopted Vanunu in the hope that he could be given US citizenship and released, was the first to reveal that when Israeli security men offered to release him a year before the expiry of his 18 years in jail, Vanunu turned them down. "He believes in freedom of speech," she said.
It remains to be seen if Israel will allow Vanunu the free speech he loves. Horev, the defence ministry security official who attended Sharon's meeting, has spoken of the threat that he believes the nuclear technician represents, which seems to be about ambiguity rather than state secrets. Horev compares this ambiguity to water in a glass. "My job is to ensure that the water doesn't spill over the glass," he said recently. "Up until the Vanunu affair, the water was at a very low level. The affair caused the water level to rise significantly and caused Israel great damage, but the water still didn't overflow. If we let certain people act in the matter, the water will spill."
The Israeli journalist Raanan Shaked was a good deal more cynical when he spoke on the subject on Israel's Channel 10 TV. "Who is the main threat to Israel?" he asked. "Of course, Mordechai Vanunu! He is the big danger. Israeli democracy simply cannot withstand the impact of this one man saying what every child knows: we have nuclear weapons."
On 21 April, when Vanunu is released, we shall find out if the water is going to overflow--and whether Vanunu will cross the red line painted so ominously on the floor at the instruction of the authorities.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for The Independent and author of Pity the Nation. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book, The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
-------- korea
DPRK 'upbeat' on nuclear talks
Radio of Vietnam
March 26, 2004
http://www.vov.org.vn/2004_03_26/english/chinhtri2.htm
The Democratic People Republic of Korea (DPRK) has agreed to push towards a third round of international talks on the region's nuclear crisis, said Chinese Foreign Minister, Li Zhaoxing. He was speaking after visiting Pyongyang - the first such visit by a Chinese foreign minister in five years.
Speaking in Beijing on his return, Mr. Li said his talks with the DPRK leader, Kim Jong-il, had taken place in "a happy atmosphere".
The DPRK and the US are locked in confrontation over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program. The second six-party round aimed at resolving the crisis ended in Beijing in February without a final agreement. But the countries involved in the talks - China, the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, and the US - agreed to set up lower-level working groups to resolve specific problems before holding further high-level talks in June.
The nuclear crisis was sparked in October 2002 when US officials said Pyongyang had admitted to having a secret uranium-based nuclear program, in violation of a 1994 agreement.
It has since restarted a mothballed nuclear power station, thrown out United Nations nuclear inspectors and pulled out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty.
The DPRK said it has reprocessed thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods at the Yongbyon nuclear facility, from which extracted plutonium can be used to manufacture nuclear bombs.
The US demanded that Pyongyang dismantle its nuclear facilities. But Pyongyang said it would only do so in return for economic and energy aid, and security guarantees from Washington.
----
US - Led Group Wins N. Korea Nuclear Site Cooperation
By REUTERS
March 26, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-nuclear.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - North Korea has agreed to cooperate with a U.S.-led international consortium on worker safety and other issues at its suspended nuclear power plant, an apparent softening of Pyongyang's stand after months of uncertainty, officials said on Friday.
Last December, the United States and its key Asian and European allies suspended construction of the plant for a year while five countries worked on talks with the secretive communist nation aimed at dismantling its nuclear programs.
``The North Korean government is cooperating on a number of things but our biggest concern was the security and welfare of our workers at the site ... we now feel our work force is safer,'' said Roland Tricot, spokesman for the New York-based Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO.
Since the suspension, the consortium had been unable to win North Korea's cooperation on a number of issues, including the welfare of workers preserving and maintaining the site. Some outstanding issues remain, including repatriation of equipment, materials and technical documents, the spokesman said.
North Korea reached a deal with the Clinton administration in 1994 to freeze its nuclear programs -- suspected of working secretly to product nuclear weapons -- in return for two light-water nuclear reactors, which cannot be used to produce weapons-grade materials. The United States also agreed to ship fuel oil to help meet North Korea's energy needs.
KEDO was formed to run and manage construction of the reactors but, under U.S. pressure, the consortium's work was suspended last year following North Korea's admission that it had run a secret weapons program in breach of the accord.
UNDERSTANDING
Spokesman Tricot said KEDO and North Korea had signed a ``memorandum of understanding'' on procedures at the site during the suspension period. In a statement, he said the memorandum had been approved by all four KEDO executive board members -- the United States, European Union, South Korea and Japan.
``It shows that the North Koreans understood our concern regarding all of our issues,'' Tricot said.
There are 136 KEDO employees at the site in Kumho, North Korea -- 134 South Koreans, one American and one Japanese national, he said.
The nations involved in the six-way talks aimed at ending Pyongyang's weapons program -- the United States, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and North Korea -- have agreed to meet for a third round of negotiations before the end of June.
North Korea this month has put off two sets of working-level talks with South Korea, citing political uncertainties caused by the impeachment of President Roh Moo-hyun and the South's annual joint military drills with the United States.
-------- libya
White House 'exaggerated extent of WMD breakthrough'
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
26 March 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=505102
The White House has been accused of exaggerating the nuclear threat posed by Libya, whose agreement to give up its weapons of mass destruction has been presented by the Bush administration and the British government as a positive consequence of the invasion of Iraq.
The controversy has erupted in the wake of an unusual press briefing last week at the United States government's nuclear research laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Amid much fanfare, reporters were shown evidence of what officials said were 4,000 uranium centrifuges, handed over by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi's government as part of its deal with Britain and the United States to give up its nuclear arms programme.
But David Albright, the head of the Washington-based arms control group the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), has said "that was not true". ISIS has established that the 4,000 figure refers merely to casings of the centrifuges which are needed to enrich uranium to weapons-grade level - not to centrifuges fitted with the precision-tooled rotors that are their most important component. "We doubt they had more than two which had rotors," said Mr Albright. This in turn means that Libya was "several years" away from making a bomb, rather than very close to possessing one, as the Bush team has implied. "Make no mistake, the Libyan programme was very serious and we're very glad it's stopped," he added. "The problem from our point of view is that the White House, which basically organised the briefing, is so focused on claiming credit that it's willing to exaggerate."
The real concern, said Mr Albright, a former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, is the origin of the highly sophisticated rotors. "Maybe the Central Intelligence Agency is working on this aspect of it, but that's not what the White House was talking about," he said. It would have taken the Libyans a long time to learn how to make the rotors and other sophisticated components, and they might not have succeeded.
"The bottom line is that what they had was a far cry from a large number of working machines," Mr Albright said.
His assessment is broadly in line with that of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog body.
The issue is equally embarrassing for Tony Blair, who trumpeted his Government's role in Libya's agreement to abandon its WMD programme. Washington even agreed for Mr Blair to announce the deal live on TV before Mr Bush - a clear signal this was a British-led initiative.
The dispute however comes at a delicate moment in Washington. Although election day is still more than seven months away, the presidential campaign is in full swing, and President George Bush has used the disarmament pledge by Libya, long classified as a terrorist state, to justify the 2003 war with Iraq after the embarrassing failure to find a single weapon of mass destruction there.
If ISIS is right, the administration has been behaving over Libya as it behaved over Iraq, overblowing a threat to prove the rightness of its cause.
The invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein was primarily justified by claims about his nuclear ambitions, and the importance of preventing "the smoking gun from being a mushroom cloud". In the event, the two main pieces of "evidence" - the alleged purchases by Iraq of uranium yellowcake in Africa, and its imports of aluminum tubes for uranium centrifuges - were either discredited as fiction or shown to be an exaggeration.
In recent weeks, the UShas increased contacts with Libya but it has not lifted sanctions, let alone made a gesture comparable to Tony Blair's meeting with Colonel Gaddafi yesterday, the first British prime minister to set foot on Libyan soil since Winston Churchill during the Second World War.
-------- missile defense
Retired Brass Urge Delay in Antimissile Shield
By REUTERS
March 26, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-missile-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of 49 retired U.S. generals and admirals is urging President Bush to postpone the scheduled deployment this year of a multibillion dollar missile shield and spend the money instead on securing potential terror targets.
In a letter to be released at a news conference Friday, the officers, including retired Admiral William Crowe, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1985 to 1989, described the complex technology as untested and a poor use of scarce defense dollars.
``As you have said, Mr. President, our highest priority is to prevent terrorists from acquiring and employing weapons of mass destruction,'' said the letter made available to Reuters.
As the ``militarily responsible course of action,'' the signers urged funds earmarked for missile defense go instead to bolster nuclear weapons depots and protect U.S. ports and borders against terrorists.
Bush has asked Congress for $10.2 billion for missile defense in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, a 13 percent increase from the year before. Over the next five years, the administration plans to spend $53 billion on the project.
The shield's initial goal is to protect against one or two warheads that could be launched by North Korea. But in their letter the retired brass said the United States already was able to pinpoint the source of a ballistic missile launch.
``It is, therefore, highly unlikely that any state would dare to attack the U.S. or allow a terrorist to do so from its territory with a missile armed with a weapon of mass destruction, thereby risking annihilation from a devastating U.S. retaliatory strike,'' they wrote.
A spokeswoman for Bush, Claire Buchan, had no immediate comment on the letter, which included among its signers Gen. Joseph Hoar of the Marines, a former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and Gen. Alfred Hansen, who headed the Air Force's logistics command.
The Pentagon's top space planner told Congress on Thursday that a key part of the planned missile defense shield would cost more and take longer to field than currently scheduled.
The Space-Based Infrared System built by Lockheed Martin Corp. ``is in a fluid situation right now,'' said Air Force Under Secretary Peter Teets.
The system is meant to detect enemy missile attacks and collect a range of technical intelligence. It involves a network of four satellites in geosynchronous orbit and two in highly elliptical orbit.
-------
49 Generals and Admirals Call for Missile Defense Postponement
March 26, 2004
source of this letter:
http://www.wagingpeace.org
http://www.mapw.org.au/missiledefence/USMilitary-letter-Bush_March2004.html
March 26, 2004
President George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C.
Dear Mr. President:
In December 2002, you ordered the deployment of a ground-based strategic mid-course ballistic missile defense (GMD) capability, now scheduled to become operational before the end of September 2004. You explained that its purpose is to defend our nation against rogue states that may attack us with a single or a limited number of ballistic missiles armed with weapons of mass destruction.
To meet this deployment deadline, the Pentagon has waived the operational testing requirements that are essential to determining whether or not this highly complex system of systems is effective and suitable. The Defense Department's Director of Operational Test and Evaluation stated on March 11, 2004, that operational testing is not in the plan "for the foreseeable future." Moreover, the General Accounting Office pointed out in a recent report that only two of 10 critical technologies of the GMD system components have been verified as workable by adequate developmental testing.
Another important consideration is balancing the high costs of missile defense with funding allocated to other national security programs. Since President Reagan's strategic defense initiative speech in March 1983, a conservative estimate of about $130 billion, not adjusted upward for inflation, has been spent on missile defense, much of it on GMD. Your Fiscal Year 2005 budget for missile defense is $10.2 billion, with $3.7 billion allocated to GMD. Some $53 billion is programmed for missile defense over the next five years, with much more to follow. Deploying a highly complex weapons system prior to testing it adequately can increase costs significantly.
U.S. technology, already deployed, can pinpoint the source of a ballistic missile launch. It is, therefore, highly unlikely that any state would dare to attack the U.S. or allow a terrorist to do so from its territory with a missile armed with a weapon of mass destruction, thereby risking annihilation from a devastating U.S. retaliatory strike.
As you have said, Mr. President, our highest priority is to prevent terrorists from acquiring and employing weapons of mass destruction. We agree. We therefore recommend, as the militarily responsible course of action, that you postpone operational deployment of the expensive and untested GMD system and transfer the associated funding to accelerated programs to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States.
Signed:
Admiral William J. Crowe (USN, ret.)
General Alfred G. Hansen (USAF, ret.)
General Joseph P. Hoar (USMC, ret.) Lt. General Henry E. Emerson (USA, ret.) Lt.
General Robert G. Gard, Jr. (USA, ret.)
Vice Admiral Carl T. Hanson (USN, ret.)
Lt. General James F. Hollingsworth (USA, ret.)
Lt. General Arlen D. Jameson (USAF, ret.)
Lt. General Robert E. Kelley, (USAF, ret.)
Lt. General John A. Kjellstrom (USA, ret.)
Lt. General Dennis P. McAuliffe (USA, ret.)
Lt. General Charles P. Otstott (USA, ret.)
Lt. General Thomas M. Rienzi (USA, ret.)
Vice Admiral John J. Shanahan (USN, ret.)
Lt. General Dewitt C. Smith, Jr.(USA, ret.)
Lt. General Horace G. Taylor (USA, ret.)
Lt. General James M. Thompson (USA, ret.)
Lt. General Alexander M. Weyand (USA. Ret.)
Major General Robert H. Appleby (AUS, ret.)
Major General James G. Boatner (USA, ret.)
Major General Jack O. Bradshaw (USA, ret.)
Major General Morris J. Brady (USA, ret.)
Major General William F. Burns (USA, ret.)
Rear Admiral William D. Center (USN, ret.)
Major General Albert B. Crawford (USA, ret.)
Major General Maurice O. Edmonds (USA, ret.)
Rear Admiral Robert C. Elliott, (USN, ret.)
Major General John C. Faith (USA, ret.)
Rear Admiral Robert H. Gormley (USN, ret.)
Major General Richard B. Griffitts (USA, ret.)
Major Rear Admiral Charles D. Grojean (USN, ret.)
Major General Raymond E. Haddock (USA, ret.)
Major General Jack R. Holbein, Jr. (USAF, ret.)
Major General Stanley H. Hyman (USA, ret.)
Major General Wayne P. Jackson (USA, ret.)
Major General Frederick H. Lawson (AUS, ret.)
Major General Vincent P. Luchsinger, Jr. (USAF, ret.)
Major General James J. LeCleir (AUS, ret.)
Major General William F. Willoughby (USAF, ret.)
Brig. General George C. Cannon, Jr. (USAF, ret.)
Brig. General John J. Costa (USA, ret.)
Brig. General Alvin E. Cowan (USA, ret.)
Brig. General Lee Denson (USAF, ret.)
Brig. General Evelyn P. Foote (USA, ret.)
Brig. General Leslie R. Forney, Jr. (USA, ret.)
Brig. General John H. Grubbs (USA, ret.)
Brig. General James E. Hastings (USA, ret.)
Brig. General John H. Johns (USA, ret.)
Brig. General Maurice D. Roush (USA, ret.)
-------- russia
Spent Nuclear Waste from Hungary: Legal Issues
Andrei Talevlin,
2004-03-26
Bellona Fdn.
http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/envirorights/33021.html
CHELYABINSK, Southern Urals-I decided to write this article because of a story concerning the visit of former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov to Hungary late last year. Aside from inter-state issues that the prime minister and his Hungarian colleagues discussed during the visit, the two countries also touched upon the collaboration in nuclear energy and concluded a contract on the reconstruction of an emergency power unit at the Hungarian nuclear power plant Paks.
Talks on the imports of SNF from the Paks plant to Mayak Chemical Combine in the Chelyabinsk Region of Russia,were also negotiated. I would hardly have focused on these issues if it had not been for one peculiar fact. In 2001 Russia's Supreme Court declared the import of Hungarian spent nuclear fuel, or SNF, to Russia to be illegal.
History of the Issue The collaboration in nuclear power utilization between Hungary and Russia dates back to the era of socialist work camps controlled by the former Soviet Union. The construction of the Paks nuclear power plant began in 1966, immediately after an agreement on joint construction between Hungary and Russia had been signed. The first power unit at Paks which was based on the Soviet nuclear VVER-440 reactor was launched in 1983. The Paks plant has been online since then. Currently, four units, with a total power of 1760 megawatts, operate at the plant.
During the 31 years of its operation, a large amount of spent nuclear SNF has accumulated at the Paks plant. SNF is the Achilles' heel of the nuclear industry. In 1994 Hungary and Russia, as parties of the international agreement of 1966 on joint construction of the Paks nuclear power plant, adopted a protocol to this agreement.
As per this protocol, Russia, as part of the former USSR, was to receive from Hungary SNF in the form of fuel assemblies and ship fresh nuclear fuel to Paks. It is curious that how this radioactive waste would be handled-via reprocessing or storage-was never stipulated in the agreement or the later protocol.
By then, a bill entitled "On Environmental Protection" that banned the import of not only radioactive waste, but also of any other foreign radioactive materials to Russia, had taken force as legislation. The handling of radioactive waste as per the protocol conflicted with the proposed legislation.
Then, on July 29, 1995, the Russian government issued a decree on the import of SNF for the purposes of reprocessing it and returning the radioactive waste and materials obtained from reprocessing. This meant that foreign SNF was imported to Russia to be reprocessed in order to extract plutonium and uranium for further use and to solidify fission products in Russia.
The major condition for the SNF imports, stipulated in the decree, was the mandatory return to the exporting country of obtained radioactive waste and other reprocessing products which were not to be utilized in Russia. The decree's requirements applied to all inter-governmental agreements on the import of foreign SNF to Russian reprocessing plants.
At the time, that meant foreign SNF could only be reprocessed on the condition that the radioactive waste obtained from reprocessing-and of us to Russia-would be returned to the exporting country.
In reality, radioactive waste has never been shipped back to Hungary-either before or after the decree was enacted. Russia's disposal of the imported radioactive waste is the only significant condition attractive to foreign countries and the major reason for their collaboration with the Agency for Atomic Energy, which until early March was known as the Ministry of Atomic Energy, or Minatom. Eastern European countries-the majority of which have already entered NATO and the European Union-could have easily sent their SNF to France or Great Britain for reprocessing, firstly, because these countries are on average closer to Great Britain and France, and, secondly, because the collaboration within the EU is always welcome.
Such multi-million dollar contracts allow for substantial economic cooperation between Eastern and Western Europe.
But both France and Great Britain-two of the only three countries in the world that reprocess SNF-comply with the mandatory return of radioactive waste from reprocessed fuel to the exporting country. And their price tags are two or three times higher than Russia's prices.
Therefore, Hungary prefers to export its SNF to Russia on the cheap instead sending it to Western Europe. Furthermore, Russia will hold on to the highly radioactive by-products of reprocessing for them. Hungary is therefore saving a buck and giving Russia its radioactive headache.
In a 1996 letter to the Russian government, Hungary requested a "transitional period" while the Hungarian government deliberated the construction of a radioactive waste repository on its own soil. Duriing this "transitional period" The Hungarian Minister of Industry and Trade asked the Russian government to accept Hungarian SNF and hold on to the reprocessed radioactive waste.
'As an Exception'
While this request was being considered in Moscow, former Chelyabinsk Region Governer Pavel Sumin was stumping for the Hungarians and offering up his Region-where Mayak, Russia's only working SSNF reprocessing facility is located-as a home for Hungary's radioactive waste to the Russian government. An appeal he sent to the government made it plain that without the Hungarian contract, reprocessing at Mayak would grind to a halt.
Following these events, the Russian Government commissioned various research and regulatory agencies to develop a plan for Hungarian SNF imports, which would, of course, provide for not returning the radioactive by-products of reprocessing.
Three executive bodies worked on the project: Minatom, GosKomEkologia, (Russsia's State Environmental Committee) and GosAtomNadzor, or GAN (Russsia's Federal Nuclear and Radiation Safety Inspection).
Heads of the executive bodies signed a one-page document titled "Resolution on the Organization of SNF Imports in Limited Amounts from the Paks Nuclear Power Plant Constructed in Hungary Jointly with the USSR."
As per the document, the agency heads "assuming the consent of the head of the Chelyabinsk Region Administration, in good will" accepted "the Hungarian Government's request", and that was why it was decided that, "as an exception" Russsia would receive Hungarian SNF without returning radioactive waste and other reprocessed products obtained Hungary.
This resolution was signed by: Russia's Minister of Atomic Energy Vladimir Mikhailov, Head of the State Environmental Committee Vladimir. Danilov-Danilyan, and GAN Chairman Yury Vishnevsky.
The resolution was subsequently approved by Government Decree No. 1483-r of October 15, 1998 and signed of on by former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. The government's decree has been published in the "Compiled Laws of the Russian Federation," and the original resolution signed by the three agency heads and ministers stipulating Hungarian SNF import procedures and terms has not.
Then, with the legal grounds for Hungarian SNF imports lined up, a train with nuclear materials and radioactive substances left the Mayak for Hungary. In the opposite direction, approximately 30 tonnes of spent fuel was sent from Paks to Mayak, which was 10% of the entire SNF volume of the plant. The war in Yugoslavia frustrated the next train shipments and the imports had to be halted.
Appeal to Supreme Court
When the Balkan conflict was over, Russia planned on more SNF imports to Mayak from Paks. But the scenario did not unfold as Minatom had planned. Two Russian environmental NG)-Pravosoznanie (Legal Consciousness) and Dvizheniy za Yadernuyu Bezopasnost (Nuclear Safety Movement)-had in the meantime managed to get hold of the original resolution signed by the agency heads and ministers decree signed and found that a number of the document's resolutions were in direct conflict with legislation. Natalya Mironova, director of Nuclear Safety Movement and myself, in my capacity as director of Legal Conscience, brought suit against the validity of the October 15, 1998 decree-signed by Primakov and based on the original resolution-in the Russian Supreme Court.
The resolution violated a number of civil rights guaranteed by the Constitution and the Law of the Russian Federation, including : 1.) The right to a safe environment and credible information on the environmental condition as per article 42 of the Constitution; 2.) The right to health protection from environmental hazards caused by industrial or other activities as well as from accidents, catastrophes and natural disasters as per article 11 of the Law of the Russian Soviet Socialistic Republic (RSFSR) "On Environmental Protection"; 3.) The right to a safe environmental climate with no effect on humans as per article 8 of the Federal Law "On Sanitary and Epidemiologic Safety," and, 4.) The right to radiation safety as per article 22 of the federal law "On Radiation Safety."
After a number of the Supreme Court hearings on this case, it turned out that neither the government's decree nor the resolution in question had been examined by experts, despite the fact that such expert examination is mandatory. It also became known that the most of the SNF contracted to be moved to Mayak still remained in Hungary. The court, therefore, had to decide whether or not this 370-tonne portion of SNF remaining in Hungary would be imported as per the Primakov Decree of October 15, 1998.
The NGOs based their arguments against fulfilling the decree on the violation of civil rights and the legislation created in regard to the resolution. As per Provision 3, Article 50 of the law "On Environmental Protection" in the former RSFSR, the import to Russia of foreign radioactive waste and materials for storage, burial, or disposal-as well as the launching by Russia of such material into space-was strictly forbidden.
Resolution conflicts with existing legislation
The resolution also conflicted with a government decree No. 773 of July 29, 1995, which disclosed a procedure for foreign SNF imports and reprocessing at Russian plants and, in particular, detailed provisions on the mandatory return of the radioactive substances obtained during reprocessing to the exporting country.
The law "On Ecological Impact Studies" outlining the procedures of state environmental impact studies, which are mandatory because of the hazardous effects to humans caused by SNF and the environment, was also violated.
Some Russian Government representatives stated that the imports of Hungarian SNF was beyond the control of Russian Law, since the liabilities on the storage of radioactive waste from reprocessed SNF in Russia were allegedly stipulated in the original 1994 international agreement between Hungary and the USSR to jointly build the Paks plant.
Government representatives alluded to a Russian Constitution provision stipulating the priority of international law over national legislation. Government lawyers even insisted on the necessary ecological impact studies and tried to append a conclusion by Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources to the case.
Legal 'illiteracy' brings down government's case
The government's lawyers are worthy of special mention and they honestly worked off their their fees. When it was clear to everyone that the decision about the imports of Hungarian SNF signed by the Mikhailov, Danilov-Danilyan, and Vishnevksy had been approved by Primakov in contravention of the law, one of the government lawyer decided , as it were, to play an all-or nothing game.
He claimed that Mikhailov, Danilov-Danilyan, and Vishnevksy were not quite well enough versed in Russian legislation and that this shortcoming led them to include in the resolution's preamble an "entirely irrelevant" formulation, which read: "The inter-national agreement of December 28, 1966 on the joint construction of the Paks nuclear power plant and the Protocol of April 1, 1994 fail to clearly stipulate liabilities regarding the final imports of SNF in Russia without further return of radioactive waste and reprocessed products."
This single phrase practically destroyed the government's case, which had insisted that Russia's liability inherited from the collapse the USSR to keep radioactive wastes from reprocessed Hungarian SNF in Russia, was based in international agreements. Indeed, Mikhailov, Danilov-Danilyan, and Vishnevksy had signed the resolutions in a state of fundamental legislative illiteracy.
A letter from the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Moscow impressed the Supreme Court considerably. We had found it with the help of Greenpeace, Russia, and I tried my best to append it to our case.
Death penalty for radwaste imports helps persuade court
The letter clarified provisions of the law on radioactive materials handling in the United Arab Emirates, or UAE. In particular, the letter stated that, per the UAE's law "On Environmental Protection" the import of nuclear waste was punishable by death. The letter also explained the necessity of such a law: "If such a law with such a severe penalty did not exist, it would create perils not only for today's generation but for posterity as well." The Supreme Court agreed to include the letter in our case.
On February 26, 2002 Russia's Supreme Court declared the Government's Decree of October 15, 1998 numbered 1483-r invalid and non-applicable. This is how the Cheliabinsk Region prevented the import of 370 tonnes of Hungarian SNF.
The government tried to appeal the case with the Appeal Review Collegium of the Supreme Court on May 21, 2002.
Government appeals-and loses
Aside from the reasons presented at the previous hearing in the Supreme Court, government counsel added allegations of procedural irregularities. The court found against the appeal on Feb 26, 2002, and the decision has remained unchanged and in force ever since. The Russian Supreme Court's fidelity to its priciples is worthy of special note. In Russia, the outcome of most trials depends largely on money. But it is my hope that not all of Russia's courts are like that, least of all the Supreme Court and its Collegium.
The Russia's Prosecutor General's support was also very important during the hearing. Prosecution representatives found the NGOs' line reasonable and came to defend it.
How can the damage be repaired?
One would think the story was over and that NGO's could have celebrated their victory. Unfortunately, this was not the case.
Two more steps should be taken to allow the legal mechanism of civil rights protection work: First, violated rights should be restored and, second, violators of the Constitution should be held accountable.
As for redressing violated rights, we should remember that the most of Hungarian SNF remains in Hungary. The Supreme Court's decision, therefore, has hampered the imports of hundreds of tons of SNF under the then nuclear energy legislation.
Approximately 30 tonnes of Hungarian SNF were imported into Russia, according to the chief engineer of the Mayak plant who had participated in the court hearing, have been reprocessed, and the radioactive waste has been discharged into the infamous lake Karachai and the Techa River Cascade.
According to the chief engineer, the return of the radioactive waste to Hungary is impossible as it cannot be extracted from the rest waste accumulated at the Mayak plant.
Aside from extraction problems, there is no proper infrastructure-no containers for radioactive waste and no special transportation for radioactive waste shipments. Additionally the Mayak plant was never conceived to deal with such issues.
As for legal accountability, a special address disclosing the violations by legal officials and singled out by the Supreme Court has been sent to Russia's Prosecutior General. Article 247 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation demands criminal responsibility for the transportation, storage, disposition and utilization or other handling of radioactive, bacteriological and chemical substances and [radioactive] waste if these acts present a danger and can cause considerable damage to humans and the environment.
Thousands of cubic meters of radioactive waste spilled during the reprocessing of the Hungarian SNF remain in the Chelyabinsk Region. Thanks to the Supreme Court's ruling, this radioactive waste has not been allowed to multiply.
Even minor violations of radioactive and nuclear substance handling procedures should be punished by administrative responsibility. Articles 8.31, 9.6 KoAP RF of the Federal Law numbered 68-FZ "On Administrative Responsibility of Atomic Energy Utilization" of May 12, 2000-which went out of effect on July 1, 2002-stipulater grounds and sanctions of administrative responsibility for violatons.
Russia's Prosecutior General, however, has found no element of offense in the activity of the governor of the Chelyabinsk Region, former Prime Minister Kasyanov and the heads of Minatom, GosKovEkologia and GosAtomNadzor, and the Prosecutor General's office stated that in its official response.
Conclusions
Reviewing the case on the Hungarian SNF import as a typical example of Minatom's international economic activities, a number if conclusions about radioactive waste handling in Russia can be drawn:
Russia is very attractive to the countries using nuclear energy that are trying to solve their own radioactive waste storage problems because Russia is the only country in the world that allows foreign radioactive waste to be stored on its territory.
During its SNF-related foreign economic activities between 1991 and 2003, Minatom, as a rule, consistently violated the law of the Russian Federation.
Russia fails to guarantee its people and its future generations the right to safe environment and safety from growing radiation hazards.
Russia is facing an acute law enforcement problem. Legal responsibility is meant to restrain and prevent violations of law, which legally and socially speaking, is vital for Russian society. Thousands of wonderful laws can easily be approved, but if they are not executed, they cannot regulate public interaction. When high-ranking officials break the law and violate civil rights and easily get away with it, what are the average people to do?
In some countries there is one more kind of responsibility beyond legal control which we have not yet mentioned in the article. This is moral responsibility of top officials before citizens. In a similar precedent, top officials in such countries would voluntarily resign. Russia is unique, and Russian leaders have a special way of ruling, abolutely different from those in Germany, Norway, France, the U.S and even the United Arab Emirates.
The author of the article is the head of Cheliabinsk pubilc organization Pravosoznanie, or Legal Conscience.
~
From the files of Bellona
An accident occurred on the second power unit of a VVER 440 reactor at the Hungarin nuclear plant in the early morning hours of April 12, 2003. It was a level 3 accident as per the INES scale, the most serious throughout the plant's history. For comparison: An explosion at plutonium production at the Tomsk-7 plant in April of 1993 caused large-scale pollution of the territory around the plant and is also considered level 3 accident as per the INES scale. As in the Chernobyl case, the worst element of the Paks accident is that it was caused by human error and that it took long for the cause to be made public.
According to IAEA specialists, the basic recommendations of Russian and IAEA specialists on all types of nuclear reactors operating at the Paks plant were not observed when spent uranium rods that were being loaded in cooling ponds were damaged, causing the spillage of radioactive substances. Moreover, according to an IAEA experts' report, the accident at the power plant was reported very late, which impeded immediate actions to clean up and decontaminate the area. ~
-------- ukraine
Ukraine Says Hundreds of Missiles Missing
March 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Missing-Missiles.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Several hundred decommissioned Soviet-built surface-to-air missiles are unaccounted for in Ukraine's military arsenal, the defense minister told a newspaper.
Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk, in an interview published in the newspaper Den, appeared to suggest the missiles may have been dismantled without proper accounting, rather than stolen or sold.
``We are looking for several hundred missiles,'' Marchuk was quoted as saying in Thursday's edition. ``They have already been decommissioned, but we cannot find them''.
Marchuk didn't specify the types of missile. Defense Ministry spokesman Kostyantyn Khivrenko told The Associated Press that he was referring to S-75 air defense missiles -- also known in the West by the code-name SA-2.
Marchuk said the Defense Ministry hadn't observed the accounting requirements established by law until last summer, an apparent jab at his predecessors.
Hundreds of such missiles from Soviet arsenals in Warsaw Pact member countries had been brought to Ukraine for dismantling but were lost due to ``accounting problems,'' Khivrenko said.
He said the absence of records documenting what happened to the missiles was ``strange,'' and added that an investigation was under way.
The missiles entered service with the Soviet air defense troops in 1957. Able to shoot down targets at altitudes up to 12 1/2 miles, they have been sold to a large number of nations around the world.
It was the same type of missile that brought down a U.S. U-2 spy plane over the Ural Mountains in 1960. Its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, bailed out safely, but was captured, convicted as a spy, and held for almost two years until being traded for a KGB agent.
The S-75s played a prominent role in the Vietnam war, Mideast conflicts, and, most recently, were used in wars in Yugoslavia and Iraq.
Marchuk blamed his predecessors for not observing proper accounting standards while dealing with the missiles and other weapons.
``They say they were destroyed. OK, destroyed,'' Marchuk said. ``Every such missile has gold, silver, platinum metals. Where are the results of their destruction?''
Marchuk said that when he became minister, ``no one knew what the armed forces had,'' and after nine months in the job he still doesn't have precise information.
He said that inventories of military equipment had revealed a gaping hole equivalent to some $189 billion. In comparison, Ukraine's entire budget last year was less than $10 billion.
Ukraine inherited a vast arsenal with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, including dozens of intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers and a wide array of other weapons. It shipped all its nuclear weapons to Russia in the early 1990s.
Marchuk's statement drew renewed attention to numerous reports of military equipment leaking out of Ukraine amid the post-Soviet turmoil.
In 2002, the United States claimed Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had sanctioned the sale of a sophisticated military radar to Iraq. The allegation, which Kuchma denies, badly strained relations between Washington and Kiev.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Book Alleges Rocky Flats Misconduct
By ROBERT WELLER
Associated Press
Friday, March 26, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Rocky%20Flats%20Book
DENVER -- Secret midnight burning of radioactive waste. An FBI spy flight with infrared cameras. An employee who claims she was contaminated by fellow workers for reporting safety violations. It sounds like something out of a paperback thriller. But the allegations are contained in a new book that says the Justice Department covered up environmental misconduct at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver more than a decade ago.
Federal and state health officials say they are looking into the claims raised by the book, "The Ambushed Grand Jury: How the Justice Department Covered Up Government Nuclear Crimes and How We Caught Them Red Handed."
The book was written by Wes McKinley, the foreman of a grand jury that investigated activity at Rocky Flats, and attorney Caron Balkany. They said the book is worth the risk of jail for violating grand jury secrecy rules.
"I am doing my patriotic duty," McKinley said. "These people are criminals."
In addition to interviews with former plant workers and investigators, the authors relied on a journal McKinley kept during the grand jury sessions. They said they were able to independently confirm all the evidence discussed in the book.
A former federal prosecutor dismissed the allegations, and the plant's former operator said all the claims have been investigated and found to be groundless.
Rocky Flats, situated on the edge of the foothills outside Denver, made plutonium triggers from the 1950s until 1989. The Energy Department complex is being cleaned up and officials hope to turn it into a wildlife refuge by 2006.
Tipped about potential safety violations, the FBI in 1988 used infrared cameras during flights over Rocky Flats and detected what agents claimed was a burning incinerator in Building 771, the plutonium-reprocessing facility. At that time, the building was supposed to be shut down after an employee was exposed to radiation.
FBI and Environmental Protection Agency officials raided the plant in 1989 as part of an investigation called Operation Desert Glow.
Investigators subsequently looked at whether Rockwell International, the plant's operator at the time, knowingly discharged chemicals into creeks that flowed into municipal water supplies, burned toxic waste and failed to adequately monitor groundwater.
From 1989 to 1992, a federal grand jury heard testimony and reviewed evidence against Rockwell. The panel wanted to indict eight people and two corporations involved with Rocky Flats and recommended closing the plant.
But then-U.S. Attorney Michael Norton refused to sign the indictments and worked out a plea bargain.
Rockwell pleaded guilty to 10 hazardous waste and clean water violations in 1992 and was fined $18.5 million. The company admitted it stored hazardous waste without a permit, in containers that leaked, and that its actions caused hazardous waste to wind up in reservoirs that supplied drinking water to nearby cities.
At the time, it was the biggest fine levied against a company in a hazardous-waste case.
A Justice Department review of the plea bargain supported the prosecutors. The review said a charge of illegal burning had to be withdrawn because Allen Divers, a former military analyst who was working for Lockheed and reviewed the infrared photos, had changed his mind and could not be sure.
However, the book's authors contacted Divers, who said he had never changed his opinion. Divers confirmed this in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
The grand jury's report remains sealed, and as recently as this month, U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch refused to allow grand jurors to break their oath and speak publicly about the case. Matsch did not respond to a request seeking comment.
Jeff Dorschner, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Denver, would not comment on whether McKinley would be prosecuted for violating grand jury secrecy.
In an interview with The AP, Norton said that the grand jurors let their emotions take control and that the most serious allegations were not borne out.
"There was not the kind of mass conspiracy cover-up that was thought at the outset to have occurred," he said. Asked about Divers, Norton said, "I've never heard of him."
Similarly, Rockwell spokesman Matthrew Gonring said the accusations were thoroughly investigated.
The book includes material from interviews with FBI agent Jon Lipsky, who led a raid on the plant in 1989, and Jacque Brever, a Rockwell employee who worked in a building where processed plutonium was stored.
"My superiors have ordered me to lie about a criminal investigation I headed in 1989. We were investigating the Department of Energy, but the U.S. Justice Department covered up the truth," Lipsky said in the book. He confirmed his statement in a brief telephone interview with the AP.
Brever's account is more chilling. She said she is suffering from thyroid cancer she believes is the result of her fellow union workers deliberately damaging her protective gear because they feared her testimony would force the shutdown of the plant and cost them their jobs.
Officials at the Energy Department did not return calls and an e-mail for comment.
Representatives of the EPA and the Colorado health department said they are looking into the allegations in the book.
----
Flats whistleblowers visit Boulder
By RICHARD VALENTY,
March 26, 2004
Colorado Daily Staff Writer
http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2004/03/25/news/news05.txt
Without the whistleblower, ordinary citizens may have never gotten the chance to know some of the more spectacular events in modern life, such as Watergate, Monica's stained blue dress and environmental contamination at Rocky Flats.
Tonight at 7:30, Wes McKinley, co-author of the recently released book "The Ambushed Grand Jury," will speak and sign copies of the book at the Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St., on the downtown mall.
McKinley was the foreman of the grand jury that, from 1989-1992, was assigned to evaluate reports of numerous environmental violations at the former plutonium trigger plant.
Accompanying McKinley Thursday will be Jacque Brever, the former Flats employee who blew the whistle on the toxic operation, risking her life in the process.
Brever, according to a passage in "Ambushed," decided in 1989 to provide FBI agents with details about the alleged secret midnight burning of plutonium-contaminated waste at Rocky Flats.
Other Flats employees found out about Brever's collaboration with the FBI. Brever worked with radioactive materials using a "glovebox," in which protective gloves are built into a box so workers can move the material without it contacting their skin.
When Brever went to work Sept. 14, 1989, she reached into the glovebox and alarms went off. According to Brever, someone inside Rocky Flats intentionally contaminated the inside of the gloves with radioactive materials, which ultimately caused some of her hair to fall out and her skin to turn green and yellow in spots.
The Flats grand jury was convened after a 1989 FBI sting operation at Rocky Flats. Rockwell International operated the plant for the U.S. Energy Department at that time.
McKinley heard three years' worth of testimony about alleged environmental crimes at Rocky Flats, including toxic releases into local streams and the air, improper storage of radioactive waste and "missing" radioactive material, among other problems.
Certain the investigation would expose serious crimes McKinley was shocked when the case was settled by the U.S. Department of Justice in a plea bargain. Rockwell was fined $18.5 million and some federal officials claimed there was no evidence of serious environmental damage.
The Flats grand jury completed a report detailing the evidence they heard to the contrary, but in 1992, a judge sealed the report. McKinley, as a grand juror, was forbidden to speak on any topic that violated grand jury secrecy laws.
Twelve years later, McKinley and Brever are still trying to get the full story out.
Erin Hamby from Boulder's Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (RMPJC) wrote research papers on the Flats grand jury as a CU-Boulder student. According to Hamby, McKinley and Brever are literally risking their lives to try to expose toxic Flats activity.
"Jacque and Wes are two of my heroes, and I'm just really happy they're doing all this," said Hamby. "I think the situation at Rocky Flats is such that it needs dramatic attention."
The Rocky Flats plutonium trigger plant is no longer operational. A cleanup operation is underway to convert the site into the "Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge." Should humans be allowed to use the site? Would you let your kid play there? Hamby, for one, would try to find a recreational site with less plutonium contamination.
"I would keep them home from school if a field trip was going there, and I would never take them there myself," said Hamby. "The amount of contamination on that site is far too high for me to risk it."
Some information for this story comes from "Ambushed Grand Jury" by Wes McKinley and Caron Balkany, Esq.
-------- kentucky
Asthma near epidemic in Kentucky
March 26, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040326-110921-8877r.htm
FRANKFORT, Ky., March 26 -- Kentucky health officials are recommending a statewide effort to fight asthma, which affects more than 200,000 people in the state.
About one-third of the cases involve children, the Louisville Courier-Journal said.
Kentucky has the nation's highest adult smoking rate, ranks eighth in obesity and its asthma rate is higher than the national average and reaching epidemic levels.
Exposure to air pollution, second-hand smoke and allergens also contribute to increased asthma rates.
Health and Family Services Cabinet Secretary Dr. James Holsinger released a report showing asthma costs Kentucky taxpayers nearly $400 million a year in Medicaid funds. He called for adding the potentially life-threatening lung disease to the list of health-related data kept by the Kentucky Department of Public Health.
The report said the state should increase asthma education and outreach to the public, patients and health care providers.
-------- new mexico
Plutonium found in air samples at WIPP
03/26/2004
Associated Press
http://kobtv.com/index.cfm?viewer=storyviewer&id=9630&cat=HOME
(Carlsbad-AP) - Plutonium particles have been found in air filter samples taken from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The U.S. Department of Energy says the amount was far lower than the allowable dose limits.
According to the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring and Research Center, the samples were taken in June, and results only recently became available.
Energy Department scientist Roger Nelson says no plutonium was detected in air samples taken outside of the exhaust shaft.
He says the particles were likely on the outside of one of the waste drums when it was placed in the underground storage facility in Carlsbad. He says the exact source may never been known.
The DOE says the amount detected was at least 12,000 times lower than the Environmental Protection Agency's annual individual dose limit.
The particles were detected by two oversight agencies and Washington TRU Solutions-the contractor that manages the site.
-------- washington
Three Hanford nuclear workers taken to hospital after noting odor near radioactive tanks
Friday, March 26, 2004
By Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-26/s_22211.asp
RICHLAND, Washington - Three workers at the Hanford nuclear site were taken to a hospital Thursday after noticing a mysterious "sweet smell" near underground tanks holding radioactive waste.
The three initially declined medical evaluation, but co-workers called 911 when one of them developed a nosebleed, according to Erik Olds, spokesman for the Energy Department's Office of River Protection.
The worker with the nosebleed was taken by ambulance to Kadlec Medical Center in Richland. The other two also were being evaluated at the hospital, Olds said. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The workers are monitors for radioactivity or chemical vapors during the cleanup of the vast site that once made plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Several investigations are under way to determine if Hanford workers are being exposed to toxic vapors from 177 underground tanks, which hold about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste from weapons production.
Last week, six workers sought medical attention after being exposed to tank vapors. They later returned to work.
The Energy Department and the contractor handling tank waste cleanup have said the vapors are not dangerous.
For 40 years, the 586-square-mile site in south-central Washington 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.
-------- us nuc waste
Six States Want Federal Judge's Ruling on Department of Energy Wastes Upheld
By John Stang,
Tri-City Herald, Kennewick, Wash.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Mar. 26, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8304283.htm
Six states asked an appellate court Thursday to uphold a federal judge's ruling that the Department of Energy cannot reclassify high-level radioactive wastes as a less dangerous category prior to treating it.
Washington, Oregon, Idaho, South Carolina, New Mexico and New York sent a friend-of-the-court brief Thursday to the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to oppose DOE's appeal of a July 3, 2003, decision by U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill.
DOE says closing waste tanks at Hanford and elsewhere will stall if it loses this legal dispute.
Stalled work could include removing some solid wastes from otherwise cleaned-out tanks, developing alternatives to conventional glassification and converting about 1 million gallons of waste into transuranic powder to be shipped to New Mexico.
This dispute revolves around DOE's high-level radioactive wastes in underground tanks at Hanford, Idaho Falls, Savannah River, S.C., and West Valley, N.Y.
Hanford has 53 million gallons of tank wastes, of which 11 million gallons are classified as high-level and 42 million gallons are classified as low-activity.
DOE says it has the power to take wastes from a formally designated high-level waste tank, then designate whether the material has high-level or low-activity.
But two environmental groups, two Indian tribes and the six states all contend DOE cannot legally do that.
They contend DOE is trying to reclassify high-level wastes as low-activity wastes without treating the material.
High-level wastes must be glassified and stored in special vaults to await eventual shipment to a proposed permanent storage site at Yucca Mountain, Nev. Low-activity wastes face less stringent and cheaper treatment requirements, and will be buried at their host sites, such as Hanford.
"The problem of safely disposing of dangerous radioactive wastes cannot be solved by simply issuing an order redefining the problem," said Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire in a news release. Her office is handling the friend-of-the court brief for the six states.
Meanwhile, DOE spokesman Joe Davis said unless DOE gets the powers that it believes it is entitled to, "We can't legally spend (some) money on cleanup."
DOE's fiscal 2005 budget request to Congress has $350 million, including $64 million for Hanford, set aside for tank farm matters nationwide, which can be used only when the reclassification issue is resolved to DOE's satisfaction.
Some critics view that set-aside money as DOE pressuring the states to drop their opposition.
Besides appealing Winmill's decision, DOE tried to get Congress to rewrite the 1982 law that the judge ruled it had violated. DOE tried to do that as a last-minute amendment to an appropriation bill in a closed-door House-Senate conference committee last fall. Both Republicans and Democrats rejected that attempt.
In its appeal, DOE argued that Congress intentionally exempted it and plutonium-production wastes are exempt from the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Also, DOE argues that its tank wastes are "wastes incidental to reprocessing," rather than "wastes resulting from reprocessing." The second phrase is part to the legal definition of high-level radioactive wastes, while the first phrase is not part of that legal definition.
Davis contends that if waste in a tank always had been treated a high-level radioactive waste, that does not necessarily mean it actually is high-level waste until DOE makes that determination.
DOE contends if some tank wastes remain classified as "high-level" that will slow efforts to remove solid residues from the bottoms of tanks earmarked for early closure, and might stall efforts to deal with some wastes as low-activity wastes.
DOE is looking at quickly converting some liquid wastes into dry transuranic wastes to ship to New Mexico. And it is looking at bulk vitrification and steam reforming as possible ways to treat low-activity wastes quicker and cheaper than possible with conventional glassification. DOE is supposed to decide by 2005 if those options are viable.
The six states' friend-of-the-court brief disputes DOE legal arguments and definitions.
The states' brief also contends that DOE is trying to sidetrack the law in order to avoid the expense and effort of treating wastes the legally correct way.
To see more of the Tri-City Herald, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.tri-cityherald.com
-------- us politics
House narrowly passes $2.4 trillion spending plan
Fri, Mar. 26, 2004
Charlotte Observer
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/8280358.htm?1c
WASHINGTON - The House narrowly passed a $2.4 trillion budget resolution Thursday that would make it tougher to increase spending -- but less difficult to cut taxes -- in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.Republicans portrayed the measure, which passed 215 to 212, as a careful mix of spending hikes for the military and homeland defense; a spending cut or freeze in most other areas; and continued tax reductions to stimulate the economy. Democrats decried it as a package of poorly targeted tax cuts benefiting the wealthy and expanding the federal deficit while short-changing domestic programs such as education and job training.
The vote puts the House at odds with the Senate, which has voted to offset any new tax cuts with corresponding spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere. Lawmakers will have to reconcile their differences in a conference committee. -- WASHINGTON POST
----
Clarke then . . .
March 26, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040325-091451-8041r.htm
Excerpts from the August 2002 press briefing by Richard A. Clarke:
RICHARD CLARKE: There was no plan on al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration ... In January 2001, the incoming Bush administration was briefed on the existing strategy. [They] decided to ... vigorously pursue the existing policy [and] ... initiate a process to look at those issues which had been on the table for a couple of years.
In their first meeting [the principles] changed the strategy by authorizing the increase in funding [for covert action against al Qaeda] five-fold, changing the policy on Pakistan, changing the policy on Uzbekistan, changing the policy on the Northern Alliance assistance. [They] then changed the strategy from one of rollback with al Qaeda ... to a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al Qaeda.
QUESTION: What is your response to the suggestion in the [Aug. 12, 2002] Time [magazine] article that the Bush administration was unwilling to take on board the suggestions made in the Clinton administration because of animus against ... the foreign policy?
CLARKE: I think if there was a general animus that clouded their vision, they might not have kept the same guy dealing with [the] terrorism issue ... There was never a plan [in the Clinton administration].
QUESTION: What was the problem? Why was it so difficult for the Clinton administration to make decisions on those issues?
CLARKE: Because they were tough issues. One of the big problems was that Pakistan at the time was aiding the other side, was aiding the Taliban. In the spring [of 2001], the Bush administration ... began to change Pakistani policy. We began to offer carrots, which made it possible for the Pakistanis ... [to] join us and to break away from the Taliban. So that's really how it started.
QUESTION: Had the Clinton administration ... prepared for a call for the use of ground forces, special operations forces in any way?
CLARKE: There was never a plan in the Clinton administration to use ground forces. The military was asked at a couple of points ... to think about it. And they always came back and said it was not a good idea. There was never a plan to do that.
QUESTION: You're saying ... there was no plan; two, there was no delay; and that actually the first changes since October of '98 were made in the spring months just after the administration came into office?
CLARKE: You got it ...The other thing to bear in mind is the shift from the rollback strategy to the elimination strategy. When President Bush told us in March to stop swatting at flies and just solve this problem, then that was the strategic direction that changed the [policy] from one of rollback to one of elimination.
---
. . . and Clarke now
March 26, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040325-091448-2119r.htm
Excerpts from Mr. Clarke's testimony on Wednesday:
RICHARD CLARKE: My view was that this administration, while it listened to me, either didn't believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem.
SLADE GORTON: In August of 1998, did you recommend a longer-lasting military response, or just precisely the one that, in fact, took place?
MR. CLARKE: I recommended a series of rolling attacks against the infrastructure in Afghanistan. Every time they would rebuild it, I would propose that we blow it up again.
MR. GORTON: And the goal of that plan was to roll back al Qaeda over a period of three to five years, reducing it eventually to a rump group, like other terrorist organizations around the world?
MR. CLARKE: Our goal was to do that to eliminate it as a threat to the United States ... The CIA said if they got all the resources they needed, that might be possible over the course of three years at the earliest.
MR. CLARKE Had we a more robust intelligence capability in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we might have recognized the existence of al Qaeda relatively soon after it came into existence. And if we had a proactive intelligence covert action program ... then we might have been able to nip it in the bud.
JAMES R. THOMPSON: Mr. Clarke, as we sit here this afternoon, we have your book and we have your press briefing of August 2002. Which is true?
MR. CLARKE:Time magazine ... implied that the Bush administration hadn't worked on that plan ... I was asked by several people in senior levels of the Bush White House to do a press backgrounder to try to explain that set of facts in a way that minimized criticism of the administration.
MR. THOMPSON: Well, let's take a look, then, at your press briefing, because I don't want to engage in semantic games ... Are you saying to me that you were asked to make an untrue case to the press and the public and that you went ahead and did it?
MR. CLARKE: No, sir.
MR. THOMPSON: Mr. Clarke, in this background briefing ... for the press in August of 2002, you intended to mislead the press, did you not?
MR. CLARKE: No ... No one in the Bush White House asked me to say things that were untruthful, and I would not have said them.
MR. THOMPSON: But what it suggests to me is that there is one standard - one standard of candor and morality for White House special assistants and another standard of candor and morality for the rest of America. I don't get that.
MR. CLARKE: I don't think it's a question of morality at all. I think it's a question of politics.
--------
White House Fights Clarke Fire With Fire
Bush Aides Rush to Head Off Damage
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25176-2004Mar25?language=printer
As his advisers tell it, President Bush had tired of the White House playing defense on issue after issue. So this week, his aides turned the full power of the executive branch on Richard A. Clarke, formerly the administration's top counterterrorism official, who charges in his new book that Bush responded lackadaisically in 2001 to repeated warnings of an impending terrorist attack.
Bush's aides unleashed a two-pronged strategy that called for preemptive strikes on Clarke before most people could have seen his book, coupled with saturation media appearances by administration aides. They questioned the truthfulness of Clarke's claims, his competence as an employee, the motives behind the book's timing, and even the sincerity of the pleasantries in his resignation letter and farewell photo session with Bush.
The barrage was unusual for a White House that typically tries to ignore its critics, and it was driven by White House calculations that Clarke would appear credible to average viewers. Bush's advisers are concerned that Clarke's assertions are capable of inflicting political damage on a president who is staking his claim for reelection in large measure on his fight against terrorism.
James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University, said he was stunned by the ferocity of the White House campaign but said Clarke "is raising fundamental questions about the credibility of the president and his staff in regard to what they did to keep America safe."
"They are vulnerable, which is why they are attacking so hard," Thurber said. "You have to go back to Vietnam or Watergate to get the same feel about the structure of argument coming out of the White House against Clarke's statements."
Bookstores reported soaring demand for the book, "Against All Enemies," which was published Monday and is in its fifth printing, with almost 500,000 copies in print.
A poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, conducted Monday through Wednesday, found significant public interest in Clarke's criticisms, with nearly nine in 10 of the 1,065 Americans surveyed saying they had heard of them. Of those polled, 42 percent said they had heard "a lot" about his claims and 47 percent said they had heard "a little."
White House communications director Dan Bartlett said officials had to take Clarke seriously because "at face value, based on his résumé and experience, you would think this guy is credible.
"Particularly because of how egregious the accusations are, you couldn't let them stand," he said.
In their effort to undermine Clarke, Bush's aides departed from some of their most cherished practices. They invited reporters into West Wing offices where they rarely tread, for on-the-record interviews with top officials. They released an e-mail from Clarke to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that they say is at odds with the account Clarke gave during his testimony to the independent panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They said he was disgruntled because his application to be deputy director of the Department of Homeland Security had been rejected.
An official also read reporters an e-mail that Rice had sent Clarke chastising him for skipping several of her morning staff meetings.
Perhaps most surprising, aides who routinely spar over such distinctions as "White House official" and "senior administration official" allowed Fox News to unmask Clarke as the anonymous briefer in an August 2002 White House conference call that highlighted the administration's efforts in the war on terrorism. The administration's allies say Clarke's statements that day conflict with allegations in his book.
In contrast to his assertions that the Bush administration did not consider terrorism an urgent problem, Clarke told reporters in that briefing that before the attacks, Bush's aides had developed "a new strategy that called for the rapid elimination of al Qaeda." He said the administration also approved a fivefold increase in CIA funding for covert action to pursue al Qaeda.
Clarke said Wednesday that as an administration official delivering the background briefing, he focused on positive developments but left out the administration's failings.
Officials from both parties said it would be at least a couple of days before it is clear whether the offensive succeeded in eroding Clarke's credibility or whether the public, and especially independent voters, would wind up viewing him as a courageous whistle-blower. Republicans said the blitz could backfire if more facts emerge to bolster Clarke's version, and if the public views him as a sympathetic figure because of his apology to the victims' families.
Joe Lockhart, a press secretary in the Clinton administration, said the White House may pay a price for focusing more on Clarke as a person than on the substance of his contentions. "This was classic political triage," he said. "You do what you think you need to do to get through the day. At the end of the day you feel pretty good about yourself, but you may have created a bigger problem for yourself down the road."
Although Clarke had submitted his book to White House lawyers for security clearances months earlier, communications officials said they did not see it and did not know the extent of his denunciation until they saw his comments Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes." Some officials said they believe Clarke has been more critical in his public comments than he was in the book.
Two hours before airtime, the White House released the text of a rebuttal interview that deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley taped last Friday for the "60 Minutes" segment. Also before airtime, the White House sent reporters a six-page document titled "Setting the Record Straight," with entries divided between "Myth" and "The Facts."
Rice told network correspondents called to her office Wednesday that Clarke's book is "180 degrees from everything else that he said." Yesterday, the White House circulated an e-mail headed "Richard Clarke v. Richard Clarke" listing what aides said were contradictions in his new and past statements.
Administration officials were so intent on mobilizing every possible argument that some of their points seemed contradictory. Collectively, they said Clarke was responsible for counterterrorism but out of the loop, claimed he was obsessed with which meetings he could attend but refused to go to some meetings, and argued both that his book was published too soon and too late.
The dispute became deeply personal. Clarke said Wednesday on ABC's "Nightline": "These are mean and nasty people, when it comes down to it." White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that the author "has a growing credibility problem."
Clarke chuckled during a phone interview when he was told that the White House had leaked word that during his departure meeting in the Oval Office, he had told Bush that he would be happy to help "if you need a friend on the outside."
"If I had done anything else, they would now be telling you that I was a rude person," Clarke said. "Their complaints have nothing to do with the argument I'm making."
Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) used a floor statement yesterday to accuse the administration of "character assassination." He pointed to Bush's promise in 2000 to change the tone in Washington and said that, instead, "the people around him . . . are doing things that should never be done and have never been done before."
But Sig Rogich, an image consultant for President George H.W. Bush, said White House officials are "doing everything they have to do and should do to point out the fallacy of what Clarke has had to say."
"I don't think the American people believe that a president would, in a cavalier way, turn his back on information that could jeopardize the nation," Rogich said.
--------
House Approves $2.4 Trillion Budget Plan
Resolution That Would Curb Spending Still Provides for Tax Reductions
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24967-2004Mar25.html
The House narrowly passed a $2.4 trillion budget resolution yesterday that would make it tougher to increase spending -- but less difficult to cut taxes -- in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1.
Republicans portrayed the measure, which passed 215 to 212, as a careful mix of: spending increases for the military and homeland defense; a spending cut or freeze in most other areas; and continued tax reductions to stimulate the economy. Democrats decried it as a package of poorly targeted tax cuts benefiting the wealthy and expanding the federal deficit while shortchanging domestic programs such as education and job training.
The vote puts the House at odds with the Senate, which has voted to offset any new tax cuts with corresponding spending cuts or tax increases elsewhere. Lawmakers will have to reconcile their differences in a conference committee, which could prove difficult. Some Senate aides said the gap might be unbreachable -- Congress last failed to enact a budget resolution in 1998 -- but House leaders yesterday predicted an accord would be reached eventually.
Budget resolutions are nonbinding blueprints that help shape annual tax and appropriations decisions, which Congress will soon start making for fiscal 2005. Both parties say budget resolutions are important symbolically because they reflect a party's basic values.
The House-passed budget would reduce taxes by $138 billion over five years; raise military spending next year by 7 percent, in addition to an expected extra $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; devote $369 billion to domestic programs, slightly less than President Bush requested; and make an unspecified five-year, $13 billion cut in entitlement programs such as welfare and Medicaid.
Before passing the GOP-drafted budget resolution, the House defeated three Democratic alternatives offered by the black caucus, conservative "blue dogs" and the Democratic leadership. The House also rejected an alternative by conservative Republicans calling for deeper spending cuts.
Much of the day's debate focused on whether to require future tax cuts to be offset by spending cuts or by corresponding increases in other taxes, a policy known as "pay as you go" or "revenue neutral." Despite pressure from Republican moderates, House leaders opted to exempt tax-cut extensions from pay-as-you-go rules. But the offset rules would apply to efforts to raise spending in entitlement programs.
To secure the votes of reluctant colleagues, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) promised a vote before Memorial Day on a yet-to-be detailed measure dealing further with budget caps and pay-as-you-go issues, Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) said. "I sold out, but I got a good price," he told reporters, waving a copy of Hastert's letter.
The House, voting 222 to 201 along party lines earlier in the day, rejected a Democratic bid to apply the pay-as-you-go rules to tax cuts, as well as to spending increases.
"Democrats believe that it is irresponsible -- indeed, immoral -- to plunge our nation even deeper into debt and to force future generations to pay our bills," Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (Md.) said in a statement, one of dozens issued by both parties throughout the day.
The House-passed Republican budget resolution, unlike the Democratic versions, would extend Bush's tax cuts for upper-income Americans. Doing otherwise, Republicans said, would amount to a tax increase on those people.
"The Democrat budgets don't 'freeze,' 'roll back,' 'defer' or 'stop to review' anything," Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) said. "They just raise taxes."
House Democrats argued in vain for higher spending for education, homeland security, veterans' health care, environmental protection and other programs. "Tax cuts for the rich rob us of the ability to fund needed programs," Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.) said during the floor debate.
Both parties in the House -- as well as in the Senate -- have agreed to extend tax cuts in three areas: eliminating the so-called marriage penalty, expanding the 10 percent income tax bracket and retaining the $1,000 child tax credit.
But the House-passed resolution would extend other tax reductions, including those aimed at higher-income people, without requiring offsetting budget savings elsewhere. The Senate, in contrast, voted 51 to 48 on March 10 to require that tax cuts -- along with spending increases -- be offset by savings elsewhere.
On the final 215 to 212 vote, 10 Republicans, including Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. of Virginia, voted against the resolution. All Democrats and the House's lone independent also voted nay.
--------
Ex-Aide's Book Corners Market in Capital Buzz
March 26, 2004
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/politics/26BOOK.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 25 - On the first day, the hottest new book in town sold out in an hour at Politics and Prose and sales clerks turned away dozens of disappointed buyers. On the second day, the store called three national book wholesalers, which announced they did not have a single copy left.
That was when Barbara Meade knew that Richard A. Clarke, the author of "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror," was the genuine article, an unexpected literary phenomenon whose account of counterterrorism failures within the Bush administration has been flying off the shelves this week.
"It's reached a point now where if you're going to be in the loop in Washington you probably have to say you've read the book," Ms. Meade, co-owner of Politics and Prose, said, adding that she believed she now has enough copies to last through the weekend.
In Washington, Mr. Clarke's book is not just the talk of the town, it is practically the only conversation in town, having - in just four days - hijacked the news agenda and placing him in the ranks of other best-selling Washington authors like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. On Amazon.com, it is ranked first, outselling even "The South Beach Diet." And some booksellers around the country are struggling to keep up with demand for the book, which has gone into its fifth printing since it went on sale on Monday.
Mr. Clarke, the Bush administration's former counterterrorism chief, says officials failed to heed warnings about the Sept. 11 attacks and then neglected the threat of Al Qaeda as they turned their attention to Saddam Hussein.
In this city, those incendiary charges are dominating political chatter at breakfast tables, dinner tables and even on the basketball court, where David Sirota, spokesman for the Center for American Progress, discussed it last night after shooting hoops with Congressional workers and former presidential campaign advisers at the Sidwell Friends School.
"It's all that people are talking about," said Jim Jordan, the Democratic strategist, who said he was planning to buy his own copy on Thursday.
There are also signs that the book's appeal is extending beyond the insular world of Washington in a week in which Mr. Clarke's story was splashed across the front pages of national newspapers and featured on televised news broadcasts as he testified on Wednesday before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
It took some quick footwork to get the book into the headlines this week, if not into the hands of everyone who wants to buy it. Its publisher, The Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, managed to get it into stores a week before schedule when it learned that Mr. Clarke was testifying this week before the commission. And Mr. Clarke's publicists got him a prime spot on "60 Minutes" on Sunday, the night before the book went on sale.
Simon & Schuster, which also published Mrs. Clinton's book and the recent best-seller about Paul H. O'Neill, the former Treasury secretary, initially printed about 300,000 copies of Mr. Clarke's book, a very large number for a work of serious nonfiction, and it has since ordered 150,000 more copies. The early pace of sales matches the O'Neill book, which was written by Ron Suskind, but it is nowhere near the national record for early sales set last year by Mrs. Clinton's memoir, said Martha Levin, publisher of The Free Press.
Outside Washington, reports on the book's sales varied.
At the Borders bookstore near the Union Square shopping district in San Francisco, managers said they had sold 200 of the 300 copies available. In Houston, Karl Kilian, the owner of Brazos Bookstore, said he sold all 15 copies he had ordered.
Kathy Morgan, manager of the Borders bookstore in Altamonte Springs, Fla., described demand as brisk, but "not blockbuster." She said more of her customers were snapping up copies of "Deliver Us From Evil," by Sean Hannity, the radio and television personality who says the war on terror must defeat liberalism along with despotism.
But a survey released this week suggests that national awareness of Mr. Clarke's arguments is quite high. The Pew Research Center reported on Thursday that about 42 percent of the 1,065 adults surveyed had heard "a lot" about Mr. Clarke's claims; 47 percent said they had heard "a little" about his charges. Only 10 percent said they had heard nothing about his criticisms.
That is startling news for some publishers and lawyers who specialize in sober political books that often attract flurries of attention in much smaller circles. "Oh, I wish it were mine," said a wistful Peter Osnos, who runs PublicAffairs, the New York publishing company, and hailed Mr. Clarke's text as "the book of the moment."
Ms. Levin declined to comment on Mr. Clarke's advance or royalties. At a typical rate, Mr. Clarke would stand to earn about $4 a copy in royalties.
Here in Washington, the book has been a hot topic of debate. At the hearings on the Sept. 11 attacks, James R. Thompson, a commissioner who is a former Republican governor of Illinois, repeatedly brandished a copy of Mr. Clarke's book this week as he questioned senior officials.
Mr. Clarke's accusations so dominated the hearings even when he was not testifying that some commissioners protested, including John F. Lehman, a Republican commissioner who was Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan.
"I've published books, and I must say I am green with envy at the promotion department of your publisher," Mr. Lehman said to considerable laughter. "I never got Jim Thompson to stand before 50 photographers reading your book. And I certainly never got `60 Minutes' to coordinate the showing of its interview with you with 15 network news broadcasts, the selling of the movie rights and your appearance here today."
Mr. Lehman followed his lighthearted remarks with a sharp attack on what he and other Republicans have described as inconsistencies and signs of partisanship in Mr. Clarke's arguments. "I'd hate to see you become totally shoved to one side during a presidential campaign as an active partisan selling a book," he said.
But while talk of the book continues to burn on many tongues here, the number of policy makers who have actually read all of its 304 pages remains a subject of some debate. Some prominent Republicans made a point this week of noting that they had not read the book, including Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, and Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, according to their spokesmen.
And several Democrats, some of whom can barely contain their glee at the release of the book in the throes of this election year, admitted they had not yet read it either. "No one's read it," said Mr. Sirota, a former spokesman for the Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, speaking of his basketball partners. "Can you still get it?"
On Wednesday, Richard L. Armitage, the Bush administration's deputy secretary of state, described himself as "the only honest person in Washington" when he admitted during the hearings that he had given the book what he described as "the Washington read."
"You looked in the index to see if your name was in it," Mr. Thompson said.
"And then what was said about me," Mr. Armitage said as the chamber erupted in laughter.
David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting for this article.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Military death toll in Al-Qaeda operation reaches 54, 20 missing
WANA, Pakistan (AFP)
Mar 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040326101001.benvdba2.html
At least 54 soldiers have been killed and another 20 are missing as a military operation against Al-Qaeda suspects and rebel tribesmen near the Afghan border dragged into its 11th day Friday, a security official said.
In what is turning out to be the army's most disastrous operation in its two-year Al-Qaeda hunt, the official revealed that a total of 37 army and paramilitary troops have been killed in battle since the operation began on March 16.
That figure includes 16 troops killed on the first day when they were surprised by scores of heavily armed fighters, apparently protecting an unidentified foreigner escaping in a bullet-proof landcruiser.
In another disastrous raid, 14 army troops were slaughtered in one hit on March 18 when they mistakenly landed by helicopter in a nest of battle-hardened militants, holed up in two tribal villages near the Afghan border.
"A contingent led by a major mistakenly landed in a militants' den and was virtually butchered," the security official, who could not be identified told
Another seven soldiers were killed in later days of the operation.
"The military's death toll in the battle field is 37," the official said.
Outside the theatre of operation, three separate attacks by unknown assailants on army bases and an army convoy have left 17 soldiers dead.
Twelve paramilitaries have been missing since the botched March 16 raid, and eight army troops have disappeared since March 18, bringing the total missing troops to 20.
Authorities believe they have been taken hostage by rebel Yargulkhel tribesmen at the center of the fighting. Efforts so far by tribal elders to persuade them to surrender their hostage have failed.
Two administration officials are also believed to have been taken hostage.
Up to 55 foreign and local militants had been killed in the military offensive, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told the parliament Thursday.
Around 163 suspects had been arrested during the operation, chief of security for the tribal areas Brigadier Mehmood Shah told AFP on Thursday night.
However some 60 have been released, the security official who could not be named said.
"Now we have little more than 100 with us. The majority of them are Afghans and there are few Chechans and Uzbeks as well," he said.
--------
Up to 2,000 Marines to Go to Afghanistan From Gulf
March 26, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/international/asia/26MILI.html
WASHINGTON, March 25 - As many as 2,000 marines now aboard ships in the Persian Gulf will be sent to Afghanistan in the coming weeks to reinforce the American-led operation there to combat fighters of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
American commanders have not yet decided how many marines from the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit from Camp Lejeuene, N.C., will ultimately be deployed to Afghanistan. A senior Pentagon official said "it will be most of them," while a defense official said that "some of the marines" would be sent but that conditions in the field would dictate the number.
The United States now has about 13,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 2,000 marines. The additional marines - about 2,000 to 2,200 are now aboard three ships in the gulf - would add significant reinforcements at a pivotal moment in the running battle along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Gen. John P. Abizaid, the head of the military's Central Command, and his top lieutenants in Afghanistan had been planning a major spring offensive against Qaeda and Taliban fighters along that frontier, and he has intended for months to use the additional marines, the senior Pentagon official said. The marines left North Carolina on Feb. 19 for a six-month deployment.
Across the border, tens of thousands of Pakistani troops are battling suspected Qaeda fighters and allied Pashtun tribesman in the rugged tribal regions, a semiautonomous area that Pakistani security forces had largely avoided until recent years.
At the Pentagon Thursday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the additional marines would help put more pressure on enemy fighters, and help provide security in Afghanistan as elections approach.
"They're going to have elections sometime this summer, perhaps late summer," General Myers said. "We want to make sure that that event goes well. There are still pockets of Taliban and Al Qaeda that need to be dealt with."
Mr. Rumsfeld said, "There's just no question that added pressure is being put on the Al Qaeda network in Afghanistan, in Pakistan and elsewhere around the world."
The additional marines would bring quick-reacting, self-sustaining firepower to the fight either along the mountain border area with Pakistan, where much of the current fighting is taking place, or in south and southeastern Afghanistan, where Taliban remnants are trying to undermine the fragile government of President Hamid Karzai.
The marines have a variety of equipment they could bring to the hunt, including light-armored vehicles, artillery, Super Cobra attack helicopters and fixed-wing Harrier jets, if needed. They also have been trained in special operations.
The United States is providing a wide array of behind-the-scenes support to Pakistani forces combating suspected Qaeda fighters near the Afghan border, including spy satellites, electronic-eavesdropping planes and advanced ground sensors.
--------
Returnees Struggle On Dry Afghan Plain
Water Diversion Cripples Once-Fertile Shomali Region
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25032-2004Mar25?language=printer
KARABAGH, Afghanistan -- "This is a book," recited Mir Agha, 12, glancing up shyly as he plucked at a wall of wool in the semi-darkness of a mud-walled farmhouse. He tried to remember more of the English he had learned at a refugee camp in Pakistan, but the memories had already faded.
Mir's father was once a farmer, and this village 30 miles north of Kabul was once surrounded by healthy wheat fields and carefully tended vineyards that produced sweet raisins for export. But now most fields are dried up and lifeless, and the family of returned refugees must rely on its children to survive.
"Weaving carpets hurts your fingers," Mir noted matter-of-factly. His two younger brothers sat beside him, silently working at the carpet loom. His older brother was out on his bicycle, selling used clothes door to door. "I'd like to be a teacher, but I've already forgotten most of what I learned," Mir said.
The homecoming of the Agha family, and tens of thousands of others who fled the fertile Shomali Plain and marauding Taliban forces in the late 1990s, should have been a success story. International aid began pouring into the region almost as soon as the Taliban was driven from power in late 2001, and the U.N. refugee agency was waiting for the returnees with open arms.
Today, after two years of massive resettlement, the Karabagh town center is deceptively busy. There is a well-equipped hospital, a noisy livestock fair, a crowded afternoon English academy, a bazaar stocked with farm implements and a brand-new community radio station, financed by the United States.
Just beyond the market, however, stretch acres of parched earth, shriveled grapevines and meager wheat, yellow from lack of nourishment. Many farmers, returning to land stunted by years of war and drought, have been unable to coax their fields back to life. To make matters worse, residents said, powerful militia bosses have diverted the region's only canal to their own lands, and civilian authorities do not dare challenge them.
"The commanders made the river detour, and so all our land is wasted. We would have to fight them to get the water back, and no one wants war anymore," said Mahmad Nawab, a farmer who was carrying fertilizer in a wheelbarrow.
Karabagh and other districts in Shomali suffered especially harsh punishment from the Taliban because the area was on the front line of the radical Islamic movement's fight against the Northern Alliance militia, an opposition force led by the late Ahmed Shah Massoud.
In a vengeful "scorched earth" campaign in 1999, the Taliban burned houses and crops, hacked fruit trees and dynamited irrigation wells. According to the U.N. refugee agency, about 53,000 families fled the region, leaving it virtually abandoned.
But once the Taliban was driven from Kabul in November 2001, Shomali people began returning by the thousands, eager to rebuild and replant. In the process, they received an unusually large amount of foreign aid, partly because the area had been specifically victimized and partly because of its strategic location between the capital and a major U.S. military base. Mines were cleared along the main road and among villages, so farmers could quickly return to their land.
"People brought earth in plastic bags, just to start planting again," said Sharafuddin, 43, a returned refugee who once grew grapes for export but now sells imported wheat in the Karabagh bazaar.
Many Shomali families had already established ties to international aid agencies in the Panjshir Valley, Massoud's stronghold to the north, where they had fled the Taliban's wrath and were housed in refugee camps. Once it was safe for them to return home, the same agencies followed.
In Karabagh alone, more than 1,000 families were given tents for temporary shelter and construction materials, such as roof beams and window glass, to rebuild their homes. Last year, a local clinic was refurbished and later upgraded to a district hospital, and an agricultural development bank was established.
Some returning families have done well for themselves, but they tend to be people whose livelihoods do not directly depend on the land, such as Abdul Khaleq, 60, who makes clay bread ovens in his yard. Khaleq said he started out selling small ones to neighbors living in U.N. tents and now has more orders for kitchen ovens than he can fill.
"My back aches from working so hard, but I have a happy life," Khaleq said, shaking hands with a strong, mud-stained grip. His busy mud compound echoed with the squeals and giggles of two dozen children -- some his own, others those of a brother killed by the Taliban who are now his responsibility.
"When we came back, the house was rubble and our only roof was a tarpaulin. Now we have a generator, and we can watch Indian movies every night," Khaleq said proudly. "There is peace, and work, and the gunmen are gone. As long as the American troops stay, they won't be back."
Much of the help for Karabagh has come from the Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development (ACTED), an international charity that operates a variety of community programs, including a tool bank that provides cheap rental tractors, low-cost fertilizer and credit to buy improved seeds.
"We've had a close relationship with the Shomali people for a long time, and they trust us," said Beth Bolitho, an ACTED spokeswoman. But she said the lack of water remains a critical problem, one complicated by ethnic rivalries, geographic disadvantages, the destruction and misuse of water systems and a lack of scientific information. "When you try to address water issues, it's a mine field," she said.
According to residents, the community's long-standing loyalty to the Northern Alliance apparently did not stop the militia's former commanders from diverting its scarce water for their own use. Even in Charikar, the nearby capital of Parwan province, civilian officials acknowledged there was little they could do about the abuse.
"During the resistance [to the Taliban], a lot of rivers were damaged, and some people took illegal streams to private lands. It was a war situation," explained the deputy governor, Khwaja Mahmad. "Some problems we cannot solve, but if our brothers put their guns down and start working for reconstruction, that will help a lot."
In Karabagh, education is a high priority for many returning families, and an after-school English program on the main street is crammed with boys of all ages. But while some families depend on their young sons to generate income, many do not allow their daughters to attend school at all once they reach puberty.
Thus, hundreds of teenage girls who studied in refugee camps in Pakistan or Panjshir have stepped backward into a conservative rural culture, where sending them to school is considered shameful. On many Karabagh farms, older girls now busy themselves with chores while their younger brothers and sisters attend class.
"We were gone for 10 years, and my daughters went to school in Kabul. They liked it a lot," said Farida, a village woman whose husband sells used books in a sidewalk bazaar. "But here, people would talk about them, so it's impossible."
Farida said it was hard to adjust to the primitive conditions of village life. "I miss having electricity," she said with a sigh.
Still, no one interviewed in Karabagh said they regretted coming home. Of the thousands of Shomali families who were repatriated from Pakistani refugee camps, the U.N. refugee agency said, less than 1 percent had given up and gone back to Pakistan.
For the Agha family, still barely surviving after two years back in Karabagh, mixed emotions persist. One son said he hated living in a hot tent; a daughter said she missed going to school. Their mother, a sturdy, unsmiling woman with callused hands, firmly interjected the final word.
"So we have nothing here, but we had even less there," she said. "Isn't it better to be hungry in your homeland?"
-------- africa
25 Dead in Ivory Coast as Protesters Defy Ban
Two More Partners Withdraw From 14-Month-Old Agreement to Share Power
Associated Press
Friday, March 26, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24923-2004Mar25.html
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, March 25 -- Rebels and the main opposition party pulled out of Ivory Coast's power-sharing government Thursday after 25 people were killed in clashes between security forces and opposition supporters who marched in defiance of a government ban.
The street skirmishes were the bloodiest to hit this West African nation's commercial capital since an attempted coup split the country in two in September 2002.
Among the dead were two police officers and 12 civilians attacked by protesters armed with machetes, Abidjan Police Chief Yapo Kouassi said. Security forces struggling to maintain order shot and killed several others, he said, giving no details.
Air France suspended flights to the country, and the French Foreign Ministry called on all parties to show restraint. There are about 4,000 French soldiers in Ivory Coast.
The events dealt a serious blow to the January 2003 peace deal brokered by France that established a power-sharing government.
"We have suspended our participation in the government to protest against today's killings," rebel spokesman Alain Lobognon said. Rebel forces in the north were put on alert, he added without elaborating.
Bacongo Cisse, spokesman for the main opposition party, Rally of Republicans, said his organization would also suspend its participation to protest the violence.
The opposition Democratic Party of Ivory Coast pulled out of the government March 4, saying President Laurent Gbagbo was not fully implementing the accord. The same complaints were behind Thursday's march.
Opposition militants gathered early in Abidjan's outlying, poorer suburbs and planned to converge on the city center's barricaded Plateau district, where the presidential palace is guarded with tanks and armored cars. They never got close.
Security forces fired tear gas to disperse them. Then, according to witnesses, paramilitary police opened fire with assault rifles, killing several in the crowd.
Jeannot Koudou, an adviser to the security minister, said that "security forces intervened to maintain order," firing tear gas and injuring several people. Asked whether any had fired into crowds, he said: "It's false. It's not true."
Integration Minister Theodore Mel blamed the opposition for the violence. "In insisting on their wish to demonstrate, they are trying to create troubles for the government, which is at the stage where it wants reconciliation," he said.
-------- arms
China, Israel march in step again
By Stephen Blank,
Mar 26, 2004
Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/FC26Ad02.html
China and Israel are resuming a military relationship. From the 1970s until both sides established diplomatic relations with each other in 1992, Israel sold China an estimated US$4 billion worth of arms. And once their political relations were normalized, their arms sales relationship become overt.
Indeed, that relationship continued until 2000, when Israel attempted to sell China an Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS), only to run afoul of the United States, which blocked the deal, saying it would give Beijing a strategic edge in any Taiwan conflict. As a result, Israel ultimately had to pay China $350 million in compensation, and there were no known arms sales through 2003.
However, now a top-level delegation led by the director general of the Israeli Defense Ministry, General Amos Yaron, Major General (Ret) Yossi Ben-Hanan, head of Sibat, the Foreign Defense and Assistance Export Organization, and Yehiel Horev, the ministry's chief security officer, visited Beijing this week. It was the first time the two nations held high-level military talks in three years.
Although this meeting is described as a confidence-building measure to reopen the way to a lucrative defense relationship with Beijing, it has not happened out of the blue. The meet follows hard on the heels of Israel's sale of the Phalcon AWACs system to India, with US approval, and the visible expansion of Indo-Israeli defense ties to the point where some observers believe Israel is now India's largest supplier.
Given the high reputation enjoyed by Israeli defense products and services, as well as Israeli defense firms' needs for markets outside of Israel, it is not surprising that the Chinese government is eager to resume what had been a lucrative relationship, and that Israel is equally interested in finding a way to restore those military ties.
But it should be noted that the Israelis have made it clear they will not cross Washington again and take the risk of offering a system to China that Washington regards as a threat to its strategic interests. Thus there is reason to believe that there will be limits and restraints to whatever Israel is prepared to offer China.
In this connection, Israel's earlier arms sales to China, especially the Lavi jet fighter, have aroused considerable unhappiness among American conservatives, who suspect Chinese military aims - with regard to Taiwan, considered its breakaway province. Some of these Israeli weapons are now turning up as Chinese systems, such as the new semi-stealth fighter, the Jian-10, which causes many difficulties to opposing air forces and air defenses.
Nor is this the only such troubling - to Washington - sale. Any future sale that arouses US suspicions about how they could augment China's existing capabilities - again, especially with regard to Taiwan - will certainly affect Israel's ties to the US.
There also is as yet no sign of what India's response to this meeting will be. Perhaps Delhi is waiting to see what happens. But it must strike at least some prominent Indian elites as strange that on the heels of Israel's greatest success in its bilateral defense ties with India, that it is turning to China, which many Indian elites consider New Delhi's main rival, to sell it weapons. Certainly it will be interesting to see how the Israeli government and defense industry handle the complex situation involving Beijing, Washington, and New Delhi.
But there is more to this story - arms sales to China - than the Israeli angle. Even as China's indigenous capabilities for producing relatively high-level defense systems grow, and its shipbuilding capabilities become much more impressive, it is conducting a vigorous campaign to broaden the base of its defense imports.
Even though it now imports some $2 billion annually from Russia in defense sales, Russian reports confirm that most of what China buys is technology for its own indigenous arms industries - not finished weapons. This apparently coincides with renewed efforts to use foreign technology to develop an impressive and stable indigenous defense technological base.
But this turn to technology in its defense relationship with Russia also coincides with a determined effort to break the blockades imposed on it by the West. France clearly wants to sell weapons to China, but the European Union imposed a blockade with American support in 1989 to protest the Tiananmen massacre of pro-democracy protesters. France's desires to gain a market, once again thumbing its nose at the US, and to strengthen the global presence of the EU notwithstanding, the EU is obviously reluctant to terminate the sanctions on arms sales. Doing so would obviously cast doubt on the seriousness of the EU's commitment to democracy and human rights abroad and to the stability of the cross-Taiwan Strait balance. Moreover, it would introduce another and unneeded source of tension into its relationship with the US over what is for it a peripheral issue - but a vital one for Washington. China's quest for superior Western technologies and weapons - from Israel - also suggests a growing disillusionment with Russian systems and unhappiness with Beijing's exclusion from the global arms market. There is little doubt that Western systems are generally of higher quality than are Russian weapons, that Western producers provide better services and after-sale repairs and possibly more value for the dollar than do Russian systems and services.
Thus it is possible - if China is successful in eventually breaking the EU arms embargo and resuming military ties to Israel, that it can find alternatives to Russian producers. If current trends continue, Israel can end up inheriting or displacing much of the Russian market for the export of defense systems to India and China, Russia's main customers. That outcome would represent a disaster for the Russian defense industry and the Russian armed forces, which have few if any sources for developing new weapons, except for those sales.
Thus China's and Israel's efforts to resume their formerly profitable relationship lie at the intersection of some important trends in world affairs, and can have significant repercussions for international affairs that go far beyond the bilateral relationship. Only time will tell how far this rapprochement goes and what its consequences will be, not only for Israel and China, but for all those with an important interest in that relationship. But whatever happens, and however this relationship develops or does not mature, its consequences will most assuredly be profound, with repercussions that go far beyond Jerusalem and Beijing.
Stephen Blank is an analyst of international security affairs residing in Harrisburg, PA.
----
Israel showcases latest intifada-induced military innovations
TEL AVIV (AFP)
Mar 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040326103348.xf6v6z0o.html
Mini drones, rifle-propelled cameras and armoured robots to defend the West Bank separation barrier: the International Conference on Low Intensity Conflict was a striking illustration of just how much the intifada has precipitated the modernisation of the Israeli army.
The first intifada 1987-1993, dubbed the "war of stones", pitted Palestinian youths throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails against Israeli soldiers firing rubber-coated bullets and a vehicle-mounted device spewing gravel.
The second intifada, which started in September 2000, quickly turned into a fully fledged armed confrontation and has spurred the Israeli army into developing an impressive array of technical innovations.
The conference held in Tel Aviv was an opportunity for the Israeli Defence Forces to showcase its latest gadgets, which have become a driving force of the Jewish state's ailing economy.
One of the show's star features was Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI)'s new generation of unmanned planes.
According to the Israeli press, it was one of these surveillance drones that framed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in Gaza City last Monday, and allowed an Israeli helicopter a long enough window to fire a missile at the Hamas spiritual leader.
The pictures these tiny stealth devices can take are sent to Israeli troops operating on the ground through a real-time feed.
IAI's new-born "Mosquito" weighs little more than a pound (500 grammes) thanks to its kevlar and carbon-fiber components, and is equipped with a tiny camera.
It has a one-hour autonomy, a range of a mile (less than two kilometres) and can be launched and guided by an infantry soldier on the ground through a palm pilot that receives live images of the combat zone, enabling troops to monitor it while maintaining cover.
One of the other spectacular innovations displayed by the Israeli military industry is the Rephaim system, which means "ghost" in Hebrew.
It comprises a sighted system which can be attached to an American M16 assault rifle or the Tavor, its new Israeli competitor.
The laser-sighted system can release a grenade fired by the rifle from the required distance and at the optimal moment.
Another of the Phantom's features is a disposable camera, specially adapted to support an anti-tank grenade which can be fired in the same manner as an assault rifle.
During the brief time it is in the air, it transmits images to foot soldiers of areas that escape their field of vision on a palm pilot.
The "Rephaim" is considered particularly effective in urban combat.
The IAI has also devised a bizarre-looking rapid reaction vehicle.
This totally mechanised light armour-plated vehicle can be dispatched from a command post to investigate any attempt to infiltrate an area which is protected by a security fence.
The attendants at the stand where the "Guardium" was on display said they had been instructed to say as little as possible about the system and instead limited themselves to inviting visitors to read a brief brochure and look at a short promotional video.
Electronic sensors placed on the fence can trigger an alarm.
The robotic vehicles, equiped with both firearms and cameras, are programmed to travel at speeds of between 80 kilometres (50 miles) and 120 kilometers per hour towards the danger area by an extremely powerful engine.
Once in place, piloted by remote control, they can make contact and engage in combat with the assailant.
Military delegates from no less than 36 European, Asian, and north and south American countries travelled to Tel Aviv to attend the conference and arms exhibition organised by the Israeli army.
-------- britain
Mexico Rejects British Explanations on Cavers
March 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mexico-cavers.html
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A diplomatic rift between Britain and Mexico widened on Friday when President Vicente Fox refused to accept London's explanations for the presence of a British military group found stuck in a Mexican cave.
Fox said Britain had not clarified questions about the activities of six cave explorers, four of them members of the military, who were plucked from a cavern late on Thursday after a week trapped by an underground flood.
``We received a reply to our request from Britain, but it is frankly unsatisfactory, we need more clarification about what this was about,'' Fox told a news conference in Nicaragua, where he is on an official visit.
Mexico's attorney general's office said it was investigating media reports that the cavers were scouting for deposits of potentially radioactive materials.
``We do not have any indication up to this point that indicates illicit activity,'' Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, deputy attorney general, told a news conference.
Mexico does not allow foreign military exercises on its soil.
The Mexican government is upset it was not told in advance of the presence of the expedition, most of whom were members of the Combined Services Caving Association, an enthusiasts' group made up of active and retired British soldiers and civilians in the Ministry of Defense.
Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez spoke in strong terms.
``We are not going to tolerate on this occasion that no one explains to us exactly what their citizens were doing here,'' he said in comments published in the Mexican press.
RELATIONS SENSITIVE
Mexico's relations with Britain were already sensitive because of allegations that Britain helped the United States spy on Mexico's U.N. mission in the run-up to the Iraq war.
After receiving medical checks at a military hospital, the cavers were brought in minibuses for questioning at a rundown immigration center in Mexico City on Friday, accompanied by trucks bearing rifle-toting members of a special police force.
British embassy sources told Reuters that all the expedition members were booked on a Friday night flight to London from Mexico City.
The trapped cavers were trapped by surging underground flood waters two days into a routine exploration trip in the Cuetzalan caves in Puebla province.
The British Embassy had originally described the cavers as being on a scientific mission and later clarified this to say they were mapping out the cave complex, one of the most extensive in the world.
Fox had asked on Wednesday for a ``swift'' explanation of what the foreign soldiers were doing in the caves.
Hoping to put an end to the incident, Britain said its minister for Latin America, Bill Rammell, met with Mexico's ambassador in London on Friday afternoon, and thanked him for help in getting the group out safely.
``We respect the Mexican authorities' need to clarify their immigration status,'' Rammell said, adding that he hoped the incident ``could be resolved as quickly as possible.''
--------
Six British Cavers Taken for Questioning
March 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Mexico-Trapped-Cavers.html
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Six British cavers who were rescued after more than a week trapped in an underground cavern were detained and questioned Friday over suspected visa violations.
As immigration agents interrogated the men, other government officials said they would investigate allegations raised by the media that the Britons were secretly prospecting for uranium.
The inquiries were part of a widening diplomatic dispute over the presence of members of Britain's military in Mexico, apparently without the government's knowledge.
The cavers' planned three-day underground expedition turned into eight days of entrapment as flood waters fed by incessant rains continued to block the cave's entrance near Cuetzalan, a town in central Puebla state, is 110 miles northeast of Mexico City.
Late Thursday, British and Mexican divers rescued the six -- four members of Britain's Combined Services, which encompasses the army, navy and air force -- and two civilians.
On Friday, the six and seven colleagues who had remained above ground were taken to an immigration office in eastern Mexico City. There they were questioned for several hours by immigration agents about possible violations of their visa status.
President Vicente Fox said he was not satisfied with Britain's explanation of the cavers' activities, and Mexican officials vowed to keep tighter tabs on foreigners entering under tourist visas, as the Britons had.
Fox said he had asked Britain for ``clear information about what they were doing.'' Britain's response was ``frankly, unsatisfactory,'' Fox said. ``We want more clarity about what this affair is about.''
British authorities on Friday denied that the men violated the terms of their tourist vistas.
``We undertook the trip in good faith as we have done for 20 yards without any problems using the same visa that we have always used,'' a Ministry of Defense spokesman said. ``However, if there is a problem, that is something we are willing to discuss with the Mexican authorities.''
Allegations about uranium started after the Britons were said to be carrying gas sensing equipment that could be used to detect the radioactive element.
Federal police had opened an investigation ``based on media reports of these individuals' possible activity in searching for deposits of radioactive materials,'' federal prosecutor Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos said.
Mexican Energy Department officials, he said, are in the Cuetzalan area investigating whether uranium even exists there. He noted that any criminal investigation would have to wait until after immigration authorities made decision on the Britons' case.
Mexican law requires a special visa for scientific explorations and bans foreign military exercises on its soil.
Complicating the affair was a British Ministry of Defense description of the trip by the Combined Forces cave club as an ``official military adventurous training expedition.'' The group also added to suspicion by initially rejecting Mexican offers of help.
British defense attache Ian Blair-Tilling said British soldiers had been coming to Mexico for underground explorations for 20 years. Members of the team were part of a military caving club but not part of a formal exercise.
``This is an expedition which has military personnel in it, (but) it is not a military mission,'' he said. ``It is a group of caving enthusiasts.''
Mexican law provides for the expulsion or jailing of those who violate the terms of their travel visas.
-------- business
Comanche's Cancellation Brings Layoffs
Boeing, Sikorsky Cut Positions Linked to Army's Helicopter Program
By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25052-2004Mar25.html
Boeing Co. and Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. have begun laying off workers because of the Army's decision last month to cancel the Comanche stealth helicopter program.
Boeing Helicopter, based in Philadelphia, will send layoff notices today to an unannounced number of salaried employees, a Boeing spokesman said. Some 500 employees were assigned to the Comanche, but the total layoffs will be significantly less than that number, the spokesman said.
Earlier this month, Boeing laid off 22 hourly workers from the Philadelphia plant, which employs 4,800.
Yesterday, the president of Connecticut-based Sikorsky announced that it would eliminate about 100 positions tied to the Comanche program, which it worked on with Boeing.
Sikorsky, a unit of United Technologies Corp., already had reassigned 200 employees from the Comanche to other work within the company. "I want to assure everyone that we are working very closely with the government . . . to finalize the remaining details of the Comanche termination process and to maximize Sikorsky content in new initiatives within the Army's long-term aviation plan," company President Steve Finger said in a letter to employees yesterday.
Sikorsky also is in the midst of a competition with Lockheed Martin Corp. to win a $1.6 billion contract to replace the president's fleet of helicopters, known as Marine One.
The Comanche program had run for 21 years and cost the government $6.9 billion when the Army decided to pull the plug on Feb. 23. The attempt to build a high-technology, radar-evading helicopter had continually climbed in cost -- the total estimated price was $39 billion -- and it ran into technical glitches and delays.
Ultimately, the Army canceled the program as a cost-saving measure in a time of rising budget deficits.
Boeing and Sikorsky got a formal stop-work notice from the Army last Friday, enabling them to determine the scope of their layoffs, the companies said.
Both will continue to employ some workers in the months-long process of shutting down the Comanche program, which includes disentangling contracts with dozens of smaller companies that provided parts and services. And a Boeing spokesman said his company would continue to oversee several areas of technology work related to the Comanche contract.
Those residual jobs include developing technology for fly-by-wire aircraft controls, radar electronics, avionics, a long-range night-vision television camera and a system for warning a pilot that he has been detected by enemy radar, said Jack Satterfield, a Boeing Helicopter spokesman.
-------- china
China to Examine Hong Kong Government
March 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-Hong-Kong.html
BEIJING (AP) -- China said Friday that it would examine how Hong Kong chooses its leader and legislature -- a move that could signal tightened control by the mainland over the territory.
Proposals regarding Hong Kong's mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law, will be considered next week at a meeting of the top committee of the National People's Congress, China's legislature, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
``In interpreting relevant clauses of the annexes of the Basic Law, the NPC Standing Committee aims to put an end to confusions and differences,'' Xinhua said.
Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The territory has wide autonomy, with its own government and border controls and mainland officials worry that the territory is becoming a base for subversion against Beijing. Full democracy was promised as a goal under the constitution written by China, but no timetable is set.
Pro-democracy forces are pushing for further reforms, including the direct election of Hong Kong's leader in 2007 and all lawmakers in 2008. Ordinary voters now have no say in choosing their leader, though they pick some legislators.
At issue are articles within Annex I and Annex II of the Basic Law, which focus on Hong Kong's political system after 2007.
Both articles mandate that any change to the selection process for the territory's top leader, or chief executive, and its legislature, the Legislative Council, needs ``a two-thirds majority of all the members of the Legislative Council and the consent of the chief executive'' -- and the final approval of the standing committee of the national legislature.
The news was met with outrage by Hong Kong opposition politicians.
``Beijing's really over the top,'' lawmaker Emily Lau said. ``It shouldn't keep on intervening in Hong Kong's affairs. Where is our autonomy if Beijing keeps acting on its own, saying our discussion does not match the legislative principles of the Basic Law and demanding an interpretation?''
Pro-democracy lawmaker Leung Yiu-chung said Beijing was trying to stifle opposition voices and dampen any expectations of a march on July 1 to mark the anniversary of a massive protest by 500,000 people. Because of the demonstration, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa was forced to backtrack on an anti-subversion bill the mainland wanted passed.
In recent weeks, Tung has been facing debate over political reforms in the territory.
Many in Hong Kong are now demanding the right to choose their leader and all lawmakers. In elections in September, ordinary citizens will choose 30 of the 60 seats of the Legislative Council.
The rest will be chosen by special interest groups that tend to side with pro-Beijing and big business.
--------
Vote Results Trigger Violence in Taiwan
March 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-Election.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Hundreds of Taiwanese protesters scuffled with riot police, threw eggs and broke windows Friday as they stormed into the Central Election Commission's headquarters, where officials certified the results of last weekend's disputed presidential vote.
Police tried to push back the protesters, but refrained from using their clubs to stop them. Some demonstrators went up elevators to the commission offices, but most stayed in the lobby, hurling eggs at the wall and knocking down flowerpots. They stayed at the scene late into the evening.
Meanwhile, rival China issued its strongest warning since the election. The mainland's Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement it will not ``look on unconcerned'' if the post-election situation leads to ``social turmoil, endangering lives and property of Taiwan compatriots and affecting stability across the Taiwan Straits.''
Taiwan dismissed Beijing's criticism as ``unreasonable'' and ``rude.'' Taiwan ``has never interfered in Communist China's domestic affairs,'' it added. ``We hope Communist China will completely respect our rule of law.''
``China's unreasonable criticism of our domestic affairs just amounts to rude meddling in our internal matters,'' said a statement from Taiwan's Cabinet-level Mainland Affairs Council, which is responsible for China policy.
Beijing has long insisted that self-ruled Taiwan belongs to China. It has threatened to take over the island if Taiwan ever slips into chaos.
The elections commission certified that President Chen Shui-bian won the March 20 election, the semiofficial Central News Agency reported.
Certifying the vote is merely a formality required by law within seven days of the election. Those who want to challenge the results can still do so within 30 days of the certification.
Some protesters said they thought once the vote results were official, the United States and other major nations would congratulate Chen, giving credibility to his victory.
Chen won by a margin of less than 0.2 percent. Challenger Lien Chan immediately demanded a re-count, alleging the vote was marred by irregularities, which he has yet to clearly document.
Lien has also said that the vote was unfairly influenced by an unexplained election-eve shooting that wounded the president and his running mate.
On Friday, police for the first time released a picture of a possible shooting suspect. The grainy security camera image showed a balding man in a yellow jacket hurrying away from the shooting in the southern city of Tainan. He got on a motorcycle parked in an alley and sped away.
``He is not a suspect yet, but there are some suspicions,'' said Wang Wen-chung, a deputy police chief in Tainan. Wang urged the man to report to police, and asked the public to help identify him.
Chen has agreed to a re-count of the vote, but lawmakers were arguing over how to amend election laws to get it done promptly. Negotiations began Friday, but they ended without a consensus.
``There's little hope of things getting passed soon,'' said ruling party lawmaker Jao Yung-ching, adding that legislators aren't ready to compromise yet.
The two main opposition parties, the Nationalists and the People First Party, are organizing rallies in downtown Taipei on Saturday and hope they will draw about 500,000 people.
-------- europe
Can technology protect us?
Friday, March 26 2004
ElectricNews.Net (Ireland)
by Matthew Clark
http://www.enn.ie/frontpage/news-9405422.html
Just days after the Madrid bombings, the EU unveiled a plan to boost R&D spending on security-related technologies to EUR1 billion per year. But can technology make us safer?
The shock waves of the Madrid blasts were still rippling across the Continent when the European Commission published a report called "Research for a Secure Europe," which among other things calls for a boost in EU spending on R&D for technologies that could make Europe more secure. The proposed "European Security Research Programme" (ESRP) will be used to help pay for the development of security systems and products to safeguard both people and infrastructure, within Europe and wherever EU missions are taking place.
And it would seem that more than just lip service is being paid to the study's findings, with the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi, saying that the requisite EUR1 billion annually has already been set aside in the EU's financial perspectives for 2007 to 2013. "This report opens a new area of activity in which the added value of closer cooperation, joint efforts and increased investment at EU level is indisputable," Prodi said.
A need for closer cooperation and more spending on security may be "indisputable" but there is some question as to whether technology can provide the security blanket that Europe's people want. So far, CCTV, biometrics and even criminal databases have proven ineffective for plugging the cracks -- fissures that one day could be exploited by terrorists bearing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. Is there a silver bullet?
The short answer is "we don't know," but this proposal is partly aimed at finding that out. After the September 11th attacks in the US, the National Academy of Sciences put out a 362-page report, similar to the one that has been commissioned in Europe and offering strikingly similar recommendations: closer cooperation among counter-terrorism agencies to determine high-tech needs, and closer cooperation among researchers to eliminate duplication of work.
But the major difference between the two studies was that the US report contained specific examples of technologies in the works that could save lives. "Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism," said that technology exists now to better protect America's power grid, ventilation systems, shipping containers and food supply. Further afield, sensors could be designed to "see" potential terrorists in public places, or to "smell" nuclear and bio-attack agents. Blast and flame retardant buildings could also be built, the report said, as could more sophisticated communications systems.
And these recommendations have been taken to heart, with an assortment of new gadgets from American firms edging their way into the hands of security personnel. In February, a US company called MDM Group said it would develop technology invented by Australia's Harrington Group Limited that allows for the manufacture of 50,000-volt "electric" bullets that can stun, but not kill, aggressors from as far as 100 metres away. Similarly, under a contract from the US Navy, Taser International said it was near the completion of its new, more aerodynamic stun gun product that also incapacitates targets.
On the sensor side, the US Navy also said that it has transferred certain chemical detection technologies used on warships to Markland Technologies, which will look to deploy non-military solutions. Elsewhere, American Science and Engineering said it had sold its eighth Z Backscatter System, an x-ray device that can be put in a van and used to scan other vehicles or passers-by. Finally, a firm named Nuclear Solutions says it is seeking funding for a portable uranium and plutonium detector that would not use traditional (and somewhat ineffective) radioactivity scanning techniques, but instead would build a device that can detect gravitational disturbances created by high-density materials.
Thanks to the EUR1 billion in new funding, it might be the case that Europe's scientists will be developing similar tools, although EU Information Society Commissioner Erkki Liikanen noted that a large proportion of the EUR1 billion in cash would go toward technologies that also have commercial applications, such as new communications systems and more advanced electronics. Nevertheless, it clear that technology is seen as central in fighting terrorism, at least to most.
"Technology is not a panacea. It alone cannot make Europe more secure," said Tim Ripley of the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies at the Lancaster University in the UK.
Ripley argues that even now, the technology exists to make practically any environment secure to the point where a violent attack would become next to impossible. Airports, for example, are highly secure and these days it's hard to sneak a bomb or gun on board an airplane as cameras, fingerprint scanners and other tracking systems now watch passengers and their baggage. Such an environment could be put in place in virtually any public space, but the costs involved -- up to STG30 per passenger in UK airports -- make it prohibitive, as does the disruption it causes in society.
"All that technology can do is help authorities to carry out their jobs more effectively," he says. "But if it is part of a wider strategy, then technology can be useful." Thankfully, it's an outlook that Europe's leaders have embraced, including Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin, who said at the launch of the study, "technology alone cannot guarantee security, but security without technology is impossible."
----
European Union Agrees on Plan to Coordinate Antiterror Effort
March 26, 2004
By THOMAS FULLER,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/international/europe/26BRUS.html
BRUSSELS, March 25 - Two weeks after the train bombings in Madrid, presidents and prime ministers of the 25 present and future members of the European Union agreed Thursday to antiterrorism measures ranging from more secure passports to the appointment of an antiterrorism coordinator.
The leaders said they would create more complete Pan-European databases of criminal records as well as lost and stolen passports and visa applications. They ordered lower-level officials to decide how long European countries should keep databases of e-mail messages, mobile telephone logs and other communications data.
The measures approved Thursday include a common European arrest warrant, a definition of terrorism and the creation of a European prosecutors office.
"The threat of terrorism is a threat to our security and our democracies and our way of life in the European Union," Prime Minister Bertie Ahern of Ireland said after the measures were approved.
The leaders also agreed to appoint Gijs de Vries, a former Dutch deputy interior minister, as counterterrorism coordinator. Mr. de Vries, who was born in New York but has lived most of his life in the Netherlands, would link together the various European Union agencies involved in fighting terrorism.
Javier Solana, the head of the European Union's foreign policy and security office, described the job as a coordinator of policies rather than intelligence.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York City and Washington, European Union leaders agreed on what they called a plan of action to combat terrorism. Many governments, however, have yet to pass laws they agreed to in 2001.
The Madrid bombing attacks spurred European governments to set a deadline. According to the plan approved Thursday, the new laws should be in place "no later than June 2004."
----
Poland to Consult Allies on Iraq Troops
By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
Associated Press Writer
Mar 26, 2004
http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/P/POLAND_IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Poland will consult with other nations that have troops in Iraq about tentative plans to withdraw up to 250 of its peacekeepers, the Defense Ministry said Friday.
Poland, a key U.S. ally in Iraq, commands a 9,500-strong multinational force in the south-central part of the country, including 2,400 soldiers of its own.
On a surprise visit to the force's headquarters last weekend, Polish Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski said Poland may reduce its presence by 250 troops when it rotates in its third group of peacekeepers in July.
The proposal will be presented to a meeting of countries with troops in the Polish-led force, to be held in Warsaw next month, Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Adam Stasinski said Friday.
Depending on the talks, Poland may decide on a smaller pullout or no pullout at all, he said. "This is at the proposal stage, no decisions have been taken," Stasinski said. "The decisions will be made in April."
On Friday, Hungarian Defense Minister Ferenc Juhasz said during a visit to Iraq that he has met with Polish commanders to discuss how the possible withdrawal of some Polish forces would affect the international mission.
He said Hungary has no intention of reducing its own 300-strong contingent in Iraq, which carries out transportation duties for coalition forces under Polish command.
Last week, President Aleksander Kwasniewski said he was "misled" by intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. But he subsequently reassured President Bush that Polish troops would stay in Iraq "as long as needed to achieve the intended goals, plus one day longer."
Spain's incoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has said he will pull his country's 1,300 troops out of Iraq by June 30 unless the United Nations takes control of the postwar occupation.
Spain's contingent is the third-largest in the Polish-led force, after Poland's own contribution and Ukraine's 1,600 troops.
----
EU Leaders Appoint Anti-Terror Coordinator
By Marie-Louise Moller
Reuters
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24969-2004Mar25.html
BRUSSELS, March 25 -- European Union leaders appointed the continent's first counterterrorism coordinator Thursday and vowed to improve intelligence-sharing in response to bombings in Madrid on March 11.
"There will be neither weakness nor compromise of any kind when dealing with terrorists," the leaders said in a statement. "No country in the world can consider itself immune. Terrorism can only be defeated by solidarity and collective action."
The leaders endorsed the appointment of a former Dutch deputy interior minister, Gijs de Vries, 48, as EU counterterrorism coordinator, a new role intended to cut through national bureaucracies and ensure smoother cooperation.
Some reports have described de Vries as a powerful anti-terrorism czar, but his mandate was tightly restricted to trying to make the complex EU institutions function better, making proposals and serving as a liaison between Brussels and member states.
"The powers currently planned for the anti-terror coordinator are absolutely insufficient," said Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker.
Measures approved by the EU after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, such as a pan-European arrest warrant to replace lengthy extradition proceedings, have not been fully implemented.
Leaders of the 25 present and future EU states pledged to implement by June some of the measures, including the pan-European warrant and creation of joint investigation teams.
The EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, was asked to present proposals by June on how to increase the exchange of sensitive intelligence between national security services and increase operational cooperation in the hunt for terrorists.
In Madrid, meanwhile, officials said police had arrested five more people in connection with the Madrid train bombings, in which 190 people were killed, raising the number of suspects in detention to 18.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said three people were arrested Wednesday and two more Thursday. But he did not comment on German media reports, citing Germany's BND security service, that three Moroccans arrested Wednesday had previously lived in Germany and may have been involved in planning the Madrid attacks.
-------- iraq
At prison gate, Iraqi families vent
Indefinite detentions are within the law, US says, but angry Iraqis liken practice to Hussein's repression.
By Dan Murphy
The Christian Science Monitor
March 26, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0326/p06s01-woiq.html
BAGHDAD - A ripple of excitement spread through the few hundred family members, gathered outside the gates of the US military's Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, when three buses crammed with men rolled out of the front gate.
Tripping over their shapeless black robes, mothers rushed to the Marine cordon, some bursting into tears as they saw sons for the first time in months, many of them hanging out the windows and shouting "follow me, follow me" as the buses sped down the highway.
With the US release of 440 men earlier this week, many visitors thought they were witnessing another mass release and scrambled for their cars and taxis to follow the disappearing buses.
But the marines intervened to slow the convoy down, leaving families, some of whom had been waiting eight months to be reunited with loved ones, with fresh disappointment and a deepening sense of grievance against the US.
Fighting guerrilla wars is always ugly, and Abu Ghraib and two other principal detention centers - Um Qasr and Habbaniyah - are another face of the compromises regarding American values that the US feels it needs to make to win here. Charges or evidence aren't needed to keep men indefinitely detained.
"Is this the definition of the freedom that America promised us?" asks Ibrahim Hamid, a farmer from the Sunni Triangle town of Ramadi. His brother Ahmed has been held at Abu Ghraib for five months, ever since a platoon of soldiers broke into their home during dinner. "They dragged him off, no explanations why. What's the difference from Saddam?" he asks.
An ugly but perhaps necessary aspect of the US occupation of Iraq has been the prolonged detention of suspected insurgents, many of whom are never charged and are eventually released.
The US says it has complied with the Geneva Conventions in handling its prisoners in Iraq, pointing out the conventions allow for the detention of people "reasonably believed" to have been involved in attacks on coalition forces.
Brig. Gen Mark Kimmitt, a coalition military spokesman, said earlier this month that most of the people at Abu Ghraib and other facilities deserve to be there. "There are a number of procedures that have to be followed and a number of filters that have to be penetrated before a detainee ends up at Abu Ghraib or one of the other facilities," he said. "We typically have a 72-hour time period in which the unit that captured that person has to demonstrate why that person is an imperative threat to the coalition, which is the legal standard."
But with soldiers converted into jailers and convinced that many of their wards were involved in the killing of comrades, Abu Ghraib also been the apparent site of some ugly scenes.
Last Saturday, the US military formally charged US six military police with abuse of prisoners, including allegations of cruelty, "indecent acts," and assault. A further 11 soldiers are being held without charge. The incidents occurred in November and December at Abu Ghraib, where a riot Nov. 24 ended with three prisoners dead and eight wounded.
As the US struggled with an unexpected insurgency last summer, soldiers began sweeping through towns and villages, detaining men suspected of militant activity. By the end of last year, the US was arresting up to 100 Iraqis a day. Details of their alleged crimes have not been released.
But soldiers working on tip-offs from neighbors and associates have clearly made mistakes, since there is frequently little evidence of these men's activities except for the word of informers. With US investigators overstretched, most of the men are eventually released.
Mr. Hamid, who mills around almost every day on the dusty lot outside the prison hoping for news, says his nephew, the son of his still-detained brother, was released on Tuesday after five months in jail.
"He wasn't questioned, not even once," Hamid says. "We suspect that a neighbor that has a grudge against us made up a story to get us in trouble."
The US doesn't release statistics on detainees, but Baghdad human rights groups estimate 6,000 to 8,000 so-called "security detainees" - men suspected of insurgent activity or terrorism - are still held at Abu Ghraib.
The prison was one of the most notorious under Saddam Hussein, where tens of thousands were held and thousands secretly executed.
While those dark days are gone, the families of those detained still navigate a complicated maze to get information on the condition and the charges against relatives, and frequently come to see the US military as their enemy.
"Many of those held in prisons and detention centers run by the Coalition Forces ... have invariably been denied access to family or lawyers and any form of judicial review of their detention," wrote Amnesty International, the London-based human rights group, in a report this month. "Conditions in many of the detention centers are harsh."
Hisham Ali, a grocer in Baghdad, spotted his friend Mohammed Ali on one of the buses Friday morning, but gave up the chase after coming to a US military roadblock. "They've had him for six months, but I know him like a brother, and I swear he wasn't involved with the opposition," Mr. Ali says. "They just take whomever they want without explaining anything. Then they wonder why so many of us hate them."
Though looks inside Abu Ghraib are rare, the environment is clearly charged, with up to 30 men crowded into tents. For the families, visits are rare and waiting lists long.
Hussein Yunos, a 50-year-old man in a tribal headdress, says his brother has been held for eight months, and he's managed to get one visit. "I can't really say how angry we are. He has six children and they need their father. Whatever they say he did, it's just rumors."
The US military is working on plans to create a visitors' center at the prison that will hopefully make it easier for family and lawyers to gain access to the prisoners. But for now, information is scarce for the visitors.
One of the perimeter guards said he was as much in the dark about the morning's buses as the families were. He said he didn't know where the men were being taken. "If I knew the answer to that question, I wouldn't still be a corporal."
----
U.S. Officials Fashion Legal Basis to Keep Force in Iraq
March 26, 2004
New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS and THOM SHANKER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/international/middleeast/26IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 - With fewer than 100 days to go before Iraq resumes its sovereignty, American officials say they believe they have found a legal basis for American troops to continue their military control over the security situation in Iraq.
After months of concern about the legal status of the 110,000 American troops who are expected to remain here after the occupation formally ends on June 30, the officials say they believe an existing United Nations resolution approving the presence of a multinational force in Iraq, approved by the Security Council in October, gives American commanders the authority needed to maintain control after sovereignty is handed back.
Showing his confidence that the approach was grounded in international law, L. Paul Bremer III, the chief of the occupation authority, issued an executive order this week specifying that the newly formed Iraqi armed forces be placed under the operational control of the American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who has been named to lead American and allied forces after the transfer of political authority to the Iraqis.
Mr. Bremer and other top American officials say they believe Security Council Resolution 1511, which conferred the mandate for the American-led alliance, can be used to provide legal justification for the American military command to operate until Dec. 31, 2005. That is when a timetable agreed on by Iraqi leaders envisages the final transition to an elected Iraqi government.
The plan, the American officials say, will require the Security Council to review the resolution before it expires in October. But the United States may also seek a new resolution, hoping to placate Spain's new prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who has said that he will withdraw Spain's contingent unless the force is placed under clear United Nations control.
The Americans hope they will not be forced to rely on a legalistic argument. They plan to negotiate with the interim Iraqi government in place after June 30 for the kind of "status of forces" agreement the United States has in dozens of nations where its forces are deployed.
But if negotiations snag - many Iraqi political leaders are often hostile to the foreign military presence - the Americans believe that they will be able to fall back on the United Nations resolution.
That remains to be tested.
Some Iraqi politicians maintain that United Nations mandate was intended to lapse at the return of sovereignty. But American officials, citing a passage in the resolution saying that the mandate would expire "upon the completion of the political process," argue that it will not lapse until a permanent Iraqi government takes office.
European and United Nations diplomats said Thursday that American control would still have to be approved by the Iraqis taking office on June 30. That control, said a United Nations official, "is not likely to survive the transfer of sovereignty unless the successor government approves it."
There were also questions about the effects of extending the primacy of the American military.
The United Nations official said that while it would be a "practical reality" for American domination to continue despite Iraqi self-rule, "it has to be done in a way that's not offensive to Iraqis and the international community, which emphasizes Iraqi sovereignty rather than Iraqi impotence."
A European diplomat said that continued American military control "sends the wrong signal" and "gives an impression of continuing foreign occupation" in Iraq.
Nevertheless, in recent interviews, American officials and military commanders said they were confident that they had found a way to avert the possible political crisis that loomed after Iraqi leaders made it plain that no status-of-forces talks would occur before June 30.
American concern has focused primarily on Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a Shiite cleric who has become a champion of the Shiite majority and of Iraqi nationalism and who has thrown a succession of political roadblocks in the path of the American plan for transition to Iraqi rule. He has rejected the interim constitution adopted by the Iraqi Governing Council, an advisory body handpicked by the Americans, and, some Iraqi politicians believe, could eventually try to derail the status-of-forces discussions.
One of the most influential members of the Governing Council who has close relations with the Americans offered support on Thursday for the American approach. The council member, Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni and a former Iraqi foreign minister, said it made sense to rely on the resolution as a fallback. He also said he supported Mr. Bremer's decision to put Iraq's military forces under American control.
Mr. Pachachi is favored to be the Sunni representative on the three-member presidency council that will head the interim government. In an interview at his Baghdad home, he said all Iraqis, including Shiite clerics restive under the occupation, recognized it was in Iraq's interest to have American troops remain to fight the intensifying terror campaign of insurgents loyal to the deposed Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, and Islamic militants.
Mr. Pachachi said it had become common for Iraqis to say that it would be best if the country's security passed into Iraqi hands after June 30. But he suggested, with a colorful turn of phrase, that Shiite clerics and others who took this view were resorting to gesture politics without foundation in the harsh realities facing Iraq.
"Bearded and nonbearded gentleman have been saying, `The question of Iraqi security should be left to Iraqis,' " he said. "But if we Iraqis do not have the means to do this by ourselves, the withdrawal of American forces would be a disaster, for the beards as well as the nonbeards."
Top aides to Mr. Bremer have said in recent days that the American troops will act as the most important guarantor of American influence. In addition, they said, the $18.4 billion voted for Iraqi reconstruction last fall by the United States Congress - including more than $2 billion for the new Iraqi forces - will give the Americans a decisive voice.
The American determination to retain military control was clear from a document released by the occupation authority on Thursday summarizing Mr. Bremer's executive order on the Iraqi forces.
The order provided for the establishment of an Iraqi Defense Ministry to be headed by an as-yet unnamed civilian, which will oversee the new 40,000-soldier Iraqi Army the Americans expect to have trained by this fall. The Defense Ministry will also control the Iraqi civil defense force, which will also be 40,000-strong. Mr. Hussein's army, disbanded by Mr. Bremer last summer, had 715,000 men.
The document was unequivocal on the ultimate control of the Iraqi forces. "All trained elements of the Iraqi armed forces shall at all times be under the operational control of the commander of coalition forces for the purpose of conducting combined operations," it said.
The document also outlined plans for Mr. Bremer to appoint an Iraqi forces chief of staff and a national security adviser for three-year terms, and an inspector-general with a five-year term.
A senior American official said "it was expected" that the interim government would leave the appointees in their jobs at least until elections early next year produce a national assembly and a second-phase transitional government.
In practice, another senior official said, any Iraqi government would be unlikely to replace the appointees before the permanent government takes office in January 2006.
"The American commander would only have to say, `O.K., we're out of here,' and the Iraqis would back down," he said.
Another official said Iraqis could hardly claim that Iraq's sovereignty was compromised by having its troops under American command when nations like Britain and Poland had placed military contingents here under an American general. "There's no sovereignty issue for them," the official said.
Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
--------
3 Troops Killed in Iraq Attacks
U.S. Officials Express Concern at Targeting of Local Police
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24925-2004Mar25.html
BAGHDAD, March 26 -- Two U.S. soldiers and a Marine were slain over the past two days in separate attacks, including a fierce firefight in which five insurgents were also killed, the military announced Thursday.
The deaths raised to 399 the number of American service members killed in action since the war in Iraq began in March 2003.
On Thursday, a roadside bomb killed a soldier with the 1st Infantry Division and wounded two others around 8:25 a.m. near Baqubah, 30 miles northeast of the capital. The injured soldiers were reported to be in stable condition, according to a military spokesman, Marine Cpl. Craig Stowell.
In the afternoon, insurgents attacked a military convoy near Fallujah using a roadside bomb, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and guns.
One Marine was killed and two were wounded in the attack at 3:48 p.m. Fallujah, a city about 35 miles west of Baghdad, has been the site of some of the fiercest resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.
In addition, at around 2 p.m. Wednesday, insurgents attacked a military convoy north of Taji, a northern suburb of Baghdad. One soldier was killed and three were wounded.
Members of the convoy returned fire, killing five attackers, Stowell said. The wounded soldiers were taken to a military hospital in Baghdad, and one has returned to duty.
In Baghdad, U.S. officials expressed worry about the constant attacks against members of Iraq's five U.S.-trained security forces, which are supposed to assume the main responsibility for guarding the country after the occupation formally ends June 30.
"We remain concerned at what is clearly a program of intimidation and targeting of not only the Iraqi Police Service, but all Iraqi government officials," a U.S. military spokesman, Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said in Baghdad. About 350 members of the national police force have been killed over the last year, he said.
"It is a credit, it is a tribute to the Iraqi Police Service that despite the amount of attacks that they endure on almost a daily basis, they have a tremendously high morale," Kimmitt said. "We have not seen a significant downturn in either the recruitment or the retention rates of the Iraqi Police Service."
Nine police recruits were killed Tuesday near Musayyib, about 35 miles south of the capital. A day later, a district police chief was assassinated on his way to work in a small town eight miles north of Musayyib.
On Wednesday in Fallujah, two gunmen in a white Toyota opened fire on members of the Iraqi Facilities Protection Service, which guards power plants and other public structures. A guard and a child were killed in the drive-by shooting.
Also on Thursday, U.S. officials said they welcomed the impending arrival of electoral and political teams from the United Nations. The teams will try to resolve some of the thorniest of the political uncertainties facing Iraq in the final months of the U.S.-led occupation authority.
"The two primary goals of the U.N. teams are, one, to help consult with us and consult with Iraqis about what shape and form the interim government that takes over on June 30 should take," said Daniel Senor, a spokesman for L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq. "The other primary goal for the U.N. teams is to look at what preparations are necessary for direct elections by the end of January next year."
Omar Hashim Kamal, an Iraqi translator for Time magazine who was critically injured in a drive-by shooting Wednesday, has died, the magazine's managing editor, Jim Kelly, announced early Friday.
--------
9 Iraqis Are Killed in Fighting With Marines in Falluja
March 26, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/international/middleeast/26CND-IRAQ.html?hp
FALLUJA, Iraq, March 26 - Nine Iraqis were killed and 25 were wounded today, hospital officials here said, after United States marines patrolling the city on foot engaged in a series of firefights with suspected insurgents. There was no immediate word on possible Marine casualties.
About 300 troops from the First Marine Division, which arrived in the city about 10 days ago to take over from the 82nd Airborne Division, began patrolling the city before dawn in what seemed to be an operation designed to assert their presence.
It also seemed to be spurred by the death of a marine in a rebel attack on Thursday east of Falluja, a city 35 miles west of Baghdad that is at the heart of the so-called Sunni Triangle, a center of opposition to the American-led occupation. Thursday's attack, in which two marines were wounded, involved a roadside bomb, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire.
One of those killed in today's incidents was reported by hospital offcials to be an Iraqi crew member for Abu Dhabi television, Burhan Muhammad, the most recent of a number of deaths involving journalists.
The atmosphere was very tense in the city, and hospital officials at the city's main hospital waved away journalists, warning this reporter that there was a very good chance that he would be shot and killed if he went inside.
After the firefights, which were said to have taken place in the Askari neighborhood of the city, the Marines sealed off the main highway to Baghdad and moved in tanks and armored cars.
This evening dozens of marines could still be seen fanning out on foot through the neighborhood. They were walking house to house but they were not searching any houses.
Last month, more than 30 insurgents shot their way into a Falluja police station, freed dozens of prisoners and killed 15 police officers.
-------- israel / palestine
NEWS ANALYSIS
Sharon's Gaza Strategy: Good for Hamas, or Israel?
March 26, 2004
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/international/middleeast/26MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, March 25 - Each side in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict wants to prove to the other that a proposed Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip is evidence of its own strength. But each is likely to convince only itself.
That is a reason for the present spike in violence, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tries to build support for a unilateral withdrawal and as the militant group Hamas works to secure a role in governing Gaza once the Israelis leave.
Hamas sees a unilateral Israeli withdrawal as a political opportunity. In the weeks before he was killed in an Israeli missile strike on Monday, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, was in talks with other Palestinian factions over how to govern Gaza if the Israelis depart, according to officials of Hamas and Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction.
That is a landmark change for Hamas. A fundamentalist group that officially seeks Israel's destruction and rejects any negotiated end to the conflict, Hamas always refused a role within the governing Palestinian Authority, regarding it as a creature of the Oslo peace framework. Since Mr. Sharon is planning to leave Gaza without an agreement, Hamas now feels free to step in, its leaders said.
How much of a role the group wants to play in running Gaza in the near term is unclear. Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, one of its leaders in Gaza, said, "We are going to contest municipal elections."
For now, the killing of Sheik Yassin has given Hamas a lift among Gaza's Palestinians. "Sheik Yassin's death will give more momentum and more power to Hamas," said one Palestinian Authority official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Palestinian Authority in Gaza is already struggling. It is straining to meet payrolls and keep the lights turned on in ministry buildings. Its popularity has faded as Palestinians have come to view it as incompetent and corrupt. By contrast, Hamas has built a network of schools and low-cost health clinics. Its leaders live modestly and have reputations as incorruptible.
On Tuesday, Ahmed Qurei, the Palestinian prime minister, rushed from the West Bank to Gaza to pay his condolences to Hamas, seating himself in a plastic chair beside Dr. Zahar under an awning set up for mourners in a dirt soccer field. "Sheik Yassin united us in his life, and will unite us in his death," Mr. Qurei said. "We promise our people will be loyal to him."
A senior Israeli military official said that in the short term, the killing would weaken the Palestinian Authority. "There's no doubt about that," he said.
But over time, he said, it is Hamas whose strength may wane as new leaders struggle to fill Sheik Yassin's overarching role and Israel keeps up its campaign against them. "Right now, they are at the peak of this thing," he said, "but how long can they stay there I don't know."
After more than three years of conflict, Palestinian political support in Gaza and the West Bank flows partly from which group can do the most damage to Israel.
For Mr. Sharon the proposed withdrawal has political advantages but also poses a problem. He is under attack from Israeli hawks who say he is repeating what they believe to be Israel's mistake in withdrawing unilaterally from Lebanon in 2000.
Many Israelis believe that that withdrawal undercut Israel's deterrence policy, its prized bulwark against Arab attack, and emboldened Palestinians to begin their uprising four months later. Now Mr. Sharon is alarmed by what he sees as a surge in terrorism, his aides say.
Ever since Mr. Sharon said in February that he was "working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza," violence in and around the strip has intensified. Militants in Gaza stepped up their attacks on Israelis, and the Israeli Army stepped up its incursions.
On March 7, Israeli forces killed 14 people, most of them Hamas gunmen, on a raid into central Gaza. A week later two Palestinian suicide bombers killed 10 Israelis in the Israeli port of Ashdod. That attack was jointly claimed by Hamas and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group linked to Fatah.
Israel called the bombing an assault on a strategic target and a major escalation. Mr. Sharon's security cabinet voted to approve the strike on Sheik Yassin.
After Sheik Yassin's killing on Monday, Mr. Sharon told legislators from his Likud Party that because Israel was planning the bold step of a withdrawal, its action against terrorism would have to become tougher, said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud legislator who was present.
"It should be clear we are withdrawing, if we withdraw, out of strength and not out of weakness," Mr. Steinitz said.
But in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the messages either side tries to send are usually much more convincing to itself than its adversary.
Palestinians cling to their own message, that Israel is running from Palestinian resistance. That the fight has exacted an appalling cost from Palestinian society - a ruined economy, a culture of death among the young - only reinforces the importance to Palestinians of rejecting Mr. Sharon's version.
For Mr. Sharon the killing of Sheik Yassin signaled Israeli resolve. Palestinians are giving it their own interpretation.
A child who called in to a Hamas radio station the day after the missile strike declared, "The assassination of Sheik Yassin is the assassination of the state of Israel." Another child called in to say, "Victory is soon." To support that interpretation, Hamas militants now feel the need to unleash devastating attacks.
Under Olso, Israel was supposed to yield civil or security control of some Gaza and West Bank land to the Palestinian Authority, which in turn was supposed to safeguard Israelis from attack by Hamas and other militant groups.
Mr. Sharon says the Palestinian Authority did not live up to its end of the deal. Now he wants to act without any agreement, withdrawing from Gaza and part of the West Bank because, he says, Israel needs to draw more defensible boundaries.
He also says he fears that if Israel does not act on its own, an internationally imposed plan may eventually deprive it of far more of the territory it captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
As they discuss how to govern Gaza, Palestinians from different groups are holding their talks through the Higher Fellowship Committee, an umbrella for the 10 factions belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization and for the handful outside it, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Hamas officials say they want to follow Sheik Yassin's plan for the group to play a role in running Gaza if Israel leaves. "His absence will not affect his plan to administer all the Gaza Strip," said Ismail Haniya, a Hamas leader who was particularly close to the sheik. The details of what this administration might look like are under discussion.
Dr. Zahar said Hamas would not contest the Palestinian presidency, which is held by Mr. Arafat, until Israel withdrew from the West Bank as well.
Dr. Zahar, who referred to Fatah as "the left wing," bridled when it was suggested that Hamas was a radical group. "Radical?" he said. "We are not radical. Your concept of radical means extremist."
He added: "The radical system describes people who lived in the Middle Ages, who prevented science and propped up the church at the expense of the poor people. This does not apply in our life."
----
Strange Motives
What was the logic behind Israel's assassination of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas?
By Neve Gordon
3.26.04
http://inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=667_0_2_0_C
Sheikh Ahmad Yassin's funeral was a heavy display of Hamas artillery. http://inthesetimes.com/images/28/11/hamas.jpg
Jerusalem-A day after Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was assissinated, the former director of Israel's intelligence agency stated that the terrorist threat would certainly increase. Indeed, as protests and riots erupted across the Occupied Territories and the Arab world, Israel went on high alert.
Ephraim Halevy, former director of Mossad, argued it would take a while before the situation would return to the level it had been before the assassination and that in the long run the threat was unlikely to decrease as a result of the extra-judicial execution.
The assassination, ordered March 22 by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was opposed by some top officials, including Avi Dichter, head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, because it was likely to lead to revenge attacks.
Considering that Yassin's assassination will exacerbate the violence in the region and thus further endanger Israeli citizens, one might ask why the government authorized the operation.
Israeli commentator Oded Granot seems to have an answer.
A day after the assassination, he noted that Hamas and Fatah (the largest party within the Palestinian Authority) were on the verge of reaching a cooperation agreement regarding the distribution of authority in the Gaza Strip. The two major political factions in the Strip wanted to ensure that there would be no internal strife and that joint control would be assumed over the region if Sharon went ahead with his plan to dismantle Jewish settlements and withdraw Israel's troops.
Israeli officials, Granot added, feared that if such an agreement were signed then the Bush administration would veto all Hamas assassinations. Israel consequently decided not to take any chances and killed Yassin.
Even if Granot is right, the question regarding the Israeli government's objective still stands.
One explanation is based on the assumption that Sharon actually intends to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and that he killed Yassin in order to advance this end. This view is informed by three major hypotheses.
- Sharon does not want to replicate his predecessor's mistake. Unlike Israel's rapid withdrawal from southern Lebanon, which many conceived as an act of defeat and cowardice, Sharon wants to create the impression that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza is in no way a result of pressure applied by Hamas. Accordingly, the assassination is both a symbolic act and an attempt to weaken Hamas' infrastructure. One may accordingly expect that in the coming months the Israeli military will accelerate its operations in the Gaza Strip.
- Sharon hopes that Yassin's assassination will help him garner support within his own Likud party, because his popularity is waning and because many of his allies are against any withdrawal from Gaza. The execution of the Hamas leader demonstrates to Sharon's political partners that he is still "attuned to Israel's security needs and will not hesitate to use all the means necessary to ensure it." The new Sharon is still the old Sharon.
- According to this explanation the attack's objective was to create chaos in the Gaza Strip so that following the withdrawal internal strife between the Palestinian factions would erupt.
Those who think that Sharon authorized Yassin's assassination in order to abandon his withdrawal proposal also employ this last point. Sharon, according to this explanation, hopes to use the chaos he has engendered and the violent reaction that will surely follow as pretense for keeping Israeli troops and settlements in the Strip.
While only the future will tell which explanation is more accurate, Yassin's assassination has a number of direct effects.
It will certainly lead to a series of bloody attacks against targets within Israel and perhaps even abroad. While Hamas' ability to strike against Israelis has in no way been jeopardized, the perpetrators' will to carry out attacks is surely much greater than it was before the execution.
The Islamic group had made veiled threats that it would retaliate against the United States for the assassination but, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, named as Hamas' new Gaza chief, said the militant group had no plans to attack U.S. targets, while another top official in the organization said it has targeted Sharon for death.
"We are inside Palestinian land and acting only inside Palestinian land. We are resisting the occupation, nothing else," Rantisi told reporters in Gaza. "Our resistance will continue just inside our border, here inside our country."
In addition, the assassination has widely broadened the frontiers of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by accentuating its religious dimension. Muslims from Jakarta to Cairo have vowed to avenge the cleric's death.
While these two effects have been mentioned in the media, commentators have ignored that the Israeli attack will likely deal a harsh blow to the recent emergence of a Palestinian nonviolent resistance movement. The three-and-a-half year Palestinian uprising, known as the second Intifada, began changing its character about two months ago: from a struggle based on violent resistance led by relatively small groups of militants to a massive nonviolent grassroots movement.
The impetus for this mobilization is the rapid erection of the separation wall. The protesters used the same techniques developed by Ghandi and Martin Luther King, with hundreds of demonstrators standing or lying in front of bulldozers, chanting songs and waving flags. Although the military has been ordered to disperse the protesters, using tear gas, clubs, and, at times, even bullets, every day in the past weeks more and more Palestinians (alongside a few Israelis and internationals) have joined the ranks. For a moment it appeared that the Palestinians had adopted a tenable strategy which could actually threaten Israel's occupation.
Yassin's assassination will probably weaken the nonviolent resistance and empower those who favor violent retaliation against Israel. Thus, ironically, Israel's operation has actually strengthened the legitimacy of Hamas' military wing.
Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University and is a contributor to The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent (New Press).
-------- nato
'North American NATO' under discussion
NORAD could evolve into deeper alliance, says U.S. military leader
Mar. 26, 2004
Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1080342095828&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
CALGARY (CP) - A North American version of NATO is being studied as the United States and Canada shore up defences against future terrorism attacks, the deputy commander of U.S. Northern Command said today.
"Should NORAD adapt once again just as it has done over its history of the last 46 years, just as it did on 9-11?," said Lt.-Gen. Ed Anderson to a gathering of military leaders and academics at a conference on homeland defence and land force reserves.
"Should we take NORAD and adapt some sort of a NATO-like organization? In other words more than just bi-national if we're going to talk continental security," he said.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command, provides warning of ballistic missile and aircraft attacks against the United States and Canada, tracks space satellites and debris for the space shuttle missions.
Expanding to include support for maritime, ground and civilian operations makes sense, said Anderson.
"We are at a point when we need to address the future.
"The threat to both of our homelands is real. There should be no doubt in anybody's mind that there is an intent to attack free democracy ... and I will tell you they are working on weapons of mass destruction as their first choice," he said.
"We know that they want to target our homeland again. They want a bigger 9-11."
Any initial move to a NATO-like model would only involve Canada and the U.S but could eventually include Mexico, said Anderson.
"Discussions between our two militaries (U.S. and Mexico) have just not gone to anything on continental security and they've got some sovereignty concerns."
The status quo on homeland security is working right now but will need to be upgraded, said David Bercuson with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute at the University of Calgary.
"I think a North American NATO is virtually inevitable. What we've got in place right now, the Bi-National Planning Group, is just that - a planning group," said Bercuson.
The three-day conference has attracted delegates from Canada, the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia. It has focused on the best way to structure, train and deploy land force reserves for homeland defence.
The U.S. Northern Command is looking at having designated reserve units located in all 50 American states with their only responsibility being part of a homeland defence force, said Anderson.
"There is still a need for a strategic reserve for our military for deployment overseas, but there may be a need now for homeland defence forces given the change in strategic environment," said Anderson.
A homeland defence force would also shorten the chain of command, since National Guard units and their resources are under the control of state governors.
"We just feel the nature of the threat is such that we have to have dedicated forces," said Anderson who said a homeland force would be made up of infantry soldiers.
"We want to have the forces that we know are ready to go and trained and equipped and organized.
"We don't want to wait for another 9-11 to be the catalyst to make some of these things happen."
----
No crisis with Russia over NATO extension: US envoy
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Mar 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040326153530.2brvqh7d.html
NATO contacts with Russia on the alliance extending eastwards have been straightfoward and non-polemical, and there is no sense of crisis over enlargement, United States NATO ambassador Nicholas Burns said Friday.
He was responding to journalists' questions here about seven new countries, including former Soviet constituent republics, joining the North Atlantic alliance Monday, thus extending it right up to Russian frontiers.
"The discussions we have had with Russia have been quite straightfoward and quite non polemical," he said: "There is no sense of crisis at all between NATO and Russia over enlargement."
His remarks contrasted with concern expressed by Moscow about planned NATO air patrols in the Baltic area close to Russian territory.
NATO warplanes will start to patrol Baltic airspace next Monday, Latvian Defence Minister Atis Slakteris said Thursday, confirming alliance plans that have edged up tensions with neighbouring Russia.
But Burns took a studiously relaxed attitude, stressing that NATO and Russia had a strong partnership.
"Russia understands that NATO enlargement is something that is not at all aimed in a negative way at Russia," he said. "What we have decided and of course communicated here at NATO to the Russian Federation is that we will be extending our air defence regime to the new members."
Burns confirmed that NATO planned to station aircraft in Lithuania to protect the air space of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia: "In the case of the Baltic countries the plan is to station four fighter aircraft in Lithuania."
The three Baltic states Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, former Soviet constituent republics, are joining NATO together with former Soviet bloc states Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, and Slovenia, once part of Yugoslavia.
The Baltic air defence decision had been entirely transparent to Russia which had been fully briefed, Burns said:
"It in no way represents any kind of a negative signal to the Russian Federation by NATO nor of course does it represent any threat."
"NATO has no plans to station substantial forces in any of the countries that border Russia," he added: "I sense no problem about this whatsoever."
Russia is deeply unhappy about NATO's move to station warplanes in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The Moscow foreign ministry said Wednesday that such plans were not in line with the spirit of partnership which developed between NATO and Russia in the 1990s after the end of the Soviet Union and communist power.
After spending years fruitlessly trying to block the expansion of the military alliance up to its borders, Russia has come out on the offensive, with Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov saying Thursday he may order a nuclear build-up in response to NATO's Baltic operations.
Moscow fears that flights over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would enable the alliance to spy on its defences.
Ivanov said his government would be seeking explanations from NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on his next visit to Moscow.
-------- pakistan / india
Purported Zawahiri Tape Condemns Musharraf
No. 2 Figure in Al Qaeda Is Said to Call for Overthrow of Pakistani Government
Associated Press
Friday, March 26, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24924-2004Mar25.html
CAIRO, March 25 -- A tape purportedly recorded by Ayman Zawahiri, the No. 2 figure in al Qaeda, called Pakistan's president a traitor Thursday and urged people to overthrow his government.
The pan-Arab satellite channel al-Jazeera broadcast a seven-minute excerpt from a tape it received Thursday. Its authenticity could not immediately be verified, but the speaker sounded like Zawahiri and made references to the Islamic holy book, the Koran, which is known to be Zawahiri's style.
Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, "seeks to stab the Islamic resistance in Afghanistan in the back," the speaker said. "Every Muslim in Pakistan should work hard to get rid of this client government, which will continue to submit to America until it destroys Pakistan."
Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said the government had no immediate comment on the purported Zawahiri tape. After the release of a Zawahiri tape in September that called for Musharraf's overthrow, the government said it would not be deterred in its pursuit of terrorists.
The tape comes as U.S. and Afghan officials say that al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, increasingly pressured by American and Pakistani forces along the Afghan border, are on the run or hunkering down rather than mounting a threatened spring offensive. Pakistani officials announced Thursday that more than 50 alleged terrorists had been killed and 163 detained in a military operation in the rugged border area, where tribes have more power than the Pakistani government and where Zawahiri is suspected of hiding.
It was not known when the tape was made, but the speaker apparently referred to the present conflict, saying, "I call on the Pakistani army: You, poor army, what a miserable state Musharraf has put you in. . . . Musharraf ruins your natural fences -- those tribes on the border -- by engaging you in a fight with them. Then he removes your nuclear weapons. Will you stay silent until Pakistan is divided again?"
Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said the Qatar-based channel received the tape Thursday, but he declined to reveal how. The tape is 17 minutes long. "Indications are that it is authentic -- the voice, the nuances," Ballout said.
Experts say Zawahiri provided much of the ideology driving al Qaeda since his Egyptian Islamic Jihad merged with Osama bin Laden's network in 1998. The United States has offered a $25 million reward for his capture.
-------- prisoners of war
US soldiers face charges of prisoner abuse
Though incidents are rare, the legal and ethical lapses highlight moral quandaries inherent in the Iraq war.
By Ann Scott Tyson
The Christian Science Monitor,
March 26, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0326/p02s01-usmi.html
WASHINGTON - To former military police Master Sgt. Lisa Girman and two of her fellow soldiers, May 12 was just "another night in the desert" restraining unruly Iraqi war prisoners. But in January, the three Pennsylvania MPs were discharged from the military for kicking and punching Iraqis, including one allegedly linked to the ambush of the Jessica Lynch convoy. [Editor's note: In the original version, Girman's name was misspelled.]
In a similar case, a Marine guard testified in February that beating uncooperative Iraqi detainees was common. In all, eight Marines have been charged for mistreating detainees, one of whom died in custody.
Now, the US military has charged six more American soldiers with assault, indecent acts, cruelty, and maltreatment in connection with the alleged abuse of as many as 19 detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad.
From detainee abuse to the excessive use of force and disputed killings of civilians, the Iraq conflict is producing its share of legal and ethical lapses by US service members, despite strenuous efforts by US commanders to avoid them.
The breaches involve only a tiny fraction of the more than 150,000-strong US occupation force, which military ethicists and human rights groups have given generally good marks for their comportment in Iraq. Still, such violations could cause disproportionate damage to the US military's image among Iraqis.
"The forces of gravity that drag you down to the level of your enemy are very powerful," says Albert Pierce, director of the Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics at the US Naval Academy. "Sometimes they are inherent in conflict, sometimes they are part of an inherent strategy by the enemy," he says, adding that US commanders are making an "extraordinary effort" to resist such forces.
Tensions could grow over such infractions if, as expected, US forces continue to operate free from Iraqi legal jurisdiction following the July 1 transfer of power from the US-led coalition to Iraqi authorities. US officials say they hope to reach an agreement with Iraqi leaders this month on what the legal status of US forces will be. "We will not have a period of time when our forces are without protection," Peter Rodman, assistant secretary of Defense for international security affairs, told a House hearing earlier this month.
Which courts have jurisdiction
Normally, agreements on the status of US forces based abroad grant a degree of jurisdiction over them to local courts, but Iraq could prove an exception, says Georgetown University law professor Anthony Arend. "I could see the US saying, the [Iraqi] court system is not well enough established, and we don't believe US forces could get a fair trial, so we reserve the right to try them under any circumstance."
Maltreatment of Iraqis is not the only problem that has sparked US military investigations and legal or disciplinary action. US service members have also been accused of victimizing each other. The Army's Criminal Investigation Command has probed allegations of felonies by US soldiers in Iraq such as sexual assault, larceny, and smuggling, and the Army has set up a hotline for reporting sexual assault.
Still, perhaps the most serious ethical issues derive from the US military's status as an occupying force, and the special obligations that implies for safeguarding Iraqis. "The US fails to meet its legal and moral responsibilities to Iraq as long as it fails to provide adequate security for the Iraqi people," writes Neta Crawford, associate professor of international affairs at Brown University, in "Principia Leviathan: The Moral Duties of American Hegemony."
So far, the major charges against US service members have involved the treatment of detainees. In the latest case, six US soldiers were charged on Saturday with crimes including "conspiracy, dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, assault, and indecent acts with another" in connection with alleged detainee abuse last November and December at the Abu Ghraib facility.
The six charged as a result of a two-month military investigation are from an original group of 17 soldiers and commanders who were suspended from duty but remain in Iraq. The military is withholding the soldiers' names until an Article 32 hearing, similar to a grand jury, determines whether they will face trial.
US military officials say they are working hard to root out abuses such as those alleged at Abu Ghraib before they spread. The military has also paid thousands of dollars to compensate for the injury, death, or property damage inflicted on innocent Iraqis by US forces.
Human rights scorecard
Last week, an Amnesty International report on human rights in Iraq over the past year stated that "scores of civilians have been killed apparently as a result of excessive force by US troops, or have been shot dead in disputed circumstances."
"Yes, there have been, sadly, cases where soldiers have operated outside established, trained rules of engagement and rules for the use of force," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy director for coalition operations in Baghdad, on Monday. But he noted that "while each of those cases is nothing to take great pride in, the fact is that 99-plus percent of the soldiers are operating well within those rules of engagement, under very tough conditions, showing remarkable restraint."
Military lawyers say they must constantly reassess the rules of engagement as the line between the enemy and the innocent grows increasingly blurry in today's battle zones such as Iraq.
"Terrorism and the conflict you face in Iraq now is not the classic war that the rules of war are formulated for," says Thomas Grassey, chair of leadership and ethics at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. "The law of armed conflict reflects a more classical pattern of guys wearing uniforms and carrying guns," says Mr. Grassey, "so the insurgents are a challenge" for military lawyers.
For US soldiers, a moral minefield
Indeed, as US troops fight a stubborn guerrilla insurgency and terrorist threat while under obligation to protect Iraqi civilians, they face a moral landscape that is in many ways more complex than in past wars.
"The question is, how vulnerable do you want your people to be in the postwar phase?" when the military's role shifts to safeguarding the civilian population and providing for basic needs, says Rear Adm. Louis Iasiello, chief of chaplains for the US Navy and an expert in just-war theory.
Debate over whether a war is justified, and conduct during the war, needs to extend to the aftermath of the conflict, he says. "Commanders have to keep that right intention, to establish a just and lasting peace" in the postwar period, Admiral Iasiello says.
-------- un
EU Leaders Want New U.N. Iraq Resolution
March 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-EU-Summit.html
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- European Union leaders Friday called for a new Security Council resolution to support an increased U.N. role in Iraq, although they did not directly link it to supplying peacekeepers.
In conclusions to be adopted at the end of their two-day summit, the EU leaders said they ``look forward to the U.N. playing a vital and growing role endorsed by the U.N. Security Council in the run-up to transition and beyond.''
Spain's incoming prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has made it clear he will pull his country's 1,300 peacekeeping troops out of Iraq by June 30 unless the United Nations takes control of the postwar occupation.
While that has alarmed Washington and London, it put Madrid in line with Germany and France -- who had refused to send troops to Iraq without a stronger U.N. role.
French President Jacques Chirac told reporters that France still believed that only a ``government that is both representative and able, and has the active encouragement of the United Nations can set Iraqis back on the road to stability and peace.''
Alongside the United States, Britain and Poland, Spain is one of the largest contributors of troops in Iraq.
``If there is any chance of getting a new resolution offering a mandate to foreign military personnel ... in Iraq that would be great of course, we would support that,'' said Polish Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz. Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq.
Across town at NATO, U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Burns said he did not want to ``prejudge'' what the new Spanish government might do after it takes office in mid-April.
He added that Poland has given assurances since the Spanish election ``that they will be keeping their forces in Iraq.''
Other European nations that have sent peacekeepers or police to Iraq include Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic.
EU leaders also turned their attention Friday to their sluggish economies after bolstering the fight against terrorism on the summit's opening night Thursday, where they approved a slew of counterterrorism measures including the creation of an ``anti-terrorism czar.''
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the ``Big Three'' of Germany, Britain and France would hold a special summit in London to discuss homeland security issues to fight terror. No date had yet been set for the talks however.
They also agreed to relaunch stalled talks on an EU constitution, with a new deadline of June 17.
The 25 European leaders, including those from the 10 countries that will join May 1, Friday discussed ways to create jobs and make European business more competitive to combat a jobless rate stuck above 8 percent.
Britain, France and Germany were pushing for a new ``super EU commissioner'' responsible for boosting industry and jobs at the EU's executive office, the European Commission.
But in the conclusions, the leaders made only a vague reference to supporting their ``competitiveness agenda'' in the next Commission, which takes office in November.
On other foreign policy issues, leaders condemned the ``extra-judicial'' killing of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin, whom Israel held responsible for dozens of suicide attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis since 2000.
On terrorism, the leaders approved a 15-point action plan in the wake of the March 11 rail bombings in Madrid.
The leaders picked former Dutch government official Gijs de Vries as the bloc's first anti-terror czar to bolster the continent's defense.
De Vries' job will be to ensure anti-terrorist measures are correctly implemented by the EU's foreign affairs, finance and interior departments.
De Vries, a former deputy interior minister who was born in New York but lived most of his life in the Netherlands, will start work Monday and report to Javier Solana, who heads the EU's foreign and security department.
Leaders adopted other measures including improving police and intelligence cooperation and increasing border controls and tracking of phone records.
-------- us
In Army Survey, Troops in Iraq Report Low Morale
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25127-2004Mar25.html
A slim majority of Army soldiers in Iraq -- 52 percent -- reported that their morale was low, and three-fourths of them said they felt poorly led by their officers, according to a survey taken at the end of the summer and released yesterday by the Army.
In addition, seven in 10 of those surveyed characterized the morale of their fellow soldiers as low or very low. The problems were most pronounced among lower-ranking troops and those in reserve units.
"Nearly 75% of the groups reported that their battalion-level command leadership was poor" and showed "a lack of concern" for their soldiers, said an Army report accompanying the data. "Unit cohesion was also reported to be low."
The survey was part of a study initiated by the Army last summer after a number of suicides provoked concern about the mental well-being of soldiers in Iraq. The report faulted the Army for how it handled mental health problems, saying some counselors felt inadequately trained and citing problems in distribution of antidepressant medication and sleeping pills.
But perhaps the most surprising findings were the grim conclusions about troop morale, which indicate that Iraq is taking a toll that goes beyond casualty figures.
The Pentagon has been intensely worried that more frequent and longer combat tours will prompt more soldiers to get out of the Army rather than reenlist, especially if it means a second stint in Iraq or Afghanistan. Army insiders say it is likely that brigades from three divisions that served in Iraq over the past year -- the 101st Airborne, the 3rd Infantry and the 4th Infantry -- are likely to be sent back in 2005.
The Pentagon data on morale also appear to give official confirmation to a more informal survey conducted last summer by Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper. That survey found about half of troops who filled out questionnaires described their unit's morale as low and their training as insufficient, and said they did not plan to reenlist.
Col. Virgil Patterson, who oversaw the Army survey, said he was "somewhat surprised" by the findings on troop morale. He noted that when the survey was taken, soldiers were still feeling the effects of a brutally hot Iraqi summer, and that since then troops have better living conditions and are better able to communicate with their families.
"It was a pretty miserable set of circumstances at the time," he said. "We speculate that all of those contributed to the factor of low morale."
Patterson said he could not place the numbers in historical context because similar surveys have not been conducted before. "This is the first time we've ever gone into an active combat theater and asked soldiers how they are doing, so we have no comparative data," he said. The study, conducted from late August through early October 2003, surveyed 756 Army soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait, focusing on units that had engaged in combat.
Reaction to the Army's survey was mixed among several experts.
Retired Army Col. Robert Killebrew, a Vietnam War veteran, said, "It's not particularly surprising, especially given the frustrating nature of the combat they're facing now, with patrols and bombs going off."
But a senior Army commander who spoke on the condition of anonymity expressed alarm.
"I'd be extremely worried by these numbers," said the officer, who specializes in morale issues. Having more than half the soldiers surveyed say they are unhappy should "set off alarm bells," the officer said.
Jonathan Shay, a Veterans Affairs psychiatrist, called it "a painful report to read." Shay, who wrote two books on cohesion and leadership problems in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, said the report shows morale and cohesion were "seriously low" among troops in Iraq.
The report faulted the Army's handling of mental health issues for troops and called for appointment of a "czar" to coordinate such services in Iraq and Kuwait. Patterson said a medical specialist would fill that new position next month.
In its findings on suicide, the report confirmed data previously released by the Army that the rate among soldiers in Iraq in 2003 was higher than for the Army generally, but lower than that of U.S. men of a similar age range. There were 23 confirmed suicides among Army troops in Iraq in 2003, for a rate of 15.6 per 100,000 soldiers, the report said. That compares with an Army average in recent years of 11.9, they said.
Col. Bruce Crow, an Army psychologist and an expert in suicide prevention who served as a member of the study group, said there were few clear patterns to the suicides, such as a persistent correlation with how long the troops had been deployed or what type of work they were doing. But he said soldiers who killed themselves generally tended to be younger, unmarried men.
--------
THE MILITARY
U.S. Army Finds Its Suicide Rate in Iraq Is Higher Than for Other G.I.'s
March 26, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/international/middleeast/26ARMY.html
WASHINGTON, March 25 - A major Army study has found that suicide-prevention teams were left behind when units left their home bases to go to war in Iraq, mental-health workers felt untrained to treat combat stress, and many soldiers seeking help for depression and emotional problems faced significant hurdles getting care.
The study, the first conducted in a combat zone, also determined that the suicide rate of soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait last year was much higher than in the Army overall, but lower than in comparable American civilian groups.
In one startling finding, in the survey of 756 soldiers late last summer, 52 percent of them said their personal morale was low or very low, and 72 percent said their whole unit's morale was that bad. Most of those surveyed had been in combat.
But in releasing their findings on Thursday, senior Army medical officials said they had found no connection between the suicides and the morale factors.
Army officials said the survey was taken at the peak of the fierce summer heat when many soldiers were still living in tents and did not have regular phone or e-mail access to their families. The officials suggested that morale had probably improved as living conditions did, but said they would not know for sure until they followed up this spring.
They said senior Army officials and commanders were fulfilling many of the recommendations in the 38-page study, including sending more Army psychiatrists and mental health specialists to combat zones, revamping reporting procedures for soldiers needing care, and monitoring reports of suicide attempts as well as suicides.
Col. Virgil J. Patterson III, a military social worker who led the Army Mental Health Advisory Team, which did the study, said in an interview that the Army intended "to improve the access, availability and quality" of mental health services for troops in combat zones.
The Army surgeon general, Lt. Gen. James B. Peake, ordered the study after a sharp rise in suicides in July and an influx of soldiers with mental health problems at Landstuhl medical center in Germany.
A 12-member team that included Army psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers went to Iraq and Kuwait from late August to early October, and interviewed medical and mental health specialists, chaplains and commanders.
One out of four soldiers surveyed reported problems with emotional or family issues or stress, but many of those said that when they sought help, they ran into barriers to treatment or follow-up visits, or into logistical runarounds. Soldiers sometimes had to arrange for two armed convoys, one to go be evaluated and another to get medicines.
Army psychiatrists and other mental health workers in Iraq and Kuwait complained that their work was hampered by a shortage of vehicles and radios, and by a need for a broader range of medications, including antidepressants and sleeping pills, the report said. Half of the Army mental-health specialists interviewed said they had not received adequate training in combat stress.
"Many of our behavioral health personnel demonstrated great ingenuity and creativity in finding ways to take care of soldiers, despite severe resource limitations," the report concluded.
The report was completed last December, but there were months of internal briefings and deliberations before it was released on Thursday. The delay prompted some critics to suggest the Army was trying to cover up the problem, but senior lawmakers largely praised the Army's effort.
"Any time you're dealing with suicide, the very finding that perhaps you weren't doing things as well as you'd like, in hindsight, makes for a sad part of a sadder tale," said Representative John McHugh, a New York Republican on the House Armed Services Committee. "But this lays out a pretty clear picture of what we need to do."
There were 23 suicides among American soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait last year, all but one by gunshot, and most involved young enlisted white men who faced personal financial problems, failed personal relationships or legal problems, Army officials said. The suicide rate was higher among Regular Army troops than among reservists, the study found, but it did not give exact numbers.
That number put the suicide rate at 17.3 per 100,000 soldiers, compared with 12.8 for the Army overall last year, and an average rate of 11.9 for the Army between 1995 and 2002, Army officials said. The civilian rate for 18- to 34-year-olds, the age range of most soldiers, is 21.5 per 100,000.
While there was an average of two Army suicides a month in 2003, with a high of five in July, there has been only one death classified as a suicide so far this year; one suspected case is to be reviewed, officials said.
Some veterans' groups criticized the Army for suggesting the service did not have a problem because the soldiers' suicide rate was lower than the civilian rate.
"We are concerned that the Army is equating the suicide rate in Iraq with that of the general population," said Wayne Smith, a spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and a Vietnam combat medic. "This is misleading in the extreme, given that military personnel are supposed to be screened for the kind of psychiatric disturbances that can lead to suicide. To suggest that the Army's suicide rate is not worrisome, based on this comparison, only further confuses the issue."
-------- propaganda wars
Bush Defends Response to Threats of Terrorism
By Amy Goldstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24965-2004Mar25.html
NASHUA, N.H., March 25 -- President Bush sought Thursday to knock down allegations that the administration was inattentive to the threat posed by al Qaeda before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying he would have "used every asset, every resource, every power of this government" to prevent the terrorist hijackings had he been warned of them.
Bush made his most extensive statements yet about the controversy that has swirled for several days, since his former chief counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, portrayed the president as unfocused on the terrorist network and unduly preoccupied with Iraq. Clarke gave the critique in a new book and in testimony Wednesday before a federal commission that is examining the 2001 attacks.
White House aides Thursday continued their strategy of trying to undermine Clarke's credibility. Bush, however, did not mention Clarke, who left the White House 13 months ago and had held senior roles in three previous administrations. Instead, Bush praised the work of the bipartisan commission and defended his own efforts to defeat terrorists in the United States and abroad. "Our solemn duty is to protect America," he said.
He called the panel, which just completed two days of public testimony from top current and former government officials, "a very important commission." Bush has consented to meet in private with the panel's chairman and vice chairman -- but not to testify publicly.
Bush made a point of saying that much of the time period included in the commission's review of possible intelligence shortcomings spans the administration of President Bill Clinton. The commission, Bush said, "is determined to look at the eight months of my administration and the eight years of the previous administration to determine what we can learn, what we can do to uphold our solemn duty."
The president's remarks, during a visit to a community college here that was devoted mainly to a pep talk about the economy, came one day after Clarke testified before the commission. Clarke opened with an emotional apology to families of the nearly 3,000 victims who died in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. "Your government failed you," he told victims' relatives who filled the hearing room.
On Thursday, Bush openly aligned himself with the attack's victims as well. He introduced a woman in the audience, Cheryl McGuinness, widow of a pilot on American Airlines Flight 11, which was the first jetliner to crash into the World Trade Center.
Bush, who has made the war on terror an organizing principle of his presidency, gave a reminder Thursday of the way his administration and Congress have reshaped the government and U.S. law in response to the attacks.
He cited creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the passage of the USA Patriot Act, a controversial statute that has given law enforcement agencies surveillance powers and greater ability to share domestic and international intelligence.
And, as he does in virtually every speech, Bush talked of the war that toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "We weren't going to let killers and assassins determine our course of life," he said.
--------
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Wrong War
March 26, 2004
By BOB HERBERT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/opinion/26HERB.html?hp
The most compelling aspects of Richard Clarke's take on the world have less to do with the question of whether the Bush administration could somehow have prevented the Sept. 11 attacks and much more with the administration's folly of responding to the attacks by launching a war on Iraq.
The United States had been the victim of a sneak attack worse than the attack at Pearl Harbor. It was an act of war, and the administration had a moral obligation (not to mention the backing of the entire country and most of the world) to hunt down and eradicate the forces responsible.
(I walked past the vacant acreage of the World Trade Center site the other day. It was a bitterly cold morning, and the wind slicing across the mournful landscape intensified the memories of the violence and horror - the unspeakable agony of the thousands lost and injured, and the grief of a traumatized city brought temporarily to its knees.)
Mr. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that despite clear evidence the attacks had been the work of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, top administration officials focused almost immediately on the object of their obsession, Iraq.
He remembers taking a short break for a bite to eat and a shower, then returning to the White House very early on the morning of Sept. 12. He writes:
"I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were. . . . Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq."
Soon would come the now-famous encounter between Mr. Clarke and President Bush in the White House Situation Room. According to Mr. Clarke: "[The president] grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. `Look,' he told us, `I know you have a lot to do and all . . . but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way.' "
"I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. `But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this.'
" `I know, I know, but . . . see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred. . . .' "
The president wanted war with Iraq, and ultimately he would have his war. The drumbeat for an invasion of Iraq in the aftermath of the Qaeda attack was as incessant as it was bizarre. Mr. Clarke told "60 Minutes" that an attack on Iraq under those circumstances was comparable to President Roosevelt, after Pearl Harbor, deciding to invade Mexico "instead of going to war with Japan."
The U.S. never pursued Al Qaeda with the focus, tenacity and resources it would expend - and continues to expend - on Iraq. The war against Iraq was sold the way a butcher would sell rotten meat - as something that was good for us. The administration and its apologists went out of their way to create the false impression that Saddam and Iraq were somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, and that he was an imminent threat to the U.S.
Condoleezza Rice went on television to say with a straight face, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
With the first anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and Osama bin Laden still at large, George Shultz, a former secretary of state (and longtime Bechtel Corporation biggie) ratcheted up his rant for war with Iraq in an Op-Ed article in The Washington Post. The headline said: "Act Now: The Danger Is Immediate."
Mr. Shultz wrote: "[Saddam] has relentlessly amassed weapons of mass destruction and continues their development." Insisting that the threat was imminent, he said, "When the risk is not hundreds of people killed in a conventional attack but tens or hundreds of thousands killed by chemical, biological or nuclear attack, the time factor is even more compelling."
Richard Clarke has been consistently right on the facts, and the White House and its apologists consistently wrong. Which is why the White House is waging such a ferocious and unconscionable campaign of character assassination against Mr. Clarke.
E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com
--------
Democrats Call Bush's Comedy Skit Tasteless
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24883-2004Mar25.html
President Bush's joking references to a search for weapons of mass destruction in the White House drew criticism yesterday from Democrats, who said the after-dinner remarks were tasteless and insensitive.
At the annual Radio and Television Correspondents Association event in Washington on Wednesday, Bush playfully provided mock captions to a series of photographs taken in and around the White House. The president's "White House Election Year Album" included pokes at himself, Vice President Cheney and his presumed Democratic opponent, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.).
One series of photos showed the president in awkward positions -- on his knees, looking behind draperies and moving furniture in the Oval Office -- accompanied by such comments as "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," "Nope, no weapons over there!" and "Maybe under here?"
A crowd of about 1,500 politicians, journalists and celebrities generally laughed along with the president's presentation.
But, noting that Bush had used the weapons issue to justify a war in Iraq in which nearly 600 Americans have died and more than 3,000 have been wounded, Democrats said the president went too far.
"It's a tragic attempt at comedy, because the price that has been paid for this endeavor has been an enormous one," Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said in an interview. Lautenberg was among the first Democrats to issue a statement condemning the comments yesterday.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was on the dais as the president spoke at the Washington Hilton, said at her weekly news conference yesterday: "It is interesting to me, because I have always treated that subject with a great deal of respect, because I really don't think it is funny. . . . I had thought that that was a little casual about a serious subject, but now the president has made it open season."
CNN, which ran a tape of Bush's bit on its morning show, reported that it generated critical e-mails from viewers, one of whom called it "stomach-turning."
Kerry's campaign issued a statement late yesterday charging Bush with "a stunningly cavalier attitude" toward a serious subject. "George Bush sold us on going to war with Iraq based on the threat of weapons of mass destruction. But we still haven't found them, and now he thinks that's funny?" the statement said.
The correspondents dinner often features the president as a lighthearted after-dinner speaker. That is the spirit in which Bush made his comments, White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said yesterday. "There's no question about the seriousness with which this president approaches this issue," she said. "It's traditional at events like this dinner for the president to poke fun at himself."
She noted that Bush also paid a tribute to the military, including a group of Special Forces troops who buried a piece of the World Trade Center in Afghanistan in tribute to those killed on Sept. 11, 2001.
Asked whether she thought Democrats were using the issue to engage in partisan politics, Buchan said, "I'll let you be the judge of that."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
For the Record
Neither Silent Nor a Public Witness Presidential Adviser Rice Becomes a 9/11 Focal Point as Contradictions Appear
By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25177-2004Mar25.html
This week's testimony and media blitz by former White House counterterrorism chief Richard A. Clarke has returned unwanted attention to his former boss, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
The refusal by President Bush's top security aide to testify publicly before the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks elicited rebukes by commission members as they held public hearings without her this week. Thomas H. Kean (R), the former New Jersey governor Bush named to be chairman of the commission, observed: "I think this administration shot itself in the foot by not letting her testify in public."
At the same time, some of Rice's rebuttals of Clarke's broadside against Bush, which she delivered in a flurry of media interviews and statements rather than in testimony, contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage contradicted Rice's claim that the White House had a strategy before 9/11 for military operations against al Qaeda and the Taliban; the CIA contradicted Rice's earlier assertion that Bush had requested a CIA briefing in the summer of 2001 because of elevated terrorist threats; and Rice's assertion this week that Bush told her on Sept. 16, 2001, that "Iraq is to the side" appeared to be contradicted by an order signed by Bush on Sept. 17 directing the Pentagon to begin planning military options for an invasion of Iraq.
Rice, in turn, has contradicted Vice President Cheney's assertion that Clarke was "out of the loop" and his intimation that Clarke had been demoted. Rice has also given various conflicting accounts. She criticized Clarke for being the architect of failed Clinton administration policies, but also said she retained Clarke so the Bush administration could continue to pursue Clinton's terrorism policies.
National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack defended many of Rice's assertions, saying that she has been more consistent than Clarke.
This is not the first time in her tenure that Rice has been questioned over disputed national security claims by the administration. Making the case about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction in September 2002, she said that aluminum tubes the United States intercepted on their way to Iraq were "only suited for nuclear weapons programs." But at the time, the U.S. intelligence community was split over the use of the tubes, and today the majority view is that the tubes were for antiaircraft rockets.
Rice so far has refused to provide testimony under oath to the commission that could possibly resolve the contradictions. On Wednesday night, she told reporters, "I would like nothing better in a sense than to be able to go up and do this, but I have a responsibility to maintain what is a long-standing constitutional separation between the executive and the legislative branch."
Other presidential aides have waived their immunity; President Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, did, as did President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger. McCormack said the comparisons are not applicable because Berger did not testify in public about policy matters.
The White House, reacting to the public relations difficulties caused by the refusal to allow Rice's testimony, yesterday asked the commission to give Rice another opportunity to speak privately with panel members to address "mischaracterizations of Dr. Rice's statements and positions."
Democratic commission member Richard Ben-Veniste disclosed this week that Rice had asked, in her private meetings with the commission, to revise a statement she made publicly that "I don't think anybody could have predicted that those people could have taken an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile." Rice told the commission that she misspoke; the commission has received information that prior to Sept. 11, U.S. intelligence agencies and Clarke had talked about terrorists using airplanes as missiles.
In an op-ed published Monday in The Washington Post, Rice wrote that "through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda" that included "sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime" including the use of ground forces. But Armitage, testifying this week as the White House representative, said the military part was not in the plan before Sept. 11. "I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11," he said. McCormack said Rice's statement is accurate because the team discussed including orders for such military plans to be drawn up.
In the same article, Rice belittled Clarke's proposals by writing: "The president wanted more than a laundry list of ideas simply to contain al Qaeda or 'roll back' the threat. Once in office, we quickly began crafting a comprehensive new strategy to 'eliminate' the al Qaeda network." Rice asserted that while Clarke and others provided ideas, "No al Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." That same day, she said most of Clarke's ideas "had been already tried or rejected in the Clinton administration."
But in her interview with NBC two days later, Rice appeared to take a different view of Clarke's proposals. "He sent us a set of ideas that would perhaps help to roll back al Qaeda over a three- to five-year period; we acted on those ideas very quickly. And what's very interesting is that . . . Dick Clarke now says that we ignored his ideas or we didn't follow them up." Asked about this apparent discrepancy, McCormack pointed a reporter to a Clarke background briefing in 2002 in which the then-White House aide was defending the president's efforts in fighting terrorism.
Similarly, Rice implicitly criticized Clarke on CNN on Monday, saying that "he was the counterterrorism czar for a period of the '90s when al Qaeda was strengthening and when the plots that ended up September 11 were being hatched." But in a White House briefing two days later, she said she kept Clarke on the job because "I wanted somebody experienced in that area precisely to carry on the Clinton administration policy." McCormack said Clarke was kept on for continuity.
Among the most serious discrepancies in Rice's claims to emerge this week is about a briefing on terrorism Bush received on Aug. 6, 2001.
Rice had said on May 12, 2002, that the briefing was produced because Bush had asked about dangers of al Qaeda attacking the United States. But at the commission hearing, Ben-Veniste said that the CIA informed the 9/11 panel last week that the author of the briefing does not recall such a request from Bush and that the idea to compile the briefing came from within the CIA.
McCormack said that when the CIA briefer presented the paper, he said it was in response to the president's questions.
--------
Rice Is Agreeable to Return for More of 9/11 Panel's Queries
March 26, 2004
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/politics/26PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 25 - Under mounting pressure from Democrats about its response to the investigation into the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the White House offered Thursday to have Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, answer more questions from the Sept. 11 panel. At the same time, President Bush forcefully denied accusations that he had ignored the severity of the threat from Al Qaeda.
The White House announced late Thursday that Ms. Rice was willing to appear before the panel again, but only in private and not under oath. Some Republicans said that Mr. Bush was being undercut by the perception that a senior White House official would not cooperate, while his aides were out pummeling Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief who has accused the Bush administration of not heeding warnings before Sept. 11.
The moves came as the White House also sought to deflect new criticism of Mr. Bush for his handling of counterterrorism issues in the months before the attacks and to contain the fallout of an investigation that Democrats and some Republicans said could cast a shadow over his re-election campaign.
The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, called on the White House to cease "character attacks" on Mr. Clarke.
"I have a simple request for the president today: Please ask the people around you to stop the character attacks they are waging against Richard Clarke," Mr. Daschle said. "Ask them to stop their attempts to conceal information and confuse facts. Ask them to stop the long effort that has made the 9/11 commission's work more difficult than it should be."
An array of White House officials, including Ms. Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, have gone on television to discredit Mr. Clarke's testimony as either politically motivated, to help John Kerry, or as a ruse to sell books.
In New Hampshire, Mr. Bush showed up at an event about the economy accompanied by the widow of a pilot of the plane that flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Only a day earlier, television news programs were filled with images of Mr. Clarke surrounded by thankful families of other Sept. 11 victims after he apologized to them for failing to head off the attack.
Mr. Bush prefaced his remarks by pointedly noting that the commission was looking at "the eight months of my administration and the eight years of the previous administration."
"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people," Mr. Bush said to a burst of applause.
In a letter to the commission's chairman, the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, said a return session would allow Ms. Rice to clear up "a number of mischaracterizations" of her statements and positions. Mr. Gonzales said she would not appear at a public session of the panel because, he wrote, it was critical that presidential advisers "not be compelled to testify publicly before Congressional bodies such as the commission."
James R. Thompson, the former governor of Illinois and a Republican member of the commission, said in an interview on Thursday that in the commission's private four-hour interview of Ms. Rice last month, she offered to meet again with the panel to answer other questions. "She said, `If you need me back at any time, I'd be delighted,' " Mr. Thompson said. "So my guess is that we will call her back."
By publicly restating her offer on Thursday, the White House sought to deflect criticism that it was trying to block a full investigation of the Bush administration's performance in the months leading to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ms. Rice told commissioners that White House officials had told her she should not testify under oath. While the panel requires officials appearing in public to testify under oath, there is no such requirement for those testifying in private.
The decision by Mr. Bush to directly address this issue underlines the extent to which the questions raised by Mr. Clarke and the commission appear to have shaken the White House. It came during a trip that was intended to address economic issues and to focus on New Hampshire, a state with a battered economy that is expected to be a critical in the presidential election.
Mr. Kerry, the expected Democratic presidential nominee, on Thursday again avoided directly engaging Mr. Bush on Mr. Clarke's assertions. Several advisers said they argued that an attack by Mr. Kerry at this point might be a welcome distraction to the White House, and make it easier to portray the criticism voiced by Mr. Clarke as orchestrated by the Kerry campaign.
Some of Mr. Bush's advisers said they believed that they had raised enough questions about Mr. Clarke's motives and credibility to negate any damage he might have caused Mr. Bush with his statements to the panel, his just-released book and a steam of television appearances this week.
"Clarke's own words contributed to the end of his credibility with people," said Terry Holt, Mr. Bush's campaign spokesman.
But Democrats and some Republicans not associated with the campaign questioned that assessment. They described Mr. Clarke's appearance before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States as compelling and said that Mr. Bush's campaign, which had already been criticized by some families of victims for using footage of World Trade Center destruction in its campaign advertisements, would have to deal with the emotional show of support by victims of Mr. Clarke after he said, "I failed you."
In addition, even some Republicans questioned the wisdom of the White House involving itself in such a public and muscular campaign to discredit a critic who was, by his account, a Republican who served in Mr. Bush's own administration.
"While it was their intent to undermine Clark's credibility, it will be interesting to see if their credibility now comes into question more than his," said Don Sipple, a Republican consultant. "I saw the parade of the victim's families on the morning shows who all applauded him. He was the first person who took any responsibility. What that does is underscore his perception as a truth teller. I think the American people are paying attention to this episode." With the economy faltering and Democrats so united, Mr. Bush's terrorism credentials are portrayed by his supporters as the strongest assets he has going against Mr. Kerry. The revelations - in particular, the account offered by Mr. Clarke - could give Mr. Kerry ammunition to attack Mr. Bush on foreign policy.
Adam Nagourney reported from Washington and Richard W. Stevenson from Nashua, N.H.
-------- homeland security
FBI up for private screens
March 26, 2004
By Guy Taylor
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040326-124121-1245r.htm
The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are developing a database that will allow private companies to submit lists of individuals to be screened for a connection to terrorism, the FBI Terrorist Screening Center Director Donna A. Bucella told legislators yesterday.
The database "will eventually allow private-sector entities, such as operators of critical infrastructure facilities or organizers of large events, to submit a list of persons associated with those events to the U.S. government to be screened for any nexus to terrorism," Miss Bucella said at a joint hearing of the House Judiciary and Homeland Security subcommittees.
The screening center oversees the master database of known and suspected terrorists, which became operational in December. That database, created by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, was developed to ensure investigators, screeners and agents work off a unified set of antiterrorist information.
In his opening statement for the hearing, Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, said the screening center's support is "particularly important to our nation's first responders, our border protection officials, and the consular officers who adjudicate hundreds of visa applications every day."
However, Mr. Cox also raised concerns about the need for the watch list not to violate the privacy of Americans. "To be the right solution, the TSC must not come at the price of the civil rights or First Amendment freedoms of American citizens," he said.
Civil liberties groups say federal law-enforcement and intelligence officials are keeping the terror watch lists so secret by that mistakes are inevitable.
Mrs. Bucella said a process to address "misidentification issues" is in place.
"We recognize that with all of these capabilities also comes the responsibility to ensure that we continue to protect our civil liberties," she said. "Procedures are in place to review and promptly adjust or delete erroneous or outdated domestic terrorism information."
After the deadly hijackings of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration attempted to stem confusion caused by the existence of multiple terrorist watch lists by establishing a joint FBI-CIA Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), consolidating more than a dozen previous lists, including the State Department's TIPOFF database of more than 110,000 known and suspected terrorists.
In September, a few days after the two-year anniversary of the hijackings that killed about 3,000 people, officials announced the creation of the TSC to consolidate watch lists and provide round-the-clock operation support for federal screeners across the country and around the world.
Mrs. Bucella outlined several successes since the TSC became operational in September, including the establishment of a consolidated 24-hour call center that law-enforcement authorities can call to determine whether an individual in question is a suspected terrorist.
After a positive or negative match, "we help coordinate operation support as to how the person should be handled," Mrs. Bucella said. The system has fielded 2,000 calls since its inception.
--------
General: U.S. Wants Canada to Join Pact
March 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Canada-US-Security.html
TORONTO (AP) -- The United States would like Canada and eventually Mexico to join in a continent-wide pact to defend against terrorism, the deputy commander of NORAD said Friday.
Any initial move for a North American-wide defense structure would only involve Canada and the United States but could eventually include Mexico, said Lt. Gen. Ed Anderson.
``The threat to both of our homelands is real,'' Anderson told military leaders and academics at a conference on homeland defense and land force reserves in Calgary, Alberta.
Anderson said a North American version of NATO, the 19-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is being studied.
``Should we take NORAD and adapt some sort of a NATO-like organization?'' he asked.
``There should be no doubt in anybody's mind that there is an intent to attack free democracy ... and I will tell you they (terrorists) are working on weapons of mass destruction as their first choice,'' he said.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, provides warning of ballistic missile and aircraft attacks against the United States and Canada. But its mission has changed since the 2001 attacks to focus also on attacks within the country.
David Bercuson, director of the Center for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, endorsed the idea of a North American defense umbrella against terrorism.
The status quo on homeland security is working right now but will need to be upgraded, he said.
``I think a North American NATO is virtually inevitable. What we've got in place right now, the Binational Planning Group, is just that -- a planning group,'' said Bercuson.
Earlier this week Canada announced $454 million in new spending over five years on Canada's defenses against terrorism, bringing to more than $6.2 billion Canada has spent on enhancing security following Sept. 11, 2001.
The three-day conference ending Saturday has attracted delegates from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. It has focused on the best way to structure, train and deploy land force reserves for homeland defense.
--------
Missile Defense for Airliners Is Possible Soon, Makers Say
March 26, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/politics/26MISS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 25 - Government contractors who were asked to find a way to protect passenger jets from small shoulder-fired missiles in Al Qaeda's arsenal have determined that some planes could be outfitted with antimissile technology as early as this summer, far sooner than the Bush administration has suggested was possible.
The contractors' assessment, revealed in recent statements at industry gatherings and in interviews with executives, is likely to increase pressure on the administration to begin installing antimissile devices, particularly on larger planes flying to foreign destinations where Al Qaeda terror cells pose a clear threat.
The technology has been installed on military planes for years, offering laser-jamming equipment and decoy flares to deflect small missiles that are known to be in Al Qaeda's stockpiles.
"Can we do it in 90 to 120 days and protect the aircraft? Absolutely," said Paul Handwerker, a business development executive at BAE Systems, a British military supplier that is leading one of three groups of contractors selected by the Department of Homeland Security in January to develop the technology for passenger jets.
Mr. Handwerker said that while he agreed with the reasoning behind the government's timetable, the company's engineers "would find a way to do it much faster" if the request was made.
Jack Pledger, an executive who oversees antimissile systems for Northrop Grumman, another contractor selected for the program, said that laser-jamming devices installed by Northrop on military planes could be quickly converted to passenger jets. "We could do it right now," Mr. Pledger said. "If it became necessary to provide this system immediately, we're ready."
Western intelligence and law enforcement agencies have repeatedly warned in recent months that Qaeda terrorists intend to shoot down American and other Western passenger planes with shoulder-fired missiles, which can be bought on the black market for as little as $5,000 and weigh as little as 35 pounds.
In November 2002, two small Russian-made SA-7 missiles fired by terrorists believed to be loyal to Osama bin Laden's network barely missed an Israeli passenger jet on takeoff from Mombasa, Kenya.
Last year, the threat of a missile attack was considered so serious at Heathrow Airport in London that troops were stationed along flight paths into the airport for several days. A British arms dealer was arrested in New Jersey last summer on charges that he tried to sell a Russian-made surface-to-air missile to an American undercover agent posing as a Qaeda operative; the case against him is pending.
A study last November by the Congressional Research Service cited estimates from counterterrorism specialists of more than 5,000 small missiles in the stockpiles of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Although Al Qaeda has never been tied to the downing of a passenger plane in a missile attack, the study noted that there had been at least five missile attacks on large passenger jets around the world since 1983, two of them resulting in the destruction of the aircraft and the deaths of all 171 people on board. Four of the attacks were in Africa, including the one in Mombasa. One attack was in Afghanistan.
The Homeland Security Department announced last year that it was setting aside $100 million for a program to determine whether antimissile devices could be installed on passenger planes, with prototypes built this year or next.
The department's timetable has been criticized on Capitol Hill, where a group of lawmakers, most of them Democrats, has urged the government to move much faster and to commit billions of dollars to begin equipping planes immediately.
The department says that it is moving as quickly as it can and that it would be irresponsible to try to outfit passenger planes until the reliability, safety and cost-effectiveness of the antimissile device is demonstrated.
They note that military antimissile systems cost as much as $3 million per plane, require intensive maintenance and can produce a high rate of false alarms, factors that could be economically disastrous to the nation's already-beleaguered airline industry.
"What we're trying to avoid is taking shortcuts," said John J. Kubricky, who is directing antimissile research programs at the Department of Homeland Security. "I can't think of any way to speed this up and to do it safely and economically."
Mr. Kubricky said antimissile technology developed for high-performance military jets was not readily applicable to passenger planes, which fly for hundreds of hours without extensive maintenance. "It's like taking the family car and comparing it to a Nascar racer," he said.
In January, the department announced that three groups of technology contractors - one led by BAE Systems, one led by Northrop and one led by United Airlines, a division of UAL Corporation, and Avisys, a small technology company in Texas - had each been awarded $2 million contracts to determine how passenger planes might be outfitted with military-style antimissile devices.
In announcing the awards, the department said it was trying to determine if there was "viable and effective" technology to protect passenger jets.
The recent comments of the contractors have alarmed officials at the Department of Homeland Security, and they have urged the contractors to refrain from such optimistic public pronouncements.
The contractors say that while they can move more quickly, they are pleased to operate within the government's timeline. "The Department of Homeland Security is taking a prudent and proper approach to evaluating the technologies," said Mr. Pledger at Northrop.
Mr. Handwerker of BAE Systems said his company supported the department's goal of creating antimissile devices for passenger planes that "make everything much more cost-effective, much easier to maintain - orders of magnitude more reliable than what is normal in a military environment."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Judge Won't Dismiss Guantanamo Spy Case
Reuters
Friday, March 26, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24875-2004Mar25.html
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif., March 25 -- A U.S. military judge denied a motion Thursday to dismiss the case against a Syrian American airman accused of spying at the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Donald G. Rehkopf, a civilian lawyer for Ahmad Halabi, asked a military court Wednesday to dismiss the case because he did not have access to important documents he needs to defend his client.
Military Court Judge Barbara Brand denied the request but said she would allow Halabi's defense team greater access to evidence.
Halabi, who is in a military prison pending trial, is charged with espionage connected to his work at Guantanamo, the military base where the United States maintains a prison camp for suspected al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.
"I find there is evidence that there is information not provided to defense counsel that is relevant," Brand said. "I find there is an ongoing intelligence investigation, and there is an ongoing criminal investigation with potential new charges."
Halabi formerly worked in the low-level position of supply clerk at Travis Air Force Base, 50 miles north of San Francisco, before being pressed into service as a translator because of a U.S. military shortage of Arabic speakers.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
White House, Pentagon Sued for Perchlorate Documents
LOS ANGELES, California, (ENS)
March 26, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/mar2004/2004-03-26-09.asp#anchor2
A chemical component of rocket fuel, perchlorate has been used in 49 states, and has been released into the environment in at least half of those states, contaminating the drinking water of more than 20 million Americans, especially in California. Perchlorate harms the thyroid gland and is most harmful to infants.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) knows at least that much about perchlorate, but there is a great deal that the national environmental organization still does not know.
It does not know the nature of the defense industry's involvement in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) assessment of perchlorate's safety and would like to know more about White House lobbying on behalf of the defense industry.
The NRDC suspects that the extent of perchlorate contamination in the nation's drinking water and the threat it poses to public health is greater than what has been revealed to the American people, but to date three federal agencies have been unresponsive to NRDC requests for more information.
On Wednesday, the organization filed suit in federal district court in Los Angeles seeking the court's help in obtaining the information it seeks. The NRDC's lawsuit asks the court to force these agencies to turn over relevant documents, as they are required to do under the Freedom of Information Act.
The NRDC lawsuit charges that the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the EPA have violated the law by refusing to disclose the documents sought by the organization under the Freedom of Information Act.
"This is likely the latest example of the Bush administration scheming with its industry friends behind closed doors to undermine safeguards for our children's health," said NRDC attorney Aaron Colangelo. "The public has a right to know the extent of this contamination, and whether the Bush administration is sacrificing the health of our children to satisfy corporate polluters' demands."
"It appears that the White House and Pentagon have joined forces with a handful of defense contractors to stop EPA from doing its job," said NRDC attorney Erik Olson.
The Bush administration and the Defense Department recently proposed legislation to exempt DOD and its industry contractors from legal responsibility to clean up perchlorate contamination. Drinking water utilities, worried about perchlorate pollution of tap water, have opposed these proposals.
Perchlorate interferes with thyroid hormone uptake. Because thyroid hormones are necessary for normal growth and development, perchlorate exposure can harm brain development in fetuses and newborn babies. Perchlorate also poses a threat to people who already have thyroid problems or an iodine deficiency, which includes 15 percent of U.S. women of childbearing age, the NRDC says.
"Perchlorate contamination," said Dr. Gina Solomon, an NRDC physician, "potentially threatens the health of tens of millions of Americans, particularly fetuses and newborns."
The NRDC believes that it would cost the Pentagon and the defense industry many millions of dollars to clean up the perchlorate in drinking water, and that is why, NRDC says it is told by sources inside EPA, the Bush White House has blocked the EPA's efforts to deal with perchlorate water contamination.
----
Parks Chief to Better Manage Costs
Move Aims to Prevent Reduction of Hours and Services
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 26, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24889-2004Mar25.html
The director of the National Park Service pledged yesterday to pare back official travel and better manage several large construction projects to prevent cuts in park hours and services.
The promise from Fran P. Mainella came six days after leaders of the House Interior appropriations subcommittee rebuked Park Service officials over an internal memo that proposed playing down prospective cuts and blaming them on tight budgets if necessary.
The Park Service's operations budget has increased nearly 47 percent, to $1.61 billion, in the past decade, the lawmakers noted. The agency, which has about 20,000 employees, also has added more than 700 full-time workers over that time, even as the number of park visitors has dropped by 3 percent. Members of Congress said improving management of expenses, such as $44 million in official travel last year, would be a more appropriate answer to the agency's financial woes.
At the subcommittee's hearing yesterday, Mainella told lawmakers that "I have heard you loud and clear" and later added that "we will get that job done."
She said she will immediately suspend almost all foreign travel, which cost the Park Service $650,000 in fiscal 2002, $300,000 last year and $100,000 so far this year. She said she will impose a 10 percent reduction in domestic travel by officials at the national and regional headquarters, and substitute teleconferencing for some other trips.
She said parks officials also will review all construction projects that cost more than $5 million, and she will try to determine why the agency did not hold required consultations with Congress before the projects began. The large projects often involve cost-sharing with outside groups. Lawmakers complained that they had learned too late of four such projects, including what they called a $100 million visitor center at Valley Forge National Historical Park in Pennsylvania, that together will cost the federal government more than $75 million.
Thomas M. Daly, president of the nonprofit National Center for the American Revolution in Wayne, Pa., the private partner supporting the Valley Forge project, said lawmakers were mistaken. The project is a museum, not a visitor center, and Congress passed a measure in 1999 authorizing its construction, he said.
"I have briefed committee staff on the project, as well," Daly said in an interview. He did not attend the hearing.
Committee spokesman John Scofield said Congress may have authorized it, but no required consultations with lawmakers took place before the money started to flow.
Mainella stopped short of promising lawmakers that there would be no changes to park hours or services. She reserved the right to "do some tweaking" if visitor traffic patterns warrant it, she said.
Panel Chairman Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.) said: "I would never say never on cutting back. After you weigh your options, you may have hard decisions you need to make."
Rep. Norman D. Dicks (Wash.), the panel's ranking Democrat, said Mainella was not wholly to blame. The Park Service in recent years has had to absorb more than $170 million in costs for federal pay raises, increased homeland security measures and hurricane clean-up efforts, he said. Lawmakers had an obligation to keep a check on the agency, too, he said.
"We in the Congress haven't done as good a job in oversight," Dicks said.
The hearing was prompted by news reports of a memo that asked park superintendents in the Northeast to develop lists of possible cuts, such as closing visitor centers on federal holidays.
The memo advised park officials to "be sure that adjustments are taken from as many areas as is possible so that it won't cause public or political controversy." It also directed officials not to call the changes cuts, and to blame them on fiscal constraints if questioned by a reporter.
Mainella told lawmakers the memo, written by another official, was just a misunderstood attempt to identify park needs. Officials "are not trying to keep anything under wraps," she said.
"I would rather the wording have been different," she told reporters, "because I think it was a communications challenge to interpret what that was about."
--------
EPA Orders Cleaner Gas in Denver
March 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Denver-Air.html
DENVER (AP) -- The government has ordered Denver-area gas merchants to sell cleaner-burning gasoline beginning this summer, a decision that is expected to increase retail prices for millions of drivers.
The Environmental Protection Agency's order, announced Thursday, brought immediate complaints from industry officials who said it raises the possibility of shortages and higher costs.
Those officials should not have been surprised, said Richard Long, director of the EPA's regional Air and Radiation Program.
Long said Denver was the only metropolitan area in the country that had received waivers from a 1991 federal requirement for the cleaner gasoline.
``Twelve years is probably adequate warning,'' Long said Friday.
The smog that for years obscured Denver's view of the Rockies is gone, due to various environmental improvements, but ozone -- made up of industrial pollution and car exhaust -- has become a problem in the fast-growing city.
Last summer, ozone readings in the Denver area peaked at their highest levels in 20 years and violated federal air quality standards more than 30 times, Long said.
The EPA said consumers should expect to pay about 1 cent per gallon more as a result of the change, in a region where prices have climbed above $2 per gallon.
Industry officials said that estimate is too low, and complained that the agency also failed to consider potential complications, including possible shortages.
Stan Dempsey Jr., president of the Colorado Petroleum Association, said he believed his refiners can supply the cleaner burning gas, ``it's just how much they can supply.''
The requirement will be in effect from June through September. Like other cold areas of the nation, Denver will revert for the rest of the year to gasoline that is less clean, but allows cars to start more easily.
On the Net:
EPA: http://www.epa.gov/compliance/civil/federal/caa.html
-------- ACTIVISTS
25 Killed in Antigovernment Protest in Ivory Coast
March 26, 2004
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/26/international/africa/26IVOR.html
DAKAR, Senegal, March 25 - Violent clashes erupted on the streets of Abidjan, the commercial capital of Ivory Coast, on Thursday, killing 25 people, prompting rebels to withdraw from a power-sharing government and raising new doubts about the prospects for disarmament.
Ivory Coast was once an oasis of stability in West Africa, but the outbreak of war in September 2002 left the country partitioned between government and rebel-held territories. Under a French-brokered peace accord, rebels and opposition parties joined a government of national reconciliation, French troops monitored a cease-fire between the warring parties, and plans were under way to deploy a United Nations peacekeeping force. The first of 6,000 peacekeepers were to arrive next month.
Then, on Thursday, came the deadliest outbreak of violence in Abidjan since the start of the conflict. Anti-government protesters, in defiance of a ban on public demonstrations, tried to take to the streets to denounce what they called President Laurent Gbagbo's failure to carry out the peace plan. The opposition had argued that despite the protest ban, the president's supporters had been allowed to march in the past.
They were met with swift force. Helicopter gunships dropped tear gas on the city, a French military spokesman reported. The police fanned out across Abidjan, blocking efforts by protesters to reach the city center. By the end of the day, the city was ghostly quiet and the state radio reported 25 dead. The Red Cross said its workers had picked up 45 wounded people.
In Abidjan, a United Nations official called the outbreak "a huge setback" to efforts at reconciliation.
Of particular concern was the apparent collapse of a power-sharing government and suggestions by the rebels that disarming their troops, a primary element of the peace accord, would not take place for the time being.
"Disarmament is not a priority anymore," said Sidiki Konate, a spokesman for the rebel group New Forces. "Killing unarmed people, is that not war?"
Mr. Konate said his group would suspend its participation in the transitional government. Two opposition parties have also pulled out.
Asked about the casualties, an Ivorian Army spokesman said demonstrators had tried to snatch police weapons and attack security forces. The government, he added, had warned the opposition not to march.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.