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NUCLEAR
Water put at risk by nuke sites
Worker Training Is Focus after Mishap at Amarillo
Africa: Oil, al-Qaeda and the US military
Sellafield ruling confirmed
EU tells Blair to clean up Sellafield
EC criticises Sellafield operators
U.S. Panel Hears Testimony on Khan's Nuke Activities
US Rep. Pallone slams Bush for new status to Pakistan
Senate Panels to Get New Iraq Weapons Report
North Korea Rejects US Proposal on Nuclear Row
Ukraine seeks to ease worries over hundreds of missing missiles
Health officials say tests would detect Rocky Flats pollution
Duke wants nuclear security waiver
Caustic soils at Hanford may lock up contaminants fast
Tank farms under review
The First Bush War
Abuse of Govt Power
White House Letter Sent to Sept 11. Commission
MILITARY
Indian airforce chief's "goodwill" France visit
Powell Offers U.S. Help to Uzbekistan After Terrorist Attacks
Key Events in Uzbekistan Since 1991
New blast, shootout in Uzbekistan
Suicide Bombings, Attacks Kill 19 in Uzbekistan
Iraq Contracts Give Halliburton Headaches
Taiwan's President Maintains Hard Line
China Detains 3 Relatives of Victims at Tiananmen
Bremer offers grim assessment of security challenges in Iraq
UK plays roulette with Iraqi refugees
Investigators to inquire into Chalabi's use of US money
Attacks Test Muslim Unity in Iraq
Peru, Chile build up defenses
Arab summit blow-up appears bad for Bush
7 Former Communist Countries Join NATO
Official: NATO May Lead Int'l Iraq Force
Washington seeks NATO-Mideast cooperation
Chechen Rebel Threatens to Strike Russians
U.S. Takes First Step To Weaponize Space
Annan Fires Top Security Adviser Over Iraq Bombing
U.N. Envoy Sent to Shape Plan for Iraq
Wartime Stress
At the Center of the Storm Over Bush And Science
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Rice 9/11 Testimony May Be Released
White House Said to Agree to Let Rice Answer Questions Publicly
Newsview: 9 / 11 Reversal Puts Rice on Spot
Justices Weigh Challenge To Ala. Execution Method
Emergency Plans Found Lacking GAO: Essential Services at Risk
Bill Would Speed Anti - Missile Device for Planes
UN warns over EU asylum rules
Indonesia warns of terrorists getting nuclear arms
OTHER
'Dead zones' in world's oceans are growing, say alarmed UN scientists
More Evidence Found of How Vitamins Prevent Cancer
Chechnya villagers block highway to protest abductions
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Water put at risk by nuke sites
Report says threat of contamination remains serious
By Larry Bivins and Greg Wright
Gannett News Service
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
http://www.chillicothegazette.com/news/stories/20040330/localnews/176667.html
WASHINGTON -- Major sources of drinking water remain at risk of serious contamination from the nation's nuclear weapons complexes, despite billions in federal spending to clean up hazardous waste produced at these sites, according to a new report released Monday.
The seepage of radioactive and toxic byproducts into vital water resources pose grave health dangers to the tens of thousands of workers at these nuclear facilities, area residents and people who live dozens of miles away, authors of the report concluded.
Long-term exposure to such radioactive materials, including cesium, mercury, strontium, plutonium, trichloroethylene and uranium, could cause heart disease and cancer.
"There is an extremely serious risk around sites where there is a lot of waste and precious groundwater," said Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
Based on a two-year study conducted by the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, a coalition of about 30 environmental, health and safety organizations, the report contends that the Department of Energy has been retreating from a commitment to clean up these sites. The department has spent an estimated $200 billion so far, the report said.
"Cleaning up the legacy of U.S. nuclear weapons production is the biggest environmental project in the nation's history, but DOE has failed to eliminate the threat of contamination to major water supplies," said Susan Gordon, the alliance's director.
The Energy Department rejected the alliance's report. A spokeswoman defended the department's cleanup efforts.
"We follow the federal and state regulatory requirements to protect the environment surrounding our sites, including groundwater safety standards," said Chris Kielich, a DOE spokeswoman. "Our sites are cleaner today because we have made dramatic progress in cleaning up our facilities under the accelerated cleanup plan."
Vina Colley, a spokeswoman for the Portsmouth/Piketon Residents for Environmental Safety and Security in Ohio, pointed out the far-reaching impact of contamination.
"Our water goes down to Cincinnati and the Mississippi River," she said. "We're affecting everybody all over the place with this water."
A recent report found radioactive pollutants in drinking water 70 miles downstream from the Savannah River weapons site near Augusta, Ga., and Aiken, S.C., said Lou Zeller, director of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, which keeps track of cleanup at the site.
Among the major water bodies facing the greatest threat are the Columbia River in Washington, the Clinch River in Tennessee, the Great Miami River in Ohio and the Savannah River in South Carolina, the alliance said. Ohio's Great Miami Aquifer, the Ogallala Aquifer in Texas and Idaho's Snake River Aquifer are among the underground water sources being polluted, the report said.
Kingston, Tenn.; Richland, Wash.; and Cincinnati are among the cities that rely almost exclusively on at-risk aquifers or rivers for drinking water.
"The record shows that a veritable toxic soup of contamination" has affected groundwater well beyond the boundaries of the nation's 13 weapons sites, said Marvin Resnikoff, whose firm Radioactive Waste Management Associates conducted the technical research for the study.
----
Worker Training Is Focus after Mishap at Amarillo, Texas, Nuclear-Bomb Plant
By Jim McBride,
Amarillo Globe-News,
Texas Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Tue, Mar. 30, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/national/8315478.htm
Mar. 29 - Pantex Plant is bolstering worker training, procedures and document reviews in the wake of a Jan. 8 incident when weapons technicians taped and moved a cracked high-explosive charge while dismantling a nuclear warhead.
Steve Erhart, senior scientific and technical adviser for the Pantex Site Office, said contractor BWXT Pantex has finished a corrective action plan and Pantex was satisfied with the document.
The plan has been presented to top National Nuclear Security Administration officials and the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board.
Erhart said the Pantex Site Office conducted an internal self-assessment of the incident to review how plant workers responded. The assessment, he said, concluded workers' actions were proper and the incident was reported in a timely fashion up the chain of command.
"Further, we concluded that local oversight of the nuclear explosive charge control process and weapons-specific training for facility representatives, although satisfactory, could be enhanced," Erhart said in a statement.
Contractor BWXT Pantex also convened a review board of senior managers, engineers and weapons lab experts to study the incident.
According to a safety board report, workers discovered the cracked high explosive during dismantlement work on the W-56, a retired nuclear weapon that is carried on a Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile.
"The configuration of the partially dismantled weapon and the nature of the cracks appear to have increased the opportunities for dropping all or part of the explosives and hence increased the potential for a violent reaction," the report said.
But Pantex officials said Friday the Jan. 8 incident did not pose a safety problem.
"Our investigation determined that there was never, at any time, a safety issue related to this incident. The safe control of all components and materials was maintained at all times," Jud Simmons, a BWXT Pantex spokesman, said in a statement. "The technicians were working in a safe and professional manner. They performed the process as they were trained, and they stopped work when appropriate."
John Conway, chairman of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, said a weapons lab's nuclear safety expert should have helped workers responding to the incident and workers could have halted the procedure more quickly.
"I think they should have stopped it sooner ... They called for assistance -- that's the key thing -- and the laboratory had a so-called expert there, who did not come down to eyeball it, but rendered an opinion that all they had to do was tape it up," he said. "Then it was taped, but not the way the safety expert would have done it presumably, as I have been told."
Conway said assistance from laboratory weapons experts also should be stepped up.
During the incident, workers were removing a high-explosives charge from a plutonium weapons core during a final dismantlement procedure.
"The investigation team also concluded that enhancements in training, procedure development and document review would benefit the plant's operations, and these improvements are currently being communicated to our employees," Simmons said.
Dismantlement operations are expected to resume after additional reviews and process enhancements are finished.
The defense safety board earlier credited Pantex workers for their response but questioned the effectiveness of Pantex training and procedures for ensuring safe nuclear explosive operations.
Experts from California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory should help Pantex officials as they do follow-up work, Conway said.
"The main thing right now, if I say something, is that we make sure that the laboratory at Livermore -- particularly since it was one of their weapons -- gives them the assistance that they need on what they are going to do now with this unit," he said.
Conway said the Pantex contractor has completed its portion of the analysis, but more work is needed.
-------- africa
Africa: Oil, al-Qaeda and the US military
By Ritt Goldstein
Asia Times
Mar 30, 2004
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC30Aa02.html
Africa's Maghreb and Sahel regions recently exploded into world view with allegations that the Madrid bombers were tied to those areas' "al Qaeda" groups. And while United States concerns about terrorism in the region have been increasingly voiced, critics of the administration of President George W Bush say that the ongoing US pursuit of energy resources lies behind them. As early as the fall of 2002, Britain's Economist magazine charged that oil "is the only American interest in Africa".
In a fall 2003 interview with Asia Times Online, noted US security analyst Michael Klare, author of Resource Wars, had warned of America's potential African involvement. When queried as to where the next oil flash point might be after Iraq, Klare replied: "I've been looking at Africa. It's heating up over there."
Illustrating the basis for such statements, in 2001 Vice President Dick Cheney's report on a US National Energy Policy declared Africa to be one of America's "fastest-growing sources of oil and gas". By February 1, 2002, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Walter Kansteiner, declared: "This [African oil] has become of national strategic interest to us." And a December 2001 report by the US National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2015, forecast that by 2015 a full quarter of US oil imports would come from Africa.
During this past February, a handful of top US generals visited Africa in separate and far from usual trips. They included the US's European commander, Marine General James L Jones, as well as the European deputy commander, Air Force, General Charles Wald. And excluding the region known as the Horn of Africa, the US European Command oversees the US's African actions.
The trips occurred against a widely reported backdrop of increasing pressures from US industry and conservative policy groups to secure energy sources outside the Middle East.
Over the past several months, the US has been in the process of dispatching Special Forces troops to the countries of Africa's Sahel - Mauritania, Chad, Mali and Niger. The effort is part of a program dubbed the Pan Sahel Initiative, designed to provide anti-terrorism training to the region's military. Others have termed it a program to train regional armies.
Involved US Special Forces groups are operating out of Germany, where an investigation of the Madrid bombers is also ongoing. And military cooperation with Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia has reportedly been increased as well. But it is the fairly recent and substantial oil discoveries that are said to be fueling this effort, and as the Washington Times declared in a headline on February 26: "US eyes terrorism networks, oil in Africa."
In Colombia, similar US undertakings to train local forces have been previously pursued to secure that country's oil infrastructure, particularly its pipelines. There, the leftist group known by the Spanish acronym FARC has long waged a guerilla campaign, pipeline sabotage being a favored tactic. Similarly, ongoing pipeline sabotage in Iraq is reported as substantial. And in a surprising revelation of US Defense Department candor, a December 2003 report referred to the "open-ended imperial policing" that Iraqi involvement now means.
Casting a new light on the Madrid bombing on March 11, the primary group allegedly behind the attack, Salafia Jihadia, was said to have singled out Spain in the May 16, 2003, Morocco bombings. A private Spanish club, Casa de Espana, was the most severely damaged among the five targets in Morocco. The other targets included: the Israeli Alliance club and a Jewish cemetery, the Belgian consulate (Belgium's business community has been very active in Morocco), and a hotel for business people. The Moroccan economy is in the throes of "structural reforms", and increasing privatization is straining relations within the country.
The May bombing followed a summer 2002 standoff between Spain and Morocco over a disputed island, Spanish commandos eventually reclaiming it from Moroccan control. A long-simmering dispute also exists between Spain and Morocco over two remaining Spanish sovereignty enclaves in the country, Ceuta and Melilla. Considerably more Spanish troops are said to garrison these enclaves than were dispatched by Madrid to Iraq. And some speculate that beyond Islamist objectives, the motivation behind Madrid's blasts may have included some very traditional, anti-imperialist sentiment.
In a surprisingly timely commentary on the agenda of Salafia Jihadia, just two days prior to the Madrid attacks, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), George Tenet, testified before the Senate Committee on Armed Services. He specifically cited Salafia, saying that it was among "small local groups with limited domestic agendas". He added that these groups "have autonomous leadership, they pick their own targets, they plan their own attacks".
Yet according to Agence France-Presse, the Madrid attacks are now said to have been planned at a "rear base" of al-Qaeda, located where Morocco borders Mali, Mauritania and Algeria. An Algerian group, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), was also allegedly involved. And as with every other major bombing over the past several months, Jordanian-Palestinian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is alleged to have been the "mastermind", though some experts in the intelligence community have expressed doubts.
In the case of the old anti-communist movement and mind set, all communists were once lumped together, their many groups and factions considered essentially as one led by the Soviet Union. A similar mind set is demonstrated by many in the West regarding today's Islamic militants. Some analysts say this as indeed the case, noting that while those who today are called "al-Qaeda" share a certain commonality, the differences between groups is often great. Notably, there existed such differences between communist groups and nations that they occasionally led to armed confrontation, warfare and splits, as in the case of China vs Vietnam and Sino-Soviet tensions and split.
But in mid-March the GSPC reportedly did fight a running battle with forces from Niger and then Chad, with the US reported to have flown food, blankets and medical supplies from Germany to aid Chad's forces. And with the basing of US military efforts in Germany, one explanation for Germany's ongoing terror investigations becomes apparent.
Subsequent to the Niger and Chad GSPC battles, US concerns about the GSPC attempting to topple the governments of Mauritania and Algeria were reported. But, in the recent debate over so-called "intelligence failures", a pattern of wildly "exaggerating" known threats has also been reported. And it is now also widely accepted that such exaggerations provided the basis for the US's military involvement in Iraq.
The GSPC has been long fighting to topple the Algerian government and install an Islamic state. But this resistance arose after the Algerian government canceled the 1992 election in order to "keep an Islamic party from coming to power", according to the Toronto Star. And while the pro-US Mauritania government of Maaouyah Ould Sid Ahmed Taya fought off a June 2003 coup attempt, it was widely reported as by Islamists from within that country's own military, not the GSPC.
Taya himself came to power in a 1984 coup and elections in that country are broadly described as "suspect". Mauritania is also widely acknowledged as a country where slavery still exists, and the Washington Times reported in July 2003 that "Mr Taya, like other pro-American leaders in the Arab world, has cracked down on political and religious opposition".
Paradoxically, if US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's so-called "democratic wave" were to actually engulf the region, it appears that hardest hit would be the bulk of US allies. But Mauritania and Algeria both have oil.
In a perspective of the oil industry shared by many in the non-governmental organization community, in a January interview with Asia Times Online, Jim Paul, executive director of the New York-based Global Policy Forum, observed: "The oil industry is all about super-profits. Since everyone is pursuing this, and the marketplace doesn't effectively regulate it, there's been war, bribery and corruption virtually wherever the oil industry goes."
In 2002, Rice's old firm, Chevron Texaco (she was a director), had said that while it invested US$5 billion in Africa over the previous five years, it would invest $20 billion over the next five.
Given such US energy investment, it's no surprise that a 2002 edition of Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections, a highly respected industry newsletter, said in a headline: "US moves to protect interest in African oil." And while several authorities were quoted as emphasizing that Africa's oil supplies were free from any major threats, the piece added that the Bush administration was determined to "ensure that they remain so".
But a steady evolution - and deterioration - of the African security environment has been reported to the media by US officials. Whereas in 2002 the continent offered apparently stable oil field conditions, that assessment was changed almost simultaneously with the level of domestic US pressures to acquire African oil; a substantive al-Qaeda threat materializing proportionate to the need for oil. And some believe that Secretary of State Colin Powell best illustrated a methodology that explained such circumstances last summer.
At a July 10 press conference in South Africa, Powell was asked how he would respond to critics who charged that the US's new focus on Africa was really about African oil. Powell replied that "we are not here for any other purpose than to demonstrate our friendship, to demonstrate our commitment, and to see if we can help people in need".
Recent questions have been raised in the US Congress regarding the administration's apparent pursuit of cynical ploys and misleading verbiage in its pronouncements.
As regards help for those in need, the tiny West African island-state of Sao Tome has been rumored since 2002 as the site for a potential US naval base. Sao Tome's strategic position in the Gulf of Guinea, where recent deep-water oil finds have been made, led to a meeting between Bush and Sao Tome's then-president Fradique de Menezes in 2002.
The US allies in the area have virtually no blue-water navy, and Sao Tome holds jointly with Nigeria an area with a reported potential of 11 billion barrels of oil. Many of the other newly discovered African reserves are located offshore as well.
While a July 2003 military coup - which shortly followed Powell's African trip - ousted president de Menezes, within the past two weeks (this March) said "US experts" began training the island's security apparatus, voicing concerns about al-Qaeda operating in the West African region.
As a US Defense Department document this winter by Dr Jeffrey Record said: "The contemporary language on terrorism has become, as Conor Gearty puts it, 'the rhetorical servant of the established order'." It emphasized that almost nothing matters "a jot against the contemporary power of the terrorist label".
Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broad sheets such as Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.
-------- europe
Sellafield ruling confirmed
Tue, 30 Mar 2004
EUpolitix.com
http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/News/200403/36db4f96-f2a9-452f-903a-1d56f0d425d6.htm
The European Commission is to order the UK to let EU safety inspectors check on the controversial Sellafield nuclear power plant, following a decision on Tuesday.
Brussels claims that British authorities have for almost 20 years blocked attempts to investigate nuclear waste at the power plant - most recently whilst insisting on full nuclear checks in Iraq.
"British Nuclear Fuels has breached [the Euratom Treaty]... we consider there has been a continuous failure to provide operational records. BNFL is continuing to fail to allow inspectors to inspect," sources told EUpolitix.com.
"We request before May 2004 a comprehensive plan that ensures all nuclear material... is accounted for and becomes available for inspection."
Diplomats suggest that the inquiry may have been prompted in part by the UK's refusal to support a controversial 'nuclear package' of proposals currently struggling to make it through the Brussels decision making process.
Opposition from the UK, along with Germany, Sweden and Finland, has left the nuclear package stranded; a fact which insiders believe may have led the commission to retaliate with Tuesday's decision.
But commission sources refute any suggestion that the decision is "political". "The fact is legal, there is an infringement," he said.
But Brussels does put the decision in the context of enlargement and Euratom requirements on East European nuclear plants which come into force on May 1.
"All member states must be treated in the same way, whether you are the UK, or Czechoslovakia or whatever," said a source.
With regard to Sellafield, the EU objects in particular to the UK's failure to say exactly how much plutonium waste is stored in the outdoor 'pond' known as B30.
Radioactivity around B30 is so high that employees can only in safety spend one hour a day there.
The ponds have existed since the 1950s, when no proper records were kept, and the commission has been asking for things to be set straight since 1986 when the site came under the remit of Euratom, the EU nuclear watchdog.
The commission claims that a transfer of plutonium is now "highly overdue" and that a significant amount of plutonium "of strategically important nuclear fuel is not properly accounted for".
"The remaining nuclear material [in B30] is old, unidentified fuel stored in skips or sludge accumulated at the bottom of the pond," states the commission.
Britain in December 2003 admitted that "it has long been recognised that conditions in B30 mean the safeguard verification activities that can be carried out are limited".
Brussels also says that Sellafield has continuously failed to keep proper operating and accounting records.
A spokesman for the commission said that failure to comply with the deadline could lead to penalties for BNFL.
He confirmed that this would mean fines, but refused to give details of the amounts that could be involved.
----
EU tells Blair to clean up Sellafield
Tue 30 March, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=485723§ion=finance
STRASBOURG, France - The European Union has told Britain to clean up its controversial nuclear plant Sellafield or face fines, after losing patience with London's refusal over decades to allow full safety inspections.
In a faint echo of Tony Blair's bid to gain access to Iraq's nuclear facilities, the EU executive on Tuesday said Britain had failed to allow EU inspections to make sure nuclear material did not end up in nuclear weapons.
"The UK operator British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) has failed to comply with the...rules concerning accounting for nuclear material and the access of Commission inspectors to nuclear material to check the nature and quality and quantity of the material," European Commission chief spokesman Reijo Kemppinen told a news conference.
The Commission, which polices nuclear safety across the 15-nation bloc, has asked Britain to devise a plan to clean up Sellafield by June 1, extending London's deadline by an extra month than originally planned. The problem centres on B30, a series of reinforced concrete ponds that store radioactive waste under water at the Sellafield plant.
"It is impossible to determine accurately the quantities of material stored and on the spot inspections cannot take place because of the high level of radiation and poor visibility in the part of the facility concerned," the Commission said in a statement.
If state-owned BNFL does not comply with the decision, the Commission could fine the company.
Greenpeace welcomed the decision, saying the 50-year old B30 ponds contained 1.3 million tonnes of plutonium, posing a major risk for workers and people living nearby.
"The UK Government and BNFL have prevaricated for years despite the fact that they knew there was a huge problem," said Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Jean McSorley, adding that the Commission should have acted 14 years earlier.
----
EC criticises Sellafield operators
March 30, 2004
RTE Ireland
http://www.rte.ie/news/2004/0330/sellafield.html
The European Commission has strongly criticised the operators of the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria over failures in its accounting of radioactive material and providing access to inspectors.
The commission also set a deadline of 1 June for British Nuclear Fuels to come up with a plan to clean up a radioactive lake on the site.
Last Friday senior officials from British Nuclear Fuels were in Co Louth in a bid to reassure councillors there that Sellafield was safe.
Unfortunately for them, the trip coincided with reports that the company could not account for how much plutonium was in an old reinforced concrete pond called B30.
The BNFL officials denied they had restricted access to the site and had explanations for the absence of key records.
A spokesman for the Minister for the Environment, Martin Cullen, said the EC ruling was 'hugely significant' as the commission was no longer going to be 'fobbed off' with 'vague information'.
In relation to B30, the spokesman said it was 'alarming' that BNFL could not say how much plutonium was actually in the pond.
-------- india / pakistan
U.S. Panel Hears Testimony on Khan's Nuke Activities
By REUTERS
March 30, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-usa-pakistan.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was aware of Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear black market activities for at least a few years, but political pressures kept him from moving aggressively against Khan until recently, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said on Tuesday.
But Bolton reaffirmed Washington's view that Musharraf and other top Pakistani officials were not ``complicit in or approved of (Khan's) proliferation activities'' and therefore are not subject to U.S. sanctions.
Bolton, testifying before a congressional committee, came under fire from opposition Democrats.
They accused the Bush administration of failing to hold Pakistan's leaders accountable for Khan's blackmarket activities and for not using economic muscle to keep countries and companies from doing business with Iran and North Korea.
With Iran and North Korea's nuclear activities a growing concern for Washington, nonproliferation issues could loom large in the 2004 election.
Since Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, confessed in February to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya, U.S. officials have insisted only Khan was responsible, not Musharraf and his government.
Bolton reiterated that position, saying U.S. officials investigated Khan's activities and ``we have no evidence that President Musharraf and top officials of the government of Pakistan are complicit.''
But under questioning by the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee, Bolton said Musharraf was aware of Khan's activities when he fired him as head of Khan Research Laboratory in the year 2001.
DIFFICULT QUESTION
``I think it was a very difficult question for President
Musharraf in the face of the internal political dynamic in Pakistan, which has resulted in the past two months ... in two assassination attempts against him,'' Bolton said.
``In fact, it was the exposure of the Iranian nuclear weapons program...and (Libyan leader Muammar) Gaddfi's decision to forswear all of his WMDprograms that brought us to the point that it was possible for Musharraf to take the actions that he did,'' Bolton said.
Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, had to balance U.S. demands for action on Khan against a risk of angering the army, his base of support, experts say.
Rep. Gary Ackerman, a New York Democrat, accused President Bush of giving Pakistan ``a pass on proliferating nuclear technology.''
He acknowledged Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and a U.S. desire not to destabilize him, but said Washington has already done enough by waiving sanctions on Pakistan and giving it $2 billion in aid over two years.
Bush's most recent decision making Pakistan a non-NATO ally goes too far, said Ackerman, adding: ``This double standard with regard to Pakistan makes a mockery of our nonproliferation efforts around the world.''
Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman of California faulted the administration for being ``all too willing to risk American lives and to use our very effective military (in Iraq) but utterly unwilling to use tactics that might inconvenience corporations or our trading partners'' that could force problem states to end proliferation.
One example is North Korea which relies on energy subsidies from China. The administration has not threatened China with a loss of even some of its $130 billion access to U.S. markets if it does not reduce the North's subsidies, he said.
----
US Rep. Pallone slams Bush for new status to Pakistan
Aziz Haniffa in Washington DC
March 30, 2004
IST Rediff.com (India)
http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/mar/30aziz.htm
Democratic Representative Frank Pallone, India's staunch ally in the US Congress, on Monday night slammed the Bush administration for conferring major non-NATO ally status on Pakistan.
In a special order speech in the House Pallone warned that the 'results of this new designation will be devastating'. Pallone is the founder and former co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans. He said the new status could throw a spanner in the rapprochement process between the two countries.
While acknowledging that the Congress has advocated 'for the US to view India and Pakistan as two separate, distinct nations', Pallone said, "At the same time we have advocated for fair treatment based on record of democracy, commitment to ending terrorism, and a variety of values important to the United States."
"India is a strong, vibrant democracy of over 50 years and Pakistan is a rogue nation under military rule. India's nuclear programme is civilian controlled and Pakistan's nuclear programme was sold to nations such as Libya, Iran and North Korea to assist illegal covert nuclear weapons programmes," he said.
"India is protecting its citizens from terrorism in Kashmir and Pakistan is sponsoring terrorist activity in its own backyard," he added.
Thus, Pallone argued, "I am taken aback by the new designation that the US has bestowed upon Pakistan."
"Not only was I surprised, but India as a nation was surprised as well, particularly since Powell had just met with India's leaders, but he did not mention the new status of Pakistan that was soon to be announced," he said.
He asserted that naming Pakistan as a major non-NATO ally 'is completely inconsistent with US policies.
"Pakistan is not a democratic nation, Pakistan supports terrorism in Kashmir, and Pakistan has engaged in nuclear activity for which it has recently pardoned the key scientist who aided covert nuclear programs in rogue nations," he said.
Pallone warned the new status accorded Pakistan 'will lead to severe implications in the South Asian region'.
"It is unclear what this status means in legal terms, but the most immediate concern is that a rapid and large-scale supply of American military equipment will flow from the US to Pakistan, including the possibility of F-16s," he said.
"This is very concerning because US military supplies that were given to Pakistan for use against Russia and China have been historically used against India," he said. "Given the current climate of the conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, any additional weapons provided to Pakistan will likely be used to escalate this conflict between the two nations and has the potential to build up a full-scale arms war."
Pallone also warned that this new designation has the impetus for breaking down negotiations and peace talks between the two nations that have just gotten underway.
"Pakistan's newly established access to US military supplies will serve as an impediment to any further Indo-Pak talks," he said.
"Pakistan has a history of abusing military and nuclear equipment, and yet we are allowing them to have access to depleted uranium ammunition, special privilege in bidding for certain US government contracts, radar systems, attack helicopters and airborne early warning systems," he said.
Pallone pointed out that as a quid-pro-quo for Pakistan's assistance to the US-led war against terrorism, the US has already allocated $3 billion worth of assistance, half of which is military aid.
He said the new MNNA status given to Pakistan 'is unfair, inappropriate and most importantly, dangerous given the volatile nature of the South Asian region'.
-------- iraq / inspections
Senate Panels to Get New Iraq Weapons Report
March 30, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/politics/30WEAP.html
WASHINGTON, March 29 - The new chief American weapons inspector in Iraq has prepared a classified report on the hunt for illicit weapons there and will brief two Senate committees in closed sessions on Tuesday about his interim findings, Congressional officials say.
The report, by Charles A. Duelfer, who took over the search in January, will be the first status report by the American government since October. It comes at a time when a host of government panels are looking into what appear to be intelligence mistakes disclosed by the failure of inspectors so far to find the chemical and biological weapons in Iraq that the Bush administration cited as a principal reason for going to war there a year ago.
An American intelligence official who confirmed that Mr. Duelfer had completed the report declined to discuss its findings. But the official sought to minimize the significance of the document, saying that Mr. Duelfer "does not draw any conclusions" in the report and intended it primarily as "an update" for administration and Congressional leaders.
There was no indication on Monday that Mr. Duelfer's report would contradict the public conclusion offered in January by the departing weapons inspector, David A. Kay, who said government agencies were "all wrong, probably" in assessing before the war that Saddam Hussein's government possessed illicit weapons and that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
Democratic senators who met recently in Baghdad with Mr. Duelfer said he provided no indication that his team had found evidence of any illicit Iraqi arsenal.
Mr. Duelfer, who arrived in Iraq in February, is working as a special adviser to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.
He is scheduled to be joined in testifying before the committees by Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who oversees the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group, which has been carrying out the search.
The intelligence official said the Central Intelligence Agency hoped to make public on Tuesday an abbreviated, unclassified version of Mr. Duelfer's classified report.
The agency followed the same approach in October when Mr. Kay produced an eight-page public statement on what he described at the time as an interim progress report. The intelligence official indicated that Mr. Duelfer's own report would probably be considerably shorter.
-------- korea
North Korea Rejects US Proposal on Nuclear Row
REUTERS NORTH KOREA:
March 30, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24494/story.htm
SEOUL - North Korea on Saturday rejected a complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of its nuclear programs, calling the main U.S. demand at six-way talks last month a plot aimed at subjugation.
Radio Pyongyang, monitored by South Korea's Yonhap news agency, said that the three requirements were a U.S. ploy to disarm and stifle the North.
Yonhap quoted the radio as saying the three requirements would "rob its nuclear deterrent and disarm the North, investigate its military capabilities before starting a war and suffocate its economy by killing its nuclear energy industry."
"The United States must give up its ambition to disarm and crush us to death if it sincerely intends to resolve the nuclear problem peacefully, and it must engage itself earnestly to the problem," the North's radio report was quoted as saying.
The report is the first commentary by the North following a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing to Pyongyang this week during which he met the North's leader Kim Jong-il.
Li said on his return to Beijing on Thursday that the North "holds a positive attitude" and was willing to continue the process of six-party talks.
China hosted the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia in two rounds of six-party negotiations in its capital but failed to make substantive progress on resolving the nuclear crisis.
The six countries agreed in principle during the second round in February to meet at a working-level to help speed up discussions.
Saturday's radio report by the North said its solution to the nuclear problem continues to be "dialogue, a peaceful process and simultaneous actions."
Pyongyang has demanded that the United States drop what it called a pursuit of military aggression, for which it would agree to give up nuclear programs for military use.
Many analysts do not expect progress toward resolving the nuclear impasse before the U.S. election in November, saying Kim Jong-il has little incentive to deal with a president whose days in office may be numbered.
------- ukraine
Ukraine seeks to ease worries over hundreds of missing missiles
KIEV (AFP)
Mar 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040330164522.ivaakju8.html
The defense minister of Ukraine tried to ease international worries Tuesday by saying that even though his country has lost track of hundreds of decommissioned missiles, the rockets posed no danger because they could not fly.
Defense Minister Yevgeny Marchuk startled the international community last week by revealing that Ukraine was looking for "hundreds of rockets."
But he revised his comments Tuesday, saying the missing missiles were not a threat.
"I would like to say outright that there is nothing to fear. There is nothing there that can fly," Interfax quoted the defense minister as saying, adding that the missiles were decommissioned in the late 1980.
"What is being searched for now is not so much the missiles themselves as the precious metals contained in them, including gold, silver, platinum and titanium."
Marchuk refused to specify what sort of missiles remain unaccounted for.
Ukraine was the third-largest nuclear power in the world at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, possessing 176 strategic missiles and 1,300 nuclear warheads.
All of the warheads were transferred to Russia by 1996 in a trilateral disarmament accord signed between Kiev, Moscow and Washington.
Ukraine began to destroy its intercontinental ballistic missiles in 1999.
US-Ukraine ties were badly hurt last year by allegations that Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma had personally approved the sale of an advanced radar system to Iraq in violation of UN sanctions.
Now, Ukraine is the fourth largest contributor of troops to the US-led stabilization effort in Iraq, with some 1,650 soldiers on the ground in southeastern Iraq.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
Health officials say tests would detect Rocky Flats pollution
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
By Robert Weller,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-03-30/s_22303.asp
DENVER - State health officials looking into allegations of environmental misdeeds at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant said Monday their tests would detect any signs of dangerous pollution levels lingering at the site.
The officials are reviewing site plans after publication of a book claiming plutonium-contaminated waste was burned illegally and contaminated water was sprayed around the plant, which made plutonium triggers from the 1950s until 1989.
"The department is confident that the comprehensive soil sampling that has occurred and continues to be conducted at the site today would identify any dispersed environmental contamination," said Douglas H. Benevento, executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
In a letter to Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, Benevento said soil tests completed in areas where contaminated water was sprayed showed plutonium concentrations far lower than levels that must be treated.
Former Rocky Flats worker Jacque Brever said she believes there are many forms of plutonium missing from the state health department's list of chemicals to be looked for at the site.
Udall asked state and federal health officials to look 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, which was written by the foreman of a grand jury that investigated activity at Rocky Flats.
-------- north carolina
Duke wants nuclear security waiver
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
By Jason Zacher ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER jzacher@greenvillenews.com
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2004/03/30/2004033028323.htm
Duke Power has asked to have some security restrictions waived for its Catawba Nuclear Station when a new uranium/plutonium fuel arrives on site.
The restrictions are required by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission when there is enough plutonium in one place to make a nuclear bomb.
A Duke spokeswoman said the station is already considered a high-risk target with heightened security. She said the company can defend the new fuel in an attack.
Critics say the mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, is a more attractive terrorist target and easier to make into a bomb than regulators think.
The MOX nuclear fuel will be used at the Catawba plant, about 6 miles north of Rock Hill. There will be about 40 pounds of plutonium at Catawba, said Ed Lyman, a staff scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. It would take only 13 pounds to make a Nagasaki-sized nuclear bomb, he said.
There has been no decision on the waiver.
"This is totally inconsistent with both the national regulations and international standards," he said. Lyman has security clearance and has read the waiver request, though he said he is not allowed to discuss it.
Duke spokeswoman Rose Cummings said Tuesday the regulations apply to places with pure plutonium, such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
"Once the assemblies are inside the reactor, it is very unlikely, but not impossible, that someone could secure that," Cummings said. "Once it's on site and in the reactor, it's highly radioactive. It's not like someone could back a truck up to the plant and take it out."
That opinion is shared by the NRC, according to an internal memo sent by staffers to Glenn Tracy, director of the Division of Nuclear Security. That memo states that the MOX fuel would be a "significantly less attractive" target for theft than uranium at a military facility.
That doesn't mean it shouldn't be protected, said David R. McIntyre, spokesman for the NRC.
"We consider it important to protect any nuclear material," he said, adding that security at power plants is geared more toward an attack to release nuclear radiation than theft of the radioactive fuel.
Catawba has two nuclear reactors, with 193 fuel assemblies in each reactor - each is 12 feet long and weighs up to 1,500 pounds. One of the reactors will have four of the 193 assemblies replaced with MOX fuel rods. Cummings said the MOX will be 95 percent uranium and 5 percent plutonium.
The NRC memo said it would take "an elaborate extraction process" and Cummings said it would be very difficult for a terrorist group to do. Lyman said it is not as difficult as Duke or the NRC believe.
"It does not take very complicated chemistry to separate the plutonium from the uranium," he said.
Whether or not terrorists had the ability to separate the plutonium from the uranium, there is a possibility that MOX itself could be used as fuel for a nuclear bomb, though Lyman said that research is top secret.
"Even if it's not a very efficient weapon, if it's one-tenth the size of Nagasaki in the middle of a city, it would be catastrophic," Lyman said.
And while the assemblies are large, bulky and would require a sophisticated attack to secure, Lyman said terrorists have proved they can pull off sophisticated attacks by coordinating four groups of five terrorists each during September 11.
"If it's bigger than what the security forces are trained to handle, all bets are off," he said.
Jason Zacher covers the environment and natural resources. He can be reached at 298-4272.
-------- washington
Caustic soils at Hanford may lock up contaminants fast
University of Arizona
Innovations Report,
30.03.2004
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/environment_sciences/report-27585.html
Soil particles lock up contaminants hundreds to thousands of times faster under the caustic conditions found beneath leaking toxic waste tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation than under normal soil conditions, researchers report.
Understanding more about how contaminants such as radioactive cesium and strontium move through the soil under real-world conditions will help cleanup efforts at Hanford and other sites contaminated with nuclear waste. Previous research on the movement of soil contaminants had not replicated the extreme conditions found at the Hanford Site in Washington state.
"There's a lot of interest in trying to determine the best approach to dealing with the massive subsurface waste at Hanford," said research team leader Jon Chorover, an associate professor of environmental chemistry at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "Our work helps predict the migration of this stuff. Understanding how these contaminants move in the soil can help with remediation."
Sunkyung Choi, a research associate at UA, will present the team's finding at the 227th national meeting of the American Chemical Society.
Choi's presentation, "Cesium and strontium uptake to clay minerals and their weathering products in a caustic waste," will be given at 4:15 p.m Pacific time on Monday, March 29, in Grand Ballroom D of the Anaheim Marriott, 700 West Convention Way, Anaheim, Calif.
Other members of the team include UA research specialist Mary Kay Amistadi and UA professor of materials science and engineering Supapan Seraphin. The research is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
At the Hanford Site, high-level nuclear waste from the manufacture of weapons is stored in 177 tanks buried in the soil. The waste contains toxic and highly radioactive elements, including plutonium, cesium 137 and strontium 90, mixed in with other materials that make the liquids in the tanks extremely caustic.
Weapons production began at the Hanford Site in 1944. Since then, 67 of the tanks have leaked, releasing highly radioactive liquid waste into the soil. Some of the contaminants have been found in the groundwater. Cost estimates for cleaning up the site run into the tens of billions of dollars.
Figuring out exactly how the wastes move through the soil is difficult because the tanks' contents are complex mixtures of chemicals. But the contaminated soils and toxic wastes materials are too dangerous for the scientists to work with directly.
"If we were working with the concentrations of radioactivity that are out there, it would be lethal doses," Chorover said. "It would kill everyone in the lab."
He and his team are doing the next best thing. They have created non-radioactive chemical mixtures that match those in the Hanford tanks and are studying how those chemicals move through uncontaminated Hanford soil collected near the tanks.
In addition, to better understand how the different components of soil interact with the various chemicals, the team created some model soils to test with the Hanford-like chemical mixtures.
Even so, geochemical processes in soils occur over years, so the research, too, must be conducted over years, not days or weeks.
So to test how various liquid-and-soil mixtures interact over time, the researchers put the mixtures in small chemical-resistant plastic bottles and loaded the bottles onto mixers that look like mini-Ferris wheels.
The wheels, each of which holds more than 100 bottles, turn the bottles end-over-end. The wheels keep turning day, after day, after day. One of the experiments has been going on more than 2 years.
At set times, the researchers test the liquid and solid portions of bottles' contents to see how chemicals from the liquid have reacted with the soil particles.
To the researchers' surprise, over time the contaminants in the experimental set-ups were bound by newly formed clays in the soil, forming unusual minerals called zeolites and feldspathoids. The mineral particles, about a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand, don't dissolve easily and therefore keep the contaminants trapped in the soil.
"We find the contaminants are remarkably slow to redissolve and appear to be more stable than initially thought," said Chorover. That stability may keep the contaminants from leaching deeper into the soil and the groundwater.
The team also found that the various clays from the soil and the various contaminants react differently with one another.
Although learning that contaminants get sequestered in solid particles seems like good news, Chorover is cautious.
"We really don't know the lifetimes of these particles. We've shown it in the lab, but we don't know what's happening in the field," he said. "We do know contaminants are migrating through the soil in the field, so these laboratory results don't explain all of what we see at Hanford."
The team's next step is figuring out how stable the solids are and how long they last in the environment.
More information: http://www.arizona.edu/
----
Tank farms under review
Tuesday, March 30th, 2004
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/4904302p-4839208c.html
Most work has stopped at the Hanford tank farms as contractor CH2M Hill Hanford Group reviews whether more should be done to keep workers safe.
Workers allowed on the tank farms to perform essential tasks, such as monitoring, are being required to wear respirators.
That requirement "may be in place for an extended period of time" as CH2M Hill performs a thorough evaluation and consults with the Department of Energy, Hanford workers and organized labor officials, according to a statement from CH2M Hill.
Among the permanent changes being considered are requiring all employees to wear respirators as work resumes and improving monitoring for fumes. Now, respirator use is voluntary if monitors show no vapors present.
The changes come after more than 40 workers have reported exposure to vapors from the underground tanks since January 2002. As work has progressed to empty the tanks instead of just monitor them in recent years, more people have been working near the tanks. Despite many changes made by CH2M Hill by February 2004 to reduce exposure to vapors, 11 workers reported smelling vapors in the last two weeks.
The vapors come from huge underground tanks of highly radioactive waste from the past production of plutonium at Hanford for weapons. Hanford has 177 tanks that vent into the atmosphere buried in fields, or "farms."
Most of the chemicals present in the fumes in the tanks are in very small quantities, such as a few parts per billion, according to CH2M Hill. It has set standards to clear workers from an area when ammonia is measured in amounts far less than allowed under federal safety standards or when total organic chemicals are present at 2 parts per million.
CH2M Hill has acknowledged that breathing the ammonia fumes is unpleasant and may cause symptoms, particularly in those most sensitive. But the contractor does not believe that the fumes have caused more than temporary symptoms.
Workers have reported symptoms such as headaches, nosebleeds, skin irritation, nausea, accelerated heart rate and breathing difficulty, according to GAP.
CH2M Hill began limiting work and requiring respirators for essential work temporarily last week after three workers smelled vapors and one developed a nosebleed two hours later.
"We decided to continue it indefinitely until we ensure the safest possible practices for tank farm workers," said Joy Turner, spokeswoman for the DOE contractor.
The move has DOE's support after more reports of tank vapors in recent weeks.
"This increase in exposures appears to indicate the actions being implemented are not sufficient and has elevated our concerns for the continued safety of tank farm workers," wrote Roy Schepens, DOE manger of the Office of River Protection, in a letter Friday to CH2M Hill President Ed Aromi.
"Nothing is more important to CH2M Hill than the health and safety of our workers," Aromi said in a prepared statement.
In addition to considering whether the use of respirators should be permanently expanded, the contractor also is assessing monitoring. That includes the frequency of monitoring, an assessment of whether different or additional equipment is needed and whether additional personal monitoring of workers may be used.
It's also looking at engineering changes that could have the potential to reduce or eliminate vapor exposures.
In the early 1990s, when the content of tank vapors was unknown, more precautions were taken for workers. But with what CH2M Hill says is a better understanding of what is in the tanks, it had made use of respirators voluntary and had prohibited systems, similar to scuba gear, that provided supplied air.
It found that tripping and decreased visibility with supplied air systems made their use hazardous.
The new and, for now, temporary requirement that workers wear respirators in the tank farms is the result of both the anxiety of workers and an increase in tank vapor incidents, Turner said.
The contractor has taken several other steps as worker concern has grown over exposure to tank vapors.
The farms with 149 single-shell tanks, the oldest of the tanks, have been inspected, and any possible leaks from equipment into the air have been sealed with foam or tape. Instrument cabinets that sometimes have had vapors leak in at hose and pipe connections have had fans installed to dispel any buildup before workers enter.
Two new types of respirators are being offered to employees that are more comfortable than traditional full-face air-purifying respirators.
CH2M Hill is providing more training to workers, including a mandatory eight-hour class for workers with unescorted access to the tank farms. It educates workers on the content of the tanks, controls in place and the symptoms and effects of chemical exposure.
The contractor also has tried raising the discharge vent on one tank to 15 feet above the ground, well out of the worker's breathing zone. Its effectiveness is being evaluated to see if the same approach should be used at other tanks.
As CH2M Hill launches a fresh round of safety assessments and improvements, several agencies are watching. Investigations or evaluations of tank farm safety are being conducted by Washington state officials, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and DOE's Office of Independent Oversight and Safety Assurance.
-------- us politics
The First Bush War
Now the questions turn to the rationale for desert storm
Village Voice,
March 30th, 2004
Mondo Washington
by James Ridgeway
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0413/mondo2.php
Since so many of the people involved in preparations for the war against Iraq (Cheney, Powell, and Wolfowitz being the most prominent) worked in the first Bush administration and had a hand in crafting Desert Storm in 1991, there is renewed speculation as to whether that war was a put-up job by Bush senior.
Among the stated reasons for Desert Storm was the need to repulse Iraqi troops massed along the Saudi border, ready to invade our ally and chief source of oil. Suspicions go back to an investigation by the St. Petersburg Times, which obtained two Soviet commercial satellite images from that time period that show no Iraqi troops massed along the Saudi border.
And before and during that war there was considerable interest in reports of a meeting between Saddam and U.S. ambassador April Glaspie in which she purportedly told him, "We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts such as your dispute with Kuwait" and "Secretary [of State James] Baker has directed me to emphasize the instruction . . . that Kuwait is not associated with America." This view seems to have been supported by congressional testimony from Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, who claimed that Bush was not taking sides between Iraq and Kuwait. The U.S. government insisted the troop buildup would be confirmed by satellite photos, which were classified and have never been released. As The Christian Science Monitor summarizes the story, after the war a House Armed Services Committee report found that Iraq had massed only 183,000 troops, not the nearly half a million often mentioned by the government. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was quoted on Frontline as saying, "The Iraqis may not have been as strong as we thought they were . . . but that doesn't make a whole lot of difference to me. We put in place a force that would deal with it-whether they were 300,000 or 500,000."
And there were the little things, like the heart-wrenching account by a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl volunteering in a hospital who said she watched as Iraqi soldiers barged in and stole incubators, leaving some 300 babies to die on the floor. Bush senior referred to these "ghastly atrocities" on several occasions. It turned out, as we now know, that the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S. and had no connection to any hospital in Kuwait. She had been prepped by Hill & Knowlton, the public relations firm, along with others who were brought on to "corroborate" her story.
Additional reporting: Phoebe St John, Alicia Ng, and Ashley Glacel
----
Abuse of Govt Power
Bravo, Senator Daschle! I'm also tired of the the Bush Administration's attacks on those who criticize them!
Carol Watson
Mar 30, 04
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P650
-
Floor Statement of Sen. Daschle on the Abuse of Government Power
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
US Senate
http://democrats.senate.gov/~dpc/releases/2004330506.html
Mr. President, last week I spoke about the White House's reaction to Richard Clarke's testimony before the 9-11 Commission. I am compelled to rise again today, because the people around the President are systematically abusing the powers and prerogatives of government.
We all need to reflect seriously on what's going on. Not in anger and not in partisanship, but in keeping with our responsibilities as Senators and with an abiding respect for the fundamental values of our democracy.
Richard Clarke did something extraordinary when he testified before the 9-11 Commission last week. He didn't try to escape blame, as so many routinely do. Instead, he accepted his share of responsibility and offered his perceptions about what happened in the months and years leading up to September 11.
We can and should debate the facts and interpretations Clarke has offered. But there can be no doubt that he has risked enormous damage to his reputation and professional future to hold both himself and our government accountable.
The retaliation from those around the President has been fierce. Mr. Clarke's personal motives have been questioned and his honesty challenged. He has even been accused, right here on the Senate floor, of perjury. Not one shred of proof was given, but that wasn't the point. The point was to have the perjury accusation on television and in the newspapers. The point was to damage Mr. Clarke in any way possible.
This is wrong-and it's not the first time it's happened.
When Senator McCain ran for President, the Bush campaign smeared him and his family with vicious, false attacks. When Max Cleland ran for reelection to this Senate, his patriotism was attacked. He was accused of not caring about protecting our nation -- a man who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, accused of being indifferent to America's national security. That was such an ugly lie, it's still hard to fathom almost two years later.
There are some things that simply ought not be done - even in politics. Too many people around the President seem not to understand that, and that line has been crossed. When Ambassador Joe Wilson told the truth about the Administration's misleading claims about Iraq, Niger, and uranium, the people around the President didn't respond with facts. Instead, they publicly disclosed that Ambassador Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent. In doing so, they undermined America's national security and put politics first. They also may well have put the lives of Ambassador Wilson's wife, and her sources, in danger.
When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that the White House was thinking about an Iraq War in its first weeks in office, his former colleagues in the Bush Administration ridiculed him from morning to night, and even subjected him to a fruitless federal investigation.
When Larry Lindsay, one of President Bush's former top economic advisors, and General Eric Shinseki, the former Army Chief of Staff, spoke honestly about the amount of money and the number of troops the war would demand, they learned the hard way that the White House doesn't tolerate candor.
This is not "politics as usual." In nearly all of these cases, it's not Democrats who are being attacked.
Senator McCain and Secretary O'Neill are prominent Republicans, and Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay, Joe Wilson, and Eric Shinseki all worked for Republican Administrations.
The common denominator is that these government officials said things the White House didn't want said.
The response from those around the President was retribution and character assassination -- a 21st Century twist to the strategy of "shooting the messenger."
If it takes intimidation to keep inconvenient facts from the American people, the people around the President don't hesitate. Richard Foster, the chief actuary for Medicare, found that out. He was told he'd be fired if he told the truth about the cost of the Administration's prescription drug plan.
This is no way to run a government.
The White House and its supporters should not be using the power of government to try to conceal facts from the American people or to reshape history in an effort to portray themselves in the best light.
They should not be threatening the reputations and livelihoods of people simply for asking - or answering - questions. They should seek to put all information about past decisions on the table for evaluation so that the best possible decisions can be made for the nation's future.
In Mr. Clarke's case, clear and troubling double standards are being applied.
Last year, when the Administration was being criticized for the President's misleading statement about Niger and uranium, the White House unexpectedly declassified portions of the National Intelligence Estimate. When the Administration wants to bolster its public case, there is little that appears too sensitive to be declassified.
Now, people around the President want to release parts of Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony in 2002. According to news reports, the CIA is already working on declassifying that testimony - at the Administration's request.
And last week several documents were declassified literally overnight, not in an effort to provide information on a pressing policy matter to the American people, but in an apparent effort to discredit a public servant who gave 30 years of service to his American government.
I'll support declassifying Mr. Clarke's testimony before the Joint Inquiry, but the Administration shouldn't be selective. Consistent with our need to protect sources and methods, we should declassify his entire testimony.
And to make sure that the American people have access to the full record as they consider this question, we should also declassify his January 25 memo to Dr. Rice, the September 4, 2001 National Security Directive dealing with terrorism, Dr. Rice's testimony to the 9-11 Commission, the still-classified 28 pages from the House-Senate inquiry relating to Saudi Arabia, and a list of the dates and topics of all National Security Council meetings before September 4, 2001.
I hope this new interest in openness will also include the Vice President's Energy and Terrorism Task Forces. While much, if not all, of what these task forces discussed was unclassified, their proceedings have not been shared with the public.
There also seems to be a double standard when it comes to investigations.
In recent days leading congressional Republicans are now calling for an investigation into Mr. Clarke. As I mentioned earlier, Secretary O'Neill was also subjected to an investigation. Clarke and O'Neill sought legal and classification review of any information in their books before they were published.
Nonetheless, our colleagues tell us these two should be investigated, at the same time there has been no Senate investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity as a deep cover CIA agent; no thorough investigation into whether leading Administration officials misrepresented the intelligence regarding threats posed by Iraq; no Senate hearings into the threat the chief Medicare Actuary faced for trying to do his job; and no Senate investigation into the reports of continued overcharging by Halliburton for its work in Iraq.
There is a clear double standard when it comes to investigating or releasing information, and that's just is not right. The American people deserve more from their leaders.
We're seeing it again now in the shifting reasons the White House has given for Dr. Rice's refusal to testify under oath and publicly before the 9-11 Commission.
The people around the President first said it would be unprecedented for Dr. Rice to testify. But thanks to the Congressional Research Service, we now know that previous sitting National Security Advisors have testified before Congress.
Now the people around the President are saying that Dr. Rice can't testify because it would violate an important constitutional principle: the separation of powers.
We will soon face this debate again when it comes time for President Bush and Vice President Cheney to meet with the 9-11 Commission. I believe they should lift the limitations they have placed on their cooperation with the Commission and be willing to appear before the entire Commission for as much time as the Commission deems productive.
The all-out assault on Richard Clarke has gone on for more than a week now. Mr. Clarke has been accused of "profiteering" and possible perjury. It is time for this to stop.
The Commission should declassify Mr. Clarke's earlier testimony. All of it. Not just the parts the White House wants. And Dr. Rice should testify before the 9-11 Commission, and she should be under oath and in public.
The American people deserve to know the truth -- the full truth -- about what happened in the years and months leading up to September 11.
Senator McCain, Senator Cleland, Secretary O'Neill, Ambassador Wilson, General Shinseki, Richard Foster, Richard Clarke, Larry Lindsay ... when will the character assassination, retribution, and intimidation end?
When will we say enough is enough?
The September 11 families - and our entire country - deserve better. Our democracy depends on it. And our nation's future security depends on it.
----
White House Letter Sent to Sept 11. Commission
Associated Press
Tue, Mar. 30, 2004
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/politics/8312248.htm
Text of the letter White House counsel Alberto Gonzales sent to the Sept. 11 commission on Tuesday, addressed to Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, chairman and vice chairman of the commission:
Dear Chairman Kean and Vice Chairman Hamilton:
As we discussed last night, the president is prepared, subject to the conditions set forth below, to agree to the request of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States for public testimony, under oath, by the assistant to the president for national security affairs, Dr. Condoleezza Rice.
The president has consistently stated a policy of strong support for the commission and instructed the executive branch to provide unprecedented and extraordinary access to the commission. To my knowledge, the executive branch has provided access to documents or information in response to each of the requests issued by the commission to date, including many highly classified and extremely sensitive documents that have seldom, if ever, been made available outside the executive branch.
As an additional accommodation, the executive office of the president has made available more than 20 EOP officials, including the national security adviser, for private meetings with the commission. As you know, based on principles underlying the constitutional separation of powers, presidents of both parties have long taken the position that White House advisers and staff are not subject to the jurisdiction of legislative bodies and do not provide testimony - even on a voluntary basis - on policy matters discussed within the White House or advice given to the president. Indeed, I am not aware of any instance of a sitting national security adviser testifying in public to a legislative body (such as the commission) concerning policy matters.
We continue to believe, as I advised you by letter dated March 25, 2004, that the principles underlying the constitutional separation of powers counsel strongly against such public testimony, and that Dr. Rice's testimony before the commission can occur only with recognition that the events of September 11, 2001, present the most extraordinary and unique circumstances, and with conditions and assurances designed to limit harm to the ability of future presidents to receive candid advice.
Nevertheless, the president recognizes the truly unique and extraordinary circumstances underlying the commission's responsibility to prepare a detailed report on the facts and circumstances of the horrific attacks on September 11, 2001. Furthermore, we have now received assurances from the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate that, in their view, Dr. Rice's public testimony in connection with the extraordinary events of September 11, 2001, does not set, and should not be cited as, a precedent for future requests for a national security adviser or any other White House official to testify before a legislative body. In light of the unique nature of the commission and these additional assurances, the president has determined that, although he retains the legal authority to decline to make Dr. Rice available to testify in public, he will agree, as a matter of comity and subject to the conditions set forth below, to the commission's request for Dr. Rice to testify publicly regarding matters within the commission's statutory mandate.
The necessary conditions are as follows. First, the commission must agree in writing that Dr. Rice's testimony before the commission does not set any precedent for future commission requests, or requests in any other context, for testimony by a national security adviser or any other White House official.
Second, the commission must agree in writing that it will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice. The national security adviser is uniquely situated to provide the commission with information necessary to fulfill its statutory mandate. Indeed, it is for this reason that Dr. Rice privately met with the commission for more than four hours on February 7, fully answered every question posed to her, and offered additional private meetings as necessary. Despite the fact that the commission will therefore have access to all information of which Dr. Rice is aware, the commission has nevertheless urged that public confidence in the work of the commission would be enhanced by Dr. Rice appearing publicly before the commission. Other White House officials with information relevant to the commission's inquiry do not come within the scope of the commission's rationale for seeking public testimony from Dr. Rice. These officials will continue to provide the commission with information through private meetings, briefings, and documents, consistent with our previous practice.
I greatly appreciate the strong support you expressed to me last night for an agreement to the conditions on which we are proposing this extraordinary accommodation and your commitment to strongly advocate for the full support of the commission. If the commission accepts the terms of this agreement, I hope that we can schedule a time as soon as possible for such a public appearance by Dr. Rice. I want to reiterate once again, however, that Dr. Rice would be made available to the commission with due regard for the constitutional separation of powers and reserving all legal authorities, privileges, and objections that may apply, including with respect to other governmental entities or private parties.
I would also like to take this occasion to offer an accommodation on another issue on which we have not yet reached an agreement - commission access to the president and vice president. I am authorized to advise you that the president and vice president have agreed to one joint private session with all 10 commissioners, with one commission staff member present to take notes of the session.
I look forward to continuing to work with the commission to help it obtain the information it needs to fulfill its statutory mandate.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Indian airforce chief's "goodwill" France visit to buy warplanes: report
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Mar 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040330141530.3qcv5uue.html
India's Airforce chief is scheduled to visit France next month amid reports that he will seek additional Mirage-2000 jets to replace the country's ageing fleet, officials said Tuesday.
Defence ministry officials described chief S. Krishnaswamy's Paris trip from April 3-9 as a "goodwill visit", but The Times of India said his talks would focus on the outright purchase of 18 Mirage-2000 jets, to be followed by the licenced production of 108 units in India.
India has already finalised the acquisition of 10 second-hand Mirage-2000 jets from Quatar, but the airforce, which will soon be ditching a section of obsolete Russian-made MiG-21s, is desperate to bolster its combat capabilities, the officials said.
The airforce, the world's fourth largest, has acquired two squadrons or 24 of the latest Sukhoi-30 MKIs from Russia and is preparing to manufacture 140 more, but it needs smaller combat planes to fill the vacuum that will be created with the phasing out of MiG-21s, experts said.
Earlier this month, the airforce clinched a 1.45-billion-dollar deal with the British Aerospace for the acquisition of 66 military trainer jets that can be used in combat.
-------- asia
Powell Offers U.S. Help to Uzbekistan After Terrorist Attacks
March 30, 2004
(Bloomberg)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000080&sid=aoeLDZ2D.B.o&refer=asia
The U.S. offered assistance to Uzbekistan in its hunt for terrorists after a series of attacks in the past two days killed at least 42 people in the country.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made the offer in a telephone call yesterday with Uzbekistan's Foreign Minister Soquid Safayev, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a briefing, according to a State Department transcript. The U.S. embassy in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, will discuss what help is needed, Boucher said.
The Uzbek government hasn't said who may be behind the attacks. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda, has been ``the dominant threat in the past,'' Boucher said in Washington.
Uzbekistan, a landlocked nation of 26 million people, was the first Central Asian nation to allow the U.S. to use a military base in the anti-terrorism war that began in 2001. The former Soviet republic, slightly larger than the U.S. state of California, is the world's second-largest exporter of cotton and an oil and gold producer.
At least 20 suspected terrorists were killed yesterday in a battle with security forces in Tashkent, Interfax reported, citing an Uzbek Interior Ministry statement. Some of the gunmen committed suicide by detonating explosives. Three police officers were killed in the fighting, it said.
Bomb blasts and shootings on Monday killed 19 people in Tashkent and the ancient desert city of Bukhara.
The violence was the worst in the country since 1999, when the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan was blamed for bombings that killed 16 people in Tashkent.
The group wants to set up an Islamic state in the Ferghana Valley bordering Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
The U.S. has about 1,000 military personnel working at the Karshi-Khanabad base in the south of Uzbekistan, many of them helping with humanitarian operations in neighboring Afghanistan.
To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor of this story: Paul Tighe at ptighe@bloomberg.net
----
Key Events in Uzbekistan Since 1991
Associated Press
Tue, Mar. 30, 2004
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8312934.htm
Key events in Uzbekistan since the 1991 Soviet collapse:
Aug. 31, 1991 - Uzbekistan declares independence from the Soviet Union following a failed coup attempt in Moscow by Kremlin hard-liners.
September 1991 - A group of young, radical Muslims seizes a government building in the Fergana Valley town of Namangan in eastern Uzbekistan, demanding establishment of an Islamic state. The group's leaders, Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldash, later set up an Islamic party Adolat, or Justice, and then the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which grows into a terrorist group with links to al-Qaida.
December 1991 - Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan's former Communist Party boss, is elected president.
March 1992 - Karimov bans Adolat, authorities arrest hundreds and close down mosques and religious schools. Namangani and Yuldash flee to Tajikistan; both later end up in Afghanistan.
Dec. 2, 1992 - Uzbekistan adopts its first constitution as an independent state.
1992 - Karimov bans two secular opposition parties, Erk and Birlik, forcing their leaders into exile.
March 26, 1995 - Karimov's period in office is extended by three years, to 2000, in a referendum.
1997 - The Fergana Valley is hit by a series of slayings of senior police officials. Authorities blame the IMU and launch a crackdown on religious extremism.
1998 - Karimov vows to crack down on the IMU. Namangani and Yuldash are sentenced to death in absentia.
Feb. 16, 1999 - Tashkent is hit by six car bombings outside key government buildings that kill 16 people. Authorities allege that attacks targeted the president and blame the IMU.
August 1999 - The IMU attempts an incursion into Uzbekistan from Tajikistan.
Jan. 8, 2000 - Karimov is re-elected to a five-year term with more than 90 percent of the vote.
August 2000 - The IMU attempts fresh incursions into Uzbekistan from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
July 2001 - The IMU attacks government troops in southern Uzbekistan and a TV transmitter in southern Kyrgyzstan.
October 2001 - Uzbekistan is the first among Central Asian nations to allow the United States to use its airspace and deploy troops on its territory for the anti-terrorism war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. The United States sets up a military base in southern Uzbekistan, deploying hundreds of troops there.
October 2001 - Beginning of U.S.-led assault on Taliban in Afghanistan. Namangani is reportedly killed during the fighting.
Jan. 27, 2002 - A referendum extends Karimov's presidential term from five to seven years.
March 2002 - Uzbekistan and the United States sign a strategic partnership agreement that boosts U.S. aid to the country.
April 5, 2002 - Parliament schedules the next presidential election for December 2007, effectively extending Karimov's term by two years.
March 2004 - At least 42 people are killed in three days of violence in clashes with suspected terrorists and three suicide bombings in Tashkent and the Silk Road city of Bukhara. Authorities blame the outlawed Islamic Hizb ut-Tahrir party.
----
New blast, shootout in Uzbekistan
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/03/29/uzbek.blast/index.html
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- A new blast, followed by a shootout between police and suspected extremists, has hit Uzbekistan -- a third straight day of violence in the Central Asian nation.
Citing police sources, Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported there were injuries in the incident near the capital Tashkent, which, according to the report, involved police and "terrorists".
The reported attack Tuesday follows a spasm of violence in Uzbekistan including two suicide bombings in as many days, as well as attacks on police and a blast at a bomb-making hideout.
At least 19 people have been killed and 26 wounded in the violence in the capital and also the city of Bukhara.
Uzbek President Islam Karimov has blamed the attackson Islamic extremists and said arrests have been made.
Security has been stepped up with extra patrols an increased presence of soldiers and police.
Prosecutor-general Rashid Kadyrov on Monday said events began late Sunday with a blast that killed 10 people at a house being used by an extremist in the central province of Bukhara.
Six policemen and a child were killed in suicide bombings and attempted suicide attacks in the capital Tashkent on Sunday night and Monday, Kadyrov said.
The suicide bombings are the first ever in Uzbekistan and have been blamed on Islamic extremists, he added.
Uzbek Foreign Minister Sadyk Safayev said the attacks were aimed at breaking the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition.
"This has been committed by the hands of international terror," Safayev said. "That's the hallmark of the terrorist acts we have already witnessed abroad.
"Attempts are being made to split the international anti-terror coalition."
Uzbekistan has been a strong supporter of the U.S..-led campaign in Afghanistan, providing a vital airbase for U.S. troops in military operations there following the September 11, 2001, attacks on America.
--------
Suicide Bombings, Attacks Kill 19 in Uzbekistan
By Burt Herman
Associated Press
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34433-2004Mar29.html
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, March 29 -- A series of bombings and attacks linked to Islamic militants, including the first known suicide bombings in Uzbekistan, killed 19 people and injured 26, officials said Monday.
Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov said the blasts Sunday and Monday were connected and were aimed at destabilizing Uzbekistan, which is an ally of the United States in the war on terrorism.
One of the blasts was set off by a female suicide bomber in a children's store near the Chorsu market, the biggest bazaar in the capital, Tashkent, Kadyrov said. Another female suicide bomber detonated explosives at a nearby bus stop. Those attacks killed three policemen and a young child, he said.
President Islam Karimov said several arrests had been made, but gave no details. Kadyrov said that one suspect had been arrested and that authorities were searching for others, but declined to say how many people might have been involved.
Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, Karimov allowed Washington to base at least 1,000 troops in Uzbekistan, a former republic of the Soviet Union that borders Afghanistan.
Karimov, who ruled Uzbekistan as party leader before the 1991 Soviet collapse and has been president since then, has come under sharp criticism by human rights advocates for repressing political and religious freedoms.
Nevertheless, the United States has dramatically increased aid and retained its rights to base troops in the country.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "The attacks are yet another example of the importance of continued cooperation against those who would stop at nothing to achieve their misguided goals."
Kadyrov said the attacks began Sunday night with a blast that killed 10 people at a house being used by an extremist in the central province of Bukhara, an ancient city on the Silk Road trading route between Europe and China.
There were also two attacks on police officers Sunday night and early Monday in Tashkent. Those attacks killed three policemen.
The suicide bombings near the bazaar were the first reported in Uzbekistan. Kadyrov said the attacks were carried out by Islamic extremists, citing the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir group and followers of the strict Wahhabi sect of Islam.
"The character and method of this act is not common to our people. It was probably exported from abroad," Kadyrov said.
In London, where Hizb ut-Tahrir operates openly, the group denied responsibility.
Karimov's government has acted against Islamic extremists through brutal policies that curb political and religious freedom. The last significant attack, an assassination attempt against Karimov in 1999, led to the arrests of thousands.
-------- business
Iraq Contracts Give Halliburton Headaches
By MATT KELLEY
Associated Press Writer
March 30. 2004
http://www.dailycomet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040330/APF/403300938
Halliburton Co. has reaped as much as $6 billion in contracts from the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but improprieties in those military contracts have also given Vice President Dick Cheney's former company high-profile headaches.
Pentagon auditors have criticized Halliburton's estimating, spending and subcontracting, and they plan to begin withholding up to $300 million in payments next month. The Justice Department is investigating allegations of overcharges, bribes and kickbacks. Democrats have accused the company of war profiteering.
Even some Wall Street analysts are asking whether Halliburton would be better off jettisoning its Iraq contracts.
"From the shareholders' point of view, don't you have to consider whether it's worth it?" Jim Wicklund of Banc of America Securities asked Halliburton executives during a March 11 conference call with investment analysts.
Halliburton is fighting back, strongly denying wrongdoing and claiming to be the victim of a political smear campaign. The company set aside nearly $200 million to repay the Pentagon for any overcharges. Executives reassured analysts that Halliburton has enough cash on hand - about $2 billion - to weather any more repayments or penalties.
Having a clean contracting system in Iraq is essential because it's the first experience Iraqis will have with the American model of business-government partnerships, said Peter Singer, a former Defense Department official who wrote a book on military contracting.
"The success in the war in Iraq and the follow-up to it depends on not just how good a job our soldiers do but also on how good a job our contractors do," said Singer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. "If we award contracts to firms that aren't performing to the utmost, it's not only a waste of taxpayer money but it also harms national security."
Halliburton also is spending millions on a nationwide television advertising campaign featuring images of Halliburton workers helping American troops.
The company's defenders say Halliburton had to perform a lot of costly and dangerous work very quickly, with minimal government oversight at the beginning.
"The root cause of a lot of these problems is that it's a huge, rapidly evolving enterprise," said Steven Schooner, a contracting expert and assistant law professor at George Washington University. "When the money was spent the government was not applying the same type of resources in terms of planning, thought and caution that we normally expect and demand in public contracting."
Halliburton's detractors are undeterred.
"The entire Halliburton affair represents the worst in government contracts with private companies: influence peddling, kickbacks, overcharging and no-bid deals," Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., said this week.
Bush administration officials say Vice President Cheney - a former defense secretary - has nothing to do with awarding contracts to the company he led from 1995 to 2000.
Through subsidiary KBR, Halliburton's experience with military contracts dates back to World War II. The company did similar logistics work for troops in Vietnam, the first Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo.
Halliburton says 15 percent of its revenue last year came from work in Iraq. That money came mainly from two contracts with KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root.
The biggest contract is with the Army to provide logistical support for troops - meal service, laundry, communications and housing. The second is a contract with the Army Corps of Engineers to fight oil well fires and rebuild Iraq's devastated oil industry.
Under criticism for awarding the oil contract outside of the usual competitive bidding process, the Army split the oil reconstruction work into two parts and held a bidding competition late last year. Halliburton got one of those contracts to reconstruct oil facilities in southern Iraq. The contract was worth more than $1 billion.
Problems already identified with Halliburton's business include:
- Allegations it overcharged by $61 million for gasoline it delivered from Kuwait to civilians in Iraq. Pentagon auditors say Halliburton did not fully justify spending more than $1 extra per gallon for gasoline delivered from Kuwait than gas it bought from Turkish companies. Halliburton says the higher price reflected charges by the Kuwaiti subcontractor that was the lowest bidder. Halliburton also says it came up with the idea of tapping the Turkish market and saved the government more than $100 million.
- A Pentagon audit that concluded Halliburton charged millions for meals never served to troops. Halliburton has repaid $36 million and set aside an additional $141 million to reimburse the military for possible overcharges. On April 1, the Defense Department plans to begin withholding 15 percent of payments to Halliburton - up to $300 million - because of the alleged overcharging. Halliburton officials say problems might have occurred because the number of troops in and near Iraq often changed quickly and drastically.
- A Defense Department probe into allegations a Kuwaiti subcontractor paid kickbacks to two former Halliburton employees. The company says it repaid $6 million to the government after it discovered the scheme.
- Widespread problems with estimating costs, justifying spending and following federal regulations. The Defense Contract Audit Agency found so many faults with KBR's practices that it warned the Defense Contract Management Agency the company's estimates were unreliable. Halliburton says any glitches were the result of working quickly to establish services in a war zone.
-Pentagon and Justice Department investigations into possible overcharging on KBR contracts to support troops in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Federal authorities also are investigating whether Halliburton violated U.S. laws prohibiting deals with Iran, and U.S. and French authorities are probing whether KBR was involved in paying $180 million in bribes to Nigerian officials to get favorable treatment for a natural gas project.
Halliburton reported making $3.6 billion in revenue from Iraq contracts last year. Executives say the company is taking in about $1 billion a month from its work in Iraq, bringing its total revenue to about $6 billion.
-------- china
Taiwan's President Maintains Hard Line
Chen Rebukes China in Interview
By Philip P. Pan and David E. Hoffman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33076-2004Mar29?language=printer
TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 29 -- President Chen Shui-bian declared Monday that his narrow reelection victory was a mandate from voters to press ahead with an aggressive agenda to develop Taiwan as an "independent, sovereign country" despite the risk of war with China.
In his first interview since an attempt on his life and an election his opponents are contesting, Chen vowed to go forward with plans to write a new constitution for Taiwan within two years, a move China has said could compel it to seize the island by force. He also condemned the Chinese government for blocking popular demands for democratic reform in Hong Kong, saying its actions have made the Taiwanese people even more determined to reject unification on Beijing's terms.
"The fundamental reason I won this presidential election . . . is because there is a rising Taiwan identity and it has been solidified," Chen said. "I think the Beijing authorities should take heed of this fact and accept the reality."
"I think we have reached an internal consensus that insists on Taiwan being an independent, sovereign country," he added.
Chen's defiant remarks, delivered little more than a week after he was shot in the abdomen and suffered a flesh wound while waving at supporters from his motorcade, signaled an intent to carry his campaign's tough line toward China into a second term despite the deep divide his approach has created in Taiwanese society and the unease it has caused in the Bush administration.
The United States has pledged to help Taiwan defend itself against a Chinese attack, but officials have expressed concern that Chen's plan to draft a new constitution might draw U.S. forces into a military confrontation with China. The Chinese government claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has threatened to seize it if it formally declares independence. It has said a new constitution could amount to such a declaration.
But Chen said the new constitution had nothing to do with Taiwan's independence. Instead, he said, it aims to deepen democratic reform and improve governance by lowering the voting age, adding new human rights guarantees, reducing the size of the legislature and settling other disputes that have left the island's government gridlocked. He also offered to hold talks with China without any preconditions.
Chen, who appeared relaxed and confident during a one-hour interview inside the presidential palace, also denied unsubstantiated charges by his opponents that he engaged in election fraud and staged the shooting the day before the March 20 election to win sympathy from voters. He defeated his opponent, Nationalist Party leader Lien Chan, by a margin of less than 30,000 votes, or 0.2 percent, of the 13 million ballots cast.
Chen expressed sympathy for his opponents but urged them to accept the will of the people. "Even if you just win by one vote, you still win. And even if you lose by one vote, you still lose, and everybody must accept such a result," he said.
He also said the shooting has made him more determined. "For me personally, I have just completed the last election of my lifetime. The day before the election, I also trod the fine line of death. And that had a great impact on my life philosophy and my attitude toward my political career," he said. "I will not be knocked down or defeated so easily."
After a week of protests, Chen agreed Saturday to Lien's demands to set up a special task force to investigate the shooting and allow the courts to conduct an island-wide recount. A team of international experts has joined the shooting probe, which has identified no suspects; the recount could begin this week.
Chen acknowledged that he was reelected by a small margin and that his referendum proposals on relations with China -- which asked voters about strengthening Taiwan's military and opening talks with the mainland -- failed. But the 54-year-old lawyer noted that he won the support of 1.5 million more voters than in 2000, when he was elected with only 39 percent of the vote. He attributed the increase in his support to 50.1 percent to a growing sense among Taiwanese that they are citizens of a new, independent nation separate from China.
Chen's comments came days after Beijing issued an unusually strong warning that it would not tolerate turmoil in Taiwan and announced plans to issue a legal ruling as early as Friday that could quash growing demands in Hong Kong for direct elections to choose the territory's leaders. By speaking out at such a sensitive moment and drawing a link between Taiwan's future and China's approach in Hong Kong, Chen raised the stakes for those in the Communist Party leadership who want to stifle the pro-democracy movement in the territory.
"In Taiwan, we have full democracy, and our freedom and democracy are fully protected," he said. "We do not wish to return to the era of authoritarianism. We don't want our freedoms to be restricted or taken away. . . .
"Right now, the people of Hong Kong are fighting for direct elections for their chief executive and general elections for the entire legislature, but the Beijing authorities are unable to consent," Chen said. "They even say, 'Wait another 30 years and we'll see.' I think this is very ridiculous.
"For the 23 million people of Taiwan, this is the greatest warning, and also the clearest signal. 'One country, two systems' is totally unattractive to the Taiwan people," he added, referring to the formula under which Hong Kong was promised a high degree of autonomy when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and which Beijing says Taiwan must eventually accept. "What has happened in Hong Kong has shown that this system, this formula, is a total failure."
Chen said Taiwan has noted "major problems" with Beijing's administration of Hong Kong, recalling that about 500,000 people turned out there for a demonstration last July "because they felt their freedom and democracy had been infringed upon."
The Chinese government refused to hold talks with Chen during his first term because he would not endorse its "one China" principle, which holds that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of it. Chen said he would continue to reject the principle in his second term because Beijing defines "one China" as the People's Republic of China and Taiwan as a local government, "which is totally unacceptable to our people."
But Chen also said he wanted to set aside his differences with China on Taiwan's status and begin negotiations to improve cross-strait relations, including establishing political ties, opening direct air and shipping links and reducing military tensions. Taiwanese companies have already invested as much as $100 billion in the mainland, and hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese live at least part of the year in China. China suspended bilateral talks in 1999.
If the Chinese government insists on the "one China" principle as a precondition for talks, Chen said, Taiwan will answer that China must recognize it as a separate country. "Then, I believe the two sides will be forever deadlocked, major differences cannot be solved and it will be impossible for both sides to sit down and talk," he said. "We understand this in our hearts. So don't raise the 'one China' principle."
Chen also repeated an offer he made four years ago to discuss the possibility of Taiwan's eventual unification with China, and announced he had set up a task force to improve relations with the mainland.
"The so-called 'one China' does not exist now. Perhaps it will in the future," he said. "We should all be able to sit together and deal with the future 'one China' issue together."
Chen defended his plan to write a new constitution for Taiwan, approve it in a referendum in 2006 and enact it by 2008, when Beijing is scheduled to host the Summer Olympics. China has argued that a new constitution would sever Taiwan's legal ties with the mainland, and senior Chinese military officers have declared that China is willing to go to war against Taiwan over the issue, even if it means a global boycott of the Games.
The constitution "is not a timetable for independence or any attempt to change our status quo," Chen said. "Our future efforts at re-engineering our constitution and constitutional reforms will be only done on the principle of not changing the status quo."
Asked how he would address China's buildup of missiles and other military capabilities aimed at Taiwan, Chen said he would continue to strengthen Taiwan's military and expand its defense and "counter-strike" forces. But he said he would not be drawn into an arms race with China. He also said Taiwan would not develop offensive weapons to deter a Chinese attack, as some military experts have urged as a cheaper alternative to defensive systems.
Instead, he said, Taiwan's democracy would help it stand up to Chinese aggression. "I think democracy, and by insisting on having a democratic Taiwan, is the greatest defense and the best arms that we have in the face of China's military threat," he said.
--------
China Detains 3 Relatives of Victims at Tiananmen
March 30, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/international/asia/30CHIN.html
BEIJING, March 29 - At least three family members of people gunned down by the Chinese military during the crackdown on dissent in Beijing on June 4, 1989, have been detained, as the authorities seek to prevent protests connected with the 15th anniversary of the massacre, relatives said Monday.
State security officers took the three, all of them women, from their homes on Sunday. Relatives said none of the three have since returned home or made contact.
Among those detained was Ding Zilin, 67, whose son was fatally shot during the crackdown and who is a leader of a protest group called the Tiananmen Mothers. The group has demanded redress from the government.
"She was taken away yesterday," said Jiang Peikun, Ms. Ding's husband. "I don't know if she was arrested or what. I think the reason is because it's the 15th anniversary of June 4."
The detentions came shortly after a noted Chinese surgeon and longtime Communist Party member, Jiang Yanyong, wrote to top leaders calling for an official reassessment of the massacre. The official version holds that the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square constituted a rebellion against the government, and that the army took appropriate action in suppressing it.
Dr. Jiang, who works in a military hospital in Beijing, treated victims of the shootings. He said in his letter, made public earlier this month, that at least two of China's most senior leaders, who have since died, had supported his view that the crackdown must be redressed.
China's surging economy makes the events of June 1989 a distant memory for most people. But the army's suppression of the student-led protests, which killed and wounded hundreds of people, remains a political flash point for even the current generation of leaders, which did not directly order the crackdown.
President Hu Jintao and the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, have promised to improve the one-party political system, and some analysts say they cannot hope to achieve reform without revising the official verdict on the Tiananmen incident. To date, however, they have shown no signs of taking such action.
Ms. Ding, a resident of Beijing, was detained while visiting her ancestral home in Wuxi, near Shanghai. The police also searched the home for documents, letters and parcels, said Mr. Jiang, her husband.
Mr. Jiang and another person who has contact with the relatives of June 4 victims said Zhang Xianling, who lost a son on June 4, and Huang Jinping, whose husband was shot dead that day, were also taken into custody on Sunday.
Ms. Zhang's family received a notice from the police declaring that she was under suspicion of "endangering state security." Ms. Huang was found to have received a package of T-shirts with a logo that read, "1989-2004: Tiananmen Mothers," someone who had contact with her family said.
-------- iraq
Bremer offers grim assessment of security challenges in Iraq
CONTINUED ROLE SEEN FOR COALITION
By Ken Dilanian,
Tue, Mar. 30, 2004
Knight Ridder
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8310324.htm
MUNTHERIA, Iraq - In an uncommonly downbeat assessment of Iraq's security challenges, U.S. Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer told local officials Monday that it will take at least a year for the country to hire, equip and train enough police and border guards to meet its needs.
``There is no way to speed it up; it simply can't be done,'' he said. ``We just have to be honest about that.''
Bremer's comments -- coming just three months before the American-led coalition is scheduled to return power to an Iraqi government -- made it clear that U.S. troops will continue to play the key role in maintaining security in Iraq even after the hand-over of power, scheduled for July 1.
At least 100,000 American soldiers will remain in the country after Iraqis take over.
Also Monday, U.S. authorities in Baghdad accepted responsibility for the shooting deaths this month of two Iraqi journalists at an Army roadblock, but said the soldiers had fired in self-defense. And a report released in Washington confirmed that on the Iraq war's deadliest day for American troops -- March 23, 2003 -- as many as 10 Marines were killed by U.S. airstrikes ordered by a Marine air controller who mistook their vehicles for enemy forces.
The lengthy investigation of the ``friendly fire'' deaths recommended ``appropriate administrative or disciplinary action'' against the air controller and left it to the Marine Corps to decide what specific action to take.
The investigators determined that the A-10 pilots acted appropriately under the circumstances.
Eighteen Marines were killed in the fighting that day around the city of An-Nasiriyah, of which investigators said they could be certain that eight were killed by hostile fire. They could not conclusively state how many of the 10 others were killed by the mistaken U.S. airstrikes.
In Muntheria, Bremer made his remarks during a meeting with local leaders from Diyala province, which stretches east from the capital to the Iranian border.
Contrary to the optimistic tone often used in public by coalition officials, the meeting featured grim assessments of Iraq's policing and border challenges.
In response to Gov. Abdulah Hassan Rashid's plea for more police officers in his province of 1.2 million people, Bremer said: ``The key is to have professional police, not just to add people who aren't trained. Many of these people who are already in the police force are corrupt, they don't understand human rights, and some of them are engaging in attacks on the coalition.''
He added: ``We're not going to bring in any more untrained police. It's not going to happen.''
Three weeks ago, four Iraqi police officers were arrested in the ambush killings of two U.S. officials and their translator. Coalition officials also have complained recently about the use of torture and other abuses by Iraqi police, many of whom were officers under Saddam Hussein's leadership.
Much of the latter problem is deep-rooted in culture -- Iraqi police build cases mainly by extracting confessions -- and coalition officials face a dilemma in trying to address it.
With murder, kidnapping and carjacking still epidemic, local police are seen as the key to Iraq's future security. And, as Bremer pointed out later, opinion polls indicate that for all their faults, they are the most trusted security force in the country.
Bremer said the coalition expected to train about 25,000 new police officers in an eight-week course by next year, which he said was the world's largest police-training effort.
In an interview after the meeting, Bremer said the coalition and Iraq's Interior Ministry were working to root out bad police officers.
``We will not hesitate to take action when we find evidence of abuse,'' he said.
The meeting also focused on border security, a sore point among Iraqis, who wonder why the coalition hasn't been able to stem the flow of foreign terrorists into their country. Foreigners are thought to have planned and carried out many of the suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis.
Coalition officials have said repeatedly -- as Bremer did again Monday -- that Iraq's border is too large and rugged to be policed with total effectiveness. The coalition recently closed 16 of the 19 border crossings with Iran in an effort to channel the flow of legal migrants and better pursue illegal ones.
``We are never going to have 100 percent security on the borders of Iraq. We have to be realistic about that,'' Bremer said.
He got an earful about the inadequacies of the situation.
Deputy Gov. Ghassan Abass Jassim told him that of 34 border police outposts in Diyala province, only eight are staffed, and those don't have enough men.
``There is some substance to that concern,'' said Brig. Gen. Dan Hickman, the local U.S. Army commander, who said troops recently caught a smuggler with a map showing which border crossings were staffed.
Coalition plans call for 16,000 border guards by next year, but the officials and Bremer agreed that 25,000 were needed. The New York Times and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
-------
UK plays roulette with Iraqi refugees
By Arthur Nelsen in London
Tuesday 30 March 2004,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/60C1E1E9-892B-4EE1-A86D-D33C4922FD20.htm
The British government may have gone to war to defend human rights in Iraq, but it is playing fast and loose with the lives of thousands of Iraqis living on its own doorstep.
Iraqi refugees whose asylum claims have been rejected are now facing the prospect of forced deportation, following a Home Office ruling that Iraq is safe enough for them to return to.
Sadi Husayn, an Iraqi Kurd from Rania, a village near Sulaymaniyah, is one of those under threat.
"I am waiting for a removal order but I will not go back," he says grimly. "If it comes, I will die in this country but I am not going back. They will have to take my body home."
Sadi speaks with an eerie determination that belies his 29 years. He lost one arm in 1991, when he opened a booby-trapped car door during fighting in Kirkuk between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) fighters and Saddam Hussein's forces.
Traumatised past
Like many young men of his generation, Sadi has been traumatised by an oppressive, oppressed and highly factional Kurdish civil society.
Not all Iraqi refugees hope to be greeted well on their return home
Sadi had family ties to the PUK and joined them to fight Saddam Hussein in 1991. But when he became politically disillusioned and tried to leave the group, he was arrested and, he says, his life was threatened.
Sadi fled to territory controlled by the rival KDP but was arrested again, as a potential PUK spy. Finally, he started editing a newspaper called Kozgur but even there, his independent stance won him enemies.
"When I wrote an article about plans by the Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK) to kill a leftwing council leader, my family received a letter warning them that if I wrote again, they would kill me," he says. "So I fled the country."
Risky return
"My family wants me to come back now. They keep saying that everyone misses me but I can't return because I know that if I do, I will be killed. Last December, one of my uncles was killed by the PUK. I have documents to prove this."
Despite the documents, Sadi's appeal to stay in the UK was turned down.
Bob Russell, a Liberal Democrat MP and member of the Home Affairs Select Committee, says that Sadi's case is "precisely" the sort that concerns him.
"If a person believes that their life is in danger, then I would always err on their side," he says. "Iraq is not yet a country that is at peace with itself, let alone with those who have fled the country in the last few years.
"I don't support the forced removals policy because when British soldiers in relatively peaceful parts of the country are still being attacked, I think it is an indication that all is not yet well."
UNHCR warning
Russell's concerns are widely shared. This month, the UNHCR issued new guidelines to governments requesting a ban on forced removals to all parts of Iraq, including those of rejected asylum cases.
Even the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council's Minister of Displacement and Migration, Muhammad Khudair, has called for an end to forced repatriations of refugees until the situation in Iraq improves.
The Foreign Office continues to advise Britons that the country is too dangerous to visit. But the Home Office appears to disagree.
The Home Secretary David Blunkett recently described northern Iraq as "generally overwhelmingly safe" and said that Iraqi asylum seekers had a moral obligation to return to their country to help rebuild it.
Forced deportation
As a Home Office statement sent to Aljazeera.net makes clear, those unwilling to leave voluntarily, may soon have their hand forced.
"The security situation for Iraqis is gradually improving across Iraq," the missive reads. "We have every intention of pursuing an enforced returns policy as soon as conditions allow."
According to Marsha Singh, a Labour MP on the Select Committee: "There are parts of Iraq where security is good and has been for some time, especially in northern Iraq where quite a few asylum seekers come from."
But in Sadi's case, it is the "good" security forces which are threatening his life. Singh admits that the issues in his case are problematic.
"It's a difficult one, isn't it?" he says, before conceding that the Home Office's advice may be inadequate.
"It's certainly not sufficient grounds for turning down an appeal," he says. "We see on our TV screens every day that certain parts of the country are still very unsafe."
Doomed deportees
Workers in the field of migrants' rights go further. Keith Best, the director of the Immigration Advisory Service says that, as a result of the new policy, some refugees will "undoubtedly" be sent back to their deaths.
"Heavens above, it's not even safe for the troops!" he exclaims. "You can't send people back to a country that is in such turmoil. It worries me because it is playing with people's lives."
"How extraordinary to say 'we've come to liberate you over there but we're going to send all the people who've managed to get to the UK back into an unsafe environment.'
"I think it's got more to do with asylum seekers being used as a tool in an unscrupulous media-assisted campaign to convince the public that the government is getting tough on immigration. And I'm afraid it will increase as we get closer to the election."
The unpleasant truth may be that it is just easier for governments and newspapers to care about Iraqi civilians when they are the victims of human rights abuses thousands of miles away, in a land filled with oil.
As Best puts it: "The government and media have created a climate where all asylum seekers are seen as crooks who are here to abuse our benefits system, and that is an evil thing to have done."
----
Investigators to inquire into Chalabi's use of US money
United States administration bans Shia newspaper
March 30, 2004 (EST)
Daily Times Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_29-3-2004_pg7_47
WASHINGTON: The investigative branch of the US Congress is looking into whether Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi broke the law in using US money to attempt to sway US opinion in favour of ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Newsweek reports in its Monday issue.
At issue are tens of thousands of dollars Chalabi and his group received in 2001 and 2002.
Chalabi agreed in writing to use State Department-supplied funds to "implement a public information campaign to communicate with Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq and also to promulgate its message to the international community at large", according to Newsweek. But the terms "strictly exclude" activities that are "associated with, or that could appear to be associated with, attempting to influence the policies of the United States government or Congress or propagandising the American people".
Yet the INC itself told Congress in 2002 that there were more than 100 news stories published between October 2001 and May 2002 containing information collected by INC informants - informants who had their expenses paid with State Department money, the magazine said.
These included articles on Saddam's links to terrorism, links to the September 11, 2001, attacks, and his alleged banned biological, nuclear and chemical programmes, the magazine reports.
Chalabi representatives insist that the money was spent legally.
The State Department cut off INC funding in mid-2002 because of costs that were "inadequately" accounted for, according to Newsweek, and in September 2002 the Defence Intelligence Agency began funding the INC defector programme. The inquiry was requested by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry - the presumptive Democratic candidate in the November presidential election - and Michigan Senator Carl Levin, ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, both critics of President George W Bush.
In another development, Iraq's US-led administration shut down a newspaper that is a mouthpiece for radical Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, accusing it of publishing articles that incite violence against American troops. Ali Yasseri, editor of the weekly al-Hawza newspaper, said dozens of US troops padlocked the newspaper's offices after ordering staff to leave.
"They told us they would arrest us if we did not leave. They said our articles incite people against America," Yasseri told Reuters outside the newspaper offices. US soldiers handed him a letter from US civil administrator Paul Bremer, citing a breach of an order issued last year that bans incitement to violence.
"These false articles not only mislead readers but constitute a real threat of violence against coalition forces and Iraqi citizens who cooperate with the coalition in the reconstruction of Iraq," a letter signed by Bremer said.
The letter referred to a series of articles it said had incited hatred, including an editorial entitled "Bremer follows the steps of Saddam". "This is a violation of our rights," Yasseri said.
Hundreds of Shias later gathered in Baghdad to protest against the ban on the newspaper.
Last July, the US-led administration closed down another newspaper for inciting violence. The Arabic-language satellite television news channels Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya have also faced sanctions from the administration and the Iraqi Governing Council for allegedly violating the law.
Sadr, a young and radical Shia cleric, has often spoken out against the US occupation, in contrast to many other Shia groups that have sought to work with occupying forces. -Agencies
--------
Attacks Test Muslim Unity in Iraq
Clerics Work to Maintain Calm as Risk of Sectarian Strife Rises
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A34497-2004Mar29?language=printer
BAGHDAD -- Abdulsattar Abdulraheem, a stringy 72, looked up from the bag of portland cement at his feet. While patching a hole in his driveway, he laid his dusty hands on a metaphor for the common quality Iraqis say will spare them a civil war.
"We are one piece!" he said. "Like concrete, solid and strong. If the nation were not like concrete, it would crumble."
Nominally divided by ethnicity, tribe and -- most precariously of late -- religion, Iraqis insist those distinctions are secondary to an overarching sense of shared national identity. It is a robust self-image, anchored by traditions as intimate as marriage but tested in recent weeks by scenes as bloody as the one illuminated by a muzzle flash outside the mosque near Abdulraheem's house.
Dhamir Dhari, a Sunni Muslim imam, answered his door on the evening of Feb. 21 and found assassins on his doorstep. His death at the hands of the two unknown men was but one in a rash of mysterious attacks on clerics and mosques here in recent weeks, striking Sunnis and Shiites alike.
The attacks, numbering more than a dozen over a two-week period this month, have been answered with resolute declarations of unity from leading Shiite and Sunni clerics, who meet regularly to devise a joint strategy for maintaining calm. Adamant in refusing to blame the rival branch of Islam, the religious leaders are instructing preachers of Friday sermons to assure worshipers that the attacks are being carried out by terrorists and shadowy foreign elements intent on provoking a civil war.
"They do these things so the Shiites will accuse the Sunnis and the Sunnis accuse the Shiites," said Qasim Janabi, who owns a restaurant near the Kubeisi mosque, where a Sunni cleric was shot on March 7 and his replacement was gunned down two days later. "But in Iraq we are all one people."
In the absence of an accurate, recent census, many estimate that Shiites constitute 60 percent of Iraq's 24 million people. But the figure is disputed on all fronts. Sunnis assert they constitute the majority; many Shiite leaders say 60 percent is low.
Yet surveys affirm Janabi's contention that Iraqis are averse to sectarian strife. Despite the polarizing policies of President Saddam Hussein, who promoted fellow Sunnis and forbade Shiites to celebrate many of their rites, a majority of Iraqi respondents choose "Muslim" if given a choice of identifying themselves as Sunni, Shiite or Muslim, according to the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies, and the number saying so has risen since January.
Another poll by the independent group found that 88 percent of Iraqi respondents say the branches of Islam should share political power. Less than 1 percent rated relations between Sunnis and Shiites as the most critical issue facing Iraq, with 40 percent citing security.
But clerics are far from sanguine, saying concern rises with every new attack.
"The situation has deteriorated with the approach of the handover of power to the Iraqis," said Sheik Nazam Khalaf Zaidi, a pillow cushioning a hand wounded in a March 11 assassination attempt that killed two of his relatives riding in the same car. "God willing, there will be no civil war. I said the same words as I was carrying the coffins of my son and my son-in-law." Fault Lines
The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority plans to return sovereignty to Iraq on June 30, but it is still unclear what kind of government will assume power. And ethnic and sectarian differences formed the fault lines for stubborn disagreements over an interim constitution adopted March 8.
The document was fashioned by the Governing Council, whose 25 original members were chosen by their American overseers on the basis of the very sectarian and ethnic differences they were expected to overcome.
"There is a plot for sectarian war in Iraq," said Abdulsattar Abduljabbar, a senior official of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most prominent organization of Sunni clerics. "We receive Shiite delegates in our office and we visit Shiite clerics in their office. There are no conflicts that could lead to fighting -- yet."
The risk is most apparent at the scenes of attacks. At the Badirya mosque in Baghdad's Talbiya neighborhood, Sunni worshipers were milling in the courtyard after evening prayers this month when a pair of stun grenades were thrown over the compound wall from passing vehicles. One man was killed by the shrapnel. The next morning a second man was shot to death in his car after leaving the first man's funeral.
"Many people accuse the Shiites," acknowledged Sheik Ali Hussein Mohammad Khafaji, the soft-spoken imam of the mosque.
Like nearly all of the several dozen people interviewed for this article, Khafaji deflected blame from anyone but coldblooded provocateurs -- perhaps Iraqis paid by foreign governments with an interest in an unstable Iraq, perhaps terrorists. A letter allegedly written by Abu Musab Zarqawi, an Islamic radical from Jordan described by U.S. officials as the prime suspect behind many terrorist strikes in Iraq, described a plan to incite sectarian war before democracy could be established in Iraq.
The imam said, "There is no difference between us" in religiously mixed Talbiya. In the chaos of war a year ago, he noted, Shiite neighbors helped to guard the mosque. Subtle Tensions
But in the course of an hour-long conversation at his cluttered office, the subtle tensions of postwar Iraq gathered with the worshipers who wandered in.
"In some cases the Shiites, they call me a Wahhabi," said Walid Alwan, a stout, middle-aged man, naming the puritanical Sunni sect in which Osama bin Laden was raised -- a label now used as local shorthand for Sunni terrorist. "They call me Saddam, as if Saddam represents the Sunni. It's not right."
His complaint sounded more weary than angry.
"We don't want a fight, but if they begin, what can we do?" Mohammed Majid, an engineer, added in a flatter tone. "I think it will be a bad future. Not for us, but for the other guys."
Clerics say such statements are precisely what they are working hard to deflect.
"We want to control the feelings of our people," said Ali Waedh, a senior Shiite cleric in Baghdad's Kadhimiya neighborhood, where scores died in suicide bombings March 2. 'He Is My Friend'
In cosmopolitan Baghdad, at least, those feelings still tend to be as gentle as the hand that a Shiite shopkeeper lays on the shoulder of the Sunni standing beside him. "He is my friend," the shop owner said. Friends josh one another about rites whose public practice incites bloodshed in some other countries, such as Pakistan. Most important, Iraqis say, marriages between Sunni and Shiite are commonplace, even in deeply religious families. Yet in recent months, the blending of politics and religion has exposed latent tensions.
Privately, some Sunnis acknowledge feeling unsettled by the postwar outburst of Shiite identity. As president, Hussein forbade Shiites to fly the flags of red, green or black that flutter from many rooftops and balconies in Baghdad today, standards that at once honor Shiite saints and declare long-suppressed religious identity.
"The Shia want to show the other people, 'We are here.' That's the feeling I get," said Salah M. Aliwi, deputy dean of the college of sciences at Mustansiriya University. The Baghdad campus had banned religious displays as a matter of principle but found itself overwhelmed by the desires of its Shiite students. The current display of black banners marking the month of mourning for the Shiite saint Hussein "is very ambiguous, because this is the first time we've celebrated this event since Saddam's regime," Aliwi said.
Aliwi, whose predecessor was assassinated by a band of five men, said he has noticed only a bit of social "coagulation," or students separating themselves by background. "Despite the religious, political, ethnic differences, Iraqis don't want war," he said. "I don't think it will happen if we stop the terrorism. But can we? Can the Americans stop terrorism here?
"We are at this moment still far from civil war, but we are getting nearer."
How closely real conflict looms may depend on how well clerics in either branch of Islam balance their desire for social unity against their steadily increasing role in politics.
The most powerful political figure in Iraq today, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, exemplifies the delicacy. The senior Shiite cleric, who met with Sunni leaders last Tuesday to address the sectarian issue, has declared that Iraq's Shiites must protect all Sunni mosques. At the same time, he instructed Shiite imams to circulate petitions and make sermons urging changes in Iraq's interim constitution, which he fears will dilute Shiite power.
"I don't care about this. The important thing is Islam is still at peace in this country," said Ayatollah Alladin Musawi, a frown creasing his round features. The senior cleric was taking a break from accepting kisses on the hand from a stream of mourners offering condolences for the death of his brother, Mohammad Kadhim Mous Ghuraify, a Shiite cleric killed by a small-caliber bullet behind the ear as he stood in a busy street negotiating a fare with a taxi driver.
It happened right in front of Kais Subhy, who watched from his snack stand as the killer jogged away at a pace that suggested no great urgency. Subhy, a Sunni, lifted the Shiite cleric from the road to the sidewalk, closed the dead man's eyes and pulled his black robes over his face.
"They are trying to provoke the sects," Subhy said, standing beside the Shiite neighbor boy he raised as a son. "With our scholars, it won't happen."
The three-day funeral was designed to demonstrate just that. In the slain imam's mosque near Baghdad's center, a delegation of Sunni clerics had been gratefully received on the first two days of mourning. The ranking guest on the final day was Mahmoud Bayati, Sistani's local representative, who the day before had attended the rites for Zaidi's relatives, both Sunnis. "I spoke for half an hour," he said.
Outside, rhythmic, emphatic chanting rose from the marchers -- customary at the funeral of a Shiite imam. In this case the march was led by the usual Shiite colors plus a fourth, white flag, symbolizing peace. "Let's deny hatred and unite under the banner of Islam," the men chanted, from slogans held overhead on cue cards.
Inside, the victim's brother was silent for a moment, still frowning. Finally the ayatollah spoke again.
"The Shiites are 85 percent," he said.
-------- latin america
Peru, Chile build up defenses
March 30, 2004
By Martin Arostegui
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040329-094215-5169r.htm
SANTIAGO, Chile - An arms race is developing between Chile and Peru amid renewed border quarrels.
The Peruvian government has criticized Chile's purchase of four missile frigates from the Netherlands. Defense analysts think the Chilean buildup influenced Peru's decision to double the number of Lupus-class frigates it will buy from Italy this year - from two to four.
At a press conference in Santiago, Peruvian Deputy Foreign Minister Luis Solari called on the Chilean public to question whether the naval buildup "responds to the country's true necessities." His Chilean counterpart, Cristian Barros, instantly defended the arms deal signed with the Netherlands as a policy of "dissuasion." The statements came as both governments sparred over renewed Peruvian claims on sea boundaries.
The escalating war of words comes after a diplomatic offensive by Bolivia for a sea outlet lost in a 19th-century war, in which Peru also had copper-rich territories and important fishing waters confiscated by Chile. Peru had remained on the sidelines during recent months as Bolivian President Carlos Mesa advanced his country's claims and his leading domestic opponent, radical socialist Ewo Morales, threatened war. But now Peru has joined the fray.
In surprising declarations during a routine visit to Santiago, Mr. Solari told reporters: "The question of maritime delimitation, which remains pending according to our understanding, has been put before the Chilean government."
He suggested that the issue be decided through international courts. Clearly irritated, Chilean Foreign Ministry officials responded that the matter was not being discussed.
The U.S. Supreme Court acted as a mediator in the last treaty fixing boundaries between Chile and Peru, negotiated in 1929.
Tensions have been exacerbated further by a border incident in which Chilean marines fatally shot a Peruvian civilian who reportedly was crossing into Chile illegally. Peru's Foreign Ministry has demanded that Chile apologize and undertake a full investigation, and the Peruvian press has attacked Chile.
Peruvian politicians accuse Chilean pilots on commercial flights over Peru of conducting electronic espionage on military units in Peru's southern frontier.
Although the Chilean government generally has handled the growing tensions as quietly and diplomatically as possible, an element of war fever shows up in public. News stands display publications with nostalgic accounts of Chile's triumphant 1879 war, a source of national pride.
"It's the most extensive and successful war of conquest ever launched by a South American country," said Chilean film director Charlie Vara, who is making a movie called "Paz" about the hard-fought desert campaign that culminated in Chile's occupation of Peru's capital, Lima.
Chile hardly underestimates Peru, which fought a recent border war with Ecuador. Chilean staff officers interviewed by United Press lnternational said Peru's Russian-built air fleet of MiG and Soyuz fighters outperforms Chile's aging French Mirages "numerically and qualitatively."
Peru also is thought to possess more effective antiaircraft defenses, and its Russian T-82 tanks are considered an even match for Chile's German-made Leopards.
Chile is acquiring 12 American F-16 fighters, and there are plans to augment the army's air-mobile capabilities with additional Black Hawk and heavy-lift helicopters, Defense Ministry sources say.
-------- mideast
Arab summit blow-up appears bad for Bush
U.S. plan for reform resented as meddling
Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/30/MNG615T99O1.DTL
Washington -- The Bush administration's attempts to promote democracy in the Arab world appear to have suffered a major setback with the acrimonious collapse of an Arab summit in Tunisia that Washington hoped would boost the initiative.
After Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali tempestuously called off the Arab League summit Saturday night, before its scheduled opening Monday, analysts and government officials from Washington to Riyadh debated whether the administration's plan for reform, dubbed the Greater Middle East Initiative, might suffer the same fate as the almost comical diplomatic catfight in Tunisia.
U.S. officials hoped that the summit would set the region on a path toward Western-style free elections and free markets. But commentators in the United States and the Middle East say the administration has instead made matters worse by appearing to shove democracy down the throats of reluctant Arab leaders.
"The Greater Middle East Initiative is going nowhere fast," said Andrew Apostolou, a Mideast analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank. "The problem is that Arab states are in no mood to agree to any form of externally generated freedoms, and I see no way out of this. I don't think the Bush administration has handled this well."
Despite the heavy publicity surrounding the initiative, few details have been released, and it is unclear whether the plan will include the carrot of significant new U.S. foreign aid. Published accounts indicate that it includes only modest spending, mainly on training programs for journalists, women and election monitors.
Apostolou and other observers say the administration's attempts to promote the initiative have been plagued by missteps from the very beginning.
Instead of being communicated privately to Arab governments, it was leaked to the Washington Post in early February -- a snub Arab rulers found humiliating.
"The Bush administration says that reform has to come from within, but ... when it was leaked, ... it took on a life of its own," said Nail Al-Jubeir, a spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington.
Arab distrust of American intentions intensified as the administration continued to support Israel's crackdown on the Palestinians. Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin last week has further inflamed passions in the region.
"In the Arab world, everything is interconnected,'' Al-Jubeir added. "To resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict is a must, to reach justice and equality for the Palestinian people in the territories. Anything without (that) is not going to go anywhere."
Although administration officials have predicted that the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the implantation of democracy in that country will cause a flowering of freedom throughout the region, for many Arabs it appears that "the opposite has happened," said Juan Cole, a professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan. "In the region, Iraq looks more like chaos, not a good model that people want to follow."
The collapse of the summit underscored the fact that intra-Arab diplomacy has long been marked by deep divisions -- not only the rivalries between close U.S. allies, such as Morocco, Jordan and Kuwait, and nations with a hard line, such as Syria, but among rulers with poisonous personal grudges, such as Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah and Tunisia's Ben Ali.
On Monday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak criticized Tunisia for its "unwarranted" indefinite postponement of the summit and immediately offered to reconvene the meeting in Cairo. But Ben Ali rejected the proposal, and it seemed that even if some sort of meeting could be cobbled together, it would be more concerned with saving face than substantive debate.
Arab analysts said a major reason for the Tunis collapse was Ben Ali's unwillingness to allow serious consideration of the Arab world's leading peace proposal -- Crown Prince Abdullah's Arab Peace Initiative, adopted two years ago at an Arab League summit in Beirut.
The initiative offers Israel full normalization of relations with the Arab world in exchange for a total withdrawal from all territory occupied since 1967. Israel has opposed the plan, and U.S. officials have avoided taking a clear position on it.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell denied some Arab news reports that Ben Ali was acting under private orders from the United States to sabotage Abdullah's initiative.
"I was hoping the summit would be able to go ahead," Powell said. "I'm sure I'll be in touch with Arab foreign ministers in the course of the next day or so to get their assessment of the situation."
"The cancellation or postponement ... doesn't change in the least our commitment that we have to support homegrown reform and modernization in the Middle East," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
Dennis Ross, who served as the Clinton and Bush administrations' chief negotiator for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is now director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said of the tiff in Tunis: "I don't think this means the initiative is dead. It shows the turmoil in the Arab world right now, where some regimes are tied in knots over reform, trying to resist it any way they can. They're trying to repress it, but the force is growing, not declining. We should push it."
Ross pointed to a meeting earlier this month of democracy advocates in Alexandria, Egypt -- which ended with a manifesto endorsing reform -- as evidence that the desire for Western-style change was strong.
Ross said the Group of Eight industrialized nations should endorse the manifesto at its next summit in Sea Island, Ga., in June. "That would embolden the reformists," Ross said, "create a shield for them."
But some say Washington should step lightly because of widespread perceptions of a U.S. double standard -- that reform is only intended for America's enemies, not its allies.
"Any overt support from the United States would be the kiss of death for reformers in the Arab world," said Phyllis Bennis, an analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank in Washington.
The Alexandria meeting was sponsored by Mubarak, who has lavished praise on the concept of reform but has refused to free dissidents languishing in his own jails or to allow banned parties to operate freely.
"There has been no reform of an unusual nature anywhere in the Middle East, and there have been many steps backward because of the exigencies of the war on terror and the massive unpopularity of the Iraq war," said Cole.
He noted that Jordan and Yemen, both close U.S. allies, had been criticized by human rights groups for cracking down on legitimate dissent under the guise of chasing al Qaeda terrorists.
Bennis said the more powerful Arab states, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, "were given a pass when Bush announced the Greater Middle East Initiative. They were told by U.S. officials, 'Don't worry, we're not going to rock your boats as long as you acquiesce to our dictates.'
"The irony is that real reformers throughout the Arab world are critical of the U.S. position. Civil society is mobilizing, demanding real reforms."
Email Robert Collier at rcollier@sfchronicle.com.
-------- nato
7 Former Communist Countries Join NATO
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34496-2004Mar29.html
President Bush welcomed seven former Communist countries into NATO yesterday, pressing the alliance's boundaries farther into what once was Warsaw Pact territory and emphasizing its post-Cold War rebirth as a partnership aimed increasingly at fighting terrorism in Europe and beyond.
The expansion -- the second time the alliance has added members since the Soviet Union fell -- comes as a changing NATO prepares to send more forces into Afghanistan, considers a future role in Iraq, and works with nations in North Africa and elsewhere to thwart terrorist organizations.
"Terrorists hate everything this alliance stands for," Bush said in a White House ceremony with representatives of the seven nations. "They despise our freedom. They fear our unity. They seek to divide us. They will fail. We will not be divided. We will never bow to the violence of a few."
The relatively young democracies that joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization yesterday included three former Soviet republics -- the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania -- and three members of the former Warsaw Pact: Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia. The seventh, Slovenia, was part of the former Yugoslavia. The invitation to join the alliance was extended at the NATO summit in Prague in November 2002 and was approved unanimously by the U.S. Senate last May.
The expansion of NATO from 19 to 26 countries tips the balance of the Atlantic alliance further eastward -- and tends to make the group as a whole more sympathetic to U.S. foreign policy. The seven, for example, backed Bush's move toward war in Iraq early last year, even as original NATO members France and Germany opposed him.
Bush pointedly noted in his remarks that all seven nations are playing supporting roles for U.S.-led military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. Bulgaria, he said, provided refueling facilities for aircraft during the 2001 Afghan campaign and also has sent more than 400 soldiers to Iraq. Military engineers from Estonia and Latvia are helping clear explosives in Iraq, and forces from Lithuania and Slovakia also have served there, he said. Romanian and Slovenian troops have deployed to Afghanistan, he added.
"They understand our cause in Afghanistan and in Iraq because tyranny for them is still a fresh memory," said Bush, whose statements included a dose of Reagan-era anti-Soviet rhetoric. "When NATO was founded, the people of these seven nations were captives to an empire."
The alliance's growing roster has been eyed warily by Russia, which also expressed alarm at NATO's first expansion in 1999, when the alliance welcomed the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland.
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a group of reporters Monday that fighter planes would begin "air policing" over the Baltic states at the moment their NATO membership took effect -- and that he explained the policy to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov two weeks ago.
"I think that the Russian Federation has very well understood that NATO has, of course, no ulterior motives by air-policing its airspace," de Hoop Scheffer said, according to the Associated Press, adding that NATO has a solid relationship with Russia. "I think that NATO and Russia will further build on this partnership."
Russian officials have said they will respond if NATO's eastward expansion begins to look threatening. "If NATO believes that there is any need for such protection in the Baltic region, Russia reserves the right to draw its own conclusions from it and, if necessary, to act accordingly," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass, the AP said.
James Steinberg, a former deputy national security adviser, called yesterday's milestone "really quite a remarkable moment, because it is the completion of a project that dates back to the 1940s, when the Iron Curtain came down," cutting off Eastern Europe from the West.
Former Pentagon policy official James Bodner said the day was especially significant because it was part of a U.S. effort to provide incentives to eastern and southeastern European states to act democratically. Having the states adjoining the Balkans become peaceable and stable was by no means guaranteed when NATO began to contemplate expanding, he said. "A decade ago in Southeast Europe we almost had things unravel," he said.
Bush hinted at a third round of expansion of the 55-year-old security organization, noting that the prime ministers of three NATO aspirants -- Albania, Croatia and Macedonia -- also were in attendance yesterday. All three "are also contributing in Afghanistan or Iraq, proving their mettle as they aspire to NATO membership," Bush said. "The door to NATO will remain open until the whole of Europe is united in freedom and in peace," he added.
NATO might play a greater role in Iraq if authorized to do so by the United Nations Security Council, Scheffer told reporters yesterday before the ceremony. Currently the alliance provides some logistical and communications support to the Polish-led multinational division in southern Iraq, but otherwise it has steered clear of involvement.
"I think that the NATO allies would enter that discussion with a positive attitude, which could mean that NATO, as far as command is concerned, could participate or could take over a certain part of the stabilization force."
--------
Official: NATO May Lead Int'l Iraq Force
March 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-NATO.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is weighing roles for NATO in Iraq but has not decided which of several options to support, a senior State Department official said Tuesday.
NATO could take over command of a multinational division, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert Bradtke said, or the alliance could train peacekeeping and Iraqi forces to improve security in the country as it moves toward self-governance on July 1.
Seventeen of the 26 NATO members already are playing a military role in Iraq, but the Bush administration is looking to bolster support for the operation it has led since deposing President Saddam Hussein.
``We want to hear the views of our partners,'' Bradtke said. ``At some point we will come to a decision and have a position of our own.''
Some contributors and would-be contributors are holding out for a U.N. resolution to authorize their participation. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Tuesday he did not know when one would be ready for approval.
If the U.N. Security Council were to authorize an international security force for Iraq, then NATO might be willing to command part of it, the alliance's most senior civilian official said Monday.
That would be a major step for the alliance, which has been divided by the war in Iraq. France and Germany, two of NATO's key European members, strongly opposed the decision to launch the war, and public opinion in other member countries is against sending troops.
Spain's new Socialist government is considering the withdrawal of Spanish troops.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said NATO might get involved if the Security Council passed a resolution and if the governing body that takes political control in Iraq asked for troops.
Secretary of State Colin Powell is due at NATO headquarters in Brussels for talks Friday with foreign ministers, including Serge Lavrov of Russia.
Russia opposed NATO's expansion, which took in seven former members of the Soviet bloc, but has accepted a relationship with the alliance that was formed, initially, to keep the Soviet Union from pushing westward in Europe.
Lavrov's participation will be the first by a Russian foreign minister in NATO discussions.
Last week, Russian Defense Minister Sergei B. Ivanov raised concerns that the United States might develop new types of nuclear weapons that could force his government to take tough defensive measures against NATO.
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Washington seeks NATO-Mideast cooperation
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Mar 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040330202903.4c33q5mm.html
The United States is looking to extend to Middle Eastern countries the same kind of cooperation established between NATO and the former Soviet bloc nations under the so-called Partnership for Peace, a senior US official said Tuesday.
The idea is one of several US projects for democratic and social reform in the Arab-Muslim world, said Robert Bradtke, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe.
Tools used in the Partnership for Peace, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's operation with central and east European non-member countries, could be used to show "what we can do on areas like counterterrorism, (and) enhancing interoperability," said Bradtke.
Such a move would help Middle Eastern countries reinforce their ties with NATO with a view to peacekeeping operations or joint military exercises, or to obtain NATO support for defense reform and planning, the diplomat said.
Bradtke said Washington also wanted to boost the current dialogue between NATO and seven Mediterranean countries, the so-called Mediterranean Dialogue, "and try to invigorate that."
The policies will be discussed Friday informally in Brussels during a NATO foreign ministers meeting that Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to attend.
Washington wants to discuss support for Middle East reform at the G8 and NATO summits in June.
-------- russia / chechnya
Chechen Rebel Threatens to Strike Russians
March 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Chechnya.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- The Chechen rebel leader threatened on Tuesday to strike Russians outside the country to avenge the killing of a senior rebel leader in Qatar.
Shamil Basayev also said the rebels fighting for independence from Russia reserved the right to use chemical weapons, according to a letter published Tuesday on a rebel Web site.
Basayev accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ignoring Basayev's earlier call for Russian authorities to observe international law in Chechnya -- specifically to end to alleged executions without trial and the disappearance of civilians -- in return for an end to Chechen terrorist attacks against civilians in Russia.
Instead, Basayev charged, Russians killed rebel leader Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev in a February car bombing in Qatar -- for which two Russian intelligence agents are in custody there awaitng trial -- and continued to abduct civilians in Chechnya and the neighboring Russian region of Ingushetia.
``What Russians can do we can too,'' Basayev said in the letter published on the Kavkaz Center Web site, which has been a voice for his rebel camp.
``I swear to Allah, we have possibilities to destroy Russians in practically any country, but we had not carried military activities beyond the borders of Russia and today the events in Qatar will be decisive in our further activities,'' he wrote.
Basayev said his rebels would not touch mosques, synagogues, pagodas and churches other than Russian Orthodox ones, nursery schools, orphanages or psychiatric institutions in Russia, but he did threaten attacks within Russia.
``We will, to the extent possible, bomb, blow up, poison, set ablaze, and organize natural gas explosions and fires on everything else on Russian territory,'' he said.
Basayev also alleged that Russian forces were using chemical weapons and poisons against Chechens.
``That is why we reserve the right to use chemical and toxic substances and the same poisons against Russia,'' he said.
Russia's Federal Security Service refused to comment on the letter.
Basayev has taken responsibility for many terrorist acts, including the rebels' seizure of some 800 hostages in a Moscow theater in October 2002 and a recent series of suicide bombings in Moscow and other cities.
In early 1995, shortly after Russian forces entered Chechnya for the first war, Basayev claimed responsibility for a container of radioactive material found buried in a Moscow park. Basayev claimed it was planted by his cohorts as a warning of the mayhem they could inflict.
The current war in Chechnya, which began in 1999, has deteriorated into a bloody stalemate with Russian forces unable to decisively crush the outnumbered and outgunned rebels.
In the previous 24 hours, four soldiers and two police died in rebel attacks and mine explosions, an official in the Moscow-backed Chechen administration said Tuesday on condition of anonymity.
The bodies of five men were discovered Tuesday in the basement of an abandoned house in the Chechen capital, Grozny, the official said. The men's bodies showed signs of torture, he said. All were dressed in civilian clothes.
Chechens living nearby told The Associated Press that the remains were discovered in a well and that a military vehicle had been seen there about a week ago, discarding several sacks. Residents said they were frightened to investigate out of fear the area was mined to keep them away.
-------- space
U.S. Takes First Step To Weaponize Space
Washington (UPI)
Mar 30, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/bmdo-04k.html
Illustration http://www.spacedaily.com/images-bin/bmdo-mkr-bg.jpg
Washington's Missile Defense Agency has earmarked $68 million for what some believe is the first step for putting weapons in space, ABC News reported Tuesday.
Known as the Near Field Infrared Experiment or NFIRE satellite, it is primarily designed to gather data on exhaust plumes from rockets launched from earth.
As a result, military officials say the $68 million item in the 2005 budget is a defensive, rather than offensive project.
But, critics point out, the satellite will also contain a smaller "kill vehicle," a projectile that takes advantage of the kinetic energy of objects traveling through low-Earth orbit (which move at several times the speed of a bullet) to disable or destroy an oncoming missile or another orbiting satellite.
As one senior government official and defense expert, who requested anonymity, said, "We're crossing the Rubicon into space weaponization."
-------- un
Annan Fires Top Security Adviser Over Iraq Bombing
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34518-2004Mar29.html
UNITED NATIONS, March 29 -- Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday ousted his top security adviser and punished several other U.N. employees for failing to provide adequate security at the United Nations' Baghdad headquarters before the Aug. 19 attack that killed 22 people there.
The U.N. chief's action marked the largest shake-up of senior staff members in over a decade. It followed the completion of a confidential 150-page report by a panel headed by a retired U.N. official, Gerald Walzer, into personal accountability for the security breakdown before the terrorist attack, which killed the United Nations' top envoy, Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil.
The move was aimed at putting to rest months of criticism of the United Nations' failure to anticipate the worst terrorist attack against the organization in its history despite mounting evidence that it was a potential terror target. Instead, it sparked fresh criticism from some within the organization who noted that Annan and some other senior officials who hastily led the United Nations back into Iraq in May went unpunished.
According to a summary of the report prepared by the U.N. secretary general's office, the United Nations -- facing mounting international pressure to address Iraq's humanitarian needs -- recklessly rushed back into the country without conducting a proper assessment of the worsening security conditions.
After the U.N. return, senior U.N. officials in New York and Baghdad, including Vieira de Mello, routinely dismissed reports from U.N. intelligence officials indicating "a very real danger to the safety of UN staff" from an increasingly violent insurgency, the summary said.
"They ignored the warning signs which were becoming more obvious each day," the summary noted. "They failed to respond effectively to the recommendations and advice which were coming from their own security advisors."
The panel leveled its most serious charge against Tun Myat of Myanmar, the United Nations' security coordinator, who was described as "oblivious" to the worsening security situation in Baghdad in the weeks leading up to the attack. Myat, a veteran U.N. official with little prior security experience, resigned Monday.
The summary concluded that Myat and the top U.N. security officials in Iraq "appeared to be blinded by the conviction that U.N. personnel and installations would not become a target of attack, despite the clear warnings to the contrary."
"I am the security coordinator. I cannot shirk responsibility for what has happened," Myat said by telephone. "I think it is only correct that I tender my resignation."
Annan also demoted Ramiro Lopes da Silva of Portugal, a highly regarded humanitarian relief expert, who served as the United Nations' top humanitarian coordinator in Iraq. Lopes da Silva, who will return to his former job at the U.N. World Food Program, was charged with putting "forward a flawed concept of operation" for the organization's return to Iraq after the U.S.-led war that included "no prior security assessment."
Lopes da Silva and a U.N. security official, Robert Adolph, who was also ordered reassigned to a new job, will be barred from taking on new assignments with responsibilities for the security of U.N. staff members.
Lopes da Silva's security plan was later approved by a senior U.N. advisory panel, the Steering Group on Iraq, and endorsed by Annan. The panel cleared Annan of personal responsibility, saying that he "had acted in a proper manner" because he was acting on the recommendation of his top advisers.
Annan charged two mid-level officials -- Paul Aghadjanian of Jordan, chief of the U.N. Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq, and Gambia's Pa Momodou Sinyan, the U.N. agency's building manager -- with misconduct and initiated disciplinary proceedings against them.
The two officials were sharply criticized in the report for acting too slowly to respond to requests to install anti-blast film, a move that "would in all probability have saved lives."
The panel faulted the 15-member steering group, which was headed by U.N. Deputy Secretary General Louise Frechette of Canada, for failing to exercise "due care or diligence" in weighing the security situation in Baghdad before the U.N. return.
Annan declined Frechette's offer to resign, noting that the entire steering group shared responsibility. Annan also chastised the heads of several U.N. agencies, including the U.N. Children's Fund and the U.N. Development Program, for ignoring restrictions designed to limit the number of U.N. relief experts stationed in Baghdad before the Aug. 19 attack.
The summary did not address the controversial question of whether Annan himself had acted responsibly by urging U.N. staff to remain in Iraq after the attack despite nearly unanimous calls from his top security and political advisers to pull out.
The U.N. headquarters staff union said Annan was letting his own inner circle off too easily. "The punishment for most doesn't fit the crime," said Guy Candusso, the vice president of the U.N. Staff Union. "We have 22 people dead, and the U.N. Secretary General lets most senior officials keep their jobs and their pensions."
--------
U.N. Envoy Sent to Shape Plan for Iraq
Key Players Still at Odds Over Transition Process
By Robin Wright and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34594-2004Mar29.html
A U.N. special envoy heads to Baghdad this week to chart a course for forming a new Iraqi government in just six to eight weeks, amid growing signs that the pivotal players in Iraq's political drama are deeply divided over how to proceed.
With a new sense of urgency, the United Nations is dispatching envoy Lakhdar Brahimi to begin deliberations, while the Bush administration yesterday dispatched the National Security Council's Iraq troubleshooter, Robert Blackwill, to help set the stage for Brahimi's mission and pressure the Iraqi Governing Council to cooperate, U.S. officials said.
The key problem is that Iraqis are deeply split, with many on the council jockeying to hold on to power despite recent polls showing that its 25 members have limited popular backing, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials. But the United Nations and the U.S.-led coalition also differ on what can realistically be achieved by the end of May, the deadline to get an interim government in place so the occupation can end on June 30, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
With two plans abandoned over the past eight months because of public opposition, the Bush administration publicly insists it is open to new ideas and has turned over the deliberations to Brahimi, State Department and White House officials said. But coalition officials are increasingly -- and reluctantly -- convinced that there is no viable alternative except to turn political authority over to an expanded version of the U.S.-appointed governing council, according to officials of coalition countries.
"We have no particular option, and time is running short. An expanded governing council is looking more likely than not, but it's not settled. The most important thing is for Iraqis to be comfortable with it," said a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"It boils down to believing there is no other alternative left. We're not philosophically against any other ideas and we're willing to let Brahimi take a shot . . . and we'll support him in any way we can. But we've tried everything -- and what else is there?" added a State Department official.
Brahimi, set to arrive in Iraq at week's end, believes that "everything is open to discussion," said a U.N. official involved in the trip, "as long as we can reach a political consensus and the new provisional administration is acceptable as much as possible to all Iraqis."
Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, particularly wants to explore two ideas -- holding either a "roundtable" of Iraqi leaders or a wider national convention -- both of which are similar to the loya jirga assembly that selected Afghanistan's postwar government after the U.S. invasion ousted the Taliban, officials from coalition countries said.
Coalition officials are concerned that time has already run out for both ideas. The central problem for any option that requires appointing a new group of Iraqis to help create a government is in figuring out who should choose that group and how many members it should have, coalition and U.N. officials said. Squabbling among Iraqis has been a complicating problem since the occupation began last year.
Coalition and U.N. officials said that, at this late date, they want to limit the number of Iraqis involved in picking a government -- or in the interim government itself -- to keep the process from becoming unwieldy. Given public posturing, they fear any attempt to name an additional 25 or 50 people to some newly formed group will lead to calls for 50 or 100 appointments.
Looming in the background of all discussions, however, is Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's popular cleric whose opposition torpedoed two earlier U.S. plans. Officials from both the U.S.-led coalition and the United Nations say they recognize that Sistani's objections to any new proposal would almost certainly doom it, too -- and further complicate the handover of sovereignty from U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer.
The majority of governing council members are pressing for either transforming the council, as is, into an interim government, or enlarging it modestly, said Iraqi officials. "We can't start July 1 with a brand-new government," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. "It will be more practical and much easier to expand the governing council, and they will assure this question of continuity."
But some council members recognize the danger of rejection if a new government is not viewed as properly representative. "We have to give other people the chance to participate, to have a say, to be part of the process so that they will support it," said Mahmoud Othman, a Kurdish member of the council.
U.N. officials are also signaling alarm over the limited time to organize elections by year's end. In Baghdad yesterday, chief U.N. elections director Carina Perelli said election plans must be made by the end of May if that timetable is to work.
"We need to make sure that between now and the 31st of January there is a modicum of security that will make the Iraqi people feel that they can go to the polls, that they can run as candidates without extreme fear and that they don't pull out of the process," she said.
Shadid reported from Baghdad. Staff writers Sewell Chan in Baghdad and Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.
-------- us
Wartime Stress
Poor morale and high suicide rates point to big problems for troops in Iraq
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By T. Trent Gegax Newsweek
March 30, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4632956/
March 30 - The gnashing of teeth you hear at the Pentagon is caused by deep concern over Army morale and suicide numbers that are upside down. The long-awaited Mental Health Advisory Team survey released a few days ago showed that unit morale is low-72 percent called it bad-and that suicide among U.S. troops in Iraq is high-35 percent higher than soldiers stationed elsewhere. And those numbers don't include suicides that happened once soldiers returned home. The report is alarming because it points to a military that's being stretched too thin. But the Army should also accept that its plan to treat battle stress isn't working.
Officially, the Army prefers to brush aside the new survey results. Pentagon spinners complain that the media has made a mountain out of a molehill on the issue of suicides and morale. They say the suicide rate is still below that of the general U.S. population. But a candid Army manpower officer calls that argument specious. "We do screen people so you do expect that we'd be better on morale and behavior," he told me after the survey came out.
Why are these numbers so bad? The incidence of low morale and high suicides reflects in part a slippage in quality control. According to Army Col. (Ret.) Jim Martin, associate professor of Social Work and Social Research at Bryn Mawr College, only 85 percent of soldiers have their high school degree (or equivalent), compared with 95 percent as recently as the mid-1990s. In other words, the behavioral bar has been lowered in order to increase recruitment demands. And those demands may only intensify. For now, the Army reports that it doesn't have a retention crisis. But that's because of a mechanism called "stop-loss," which is basically a freeze on all retirements (or "silent draft," in the words of the manpower officer). Until stop-loss is lifted, we won't get an accurate look at the manpower picture.
Future recruiting needs to better select who is fit to handle the rigors of war. Researchers recently discovered, for instance, that men who slide quickly into the Rapid Eye Movement stage of sleep are more predisposed to suffer Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. There are obvious socio-economic indicators for depression: Most suicides in Iraq involved a young, white enlisted (i.e., non officer) guy who had money or family problems. In other words, these guys were already having trouble before they headed off to Iraq. Things only got worse once they began laboring for 24-year-old platoon sergeants ill-equipped to notice suicidal tendencies and once they placed their trust in a general officer leadership that misled them on their deployment time. The heartbreak was devastating among Third Infantry Division soldiers who had camped in the Kuwaiti desert for nearly a year before charging into the heart of Iraq. They'd been told that the sooner they reached Baghdad, the sooner they'd be bound for home. Instead, their tours were extended nearly a year. After that, they looked like dead men walking.
The Pentagon did have a plan to handle psych injuries in Iraq: roving Combat Stress Control teams. It was a great idea. But the teams failed in part because there was no senior mental health leader in Iraq (even though that was one of the primary recommendations Army psychologists made after the first Gulf war). Without a general officer in charge of mental health in Iraq, the combat stress teams were overlooked. Some didn't even have proper radios. "These kinds of units are always last on the list of what's needed" when the war machine is lined up for battle, Dr. Jim Martin says.
More importantly, soldiers didn't fully trust the stress teams. They weren't embedded with every unit, so soldiers didn't get a chance to bond with the psychologists. Trust needs to form before one service member will trust another with his demons. This is something that the Marine Corps already figured out. Operation Iraqi Freedom saw the debut of the Corps' remedy for combat stress, a program called Operational Stress Control and Readiness, better known as OSCAR. Where the Army's mental health specialists roamed the battlefield to meet soldiers for the first time, OSCAR teams are as integral to larger units as combat engineers. That is, OSCAR teams are part of the unit back home in garrison. They get to know their brothers. Much as it would hate admitting it, the Army could learn a thing or two from their rivals in the Marine Corps.
-------- propaganda wars
At the Center of the Storm Over Bush And Science
March 30, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/science/30ADVI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON - The average scientific dispute is a joust in obscurity, a clash over technical matters that few but the immediate combatants grasp or are even aware of.
Dr. John H. Marburger III, President Bush's science adviser, might relish a dose of that obscurity right now. Instead, he has become the first line of defense against accusations that the Bush administration has systematically distorted scientific fact and stacked technical advisory committees to advance favored policies on the environment, on biomedical research and on other areas like the search for unconventional weapons in Iraq.
Dr. Marburger says that pattern is illusory, a product of stringing together a few unrelated incidents within the vast canvas of government science, most of which is working just fine.
"From all the evidence I can find," he said, "it's certainly not true that science is being manipulated by this administration to suit its policy. It's simply not the case."
But to a degree not seen in previous administrations, a wide range of influential scientists - even many who say they like Dr. Marburger personally and respect him professionally - express dismay at White House science policy.
"I think this is as bad as it's ever been," said Wolfgang H. K. Panofsky, a retired Stanford physicist who has advised the government on science and national security since the Eisenhower administration. "This is an extremely serious issue. I believe it is true that there is such a thing as objective scientific reality, and if you ignore that or try to misrepresent it in formulating policy, you do so at peril to the country."
Other experts have been blunter. In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Dr. Howard Gardner, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, said, "I actually feel very sorry for Marburger, because I think he probably is enough of a scientist to realize that he basically has become a prostitute."
Later, in an interview with The New York Times, Dr. Gardner said he had made the reference but added, "I wish I'd used it as a verb rather than as a noun."
An intent graying physicist and woodworking enthusiast who once built an entire harpsichord from scratch, Dr. Marburger, 63, is so unassuming that he routinely melted into the backdrop at announcements of scientific discoveries while working at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton on Long Island. He was director of the laboratory before moving to Washington in October 2001.
But just as in the now-you-see-it, now-you-don't world of quantum phenomena that Dr. Marburger, who is also director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, has spent much of his life studying, appearances may be beside the point. Widely believed to be excluded from the president's inner circle - he surprised many people by declaring soon after his nomination that he was a lifelong Democrat - Dr. Marburger is said by White House officials to have Mr. Bush's ear on all important technical matters. The president who is supposedly so antagonistic to science enjoys Dr. Marburger's explanatory style, the officials say.
In fact, Dr. Marburger, who has recently endured speculation that he might resign, may be just what fellow scientists have always longed for in the White House, an expert with deep knowledge of the technical issues, a bureaucrat's ease in palace politics, a ready turn of phrase and even a modest dose of mystique.
"He is closer to the pulse in the White House than any of his predecessors, to my knowledge," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who also worked for Mr. Bush's father and Ronald Reagan. Not only does Dr. Marburger typically attend each morning meeting for the senior staff in the Roosevelt Room, Mr. Card said, but also "the president enjoys Jack Marburger."
"He's a little bit of a character, which is fun," Mr. Card said.
Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said that Dr. Marburger was "either at or near the top of the list of those who participate most actively in the budget process, in my experience."
To colleagues and friends who suggest that Dr. Marburger could not possibly agree with many of the administration's science policies - for example, limits on embryonic stem cell research that many scientists have said hamper potentially therapeutic applications - he has a simple answer. "No one will know my personal positions on issues as long as I am in this job," Dr. Marburger said in an interview. "I am here to make sure that the science input to policy making is sound, and that the executive branch functions properly with respect to its science and technology missions."
Stem cells, for instance, "offer great promise for addressing previously incurable diseases and afflictions," Dr. Marburger said. "But I can't tell when a fertilized egg becomes sacred. That's not my job. That's not a science issue. And so whatever I think about reproductive technology or choice or whatever is irrelevant for my job as a science adviser."
That is the approach he took as chairman of Gov. Mario M. Cuomo's fact-finding commission on the Shoreham nuclear power plant on Long Island in 1983. Dr. Marburger later made it clear that he did not agree with everything in the consensus report on the reactor, which found that the plant probably should never have been built and would bring few if any benefits if it opened. The reactor never went into full operation.
"The governor didn't want my opinion," Dr. Marburger said. "He told me that. The governor wanted to know what the situation was. And I delivered that."
That was not the only contentious issue that he handled smoothly before going to Washington. When he took over as director of Brookhaven in 1998, there was widespread outrage over disclosures of a leak of radioactive tritium from a research reactor. Dr. Marburger was credited with creating policies and a dialogue that quelled the outrage. He finally presided over the shutdown of the reactor, a move that the Energy Department ordered. Dr. Marburger said he did not support that decision.
"I regret it," he said. "I thought it was a good reactor, and it still had years of life left in it."
Those episodes may afford a clue to the mind of the elusive Dr. Marburger, who was also president of the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1980 to 1994 and before that was dean at the California Institute of Technology. He was born on Staten Island and grew up in Maryland near Washington before studying at Princeton and Stanford, where he received his Ph.D. in 1967.
However adroitly Dr. Marburger's credibility and communications skills helped him handle those crises, he is discovering that the forces of discontent focused on Washington are far less easily tamed. Many influential scientists remain convinced that Dr. Marburger has simply disappeared at the White House, after arriving 10 months into the administration, because of Mr. Bush's delay in appointing him. Even then, Dr. Marburger did not receive the prestigious title "assistant to the president" that some of his predecessors had, but instead reports directly to Mr. Card.
In the view of some scientists with decades of experience in advising the government, all those factors have helped open the way to widespread political interference in the technical advisory process across numerous agencies.
"I don't believe there's any precedent for it, I really don't, at least since World War II," said Dr. Lewis M. Branscomb, a physicist who is an emeritus professor of public policy and corporate management at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Dr. Branscomb was director of the National Bureau of Standards under President Richard M. Nixon and was also on high-level advisory panels for four other presidents, dating from John F. Kennedy.
Speaking directly about Dr. Marburger, Dr. Branscomb added, "I have a great deal of sympathy for his position, because I don't believe he has the authority, the power, to go back into all the agencies and unearth all the facts about all these cases."
Discontent among scientists has recently verged on insurrection. In late February, more than 60 influential scientists, including more than 20 Nobel laureates, signed a statement saying the administration had disbanded scientific advisory committees, placed unqualified people on other panels and censored reports by others when their scientific conclusions conflicted with administration policies.
"Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front," the letter said.
That letter and a highly critical, detailed report by the Union of Concerned Scientists that was released at the same time pointed to, among other problems, what it called tampering in June 2003 with a draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency on climate change. Dr. Marburger voiced respect for the letter's signers, and he has asked them to discuss their concerns with him. But uncharacteristically, he also flashed rhetorical steel in responding to the criticisms in the two documents. He said that although a few isolated incidents might have "ruffled feathers," the effort to argue that they constituted a pattern had produced a "conspiracy theory report."
Even some scientists who are strongly sympathetic to his position suggest that this counterattack might have been hasty.
"I think it would have been better to say, `Well, it raises some serious allegations; I will look into them,' " Dr. Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, said. "That would have been a more appropriate response and probably would not have hurt him at all with anybody, including the administration."
Some scientists, though, said Dr. Marburger's quick reaction was understandable, given what they say are flaws in the report by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"It was really a generalization of a lot of individual things that might have happened or might not have happened," said Erich Bloch, a principal at the Washington Advisory Group, which does for-profit consulting on technical issues. "I'm not so sure that one should interpret that as being the majority opinion of the scientific community," said Mr. Bloch, who directed the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1990 and is on the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology.
Still, Dr. Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who has advised the government since the mid-1950's and who signed the letter, said he was satisfied that the report showed "political influence in order to make the science come out right for preconceived notions."
A recent day spent following Dr. Marburger on his rounds in Washington provided some insights into his schedule but little into his own views on science policy. He gave an early-morning speech to a conference on the future of aging, presided over a staff meeting in his sixth-floor office on Pennsylvania Avenue, lunched at the Bombay Club with an official from the National Institutes of Health and gave another speech, this time before young scientists whom the government is courting for military research.
Along the way he offered a few conjectures about the reasons for the attacks by some scientists. "I know that we are in the early stages of a very bitter political campaign," he said. "I don't think it is appropriate for people who are concerned about their country to act with such bitterness. But it's a fact."
In response to a report in the journal Nature on the speculation that he might resign, he said he was not considering it. But when asked whether he would accept a second four-year term as science adviser if Mr. Bush is re-elected, he demurred. "I'm focused on this term," Dr. Marburger said. "I haven't, honestly, given a thought to what I would do next."
Dr. Charles M. Vest, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said, "If I were seeking science advice, I would be very glad to receive it from Jack."
But even Dr. Vest, who said he did not believe that the Bush administration was much different from others in its use of science, cautioned against "a very long-term trend toward selective use of scientific information driven by a political and ideological motivations."
He added, "I think it's been going on for far too long."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Rice 9/11 Testimony May Be Released
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34348-2004Mar29.html
After resisting for months, White House officials worked yesterday to negotiate a compromise that would allow public release of national security adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the independent commission looking into the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, according to administration aides.
These aides said the White House believes Rice's refusal to testify is becoming a political problem and officials are looking for a way out. The leading possibility is for Rice to submit to another private session with the commissioners and allow them to release a transcript, the aides said.
But officials said commission members insisted anew yesterday that they want Rice to testify under oath and in public. That is partly because of questions raised in last week's testimony by Richard A. Clarke, a former Bush national security official who asserted that the White House neglected the threat of terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The aides said the White House would continue to resist yielding completely. President Bush believes that would set a precedent that could inhibit the advice senior staff provide future chief executives. The White House has also said formal testimony could undermine the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches, since the commission was created by Congress and Bush's signature.
Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton said on weekend talk shows that the commissioners unanimously believe that Rice should testify publicly, and that they would continue to press her to do so under oath.
The White House did not allow a recording to be made of what Rice said when she met privately with the commissioners for four hours in February, the aides said. But the commissioners and their staff members have notes that were described as being nearly verbatim.
The aides would discuss the matter only if they were not named, because the White House is not publicly acknowledging that a compromise is being considered.
Lawyers from the office of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales are discussing several possibilities, aides said. "The goal here is to have the American people able to see reflected, or hear, what Dr. Rice has to say about these questions," a senior administration official said. "There are a lot of different ways to arrive at that shared goal. The details of that are a matter of discussion."
Just five or six of the 10 commission members attended Rice's first session; commissioners said that was because she insisted on holding the session on a Saturday, in the White House complex.
An agreement about Rice's testimony would not end the disputes between the White House and the commission, which has accused Bush's aides of cooperating grudgingly when they cooperate at all.
Bush agreed in February to answer questions during a private meeting but not with all 10 commissioners -- only with the chairman and vice chairman. Vice President Cheney made the same offer.
Al Felzenberg, spokesman for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said the commissioners asked Bush to reconsider. "As of today, he has not said that he has reconsidered, and we have neither accepted nor rejected his offer to meet with the chairman and the vice chairman," Felzenberg said. "That's still under discussion within the commission."
Former president Bill Clinton and vice president Al Gore are scheduled to meet separately with the commission. The sessions will be private. Felzenberg said they have not responded to an additional invitation to testify publicly.
Republican officials said Rice's stance has helped prolong news coverage of Clarke's charges. Republican commissioner John F. Lehman said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that Rice's refusal to testify publicly was "creating the impression that the White House has something to hide" and "is a political blunder of the first order."
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the "position remains the same, in terms of the principle, and why we believe it's important to uphold that principle."
Late last week, Rice renewed an offer for a second private session. "Condi very much looks forward to meeting with the commission again," McClellan said. "We're just in the preliminary discussion stages."
--------
White House Said to Agree to Let Rice Answer Questions Publicly
March 30, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/politics/30CND-PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, March 30 -- The White House said today it will allow President Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to testify in public and under oath before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, reversing its position that she was prevented from doing so by executive privilege.
In addition, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will testify in one joint private session before all 10 commission members, with one commission staff member present to take notes. The White House had previously said that the President and Vice President would appear only before the chairman and co-chairman.
The White House's change in stance was conveyed in a letter today from Alberto R. Gonzales, the counsel to President Bush, to Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the chairman and vice chairman respectively of the 9/11 commission.
Mr. Gonzales said in his letter that the White House was allowing Dr. Rice to testify in recognition that "the events of Sept. 11, 2001, present the most extraordinary circumstances." He said the White House's accommodations were on condition that they would not set precedent regarding the separation of executive and legislative powers, and that the commission not seek additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice.
The reversal represents a major shift by the Bush administration, probably in acknowledgement of the continuing enormous public interest in the Sept. 11 attacks. The interest has been fanned in recent days by the accounts of Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism official who said that President Bush and his top advisers had underestimated the threat from Al Qaeda, then seemed preoccupied with linking the Sept. 11 attacks to Iraq.
The decision came a day after the chairman and vice chairman of the commission said that they would ask Ms. Rice to testify under oath in any future questioning because of discrepancies between her statements and those made in sworn testimony by President Bush's former counterterrorism chief.
"I would like to have her testimony under the penalty of perjury," said Mr. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, in comments on Monday that reflected the panel's exasperation with the White House and Ms. Rice.
Ms. Rice had refused to testify in public before the commission, even as she has granted numerous interviews about its investigation. On Monday, the White House declined to respond to Mr. Kean's comments.
But it seemed clear from Mr. Gonzales's letter that there had been intense private negotiations between the White House and the commission. The letter refers, for example, to assurances from Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, that Ms. Rice's public testimony "does not set, and should not be cited as, a precedent for future requests for a national security adviser or any other White House official to testify before a legislative body."
Mr. Gonzales said he hoped Ms. Rice's could appear "as soon as possible" before the 9/11 panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The panel is to hold another round of hearings in mid-April.
The agreement that President Bush and Vice President Cheney will appear before the full panel was a major concession by the administration, even though Mr. Gonzales waited until the penultimate paragraph in his letter to announce it.
The agreement headed off a resolution that Senators Charles E. Schumer of New York and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats, had intended to introduce today, calling on President Bush to make Ms. Rice available for public testimony under oath.
"Well, thank you, Mr. President," Mr. Schumer said in a statement today. He said he looked forward to hearing Ms. Rice's testimony. "We ought to trust this commission," he said. "It's bipartisan. It has many people of integrity on it. And let it go forward without stonewalling."
Ms. Rice has so far granted one private interview to the 10-member, bipartisan commission and has requested another. But the White House had cited executive privilege in refusing to allow her to testify in public or under oath. That decision has led Democrats and other critics to accuse the White House of trying to hide embarrassing information about its failure to pre-empt the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I think she should be under the same penalty as Richard Clarke," Mr. Kean said in an interview.
Congressional Republican leaders have said that Mr. Clarke lied under oath in describing the Bush administration's counterterrorism record and requested that previous Congressional testimony by him be declassified.
In a private interview in February with several members of the commission, Ms. Rice was not required to be under oath, and panel officials said that no transcript was made of the four-hour conversation. The commission has required all witnesses testifying at public hearings to be sworn in, opening them to perjury charges if they are found to be lying, while all but a handful of the hundreds of witnesses questioned behind closed doors have not been sworn in.
Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton, the panel's vice chairman, also said that if the White House agreed, they were ready to declassify and make public the notes taken by commissioners when they interviewed Ms. Rice on Feb. 7, along with the transcripts of nearly 15 hours of private questioning of Mr. Clarke that was conducted by the commission before last week's hearing. "My tendency is to say that everything should be made public," Mr. Kean said.
There were signs throughout the day on Monday of a debate within the administration over whether to hold fast to the principle of not allowing White House aides to testify before Congress or to seek a deal that would allow Ms. Rice to appear before the commission.
White House officials said Ms. Rice herself was looking for ways she could be permitted to respond to the commission, despite the reservations of the White House counsel's office and the potential difficulty of explaining why the administration was reversing course on what it had made a matter of principle.
One outside adviser to the White House said that Mr. Bush's political staff was inclined to compromise on Ms. Rice's testimony, judging the political costs of continuing to fight in the midst of a tight re-election campaign to outweigh any cost from showing flexibility on the principle.
"It's fair to say many of the senior political advisers understand the principle but have a more pragmatic view," said the adviser, who insisted on anonymity, saying he wanted to keep his role behind the scenes.
This adviser said that Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser and political strategist, wanted to move the election away from questions like "Were there intelligence failures?" and to put the focus instead on which candidate could better protect against any future efforts by terrorists to attack the United States.
"If we're going to have a discussion about W.M.D. and intelligence failures and Osama bin Laden, that's not an election George W. Bush wins," the adviser said. "If it's about who keeps you safer, that's the ground we want to be on."
The White House has cast its objections to allowing Ms. Rice to make a formal appearance before the commission as a matter of upholding the principle of separation of powers between Congress, which created the commission, and the executive branch.
In a letter to the commission last week, Mr. Gonzales said that in order to protect the ability of any president "to receive the best and most candid possible advice from their White House staff" on national security issues, it was important that "these advisers not be compelled to testify publicly before Congressional bodies such as the commission."
A second outside adviser said that White House officials believed they could endure the political storm raging now, but that they were concerned that giving up the privilege could come back to haunt them down the road.
After finding herself at the center of the political furor over Mr. Clarke's testimony, Ms. Rice asked last week for a separate meeting with the commission, specifically to rebut the accusation made by Mr. Clarke in his testimony and in his new, best-selling memoir.
"With other witnesses, our policy has been to conduct interviews under oath when key factual matters are in dispute, and there are obviously some factual matters here under dispute," Mr. Hamilton said. He said the commission would probably go ahead with the interview even if Ms. Rice refused.
"If she decided not to be placed under oath," he said, "that would be her decision, and we are still going to want her testimony."
The commission has voted in the past against issuing a subpoena for Ms. Rice, and panel members said today that they were unlikely to reconsider given the long court challenge that might result.
--------
Newsview: 9 / 11 Reversal Puts Rice on Spot
March 30, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rice-Hot-Seat.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's reversal on Sept. 11 testimony, a major capitulation by the administration, may help the White House rebut suggestions that it has something to hide. But it also raises the political stakes and puts heavy pressure on Condoleezza Rice.
Bush's national security adviser is sure to be asked -- in public and under oath -- not only about her efforts to discredit former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, but about her statements that seem to contradict those of other members of the administration.
For instance, her contention that the administration had a strategy before the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks for military operations against al-Qaida clearly disputes Clarke's claim that it did not. But it also appears to be at odds with testimony by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
Rice's comments in TV interviews also appear to undercut Vice President Dick Cheney's suggestion that Clarke was ``out of the loop.''
And her description of Bush's comments on a possible Iraq link in a Situation Room discussion with Clarke on the day after the attacks followed comments by White House spokesman Scott McClellan that the president had no recollection of such a meeting or conversation.
Rice will be on the hot seat as she faces questions from a panel seeking to resolve these and other contradictions. ``We have to explore those differences,'' the panel's Republican chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean, said Tuesday.
As for her appearance, the administration appeared to have few realistic options but to do a dramatic about face and allow Rice to give sworn testimony to the panel.
``When you're in a hole, you should stop digging,'' said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
The furor caused by Clarke's suggestion, both in a book and to the commission, that Bush had mismanaged the war on terror showed no signs of abating, despite a weeklong administration counteroffensive.
``They had no choice'' but to let Rice testify in public, said Alan J. Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University. ``They could not continue on the present line because it made them look like they had something to hide. And the fine distinctions on separation of powers were lost on the public and were debatable on their face.''
The criticism only intensified as Rice made herself widely available for media interviews -- to the point where Kean said that the administration had ``shot itself in the foot'' by not letting her testify.
``I think it's the right decision,'' said Sandy Berger, who was former President Clinton's national security adviser. ``It's not the end of the road, obviously. Her testimony will obviously add to the picture the American people have. It can be then contrasted or compared to any other testimony that may or may not be consistent.''
The policy reversal came as polls suggested declining public approval of Bush's handling of the war on terror. In two polls out this week, Bush slipped from the mid 60s on handling terrorism to the high 50s, eroding his strength on the issue that was both the backbone of his public support and the centerpiece of his re-election campaign.
Rice, a former Stanford University professor and provost who is a veteran of the first Bush administration, has been on the spot before over disputed national security claims.
In September 2002, she suggested that aluminum tubes seized en route to Iraq were ``only suited for nuclear weapons programs.'' Intelligence officials said they were more likely intended for anti-aircraft rockets.
Last July, during the president's trip to Africa, Rice told reporters that Bush's State of the Union message never would have included a later-debunked claim that Iraq was shopping for uranium in Africa ``if we had known what we know now.'' She hinted at the time that CIA Director George Tenet was to blame for the lapse.
But Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy, later disclosed that two CIA memos and a phone call from Tenet had persuaded him to take a similar passage about Iraq and uranium out of a presidential speech three months before the State of the Union address.
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Tom Raum has covered national and international affairs for The Associated Press since 1973.
-------- death penalty
Justices Weigh Challenge To Ala. Execution Method
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34317-2004Mar29.html
An attorney for an Alabama death row inmate challenging the state's plans to have prison technicians cut deeply into his body to deliver a lethal injection asked the Supreme Court yesterday to give condemned prisoners the right to sue over allegedly unconstitutional prison practices even after they have exhausted all legal means of avoiding execution.
Attorney Bryan Stevenson told the justices that David Larry Nelson, sentenced to death for a murder he committed in 1978, could not have raised his claim against the state's proposed "cut-down" procedure earlier because he did not learn about it until six days before his originally scheduled execution date, Oct. 9, 2003.
Nelson "objects to this inhumane cutting by people who are not qualified to do this," Stevenson said. "The fact that he is near execution does not mean that he's lost his constitutional rights."
A longtime abuser of intravenous drugs, Nelson has damaged his veins so badly that prison officials anticipate difficulty finding a vein in his forearms or hands into which it will be possible to inject a lethal mixture of chemicals. If they cannot, they propose to insert a "central line" in his groin or neck.
Failing that, however, the lethal injection would be delivered into a vein located after a two-inch incision is made into Nelson's leg or arm.
Nelson filed a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming that this procedure would violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment -- even though he says he no longer disputes his death sentence.
But an Alabama federal judge and the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rejected Nelson's right to file the claim, saying it was tantamount to another attempt to avoid the death penalty. As such, they said, it was not permitted under a 1996 federal law designed to limit death row appeals.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Nelson's appeal, to settle the question of whether a prisoner can ever invoke federal civil rights law to seek a stay of execution and gain a hearing on aspects of his sentence -- even after his right to seek habeas corpus, the usual means of contesting a death sentence on constitutional grounds, has been exhausted.
Stevenson argued at the court yesterday that the proposed cut-down procedure, though designed to make a lethal injection feasible, is clearly separate from the lethal injection itself. Thus, he said, Nelson must be allowed to challenge it as one of the conditions of his confinement, just as if he were being beaten or mistreated two months before his execution date.
Under the 11th Circuit's decision, Stevenson said, "if Alabama said tomorrow the state wants to stone people to death . . . he would have no way to get into court."
But Alabama Solicitor General Kevin C. Newsom countered that the cut-down would be used only as a last resort, and that a ruling in favor of Nelson would defeat the purpose of the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act.
Broadly speaking, that 1996 law attempts to speed up executions by barring prisoners who have been denied habeas corpus by both the state and federal courts from raising new appeals unless they are based on new Supreme Court rulings or new evidence of innocence.
"This will unleash in federal court a torrent of new challenges to state execution procedures," Newsom said.
Justice Antonin Scalia seemed sympathetic to that view.
"This man is looking death in the face for a crime committed over a quarter-century ago, and what he's concerned about is an incision?" he asked Stevenson. "I find it hard to believe this is cruel and unusual punishment."
Though he has forfeited his life, Stevenson replied, Nelson has not forfeited his rights. "He is still entitled to some consideration," he said.
The case is Nelson v. Campbell, No. 03-6821. A decision is expected by July
-------- homeland security
Emergency Plans Found Lacking GAO: Essential Services at Risk
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, March 30, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34337-2004Mar29.html
Federal agencies have not developed adequate plans to ensure the continuation of essential government services during emergencies such as terrorist attacks, bad weather or unexpected building closures, a new study has found.
The report released yesterday by the General Accounting Office found that none of 23 major departments and agencies studied had fully complied with a six-year-old presidential directive to develop emergency plans in accordance with guidelines from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Agencies often omitted vital programs in compiling their lists of essential functions for their "continuity of operations" plans (COOP), according to the 26-page report. For instance, agencies did not list 20 of the 38 federal programs that were identified as "high impact" during efforts to shore up computer systems before the year 2000, the report's authors found.
While the authors of the GAO report did not name the omitted programs, the high-impact list includes such efforts as food stamps, unemployment insurance, Social Security benefits and the National Weather Service.
Moreover, no agency fully met all FEMA guidelines for the emergency plans, such as requirements for tests and training exercises, preservation of vital records, provisions for alternate facilities, and coordination with partner agencies in providing some services, the report found.
It apparantly was not all the agencies' fault. The study found that FEMA, which is now a part of the Department of Homeland Security, fell short on oversight of the plans and that its guidance for agencies lacked detail.
"If FEMA does not address these shortcomings, agency . . . plans may not be effective in ensuring that the most vital government services can be maintained in an emergency," the report said.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said in a statement yesterday that he was concerned by the report and would hold a hearing after the April congressional recess.
"In the last few years in Washington, we have seen enough events, both big and small, interrupt government operations to know the importance of continuity-of-operations plans," said Davis, who requested the GAO study.
In written comments to the GAO, Michael D. Brown, the undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response at Homeland Security, argued that the government was poised to deliver services in an emergency. Nevertheless, he agreed that FEMA needed to do more.
He wrote that the agency has already taken a number of steps, including plans for a government-wide exercise to test emergency plans in May, more outreach to smaller agencies and a fiscal 2005 budget proposal that would increase by $27 million funding for continuity-of-government programs.
"All of these FEMA efforts and activities are specifically designed to improve planning and to further ensure the delivery of essential government services during an emergency," Brown wrote in a two-page memo dated Feb. 18.
--------
Bill Would Speed Anti - Missile Device for Planes
March 30, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-security-aircraft.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lawmakers worried about potential missile attacks on U.S. aviation introduced bipartisan legislation on Tuesday that would speed development of defense systems for commercial planes.
Spearheaded by House of Representatives aviation subcommittee Chairman John Mica, the bill also encourages the Bush administration to strengthen efforts through treaties or buyback programs to reduce the availability of shoulder-fired rockets.
Fears about potential attacks on planes surged in 2002 when portable missiles were fired at, but missed, an Israeli airliner in Kenya. Attacks on military and cargo aircraft in Iraq have stoked concerns more recently.
``These are inexpensive, easily transported, easily concealed and easily smuggled,'' said Rep. Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat and co-sponsor of the bill. ``We've got to get ahead of this.''
The proposal, which Mica hopes to bring to the House floor in May, would build on Transportation Security Administration efforts.
The agency is in the midst of an 18-month research and development program for placing anti-missile systems on planes. Northrop Grumman Corp., Britain's BAE Plc and United Airlines were selected this year to refine the concept for heat-seeking countermeasures and submit cost proposals.
The lawmakers are satisfied with that plan, but want to expedite the separate process of certifying a device if its accepted by homeland security planners. The Federal Aviation Administration can take years to approve an aircraft system and Mica wants the agency to ``fast-track'' a certification blueprint.
``We don't want excuses,'' Mica said.
While the proposal looks at streamlining, it does not address the recurring question of cost and who would pay -- government or industry.
Some estimate that outfitting the U.S. commercial fleet of more than 6,000 planes could cost $10 billion, but others believe mass production would reduce the price. Also, there are expectations only bigger planes would need countermeasures and expensive retrofits would be limited.
But Mica said he would consider requiring anti-missile systems on big new aircraft like the 550-seat A380 being developed by Airbus .
Mica, a Florida Republican, said he is working with colleagues in the U.S. Senate for aircraft countermeasures.
-------- immigration / refugees
UN warns over EU asylum rules
By Dominic Casciani
Tuesday, 30 March, 2004,
BBC News Online community affairs reporter
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3580665.stm
The head of the United Nations' refugee agency is warning lives may be at risk if European Union members approve tough new asylum rules.
Ministers from member states are meeting on Tuesday to try to agree a pan-EU asylum policy.
But Ruud Lubbers, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), says the proposals may breach international law.
One refugee agency claims the UK government is urging EU partners to lower standards of treatment.
EU members are committed to harmonising asylum laws, with countries most affected by the recent growth in applicants leading the debate.
Proposals on the table
According to the draft proposals, interior and justice ministers from across the EU are considering tough new criteria on how people can seek refugee status.
One of the proposals thought to be on the table on Tuesday is a Europe-wide list of countries which are considered safe, from which asylum seekers are presumed not to be genuine.
The UK's version of the list, already in force, has been attacked for including countries with poor human rights records.
The UNHCR warns further proposals could lead to the deportation of applicants to countries they may have travelled through without considering whether they would be at risk. Rejected asylum seekers may also face deportation before an appeal is heard.
Mr Lubbers said the EU proposals flew in the face of commitments made by the member states to protect the right to seek asylum while they harmonised national policies.
He said: "The numbers of asylum seekers coming into the EU has dropped sharply and is continuing to do so.
"There is no need to focus so single-mindedly on reducing standards and trying to deter or deny protection to as many people as possible."
'Experts ignored' Campaigners, led by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, accused EU members of ignoring recommendations from international experts.
Daphne Bouteillet Paquet, of Amnesty, said: "We have no option but to call on the EU to scrap this proposal which has been shaped in reaction to populist pressures and fears whipped up about a non-existent flood of refugees into the EU.
"We no longer regard this proposal as credible."
The countries believed to be pushing for a tightening of rules include the UK, Germany and Austria, say campaigners.
'Driving down standards'
Maeve Sherlock of the Refugee Council said: "The UK Government is playing a central role in driving down standards across Europe.
"It is pushing for some of the most controversial aspects of legislation currently making its way through Parliament in Britain to be incorporated into a common European system."
But a spokesman for the Home Office denied the charge, saying the UK government is working with EU partners to create a fair asylum system.
"At the same time, it is essential that the Directive should allow Member States to respond to their particular asylum difficulties," added the spokesman.
"The UK is currently carrying out important reforms of the domestic asylum system which must be reflected in the [proposed] directive.
"A vigorous effort is being made to conclude negotiations with a directive which will reflect the needs of member states and improve the position of refugees."
-------- terrorism
Indonesia warns of terrorists getting nuclear arms
March 30, 2004
Pakistan Daily Times
AP
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_30-3-2004_pg7_46
JAKARTA: Indonesia on Monday urged Asian and Pacific governments to work together to prevent militant groups from obtaining nuclear weapons technology on the black market.
"The possibility of acquisition of nuclear weapons...by non-state actors has added a new layer of threat. Imagine, terror groups buying nuclear weapons' technology," Indonesia's foreign minister, Hassan Wirayuda, told a seminar on nuclear proliferation. He said Indonesia preferred countries to work together under multilateral agreements to prevent such an incident, "instead of each country taking their own initiative."
Wirayuda's comments come as Washington has urged Southeast Asian nations to crack down on possible nuclear trafficking.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
'Dead zones' in world's oceans are growing, say alarmed UN scientists
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
30 March 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=506496
It is as sinister a development as any in the list of things going wrong with the planet. Marine "dead zones" - oxygen-starved areas of the oceans that are devoid of fish - are one of the greatest environmental problems facing the world, UN scientists warned yesterday.
There are nearly 150 dead zones across the globe, they are increasing, and they pose as big a threat to fish stocks as over-fishing, the United Nations Environment Program (Unep) said in its Global Environment Outlook Year Book 2003, released at a meeting of environment ministers in Korea.
These lifeless areas of the sea are caused by an excess of nutrients, mainly nitrogen, that originate from heavy use of agricultural fertilizers, from vehicle and factory emissions and from human wastes. They have doubled in number over the last decade, with some extending over 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles), about the size of Ireland, Unep said.
Dead zones have long afflicted the Gulf of Mexico and Chesapeake Bay off the East Coast of America but they are now spreading to other bodies of water, such as the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the Adriatic, the Gulf of Thailand and the Yellow Sea as other regions develop, Unep said. They are also appearing off South America, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
The nutrient run-off from farm fertilisers, sewage and industrial pollutants triggers blooms of microscopic algae known as phytoplankton. As the algae die and rot, they consume oxygen, suffocating all marine life.
"Humankind is engaged in a gigantic, global experiment as a result of inefficient and often overuse of fertilisers, the discharge of untreated sewage and the ever-rising emissions from vehicles and factories," said Klaus Toepfer, Unep's executive director.
"The nitrogen and phosphorous from these sources are being discharged into rivers and the coastal environment or being deposited from the atmosphere, triggering these alarming and sometimes irreversible effects. Unless urgent action is taken to tackle the sources of the problem, it is likely to escalate rapidly."
Dead zones are especially dangerous to fisheries because they afflict coastal waters where many fish spawn and spend most of their lives before moving to deeper water, said Marion Cheatle, Unep's senior environmental affairs officer. "It hasn't been something well known by policy-makers," Ms Cheatle said. "But it's been getting noticeably worse."
The economic costs associated with dead zones is unknown, but predicted to be significant on a global scale. Unep is urging nations to co-operate in reducing the amount of nitrogen discharged into their coastal waters, by cutting back on fertiliser use or by planting more forests and grasslands along feeder rivers to soak up the excess nitrogen.
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More Evidence Found of How Vitamins Prevent Cancer
Story by Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
REUTERS USA:
March 30, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24487/story.htm
WASHINGTON - Vitamin E protects against at least two common forms of cancer - prostate and bladder - but popping supplements is probably not the best way to get the vital nutrient, researchers said.
Two studies found that people who either ate the most vitamin E containing food or who had the highest levels in the blood were the least likely to have cancer.
But the researchers also noted that there are several different forms of vitamin E and the kind you eat - in this case alpha tocopherol - is key. And the best-absorbed form of alpha tocopherol is not found in supplements but in foods such as sunflower seeds, spinach, almonds and sweet peppers.
In one of the studies presented to the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research in Orlando, Stephanie Weinstein of the U.S. National Cancer Institute and colleagues found men with the most vitamin E in their systems had the lowest risk of prostate cancer.
They looked at data from 29,133 Finnish men aged between 50 and 69 taking part in a smoker's study. All gave blood at the beginning of the study and then took vitamins to see whether the supplements might prevent various forms of cancer.
This study is best known for showing that smokers who took beta carotene, which the body converts to vitamin A, actually had higher rates of lung cancer.
Weinstein looked at vitamin E and prostate cancer, and they looked at how much E the men had in their blood before they ever took a supplement. They looked at 100 men with prostate cancer and 200 men who did not.
"We found that the men who had higher serum (blood) levels of vitamin E had a lower chance of getting prostate cancer," Weinstein told a news conference monitored by telephone.
NOT ALL E'S ARE EQUAL
Then they looked at the two main forms of vitamin E - alpha tocopherol and gamma tocopherol.
Men with the highest natural levels of alpha tocopherol were 53 percent less likely to later develop prostate cancer. Men with the highest levels of gamma tocopherol, which only represents about 20 percent of the vitamin E in blood - had a 39 percent lower chance.
Taking supplements further reduced prostate cancer rates. "Nuts and seeds, whole grain products, vegetable oils, salad dressings, margarine, beans, peas and other vegetables are good dietary sources of vitamin E," Weinstein said.
In a similar study, Dr. Xifeng Wu of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, John Radcliffe of Texas Woman's University in Houston and colleagues studied 468 bladder cancer patients and 534 cancer-free volunteers.
They asked their 1,000 volunteers what they ate, and estimated how much alpha-tocopherol and how much gamma tocopherol they got in their everyday diets and from supplements if they took them.
Those with the highest intake of alpha tocopherol from food had a 42 percent reduced risk of bladder cancer, and those who had a vitamin E-rich diet and took supplements too had a 44 percent lower risk.
But when broken down into types, they found gamma tocopherol offered no protection against bladder cancer.
"It would not be reckless to encourage people to try and meet the dietary allowance of vitamin E, which is about 50 milligrams a day," Radcliffe told the news conference. Current average U.S. intake of E is only 8 mg a day.
One of the best sources, said Radcliffe, a dietician, is a handful of sunflower seeds. Almonds, spinach, mustard greens and green and red peppers are also good sources of alpha tocopherol.
Many E supplements, he said, contain both active and inactive forms of E and may not be the best source. Plus, he said, sunflower seeds are high in selenium, another key nutrient, while greens are loaded with desirable nutrients.
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Chechnya villagers block highway to protest abductions
GROZNY, Russia (AFP)
Mar 30, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040330144747.gbiddid5.html
More than 300 people blocked the main highway in Russia's war-torn republic of Chechnya Tuesday to protest the detention of two men from their village by armed forces.
The demonstrators blocked a busy intersection of the highway on the outskirts of the capital Grozny a day after unidentified armed men took away two residents of the Starye Atagi village, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) away.
According to several residents, armed men drove into Starye Atagi on Monday and for several hours searched for supporters of Aslan Maskhadov, a top rebel leader, before driving away with 28-year-old Ruslan Akayev and 30-year-old Rezvan Masayev.
When village residents protested the detentions to Russian forces responsible for the region, they were told that no operations had been planned in the area by Moscow troops.
A spokesman for the Chechen regional police, Khalid Suluyev, met with the demonstators on Tuesday and said: "There were no reasons to detain Akayev and Masayev. According to our information, they drove private taxi cabs and did not have any connection to the separatists."
The villagers also complained of looting by the armed men, who they said stole jewelry, a television set and a car.
Random detentions and looting by armed men are common in Chechnya, where a guerrilla war between separatists and Russian forces is well into its fifth year.
Rights groups have pinned the brunt of the blame for the incidents on Russian troops and forces loyal to Akhmad Kadyrov, a former rebel turned Kremlin ally who was elected Chechen president during a disputed poll in October 2003.
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