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NUCLEAR
Poisoned?
Inside camp of troubles
Soldiers demand to know health risks
India, US hold talks on N-issue
Khan's nuclear network used military aircraft
Seven Lessons for Dealing With Today's North Korea Nuclear Crisis
Japan Support of Missile Shield Could Tilt Asia Power Balance
Nuclear Necessity in Putin's Russia
Bush, ElBaradei, Discuss Proposals of Nuclear Nonproliferation Talks
CDC readies new contract for contaminant study
Nuclear power dangerous, expensive
'The Hutch' claims data from tax-funded research is proprietary
Nader Scrambles to Collect Thousands of Signatures
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
MILITARY
U.N. Aide Says Sudan Is Tolerating Ethnic Cleansing
After Violence in Uzbekistan, Authorities Launch New Roundup
Kosovo goes to hell
Spanish Police Find Bomb on Train Line
U.S. Muslims Seek Pentagon Probe Of Iraq Photo
Iraqi Cleric Urges Action Against U.S.
Gypsy village destroyed
2 U.S. Troops Killed; Fallujah Plan Readied
Petraeus to Get Key Job in Iraq
Sharon Says He Has Ordered a Halt to Gaza Development
A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel
Palestinian Kills Israeli in West Bank Settlement
NATO Seeks to Soothe Russia
7 Nations Join NATO, Bolstering U.S. on Iraq
Powell Expresses Doubts About Basis for Iraqi Weapons Claim
Powell Blames C.I.A. for Error on Iraq Mobile Labs
U.S. to rely more on contract soldiers
GI deaths in Iraq for March hit 50
Science Not Being Distorted, White House Aide Says
Bush's Science Aide Rejects Claims of Distorted Facts
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel Granted Look at Clinton Papers
White House Agrees to Let Panel Review Clinton-Era Files
Foreign Rulings Not Relevant to High Court, Scalia Says
Roles in Disaster Cause Rift in City
U.S. Will Fingerprint 13 Million More in Fall
Millions More Travelers to U.S. to Face Fingerprints and Photos
Justice Dept. Seeks Owner of 9/11 Globe
Spain Confirms Matchup of Bomb Materials
Warning of Possible Attacks on Big-City Buses and Trains
ENERGY
Nuclear energy stymied by superstition
ACTIVISTS
Whistleblower Drops Israeli Citizenship
Act Now on Fissile Material Treaty
Protesters block construction of NATO radar station in Hungary
'Hey, Nick. Your mom's here.'
No Charges Against Anti War Protestors
Japanese man stages naked sit-in
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Poisoned?
Shocking report reveals local troops may be victims of america's high-tech weapons
April 3, 2004
By JUAN GONZALEZ
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180333p-156685c.html
Four soldiers from a New York Army National Guard company serving in Iraq are contaminated with radiation likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops, a Daily News investigation has found.
They are among several members of the same company, the 442nd Military Police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah. "I got sick instantly in June," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop. "My health kept going downhill with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach."
A nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium.
Laboratory tests conducted at the request of The News revealed traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.
If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops, firefighters and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County. Dispatched to Iraq last Easter, the unit's members have been providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi police. The entire company is due to return home later this month.
"These are amazing results, especially since these soldiers were military police not exposed to the heat of battle," said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who examined the G.I.s and performed the testing that was funded by The News.
"Other American soldiers who were in combat must have more depleted uranium exposure," said Duracovic, a colonel in the Army Reserves who served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
While working at a military hospital in Delaware, he was one of the first doctors to discover unusual radiation levels in Gulf War veterans. He has since become a leading critic of the use of depleted uranium in warfare.
Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium enrichment process, has been used by the U.S. and British military for more than 15 years in some artillery shells and as armor plating for tanks. It is twice as heavy as lead.
Because of its density, "It is the superior heavy metal for armor to protect tanks and to penetrate armor," Pentagon spokesman Michael Kilpatrick said.
The Army and Air Force fired at least 127 tons of depleted uranium shells in Iraq last year, Kilpatrick said. No figures have yet been released for how much the Marines fired.
Kilpatrick said about 1,000 G.I.s back from the war have been tested by the Pentagon for depleted uranium and only three have come up positive - all as a result of shrapnel from DU shells.
But the test results for the New York guardsmen - four of nine positives for DU - suggest the potential for more extensive radiation exposure among coalition troops and Iraqi civilians.
Several Army studies in recent years have concluded that the low-level radiation emitted when shells containing DU explode poses no significant dangers. But some independent scientists and a few of the Army's own reports indicate otherwise.
As a result, depleted uranium weapons have sparked increasing controversy around the world. In January 2003, the European Parliament called for a moratorium on their use after reports of an unusual number of leukemia deaths among Italian soldiers who served in Kosovo, where DU weapons were used.
I keep getting weaker. What is happening to me?
The Army says that only soldiers wounded by depleted uranium shrapnel or who are inside tanks during an explosion face measurable radiation exposure.
But as far back as 1979, Leonard Dietz, a physicist at the Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory upstate, discovered that DU-contaminated dust could travel for long distances.
Dietz, who pioneered the technology to isolate uranium isotopes, accidentally discovered that air filters with which he was experimenting had collected radioactive dust from a National Lead Industries Plant that was producing DU 26 miles away. His discovery led to a shutdown of the plant.
"The contamination was so heavy that they had to remove the topsoil from 52 properties around the plant," Dietz said.
All humans have at least tiny amounts of natural uranium in their bodies because it is found in water and in the food supply, Dietz said. But natural uranium is quickly and harmlessly excreted by the body.
Uranium oxide dust, which lodges in the lungs once inhaled and is not very soluble, can emit radiation to the body for years.
"Anybody, civilian or soldier, who breathes these particles has a permanent dose, and it's not going to decrease very much over time," said Dietz, who retired in 1983 after 33 years as nuclear physicist. "In the long run ... veterans exposed to ceramic uranium oxide have a major problem."
Critics of DU have noted that the Army's view of its dangers has changed over time.
Before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, a 1990 Army report noted that depleted uranium is "linked to cancer when exposures are internal, [and] chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."
It was during the Gulf War that U.S. A-10 Warthog "tank buster" planes and Abrams tanks first used DU artillery on a mass scale. The Pentagon says it fired about 320 tons of DU in that war and that smaller amounts were also used in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
In the Gulf War, Army brass did not warn soldiers about any risks from exploding DU shells. An unknown number of G.I.s were exposed by shrapnel, inhalation or handling battlefield debris.
Some veterans groups blame DU contamination as a factor in Gulf War syndrome, the term for a host of ailments that afflicted thousands of vets from that war.
Under pressure from veterans groups, the Pentagon commissioned several new studies. One of those, published in 2000, concluded that DU, as a heavy metal, "could pose a chemical hazard" but that Gulf War veterans "did not experience intakes high enough to affect their health."
Pentagon spokesman Michael Kilpatrick said Army followup studies of 70 DU-contaminated Gulf War veterans have not shown serious health effects.
"For any heavy metal, there is no such thing as safe," Kilpatrick said. "There is an issue of chemical toxicity, and for DU it is raised as radiological toxicity as well."
But he said "the overwhelming conclusion" from studies of those who work with uranium "show it has not produced any increase in cancers."
Several European studies, however, have linked DU to chromosome damage and birth defects in mice. Many scientists say we still don't know enough about the long-range effects of low-level radiation on the body to say any amount is safe.
Britain's national science academy, the Royal Society, has called for identifying where DU was used and is urging a cleanup of all contaminated areas.
"A large number of American soldiers [in Iraq] may have had significant exposure to uranium oxide dust," said Dr. Thomas Fasey, a pathologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center and an expert on depleted uranium. "And the health impact is worrisome for the future."
As for the soldiers of the 442nd, they're sick, frustrated and confused. They say when they arrived in Iraq no one warned them about depleted uranium and no one gave them dust masks.
Experts behind News probe
As part of the investigation by the Daily News, Dr. Asaf Duracovic, a nuclear medicine expert who has conducted extensive research on depleted uranium, examined the nine soldiers from the 442nd Military Police in late December and collected urine specimens from each.
Another member of his team, Prof. Axel Gerdes, a geologist at Goethe University in Frankfurt who specializes in analyzing uranium isotopes, performed repeated tests on the samples over a week-long period. He used a state-of-the art procedure called multiple collector inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry.
Only about 100 laboratories worldwide have the same capability to identify and measure various uranium isotopes in minute quantities, Gerdes said.
Gerdes concluded that four of the men had depleted uranium in their bodies. Depleted uranium, which does not occur in nature, is created as a waste product of uranium enrichment when some of the highly radioactive isotopes in natural uranium, U-235 and U-234, are extracted.
Several of the men, according to Duracovic, also had minute traces of another uranium isotope, U-236, that is produced only in a nuclear reaction process.
"These men were almost certainly exposed to radioactive weapons on the battlefield," Duracovic said.
He and Gerdes plan to issue a scientific paper on their study of the soldiers at the annual meeting of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine in Finland this year.
When DU shells explode, they permanently contaminate their target and the area immediately around it with low-level radioactivity.
----
Inside camp of troubles
By JUAN GONZALEZ
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
April 3, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/180340p-156689c.html
The soldiers of the 442nd Military Police never heard of depleted uranium before they went to Iraq.
They know only that inexplicable ailments have befallen them.
Last year, more than a dozen of the company's soldiers were transferred back to Fort Dix for treatment of a variety of maladies. Frustrated with how the military was handling their concerns, they gave extensive interviews to the Daily News about their experiences, and nine of them eventually volunteered to be tested by a team of experts headed by Dr. Asaf Duracovic.
According to the soldiers, most of them became sick last summer while stationed in Samawah, a town 150 miles south of Baghdad that was the scene of heavy combat in the first weeks of the war.
Their unit entered the town in June, following short stays in Diwaniyah, Karbala and Najaf. They pitched camp at a huge, dusty, vermin-infested train depot on the outskirts of town.
That's where, they claim, their problems began.
"One night, I had 10 or 15 people with temperatures over 103, unexplained night chills, all kinds of things," said Sgt. Juan Vega, the company's principal medic. About a dozen of the 160 soldiers in the company suddenly developed kidney stones, he said.
A 1990 Army study linked DU, to "chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."
"I told our commander, 'We need to get the hell out of this place, there's something wrong with it,'" said Vega, 34, an FDNY paramedic.
The soldiers recall that two Iraqi tanks, one all shot up, had been hauled onto flatbed railroad cars less than 100 yards from where the company slept.
Pentagon officials have confirmed that tanks hit by DU shells are the biggest potential sources of battlefield radioactivity because when DU penetrators hit a target and explode, a fine aerosol of uranium oxide, or radioactive dust, is formed. The closer the tanks are to people, the greater the danger of inhaling the dust.
In addition, a UN environmental report on Iraq warned last year of a "high risk of inhaling DU dust" within 150 meters of any target hit by DU shells "unless high-quality dust masks are worn." The soldiers never received dust masks.
----
Soldiers demand to know health risks
By JUAN GONZALEZ
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER,
April 3, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/180337p-156686c.html
Doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center recently told Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos that a biopsy revealed his rash comes from leishmaniasis, a disease spread by sandflies and contracted by hundreds of G.I.s in Iraq.
Until last week, however, Army doctors refused requests by Ramos and a few others in the 442nd Military Police to have their urine analyzed for depleted uranium, a procedure that can cost up to $1,000.
Three of the nine tested in the Daily News investigation - Sgt. Herbert Reed, Spec. William Ruiz, and Spec. Anthony Phillip - also were tested by the Army in November. But the results were withheld for months despite repeated inquiries.
Last week, after Army officials received press inquiries about the 442nd and discovered that a group from the company had sought independent testing, an administrator at Walter Reed told Reed and Phillip that their tests from November had come back negative for depleted uranium.
The News' tests also showed negative results for Reed and Phillip, but Ramos tested positive. The soldiers of the 442nd are not the only ones to raise questions about depleted uranium in Samawah.
In August, a contingent of Dutch soldiers arrived in the town to replace the Americans. Press reports in the Netherlands revealed that Dutch authorities questioned the U.S. beforehand about the possible use of DU ammunition in Samawah. According to Sgt. Juan Vega, senior medic for the 442nd, the Dutch swept the area around the train depot with Geiger counters and their medics confided to him they had found high radiation levels. The Dutch unit refused to stay in the depot, Vega said, and pitched camp in the desert instead.
And in February, after Japanese troops moved into the same town, a Japanese journalist equipped with a Geiger counter reported finding radiation readings 300 times higher than background levels.
"There'd been a lot of fighting in Samawah before we got there," said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, 41. "The place was dusty as hell, and the sandstorms were hitting us pretty good."
Felled at first by what he thought was the sweltering Iraqi heat, Ramos expected to recover quickly.
"My health just kept getting worse," he said. "I tried to work out each day to get through it but I kept getting weaker. A numbing sensation hit my hands and my face, and the migraine headaches became constant. I was afraid I was having a stroke."
He was sent first to a Baghdad hospital for treatment, but with no neurologist available, he was shipped out to Germany and eventually to the U.S.
"I had rashes on my stomach for four months," Ramos said. "And now, whenever I [lie] down, my hands fall asleep."
Doctors at Walter Reed have been stumped. They've given Ramos braces to wear on his arms at night to try to prevent his hands from falling asleep, and they've prescribed a host of muscle relaxants and painkillers, but nothing seems to work.
"I have four kids. What happens to them now if I can't work?" said Ramos, who was looking forward to a transfer from the NYPD Housing Bureau to the robbery unit in Brooklyn's 75th Precinct once he returns from active duty. "I need them to investigate what's going on with my body."
Cpl. Anthony Yonnone, 35, a cop with the Veterans Administration in Fishkill, N.Y., has the highest DU levels of the four soldiers who tested positive, said Dr. Asaf Duracovic, who performed the testing funded by The News.
Yonnone said his nausea, skin rashes and migraines began in Samawah. "The headaches are constant and they don't want to stop," he said. "The rashes seem to come and go.
"We were always passing blownout tanks when we were out doing patrols."
He recalled that American units in the town burned trash and waste each night in big drums near the train depot. "The combination of smoke and sand when we lit those fires covered everybody," he said.
Evacuated from Iraq in August for minor surgery, Yonnone was sent first to Germany.
"They gave us a questionnaire. I marked that I wasn't exposed to depleted uranium because nobody had even told us what it was back in Iraq," he said.
-------- india / pakistan
India, US hold talks on N-issue
Hi Pakistan
April 3, 2004
http://www.hipakistan.com/en/detail.php?newsId=en59864&F_catID=&f_type=source
WASHINGTON, April 3: A high-level Indian delegation is currently visiting Washington for talks on nuclear and strategic issues, diplomatic sources told Dawn on Saturday.
The delegation is led by two senior members of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, Sheel Kant Sharma, who heads the disarmament section of the ministry and Sujata Mehta, who heads the Americas division.
Mr Sharma is holding talks on President Bush's proliferation security initiative that he announced last May in Krakow, Poland, the sources said.
Under this initiative, the Bush administration is seeking new agreements with allied nations for searching and seizing planes and ships carrying weapons of mass destruction or weapons technologies.
In October, US and British agents seized a German-flagged ship - BBC China - that was carrying parts to build a nuclear bomb from a Persian Gulf country to Libya. The seizure is believed to have influenced Tripoli's decision to suspend its weapons programme in December.
The diplomatic sources said that India has some reservations about entering into this arrangement with the United States and Mr Kant has come with a set of questions which he wants US officials to answer before New Delhi could sign an agreement with Washington.
"In principle, the Indians are not against reaching such an agreement with the United States. They know that already more than a dozen countries have joined this growing club of international monitors but they need certain clarifications first," said a senior South Asian diplomat in Washington.
"They are particularly concerned about the legal status of the proliferation security initiative and how it may affect India's own nuclear programme,"said the diplomat. "After all, India is not a member of the nuclear club and any tightening of control over nuclear materials could also affect India and Pakistan, two declared but unrecognized nuclear powers."
The other senior member of the Indian delegation - Sujata Mehta - is holding talks with US officials on further enhancing the newly formed strategic partnership between India and the United States.
The strategic partnership agreement was announced on Jan 12, in two separate statements issued in Washington and New Delhi by President Bush and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.
----
Khan's nuclear network used military aircraft
Ashish Kumar Sen writes from Washington
Saturday, April 3, 2004,
India Tribune
http://www.tribuneindia.com/2004/20040403/main6.htm
Chandigarh - Abdul Qadeer Khan's nuclear proliferation network, while using Pakistan military aircraft to ferry supplies, worked without the "approval" of the government in Islamabad, a senior State Department official told members of a U.S. congressional committee on Tuesday.
"Based on the information we have now, we believe that the proliferation activities that Mr. Khan confessed to recently, his activities in Libya, in Iran and North Korea, and perhaps elsewhere, were activities that he was carrying on without the approval of the top levels of the government of Pakistan," James Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, said in testimony before the House International Relations Committee.
"That is the position that President (Pervez) Musharraf has taken, and we have no evidence to the contrary."
Asked by former Democratic co-chairman of Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, Congressman Gary L. Ackerman, about reports that Pakistani military aircraft were used to carry nuclear goods from Pakistan to North Korea, Mr. Bolton said the aircraft may have been used outside official military control.
He added, however, that Pakistani officials at the Khan Research Laboratories and in the military might have participated in the network's proliferation activities. These officials "probably enriched themselves just as Khan himself did," Mr. Bolton said.
"The understanding we have is that Khan Research Laboratories had extraordinary autonomy and quite likely could use military aircraft for purposes that others in the military would not necessarily know the purpose of because of compartmentation of the information," the senior official said.
Mr Bolton said if information was revealed linking the Pakistani government to the covert sales, "we will act on it" and impose sanctions.
Washington lifted sanctions on Pakistan soon after the September 11 attacks. Mr. Bolton said "a more cooperative approach to achieve our mutual nonproliferation goals" had since been implemented.
He told the committee, however, that while Pakistan had not conducted nuclear explosive tests since 1998, it "continues to develop nuclear weapon and missile programmes."
"Our recent nonproliferation focus with Pakistan is to work with the government to eliminate once and for all the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called 'father' of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme," he said.
Recent revelations have implicated Dr. Khan in leading an international black market spread through Europe, Asia, and Africa that sold uranium enrichment technology and equipment to Iran, North Korea, Libya and other states.
Mr Bolton said Washington had been concerned about the scope and breadth of Dr Khan's activities for quite some time.
"What we have learned about the international black market in weapons of mass destruction shows how sophisticated WMD proliferators are, and how skilled they are at deception and camouflage," he said. "The complexity of the Khan network illustrates the need for a multi-faceted approach to ultimately defeat the WMD black market."
-------- korea
Seven Lessons for Dealing With Today's North Korea Nuclear Crisis
Excerpted from Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis
Joel S. Wit, Daniel Poneman, and Robert Gallucci,
April 3, 2004
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_04/GoingCritical.asp
As the United States and North Korea prepare for a fourth round of talks to resolve an 18-month old crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programs, the two countries find themselves fighting over many of the same issues they fought over during the last nuclear crisis in 1993 and 1994. During that showdown, North Korea similarly announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and threatened to take steps (including the production of plutonium) toward building nuclear weapons. The crisis ended with an agreement by North Korea to freeze its nuclear program and provide a full accounting of its past actions in return for a U.S. commitment to meet Pyongyang's energy needs and begin the process of normalizing bilateral relations. In the following excerpts , U.S. negotiators Wit, Poneman, and Gallucci argue that the previous set of talks hold important lessons for their counterparts today in the Bush administration. Going Critical: The First North Korean Nuclear Crisis is to be released by Brookings Institution Press later this month.
What lessons do the crises of 1993 and 1994 hold for the impasse of today? Now, as then, the critical issue is North Korean access to bomb material, this time highly enriched uranium as well as plutonium. Now, as then, the consequences of failure would be grave: an untethered North Korea would be able to churn out bomb-making material each year for use in threatening its neighbors-or for export to terrorists or others. (The fastest route to Al Qaeda would seem to run through Pakistan, North Korea's active trading partner in illicit arms and the likely source of the technology North Korea used to enrich uranium.) Now, as then, a difficult relationship with a newly elected South Korean president further complicates an already daunting diplomatic mission. Now, as then, the other regional powers-South Korea, Japan, China, and Russia-have important roles to play in resolving the crisis.
Mark Twain once observed that by sitting on a hot stove, his cat learned not to sit on a hot stove again. But the cat also learned not to sit on a cold stove. Even if one considered the Agreed Framework a hot stove, the question is whether the government could design a cold stove that could support a lasting and effective diplomatic solution to the North Korean nuclear challenge. To do so, it would have to consider what kind of agreement would advance U.S. interests and how the United States should go about negotiating such an arrangement. The 1994 crisis has relevance for today on both counts.
Lesson 1. Set strategic priorities, then stick to them. It may seem too obvious to dwell on this lesson, but setting and maintaining priorities is easier said than done. During the first North Korean crisis, the Clinton administration placed the highest strategic priority on blocking North Korean access to additional stocks of separated plutonium. Clarity on that point enabled decision-makers to resist pressures inside the administration to press other (admittedly important) objectives-curbing Pyongyang's ballistic missile program and its threatening conventional force posture-to the point where they would jeopardize the resolution of the nuclear crisis. Failure to set priorities quickly leads to stalemate. For example, the Bush administration proposed a comprehensive approach in dealing with North Korea, a "bold initiative" that would offer energy and other carrots if North Korea verifiably dismantled its nuclear program and satisfied other U.S. security concerns.31 Such an approach runs the risk of failure because it seeks full North Korean performance on all U.S. demands before offering significant U.S. performance on any North Korean demands. There was never any chance North Korea would accede to such a position, especially since time played in Pyongyang's favor as each passing day it enhanced its own nuclear capabilities. Since the president has made clear that the United States seeks a diplomatic resolution to the current crisis, some parallelism in performance will need to be negotiated if the parties are to achieve agreement on the core issues.
Lesson 2. Integrate carrots and sticks into a strategy of coercive diplomacy. If offered only carrots, the North Koreans will conclude that the other side is more desperate for a deal than they are and will likely continue on a path of defiance and increasing negotiating demands. Offering only sticks will tell the North Koreans that there is no benefit from complying with international demands, except avoidance of pain. They might as well continue down a dangerous path of defiance until their acts become so threatening that the international community will have to respond, by which time Pyongyang may have substantially strengthened its bargaining leverage. That is essentially what occurred after Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly challenged the North Koreans in October 2002 regarding their secret enrichment program.
The Clinton administration relied on both carrots and sticks to try to resolve the 1994 crisis, integrating them into a negotiating position that presented a clear choice.32 If Pyongyang returned to full compliance with international nonproliferation norms, then the international community would respond favorably, reassuring North Korea that compliance would enhance its national security, and even prosperity. It was easier to define the acceptable end-state than to define a viable diplomatic path to reach it. Once the North Koreans were prepared to back down and comply with their nonproliferation obligations, they still sought a face-saving way to do so. This was the "escape valve" that President Clinton kept prodding his advisers to embed into the U.S. negotiating position and, deus ex machina, finally appeared in the form of Jimmy Carter.
At the same time, Pyongyang had to know that if it passed up the face-saving exit and continued to defy the international community, it would experience increasing isolation and hardship. In 1994 this coercive side of diplomacy came to the fore through a gradual military buildup on the peninsula and efforts to seek global support for economic sanctions. Ominous signals from Beijing at the time must have undermined the North Koreans' confidence that China would intervene to insulate North Korea from the effect of UN Security Council sanctions. These efforts put pressure on North Korea to back down when the crisis crested in June 1994. Arriving in Pyongyang at the critical moment, former President Jimmy Carter gave the North Koreans a face-saving way out. They took it.
Lesson 3. Use multilateral institutions and forums to reinforce U.S. diplomacy. Each of North Korea's neighbors has unique equities and assets that must be brought into the settlement. South Korea is the most directly affected, sharing the peninsula and innumerable ties of blood, culture, and history. The United States-a neighbor by virtue of the 37,000 American troops deployed across the Demilitarized Zone-has an unshakable security commitment to South Korea and broader political and economic interests in the region. Japan shares a complex history with Korea-including its occupation of the peninsula ending with Tokyo's defeat in World War II, the painful issues of Japanese abducted by the North Korean regime, and ties between ethnic Koreans living in Japan and their relatives in the North. It also has the economic resources likely to be an essential part of any settlement with North Korea.
China-traditionally as close to North Korea as "lips and teeth"-has loosened its ties but remains more closely involved with Pyongyang than any other regional player. It also retains the most leverage of any outsider, as the provider of the majority of North Korea's fuel and food, without which Pyongyang's economy could not survive. While Russia does not approximate that degree of influence, it is bound to the North by treaty and historical ties dating back to Josef Stalin. It can still contribute significantly to a diplomatic settlement of North Korea's differences with the world.
The Clinton administration worked closely with all of the other regional players in the quest for a solution to the nuclear crisis. It also made full use of all available multilateral institutions to bring pressure to bear upon North Korea in the effort to persuade it to comply with international nonproliferation norms. When the Clinton administration engaged in bilateral discussions with North Korea, it did so with multilateral backing-encouraged initially by South Korea and China, authorized by the UN Security Council. These bilateral talks in no way detracted from the administration effort to secure broad multilateral support for a negotiated solution if possible, and for the use of coercive measures if necessary. To the contrary, the showing of its good-faith bilateral efforts helped the United States make its case in multilateral forums.
Lesson 4. Use bilateral talks to probe diplomatic alternatives. While multilateral diplomacy is indispensable, involving more governments-with varying motives, interests, and objectives-at best complicates and at worst dilutes or even undermines U.S. efforts. The United States should therefore use multilateral diplomacy but not be locked into it exclusively. As a sovereign nation, the United States must be free to use any mechanism-including bilateral talks-to advance its unique interests and objectives. In that sense, bilateral talks are not merely a "gift" to be conferred on other governments, but a vector to convey U.S. perspectives unalloyed and undiluted by multilateral involvement.
American negotiators sometimes envisaged outcomes that would satisfy its multilateral partners' needs, even if the partners were unwilling or unable (because of their negotiating constraints or domestic political factors) to approve certain negotiating positions in advance. Of course, the trade-off is that although reducing the number of parties in direct negotiations can facilitate reaching a deal, it can complicate implementation to the degree that the arrangement does not adequately address the concerns of the governments whose cooperation is essential to success.
Today the Bush administration faces the same dilemma. It has relied almost entirely on multilateral talks, rejecting any but fleeting bilateral contacts with Pyongyang. This approach may give the key governments a greater stake in ensuring that an agreement is fully implemented, create greater pressure on Pyongyang by presenting a unified front, and provide an avenue for others to bring carrots or sticks to bear in the service of the collective diplomatic effort. The disadvantages include an inevitable muffling of U.S. positions in relation to Pyongyang, while also subjecting Washington to greater pressure to modify its own positions.
Most important, placing so much weight on the multilateral format of the discussions with North Korea allows Pyongyang to dictate the pace of the crisis. Pyongyang already makes the decisions on its own nuclear activities. Letting it off the hook of "confronting its accusers" also gives it the upper hand in deciding the pace of the diplomatic effort. Rigid insistence on specific formats or conditions (as opposed to an "anytime, anywhere" offer for talks) permits the North Koreans-now liberated from the cameras, seals, and inspectors of the [International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)] that they ejected in 2002-to continue their pursuit of nuclear weapons while sidestepping international pressure. Since time is on North Korea's side, the United States and its allies should seek to force the issue by reasserting control over the pacing of the crisis.
In the Civil War, it was not enough for Abraham Lincoln to refuse to recognize the Confederate States of America. He had to take affirmative action to interfere with the Confederacy, which would have realized its strategic aims simply by carrying on its activities independently from-and unmolested by-the Union. Similarly, North Korea can realize its strategic objectives simply by continuing its current path until someone stops it. The longer real negotiations are delayed, the greater the nuclear capability-and bargaining leverage-the North will have accumulated. So whether a particular round of talks with North Korea is bilateral or multilateral is less important than that they occur sooner rather than later. (This is where setting priorities correctly comes into play.)
Lesson 5. South Korean support is crucial to any lasting solution of the North Korean nuclear problem. The role of South Korea is as complex as it is central to resolving the North Korean nuclear crisis. Seoul's support is critical, since any action or solution, whatever form it takes, will be on its peninsula. To that end, in 1993 and 1994 the United States and South Korea spent enormous amounts of time and energy working together to forge a common strategy. Contrary to popular belief in South Korea, time after time Washington deferred to Seoul or explicitly took its views into account. The record shows that South Korea had a remarkable degree of influence, even though its positions frequently changed.
Some South Koreans have complained about being harnessed to an ally ready to sacrifice their interests on the altar of nuclear nonproliferation. The most notable example is President Kim's recent claim that he stopped President Clinton from starting a second Korean War.34 In fact, there were no eleventh-hour phone calls to the White House. President Kim was solidly behind the American drive for sanctions, and his government was well informed about the gradual military buildup on the peninsula as well as the more extensive deployments that were about to be considered. Seoul did not know about American consideration of a preemptive strike against Yongbyon, but it is clear from the record of the Principals Committee meetings that Washington would never have authorized an attack without prior consultation with Seoul. That consultation never became necessary after the June breakthrough that returned the nuclear issue to the negotiating table.
In important respects, the challenge of maintaining U.S.-South Korean solidarity is more difficult today than it was a decade ago. Then the majority of South Koreans, and their government, had personal memories of the Korean War and its aftermath as well as serious doubts about Pyongyang's intentions. Now a younger generation has taken the reins of power, after years of a Sunshine Policy that has left many South Koreans feeling greater sympathy toward their brethren in the North and greater concern that their peace is more likely to be disturbed by Americans than North Koreans. For Americans, the deference once accorded to Seoul as facing the more imminent threat from the North has since September 11 been displaced by its own sense of vulnerability to the export of nuclear technology to adversaries and, to some, the prospect of North Korean ballistic missiles ranging the continental United States.
Lesson 6. Take full advantage of China's continuing sway over North Korea. As the driving force behind the six-party talks in 2003, China assumed a much higher profile as a diplomatic player on the world stage. Its importance in addressing the North Korean nuclear crisis was already apparent in 1994. The first crisis broke during China's transition from unalloyed dedication to its alliance with Pyongyang to a more evenhanded relationship between the two Koreas. That timing left China more open to work cooperatively with Seoul, while giving Pyongyang greater reason to fear abandonment by its prime benefactor. Beijing understood both its own leverage as well as the grave consequences of a North Korean nuclear program and repeatedly, but quietly, nudged Pyongyang toward compliance with its nonproliferation commitments. Beijing's most important effort unfolded in the spring of 1994, when it tried its hand at mediation after North Korea's unloading of the fuel rods from the 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon and appeared to signal that Pyongyang could not count on China blocking the imposition of UN sanctions against North Korea.
Although Chinese officials have traditionally sought to downplay their influence in Pyongyang, they clearly retain greater leverage over the Kim Jong Il regime than any other player. Fortunately, China and the United States agree on two key objectives: (1) the Korean Peninsula should remain stable and secure, and (2) it should be free of nuclear weapons. But this convergence of views between Washington and Beijing has limits. Specifically, China has a strong interest in avoiding political disruption in North Korea, which argues in favor of seeking a negotiated solution to the nuclear challenge and against taking steps that could induce regime change in North Korea. By 2003, however, some U.S. officials had apparently concluded that the North Koreans were inveterate cheaters with whom no agreement could be reached that would protect American interests. Under this view, agreements should therefore be eschewed in favor of the only practical way to head off North Korean possession of a growing nuclear weapon stockpile: regime change. Whether this would occur by force or by inducing a social collapse through encouraging massive refugee flows out of the North, the bottom line is that pursuit of this objective would drive a wedge between China and the United States.
Lesson 7. Negotiated arrangements can advance U.S. interests even if the other party engages in cheating. Of course, it is possible to construct a deal that would leave the United States in a worse position if the other side cheated. An example would be an agreement that left the other side well positioned to break out of a treaty in a manner that would put the United States at an instant military disadvantage. Nazi Germany's rearmament in violation of the Versailles Treaty, combined with Europe's failure to respond, comes to mind. But it is also possible to construct a treaty that leaves the United States better off every day that the other party is compliant, and not significantly disadvantaged if the other party cheats.
U.S. negotiators will always need to make hard choices. It would be desirable if any new deal includes comprehensive limits on North Korea's nuclear program, extending beyond known plutonium production facilities to encompass not only uranium-enrichment activities but also any nuclear weapons Pyongyang may have already built or obtained, as well as its research and development efforts. Such a commitment would be impossible to verify with confidence, even with "anytime, anywhere" inspections in North Korea. It is just too easy to cheat.
Should U.S. negotiators pass up stronger commitments if they cannot be confidently verified? What if a new deal imposes greater restrictions on Pyongyang with more extensive inspections than the 1994 accord but still leaves uncertainties? Would such a deal serve U.S. interests? Similar questions confronted the United States in 1994, when the president had to decide whether to seek more immediate limits on North Korea's threatening plutonium production program in lieu of immediate special inspections.
One way to try to avoid falling into a situation in which the president faces only extreme options is to set "red lines" for North Korea. Initially, the Bush administration seemed leery to do that on the assumption that "if you draw it, they will cross it." There is always a danger that Pyongyang will cross these lines, either deliberately or through miscalculation. In the spring of 1994, North Korea did cross a red line by unloading the 5-megawatt reactor and destroying important historical information contained in the spent fuel rods, triggering the march toward confrontation. But one month later, Pyongyang did not expel the IAEA inspectors monitoring the Yongbyon facility, perhaps in part because of Jimmy Carter's trip but also because it knew that could trigger an American preemptive attack. In short, picking a clear boundary for acceptable behavior can prove a successful deterrent, but only if it is backed by the credible threat of force. The United States should not be bluffing, and it must be clear that it is not.
For four decades, the greatest threat of nuclear conflict emerged from the superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall set events in train that ended with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The first major nuclear proliferation threat-of seeing four nuclear-weapon states emerge full-blown at the end of the Cold War-was averted when U.S. negotiators persuaded the newly formed nations of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to relinquish all of their nuclear weapons to Russia. The second threat-that Russia would become a source of nuclear weapons proliferation from the diversion of weapon scientists and fissile materials to hostile forces-spawned a series of U.S. initiatives under the seminal Nunn-Lugar legislation aimed at promoting the safe and secure dismantlement of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.
North Korea posed the third great nuclear threat. Addressing that threat as a matter of national urgency led to the concerted effort described in these pages. The urgency was dictated not only by the dire consequences that unbounded North Korean plutonium production could have produced but also by the impending review and extension conference for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT], the cornerstone of global efforts to combat the spread of nuclear weapons. Had the United States failed to contain the North Korean threat in time, it would have torn a hole in the regime just at the moment when the nations of the world were gathering in New York to decide whether to extend the treaty indefinitely, or to let it lapse.
The Agreed Framework permitted the NPT conference to proceed with a North Korea that had reaffirmed its commitment to the treaty, accepted IAEA monitoring to ensure the continuation of the nuclear freeze, and promised ultimate North Korean acceptance of inspections to clarify remaining questions about its past nuclear activities. The accord earned the support of the IAEA, and the NPT was successfully extended indefinitely and without condition, by consensus, in May 1995.35
The response of the United States to the North Korean nuclear challenge was pragmatic, guided by the overarching objective to stop Pyongyang's access to more separated plutonium. It was principled, gaining support of the world community through the UN Security Council, the IAEA, and other forums to support U.S. efforts to persuade Pyongyang to curtail and accept international limits on its nuclear activities. It was complex, involving constant scrutiny of U.S. interests and the effects of shifting events, continual consultations with friends and allies, and a difficult and protracted negotiation with the North Koreans.
Above all, the U.S. response was guided by a determination to prevent the nightmare of nuclear destruction threatened by the North Korean program. The U.S. officials involved in negotiating the Agreed Framework shared a fundamental commitment to advancing the nation's security. None would have advocated support for any accord that did not meet a simple test: would Americans be safer with the Agreed Framework than without it? As public servants, a decade ago we answered that question in favor of the Agreed Framework. As authors today, we reach the same conclusion.
That the same question-will Americans be safer or not?-should guide the evaluation of any proposed U.S. response to the renewed nuclear threat in Korea. If grounded in a policy that forces North Korea to choose between a path of compliance with-or defiance of-the global norm against nuclear weapons proliferation, that question can bring the world to a safer future. North Korea will only be forced to make that choice if the path of defiance inexorably brings pressure that threatens the continued viability of the Kim Jong Il regime, while the path of compliance offers the regime the security assurances and improved relations with the international community that it seeks. We wish those entrusted with our national security well as they make the fateful choices that will shape the outcome of the current crisis. The stakes could not be higher.
Joel S. Wit, a senior fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, served as the State Department coordinator for the 1994 U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework. Daniel Poneman, a principal at the Scowcroft Group, was a member of the National Security Council from 1990-1996, including three years (1993-1996) as senior director for Nonproliferation and Export Controls. Robert Gallucci, currently dean of Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, was the lead U.S. negotiator with North Korea in 1993 and 1994. From 1998-2001, Ambassador Gallucci held the position of special envoy to deal with the threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
-------- missile defense
Japan Support of Missile Shield Could Tilt Asia Power Balance
April 3, 2004
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/international/asia/03MISS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
TOKYO, April 2 - As the United States races to erect a ballistic missile defense system by the end of the year, it is quietly enlisting Japan and other allies in Asia to take part in the network, which could reshape the balance of power in the region.
Last week, a few days after the United States Navy announced that it would deploy a destroyer in September in the Sea of Japan as a first step in forming a system capable of intercepting missiles, Japan's Parliament approved spending $1 billion this year to start work on a shield that would be in place by 2007.
On Wednesday, the Pentagon said it would sell Taiwan $1.78 billion in radar equipment to increase the nation's ability to detect ballistic missiles. Australia decided in December to join the United States-sponsored system, and American officials are holding talks with India.
But the network will eventually require the sharing of critical information and coordination among its members, which could split Asian nations into two camps: those inside and those outside the system. Those inside the system say the shield will be a defense against the missile buildup by nations like China and North Korea; those outside say it will destabilize the region and start an arms race.
China, already displeased with Japan's decision, said Thursday that the radar sale to Taiwan sent the "wrong message," and it reiterated its opposition to America's selling "advanced weapons" there. The United States has vowed to protect Taiwan against an attack by China, which has 500 missiles pointed at the island.
North Korea said Thursday that the Navy's deployment of the destroyer was preparation for war and part of its "attempt to dominate the Asia-Pacific region." Indonesia, which does not have ballistic missiles, has said Australia's decision could also ignite an arms race.
For Washington, getting its allies aboard makes it easier politically and financially to push ahead with a system that critics have described as too costly and unproven. President Bush, who withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, made a missile defense shield a campaign promise in 2000.
In Europe, Britain has signed on, but interest there has been generally tepid compared with the reception in Asia, where the missile buildup in China and North Korea, and the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan, are driving the rise in the region's military spending.
Japan's role in missile defense is particularly significant because deployment could force it to alter long-held pacifist practices and re-examine its Constitution.
The immediate threat for Japan comes from North Korea, which launched a missile in 1998 that flew over Japan before it fell into the sea. North Korea has ballistic missiles that could easily strike Japan. China's successful launching of a manned space capsule last year and the increasingly frequent movement of Chinese naval vessels near Japan's territorial waters have also unnerved the Japanese.
Japan has stressed the North Korean threat, trying to persuade a skeptical China that the shield would be purely defensive.
Howard Baker, the United States ambassador to Japan, acknowledged that a shield would rob missile-armed nations of offensive power and could encourage the development of shield-piercing missiles, but he said it would not destabilize Asia.
"Missile defense is a unique military concept," Mr. Baker told reporters here on Friday. "It is inherently incapable of offensive operation. It is purely defensive. And therefore I don't think anybody should be concerned about it."
Japan would spend $10 billion in this decade to develop a two-layer shield. In the 10 minutes or so that it would take a ballistic missile fired from North Korea to reach Japan, one of Japan's advanced destroyers with the Aegis weapons system would try to intercept it by firing ship-to-air missiles. If that failed, Patriot missiles based around key cities would have a second chance to knock down the enemy missile.
To build the shield, Japan plans to modify its four Aegis destroyers by adding the interceptor, the Standard Missile-3, and by purchasing 16 new versions of the Patriot missiles. To track incoming missiles, Japan would rely on intelligence from United States satellites, but it also plans to construct a land-based radar network and a command and control system.
In the last two years, the United States has conducted five tests of its Aegis-based Standard Missile-3, completing four successfully. The United States and Japan are expected shortly to conduct joint tests of an upgraded version of the missile that would incorporate four components developed together: an infrared seeker, kinetic warhead, rocket motor and nose cone.
The first joint test is to take place in late 2005, followed by another in early 2006, said Lt. Cmdr. Alvin Plexico of the Navy, a spokesman for the Defense Department.
The production of these components - and the likelihood that they will eventually be sold to other nations joining the network - could force Japan to abandon one of the cherished tenets of its postwar pacifism: a ban on arms exports. Although Japan has long had one of the world's largest military budgets, its arms industry has been barred from exporting since 1967.
Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's defense minister, who has publicly floated the idea of rescinding the ban, said Japan would not become a "merchant of death, selling weapons all over the world to make huge profits." But he added that there might be components that could be produced only in Japan.
"We don't know how things will turn out yet," he said.
Another necessary change might be a redefinition of Japan's concept of collective self-defense. Japan has maintained that it has that right, but chooses not to exercise it because it is not allowed under its Constitution, which was imposed by the United States during the postwar occupation.
The government has argued that intercepting a missile aimed at Japan amounts to a pure act of self-defense and emphasizes that the shield will be a Japanese one. But others point out that Japan will be part of a system linking the continental United States and other friendly nations.
Complicated situations can also arise: How does Japan react if United States naval vessels in international waters are attacked, or if another country in the network is attacked? Hideaki Kaneda, director of the Okazaki Institute here and a former admiral in the Self-Defense Force, said adopting missile defense, like sending troops to Iraq, was evidence of Japan's fundamental rethinking of its security and its desire to become a more active partner in the security alliance with the United States.
"Japan will protect U.S. troops stationed in Japanese territory" against a missile attack, Mr. Kaneda said. "This would make the nature of the Japan-U.S. alliance more mutually responsible."
The United States had been urging Japan to adopt missile defense at least since 2002, but Tokyo had hesitated until late last year, mainly out of fear of upsetting China, said Robyn Lim, a professor of international relations at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan.
"The United States's message was that it could build missile defense with or without Japan," Ms. Lim said.
In an Asia still suspicious of Japan, missile defense is the safest way to accommodate Japan's new security interests, Ms. Lim said, especially when talk of acquiring nuclear weapons is no longer the taboo it was only a few years ago.
"The Japanese are going to have to tackle the nuclear issue and the threat from North Korea one way or another," she said. "For China and the rest of Asia, it's better for Japan to do this within the framework of the U.S.-Japan security alliance."
In a meeting with Mr. Ishiba in Beijing in September, China's defense minister, Cao Gang Chuan, warned that Japan's adoption of an antimissile system would disrupt the global strategic balance and set off an arms race.
An effective shield would challenge China's military power by curbing the effectiveness of its missiles, which can now strike Taiwan or American forces stationed in Okinawa and elsewhere.
Russia said in February that it was developing a so-called hypersonic missile technology capable of piercing the United States' system.
But Mr. Ishiba said he did not believe that a shield would encourage other countries to develop missiles that would defeat the system. "If you launch a missile and it gets shot down," he said, "you give up missile production."
-------- russia
Nuclear Necessity in Putin's Russia
Rose Gottemoeller,
April 3, 2004
Arms Control Today
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_04/Gottemoeller.asp
What purpose do nuclear weapons serve in today's Russia? More than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russians still deploy more than 5,000 warheads on strategic nuclear-weapon systems. Additionally, they might deploy more than 3,000 nonstrategic warheads, and there are as many as 18,000 warheads either in reserve or in a queue awaiting dismantlement.[1] This enormous capability is available to Kremlin leaders, but it is a very good question what they can do with it.
Clearly, Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to see some political and diplomatic benefit to the weapons. It was no accident that in February-only one month before Putin successfully won re-election-the Russian military staged an all-out nuclear exercise that harkened back to the Cold War. Much of the short-term political payoff was lost, of course, when, with Putin in ceremonial attendance and cameras rolling, the navy twice failed to launch ballistic missiles from its strategic strike submarine. Still, the Russian president also announced plans for a new strategic weapon system, one that, from the evidence of media reports, involves maneuvering warheads that were first developed in response to President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" missile defense system in the 1980s.
By overseeing the exercise, Putin was able to look presidential, recalling the days of Soviet power for at least the portion of his electorate nostalgic for it. Also, he was able to say to the U.S. administration recently critical of him, "You cannot ignore Russia." Finally, he was able to highlight for the Russian armed forces that he was paying attention, celebrating their stature as a national institution. Even with the missteps, the exercise thus was a political boon to Putin-not that he needed it in his landslide election victory. Still, Russia's dilemmas about its nuclear arsenal extend well beyond the ramifications of these election-year events.
During much of his first term, Putin and his military and foreign policy advisers struggled with what to make of the Cold War-sized nuclear arsenal they inherited. Like Putin's predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, they pondered whether this arsenal could offer security benefits in a world where the Kremlin's most likely adversaries were no longer another nuclear weapons superpower, but terrorists and separatists. They tested whether Moscow could leverage these weapons to diplomatic advantage and "throw its nuclear weight around." They probed whether it was possible to redirect the resources of the nuclear arsenal to other purposes.
As Putin begins his second term, however, many of these questions appear to have been at least partially answered. A combination of military necessity and domestic political benefits have combined with the demise of certain constraints, specifically START II, to convince Putin and his top aides that Russia should continue to depend on nuclear weapons. In fact, the Kremlin has drawn this conclusion even though Russian officials implicitly acknowledge such weaponry will do little to counter the main threats to their security.
To illustrate this point: the recent exercise mimicked one last seen in 1982, when the Soviet Union was at the height of its efforts to achieve nuclear war-fighting prowess and bolster its deterrent against the United States. Russia's official comment, however, placed the 2004 exercise in a context quite different from Cold War deterrence. According to official sources, the exercises were planned to counter the threat of terrorism.[2]
Given the massive display of nuclear capability and the evident focus on the United States, this explanation at best seemed far-fetched: would the United States somehow be involved in a terrorist attack and have to be punished for pursuing that course? More likely, the Russian military was simply reaching for its default option, a well-known threat scenario and, at least in the old days, a well-practiced response.
A Missed Opportunity
It did not have to turn out this way. Beginning in the late 1990s, the role of strategic nuclear weapons in Russian national security was at the center of a bureaucratic battle over post-Cold War military reforms-a debate that could have turned out very differently. The battle featured two key players, Marshal Igor Sergeyev, a former commander-in-chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces (SRF) who was named minister of defense in May 1997, and Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kvashnin, putatively his senior deputy. Sergeyev favored a strong role for strategic nuclear weapons in Russia's military policy. Kvashnin wanted the Kremlin to put its emphasis on strengthening the conventional armed forces for regional conflicts such as the war in Chechnya.
Under Yelstin, Sergeyev got his way, seeking and gaining approval from the Security Council to create a Strategic Deterrence Force. This force would combine the strategic nuclear capabilities in the SRF with those of the navy and air force, together with certain other early warning and command and control assets, including Russian reconnaissance satellites in space.[3] In this way, it would form an integrated strategic command similar to the Strategic Command being formed during a similar period in the United States.
This "victory" for the strategic forces was short-lived. By April 2000, the fierce debate between Sergeyev and Kvashnin had broken into the open. Kvashnin apparently went around Sergeyev to suggest to Putin, who had only recently ascended to the presidency, that the SRF should be downgraded as a separate service and folded into the air force. Sergeyev responded sharply and openly to this proposal, angrily insisting that it be withdrawn.[4] Only three months after being sworn in, Putin was faced with the unprecedented task of rebuking his two top military men for their public disagreement.
By August, however, Putin seemed to be deciding in Kvashnin's favor. Through the summer, he fired several generals who were seen as allies of Sergeyev. Then, at a Security Council meeting in August, he gave lip service to the continued need for strong nuclear forces but otherwise placed emphasis squarely on strengthening the conventional forces. The notion of a Strategic Deterrence Force was officially dead; indeed the SRF were to be subordinated to the air force.
This outcome to the debate seemed to foretell a permanent victory for Kvashnin. Russian military policy seemed to be heading in the direction of a profound and unprecedented "denuclearization." A keystone of Kvashnin's concept was that the Russian Federation no longer needed to maintain nuclear parity with the United States but could succeed at deterring U.S. aggression with a minimal nuclear force. Kvashnin proposed, for example, to move from 756 land-based ICBMs to 150 by 2003.[5] Although Western analysts called this idea "strategic decoupling," Russian experts such as Vladimir Dvorkin, a retired SRF general and eminent modeler of the strategic forces, called it "a gross strategic mistake."[6]
Repercussions of U.S. Policy
Within two years, a U.S. policy decision helped restore the status of the strategic nuclear forces. In December 2001, the United States announced its intention to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. The Russian Federation responded with restraint, officially calling the withdrawal a "mistake" but not reacting with immediate political or military countermoves. The Kremlin did, however, what it had long warned it would do: it stated that it would not implement the START II treaty cutting the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. By doing so, Russian officials said they would have the flexibility to counter future U.S. missile defenses that might impact the effectiveness of their strategic arsenal.
In deciding not to implement START II, which had never concluded its ratification process and had not entered into force, Russian officials were able to opt out of that treaty's ban on multiple-warhead land-based missiles (so-called MIRVed ICBMs). Instead of retiring such missiles, the Kremlin decided that it would continue deploying them for at least a decade.[7]
In this new strategic landscape, Russian experts began talking increasingly about strategic modernization "on the cheap," looking for ways to sustain a modern strategic nuclear force and still accomplish urgently needed improvements to the conventional forces. Dvorkin, for example, spoke about putting multiple warheads on the Topol-M, the new Russian ICBM that had been designed with a single warhead to conform with START II.[8] Yet even without such measures, the failure of START II meant that the Kremlin no longer had an urgent requirement to modernize their strategic forces, because they could maintain the deployment of earlier generations of multiple warhead missiles. The Russian nuclear arsenal was very far indeed from Kvashnin's stated goal of 150 land-based ICBMs by 2003-Sergeyev seemed to have been vindicated.
Putin and his top advisers made the shift plain in October 2003. At a meeting with top-ranking military leaders, Putin seemed to be saying that the time for upheaval was over when he announced, "We are moving from radical reforms to deliberate, future-oriented development of the armed forces."[9] Sergei Ivanov, a Putin ally and civilian who had been sworn in as defense minister in April 2001, also seemed to call a halt to the roller-coaster debate over defense reform, asserting that the Russian army had already adapted to new realities. No longer, Ivanov said, would the Russian army have to consider global nuclear war or a large-scale conventional war as the most likely contingencies. Therefore, nuclear and conventional forces had already been trimmed substantially.[10]
Accompanying these statements was a reconfirmation that Russia was taking steps to maintain the capability of its strategic nuclear arsenal. Ivanov underscored the fact that the strategic nuclear forces would retain essentially the same composition as they had had during the Cold War years. "Russia retains a significant number of land-based strategic missiles....I am speaking here about the most menacing missiles, of which we have dozens, with hundreds of warheads," he said.[11]
Whether October 2003 represented an accurate time to declare the reform of the Russian armed forces complete seems doubtful. Even by the evidence that Putin and Ivanov presented in their public comments, reform still was a work in progress. Nevertheless, it is possible to point to a "settling out" of the relationship between the nuclear forces and the conventional forces. Neither Kvashnin, in his insistence on a "denuclearization" of the Russian armed forces, nor Sergeyev, with his emphasis on strong strategic nuclear forces and investment to match, had been precisely right. Each, however, had been to some measure correct.
The compromise path, as noted above, was engineered through the demise of START II. Relieved of START II constraints, the Russian Federation found a way to retain strategic nuclear weapons "on the cheap," thus freeing up funding for conventional force modernization. With the competition resolved, perhaps progress on reforming conventional forces could accelerate.
Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons
This resolution, at least for the time being, of the debate about the relationship and primacy of strategic nuclear and conventional forces does not address the place of nonstrategic nuclear weapons in Russian military doctrine. One of the oddest aspects of the Sergeyev-Kvashnin debate was that both of those military leaders as well as other Russian military experts shared and continue to share a theoretical consensus on the utility of nonstrategic nuclear weapons to counter Russian conventional weakness.
In April 2000, a new version of Russian military doctrine was issued, consistent with earlier versions except in its emphasis on the importance of using nuclear weapons to deter and counter attacks on Russian territory. This doctrine had been preceded, in January 2000, by a new National Security Concept that emphasized the same point. In describing the concept, Ivanov, who was then secretary of the Security Council, spoke about the nuclear issue: "Russia never said and is not saying now that it will be the first to use nuclear weapons, but at the same time, Russia is not saying that it will not use nuclear weapons if it is exposed to a full-scale aggression which leads to an immediate threat of a break-up and [to] Russia's existence in general."[12]
The doctrine stressed that even a conventional attack on targets that the Russians considered of strategic importance on their own territory could bring forth a nuclear counterattack anywhere in the theater of military operations. The exercise Zapad-99 showed exactly the type of scenario that underpinned this doctrine. Enemy forces (and NATO was heavily implied, in alliance with regional opponents of Russia) were beginning to overrun Russian territory. At the same time, they were using high-precision conventional weapons to attack strategic targets, such as nuclear power plants, on Russian territory. In response, Russia launched bombers armed with nuclear air-launched cruise missiles against enemy territory.
The greatest innovation of the January 2000 National Security Concept was the suggestion that nonstrategic nuclear weapons might be used in a limited way to counter a conventional attack, without spurring a major escalation to all-out nuclear use. The concept essentially restated long-standing policy, renewing the mission of the nuclear forces to deter any attack-nuclear, chemical, biological or conventional-against the territory of the Russian Federation.[13]
The notion that a limited nuclear response could be used to de-escalate conflict was a departure from long-standing Soviet era doctrine, which tended to stress the inevitability of rapid escalation as a counter to the U.S. position. During that era, the United States stated that it might have to use nuclear weapons in a limited way to counter an overwhelming Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe. The arrival of this idea in Russian nuclear policy seems to indicate that the shoe was now on the other foot: it was now Russia that might have to contemplate the limited use of nuclear weapons to compensate for its weakness against a determined and overwhelming regional aggressor.
Thus, a major new trend was emerging in Russian nuclear security policy: Nuclear weapons would not only be used in a large-scale coalition war involving exchanges with a major power such as the United States. They might also be used in conflicts on Russia's periphery if the Russians decided that they had no other option to counter a weapon of mass destruction attack involving chemical or biological weapons. They might also be used to counter attacks by small-scale but capable conventional forces impacting targets that Russia considers to be of strategic importance.
This latter use, it is worth stressing, had earlier antecedents. As early as the mid-1980s, the Soviets were becoming concerned about what they termed "strategic conventional attacks" against Soviet territory. In that era, they worried about the new U.S. long-range land-attack cruise missiles that were capable of carrying either conventional or nuclear warheads. The Soviets complained at the time that they would not be able to distinguish between a nuclear and conventional attack and would therefore either have to treat the attack as nuclear or lose their opportunity to launch on tactical warning. In this way, "strategic" conventional weapons might deprive them of their options to limit damage from a nuclear attack.[14]
At the time, the Soviets were not stressing the "de-escalatory" nature of limited nuclear response options. In fact, they tended to threaten that a cruise missile attack on Soviet territory, even if it turned out to be conventional, could lead to all-out nuclear war. They did claim, however, that such response options would be consistent with Soviet no-first-use policy because they would be responding on warning of what appeared to be a nuclear attack; once their opponent had launched such an attack, they were justified to respond. Even if the cruise missile turned out to be conventionally armed, they would have been responding to "nuclear" warning.
Thus, when the Russians talk about using their nuclear forces against "terrorists," they are falling back on some established traditions but also on the military reality that their conventional forces are not yet ready to confront new threats to the Russian Federation. Yet, it not likely that terrorist decision-makers will be deterred by nuclear weapons.[15] Rather than bolstering Russian defenses against terrorism, the ineffectual nature of nuclear forces for this mission only highlights the continued weakness of the Russian armed forces overall.
Future Directions
The Russians seem to be drawing a measure of security from their nuclear capability and are doing it "on the cheap." One problem will arise if that security becomes synonymous with the current high numbers of nuclear weapons and the Russian government decides it will no longer work to reduce its vast holdings of nuclear weapons and materials. At the moment, Russia seems to be taking seriously its commitments under the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) to reduce operational deployments of strategic nuclear warheads to 1,700-2,200 by 2012. For example, despite their decision to maintain some older systems, they are eliminating SS-18s at the rate of two to three regiments a year, blowing up silos so that the reductions are irreversible. As long as the Russians remain committed to reductions, their continuing dependence on nuclear forces is not a problem.
A problem will arise if the Russians decide that they must begin to modernize their nuclear capability, developing and building new nuclear warheads and possibly testing them. This direction looked possible in 2003 as high-level officials made obscure references to the need for new "strategic weapons." Putin, for example, remarked approvingly about new strategic capabilities in his "State of the Union" address in May, but it was unclear whether he was talking about new advanced conventional weapons or new nuclear weapons.[16]
U.S. policy may have had some impact on these decisions. For example, Putin announced a new strategic system in February 2004, the resurrection of a Soviet-era maneuvering warhead project that had been originally designed to counter the U.S. Star Wars program. With the United States moving toward deployment of a national missile defense system, Putin perhaps wanted to reassure his military that important technological countermeasures were "in the works."
Yet, U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses, and research and potentially deploy new nuclear weapons, have also prompted assertions from some Russian officials that they will not seek to match U.S. efforts. Russian officials have stated clearly, "We will not chase after you." They seem to believe that existing Russian nuclear deployments could counter any new U.S. capabilities, offensive or defensive, for the foreseeable future. No need for panic, they convey, we will not be surprised or overwhelmed by new developments in the United States.[17]
Thus, Russian nuclear policy looking into the future is an interesting admixture. It combines military necessity-an insurance policy against conventional weakness-with a political expression of national pride. The celebration of the nuclear forces has also served a reassurance function, conveying that the leadership, and particularly Putin, value the military's contribution to Russia's future.
A key question for the international community, and indeed for the United States, is whether Russia's nuclear capabilities and emotional investment in such weapons might be tapped for larger purposes than Russian domestic politics. It is often said that nuclear weapons give Russia a seat at the diplomatic table. Indeed, Russia's status as a permanent member of the UN Security Council is linked to its status as a nuclear-weapon state under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
To be sure, Russia's nuclear weapons give it a stronger role on the world stage than its economy or political heft would otherwise warrant, and Russia's pride in this role should be harnessed to accomplish larger international goals. For example, the Russians might be asked to use their nuclear expertise more fully in the fight against proliferation. Recently, they have shown a willingness to take a firmer hand with Iran over the supply of fuel to the Bushehr reactor project. Can such firmness be extended both with Iran and to other proliferation tough cases? Can Russia in fact become a full partner to the United States in the fight against proliferation?[18]
Consider the example of North Korea. Having provided nuclear research reactors and power technology to North Korea in the first place, Russia has significant first-hand knowledge of the foundations of the North Korean program. Moreover, Russia has indicated an interest in serving as an international repository for spent nuclear fuel. If North Korea has not reprocessed all of its 8,000 nuclear fuel rods, it might be convinced to hand them over for storage at an international site, along with whatever plutonium has been produced. Because of its involvement with the North Korean program and its geographic proximity, Russia could provide the site for these materials.
The Russians, with the help of the United States, could also lead by example. For example, the Russian Federation could accelerate reductions in its nuclear arsenal and the nuclear materials that underpin it. Although the current U.S. administration does not seem interested in reductions beyond those enshrined in the SORT, there are good reasons to pursue them. In particular, controlling and eliminating nuclear assets is the best way to keep them out of the hands of terrorists and regimes inimical to the international order. This goal is particularly relevant to nonstrategic or tactical nuclear weapons. Up to this point, such weapons have not been subject to formal arms control agreements, but they are likely to be among the nuclear assets most attractive and accessible to terrorists.
Even if the United States and Russia do not immediately turn their attention to new nuclear arms reductions, they could reinvigorate joint efforts to protect, control, and account for nuclear materials. An early joint effort, called the Trilateral Initiative because of the involvement of the International Atomic Energy Agency along with the United States and Russia, made some progress on joint nuclear material protection in the 1990s but then stalled over implementation costs and related issues. Russia and the United States could quickly reinvigorate this initiative, thus providing some important impetus to international efforts to control nuclear materials.
Likewise, the United States and Russia promised each other, at the time the SORT was signed in May 2002, that they would examine new measures of transparency that would facilitate implementation of the treaty. Some of the most important of such measures could relate to monitoring warheads in storage. Both Russian and U.S. experts have spent considerable time jointly developing the technologies and procedures that would be necessary to monitor warhead storage, and this agenda could quickly be developed. These steps could apply equally to strategic and nonstrategic nuclear warheads if the two countries should decide to pursue joint measures that would control and account for both types.
The United States will have to make some effort to allow Russia to assume the role of a more equal partner on nonproliferation policy. Washington is accustomed, for example, to thinking of Russia more as a proliferation problem than part of the solution. Indeed, Russia's insistence on selling nuclear reactors to unpalatable customers such as Iran and Libya has meant that it has been continually under suspicion as a proliferator itself. Nevertheless, the center of the proliferation sales network seems to have been in Pakistan rather than Russia. Thus, if the United States is willing to continue the difficult work of improving Russian export control laws and other regulations, Russia could develop into a reliable nonproliferation partner.
Likewise, on the arms control front, Russian weakness and distraction have often meant that the United States has taken the lead in advancing new initiatives. The SORT, for example, was based on a U.S. concept, although the Kremlin insisted that it be signed as a legally binding treaty rather than a political commitment. In the future, Washington may find itself as the only partner volunteering new ideas, such as further reductions in strategic nuclear forces or a withdrawal of nonstrategic nuclear weapons from NATO Europe. Even if such initiatives are advanced on a voluntary basis rather than in the context of a negotiation, they can be designed to draw forth a positive response from the Russian side.
The United States and Russian Federation have a long history of working together to solve nuclear problems, particularly in the realm of nuclear arms reductions. For the time being, Russian nuclear weapons must compensate in part for its weakness. However, Russia's nuclear capabilities also mean that it can be somewhat self-confident in the international arena, turning its knowledge, expertise, and resources to serve the country's larger goals. With sufficient U.S. cooperation and encouragement, Putin might be able to provide a new and positive answer to the question of what purpose nuclear weapons serve in today's Russia.
NOTES
1. According to information published by the Arms Control Association, as of July 31, 2003, strategic nuclear forces of the former Soviet Union totaled 5,286 nuclear warheads (2,922 ICBMs, 1,732 SLBMs, and 632 bombers). This information is based on the Memorandum of Understanding between the United States and the Russian Federation of July 31, 2003. Arms Control Association, "Current Strategic Nuclear Forces of the Former Soviet Union," February 2004, available at www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/sovforces.asp. See also Natural Resources Defense Council, "Table of USSR/Russian Nuclear Warheads," November 25, 2002, www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab10.asp.
2. Ivan Safronov, "Russia Will Play Out a Nuclear Game With Itself," Kommersant, January 30, 2004.
3. The inception of the Strategic Deterrence Forces is described in Jacob W. Kipp, "Russia's Nonstrategic Nuclear Weapons," Military Review, May-June 2001, available at http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/fmsopubs/issues/russias_nukes/russias_nukes.htm.
4. David Hoffmann, "Putin Tries to Stop Feuding in the Military," The Washington Post, July 15, 2000, p. 14. A good summation of Russian commentary on the debate is contained in Nikolai Sokov, "'Denuclearization' of Russia's Defense Policy?" July 17, 2000, available at www.cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/denuke.htm. Another good precis of the debate is Philipp C. Bleek, "Russia Ready to Reduce to 1,500 Warheads, Addressing Dispute Over Strategic Forces' Fate," Arms Control Today, September 2000.
5. For a good review of Russian sources on this point, see Sokov, "'Denuclearization' of Russia's Defense Policy?"
6. Vladimir Dvorkin, "Russia Needs a Transparent Development Programme for Its Strategic Nuclear Forces," Vremya Novostei, No. 1, January 2003, translated in the CDI Russia Weekly, No. 240, Center for Defense Information, Washington, DC.
7. According to some analysts, SS-18s and SS-19s could be refurbished and maintained well beyond their guaranteed life span, perhaps until 2020 or even beyond. General Yury Kirillov, chief of the SRF Military Academy, said that, "[c]onsidering Russia's economic capabilities, the preservation of Russia's nuclear potential requires a maximum possible extension of the service life of the RS-20 and RS-18 MIRVed missile complexes." (The NATO designators for these missiles are the SS-18 and SS-19.) Interview with Colonel General Yury Kirillov, "Possibly It's Time to Advance the Idea of a Nuclear Deterrence Safeguards Treaty," Yadernyy Kontrol, November-December 2002, translated in FBIS-SOV-2003-0114, October 5, 2002.
8. Discussion among Aleksandr Golts, Sergey Parkhomenko, and Vladimir Dvorkin, Ekho Moskvy Radio, May 21, 2002, available at www.echo.msk.ru/interview/8529.html.
9. Lenta.RU, available at http://vip.lenta.ru/fullstory/2003/10/02/doctrine/index.htm.
10. Viktor Litovkin, "Security is Best Achieved Through Coalition: Russia's New Military Doctrine Highlights Community of Goals with the World," www.cdi.org/russia/276-6.cfm.
11. Simon Saradzhyan, "Putin Beefs Up ICBM Capacity," The Moscow Times, October 3, 2003. See also Jeremy Bransten, "Russia: Putin Talks Up Power of Nuclear Arsenal," RFE/RL, available at www.rferl.org/nca/features/2003/10/03102003170748.asp.
12. "Security Council Chief Says New Concept 'Unique,'" ITAR-TASS, February 24, 2000, in FBIS-SOV-2000-0224. The doctrine may be found at "Voyennaya doktrina Rossiiskoi Federatsii," Nezavisimaya gazeta, April 22, 2000, available at http://ng.ru/printed/politics/2000-04-22/5_doktrina.html.
13. For a useful commentary on the link between Zapad-99 and the Security Concept, see Nikolai Sokov, "Russia's New National Security Concept: The Nuclear Angle," CNS Reports, January 19, 2000, available at http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/reports/sokov2.htm.
14. For a discussion of this period in Soviet doctrine, see Rose Gottemoeller, "Land-Attack Cruise Missiles," Adelphi Paper, No. 226 (Winter 1987/88): 18-19.
15 It should be noted that, when the Russian government refers to "terrorists," it often is describing separatists from the breakaway republic of Chechnya, who may or may not be engaging in nonstate terrorist activities. To the extent that Chechen politicians ascribe to the responsibilities of government leadership, they might be subject to some aspects of deterrence, especially of a nuclear kind.
16. President Vladimir Putin's Annual Address to the Federal Assembly, May 16, 2003. Then-Deputy Prime Minister Alyoshin asserted after the president's speech that Putin was talking about a new strategic command and control system to allow "the use of in-depth space, air and earth systems," not new nuclear weapons. See Natalia Slavina, "Deputy Premier Says Russia Government to Pursue Tasks of Putin's Address," ITAR-TASS, May 16, 2003, transcribed in FBIS-SOV-2003-0516. See also "Russian Deputy Premier Calls for Developing IT-Intensive Weapon Systems," Moscow Interfax, May 16, 2003, in FBIS-SOV-2003-0516.
17. Conversations with author, Moscow, January 2004.
18. This idea was advanced by Russian participants in a joint project of the U.S. National Academy of Scientists and the Russian Academy of Sciences on the future of nonproliferation coo=peration. See National Research Council of the National Academies, "Overcoming Impediments to U.S.-Russian Cooperation on Nuclear Non-Proliferation: Report of a Workshop," February 2004, pp. 1-10.
Rose Gottemoeller is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she holds a joint appointment with the Russian and Eurasian Program and the Global Policy Program. Before joining Carnegie in October 2000, Gottemoeller was deputy undersecretary for defense nuclear nonproliferation in the Department of Energy.
-------- treaties
Bush, ElBaradei, Discuss Proposals of Nuclear Nonproliferation Talks
Wade Boese,
April 3, 2004
Arms Control Association
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_04/NonproliferationTalks.asp
Diplomats from more than 100 states are expected to convene for nearly two weeks beginning April 26 to assess what future measures might be taken to shore up the beleaguered nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). In anticipation, U.S. President George W. Bush and Mohamed ElBaradei, the United Nations' top nuclear expert, met in mid-March to discuss possible proposals.
Although the nuclear nonproliferation regime was recently buoyed by Libya's December 2003 renunciation of its nuclear weapons program, the exposure of illicit Iranian nuclear activities and the disclosure of Abdul Qadeer Khan's black market nuclear network highlighted the regime's ills.
With the help of the Pakistani-based Khan network, NPT states-parties Libya and Iran pursued secret nuclear work for years without being caught. North Korea, which announced its withdrawal from the NPT last year, also conducted nuclear-related dealings with Khan. (See ACT, March 2004.)
These revelations have spurred calls for reform from Washington, other world capitals, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which is responsible for making sure states do not illegally use their peaceful nuclear programs to build atomic bombs covertly.
At Washington's invitation, ElBaradei, the IAEA director-general, visited the United States March 15-18 to discuss proposals for remedying the ailing nonproliferation regime. ElBaradei met with Bush, top officials from the CIA and the Departments of Energy and State, and members of Congress.
ElBaradei summed up his message to the president in a March 18 PBS interview as "[T]his is a different ball game and we have to revise the rules."
Possible revisions discussed at the meetings included cleaning up and securing weapons-usable material worldwide, strengthening export controls, and denying uranium-enrichment and plutonium reprocessing technologies to states that do not have them. Currently, 15 states possess such capabilities, which are legal under the NPT but necessary for making nuclear weapons. ElBaradei does not want to see that total grow.
Although Bush and ElBaradei share many of the same concerns and believe that the threat of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons demands that the past rules of the nonproliferation regime be updated, they have yet to announce a set of agreed specific proposals or general strategy.
Both men have laid out initiatives separately: Bush in a Feb. 11 speech at the National Defense University and ElBaradei in a series of written pieces and interviews. (See ACT, March 2004 and November 2003.) Bush's proposals have stressed getting individual states to do a better job of clamping down on their own nuclear materials and technologies, while ElBaradei has urged that states subject their nuclear programs to more stringent multinational controls. There is some overlap, such as ending the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) in reactors around the globe.
The forthcoming NPT Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting, which is scheduled from April 26 to May 7 in New York, will likely see a full airing of proposals to amend the nonproliferation regime. Indonesian Ambassador Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat will serve as the meeting's chairman.
Treaty compliance and enforcement will be the central themes pushed at the PrepCom by the U.S. delegation, which will be headed by Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton.
In a March 12 interview with Arms Control Today, Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance Paula DeSutter said, "Verification and especially compliance are going to be important topics at the PrepCom." The reason, she explained, is because the treaty "has been under assault by North Korea, Iran, and other countries of concern."
If past PrepComs are any guide to what can be expected, the United States will not be the only state reprimanding other NPT members for failing to live up to their commitments. In fact, the United States will face the same charges.
Many states have previously alleged that Washington, as well as Beijing, London, Paris, and Moscow, have not done enough to reduce the role and size of their nuclear arsenals. Article VI of the NPT calls upon all treaty members to work toward disarmament.
In 2000, these five capitals joined in agreeing to 13 steps to advance toward that goal, but they have made mixed progress in fulfilling their pledges. For example, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which bans nuclear testing, has not been brought into force, and negotiation of a treaty to end the production of HEU and plutonium for weapons purposes has not been initiated even though a five-year deadline was set for its completion. The Bush administration is now reviewing whether it supports such negotiations. (See ACT, March 2004.)
However, the administration contends it has a solid NPT record, citing its 2002 treaty with Russia to reduce their nuclear forces to fewer than 2,200 deployed strategic warheads each by the end of 2012. "I think we can point toward greater progress under this administration in moving toward the objectives of Article VI than can be pointed to under the entire history of the NPT," Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Stephen Rademaker asserted in a Jan. 21 interview with Arms Control Today.
DeSutter said, "I think it would be a very sad thing given the assault we're seeing on the NPT by virtue of the noncompliance that we've got if countries focused on the United States instead of where the problem is."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
CDC readies new contract for contaminant study
ROGER SNODGRASS, roger@lamonitor.com,
Saturday, April 3, 2004
Los Alamos Monitor Assistant Editor
http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2004/04/01/headline_news/news02.txt
POJOAQUE - Researchers commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported progress in their search for historical documents about contaminant releases at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Tom Widener of ChemRisk Inc. presented a draft Interim Report of the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment Project Tuesday evening at the Cities of Gold Hotel.
The multi-year project to understand the risks from radiological emissions and toxic chemicals is running out of money, short of its goals, but team members expressed optimism the work would continue.
Phil Green, representing CDC, said a new procurement package has been prepared and a solicitation for a contract to finish the job is expected to go out within 30 days with the intent to award the contractor before the end of September.
Participants outlined steps that have been taken to bring the current project to a close, including a database of bibliographic information and summaries of the content of documents located by the team, sets of copies that will be available at the Zimmerman Library at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, and a key-word-searchable electronic collection of those documents, along with a chronology of incidents and unusual events that have been identified.
Widener said the preliminary data on airborne releases of radiological material, particularly plutonium, beryllium and tritium, continue to raise questions about possible discrepancies between documented release estimates and residual evidence in contemporary soil tests.
The tenor of the meeting contrasted sharply with the last public presentation in July 2003, when Charles Miller, the project officer of the radiation studies branch of CDC, said the project was threatened, not by a lack of funding, but by logistical complications of obtaining records from the laboratory.
"Access to classified documents at Los Alamos has been more difficult than LAHDRA team members have experienced at any of the other DOE sites that have been subjects of dose reconstruction investigations," the draft report says, in a section entitled, "Challenges to Information Gathering at Los Alamos."
As the CDC project sought to dig deeper into the records, LANL suffered a disaster (the Cerro Grande Fire) and a series of security crises (the missing hard-drives, Wen Ho Lee, and 9/11.) Each of those episodes caused heightened security requirements at the laboratory and further restricted the LAHDRA analyst's efforts to conduct their review, members of the board said.
Despite a letter from DOE's top nuclear official attesting to the project's needs, whole areas of documents were placed off limits to them and their appeals to the Albuquerque area office went unanswered, the group reported.
But then, as the project prepared to close and shifted toward capping off a reduced scope of work last year, renewed efforts began to resolve the bottlenecks that had denied and withheld access to potentially significant quantities of data, they reported at the meeting.
"Three years now into the five-year contract," Widner said, "it's been like a roller coaster ride."
For the last four or five months, Widener said the lab has stopped treating the project like an unfounded mandate to be handled routinely with available resources.
"We went for a number of years without an effective level of support. We have encouraging signs as to the level of support," Widener said.
"LANL has granted over $1 million this year to support the effort," said C.M. Wood of CDC.
A new appeals process with DOE has been worked out, he said, adding, "We have not looked at a single document under the new treaty."
Letters backing the continuation of the project have been sent to federal officials by Gov. Bill Richards and Sen. Jeff Bingaman.
Bingaman's letter, dated March 26 to the director of the National Center for Environmental Health says, "I have requested additional funds from the subcommittee on energy and water appropriations for the Los Alamos staff to continue assisting you in this effort."
The results of the study will be useful for dose reconstruction studies, involving nuclear workers claims, as well as for future environmental restoration programs, the team members emphasized.
Comments are invited on the draft report, available at http://www.shonka.com/ReConstructionZone/default.htm
-------- virginia
Nuclear power dangerous, expensive
Fredericksburg, VA
Free Lance Star
4/3/2004
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2004/042004/04032004/1317346
I take issue with Dominion Power's claim ("Alliance fights reactor plans," March 17) that it is acting responsibly in submitting an Early Site Permit application to build two or more new nuclear reactors at North Anna. It is extremely irresponsible to build additional nuclear units when the disposal of highly radioactive spent fuel remains unresolved.
Yucca Mountain, the designated federal repository for commercial nuclear waste, is unlikely to open as scheduled in 2010 or for years after. Spent fuel rods are multiplying at North Anna and continue to be stored in water pools (with some dry-cask storage) exacerbating the terrorist threat.
Two new nuclear units at Lake Anna would have adverse effects on the ecosystem, drastically reducing the level of the lake. Lakefront real-estate values are likely to suffer. After the last three-year drought, safeguarding our water resources has become a priority.
Has Dominion studied the health impacts associated with an increase in "legal" or "permissible" radiation releases from two additional nukes? Has Dominion adequately projected population trends to plan for evacuation in case of accident?
Given that the nuclear-waste issue remains unresolved, that nuclear power is expensive, government/ratepayer subsidized, and fraught with radiation risks, Dominion should drop the nuclear option altogether and base our energy future on safer and sustainable sources--i.e, conservation and renewables.
Elena Day
Charlottesville
-------- washington
'The Hutch' claims data from tax-funded research is proprietary
By The Associated Press
Saturday, April 03, 2004
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001894707_hanford03m.html
SPOKANE - The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is refusing to release data from a taxpayer-funded study of thyroid disease among people who lived downwind from the Hanford nuclear reservation, lawyers for plaintiffs suing Hanford contractors say.
Attorneys for the thousands of people suing the contractors over radiation releases from the former nuclear-weapons production site recently issued a subpoena seeking information on how the 1999 study's radiation doses were calculated.
The Seattle cancer center is fighting the subpoena, saying the numbers it crunched to study thyroid disease among Hanford downwinders are proprietary.
In a March 24 memorandum to U.S. District Judge Frem Nielsen, filed in federal court in Spokane, lawyers for 2,322 plaintiffs objected to that stance. The judge has not ruled on the subpoena.
The trial is scheduled for March 2005.
Taxpayers paid $22 million for the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study and all the data should be public, the attorney said.
Tobacco-industry scientists made similar claims of privilege to fight release of their data on the health impacts of cigarettes, but the courts rejected that stance, the Hanford lawyers said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contracted with "The Hutch" for the thyroid study. Under the CDC contract, the release of much of the Hanford data isn't allowed because it would invade the privacy rights of study participants, said June Campbell, a lawyer representing the Hutch.
The raw information "contains personal information about the participants. Under federal law, the participants are given an assurance of confidentiality," Campbell said.
The Hutch's researchers also have an exclusive right to use the data in scientific papers they plan to publish, Campbell said.
The plaintiffs want access to the study's "grid nodes," 36-square-mile geographic units in the inland Northwest used to locate where people lived in order to calculate individual radiation doses.
They also want the calculated doses for the study's 3,440 participants and individual files for 11 "bellwether" plaintiffs, whose cases are the first scheduled for trial next year.
Congress demanded the thyroid disease study in 1988, two years after the Energy Department released thousands of pages of documents showing that clouds of radioactive iodine 131 and other elements had been released from Hanford starting in the 1940s during the manufacture of plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Iodine 131 lodges in the thyroid gland, where it can cause cancer and other abnormalities.
In their study, the Hutch's researchers reported no verifiable link between the Hanford releases and increased thyroid disease downwind, a finding that researchers said surprised them.
That angered many downwinders, who said the study dismissed their health problems. The CDC told the public that the study's inconclusive findings "do not prove that Hanford radiation had no effect on the health of the area population."
Lawyers defending Hanford's Cold War-era contractors seized on the Hutch study, saying the results would make it difficult for the downwinders to prove their case in court.
-------- us politics
Nader Scrambles to Collect Thousands of Signatures
By Brian Faler
The Washington Post
Saturday, April 3, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46296-2004Apr2?language=printer
Ralph Nader would like your autograph.
In fact, he needs it. The longtime consumer advocate, who is running for president as an independent, must collect hundreds of thousands of signatures from voters across the country to get his name on state ballots for the Nov. 2 election.
It is a daunting task -- despite hand-wringing from Democrats that his campaign could affect the outcome of the presidential race -- that stands between Nader and his chances of becoming a significant factor in the election.
The requirement stems from state laws that were designed to prevent frivolous candidates from cluttering the ballots.
Each state has its own standards -- different signature requirements, deadlines and time limits. Some are rather strict. Texas, for example, requires candidates to collect 64,076 valid signatures within two months, beginning on March 10. It also requires those signatures to be from registered voters who did not vote in the state's Democratic or Republican presidential primary earlier this year.
At the other end of the spectrum, there is Tennessee, which requires just 25 signatures -- although that number is expected to be increased to 275 soon. New Jersey wants 800. The state of Washington asks for 1,000. Both Colorado and Louisiana will waive their 5,000-signature requirement if Nader pays a $500 fee.
The District asks for fewer than 4,000 signatures; Maryland, about 28,000; and Virginia, 10,000.
In all, Nader will need about 620,000 valid signatures to reach his goal of getting on the ballot in all 50 states, according to Richard Winger, editor of Ballot Access News and a leading authority on the topic. Nader will actually need many more than that, because scores of signatures will probably be disqualified for a variety of reasons. Winger said Nader needs to aim for about 900,000 signatures to clear the bar nationwide; the candidate has estimated that he will need 1.5 million.
Nader repeatedly denounces the signature requirement -- from which the major parties' nominees are exempt -- as unfair. "There's a tremendous bias in state laws against third parties and independent candidates bred by the two major parties, who pass these laws," Nader said, when he announced his candidacy in February on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"They don't like competition. So it's like climbing a cliff with a slippery rope," he said.
Nader's campaign has focused its efforts on states with particularly stringent rules: Texas, Oklahoma, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Illinois. It has been recruiting volunteers online and at campaign stops, asking them to fan out to churches, post offices and other public venues to urge voters to sign their petitions. The campaign said it has recruited about 7,000 volunteers so far.
"We might be able to do it with the 7,000 we already have," said Kevin Zeese, Nader's spokesman. "We could certainly use more. I would love to see us having 15,000. But I think a 7,000 base is pretty good to start with."
Most states' deadlines are not until summer. But Nader's campaign faces its first test of support next week in Oregon, where it will try to qualify for the ballot in a single day. The state gives candidates such as Nader an option: collect 15,306 signatures before Aug. 24 or collect signatures from 1,000 registered voters attending a nominating convention. The Nader campaign has opted for the latter, scheduling an event in Portland on Monday.
Nader's task would be easier if he accepted the presidential nomination of one of the minor parties that already have spaces reserved on some states' ballots. Some members of the Green Party, which has yet to choose its presidential candidate, want to support Nader. The Green Party nomination would give access to ballots in 23 states, thanks to the party's performance in previous elections. The Reform Party, founded by Texas billionaire Ross Perot, has offered Nader its top spot, along with its seven ballot spots. The Natural Law Party is also considering giving him its nomination and 12 ballot lines, according to John Hegelin, the group's former presidential candidate.
But Zeese said Nader will not accept any of those nominations because he does not want to be too closely associated with any one party, even if it would give him an edge in the chase for signatures. "Ralph sees himself as an independent," Zeese said. "I think what happens is that when you pick one party, you're defined by that party. . . . Rather than being defined by that party, we define ourselves."
Zeese added that Nader hopes to appeal to a broad spectrum of third-party voters and would accept their organizations' support, volunteers and ballot lines. "It's more powerful to have a coalition of third parties come together and say: We are joined together to challenge the duopoly," Zeese said.
However, Nader will run with at least one party -- his own. The candidate recently created the Populist Party, under whose banner he will run in states that require fewer signatures from new parties than they do from individual candidates. In North Carolina, for example, election officials ask for about 100,000 signatures from independent candidates but fewer than 60,000 from people organizing new parties.
In 2000, when he was the Green Party's nominee, Nader won the votes of more than 2.8 million voters -- including enough in two states, Democrats have complained, to throw the election to George W. Bush. This year, his campaign lacks not only the organizational muscle of the Green Party but also is relying on volunteers rather than paid signature gatherers.
In addition, Nader has earned the ire of many of his erstwhile supporters, who argue that he ought to focus exclusively on defeating President Bush. Democrats, some of whom in previous years may have been tempted by Nader's leftist platform, appear to be unusually unified behind the candidacy of Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.).
Zeese said he did not know whether such sentiments have affected the Nader campaign's petition drives. "I don't know yet -- it's too soon to say," he said. Zeese rejected suggestions that Republican officials might help the campaign gather signatures. "We have had no contact with the Republican Party," he said.
One recent poll suggests that Nader's support has tumbled. The survey, which was conducted by the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, found that 21 percent of the public has a favorable opinion of Nader, while 37 percent does not. In 2000, the poll found 24 percent saying they had a favorable opinion of Nader and 24 percent saying they did not.
Nader has said he will appeal this year to disgruntled conservatives and independents. Yesterday, he posted an "Open Letter to Conservatives Upset With the Policies of the Bush Administration," inviting them to join his independent campaign.
Even though Nader denounces the signature requirement as unfair, Zeese said the petition exercise has its upside. "Ralph's approach is to use the signature gathering hurdle as an opportunity to organize and to gather volunteers," he said. "He's trying to turn this challenge into an opportunity -- an opportunity to build a political base."
---------
WHITE HOUSE MEMO
The Clinton-Bush Transition Seemed to Be Tidy. Was It?
April 3, 2004
By TODD S. PURDUM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/politics/03MEMO.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 2 - Aside from deaths in office, it was among the shortest presidential transitions in American history: the five and a half weeks from the Supreme Court's ruling in the disputed election of 2000 to George W. Bush's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2001. And yet it was considered among the smoothest.
The transition was led by Vice President-elect Dick Cheney, himself White House chief of staff to Gerald R. Ford. The new defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was also filling a post he had held under Mr. Ford. Other top officials, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, had served in similar arenas in the first Bush administration, and the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, was staying on from the Clinton years.
It was a team that was right up to speed.
Or was it?
"There are a lot of changes in eight years, both on the surface and more subtle changes, in whatever areas you want to talk about, and certainly in national security," said Charles O. Jones, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who is an expert on presidential transitions.
"It's possible that previous experience, which we normally think of as an advantage, can also kind of lock you out of attention to all of what has changed during that time, simply because you weren't a part of it," Mr. Jones said. "That isn't to say they ignored it. It's just to say that all the subtleties involved are not something that you're up to speed on, necessarily."
That was the essence of the politically explosive accusations last week by the former counterterrorism coordinator for the Clinton and Bush administrations, Richard A. Clarke: that the Bush team had viewed terrorism as important, but not urgent. In addition, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported that the deputy director of central intelligence, John E. McLaughlin, had "felt a great tension" involving "the new administration's need to understand these issues and his sense that this was a matter of great urgency."
Had the transition been a factor in the failure to foil Al Qaeda?
Top officials from Mr. Bush down strenuously rejected any suggestion that they had not been alert to the threat of terrorism, and working hard to face it from Day 1.
In his testimony to the commission, Mr. Rumsfeld complained that "for much of that period, most of the senior officials selected by the president" for jobs at the Pentagon had yet to be confirmed by the Senate. That is true enough, and the process was complicated by the Senate's shift from Republican to Democratic control in early summer.
Paul C. Light, a professor of public service at New York University who conducted an extensive comparison of confirmations across administrations from John F. Kennedy to Mr. Bush, found that in July 2001, about half the top 150 posts directly involved in national security - at the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Transportation and the Treasury, and at the C.I.A. - remained vacant; one-quarter were still unfilled on Sept. 12. While the Bush team filled the uppermost cabinet posts very quickly, it was the slowest in 40 years in filling 520 top positions over all.
But Professor Light noted that this lag had resulted in part from the cumbersome process of F.B.I. background checks and from delays by the White House itself.
"It's fair to say that there were frustrations getting people in place," he said. "It's also fair to say the frustrations were caused by both the White House and the Senate."
No one disputes that the process of preparing to assume the presidency has improved a lot since Harry S. Truman took office on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt without knowing even the existence of the atomic bomb, which he would drop four months later. The topic has been studied extensively, and in even the most tense transitions - Truman to Dwight D. Eisenhower, or the first President Bush to Bill Clinton - a ritual diligence and civility prevails.
But there are tensions - and a learning curve - all the same.
"Generally the outgoing administration is eager to brief the new administration," said one expert on the presidency, George C. Edwards III of Texas A&M University. "The problem is usually on the part of the incoming administration, which is thinking, `We just beat you guys,' or at least `We're the new team in town,' and there's a certain amount of arrogance and hubris and adrenaline and ignorance involved."
The Bush administration maintains that it was taking a fresh look at the Clinton approach, and, history suggests, that is sometimes a good idea. Kennedy, three months after taking office, carried out the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which had been conceived and largely planned under Eisenhower, and lived to regret the resulting fiasco.
"The Kennedy people came in and were briefed on it, but didn't really have the capacity to focus on it very much," said James P. Pfiffner, a professor of public affairs at George Mason University. "And then Kennedy felt it was a disaster, and began to distrust the career services a bit."
Mr. Clinton's own transition into office is generally viewed as one of the worst of modern times. He delayed appointing senior White House aides, got caught up in squabbling over his vow to name a cabinet that looked "like America" and made two failed attempts to find a woman for attorney general before getting one confirmed: Janet Reno, whom he did not know well and who soon became the central figure in one of the administration's biggest early controversies, over the raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex.
One of Mr. Bush's most constant campaign themes four years ago was that he would behave differently from his predecessor, and restore "honor and dignity" to the White House after Mr. Clinton's affair with Monica S. Lewinsky. Professor Pfiffner said, "I do think that played an important role in playing down all sorts of things" in terms of Bush aides' inclination to listen to what the Clinton team was telling them after the election had been decided.
But presidents need not be from parties different from their predecessors' to want to make a fresh mark.
Just ask Mr. Bush's father. When he took over from Ronald Reagan, his aides took to referring to the prior administration as "pre-Bush," and he went out of his way to let it be known that he could talk to Congress and reporters without cue cards. And when he realized that the chair behind his desk in the Oval Office was too low, he did not ask for help. He just slung it over the desk, screwed out the bottom and raised the seat himself.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
U.N. Aide Says Sudan Is Tolerating Ethnic Cleansing
April 3, 2004
By WARREN HOGE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/international/africa/03NATI.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 2 - The United Nations director for relief in Sudan said Friday that Arab militias were conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing to drive black Africans out of a border region of the country with the apparent tolerance of the Sudanese government.
Jan Egeland, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said the armed groups were using "scorched earth tactics," deliberately destroying food and humanitarian supplies and attacking refugee centers in a program of "systematic depopulation."
"I consider this ethnic cleansing," he said, estimating that 750,000 people had been forced from their homes and villages, tens of thousands had fled into neighboring Chad and 10,000 might have died.
Speaking to reporters after briefing the Security Council on the situation, he said he was sounding the alarm because it was "one of the most forgotten and neglected humanitarian crises in the world."
Mr. Egeland said that relief workers had witnessed beatings, killings and gang rapes, but that alerting Sudanese authorities had gotten no response. He said he personally knew of a number of occasions where the government refused to intervene in "ongoing massacres."
"We can tell they tolerate them," he said of the mass killings.
"I have no reason to believe that the government is actively planning it, but I have reason to say that little is done to stop it, and therefore it seems as if it is being condoned."
The United Nations had received most of the $23 million in emergency assistance it asked for in a September plea, he said, but with the increase in violence it now needed $115 million more and an added $30 million to care for refugees.
He said the virtual civil war was being waged by rebel groups, militias and criminal gangs, as well as by Arab groups attacking black Africans. The fighting began a year ago over local protests that the oil-rich Sudanese government was ignoring the needs of Darfur, which borders Chad.
The most important step now, he said, was to get a cease-fire declared. But reports from Ndjamena, the Chadian capital, where talks were under way, indicated that the combatants' representatives would not even enter the same room. The negotiations had descended into "talks about talks" while people continued to die, Mr. Egeland said.
-------- asia
After Violence in Uzbekistan, Authorities Launch New Roundup
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46361-2004Apr2?language=printer
TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, April 2 -- They stood outside the gates as the gruff guard waved his Kalashnikov.
"Go away," the guard barked.
It started to rain. The mothers pleaded for information about their missing sons. The officer growled again, then turned his back.
Saida Mamurova stared at the imposing prison behind the gates. "How terrible," she lamented. "It's so hard for us. I'm out here, and my son is in there. I can't imagine."
The authorities came for her 34-year-old son, Dilshod, one night this week and took him away, a fate that has befallen other young Muslims in the Uzbek capital as the government launched a new crackdown following a series of suicide bombings. Mamurova's two other sons are already in one of Uzbekistan's notorious prisons. "What will I do now if they're all in prison?" she asked. "I'm a lone woman. I can't stand so much."
Arbitrary arrests and torture have been routine under President Islam Karimov's rule, according to the U.S. government and human rights groups, which estimate that about 7,000 people are being held in Uzbek prisons because of their political or religious beliefs. In the aftermath of five days of explosions and gunfire that have killed at least 47 people this week, authorities are again going door to door inspecting documents, making what they call "preventative" arrests of people on watch lists and even rounding up more prosperous Uzbeks so they can extract money for their release, according to witnesses.
"We're concerned that police and security forces . . . are going to be given carte blanche and the international community is going to turn a blind eye," said Acacia Shields, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch and primary author of a 319-page report issued this week on political repression here.
So far, Human Rights Watch has documented the arrests of 12 people with no known link to the terrorist attacks, mainly religious dissidents and their relatives -- and Shields suspects there have been dozens, possibly hundreds, more. A diplomat here estimated that at least 200 people had been swept up and told of visiting a police station where he saw 50 detainees, some of whom were kicked and beaten in front of him.
The arrests follow the deadliest violence here since Uzbekistan became a key ally of the United States in the war on terrorism in 2001. Most of those killed were combatants, according to official numbers released Friday, which listed 10 police officers and 33 militants, seven of them women.
"The investigation continues," Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov told reporters. "We're taking care of the city. I promise you that the criminals will be found and punished."
Kadyrov, who put on display assault rifles, pistols, ammunition, detonators and vests of explosives seized over the last few days, said the militants had trained outside Uzbekistan. Also displayed were militants' passports, including one apparently pierced by a bullet. Police have recovered 55 explosive belts and two tons of explosive materials, he said.
Kadyrov said 19 people, including four women, had been arrested as accessories to the violence. A wanted poster issued by authorities listed eight other suspects being sought. Kadyrov would not take questions and did not address criticism of the latest roundups.
The violence comes at a delicate time for Uzbekistan, which faces three crucial decisions in the United States and Europe in coming weeks over whether its human rights record warrants sanctions. President Bush called Karimov on Friday to reiterate U.S. solidarity as Uzbekistan struggles against terrorism, and human rights groups feared that the attacks could generate sympathy for Karimov's authoritarian government.
Unless the State Department certifies this month that Uzbekistan has made significant progress in human rights, $50 million in direct aid will be cut off. The U.S. government also must decide whether to include Uzbekistan on a list of "countries of particular concern" because of religious persecution. And the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has until next week to determine if Uzbekistan has met human rights benchmarks, a prerequisite for further loans.
Gulsara Makhmudova described how officers burst into her apartment late one night this week to seize her son, Bobur Makhmudov, 34, whose father is Mamadli Makhmudov, a writer and political prisoner. Gulsara said she had been scouring prisons and police stations ever since in an effort to find him, only to be turned away.
She is convinced her son is being abused. "They beat everyone," she said quietly. "With my husband, they put something hot under his nails, both toes and fingers, to make him say, 'I am the one who is bad.' "
Makhmudova was one of a small clutch of mothers who stood outside the state criminal administration headquarters Friday, seeking their sons. They were accompanied by Allison Gill, a Human Rights Watch researcher, and Raban Richter, a German diplomat who volunteered to help.
They stood in the rain for an hour, but guards refused to let them inside, even into the reception area normally open to visitors. The diplomat and the activist persisted, asking to see a major they had met before.
"I don't know where he is," the guard said brusquely. "Maybe he went home."
"Please," the diplomat said again, "take us to your boss."
The guard rolled his eyes, shook his head no and turned to the human rights worker. "Explain it to him," he instructed.
"I understand everything perfectly," the diplomat said in fluent Russian.
Another officer came over. "Go away," he barked, even more impatiently.
"There's a big problem here," Richter told him, trying to explain that he had a right of access to the prison. "It's your own law."
"Not allowed," the officer snapped.
"I'm a representative of Germany," the diplomat said.
"Not allowed."
"I'm just trying to talk to you."
"Not allowed."
-------- balkans
Kosovo goes to hell
3 April 2004
Spectator.co.uk
http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec270b.html
Tom Walker says that Tony Blair is too busy doing global management to bother much about the consequences of Nato's humanitarian intervention in the Balkans From the kitchen balcony of our old flat in Pristina, we used to look out on a rubbish dump in the foreground, then the precipitous and rutted Plevljanska Street, and across that to the old Orthodox church of St Nikola. To the right of our flat were some tumbledown one-storey buildings housing Serbs and gypsies.
The gypsies used to clean up the rubbish now and again, but never to the point where it all disappeared. Sasa the Serb used to sell us bootlegged petrol, which he nonchalantly glugged into our car tanks while pulling on a cigarette. Thus it was that generally we kept our distance from Sasa - as we did from the youths who lived in the priest's house by the church, who took a pot shot at our balcony once and removed a large piece of masonry. But Pop Rade, the priest, was an OK sort of guy, and I once sold him a Crooklock for his stolen Audi. Life in the 'hood was a little uneasy at times, but by and large we muddled along all right.
That was back in 1999. Sasa is long gone, as are the gypsies, their impoverished little shacks demolished and built over. But until a fortnight ago the church had survived, albeit thanks to regular sentries being posted on its gates by Nato's Kosovo force. Then it too was burned to the ground, leaving only the rubbish dump as a sort of immutable legacy of the UN/Nato recipe for multi-ethnic harmony.
This was the sort of thing that we were told wasn't meant to happen again: 3,600 Serbs pushed from their homes, which were then looted and burned along with a good number of their churches and monasteries. Britain sent 700 more troops, and in the Commons there were some glib remarks about the problems of youthful nations. 'We have known all along, when we committed ourselves to resolving the terrible ethnic conflict in the whole of the former republic of Yugoslavia, that it was going to take some time,' said Jack Straw. 'I can't put a specific time on it.'
You bet, Jack. Let's say a century or so, eh? The plain fact is that Kosovo, or what we were told Kosovo was to become, isn't working.
Where did it all go wrong, now that we cast our minds back to those distant days when the Prime Minister was cutting his teeth in the art of ethical warmongering? Five years is a long time in the vast sweep of New Labour's foreign peregrinations, and we've managed to pack in quite a bit of bombing since we hit the old Yugoslavia. But back then we were told that Slobodan Milosevic, our biggest bogeyman since Hitler, had to stop his heinous clampdown on the long-suffering Albanians. As Straw's predecessor, Robin Cook, so nobly put it: Nato 'cannot permit a rebirth of fascism in Europe'.
Ignoring the fact that our great libertarian friends from the Kosovo Liberation Army were as blind to ceasefires as the Serbs, and after lots of 'monitoring' (insertion of spies/target identifiers) and a few dubious massacres and then a very dubious one (Racak), we moved into peace conference mode. At Rambouillet the Serb delegation (minus Milosevic, who doesn't travel well) was told that Nato must have access to all its territory, and not just Kosovo. Oddly, they didn't sign up, and the Nato bombers warmed their engines.
Caught off guard by Milosevic's intransigence, Mr Blair badly needed a selling point for this little jolly and, with Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of the Albanians, he duly got it. With the pace of events, he neatly skipped past lie number one: that the cleansing (operation 'horseshoe' - remember that one?) had started before the Nato campaign. It hadn't. Through the air strikes on Yugoslavia of the balmy spring and summer of 1999, the momentum was kept up with the promise of mass graves of Albanians to be found in the aftermath. There were satellite pictures and eyewitness accounts to whet our appetites.
Any of this sound familiar? For Slobodan Milosevic, read Saddam Hussein. For mass graves, read WMDs. In this age of instant reckoning, of the television clip and the soundbite, war is cheaply sold in the right package. What is not so easy is the aftermath.
Since 1999, the KLA have not proved to be the great defenders of human rights they were once cracked up to be: some 350,000 Serbs and other minorities have fled, and of the 100,000 left, many will surely go. Empowered, the Albanians have fulfilled virtually none of the conditions the UN has laid down as prerequisites for independence, but nonetheless it is now universally agreed that that is the only answer. The thugs have won the argument, and the last thing Nato or the prototypical EU defence force wants is to have to take on the inheritors of the KLA in their own backyard.
I am married to a Serb. My father-in-law was a Serb policeman (albeit a traffic cop). I am sometimes accused of being 'pro-Serb' in the way I look at Kosovo. I once reported seeing a tractor pulling a trailerload of mujahedin in Kosovo, and was told that I was not only pro-Serb, but fantasising.
Three Albanian children died before the latest violence, I am reminded, and the Serbs started it. Well yes, maybe, but if an Albanian child drowns in northern Mitrovica does that automatically justify dashing out and burning down the nearest monastery? Or razing 350 houses, and more than 20 churches?
There seems still to be an odd political correctness to reporting the suffering of stateless Albanians, despite the fact that for the four years in which they have held the province their leaders have said nothing about the steady trickle of killings of Serbs. I receive regular emails from Albanian agencies in Pristina arguing that when a Serb village is wiped from the map, it is somehow Belgrade's fault. Or if not, then the UN's. 'Give us independence and all will be well' is the mantra.
Those Serbs who remain in Kosovo, and those not living in Mitrovica, which adjoins Serbia itself, are sitting ducks. The nameless Albanians who funded and invented the KLA from Geneva, New York and elsewhere are pursuing their deadly plan.
'There are elements out there who think that as long as there is anything Serb left, there is a pretext for Belgrade,' one of my oldest diplomatic sources in the region told me last week. 'There is a minority of wild men who want to cleanse the land of everything Serbian.'
Still, Mr Blair doesn't have to listen to my witterings. From his own ranks, Alice Mahon just about hit the nail on the head when she said, 'Kosovo is a monoethnic state run by the Mafia, with ethnic minorities living in guarded enclaves.'
But will he care? The New Labour Kosovo customer satisfaction helpline has long since been pulled. Mr Blair has bigger fish to fry these days, doing global management shoulder to shoulder with Dubya. Afghanistan, Iraq, now probably Israel and Palestine; and all the time that golden constant of the war on terror. The fact is that our Prime Minister is probably just too damned important for little old Kosovo now.
If he had any humanity, he would fly to Pristina, and take Ibrahim Rugova, the Kosovan leader, and all the other Albanian puppets with him on a tour of their latest works. They could scuff their shoes in the ashes of the Devic monastery in that birthplace of the Albanian renaissance, the Drenica valley, and they could then travel on south to Prizren and see for themselves the charred remains of the Church of the Archangels. These were precious monuments - truly cradles of a faith - and had little to do with the ugly concrete reminders of retreating orthodoxy put up by Milosevic in haste in the 1980s and 1990s. Blowing up the latter over the past few years was perhaps understandable; burning down monuments from the 14th century - a legacy that any Kosovan could have been proud of - was nihilistic in the extreme. Apparently the Kosovan parliament has set up a fund to rebuild them and all the houses; I'll believe that when I see it.
We trundle on in this demented rollercoaster towards independence. The Serbs in Mitrovica will no doubt stay, many as mad and thuggish as their Albanian counterparts across the river Ibar in which the three children perished. My Serb friends from Kosovo tell me that communities will hang on in the middle, around the Gracanica monastery and around Gniljane in the east. A few thousand more will cling to the slopes of the ski resort of Brezovica and Strpce. Apart from the Mitrovica lot, imagining any of them staying beyond the next 20 years is hard.
With whom will the new Kosovo trade? Currently 80 per cent of business is with Serbia and all other possible partners seem less than promising. The great mother country, that bastion of many an EU accession treaty, Albania itself, is hardly the emerging economic tiger of the region, and Macedonia and Montenegro, both with Slav majorities, are most unlikely to embrace the new government of Pristina. Besides, there are bloody great mountains in the way. All the decent roads lead to Serbia.
As with much of his foreign policy grandstanding, the final goal of Tony Blair's Kosovo adventure was not thought through. Thanks to Rugova's non-cooperation with Serbia throughout the 1990s, the fledgling state has an uneducated, unemployed mass of disaffected youth, easily whipped up by the sinister ringleaders to perform whatever odious task is necessary in the Kosovo year-zero project. Belgrade has long moaned about the drugs, but to little effect.
Saddest of all, perhaps, are the decent Albanians who have to sit by in silence. I would too; Kosovo is the sort of place where dissenters get sniffed out then snuffed out pretty quickly. Last month one of them sent me an email to let me know that he and his family were surviving. 'The situation seems under control,' he wrote. 'KFOR has finally appeared (after a few days), and the rest you can imagine ... Kristallnacht. Keep in touch.'
Tom Walker is the diplomatic correspondent for the Sunday Times.
-------- europe
Spanish Police Find Bomb on Train Line
Early Tests Indicate Tie to Madrid Blasts
By Pamela Rolfe
The Washington Post
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44083-2004Apr2.html
MADRID, April 2 -- Spanish police found a bomb Friday under the track of the high-speed train that links Madrid and Seville, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said.
A railway employee alerted police after discovering a suspicious-looking package about 35 miles southwest of Madrid, Acebes said at a news conference. The package contained 22 to 24 pounds of explosives, which were connected to a detonator with a 450-foot cable.
Preliminary tests indicated the explosive material could be Goma 2 Eco, Acebes said. That explosive was used in the bombings of four commuter trains in Madrid on March 11 that killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,800. Acebes said more testing would be conducted on the explosive discovered Friday.
Acebes said the armed forces, police and railway guards, backed by 45 helicopters, canine units and army all-terrain vehicles, would be deployed to guard Spain's railways during Easter Week holidays, a period of heavy travel that begins Friday night.
Given that the package bomb was dry after a night of rain, he said investigators believe the explosive was placed beneath the tracks after 8 a.m. Friday. The bombers might have been interrupted while planting the bomb, as it was not properly connected to a detonator, Acebes added.
The police have not determined who placed the bomb under the tracks of the high-speed AVE train, but the discovery comes less than a month after 10 bombs hidden in backpacks exploded in Madrid. Authorities have said the investigation of those bombings is focusing on the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which also has been blamed for attacks last year in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed 45 people, including the 12 suicide bombers. The State Department has listed the group as a terrorist organization.
Earlier this week, Spanish authorities issued an international warrant for Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, 35, a Tunisian, who was described as the "leader and coordinator" of the March 11 bombing plot. Warrants also were issued for five Moroccans. All are wanted for murder and for belonging to a terrorist group, a crime under Spanish law.
On Friday, a Moroccan man was charged with involvement in the March 11 bombings, the Reuters news agency reported. The suspect was accused of "belonging to or collaborating with a terrorist organization." The man had been a laborer at the house where the bombs were prepared and told the court he was asked not to show up for work during the week of the attacks, a court official said.
Meanwhile, Juan del Olmo, the magistrate investigating the bombings, ordered the release of four other suspects, including two Syrian men who were acquainted with Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, a court official said. A Moroccan man and a Spaniard were also freed. Fifteen suspects remain in custody.
The discovery of the package bomb came a day after the government intercepted three letter bombs that had been sent to Spanish news outlets. Acebes said police had not determined the origin of the letter bombs, but that the same type of bomb had been used by anarchist groups in the past.
-------- iraq
U.S. Muslims Seek Pentagon Probe Of Iraq Photo
April 3, 2004
(IslamOnline.net)
The picture in question
http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2004-04/03/images/pic06.jpg
WASHINGTON, April 2 - U.S. Muslims called for a Pentagon probe of a photograph circulating on the Internet that showing an American soldier apparently mocking an Iraqi child.
In the photo, an American soldier is standing next to two Iraqi children who are giving the thumbs-up sign.
One child holds a hand-lettered sign in English that reads: "Lcpl Boudreaux killed my Dad, th(en) he knocked up my sister!". ("Knocked up" is American slang for making someone pregnant out of wedlock).
"If the United States Army is seeking to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, this is the wrong way to accomplish that goal," Muslim Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Executive Director Nihad Awad said Friday, April 2.
"Defense Department officials must take action to let military personnel know that such offensive behavior harms America's image and will not be tolerated," Awad said.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in February ordered investigations into reported sexual assaults in the ranks of his troops in Iraq and Kuwait.
Rumsfeld cited concerns that some female soldiers have reported sexual misconduct but have been left in their units to serve with those accused of assaulting them.
Rape Letter
Awad said CAIR has also received an anonymous letter from a soldier who recently returned from Iraq that claims a commanding officer engaged in inappropriate conduct with prepubescent Iraqi girls.
The letter states that the officer, who was named by the writer, referred to the girls as "pre-rag heads" and coerced local Iraqi leaders to provide them in exchange for protection by American soldiers.
Awad said the officer's military unit was also named in the letter.
"The thought of all this makes me sick to my stomach. I am afraid to bring this to anyone in the Army, because I am doubtful that they would believe a soldier over the Battalion Commander," read the letter.
The CAIR executive director said that these reports point to "a disturbing pattern of behavior that needs to be addressed by our military".
Iraqi ordinary inhabitants lament that occupation forces sometimes are accused of raping girls themselves along with trigger-happy others.
Many civilians have charged that the U.S. occupation forces helped undermine morality in the country by spreading vicious acts, including sex trade and drug dealing since they rolled into Baghdad on April9 .
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Wednesday, July16 , that the failure of Iraqi and U.S. occupation authorities to provide public security in Iraq's capital lies at the root of a widespread fear of rape and abduction among women and their families.
The "Climate of Fear: Sexual Violence and Abduction of Women and Girls in Baghdad" report said that the failure of Iraqi and U.S.-led occupation authorities to provide public security in Iraq's capital lies at the root of a widespread fear of rape and abduction among women and their families.
The report also found that U.S. military police were not filling the gap when Iraqi police were unwilling or unable to conduct serious investigations of sexual violence and abduction.
On May30 , a British soldier was questioned over sickening "torture" photos of Iraqi prisoners, including an Iraqi PoW dangling from a fork-lift truck, and others depict soldiers committing sex acts near captured Iraqis.
The abuses led to growing sentiments against U.S. and British forces among ordinary Iraqis, one year after the occupation of their oil-rich country.
----
Iraqi Cleric Urges Action Against U.S.
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 3, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46467-2004Apr2.html
BAGHDAD, April 2 -- An influential Shiite Muslim cleric whose newspaper was shuttered for printing inflammatory articles called Friday for his followers to strike back at officials and appointees of the U.S.-led occupation authority.
"I and my followers of the believers have come under attack from the occupiers, imperialism and the appointees," Moqtada Sadr said in a sermon in the southern town of Kufa, outside the holy city of Najaf. "Be on the utmost readiness, and strike them where you meet them."
On Friday evening, clashes erupted in Kufa. Residents said that rocket-propelled grenades and mortars were fired but that it was unclear who was involved. At some point in the fighting, gunmen killed Kufa's police chief, Col. Saeed Tiryak, and a colleague, according to Iraqi police sources quoted by the Reuters news agency.
Spanish troops in charge of security in Najaf intervened, residents said, but the fighting continued into the evening. It was not clear whether the clash was related to Sadr's sermon.
The sermon, which capped a week of anti-American protests by Sadr's followers, suggested a new level of intensity in the running battle of wills between occupation officials and the young and charismatic cleric, who commands a large following among poor urban Shiites.
A relatively junior cleric, Sadr, 30, draws much of his popularity from the reverence many Iraqi Shiites feel toward his father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who was assassinated along with two of his sons in Najaf in 1999. The elder Sadr's followers blamed the slayings on President Saddam Hussein's security forces, and after Hussein was toppled in April, the sprawling Shiite slum in Baghdad known as Saddam City was renamed Sadr City.
Since May, Moqtada Sadr and his lieutenants have called for the United States and its allies to leave Iraq. Their initially strident, vocal demands were gradually toned down over the course of several months, and U.S. officials have been deeply divided over how to respond.
A particular concern has been Sadr's militia, called the Mahdi Army, which was formed last year and has thousands of members. The United States wants to dissolve the militias affiliated with several Shiite organizations in southern Iraq because of the threat they pose to stability in Iraq after the planned end of the civil occupation on June 30.
Tensions flared anew on Sunday, when American soldiers padlocked the doors of al-Hawza, a weekly newspaper controlled by Sadr. In a letter ordering the closing of the newspaper for 60 days, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, said it had printed lies that incited violence, although he did not say that it directly advocated violence.
Sadr's followers responded with three massive demonstrations, the first on the night the soldiers arrived at the newspaper's offices in Baghdad.
On Wednesday, thousands of Sadr's followers crossed the Jumhuriya Bridge that spans the Tigris River and past the heavily protected compound where the occupation authority is based. The march was peaceful, but the mostly young and unemployed men who make up Sadr's militia chanted their readiness to take up arms.
"Just say the word, Moqtada, and we'll resume the 1920 revolution," they chanted, invoking an uprising against British rule. Another chant vowed, "Today is peaceful, tomorrow is military."
A delegation of three clerics representing Sadr was invited into the compound for an impromptu meeting with three occupation officials, including Bremer's spokesman. The clerics said they wanted the paper reopened.
On Friday, a third protest drew more than 1,500 people outside the occupation compound. The crowd prompted U.S. officials to e-mail an internal alert to employees warning, "There is a high probability that the demonstration may turn violent." There were ultimately no reports of violence.
In his Friday sermon, which was tape-recorded, Sadr said that neither the United States nor the United Nations supports peace and Islam in Iraq. He warned that any attack on the Shiite religious leadership in Iraq would cause him to join "my brothers in Lebanon, Palestine and other occupied countries."
Reflecting the political rivalry between Shiite Muslims and Kurds -- two newly empowered groups that had been suppressed under Hussein's government -- Sadr issued a blunt warning to the Kurds.
"Stop supporting the occupation and the West," he said. "There will be a day when you'll be killed by their hands."
Sadr also threw his support behind two militant organizations: Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, and Hamas, based in the Palestinian territories. "From here, I declare my solidarity with the solidarity between Hezbollah and Hamas," Sadr said. "May they consider me their striking hand in Iraq, whenever necessity requires it."
Correspondent Karl Vick contributed to this report.
----
Gypsy village destroyed
Sat Apr 03, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P677
A month ago, Qawliya's collection of perhaps 150 homes in southern Iraq contained a small red-light district, an isolated warren known for prostitution and gunrunning and as a haven from the law. Today, it is destroyed, the few sounds of life made by barking dogs and scavengers piling bricks from razed homes.
Its residents -- hundreds of men, women and children, mostly members of Iraq's tiny Gypsy minority -- were driven out by a militia controlled by a militant Shiite Muslim cleric, residents and police say. Neighbors systematically looted it. Some accounts say the village was burned, though the militia denies it.
No one has been punished, police say. The U.S.-led occupation, which learned of the raid soon after it happened on March 12, has yet to make it public. Qawliya's residents, most of whom fled to other cities, largely remain in hiding, fearful to talk.
----
2 U.S. Troops Killed; Fallujah Plan Readied
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46447-2004Apr2.html
BAGHDAD, April 2 -- A roadside bomb killed one U.S. soldier and wounded another in a prosperous section of the Iraqi capital, and a Marine was shot dead in western Iraq, the U.S. military announced Friday.
In the city of Fallujah, clerics used their Friday sermons to denounce the mutilation of the bodies of four American civilian security guards who were killed there Wednesday. U.S. officials said Marines who recently assumed security duties in western Iraq were planning a forceful campaign to pacify Fallujah, but by nightfall no major troop movements were reported.
The bomb in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood exploded around 6 a.m. as soldiers from the Army's 1st Armored Division were on patrol. The injured soldier was in stable condition, according to Maj. Dave Gercken, a spokesman.
In western Iraq -- where five U.S. soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing Wednesday -- a member of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force was fatally shot late Thursday in western Anbar province, military officials said.
In northern Iraq, a suicide bomber killed himself and two other people at the entrance to the town hall in Riyadh, 16 miles west of Kirkuk. The attack occurred during a reconciliation conference between former members of the banned Baath Party and U.S. soldiers, according to Lt. Gen. Shukur Shaker Hakeem, a police commander in Kirkuk province.
The assailant had been denied access to the meeting because of strict security measures, Hakeem said. U.S. troops cordoned off surrounding streets after the attack and detained an Iraqi police officer with alleged ties to the bomber.
At three mosques across Fallujah, clerics focused on Wednesday's killing and mutilation of the four American security guards.
A few blocks from the site of the ambush, Sheik Fawzi Nameq told about 600 worshipers that the townspeople who burned, dismembered and abused the corpses committed a sin, but he refrained from making a judgment on the killings.
"Islam does not condone the mutilation of the bodies of the dead," Nameq said, according to the Associated Press. "Why do you want to bring destruction to our city? Why do you want to bring humiliation to the faithful? My brothers, wisdom is required here."
In another mosque, Sheik Hamid Saleh also focused on the mutilations rather than the killings, the Reuters news agency reported. "This is childish behavior committed by ignorants who don't know the meaning of life and death," Saleh said. "This is a grave mistake that destroys the reputation of Islam and Muslims."
At the Sheik Abdulaziz Samarrai Mosque, Sheik Hussein Kubeisi said the mob's rage stemmed partly from legitimate concerns about a lack of security and opportunity one year after the U.S.-led invasion.
"The situation of some people has improved, but the majority of the people -- like the former military people and the dismissed employees and so on -- are without hope after one year," Kubeisi said in a sermon that was partly broadcast on the al-Jazeera satellite television network.
Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, is coordinating military plans to reestablish control in Fallujah, a top U.S. military official said in Baghdad.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Conway also will oversee a "top to bottom" review of the conduct of Iraqi security forces and local officials during and after the killings of the civilians. The Marines replaced the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division in western Iraq on March 24.
"At first blush, one has to ask: How does this happen in a city of that size, which does have a police force and an Iraqi Civil Defense Corps presence?" said the official. "We are going to be looking at all organizations inside Fallujah that have responsibility and authority . . . and anyone who has a leadership position inside that city."
The official added, "The stakes are too high, the outcomes too important, to give anyone the luxury to sit on the fence in Fallujah."
Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top military spokesman in Iraq, called for residents of Fallujah to identify those responsible for the killings. "I think they'll make the right choice and turn these people over to us," he told reporters in Baghdad. "If not, we're prepared to go in and find them."
Also Friday, the military identified the soldiers who died Wednesday near Habbaniya, 12 miles northwest of Fallujah, in the deadliest roadside bomb attack against U.S. troops since the start of the war.
The soldiers were all part of the Army's 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan. They were identified as 1st Lt. Doyle M. Hufstedler, 25, of Abilene, Tex.; Spec. Sean R. Mitchell, 24, of Youngsville, Pa.; Spec. Michael G. Karr Jr., 23, of San Antonio, Tex.; Pfc. Cleston C. Raney, 20, of Rupert, Idaho; and Pvt. Brandon L. Davis, 20, of Cumberland, Md.
The bombing pushed the military death toll for March to 49, making it the second-deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1. The deadliest month was November, when 82 troops were killed. Since the start of the war, 601 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq, 409 in hostile action.
Special correspondent Marwan Ibrahim in Kirkuk contributed to this report.
--------
Petraeus to Get Key Job in Iraq
101st Airborne Chief to Take Charge of Developing Iraqi Military
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46357-2004Apr2.html
Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who spent most of the past year in Iraq as commander of the 101st Airborne Division, is being sent back to that country to oversee the organization and training of all Iraqi military and security forces, Pentagon insiders said yesterday.
The selection of Petraeus, which has not yet been announced, is "all part of the thinking about the transition" to Iraqi sovereignty in 90 days, said a spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who confirmed the choice but declined to be identified.
Essentially, Petraeus is being given charge of a major component of the U.S. exit strategy for Iraq -- developing Iraqi forces strong enough to maintain security and thereby permit the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
Despite the behind-the-scenes moves being made to prepare for the transition of power, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz sought yesterday to play down the military significance of the changeover.
"There's not going to be any difference in our military posture on July 1st from what it is on June 30th, except that we will be there then at the invitation of a sovereign Iraqi government, which I am quite sure will want us to stay there until killers like the ones who perpetrated these atrocities in Fallujah are brought under control," he told reporters on Capitol Hill after he briefed members of Congress on the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As chief of an expanded Office of Military Cooperation, Petraeus is expected to take over many of the internal security functions currently overseen by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority. Petraeus, whose command of the 101st during last spring's war in Iraq was recently the subject of a two-part series in The Washington Post, almost certainly will be nominated by Rumsfeld for a third star as part of the assignment, the Pentagon insiders said.
Petraeus's new position will be especially sensitive in the coming months because it will make him the point man for integrating various Kurdish and Shiite Muslim militias into the Iraqi security structure, or for eliminating them somehow. His experience over the past year in northern Iraq has allowed him to develop close relationships with several Kurdish leaders, whose pesh merga has 50,000 members, making the militia larger than many nations' armies.
Senior U.S. officials in Iraq say that breaking up the armed groups there is essential to the country's transition to democracy, and that the demobilization of the Kurdish and Shiite militias is the first step toward that goal.
Even so, having Petraeus in a top slot in Baghdad overseeing the distribution of weapons to Iraqi forces would be good news for the Kurds. It would likely be more problematic for the Shiite militias, especially the Mahdi Army, a force organized last year by Moqtada Sadr, a militant young Shiite cleric.
Petraeus is believed to favor a hard line against insurgents in the Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad. He is said to favor a strategy of flooding especially hostile enclaves, such as Fallujah, with forces and slugging it out, accompanied by a policy of engagement that turns on heavy spending to boost local employment.
Petraeus is close to Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East. Abizaid is said to have specifically asked the Army for Petraeus.
The Army said he will be succeeded as commander of the 101st Airborne, which is based in Fort Campbell, Ky., by Maj. Gen. Thomas R. Turner II, who currently commands the Army's Italy-based Southern European Task Force.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Says He Has Ordered a Halt to Gaza Development
April 3, 2004
New York Times
By JAMES BENNET
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/international/middleeast/03MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, April 2 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview published Friday that he had given orders to halt development of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip in a step toward an eventual Israeli withdrawal.
In a message that Israeli officials said was intended partly to reassure the Bush administration, Mr. Sharon also said he would not be deflected from his withdrawal plan by a corruption inquiry that could result in his indictment.
"We have to get out of Gaza, not to be responsible any more for what happens there," Mr. Sharon told the Israeli newspaper Maariv in one of several interviews granted to the Israeli media before the Passover holiday. "I advise you to take me seriously. I have the power to do this."
With tensions running high, hundreds of Israeli riot police officers clashed Friday with thousands of Palestinians at a Jerusalem holy site, in the largest eruption of violence there since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000.
At least 20 Palestinians were hurt and 14 were arrested after Israeli forces moved in to disperse Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli police officers on the site, the man-made plateau sacred to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.
Palestinian witnesses said the incident began with about a dozen youths throwing stones at police officers stationed on the plaza. The police said hundreds of Palestinians were throwing stones.
Wielding batons and firing rubber pellets and stun grenades, the police then drove thousands of Palestinians into Al Aksa Mosque. Superintendent Gil Kleiman, a police spokesman, said that some Palestinians continued throwing stones from the mosque doors.
"They started using Al Aksa Mosque as a sanctuary to continue rioting," he said. He said the police then chased the remaining Palestinians inside and secured the doors for at least an hour, until Muslim authorities and the police negotiated an agreement for all those inside to leave peacefully.
Calling the situation "very volatile," Superintendent Kleiman said the Israeli operation was successful because it ended without serious casualties. But Palestinians accused the police of using excessive force.
Israeli police officers are stationed on the plateau to prevent Palestinians from throwing stones down at Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall, which abuts the plaza, Superintendent Kleiman said.
In some of his interviews, Mr. Sharon echoed longstanding Israeli threats against Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, saying that he had "no insurance policy."
Such threats appeal to the Israeli public, but they are less well received in Washington. An Israeli official said that Mr. Sharon considered himself still bound by a commitment not to harm Mr. Arafat that he gave President Bush three years ago.
Mr. Sharon issued a similar threat against Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanese guerrilla group.
"Anyone who kills a Jew or harms an Israeli citizen, or sends people to kill Jews, is a marked man, period," Mr. Sharon was quoted as telling the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Mr. Sharon made his comments about halting development in Gaza to Israel's largest daily, Yediot Aharonot. The newspaper also reported that Mr. Sharon said Israel would continue to supply electricity and water to Gazans after a withdrawal, but would weigh cutting off such supplies if Palestinian attacks continued.
An Israeli official said the government would continue to finance settlement projects in Gaza that were "in the pipeline," as well as those that were deemed necessary for security, like fences. But he said, "Expansion of greenhouses, and that kind of stuff, that will be halted."
Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the Gush Qatif settlement bloc in Gaza, scoffed at Mr. Sharon's remarks. "We know the reality here is on the contrary," he said. "On the ground, there are a lot of projects, a lot of families coming here all the time."
He added, "We won't stop to expand our settlements, just because of the simple truth: we are Jewish people in Jewish homes on Jewish land."
In the interviews, Mr. Sharon repeatedly affirmed his innocence in the inquiry into whether he had accepted bribes from an Israeli developer, David Appel. "I am totally convinced that my hands are clean, and totally convinced of my innocence," he told Yediot.
Israel's state prosecutor recommended to the attorney general on Sunday that Mr. Sharon be indicted in the case. The attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, is likely to render a decision in about two months. An indictment would almost surely force Mr. Sharon's resignation.
Mr. Sharon complained about leaks of the prosecutor's recommendation to the press, telling Maariv, "This is persecution."
Mr. Sharon gave the interviews on Thursday, the same day he met with three envoys from the Bush administration to discuss his plan to withdraw without a peace agreement from most or all of Gaza and possibly part of the West Bank. The Israeli official said the envoys were less interested in the details of the plan than in Mr. Sharon's prospects for weathering the investigation.
Mr. Sharon, who is to meet with President Bush on April 14, is seeking his help with the withdrawal.
----
A Conservative Total for U.S. Aid to Israel: $91 Billion-and Counting
Saturday, April 03 2004
Palestine Chronicle
By Shirl McArthur
http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20040403062154205
"An Oct. 27, 2000 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, using available and verifiable numbers, gives cumulative aid to Israel from 1949 .."
With the turmoil surrounding the presidential election essentially freezing Congress into inaction, this is probably a good time to take another look at aid to Israel. The common figure given for U.S. aid to Israel is $3 billion per year-$1.2 billion in economic aid and $1.8 billion in military aid. As impressive as this figure is, however, since it represents about one-sixth of total U.S. foreign aid, the true figure is even more remarkable. It is difficult, however, to arrive at an exact number. Much of the money the U.S. gives Israel is buried in the budgets of other government agencies, primarily the Defense Department (DOD). Other subsidies come in a form that isn't easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, which allows Israel to gain (and the U.S. taxpayer to lose) the interest on the unspent money.
This year's appropriations bills for FY 2001, which began Oct. 1, 2000, include, in addition to the $2.82 billion in economic and military foreign aid to Israel, an additional $60 million in so-called refugee resettlement and $250 million in the DOD budget, plus $85 million imputed interest, for a total of at least $3.215 billion. In addition, on Nov. 14, 2000, President William Clinton sent a special request to Congress for an additional $450 million in military aid to Israel in FY 2001, plus $350 million for FY 2002.
The package also included $225 million in military aid for Egypt and $75 million in security assistance for Jordan. The $450 million for Israel is not included in these calculations, because it is unclear at this writing whether Congress will approve the package in the current political climate.
Calculating Total U.S. Aid
Unquestionably, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. aid since World War II. Estimates for total U.S. aid to Israel vary, however, because of the uncertainties and ambiguities described above. An Oct. 27, 2000 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, using available and verifiable numbers, gives cumulative aid to Israel from 1949 through FY 2000 (which ended Sept. 30, 2000) at $81.38 billion. On the other hand, last year the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs estimated total aid to Israel through FY 2000 at $91.82 billion.
The CRS number surely is too low, because, although it does include such things as the old food-for-peace program, the $1.2 billion from the Wye agreement, and the current subsidy for "refugee resettlement," it does not include money from the DOD budget, on the grounds that those funds are for joint research and development projects. Nor does the CRS figure include estimated interest on the early disbursement of aid funds. Last year's Washington Report estimate imputes an amount for "other aid" (including the DOD) that may no longer be valid, based as it is on a thorough study of three representative years. While this year's estimate is more conservative, the results are still shockingly high.
To the CRS number of $81.38 billion through FY 2000 can be added (with details to follow):
• $4.28 billion from the DOD; and • $1.72 billion in interest from early disbursement of aid, for a total of $87.38 billion through Sept. 30, 2000. To that can be added the $3.22 billion detailed above, giving a grand total of $90.6 billion total aid to Israel through FY 2001. Approval of Clinton's special request for $450 million more in military aid would push the number over $91 billion. Defense Department Funds
A search going back several years was able to identify $3.423 billion in specific DOD line items appropriated to Israel. Since that figure includes only the programs that were uncovered, it is reasonable to add 25 percent, or $856 million, to account for what was not found. The largest items in the DOD budget were $1.3 billion for the cancelled Lavi attack fighter project; $628 million for the ongoing Arrow anti-missile missile project; and $200 million for the completed Merkava tank. The fact that the U.S. military was not interested in the Lavi or the Merkava for its own use and has said the same thing about the Arrow would seem to invalidate the argument that these are "joint defense projects."
Interest
Israel began receiving early disbursement of U.S. economic aid in 1982, and of military aid in 1991. It would be inaccurate to simply apply the rate of interest to the amount of aid, because it has to be assumed that the aid monies were drawn down over the course of the year. In 1991 it was reported that Israel earned $86 million in interest on the economic aid money deposited in the U.S. Treasury. Since the period from 1982 to 1991 was a time of relatively high interest rates, the figure of $860 million (86 x 10) seems a reasonably conservative estimate for those 10 years. For the nine years since 1991, a 6 percent rate was applied to one-half of the economic aid, for a total of $324 million over the past decade.
On the military aid, the 6 percent rate was applied to one-half of the military aid for the 10 years it has been disbursed early, for a total of $540 million.
Some Comparisons
The impressive numbers for U.S. aid to Israel become even more so when they, and the attached conditions, are compared with other Middle East countries. The roughly $3.3 billion in annual aid compares with some $2 billion for Egypt, $225 million for Jordan, and $35 million for Lebanon. Aid for the Palestinian Authority (PA) is not earmarked, but has been running at about $100 million. Furthermore, aid to the PA is strictly controlled by the U.S. Agency for International Development, and goes for specific projects, mostly civil infrastructure projects such as water and sewers.
On the other hand, the U.S. gives Israel all of its economic aid directly in cash, with no accounting of how the funds are used. The military aid from the DOD budget is mostly for specific projects. Significantly however, considering current events, one of those projects was the development of the Merkava tank, which has been encircling and firing on Palestinian towns in the West Bank and Gaza.
The only condition the congressional foreign aid bill places on military aid to Israel is that about 75 percent of it has to be spent in the U.S. In contrast with other countries receiving military aid, however, who purchase through the DOD, Israel deals directly with U.S. companies, with no DOD review.
Special mention should also be made of the details of the Wye agreement. All of the $400 million going to the PA under the agreement is economic aid, whereas all of the $1.2 billion for Israel is for military projects and programs. These include $40 million for armored personnel carriers and $360 million for Apache helicopters, again significant considering current events.
Loans, The "Cranston Amendment," and Loan Guarantees
Currently, Israel owes the U.S. government almost $3 billion in economic and military loans. Direct government-to-government loans are included in the above numbers for total aid, because repayment of several loans has been "waived" by the U.S. Israeli officials are fond of saying that Israel has never defaulted on a loan from the U.S. Technically, this is true. The CRS report, however, notes that from FY 1994 through FY 1998 $29 billion in U.S. loans have been waived for Israel. Therefore, it is reasonable to consider all loans to Israel the same as grants.
There seems to be much confusion about the so-called "Cranston Amendment," named after the California senator who sponsored it in 1984. The amendment said, simply, that it is "the policy and intention" of the U.S. to give Israel economic aid "not less than" the amount Israel owes the U.S. in annual debt interest and principal payments.
Since official economic aid to Israel has always been considerably higher than the annual debt repayments, this is something of a non-issue. Furthermore, since the amendment is simply a statement of policy and intent, it may not be legally binding. In any event, although the amendment was included in every aid appropriations bill through FY 1998, it has not been repeated in the FY 1999, 2000, and 2001 appropriations bills.
The amount of U.S. government loan guarantees to Israel was not included in the above numbers, because they have not cost the U.S. any money (yet), although they are listed as "contingent liabilities" (that is, they would become liabilities to the U.S. should Israel default). Nevertheless, they unquestionably have been of tangible financial benefit to Israel. The major loan guarantees issued by Washington have been $600 million for housing between 1972 and 1990; the much publicized $10 billion for Soviet Jewish resettlement between 1992 and 1997; and some $5 billion for refinancing military loans commercially. Currently, the total U.S. contingent liability for Israeli loans is about $10 billion.
The Neeman Agreement
After Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told Congress in 1996 that he wanted to reduce the level of U.S. economic aid to Israel, Israeli Finance Minister Yaacov Neeman met with members of Congress in January 1998 to negotiate the details. After much backing and forthing, they reached agreement that Israel's then-$1.2 billion in economic aid would be decreased annually, beginning FY 1999, by $120 million, and the $1.8 billion in military aid would be increased by half that, or $60 million.
As a little-reported part of the deal, the amount of military aid that Israel was allowed to spend in Israel would be increased by $15 million per year. From FY 1988 through 1990 Israel was allowed to use $400 million of its $1.8 billion U.S. military aid in Israel. Beginning in FY 1991 that was increased to $475 million. As a result of the Neeman agreement, beginning in FY 1999 the aid appropriations bill gave the amount to be spent in Israel as a percentage of the total, rather than a stated amount. This maneuver helped hide from U.S. defense contractors the fact that the U.S. direct subsidy to their Israeli competitors was being increased by $15 million per year. For FY 2001 the stated percentage works out to $520 million. None of this is included in the above figures, because it does not represent a direct cost to the U.S. taxpayers. It is clearly an indirect cost, however, in terms of lost tax revenue and lost business for American companies.
-Shirl McArthur, a retired foreign service officer, is a consultant in the Washington, DC area.
Source: www.infoshop.org - March 30, 2004
----
Palestinian Kills Israeli in West Bank Settlement
April 3, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast.html
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat said on Saturday he was unmoved by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's threat to assassinate him.
``I don't care for it. I am caring for my people, for our children, for our women, for our students,'' Arafat told reporters at his battered Ramallah headquarters.
It was his first response to Sharon's most explicit threat yet. In comments published on Friday, Sharon called Arafat a poor insurance risk, an ominous phrase two weeks after Israel assassinated Hamas militant leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Israel was unrepentant despite U.S. criticism but Sharon, who will meet President Bush on April 14, has acknowledged he promised Washington not to harm Arafat.
Israeli Internal Security Minister Tsahi Hanegbi defended the prime minister's original remarks, saying U.S. forces have killed militants in Iraq and Afghanistan.
``It (the United States) should be the last one to preach to us about how to implement our right to self-defense,'' Hanegbi told Israel Radio.
Jordan and Egypt condemned Sharon's threat. A Jordanian government spokesman said removing Arafat would harm the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said it would lead to ``great unrest.''
``Anyone who really wants peace must refrain from such statements and such behavior and work with those who are seriously working to achieve peace,'' Maher said in Cairo.
Hamas said an attack on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank was a reprisal for Yassin's death. A gunman killed a settler and wounded his 12-year-old daughter before soldiers shot him dead.
Hours after the attack at Avnei Hefetz, Israeli soldiers arrested 23 Palestinians in the West Bank town of Nablus.
In Gaza, troops pulled out of the Rafah refugee camp after what military sources called a successful operation to find an arms-smuggling tunnel under Palestinian homes near the Egyptian border. Soldiers destroyed seven homes, witnesses said.
Israel's government said in September that Arafat -- holed up in Ramallah for more than two years -- should be ``removed.'' But the president, regarded by Palestinians as a symbol of their struggle for statehood, has scoffed at such threats, saying he would welcome martyrdom.
Sharon threatened Arafat and Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group: ``I wouldn't suggest either one of them should feel secure. I wouldn't propose that any insurance company give them coverage,'' he told a newspaper.
-------- nato
NATO Seeks to Soothe Russia
Entry of East European Nations No Threat, Officials Say
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46008-2004Apr2.html
BRUSSELS, April 2 -- NATO officials sought Friday to assure Russia that the addition this week of seven East European members, including the three Baltic states that once were Soviet republics, would not change Europe's strategic balance and should not prevent future NATO-Russia cooperation.
In a scene heavy with symbolism, NATO formally marked the expansion by raising the flags of Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia over NATO headquarters as a military band played their national anthems.
The enlargement, bringing NATO membership to 26 nations, comes as the 55-year-old military alliance is struggling to implement a shift from an organization aimed at collective defense against a common foe to a rapid-reaction force that would combat emerging threats. In its first operation outside Europe, NATO has been handed responsibility for expanding the international security force in Afghanistan -- and may one day take a role in Iraq -- but it has had trouble moving equipment and military personnel to Afghanistan in a timely manner.
NATO members adopted a new resolution on Friday pledging to work together to combat terrorism, including a plan to provide security for the Athens Olympics in August. But a NATO official said efforts to send six Dutch Apache helicopters to Kabul had been stymied until Luxembourg came up with the funds, and the cost of shipping four Turkish transport helicopters is still under negotiation with Iceland.
"NATO membership ain't what it used to be," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It is no longer a passport to a strategic vacation. It is now a passport to sharing a collective responsibility for all of the problems of the world. If nations don't wake up to that, the mismatch between expanding the political ambitions of the alliance and the actual capabilities to implement that ambition will grow."
While the United States has sought NATO assistance in Iraq, NATO officials said it was unlikely the alliance would take on much responsibility there before it finishes its mission in Afghanistan. Officials here said NATO might provide logistics and planning help to some nations operating in Iraq, or help with police training, before it assumes a formal peacekeeping role.
Afghanistan "is at the moment NATO's highest priority and at the same time the biggest challenge," said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the alliance's secretary general.
After the seven new members formally joined NATO on Monday, four Belgian F-16s were dispatched to a base in Lithuania to begin patrols of the Baltic airspace that also includes Estonia and Latvia. But reflecting Russian anger at NATO's eastward expansion, the lower house of the Russian parliament warned this week that Russia might take action to ensure its security, "including reconsidering Russia's participation in arms treaties."
Russian and NATO officials are also at odds over whether Russia will fulfill an agreement to withdraw troops from Georgia and Moldova. In what de Hoop Scheffer called "one of the hard nuts to crack," Russia has said it will not withdraw the troops until the Baltic states and Slovenia join a treaty that limits conventional armed forces in Europe. Russia has also suggested that for financial reasons it cannot withdraw the troops for as long as 15 years.
Baltic officials, in particular, made it clear they viewed membership in NATO as a significant milestone that would prevent Russia from threatening them in the future. "The reality of Latvia's history in the last century showed us that the existence of nations is threatened when tyranny prevails," Latvian Foreign Minister Rihards Piks said.
Despite the tensions, NATO officials said they were encouraged that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had accepted an invitation to meet Friday with the newly enlarged NATO at a session of the NATO-Russia Council, placing him at the same table with representatives of former Soviet republics and satellites. The two-year-old council was formed to foster cooperation between NATO and Russia.
"I am very glad Minister Lavrov is coming. We need that partnership with Russia," de Hoop Scheffer told reporters before the council meeting. He said "it is in the interest of NATO, and in the interest of Russia as well, to have this good partnership."
At a news conference after the council meeting, Lavrov said: "The very fact that we met today shows we think very highly of this mechanism . . . for coming together to face the contemporary threats we all face."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in an interview with newspapers from the seven new NATO states, said the expansion should not fundamentally change the strategic situation. "I don't sense that the Russians will find it necessary to counter this move with anything that would be either provocative or destabilizing or dangerous," he said.
In Moscow on Friday, President Vladimir Putin said Russia's relations with NATO "are developing positively," the Associated Press reported. He said Russia has "no concerns about the expansion of NATO in terms of the security of the Russian Federation," but warned that "today's threats are such that the expansion of NATO will not remove them."
NATO operates by consensus, and some have feared that adding new members might make decision-making more cumbersome. But U.S. officials said they believe many of the new members would be more willing to back the United States in NATO disputes. The alliance was deeply strained by the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, but six of the seven new entrants already have troops there.
"I think the time has come for us on both sides of the Atlantic to put these divisions aside," Romanian Foreign Minister Mircea Dan Geoana said. "The countries that have suffered under communist dictatorship have not only a strategic necessity to stabilize Iraq . . . but also a moral obligation to assist this nation that has suffered an even worse dictatorship."
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7 Nations Join NATO, Bolstering U.S. on Iraq
April 3, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/international/europe/03NATO.html
BRUSSELS, April 2 - NATO formally welcomed seven new members into the alliance on Friday, stretching its security umbrella to the borders of Russia and prompting Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to reassure Moscow that it should not feel threatened.
The NATO ministers also issued a statement calling for greater coordination against terrorism, and the new members expressed enthusiastic support for deeper NATO involvement in Iraq.
"Today is the clearest demonstration that in Europe, geography no longer equals destiny," said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, the NATO secretary general.
Mr. Powell, who met with Russia's new foreign minister, Sergei V. Lavrov, shrugged off a statement by the Russian Parliament, or Duma, that criticized the enlargement of the alliance as well as concerns voiced by the government of President Vladimir V. Putin over NATO's deployment of several F-16 fighter jets to patrol over the Baltic states.
"Dumas are like European legislatures; they are like my Congress; they pass resolutions," Mr. Powell said in a news briefing. "But I don't think it will fundamentally change the strategic situation."
With a flag-raising ceremony in the morning drizzle, foreign ministers from the enlarged, 26-member alliance stood in a plastic tent and listened to martial music and national anthems.
The accession of the new members - Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - came as a relief to the Bush administration, which had clashed bitterly with its French and German allies over the war in Iraq, prompting officials to speak dismissively of the complaints of "Old Europe." Of the seven new members, only Slovenia is not contributing to the war in Iraq, and all are active in the effort to rebuild Afghanistan.
Romania's foreign minister, Mircea Dan Geoana, whose nation has 700 troops in Iraq, suggested that the balance had shifted in favor of the American policy there. "The next few weeks and months will be decisive," he said.
But NATO, which operates by consensus, is requiring a United Nations resolution authorizing it to take on a greater role after the scheduled transfer of authority to Iraqis on June 30, leaving open the possibility for a renewed debate. Mr. Powell said Friday that he did not expect NATO to get involved in Iraq before that.
-------- spies
Powell Expresses Doubts About Basis for Iraqi Weapons Claim
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46440-2004Apr2.html
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell voiced new doubt yesterday on the administration's assertions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, saying the description in his U.N. presentation of mobile biological weapons laboratories appears to have been based on faulty sources.
Powell, describing the mobile labs as "the most dramatic" element of his Feb. 5, 2003, speech before the U.N. Security Council, said he hoped the recently appointed commission to examine prewar claims of Iraqi weapons "will look into these matters to see whether or not the intelligence agency had a basis for the confidence . . . placed in the intelligence at that time." He also said he has spoken to CIA officials about how suspect information ended up in his speech.
Powell made his remarks in response to a question as he briefed reporters on his plane about meetings yesterday at NATO headquarters in Brussels. Powell, who returned to Washington last night, in the past had stressed that all of the facts about Iraq's weapons programs are not known, but Iraq's intentions were clear, and it was necessary to wait for the final report of the inspection team.
Powell's 90-minute presentation had offered an overview of U.S. intelligence about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, as the Bush administration was struggling to win approval of a U.N. resolution authorizing military action against Iraq. In his speech, Powell provided extensive descriptions of the biological weapons labs. He also displayed an illustration of a mobile lab that he said was based on an eyewitness account. Powell stressed that the information on the weapons labs was based on multiple sources.
But since Saddam Hussein's government was deposed, weapons inspectors in Iraq appear to have found little evidence of such labs, though they did find two trucks that some experts believe were used for producing hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. As recently as January, Vice President Cheney cited the discovery of the trucks as "conclusive" evidence of the mobile labs described by Powell. But CIA Director George J. Tenet later told Congress he warned the vice president not to be so categorical about the discovery.
Moreover, in recent weeks news organizations have reported that one of the sources cited by Powell had been cited by U.S. intelligence officials as unreliable even before his presentation. The warning, however, was missed during the preparation of Powell's speech. Another source, who provided the eyewitness description of the labs, had never been interviewed by U.S. intelligence -- which did not even know his real name until after the war, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. After Powell's speech, it also was learned that this source was a relative of a senior official in the Iraqi National Congress, an émigré group that was considered by some U.S. intelligence officials to be a provider of dubious information about Iraq's weapons programs.
"Now it appears not to be the case that it was that solid," Powell said yesterday. "But at the time I was preparing that presentation it was presented to me as being solid."
Powell, who asked Tenet to sit behind him during the speech to demonstrate CIA backing for the facts cited in it, stressed yesterday that "I'm not the intelligence community." He said that "it was presented to me in the preparation of that as the best intelligence and information that we had."
"I made sure, as I said in my presentation, these were multi-sourced," Powell said. "And that was the most dramatic of them, and I made sure it was multi-sourced. Now, if the sources fell apart, then we need to find out how we've gotten ourselves in that position. I've had discussions with the CIA about it."
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Powell Blames C.I.A. for Error on Iraq Mobile Labs
April 3, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/politics/03POWE.html
WASHINGTON, April 2 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Friday that he had had assurances from the intelligence community that one of the principal charges he made in a speech to the United Nations last year - that Iraq had mobile weapons laboratories - had been multisourced and was solid at the time.
Mr. Powell urged a presidential commission examining intelligence problems in Iraq to look into what he said was a failure by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Speaking to reporters on a flight home from Europe, Mr. Powell said he had sought to highlight the laboratory charge in his presentation to the United Nations in February 2003 because it was especially "dramatic." But he said he included it only after studying four sources that were used to compile the intelligence.
"I looked at the four elements that they gave me for that one, and they stood behind them," he said of his intelligence briefers. "Now it appears not to be the case that it was that solid."
The remarks were Mr. Powell's broadest acknowledgment yet that his United Nations presentation, which the Bush administration saw as a formal and comprehensive case for the Iraq war, was based at least in part on erroneous information.
"At the time I was preparing the presentation, it was presented to me as being solid," the secretary said.
Mr. Powell has been dogged by questions about his United Nations presentation - which included satellite photos and transcripts of radio intercepts - since the end of the American-led invasion last year. The skepticism toward his case increased this year after David A. Kay, the chief American weapons inspector, said he did not believe that further searching would turn up any unconventional weapons in Iraq.
The inspectors in Iraq concluded that the mobile units had not been used for making weapons and might have had some benign purpose.
Mr. Powell urged the presidential commission to "see whether the intelligence agency had a basis for the confidence that they placed in the intelligence at the time." The commission, which is headed by Laurence H. Silberman, a federal judge, and former Senator Charles S. Robb of Virginia, will not present its findings until next spring.
"If the sources fall apart, we need to find out how we got ourselves into that position," Mr. Powell said, "and I've had discussions with the C.I.A. about that."
-------- us
U.S. to rely more on contract soldiers
By DAVE HIRSCHMAN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
04/03/04
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/0404/04contractors.html
Civilians employed by for-profit paramilitary companies will play a growing role in U.S. wars because they are more flexible, affordable and, ultimately, expendable than regular soldiers. Alan Armstrong, an Atlanta lawyer and historian who has represented U.S. mercenaries and written extensively about their operations, says the nature of today's terrorist threat is expanding the need for private soldiers.
"It's a growth industry," Armstrong says. "We can't identify the terrorists, they don't wear uniforms. So we play the same game - and the rules of engagement get very blurry."
The killing of four U.S. employees of Blackwater Security Consulting in Iraq last week and the mob desecration of their corpses brought new attention to the increasingly broad and dangerous tasks private contractors are performing there and elsewhere.
U.S. companies including Halliburton, DynCorp, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon provide armed guards at military bases from Afghanistan to Qatar, protect materials in Kuwait, and help supply U.S. forces across the Middle East. Their technicians maintain complex weapons systems including B-2 bombers, unmanned Global Hawk spy planes and Apache helicopters.
The number of U.S. employees of military contractors in Iraq has been estimated at 20,000 - a contingent roughly 20 percent the size of the U.S. military force there.
In other regions, U.S. contractors are used as aviation mechanics and police in Bosnia. They fly crop-dusters spraying herbicides on coca fields in Columbia. And they train police and military forces in many Latin American countries.
The use of private contractors grew steadily in the 1990s as the Pentagon cut back the active duty military and outsourced training, logistics, transportation and security. Those moves allowed the Pentagon to focus on "war fighting" and reduce its standing forces.
Working for private companies also can be attractive to former soldiers. According to current and former employees of contractors, the jobs pay about three times as much as U.S. soldiers earn. They also lack the military's bureaucracy, strict conduct rules and oversight. They allow for extensive overseas travel and time off between assignments.
Working as civilian contractors also gives highly trained specialists the chance to use military skills and security clearances that have few direct applications in civilian life.
Drawbacks include a lack of legal protection. Mercenaries aren't covered by the Geneva Convention or other treaties meant to guarantee humane treatment of war prisoners. And the U.S. government won't go to the same lengths to guarantee their safe return if they are captured.
Three U.S. employees of California Microwave, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, were taken prisoner by Colombian rebels Feb. 13, 2003, after their aircraft went down in a remote region of the country - and they remain captives. Two others were shot and killed at the crash site.
An Atlanta firm, Safenet-Iraq, is on a government list of private contractors providing security services in Iraq. Company officials did not return telephone calls and e-mails.
Critics claim the growing reliance on contractors poses high policy risks. Daniel Nelson, a professor specializing in military-civil relations at the University of New Haven, says the goals of the United States and its subcontractors overseas often diverge.
"There are hundreds of these companies doing business in Iraq," Nelson says, "and the longer the conflict goes on, the more money they make. They have no incentive for ending the conflict."
Nelson also decries the lack of financial and ethical accountability among private firms that he says fall outside U.S., local and military codes of justice.
"The Congress doesn't know what these companies are doing or why they're doing it," he said. "In the long run, this standing nonmilitary military has the potential to be disastrous for democracy."
----
GI deaths in Iraq for March hit 50
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 3, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uspent033738178apr03,0,2749208.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines
WASHINGTON - The Pentagon on Friday identified the five U.S. soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in Habbaniyah, Iraq, on Wednesday, pushing the official U.S. military death toll for March to 50.
Meanwhile, the military reported that a roadside bomb killed one American soldier and wounded another Friday in Baghdad and a U.S. Marine died as a result of hostile action a day earlier in Anbar province, of which Fallujah is the most populous city.
Also on Friday, officials identified the fourth victim of an attack on civilians in Fallujah this week as Wesley J. Batalona, a native of Hawaii.
March was the second-deadliest month for U.S. troops in Iraq since President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. The deadliest was November, when 82 died.
Since the war began in March of last year, 601 U.S. troops have died in Iraq and 3,022 have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon's count. The total does not include the unidentified soldier killed Friday and the unidentified Marine killed Thursday. It also excludes two Department of the Army civilians who were killed March 9 and other American civilian deaths.
The five soldiers who were killed Wednesday were identified as 1st Lt. Doyle M. Hufstedler, 25, of Abilene, Texas; Spc. Sean R. Mitchell, 24, of Youngsville, Pa.; Spc. Michael G. Karr Jr., 23, of San Antonio; Pfc. Cleston C. Raney, 20, of Rupert, Idaho; and Pvt. Brandon L. Davis, 20, of Cumberland, Md.
They were killed when an improvised explosive device hit their M-113 armored personnel carrier.
All five were members of the Army's 1st Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan.
-------- propaganda wars
Science Not Being Distorted, White House Aide Says
By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46283-2004Apr2.html
President Bush's chief science adviser fired back yesterday at a scientists' advocacy group that had accused the administration of distorting facts to support a conservative political agenda.
In a statement released with a 17-page, point-by-point rebuttal, John H. Marburger III, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the response aimed to "correct errors, distortions and misunderstandings" in the Feb. 18 report of the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
"The accusations in the document are inaccurate," Marburger wrote in the letter, which he sent with the report to several members of Congress. "In this administration, science strongly informs policy."
Marburger's rebuttal was issued at a time of increasing scrutiny of the Bush administration's relationship with science. The administration has for many months been under fire from critics alleging that officials have ignored certain scientific findings, changed Web sites, revised or eliminated wording in reports, and altered the makeup of advisory committees in ways that bowed to political priorities.
Most recently, President Bush's Council on Bioethics came under fire from several science groups after two members supportive of human embryo research were dismissed, a move the administration denied was political.
The UCS report gained extra attention because its release was accompanied by a supporting letter signed by more than 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates. Although Marburger initially dismissed it as "a collection of more or less disconnected cases" -- and suggested that some scientists had simply had "their feathers ruffled" -- he also promised the detailed response that came yesterday.
As with the UCS document, Marburger's rebuttal is a blend of footnoted scientific documentation and personal assertions. Together, the two documents offer a reminder that science is a mix of fact and interpretation -- and that at times it can be difficult to tease the two apart.
For example, Marburger's rebuttal repeatedly refers to a recent National Academies assessment of the administration's plan to deal with global warming -- a report, Marburger writes, that "heartily endorsed" the Bush plan.
Although it is true that the National Academies praised many aspects of the plan, they also expressed deep concerns about whether and how the plan would be implemented, and confessed to concern that it would not be adequately insulated from political pressure.
Other UCS accusations and their matched White House responses are equally open to interpretation:
• The UCS said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had removed from its Web site a fact sheet about condoms and replaced it with a document emphasizing condom failure and the effectiveness of abstinence. Marburger responded that the CDC "routinely takes information off its Web site and replaces it with more up to date information," and that this change, based on new data from the National Institutes of Health, was simply an example of that.
• The UCS alleged that the National Cancer Institute kept posted on its Web site information suggesting a link between abortion and breast cancer even after the science behind that link had been debunked, and only removed the page after a public outcry. Marburger replied that NCI removed the fact sheet "when it became clear that there was conflicting information in the published literature."
• The UCS said that the administration has been trying to weaken the Endangered Species Act. Marburger responded that the current situation dates to the Clinton administration.
• The UCS said that the White House Office of Management and Budget's recent effort to centralize much of the federal scientific peer review process is part of a plan to gain political control over scientific information that might be used to justify new regulations unwelcome to industry. Marburger countered that the OMB proposal aims to strengthen the influence of science, not weaken it, and has been open to comment and is being revised.
Marburger conceded that the government erred when it lifted several paragraphs from a document prepared by energy industry lawyers and used them in a regulation the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed for power plants. But even there, Marburger noted, the language went into the preamble, not the rule. "The UCS's implication that industry is writing government regulations is wrong," he wrote.
With regard to the allegation that scientific advisory committee members must pass a political litmus test, Marburger wrote: "I can say from personal experience that the accusation . . . is preposterous. After all, President Bush sought me out to be his science adviser . . . and I am a lifelong Democrat."
Kurt Gottfried, a professor emeritus of physics at Cornell University and chairman of the UCS, said he had read only part of the rebuttal but was so far unconvinced.
For example, he said, the administration has sometimes said or written scientifically defensible things about climate change. "But have they ever acted in any way but to knock down the idea that climate change is a priority?"
Many of the scientists who signed the UCS statement "have served in many administrations, so when we say this is a new situation, there's some credibility to that," Gottfried said. "We're not just getting out of grad school."
--------
Bush's Science Aide Rejects Claims of Distorted Facts
April 3, 2004
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/politics/03ADVI.html
The White House issued a detailed rebuttal yesterday to accusations by an advocacy group and 60 prominent scientists that the Bush administration had distorted or suppressed scientific information to suit its politics.
In a letter to Congress, which had requested a White House response, Dr. John H. Marburger III, science adviser to President Bush, said most of the accusations were false and in some cases "preposterous."
In February, the advocacy group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, which has long criticized administration policies on issues like biotechnology, global warming and nuclear power, released a 38-page report, finding, "There is significant evidence that the scope and scale of the manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science by the Bush administration is unprecedented."
The report was endorsed by 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and people who had served in past Republican administrations.
Yesterday, Dr. Marburger rejected almost every point. "The accusations in the document are inaccurate, and certainly do not justify the sweeping conclusions of either the document or the accompanying statement," he wrote.
In a few places, he said, the administration had erred, but he added that the mistakes had nothing to do with a lack of scientific integrity.
For instance, he agreed that the Environmental Protection Agency had included text from a document prepared by lawyers for the utilities industry in the preamble of a proposed rule restricting power-plant pollution. But that text, he said, had no bearing "on the integrity of the science used by E.P.A."
Yesterday, scientists and experts not directly involved in the debate said the matter was not settled.
"The scientific community delivered a hard message and he has responded on behalf of the administration and on behalf of his own views in a thorough way," said Dr. Donald Kennedy, the editor in chief of the journal Science and commissioner of food and drugs under President Jimmy Carter.
The original report can be read on the Web at www.ucsusa.org and the administration's response at www.ostp.gov.
One significant accusation in the group's report was that the administration, in dealing with a wide array of scientific advisory panels, had often dismissed experts, or selected others, because of their views on contentious subjects.
Dr. Marburger said that the White House was determined to maintain balance on such committees and that asking for experts' views on issues was a way to achieve diversity.
But he said, "The accusation of a litmus test that must be met before someone can serve on an advisory panel is preposterous."
He noted that he himself was "a lifelong Democrat."
The scientists' group also accused the administration of revising scientific reports to make them mesh better with White House policy. A notable example was a heavily edited section on climate change in a draft E.P.A. report on the environment last year: the White House removed almost any finding pointing to a human link to warming global temperatures. After a battle with the White House, the agency dropped the entire section, leaving a hole in what was supposed to be an overview of environmental trends.
Yesterday, Dr. Marburger said the section was dropped because more voluminous reports on climate change were in the works.
After a quick review of the White House rebuttal, which was released in the afternoon with no notice, Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell who is chairman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the group would take a fresh look at all the issues.
"It's possible there are things we got wrong," Dr. Gottfried said. "We're not infallible, like the Vatican or the White House. But I don't think there's any reason to think we got the big picture wrong. In fact, our case is stronger now than when we produced that report."
He did not back down from the group's contention that science was more abused by the current administration than by its predecessors.
"I think the average age of those who signed the letter is well over 60," Dr. Gottfried said. "We've seen many an administration come and go, and many have served in those administrations. When we say that this pattern is, in extent, unprecedented we mean that."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
9/11 Panel Granted Look at Clinton Papers
White House Moves to Cut Off Another Dispute Over Testimony, Documents
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46375-2004Apr2.html
The Bush administration agreed yesterday to let the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks review about 9,000 pages of documents from the Clinton archives, which the White House had earlier refused to release, despite the conclusion of federal researchers that they were relevant to the panel's work.
The agreement, announced by White House spokesman Scott McClellan and confirmed by commission officials, was aimed at cutting short another high-profile battle between the administration and the Sept. 11 panel in the midst of the presidential election campaign. The Bush White House has feuded with the commission repeatedly over access to documents and witnesses, and this week capitulated to demands for public testimony from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
But in comments to reporters in Huntington, W.Va., McClellan declined to say whether the White House would agree to actually hand over any of the documents at issue, raising the possibility of further disputes. Most of the records are highly classified and are directly related to terrorism and national security issues, officials said.
Some commission members said yesterday that the lack of disclosure of the Clinton documents raises the possibility that the Bush administration has withheld other relevant records, as well. They said the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, may need to seek a review of other documents that were produced by individual agencies but not turned over by the White House.
"We can't afford to have documents that are relevant to our inquiry being withheld on a technicality," said Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democratic commission member who served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration. "This is not litigation. This is finding facts to help the nation, and we should not treat this as if we're adversarial parties here."
McClellan said: "We have been fully responsive to the commission's request, and any allegation to the contrary is simply ridiculous. . . . If the commission now wants to go back and verify that some documents are duplicative or nonresponsive to their request, then we are more than happy to work with the commission so that they can do so."
The agreement on the Clinton papers comes amid a fierce political debate about the relative counterterrorism efforts of the Clinton and Bush administrations. Former counterintelligence coordinator Richard A. Clarke has testified that the Bush team was less focused on the al Qaeda threat than the Clinton administration.
The latest flap erupted this week after Clinton attorney Bruce R. Lindsey disclosed that about three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of Clinton papers intended for the Sept. 11 commission had not been turned over to the panel by the White House. Bush administration officials said the documents that were withheld were either duplicates or "nonresponsive" to the specific requests made in writing by the commission.
Lindsey said yesterday that, based on final numbers he had received from the archives, the White House turned over 1,966 pages of 10,790 total, or about 18 percent. Another 90 pages of Clinton documents are also in dispute, but officials were unable to provide further details about that batch yesterday.
Clinton's official papers are still government property and are kept by the National Archives and Records Administration in two locations: a warehouse in Little Rock and a secure facility in Washington for highly classified documents. Archives staff combed the records and identified those that they deemed relevant to the commission's formal requests and sent them to the White House for review.
Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said that the archives began shipping Clinton documents to the White House in July and that the last batch was sent in early March. Most came from the secure collection in Washington, she said.
The commission's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, said staff members have learned of two examples of documents that were not included in the Clinton records turned over to the commission but that were relevant to the commission's work. According to Lindsey and other sources, one was a document cited by Lindsey and another was identified by Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, the former Clinton national security adviser. Berger's office said he was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Lindsey said the disputed records "clearly relate to the topics that the 9/11 commission is investigating." He said the White House adopted a "legalistic approach" that allowed them to withhold, for example, memos prepared in advance of a particular meeting if the commission request was focused on the meeting itself.
"We need to figure out if there are documents that are outstanding that are relevant," Zelikow said before yesterday's agreement. "We share Mr. Lindsey's concerns."
Zelikow said he had "high confidence" in records from the Bush administration because the system for reviewing and producing them was different. But Gorelick and Richard Ben-Veniste, a former Watergate prosecutor, said the panel may have to review those records as well to make sure nothing is missing.
"If they are using a standard to withhold documents that are relevant and material to our inquiry that we don't know about or would not have suspected, then that is potentially a grave concern for all our requests," Ben-Veniste said. "We don't know what we don't know."
Spokesman Al Felzenberg said the commission expects to be able to review the disputed Clinton documents early next week.
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White House Agrees to Let Panel Review Clinton-Era Files
April 3, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/politics/03PANE.html
WASHINGTON, April 2 - The White House has agreed to allow the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks to review thousands of Clinton administration national-security documents that the White House acknowledged this week it had withheld from the panel, the commission said Friday.
But even as the White House tried to convince the panel that it was not withholding valuable information, administration officials refused to make a commitment to let the commission have copies of the Clinton-era documents. And the officials suggested that similar, highly classified Bush White House documents might also have been withheld from the panel.
The disclosure by the White House on Thursday that it had withheld thousands of classified national-security documents gathered by the National Archives from the files of the Clinton White House drew protests from members of the commission, Democrats and Republicans alike, as well as Congressional Democrats.
Researchers from the National Archives were allowed to use their discretion in culling information from Clinton White House files in response to a series of document requests from the commission, which is investigating intelligence and law-enforcement failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, made over the last year.
But the final decision on whether the documents could be handed over was left to the Bush White House, which decided to block transfer of three-quarters of the nearly 11,000 pages of material, said former Clinton aides who say they were concerned that so many documents had been withheld.
"This is very disturbing," said Richard Ben-Veniste, the former Watergate prosecutor who is a Democratic member of the commission.
The White House said on Thursday that it decided to withhold the Clinton documents because they duplicated other documents, were not relevant to the commission's requests or involved national security and were "highly sensitive."
Mr. Ben-Veniste and other commission members said they were surprised to learn that any Clinton documents had been withheld.
"Since all of the commissioners and most of the staff have security clearances at the very highest level," Mr. Ben-Veniste said, "it puzzles me as to what would be withheld on the basis of national security concerns."
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said on Friday that the Bush administration had been "fully responsive to the commission's requests and any allegation to the contrary is simply ridiculous." He said that "if the commission now wants to go back and verify that some documents are duplicative or nonresponsive to their request, then we are more than happy to work with the commission."
Mr. McClellan did not respond directly, however, when asked if the copies of the withheld documents would now be released to the commission. "I said we'll work with the commission to make sure they are able to verify that those documents are nonresponsive or that they're duplicative," he said.
On Capitol Hill, Democratic leaders said the debate over the Clinton documents was further evidence of stonewalling by the Bush administration, which had frequently struggled with the commission and had initially opposed its creation.
Most recently, President Bush clashed with the panel over its request for public testimony from Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser. On Tuesday, after months of negotiations, Mr. Bush bowed to political pressure and agreed to allow her to testify.
"Unfortunately, today, we were reminded that once again the Bush administration had to be dragged at every step of the way to fully cooperate with the 9/11 commission," Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said.
A commission spokesman, Al Felzenberg, said panel officials would be allowed to review the Clinton administration documents within a few days. "We will be able to send some of our folks in to look at everything that the Clinton library sent over, to ascertain for ourselves that we have the material we need," he said.
The public debate over the commission's access to the Clinton documents followed complaints to the commission from Bruce Lindsey, Mr. Clinton's former deputy White House counsel and his liaison to the National Archives. Mr. Lindsey said he feared that the commission was making judgments about the Clinton administration's actions in dealing with terrorist threats without full access to its papers.
Mr. Lindsey said he had reviewed many of the 10,800 documents gathered by the National Archives, where Mr. Clinton's files are stored, and found them to be valuable to the commission's work. He said they included many documents about Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and the government's counterterrorism policies.
Mr. McClellan and other White House aides said the Clinton documents had been withheld after a review process intended to remove duplicate files, material that was not directly responsive to the commission's requests and "highly sensitive" documents that contained information that could be shared with the commission in other ways.
The review, Mr. McClellan said, was "based on the same standard that we use for all documents, whether it's this administration or documents that were in the archives."
Asked if his comments suggested that Bush White House documents had been withheld on the same basis as the Clinton ones, Mr. McClellan had no comment. "This was a mutually agreed upon procedure," he said.
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said the White House review had been requested by the commission. "I don't like the term `withheld,' " Ms. Healy said in describing the documents that were not provided to the commission. "This was a process they asked us to go through - they said, `Don't inundate us with everything, give us what is necessary.' "
-------- courts
Foreign Rulings Not Relevant to High Court, Scalia Says
By Anne Gearan
Associated Press
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46356-2004Apr2.html
Justice Antonin Scalia said yesterday his colleagues on the Supreme Court will probably go on referring to foreign court decisions in their rulings on U.S. law but that does not make it right.
Scalia generally opposes a greater role and influence for international law in U.S. courts.
Although that view made him an unusual choice to speak to the American Society of International Law, Scalia said he welcomes the opportunity to engage his critics.
"It is my view that modern foreign legal material can never be relevant to any interpretation of, that is to say, to the meaning of the U.S. Constitution," Scalia told the group.
Scalia said the modern court's reliance on legal rulings overseas traces at least as far back as 1958 and has been applied inconsistently.
The only consistent way to interpret U.S. law is to stick to the original meaning of the Constitution, Scalia said. "We have no authority to look around and say, 'Wow, things have changed,' " he said.
Scalia is the most vocal critic of a trend among his colleagues on the high court to note international views in the court's rulings. Scalia told the law group much the same thing he has said in recent opinions.
For example, Scalia complained when a majority of the court found a "national consensus" against executing the mentally retarded and banned the practice. The majority had noted strong international opposition to the executions.
"The Prize for the Court's Most Feeble Effort to fabricate national consensus must go to its appeal (deservedly relegated to a footnote) to the views of assorted professional and religious organizations, members of the so-called world community, and respondents to opinion polls," Scalia wrote in a dissent in that 2002 case.
He said the practices of other countries are irrelevant because their constitutions are not at issue. International "notions of justice are (thankfully) not always those of our people," Scalia wrote then.
The Supreme Court should not "impose foreign moods, fads or fashions on Americans," Scalia wrote last year.
-------- homeland security
Roles in Disaster Cause Rift in City
April 3, 2004
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and MICHELLE O'DONNELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/nyregion/03COMM.html?pagewanted=all&position=
More than two and a half years after the World Trade Center attacks exposed weaknesses in New York City's emergency response system, the city still lacks what many experts say is the most basic and essential tool for handling disasters: a formal agreement governing which city agency would lead the response at the scene of any catastrophic accident or terrorist strike.
Indeed, documents and interviews show that the dispute over control of such scenes among the city's main emergency response agencies - the Police and Fire Departments and the Office of Emergency Management - remains profound.
An exchange of letters in January between the Police Department and the O.E.M., in fact, shows that the police insist that they should control virtually every major emergency. The police, saying they alone possess the necessary resources and expertise, cite intelligence that they say makes clear "that Al Qaeda and other related terrorist groups are planning to utilize WMD devices to attack New York City."
Therefore, if a chemical attack occurred in the city's subways tomorrow, rescuers - some of the best-trained and equipped in the nation - would flood the scene and work to save lives. They would be working, however, without an accepted command structure to coordinate the work of more than a dozen city agencies, including not only the Police and Fire Departments, but the Health Department and the Department of Environmental Protection.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is ultimately responsible for producing an accord, is optimistic about recent progress, and does not view the lack of an agreement as grave, according to a spokesman. And top officials in the Police and Fire Departments, who had said they were on the verge of a formal agreement seven months ago, publicly expressed confidence that the problems would be ironed out soon.
The stakes are high. Not only do most experts agree that such a formal command system is critical, but the federal government has said it will withhold tens of millions of dollars next year in homeland security funding if no system is in place by October. On the morning of Sept. 11, the Police and Fire Departments, which have long had a problematic rivalry, barely communicated at the World Trade Center, and each department suffered grievous losses of life.
Interviews with senior officials and the recent exchange of letters suggest that the deep divide persists. They show, for instance, that the Police Department in recent months has made an aggressive push to lay claim to the top job at virtually all scenes, including those where the Fire Department has long been recognized by many as most expert - from building collapses to hazardous materials incidents.
In addition to terrorist attacks, and plane and train crashes, the Police Department has also said it should be the lead agency at everything from water main breaks and power and phone failures to weather emergencies. Under the police proposal, the Fire Department would be the lead agency only at fires, stuck elevators, rescues in confined spaces and impalements.
The Fire Department maintains that it should serve as the lead agency at explosions, incidents involving hazardous materials, building collapses and plane crashes on land. In short, it claims the prime role in any rescue in which lives are in peril and the highly specialized skills of firefighters are needed, such as working in smoke-filled areas, mitigating chemical contamination and sifting through rubble searching for victims.
The strain and mistrust between the departments exist at a time when each has made major investments in improving its readiness for terror. The Police department has investigators gathering intelligence in several foreign countries including Israel and Indonesia. They are in line to receive state-of-the-art monitors to sniff out biological attacks, and are increasing training. They are helping formulate a range of plans to prepare the city for an assault by terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction.
The Fire Department, for its part, has recently produced a sweeping plan that lays out comprehensive measures to prepare for such an attack. It has recently trained more than 600 firefighters to work with hazardous materials, trained officers to work in management teams for extended rescue operations and will add 25 ambulances to a fleet of 10 that can be used to treat and transport people exposed to radiation or chemical or biological materials.
The Police Department said yesterday that reaching an agreement on the plan or protocol - called the Citywide Incident Management System - was delayed in large part because the federal Department of Homeland Security did not complete its own broad national protocols until March 1. The city plan must follow the national model, called the National Incident Management System.
A spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg also said the protocols were delayed by the departure in January of the head of the O.E.M., John T. Odermatt, whose agency was writing the plan. His replacement, Joseph F. Bruno, will not start work until later this month.
But the interviews and correspondence from January show that the Police Department has sought to reduce the authority of the Office of Emergency Management. In a Jan. 12 letter to the O.E.M.'s acting commissioner, a senior Police Department official wrote that the O.E.M. should neither have the authority to choose which city agency would take the lead role, nor the authority to resolve interagency disputes.
"This type of authority should be reserved for and exercised only by the mayor," wrote the official, Assistant Chief Phil T. Pulaski, who is involved in formulating the protocols with Fire Department and O.E.M. officials. "Moreover, it is the position of the NYPD that the coordinating agency should have no operational authority whatsoever."
In a response, Calvin Drayton, the first deputy commissioner at the O.E.M. who is serving as acting commissioner, cited the City Charter, which states that the O.E.M. is the lead agency in coordinating and moving resources to incidents involving public safety and health, including incidents that may involve acts of terrorism.
"The mayor, of course, has final authority to designate the lead agency," he wrote. "However, the vast majority of multiagency responses that occur daily in New York City are resolved without the mayor's personal involvement."
The mayor, in recent weeks, has appeared to side with the Police Department, seeking to redefine the O.E.M.'s role and suggesting that there was little need for an agency to coordinate the work of the Police and Fire Departments.
"The truth of the matter is they don't have big coordinating problems," he said on his weekly WABC radio show. The city, he said, needs more planning from the O.E.M., rather than having the agency respond to events.
In an e-mail message yesterday, the mayor's spokesman wrote: "Emergency workers from different agencies work alongside each other every day while protecting New Yorkers and this agreement seeks to formalize existing practices as well as establish protocols which take into account the dangerous world we now live in."
The protocols being drawn up by the O.E.M.Citywide Incident Management System, must conform to the federal model for the city to receive federal Homeland Security grants. Since 1996, the city has had a chart of command designating which agency would take the lead, although the document often failed to prevent jurisdictional clashes.
Under the protocols, the city's emergency responders would operate at a catastrophe under a unified command. The designated lead agency would oversee the work of other departments, but rescue workers from each agency would answer to their own commanders. Senior officials of each agency would confer at a command post, and major disputes would be settled by the mayor.
One of the central areas of dispute is incidents involving hazardous
materials. Both departments field teams of officers trained in such work and both have recently increased the number trained. But historically, it has been the domain of the Fire Department. It is an area of increasing importance as concern about radiation and chemical and biological weapons has grown.
The Fire Department's specialized units respond to such incidents. But with the specter of terrorism, the Police Department has argued that any incident - even those that appear to be accidental - must be treated as possible acts of terror. Fire Department officials in the past have contended that the Police Department does not have the depth of training, resources or expertise to handle these incidents.
Chief Pulaski, in his Jan. 12 letter, said that what were once unexceptional emergencies, like building collapses or trucks spilling chemicals, should be considered crimes or terrorism until they are "proven not to be."
He cited a range of intelligence on Al Qaeda's instructions to terrorists to create improvised weapons of mass destruction by crashing trucks carrying chemicals and using toxic chemicals or radioactive materials. Al Quada also suggested renting apartments in strategically located high-rise buildings and using gas to bring them down, he wrote.
Chief Pulaski also detailed the department's position on the variety of events in which it said it should serve as the lead agency. Roughly half of his four-page letter was devoted to detailing the department's training, resources, experience and law enforcement expertise to show why it should be the lead agency for almost every type of emergency, disaster or attack. The lead agency, he said, should be the one that can "manage the entire incident" rather than the "agency with the expertise to resolve one or more specialized aspects of the incident."
Citing a draft of the federal protocol, he wrote that the Police Department should take the lead at all plane and rail crashes, explosions, incidents involving hazardous materials, blackouts, building collapses, telephone failures, water main breaks and weather emergencies.
-------- immigration / refugees
U.S. Will Fingerprint 13 Million More in Fall
Visitors From Close Allies To Be Photographed, Too
By Christopher Lee and Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 3, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45069-2004Apr2.html
Millions of visitors from some of the United States' closest allies soon will have to be fingerprinted and photographed before entering the country, U.S. officials said yesterday.
Officials said the requirements of the U.S. VISIT program will be expanded this fall to cover about 13 million travelers each year from 27 countries, including Australia, Britain and Japan, whose citizens are allowed to travel within the United States for as many as 90 days without a visa. The program -- an effort to track down criminals, suspected terrorists and travelers who overstay visas -- began Jan. 5 and now applies mainly to about 19 million visitors each year from Central and South America, Africa and Asia.
The expansion, which will take effect by Sept. 30, means only diplomats and travelers from Mexico and Canada will not be fingerprinted and photographed when they enter the United States through 115 airports and 14 seaports, said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security at the Department of Homeland Security. The new requirements, which will add about 15 seconds to a journey, will also apply to the 50 busiest border crossings by Dec. 30, he said.
"For the first time, we will have a comprehensive check against our watch lists for all international visitors coming from overseas under the U.S. VISIT program," Hutchinson said. "We did this because terrorists have a way of exploiting vulnerabilities and gaps in the system. This is a gap that we wanted to close."
The announcement came as the government released a security warning that terrorists might try to bomb public transportation systems such as trains and buses in major U.S. cities this summer. A bulletin issued by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the basis of "uncorroborated reporting" warns that terrorists could try to conceal explosives in luggage and carry-on bags.
Also yesterday, the Bush administration said it has asked Congress to extend by two years, to Oct. 26, 2006, a deadline for countries in the Visa Waiver program to use only machine-readable passports that contain "biometric" information, such as fingerprints and digital photographs. The deadline also requires DHS to have readers for biometric passports at all ports of entry.
European nations have been telling Homeland Security for months that they could not meet the deadline because they do not have the technology ready or the legal framework to allow such passports. Japan said it will have biometric passports by 2005. Only Australia said it will meet the deadline, and there has been confusion among countries about the kind of technology and biometrics they should incorporate into the passports.
If Congress does not extend the passport deadline, and the countries have not developed the biometric passports, air travel would essentially be halted between the United States and some of its biggest, long-standing allies.
For those reasons, Congress is likely to approve the extension, said congressional aides familiar with the program.
U.S. VISIT was prompted by a law passed by Congress in 2000 that required the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service to develop an entry and exit system to better track visitors to the United States. The USA Patriot Act, passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, required the program to be speeded up and added the requirement to collect biometric information from travelers.
The European Union, caught unaware that the U.S. decision to require fingerprinting was final, said it "understands some of the reasoning behind this, and we will have to look at the detail for how the U.S. proposes to carry it out, " according to spokesman Anthony Gooch.
An EU official said it will firmly push the United States for a two-year extension of the biometric passport deadline and will consider reciprocation by fingerprinting U.S. citizens in Europe. In addition, the EU plans to push for the United States to extend the deadline for nine new EU member countries that currently do not have visa-waiver programs, the official said.
Hutchinson said he will try to answer any concerns about the new fingerprinting requirements when he visits Europe later this month. "We understand this is something there will be a lot of questions and comments [about], and some kickback from the international community," he said.
Officials with foreign airlines and U.S. airports said the program has not caused major delays for passengers. But they worry that imposing the fingerprinting requirement on 13 million more passengers could clog customs and immigration lines and delay flights.
"They suggest it's only adding 15 seconds a person . . . but I can't believe that's really the average," said Todd Hauptli, a lobbyist for U.S. airports. "That's optimistic."
David O'Connor, who represents foreign airlines serving the United States, said he, too, is anxious about how travelers will react to being fingerprinted. In some places, such as Brazil, some people thought the fingerprinting treated visitors as though they are criminals.
"The test will be, what is the public reaction?" said O'Connor, U.S. director of the International Air Transport Association, which represents 120 airlines serving the United States. "It may be fairly negative, especially in some countries such as France."
The security bulletin sent out late Thursday by the FBI said there were uncorroborated reports of "an alleged plot against major U.S. cities in the summer that may target commercial transportation systems," including buses and railways, according to an FBI official.
The alert said that "the plot as reported calls for improvised explosive devices possibly made from ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel," which would be concealed in luggage, backpacks or carry-on bags, the official said. The bulletin noted the recent commuter train bombings in Madrid and outlined a series of tighter security measures for transportation facilities and passengers, the official said.
The FBI official stressed, however, that the information that led to the bulletin may not be credible and has not been confirmed by other sources.
Staff writers Dan Eggen and William Branigin contributed to this report
--------
Millions More Travelers to U.S. to Face Fingerprints and Photos
April 3, 2004
By RACHEL L. SWARNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/politics/03TRAV.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 2 - The Department of Homeland Security announced on Friday that it planned to require travelers from 27 industrialized nations, including longtime allies like Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and Australia, to be photographed and electronically fingerprinted when they arrive in the United States.
Officials described the move as a critical security measure intended to protect the country from future terrorist attacks. Once the program goes into effect, by Sept. 30, at 115 airports and 14 seaports around the nation, only diplomats, Canadians and Mexicans carrying border cards, which are typically used for 72-hour visits to the United States, will be exempt from the new rules.
Under an existing program, airport inspectors began photographing and fingerprinting travelers who need visas to visit the United States in January.
The new decision would extend that requirement to tourists from 22 European countries and Brunei, Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, who can currently travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. Because they are required to carry visas, students and other visitors from those nations who stay for more than three months have already been subjected to the new security measures.
Asa Hutchinson, an undersecretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said intelligence reports indicated that terrorists might take advantage of the loophole that allows travelers from Europe and other industrialized nations to travel to the United States with little scrutiny.
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only suspect charged in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, traveled to the United States on a French passport, and at least two of the people arrested in last month's bombings in Madrid carried Spanish passports.
Mr. Hutchinson said the Bush administration had already discussed these concerns with officials in the 27 nations and said the new requirements would not come as "any particular surprise."
He said he did not believe the move would deter tourists from visiting the United States, but acknowledged that some countries might retaliate by instituting tough new requirements for Americans traveling abroad. He went on to say the Bush administration would applaud such decisions from foreign leaders.
"We welcome other countries moving to this kind of system," Mr. Hutchinson said at a news conference on Friday. "We fully expect that other countries will adopt similar procedures. We recognize that it's a two-way street."
Homeland security officials said that 2.5 million visa-carrying travelers have been screened since the new program began on Jan. 5 and emphasized that the program has run smoothly so far. But airport and travel executives warned that the decision could overwhelm inspectors and result in a slump in the number of international travelers, which plunged after the Sept. 11 attacks and has only begun to recover.
"We're very concerned about the potential for negative reaction from those markets," said Rick Webster, director of government affairs at the Travel Industry Association of America, which represents the nation's largest airlines, hotels, cruise lines and car rental companies.
In 2002, almost 13 million of the 19 million overseas visitors to the United States came from the 27 countries affected by Friday's decision. Tourists from just four of those nations, Britain, France, Germany and Japan, spent $22.2 billion in the United States that year, accounting for one-third of all spending by overseas visitors, according to Mr. Webster's group.
Several countries whose citizens are required to have visas to travel to the United States have already retaliated. This week, China announced that it was barring Americans from applying for last-minute visas at Chinese airports and was requiring some Americans to be interviewed before receiving tourist visas. In January, Brazil announced that it would fingerprint and photograph American visitors.
Friday's announcement came in the evening in most European capitals, so few officials were offering responses. A British Foreign Office spokesman said that the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair had known for some time that the Bush administration would probably begin fingerprinting and photographing all visitors to the United States.
"It is something we have been discussing, post-Madrid," the official said, referring to the March 11 terrorist attacks in Spain.
Martine de Haan, a spokeswoman for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said, "If they want to do it, it's O.K. with us."
Ms. de Haan said the Dutch government viewed the new regulations as a temporary measure because the Netherlands and other European countries were working on creating new passports with facial-recognition technology that may eliminate the need for American officials to take the fingerprints of European visitors.
She acknowledged, however, that Europeans had objected to some American security provisions in the past and said she was unsure as to whether the new policy would anger some Dutch citizens.
"Maybe," Ms. de Haan said. "We'll have to see about that."
The announcement came two weeks after the State Department and Homeland Security officials urged Congress to postpone by two years a deadline that required the 27 countries to start issuing passports that employ facial-recognition technology by Oct. 26. Nearly all of the countries are expected to miss the deadline, forcing millions of visitors with old-fashioned passports to apply for visas to travel to the United States. The officials argued that many of those travelers might choose to avoid the United States, which could threaten the American tourism industry.
Some lawmakers and administration officials said the new regulations may persuade members of Congress who remain anxious about security loopholes to approve the extension. They argue that tourists will be willing to undergo the screening once they learn that the digital fingerprinting and photographing typically takes 15 seconds and does not leave visitors with ink-stained fingers.
Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, hailed the new rules on Friday and said they could be put into effect with little inconvenience and would "help ensure that the visa waiver program is not exploited by terrorists."
Mr. Hutchinson said he believed that airports could handle the screening of an additional 13 million people without delays, but airport officials remained skeptical.
"We have some concerns about making sure that we match the resources necessary to make sure that this doesn't cause additional queuing as people are coming in through the facilities," said Todd Hauptli, vice president of the American Association of Airport Executives.
-------- police
Justice Dept. Seeks Owner of 9/11 Globe
Associated Press
Saturday, April 3, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46171-2004Apr2.html
The Justice Department is looking for the owner of a Tiffany crystal globe paperweight after investigating allegations of FBI agents taking rubble from the World Trade Center.
A New Jersey woman whose son died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has written Attorney General John D. Ashcroft asking for the globe, saying her son had an identical one on his desk on the 93rd floor of the South Tower.
But the office of Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine is offering other people a chance to lay claim to the globe. They can be made by writing or e-mailing (inspectorgeneral@usdoj.gov) the inspector general's office by the close of business on April 12.
An investigation by Fine concluded that an FBI agent improperly removed the globe from a debris collection site at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, N.Y. In all, the probe found that 13 agents improperly took items ranging from chunks of concrete to pieces of New York firetrucks, leading the FBI to adopt a policy barring agents from taking anything from crime scenes.
The globe, which wound up on a desk in the FBI's Minneapolis field office, was the item that sparked the investigation. Tiffany sells the globes for about $350, but officials estimate that as a Sept. 11 artifact it could be worth $5,000 or more.
-------- terrorism
Spain Confirms Matchup of Bomb Materials
Saturday April 3, 2004
By MAR ROMAN
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3935430,00.html
MADRID, Spain (AP) - A bomb found under a train track was made of the same type of explosives used in last month's Madrid terror bombings, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said Saturday, as train service was restored on the high-speed rail line.
Investigators have said the March 11 bombings were carried out with Spanish dynamite - Goma 2 Eco. The attack killed 191 people and injured 1,800.
On Friday morning, authorities immediately stopped six bullet trains using the Madrid-Seville line after the discovery of the 26-pound bomb under a track about 40 miles south of Madrid. The bomb failed to detonate because it wasn't properly connected, officials said.
No train was near the site when the bomb was discovered, state rail officials said. But about 1,600 passengers left their trains and were taken to their destinations by charter buses. Train service was restored Saturday.
``The explosives (found Friday) are the same as those used on March 11, but at this moment the investigation is continuing ... to try to determine who is behind it,'' Acebes told reporters, confirming an initial analysis.
Also Saturday, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that the Spanish Embassy in Egypt received a letter from an Islamic militant group threatening new attacks if Spain doesn't withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In the letter, The Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, a group that also claimed responsibility for the March 11 attacks, threatened to strike against Spanish diplomatic missions in North Africa and the Mediterranean region unless Spanish troops are withdrawn in four weeks.
A Spanish diplomat in Cairo, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed that the embassy received a threatening letter signed by Abu Hafs after the commuter train attacks last month.
The United States believes the Abu Hafs group lacks credibility and has only tenuous ties to al-Qaida. In the past, the group has claimed responsibility for events to which they were not connected - such as last summer's blackouts in North
The discovery of the bomb on Friday rattled a country still traumatized by the March 11 attacks in Madrid, which officials believe may have been carried out by an Islamic extremist group from Morocco. Authorities on Friday stepped up security on Spain's entire rail network and used soldiers to provide surveillance.
Judge Teresa Palacio, a magistrate at the National Court, said Friday there was no evidence pointing to either the armed Basque separatist group ETA or the al-Qaida terror network in the failed attack. ETA has targeted Spanish rail lines in the past.
Because the bag was dry and the ground was wet, authorities believe it was placed at the scene Friday. A 450-foot-long cable attached to a detonator looked new.
Acebes said Friday the bomber or bombers may have been scared away by security guards as they planted the device. There was no warning about the bomb, he said.
The line where the bomb was found mainly serves Spain's AVE bullet trains, which have a maximum speed of 190 mph, although some slower trains also use it.
Spain's entire rail system will get a new security system employing helicopters, four-wheel-drive cars and armored vehicles from the Spanish army.
Also Friday, a Spanish judge charged a 15th suspect in the March 11 bombings on four commuter trains, Spain's worst terror attack. The government has said its investigation is focused on the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which has links to al-Qaida.
Six of the 15 suspects detained in the March 11 bombings are charged with mass murder, while the remaining nine are accused of collaborating with or belonging to a terrorist organization.
Otman El Gnaout, a Moroccan, was jailed Friday on terrorism charges. Eleven of the 15 suspects are Moroccan.
Judge Juan del Olmo, the investigating magistrate, has issued international arrest warrants for five Moroccans and a Tunisian, identified as Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet and described as the leader of the group suspected of carrying out the attacks. America and Britain.
----
Warning of Possible Attacks on Big-City Buses and Trains
April 3, 2004
New York Times
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/03/politics/03TERR.html
WASHINGTON, April 2 - Federal officials are warning local police nationwide that terrorists might try to bomb buses or trains in major American cities this summer, but they cautioned that they had no specific or credible information about any plots.
In a bulletin sent to law enforcement officials around the country on Thursday night, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security said they had received uncorroborated intelligence information "on an alleged plot against major U.S. cities in the summer of 2004" that could single out commercial transportation systems like trains and buses by using improvised explosives.
Officials described the bulletin as precautionary. The intelligence information that generated the report "is not corroborated and it's vague, but we're taking into account the events we've seen in the last few months or so and putting it out there for local law enforcement to look at," a senior F.B.I. official said.
The F.B.I. has warned many times since the Sept. 11 attacks that Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups are likely to single out commercial transportation like planes, trains and buses, but that concern has been heightened in recent weeks by last month's rail bombings in Madrid.
Federal officials are also concerned about the possibility of terrorist strikes at the political conventions in Manhattan and Boston and are working with state and local police to coordinate security.
Thursday's bulletin did not mention specific cities as potential targets, but it urged local police to take extra steps to ensure security on city transportation.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, cited the alert at a news conference she held in Penn Station in New York to call for passage of legislation that would provide $570 million to upgrade New York's six aging rail tunnels.
"I think it's imperative that we do everything possible to keep travelers on our railways safe," she said. The money in the legislation would be used to upgrade communications systems, improve ventilation and build evacuation routes in the tunnels, which were built in 1910.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
Nuclear energy stymied by superstition
By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.
April 3, 2004,
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/2483526
It was, to put it calmly, infuriating to be told by OPEC, at a moment when gasoline prices were rising, that production of oil would be reduced by 4 percent (1 million barrels per day).
A Saudi prince sought to ease the pain, present and prospective, by coming to Washington and informing President Bush that Saudi Arabia would guarantee the world against any shortage of oil. That was a way of saying that a diminution in supplies, if critical, would be offset, noblesse oblige, by a Saudi hand opening up the faucet, as needed.
It was nice to hear this, and also humiliating. The industrial world winces on being reminded of our increased dependency on the technology, reserves and graces of Saudi Arabia.
But perspective here is useful.
We consume, in the United States, about 20 million barrels per day, importing 10 million of them. It is comforting to remind ourselves that we are the largest producer of oil (about 9 million barrels per day) in the world. But our reserves are not unlimited, while the Saudis are confident that, if necessary, they could ramp up production to 10 million barrels per day.
Business Week reports that "if demand is really strong (the Saudis) insist, the kingdom could build up to 12 million bbl. a day by 2016 and hold that level out of existing reserves until 2033."
Again in search of perspective: The pain of our gasoline prices doesn't lessen by inspecting the scene abroad, but comparing prices blunts the edge of our indignation. We have been paying, according to U.S. government figures, an average of $1.76 per gallon of gasoline.
In constant dollars, we paid $2.99 for a gallon in March 1981. And the price Americans pay for gasoline is about one-third the price Europeans pay.
We do have, of course, government reserves. These amount to 22 billion barrels - good, by simple arithmetic, for about three years. Obviously the use of these reserves is not to be contemplated as the answer to a 4 percent OPEC reduction.
We move inevitably to the question that politics simply refuses to take up, an approach not likely to be heard, in the months ahead, from the lips of George Bush or John Kerry.
It is, of course, nuclear energy.
Once again the search for perspective.
After capital investment, the cost of nuclear generation per unit of energy is 1.76 cents, to be compared with coal (1.79), oil (5.28) and natural gas (5.69). The cost of a new nuclear plant is viable when the price of natural gas consistently tops $5 per million Btu (British thermal units). Gas has topped $10 per million Btu, though it has since fallen back to about $3, but is recently rising.
From it all, we remind ourselves, or should, that the failure to proceed with nuclear energy production results from the crowning industrial superstition inherited from the 20th century.
While nobody was paying much attention, France proceeded, over 20 years, to build up nuclear plants to supply 75 percent of its electricity. The disaster at Chernobyl, following the threatened meltdown at Three Mile Island, turned attention away from nuclear energy and even away from a discussion of it.
But reality is at work here. A Stanford professor writes, "With high probability, the countries of the world will face a decision between greatly expanded nuclear energy and a greatly reduced standard of living."
We are not going to succeed with campaigns to reduce our consumption of electricity or to ration our recreational driving by inveighing against the people who buy high-consumption cars in Detroit. They are paying for their peculiar appetites - the cars are expensive, the cost of filling their tanks is high, and no one can persuasively argue that the marginal extra consumption of oil is critical.
In Europe, they all use economy cars, and the price of gasoline is, as noted, three times higher than our own.
It will be a long way off, perhaps even after the Bush family gives up the White House, before we develop other means of heating our houses and propelling our automobiles.
But our problems are man-made problems, ones we impose on ourselves, not problems imposed on us by fossil-fuel shortages.
With breeder reactors, the uranium and thorium supply will last for billions of years.
Buckley is a nationally syndicated columnist based in New York.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Whistleblower Drops Israeli Citizenship
Saturday April 3, 2004
By JASON KEYSER
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3936722,00.html
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu has formally asked to renounce his citizenship as a way to prevent the government from confining him to the country after his release from prison, Israel's Channel Two TV reported Saturday.
On April 21, Vanunu is to be freed from a prison in the southern city of Ashkelon after serving 18 years for treason and espionage. Israel's Mossad spy agency captured him in Europe in 1986 after he disclosed details and photos of Israel's top-secret nuclear plant and the country's reputed nuclear weapons arsenal to The Sunday Times of London.
Israeli officials say Vanunu might still possess information that could harm Israeli security and are taking steps to limit his freedom of movement after his release, possibly confiscating his passport. Vanunu denies having any more secrets to spill.
The TV report said that Vanunu, 50, has sent a letter from prison to the Interior Ministry formally asking to give up his citizenship. A ministry spokeswoman declined to comment.
Vanunu's brother, Meir, told The Associated Press on Saturday night that he hadn't spoken to his brother in several weeks and wasn't aware of the letter.
He said his brother wants to go abroad and live with a Minnesota couple who adopted Vanunu in 1997 thinking that doing so would entitle the man to U.S. citizenship. But only adoptees under age 16 are allowed to receive U.S. citizenship.
``I know that for years he has been trying to renounce his citizenship,'' Meir Vanunu said. ``I don't know if he has recently sent a letter to the ministry of interior.''
Vanunu, who was a technician at the nuclear plant in the desert town of Dimona, served more than a decade in solitary confinement after being convicted in an Israeli court.
Vanunu has become a hero of anti-nuclear weapons activists during his years in prison and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Based partly on photographs that Vanunu provided the British newspaper, it is widely believed Israel has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA recently estimated Israel has 200-400 nuclear weapons.
Israel has an official policy of ``nuclear ambiguity,'' saying only that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
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Act Now on Fissile Material Treaty
Daryl G. Kimball,
April 3, 2004
Arms Control Association
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_04/Focus.asp
International efforts to curb the spread and buildup of nuclear weapons arsenals greatly depend on controlling the production and stockpiles of the key ingredients for the bomb: highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium. Negotiating a global agreement to cut off the production of these fissile materials for weapons purposes has long been a goal of the United States. Now, however, the Bush administration may be reversing its support for this common sense proposal.
Since the early 1990s, states at the Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament (CD) have sought to begin formal talks on a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT). FMCT negotiations have been stymied by China since 1999 in an attempt to gain leverage on its priority issue: a treaty for the prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS). Unwilling to constrain its ambitious plans for missile defense systems that could include space-based weapons, the United States has said there is no arms race in outer space and will only allow exploratory discussions on the subject.
Successive presidents of the CD and, more recently, a group of five ambassadors have tried to bridge the political differences by proposing to start negotiations on an FMCT in an ad hoc committee, as well as to simultaneously begin substantive discussions on PAROS and general discussions on nuclear disarmament.
Last August, China indicated it could agree to this formula. The United States has since balked. In November, the U.S. representative to the UN voted for a resolution supporting an FMCT but noted that the United States had, after nine years of support, initiated a "review" of the concept. In January, Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control Steve Rademaker told Arms Control Today, "We are looking at the threshold question, does an FMCT make sense?"
From the U.S. perspective, moving ahead on FMCT negotiations is a no-brainer. A universal measure, it would reinforce the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and voluntary nuclear export controls, as well as help contain the nuclear programs of the three NPT holdout states: India, Israel, and Pakistan.
The five major nuclear-weapon states-China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States-have all indicated they are no longer producing fissile material for weapons purposes. On the other hand, India and Pakistan have active production programs for both HEU and plutonium, and it is likely that their stocks of weapon-grade material are increasing. It is not clear whether Israel is continuing to produce fissile material for weapons purposes. Under the guise of civilian nuclear power research, other states, including Iran, have built facilities capable of producing fissile material for weapons.
An FMCT and its additional verification system would augment existing efforts to detect and deter clandestine nuclear bomb production and acquisition efforts. In addition, FMCT talks could also produce confidence-building declarations from all states with nuclear weapons and/or HEU or plutonium stockpiles, as well as associated fabrication, reprocessing, and storage facilities.
There is no practical reason for the White House not to support initiation of FMCT negotiations under the compromise formulation. So far, however, it has not. In his February 11 speech outlining steps to restrict access to nuclear bomb material and related technologies, President George W. Bush failed even to mention an FMCT.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) has called an FMCT "an essential supplement" to the president's proposals. In recent weeks, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and key U.S. allies have also urged the United States to support FMCT negotiations. Though some states may not be enthusiastic, no other nation has registered its opposition.
The absence of continued strong support for an FMCT would doubtless undermine the legitimacy of other, vital U.S. nonproliferation objectives. Completion of an FMCT by 2005 and informal discussions on nuclear disarmament at the CD were two of 13 action steps to which all NPT states-parties committed themselves in May 2000. Yet, since taking office, the Bush administration has undermined almost every one of those measures and has sought to keep its nuclear weapons research, production, testing, and deployment options open.
In his speech about nuclear proliferation challenges, Bush cautioned that rising awareness and condemnation "means little unless it is translated into action." The president would do well to heed his own advice and seize the opportunity to begin negotiations on a verifiable, global ban on the production of fissile materials for weapons.
----
Protesters block construction of NATO radar station in Hungary
BUDAPEST (AFP)
Apr 03, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040403115504.52oce4sr.html
Hundreds of environmental activists on Saturday blocked efforts to build a NATO radar station on a protected nature reserve in Hungary, state-run MTI news agency reported.
More than 200 protesters, including 25 activists from environmental pressure group Greenpeace, peacefully blocked roads leading to the Mecsek reserve in Pecsvarad, 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of Budapest capital, preventing trucks from heading to the construction site.
"We are asking the defence ministry ... to suspend the works or else we will use every possible means of civil disobedience to block construction," Tamas Herbert, leader of a local civic group, told MTI.
The ministry is currently reviewing protester allegations that construction of the radar station will damage the environment.
In February Greenpeace activists chained themselves to trees in Mecsek to bring attention to concerns about the nature reserve.
Hungary joined NATO in 1999 and is one of 10 central and eastern European countries scheduled to join the European Union on May 1.
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'Hey, Nick. Your mom's here.'
Anti-war Alameda woman's trip to see son serving in Iraq has surprises for both
Joe Garofoli,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, April 3, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/04/03/MNGIQ609LN1.DTL
Susan Galleymore had traveled 7,472 miles from Alameda to search for her son in Iraq and was close to finding him. The Army Ranger had urged her not to come. He wouldn't even tell her where he was stationed. It was too dangerous, he said.
But on Feb. 1, seven days after she arrived, the 48-year-old woman was outside the U.S. military base where her son might be. Her car idled among a dozen waiting to be inspected. She stepped out, her face covered in a borrowed hijab, the traditional head scarf worn by Muslim women. She approached a gun- toting U.S. soldier as he inspected a car.
"I'm coming up behind you, I mean you no harm," she said. She pulled out her U.S. passport. "I have business here and I want to speak to your sergeant."
"Ma'am," the guard said firmly, as he whirled toward her. "Get back in your car, ma'am!"
Galleymore held her ground. Six soldiers moved toward her. "I will do that as soon as I talk to your sergeant," she said, and pulled down her hijab.
"You're American," one of the soldiers said.
The tension melted. Soon, she was inside the gate, hugging her son.
Galleymore had done what some military parents only consider during their sleepless nights: She went to Iraq to find her son and see for herself how he was doing. And the 90 minutes they spent together, she said, was well worth the danger.
"I wouldn't change a thing," Galleymore said. "But I felt sad when I went home. I was going back to my safe little home, while all of these lives are being destroyed over there."
The weeks before and after Galleymore's 10-day visit to Iraq have been a complex transformation from the personal to the political. Her quest to find out about her son has evolved into trying to understand what Iraqi mothers, as well as other U.S. military parents, are going through.
That journey has been by turns lonely, satisfying and moving. It has cost her close friendships, given her new ones and complicated her relationship with her active-duty son Nick. Some objected to her post-trip writings about Iraqis who told her of how "jittery GIs shoot Iraqi civilians in the streets," as she mentioned in one online essay.
Galleymore prefers not to use Nick's last name so that he is not harassed by his colleagues for her anti-war views. She requested the same anonymity for her daughter, who likewise doesn't share her mother's opinions on the war. But others do, including the U.S. and Iraqi parents who've shared their concerns in a series of interviews that Galleymore is gathering for a book. Many are listed on her Web site, www.motherspeak.org.
Galleymore insists her project is not about election-year politics. She would like to see the troops come home and opposes the U.S. occupation but is not actively campaigning for any political candidate. She recently appeared at a news conference sponsored by the group that coordinated civil disobedience in San Francisco last month. And she traveled to Iraq with the women-founded peace activist organization Code Pink, whose self-described mission includes "giving President Bush a pink slip."
But she said her journey is about reconciliation, not partisanship. It was about shining a light on what is happening to U.S. children in Iraq -- those serving in uniform -- and the Iraqi families whose lives have been affected by the invasion, from the five U.S. soldiers and four American contract workers who were killed Wednesday by Iraqi insurgents to the many thousands of Iraqis who have died at American hands.
"What was most striking was how isolated the soldiers are over there," she said. "They're not interacting with the Iraqi people that much."
The need for cultural understanding was awakened during Galleymore's early childhood in apartheid-era South Africa. Her white, middle-class family owned a 30-unit hotel there, and with her parents busy running the 24-hour business, she and her siblings were raised by black nannies. She saw apartheid's inhumanity daily through their eyes, and she was repulsed by seeing work crews of black men shackled at the ankles along the roadside.
She left home at 19 and met her husband, an American, while working in Israel. They married when she was 20, moved to Berkeley and had two children during their seven-year marriage. She became a U.S. citizen in 1985, admitting that her view of the United States reflects the optimism of a new immigrant: "We need to live up to our ideals." Especially in Iraq.
Galleymore was more political as a young mother, taking her young children on protest marches during the Iran-Contra controversy of the mid- 1980s. Her children hung out with the progressive thinkers she met while working for a food policy organization. But Galleymore's activism faded as her children entered adolescence, her time eaten up by the demands of single motherhood.
And somewhere along the line, her children didn't absorb her political perspective.
After Nick finished his third year at San Francisco State University and had been accepted for transfer to UC Berkeley, he announced that he had joined the Army.
"It was a total surprise," Galleymore said. "It wasn't like he needed money for college. He was already three years in, so that doesn't hold water."
She dismissed Nick's volunteering as a phase; it wasn't. Her son not only wanted to be in the Army, he wanted to be in an elite unit. He passed up completing his college degree and left for boot camp on Independence Day weekend, 1999.
Galleymore still doesn't know exactly why. They could never fully discuss it.
In January 2003, Nick was shipped to Afghanistan. He had become an Army Ranger, a jump master for paratroopers and a sniper. He was in the thick of the action. Last Dec. 19, his 26th birthday, Nick called to say he was headed to Iraq. At that point, with U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians being killed almost daily, Galleymore began to panic. She couldn't sleep at night, "because I was thinking, 'My kid is going to get killed for something I don't believe in, and I don't think he knows what he's getting into.' "
She began talking with other military mothers, hoping to get their perspectives on how to cope. But many knew little about what was going on in Iraq. Frustrating her effort to learn more about Nick was that she felt the news reporting from the front lines was giving an overly rosy picture of the U. S. occupation.
At wit's end, she decided that the only way to calm her fears was to go to Iraq. She got in touch with Code Pink, which has led about a dozen parents to Iraq over the past few months. After holding a fund-raiser, which netted half of the trip's $2,200 cost, she left for Iraq on Jan. 24.
Her goal was to interview Iraqi mothers and to find her son -- even though three days before she left, he had begged her not to come. It was too dangerous; the landscape was littered with bandits and homemade explosive devices, he said.
Nick was prophetic. During their 12-hour ride into Baghdad from Jordan, one of the three cars in the convoy was pulled over and its occupants robbed. No one was hurt.
The group's first few days were filled with visits to hospitals, orphanages and politicians and a ground-level view of the occupation. Galleymore was devastated by the story she was told by an Iraqi mother: The woman, pregnant at the time, had been riding in a car with her family when, she says, U.S. soldiers shot and killed three of her four children and her husband.
A few days before they were about to leave, she received an e-mail from her son. Nick had relented. He said if she wanted to see him, his mother should contact his base's public information officer. Galleymore did. A journalist friend helped her find the location.
After the scene outside the gate, Galleymore met some of her son's friends inside. They couldn't believe she was who she was.
"You mean, you're his mom?" one asked incredulously as he was about to call for Nick.
"Yeah," Galleymore said. "But don't say that. Say, 'Susan's here.' "
Of course they didn't follow instructions. The call went out on the two- way radio: "Hey, Nick. Your mom's here."
Twenty minutes later, Nick arrived. He was dressed in full gear and smiling broadly. He hadn't seen his mother in five months. They embraced, and Galleymore gave him the See's nuts-and-chews candy, Power Bars and fruit drinks from REI that she had carried halfway around the world for him.
They talked for 90 minutes alone. Nick showed his mom around the base a bit, even accompanied her to see the view from a guard tower. Galleymore said there was no hostility; they didn't talk politics. They were just in the moment, mother and son. Every few minutes, Nick would shake his head and say, "I can't believe you're here."
"The only thing I told him was, 'Don't do anything in Iraq that you'll be ashamed of in the future,' " Galleymore said.
They embraced and exchanged "I love you's," and she returned home. She had seen where he was and even met some of his fellow soldiers.
But reactions to her trip have been mixed -- especially after she began writing a Weblog and essays that have spoken frankly about shootings of Iraqi civilians, overcrowded hospitals and young GIs who may be suffering emotionally and physically. Some longtime friends, even a few who contributed to her Iraq trip fund-raiser, have stopped talking to her. She doesn't know why.
Many military parents have ripped her, saying she embarrassed her son and put herself in harm's way. Other mothers have contacted her wanting to know when the next trip is.
"She did what any mother in her position would do: She said, 'The hell with it, I'm going,' " said Marianne Brown in an interview. The Michigan mother, whose 21-year-old son is serving in a military police unit in Iraq, contacted Galleymore after she returned from Iraq, wanting to go find her son.
U.S. military officials strongly urge parents not to go to Iraq. Instead, they should contact the stateside representative of their child's unit, said 82nd Airborne spokeswoman Master Sgt. Pam Smith. There are innumerable ways for an untrained civilian to be harmed in such chaos.
"I'm a mother, too, so I know how she feels," Smith said. "But it is extremely dangerous over there."
Danger seems irrelevant to parents concerned about their children, and about other children they see in Iraq, said Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans, who was on the trip. "You're not thinking about the danger. You're thinking about seeing your child."
Galleymore was one of the lucky ones, Evans said. She's been to Iraq with parents who have left without seeing their children.
The best news for Galleymore is that Nick is on his way home, due to arrive in the next few weeks. But she said that he was unhappy about some of his mother's writings about her trip.
In one essay, Galleymore asked for others to appreciate that the soldiers are in a dilemma, "caught in a military culture that encourages the numbing of most emotions but anger. Whip up enough anger in young men emotionally isolated, denied friends, family, lovers, even civilians clothes, physically exhaust them, nourish them inadequately, expose them to extreme temperatures and violent behavior, confine them to base and portray everyone else as murderous and you create impossible stress."
Nick told his mother that wasn't his experience. She doesn't know how they'll get along when he returns.
"I don't know if he hasn't been responding to my e-mails because he can't, or because of something else," Galleymore said.
Even after meeting halfway around the world, Galleymore's relationship with her son is in some ways as complicated as it was before he left. But she knows they'll eventually understand each other; they're mother and child. She hopes that Americans eventually achieve the same with Iraqis.
E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com.
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No Charges Against Anti War Protestors
Sue McGuire
KCBS-740 AM
04-03-2004
http://cbs5.com/news/local/2004/04/03/No_Charges_Against_Anti_War_Protestors.html
(KCBS)--San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris is dropping 124 cases against anti war protestors including two in which police suspected felonies had been committed.
Harris explained that in her opinion the standard of proof needed to successfully prosecute the cases had not been met.
Harris did not criticize police methods of collecting evidence in any way.
The arrests were made during a roving protest in down San Francisco March 19th and a much larger march the following day to protest the one year anniversary of the Iraq war.
Harris said she reviewed each police file separately herself before reaching her conclusion.
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Japanese man stages naked sit-in
April 3, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040403-094742-3601r.htm
YONABARU, Japan, -- A man in Japan staged a naked sit-in at the Yonabaru mayor's office because he was upset he hadn't gotten his welfare payments.
Masaru Miyagi barged into the mayor's office Friday complaining that he would not move until he would be told when his welfare payments would begin, the Mainichi Daily News reported Saturday.
When he refused to leave the office the police were called.
While negotiating with police, Miyagi suddenly ripped off his trousers and underpants.
He faces charges of trespassing and, possibly, indecent exposure.
Miyagi had applied for welfare in March and has visited government offices twice to ask for early payment, but his case is still being processed.
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