Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Lawsuits tell story of secret nuclear wasteland
Security of nuclear sites questioned
Uranium drinkers say mine cut them loose
U.S. Soldiers Contaminated With Depleted Uranium Speak Out
Army to test N.Y. Guard unit
Soldiers home from Iraq being tested for uranium contamination
GIs Tested for Depleted Uranium Exposure
Pakistan Offers Nuclear Disarmament Talks with India
Closing Pandora's Box:
US slaps sanctions on alleged Iran nuke suppliers
U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Criticizes Iran
UN nuclear chief voices impatience with Iran
Prober: I knew in days U.S. 'wrong' on WMD
Japan denies early deployment of US anti-missile system
N.Korea Can Make 'Unlimited' Nuclear Arms
Brazil refuse to let UN inspectors to nuclear facility: report
Brazil Says Its Nuke Program Is Peaceful
U.S. seeks Asian help on a missile shield
US mulls placing missile defense system in Japan: report
Formal Hearing on Dry Cask Nuclear Waste Storage Rejected
Plan Would Transport Nuke Waste by Rail
New to the Job, Rice Focused on More Traditional Fears
MILITARY
Indian, French navies to hold biggest ever exercise off Goa
RWANDA Genocide death toll is put at 937,000
The planes of tomorrow
Why Uzbek women opt for bombs
Poll result puts peace plans in doubt
Boeing back in Pentagon's good graces
US to lift bar on Boeing bids for government rocket work: report
Contracts Awarded
Federal Contracts Defense Department Orders Viisage Printers
Paper: Air Force to Allow Boeing to Bid
Air Force Could Lift Boeing Sanctions
Taiwan Opposition Wants Election Voided
EU defense ministers to mull joint military body, Bosnia force
Spain Says Blast Killed Head of Terror Cell
Huge Basque Arsenal Found in Southwestern France
Angry over attacks, Spaniards want troops out of Iraq
Shiite cleric spurs uprising in Iraq
Apaches swoop on Shia militiamen
61 die as Iraq arrest sparks wave of riots
Eight U.S. Troops Killed in Shiite Uprising
Protests Unleashed by Cleric Mark a New Front in War
A Young Radical's Anti-U.S. Wrath Is Unleashed
U.S. Announces Warrant for 'Outlaw' Iraqi Cleric's Arrest
Contractor tells why he left Iraq
Chiefs named for defense, intelligence
Sharon: Withdrawal a Blow to Palestinians
Sharon Hints He Has Dropped Vow Not to Harm Arafat
Singapore ends military presence in Iraq
Reference of alliance
The Masters of Jihad
Commander Punished as Army Probes Detainee Treatment
Security Posts Created in Iraq
Researcher Is Found Guilty of Espionage
The hidden cost of war
So Much for Spinning the Positive
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Afghan Farmers Protest Opium Crop Plan
Patriot Act divides Bush loyalists
Rice to Face Questions on Clarke
Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable
Inmate backs Nichols' defense
Spain Labels as Credible a Letter Threatening New Attacks
ENERGY
US oil companies say SEC asking reserves questions
OTHER
Farmers' Right to Use Their Own Seeds Protected by Treaty
A 'Flip-Flop' on Patients' Right to Sue?
ACTIVISTS
The barnyard at Barnum
Veterans Call for Nuclear Disarmament
Hungary suspends NATO radar construction after green protests
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Lawsuits tell story of secret nuclear wasteland
By MARK MCDONALD
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Mon, Apr. 05, 2004
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/8361021.htm
KARABOLKA, Russia - One of the world's ghastliest nuclear accidents happened just upwind of here, in a secret atomic city that didn't have a name and never appeared on any maps. An explosion of radioactive sludge sent up a toxic plume that contaminated a quarter-million people.
This was the Soviet Union, 1957, but only now are the voices of the victims being heard.
Communist authorities responded to the accident with a global cover-up and a scorched-earth cleanup. Even as they evacuated entire Russian communities, they were sending 1,500 ethnic Tatar farmers into the hot zones to do the dirty work. Children were pressed into service, too, from fourth-graders on up.
Many of the "young liquidators," as the children came to be known, died from radiation-related diseases soon after the explosion, which few people know about even today. They came down with afflictions they couldn't have imagined, illnesses they couldn't even pronounce.
Finally, however, the surviving liquidators are starting to win victories in the Russian courts. It's taken nearly half a century for Moscow to admit any sort of responsibility for the disaster, but three Karabolka residents recently won absurdly small but perhaps precedent-setting judgments that give them reparations of $8 a month, plus an annual stay at a Russian spa.
The children and grandchildren of the liquidators inherited a sad array of congenital health problems. They, too, have begun filing damage claims.
The Karabolka farmers never were told about the dangers of the explosion at the secret nuclear lab called Mayak ("The Lighthouse"). Authorities told the villagers the cleanup was necessary because crude oil somehow had seeped into their fields and groundwater. Even if the villagers had been told the truth, terms such as atom, radiation and nuclear simply weren't part of the vocabulary of a remote village in the southern Urals circa 1957.
The Karabolka children helped with the nuclear triage alongside their parents. Week after week they dug potatoes and carrots out of the ground with their bare hands, then buried the contaminated crops in deep pits. They cleaned bricks that were covered in radioactive soot. They buried dead cattle, filled in poisoned wells and dismantled clapboard houses.
"Our hands were bleeding. Everybody was vomiting," said Glasha Ismagilova, a 57-year-old paramedic who was an 11-year-old tomboy at the time. "My vomit was very green. The doctor looked at it and said I had eaten too many peas, and he sent me back to work. But of course I hadn't eaten any peas at all."
The explosion wouldn't be the only nuclear disaster to befall the area. People living along the nearby Techa River now are suing for the damage caused by decades of Mayak engineers dumping radioactive waste into the water. That practice, which began in the late 1940s, ended only recently.
Environmental experts have called the Techa district the most polluted place on earth. Radiation levels once reached the rough equivalent of four Chernobyl accidents.
"But this was no accident," said Alexander Aklayev, the director of a small, underfunded research hospital in Chelyabinsk that studies and treats radiation diseases. "The Techa discharges were authorized."
Aklayev's database, developed with help from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, is tracking 69,000 documented victims from the Mayak disasters.
They've even issued ID cards to the sufferers.
Victim No. 001213 is Safia Skaripova.
"I want the state to pay for killing my first son and damaging my second son," said Skaripova, 51, a single mother who's launched the first lawsuit based on what's known in Russia as moral damages.
Skaripova wasn't exposed during the Mayak blast, but she grew up along the Techa, swimming in its pools, drinking its water, eating its fish. She believes her contamination from the radioactive river caused Valery to die of brain cancer at age 5 and Misha, 8, to have Down syndrome.
"Children exposed to Mayak are no different than the children from Chernobyl," she said, stroking Misha's broad, sweet face. "They have the same diseases. They have the same fate."
"A big group of children," Aklayev agreed, "were irradiated inside the womb."
Glasha Ismagilova spoke calmly about her own various illnesses, about the new 3-inch tumor on her liver and the painful crumbling of her knees and hips.
She's a strong, plainspoken woman, but the tears started to come when she remembered borrowing her mother's orange sundress on that morning 47 years ago when the Mayak cleanup began. She wanted to look nice that day because she thought she and her fourth-grade class were headed off on a special field trip.
They were headed, of course, to their doom.
"We were treated like laboratory rabbits," she said. "This was a horrible crime by the state. What kind of monsters would assign children to do such work?"
The secret Mayak lab, hidden in the closed city now known as Ozersk, was the epicenter of the Soviet nuclear-weapons program. A heavily guarded city of some 80,000, Ozersk is still operating full-bore, and it's still off-limits to nonresidents.
Sept. 29 arrived hot and hazy that year, another muggy Sunday in the southern Urals, another typical workday down on the collective farm. But then in midafternoon, 70 tons of superheated atomic waste blew the lid off its concrete storage vault.
The ground in neighboring Karabolka, 12 miles away, shook so badly that one resident said "the teacups were flying." World War II combat veterans in the village thought Cold War hostilities had broken out. Women hurried their children indoors while the men climbed onto barn roofs and haystacks to look for approaching American tanks.
All they could see was a strange cloud - black and low, and coming their way.
The cloud was gone the next morning - it rained during the night - but a few days later a squad of Red Army soldiers arrived to seal off the Tatar half of Karabolka. Nobody in, nobody out, except to help in the decontamination effort on the far side of the village, where there was a native Russian community.
The initial cleanup lasted throughout the fall of `57, then began again in the spring of 1958 when the winter snows receded.
Once again, the kids were taken out of school and put to work. Almost all of them were Muslims, the children of ethnic Tatar and Bashkir families that had lived in the area for centuries. A couple hundred Russian families lived across town; these "Volga Russians" were relative newcomers who'd come to work in the foundries and chemical plants in the nearby industrial center of Chelyabinsk.
"But when we got there, not a single soul was left in Russian Karabolka," Ismagilova said. "They had all been evacuated and resettled."
Aklayev, the clinic director, said 10,000 people from seven villages were resettled after the blast. "No one knows why some were resettled (from Karabolka) and others were not," he said. "Even for the evacuees, though, it was too late."
Ismagilova doesn't buy the government's explanation that the Tatar side of her village was safe enough while the Russian side had been contaminated. She said it was genocide.
"Our farms and houses were right next to the Russians'," she said. "They lived on one side ... we lived on the other side. But our (Tatar) families were not well-educated, so it was easier for the authorities to keep us in the dark. They used us to clean up their disaster."
Sipping tea in her mother's home in the village, Ismagilova scraped the frost from a windowpane and looked out at Karabolka's snow-covered fields. Even now, more than four decades on, the irradiated fields and pastures remain dangerous and unplantable: no hay, no potatoes, no carrots.
Only 520 destitute villagers remain from an original population of 2,900.
"Almost all the people here were liquidators, but they're too old and sick to press their claims," she said, the tears coming again. "They did the state's dirty work 45 years ago and now they have no money. Not even enough for bread. They have no future."
----
Security of nuclear sites questioned
Hanford among places where training is a concern
LARRY BIVINS
GANNETT NEWS SERVICE,
Monday, April 5, 2004
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040405/topstories/19771.shtml
Photo of states with nuclear weapons facilities: http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040405/topstories/19771-10423.jpg
WASHINGTON -- Despite efforts to beef up homeland security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the nation's nuclear weapons sites are vulnerable, recent reports suggest.
The reports by federal investigators and a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group raise serious questions about the training of guard forces at Oak Ridge, Hanford, Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and other nuclear sites.
Tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium used to make nuclear bombs, thousands of nuclear warheads and sensitive information are stored at the nation's 13 nuclear weapons complexes operated by the Department of Energy.
Anti-nuclear activists, government monitors and lawmakers worry that terrorists might gain access to nuclear materials to create a "dirty bomb" or cause a detonation on site, imperiling thousands of community residents and workers at the facilities.
"You can create an improvised nuclear device with this stuff rather quickly," said Peter Stockton, senior investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington, D.C., watchdog organization.
Government officials expressed confidence in the security at the nuclear weapons sites.
"We stand by the security at our sites," said Bryan Wilkes, a spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, created in 2000 specifically to oversee security at the weapons complexes. "We feel strongly that we have some excellent, tough measures in place."
Still, concern about security at the nuclear facilities has been underscored by recent events. On March 15, 48 crates of nuclear weapons materials from Libya arrived at the Y-12 National Security Complex at Oak Ridge, Tenn.
Last month, the Energy Department's inspector general reported that 10 of the 12 nuclear weapons sites surveyed had eliminated or modified key elements of a 320-hour basic training program required for security personnel.
On-site testing was not performed at the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico and the Tonopah Test Range near Las Vegas.
The inspector general also noted that one facility, which it did not name, had reduced its core training by 40 percent. The report also said that in most cases, training in defensive tactics was unrealistic.
Much of the recent attention to security operations has centered on the Y-12 complex at Oak Ridge, an 811-acre site located about 15 miles from Knoxville, Tennessee's third-largest city. Tons of weapons-grade uranium are deposited at the 60-year-old complex, the nation's primary site for storing and processing the material.
Stockton's group reported in January that the guard forces at the Oak Ridge facility fared poorly on an impromptu Energy Department evaluation in December. The group said sources described the results as "pretty ugly."
And the Energy Department's inspector general reported in January that security officers cheated on a performance test in June, having gained access to elements of the examination in advance, skewing the assessment of the personnel's readiness.
Wilkes said the nuclear security agency is addressing some of the training, preparedness and staffing issues that came out in the inspector general's January report. He also noted that it was his agency that called for the investigation into whether security personnel at Oak Ridge had undermined performance tests.
"We take very seriously any allegations of impropriety or any potential problems," Wilkes said. "And we pounce on any indication of discrepancy."
-------- australia
Uranium drinkers say mine cut them loose
The Age
April 5 2004
By Lindsay Murdoch, in Darwin
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2004/04/04/1081017037074.html
Australia's biggest uranium miner has gone into damage control 12 days after workers drank large quantities of water containing 400 times the legal limit of uranium following a leak at the Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park.
Three of the men say they have been suffering from vomiting, diarrhoea and lethargy and were forced to pay their own way to leave the Northern Territory to seek medical treatment in their home state. The Ranger mine, a subsidiary of the British giant Rio Tinto, has now flown a doctor from England to examine 12 workers who drank or showered in water used for processing uranium ore.
But one of the workers, Paul McDonald, told the Herald the doctor had told him he "basically cannot let me know I will be OK. He really doesn't know himself". The workers say that the mine owner, Energy Resources of Australia Ltd, initially refused to pay for their air fares home and had said any medical expenses would have to be channelled through their direct employer, Power Station and Marine Services.
However, ERA has now compensated one worker for his fare and a spokeswoman said yesterday that information, support and counselling, including specialist medical information, is being provided for affected workers.
Ben Newton, 28, who received $400 for his fare, said: "You can call it a bribe or whatever. But I can't just sit at home stewing. I have to get on with my life. And I don't want to be put on a work black list."
The ERA spokeswoman confirmed that the leak happened when a pipe containing contaminated water was wrongly fitted to a drinking water pipe.
The workers drank the tainted water nine hours after the leak of 150,000 litres of contaminated water at the mine. The mine managers had failed to tell the workers about the leak before they each drank three to four litres.
Speaking publicly for the first time about the leak that closed operations at the long-troubled mine, three of the workers said Ranger's only action in the days immediately afterwards was to send them off the site.
They say ERA failed in the days after the leak to provide them with basic information about the level of contamination or advice on what they should do.
"What has happened to us is disgusting," Mr McDonald said. "We are sick but trying to carry on with our lives. But the implications for our future health scares the living daylights out of me."
[...]
-------- depleted uranium
U.S. Soldiers Contaminated With Depleted Uranium Speak Out
Monday, April 5th, 2004
Democracy Now! Broadcast Exclusive
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/05/1356248
A special investigation by Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News has found four of nine soldiers of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard returning from Iraq tested positive for depleted uranium contamination. They are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
After repeatedly being denied testing for depleted uranium from Army doctors, the soldiers contacted The News who paid to have them tested as part of their investigation.
Testing for uranium isotopes in 24 hours' worth of urine samples can cost as much as $1,000 each.
In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, three of the contaminated soldiers speak out.
Army officials at Fort Dix and Walter Reed Army Medical Center are now rushing to test all returning members of the 442nd. More than a dozen members are back in the U.S. but the rest of the company, mostly comprised of New York City cops, firefighters and correction officers, is not due to return from Iraq until later this month.
After learning of The News' investigation, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) blasted Pentagon officials yesterday for not properly screening soldiers returning from Iraq.
Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she will write to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding answers and soon will introduce legislation to require health screenings for all returning troops.
Depleted Uranium is considered to be the most effective anti-tank weapon ever devised. It is made from nuclear waste left over from the making nuclear weapons and fuel. The public first became aware the US military was using DU weapons during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. But it had been used as far back as the 1973 Yom Kippur war in Israel.
Amid growing controversy in Europe and Japan, the European Parliament called last year for a moratorium on its use.
- Sgt. Herbert Reed, assistant deputy warden at Rikers Island with 442nd military police company of New York Army National Guard. He did not test positive for depleted uranium, but has uranium 236, a uranium isotope not found in nature.
- Sgt. Agustin Matos, was deployed in Iraq with the 442nd Military Police. He is among the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
- Sgt. Hector Vega, among the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
- Dr. Asaf Durakovic, colonel in army reserves who served in first Gulf War. He is 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. He tested the nine men at the request of the Daily News.
- Leonard Dietz, retired physicist from Knolls Atomic Laboratory in upstate New York. Pioneered the technology to isolate uranium isotopes.
Read Juan Gonzalez' Exclusive Reports in the New York Daily News:
- Poisoned? Shocking report on troops http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/180332p-156685c.html
- Inside filthy camp where trouble began http://www.nydailynews.com/news/story/180342p-156689c.html
- Soldiers demand to know health risks http://www.nydailynews.com/news/local/story/180337p-156686c.html
- Army to test N.Y. Guard unit http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180723p-156921c.html
Related Democracy Now! Coverage:
- Is Depleted Uranium Creating a New Nuclear Danger in Iraq? http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/06/13/1549215&tid=12
- Radiation is 1,000 Times the Normal Levels Where US Troops Used Depleted Uranium Shells in Baghdad http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/16/160254&tid=6
- U.S. Reportedly Fires DU Shells in Basra: Despite Evidence of Health and Environmental Effects, Pentagon Denies DU Is Dangerous http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0323211&tid=8
- Part 2 of Our Discussion On Depleted Uranium, with the Scientific Secretary with the European Committee On Radiation Risk, and a U.N. Human Rights Lawyer http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0317258&tid=12
- Dr. Asaf Durakovic Gives a Rare Interview About Depleted Uranium in Iraq: He Was the First Military Doctor to Test Gulf War Veterans for Radiation Exposure and Was Terminated for His Work http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/07/0317248&tid=12
----
Army to test N.Y. Guard unit
Hillary demands that all veterans of Iraq get checked
NY Daily News,
April 5, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/180723p-156921c.html
Army officials at Fort Dix and Walter Reed Army Medical Center are rushing to test all returning members of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard for depleted uranium contamination.
Army brass acted after learning that four of nine soldiers from the company tested by the Daily News showed signs of radiation exposure.
The soldiers, who returned from Iraq late last year, say they and other members of their company have been suffering from unexplained illnesses since last summer, when they were stationed in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested the nine men at The News' request, concluded four of them "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops.
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), after learning of The News' investigation, blasted Pentagon officials yesterday for not properly screening soldiers returning from Iraq.
"We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses," Clinton said. "We have to have a before-and-after testing program for our soldiers."
Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she will write to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding answers and soon will introduce legislation to require health screenings for all returning troops.
During meetings with Pentagon officials last year, Clinton said "one of the issues we raised was exposure to the depleted uranium that was in the weapons, and how they were going to handle it."
She was assured then that troops would be properly screened.
But the soldiers from the 442nd contacted The News after becoming frustrated with how the Army was handling their illnesses.
Six of them say they repeatedly sought testing for depleted uranium from Army doctors but were denied.
Three who were tested in early November for DU said they had been waiting months for the results. Two of those finally got their results last week - both negative.
Testing for uranium isotopes in 24 hours' worth of urine samples can cost as much as $1,000 each.
But late last week, after learning of The News' results, the Army reversed course and ordered immediate testing for more than a dozen members of the 442nd who are back in the U.S.
The rest of the company, comprising mostly New York City cops, firefighters and correction officers, is not due to return from Iraq until later this month.
"They ordered all of us who are here at Fort Dix to provide 24-hour urine samples by 1 p.m. today," one soldier from the company said Friday.
Late Friday, Pentagon spokesman Austin Camacho said he could not confirm or deny that new tests had been ordered for the soldiers of the 442nd.
"It's hard to imagine, theoretically, that these men could have harmful exposures," Camacho said, because none of them had been inside tanks during direct combat.
Army studies of depleted uranium have concluded that only soldiers who suffer shrapnel wounds from DU shells or who were inside tanks hit by DU shells and immediately breathe radioactive dust are at risk.
Even then, Camacho said, studies of about 70 such cases from the first Gulf War have shown no long-term health problems.
But medical experts critical of the use of DU weapons, as well as some of the Army's own early studies of depleted uranium, say exposure to it can cause kidney damage. Some studies have shown that it causes cancer and chromosome damage in mice, according to the experts.
Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium enrichment process, has been used by the U.S. and British militaries for more than 15 years in some artillery shells and as armor-plating for tanks. It is valued for its extreme density - it is twice as heavy as lead.
Amid growing controversy in Europe and Japan, the European Parliament called last year for a moratorium on its use.
'Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my chest tightening.'
Sgt. Agustin Matos, a member of the 442nd Military Police of the New York National Guard and a city correction officer in civilian life, has all-too-vivid memories of his stay in Samawah, Iraq.
"The place was filthy; most of the windows were broken; dirt, grease and bird droppings were everywhere," he said. "I wouldn't house a city prisoner in that place."
He recalled a mandated morning run of about 3 miles on a sandy track near a train depot.
"Every time I ran I felt my throat burning and my chest tightening," he said.
Now, Matos, 37, believes his symptoms may be the result of radioactive dust he inhaled from spent American shells made from depleted uranium.
The Long Island man is one of four Iraq war veterans who tested positive for DU contamination, according to a Daily News investigation.
The soldiers and other members of the 442nd say they are suffering from physical ailments that began last summer while they were stationed in Samawah.
Matos, who was assigned to the 4th platoon's 2nd squad, arrived in Samawah last June, two weeks ahead of the rest of the company.
His advance team had orders from Capt. Sean O'Donnell, their commander, to ready a huge depot in a train repair yard on the outskirts of downtown Samawah as a barracks for the unit.
Once the entire company arrived, each platoon was assigned its own space inside the depot, which was bigger than a football field.
A locomotive that straddled a repair pit and an empty train car sat in the middle of the sleeping area, with two platoons assigned to bed down along one side of the train and two others along the other side.
Just outside the depot, two Iraqi tanks, one of them shot up, had been hauled onto flatbed railroad cars.
The company was so short-handed, according to the soldiers, that the commander would evacuate a G.I. only if he could no longer physically function.
Matos was sent home last year for surgery for a shoulder injury suffered in a jeep accident.
Since his return, he has had constant headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, joint pain and excessive urination. After he recently discovered blood in his urine, doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center gave him a CAT scan and discovered a small lesion on his liver.
A 1990 Army study linked DU to "chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."
"Before I left for Iraq, they tested my eyes and I was fine," Matos said. "Now my eyesight's gotten bad, on top of everything else."
Another member of the company who tested positive for DU is 2nd platoon Sgt. Hector Vega, 48, a retired postal worker from the Bronx who has been in the National Guard for 27 years.
Since being evacuated to Fort Dix for treatment for foot surgery, Vega said he has endured insomnia and constant headaches. And like many of the sick soldiers, Vega said, "I have uncontrollable urine, every half hour."
One day, during a trip a few hours south of Samawah, he and another soldier stopped on the side of the road to photograph and check out two shot-up Iraqi tanks.
"We didn't think anything of walking right up to those tanks and touching them," he said. "I didn't know anything about depleted uranium."
As for the railroad depot where they slept, Vega recalls it as "disgusting. Oil, dirt and bird droppings everywhere, insects crawling all around us."
And then there were the frequent dust storms.
"They would blow all that dust inside the depot all over us when we were sleeping or eating. It was so thick, you could see it."
----
Soldiers home from Iraq being tested for uranium contamination
Knight Ridder News Service
Monday, April 5, 2004
http://www.magicvalley.com/news/worldnation/index.asp?StoryID=8359
NEW YORK -- Army officials at Fort Dix and Walter Reed Army Medical Center are rushing to test all returning members of the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard for depleted uranium contamination.
Army brass acted after learning that four of nine soldiers from the company tested by the New York Daily News showed signs of radiation exposure.
The soldiers, who returned from Iraq late last year, say they and other members of their company have been suffering from unexplained illnesses since last summer, when they were stationed in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, a former Army doctor and nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested the nine men at The Daily News' request, concluded four of them "almost certainly" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., after learning of The Daily News' investigation, blasted Pentagon officials Sunday for not properly screening soldiers returning from Iraq.
"We can't have people coming back with undiagnosed illnesses," Clinton said. "We have to have a before-and-after testing program for our soldiers."
Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said she will write to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding answers and soon will introduce legislation to require health screenings for all returning troops.
During meetings with Pentagon officials last year, Clinton said "one of the issues we raised was exposure to the depleted uranium that was in the weapons, and how they were going to handle it."
She was assured then that troops would be properly screened.
But the soldiers from the 442nd contacted The Daily News after becoming frustrated with how the Army was handling their illnesses.
Six of them say they repeatedly sought testing for depleted uranium from Army doctors but were denied.
Three who were tested in early November for depleted uranium said they had been waiting months for the results. Two of those finally got their results last week -- both negative.
Testing for uranium isotopes in 24 hours' worth of urine samples can cost as much as $1,000 each.
But late last week, after learning of The Daily News' results, the Army reversed course and ordered immediate testing for more than a dozen members of the 442nd who are back in the United States.
The rest of the company, comprising mostly New York City cops, firefighters and correction officers, is not due to return from Iraq until later this month.
"They ordered all of us who are here at Fort Dix to provide 24-hour urine samples by 1 p.m. today," one soldier from the company said Friday.
Late Friday, Pentagon spokesman Austin Camacho said he could not confirm or deny that new tests had been ordered for the soldiers of the 442nd.
"It's hard to imagine, theoretically, that these men could have harmful exposures," Camacho said, because none of them had been inside tanks during direct combat.
Army studies of depleted uranium have concluded that only soldiers who suffer shrapnel wounds from depleted uranium shells or who were inside tanks hit by depleted uranium shells and immediately breathe radioactive dust are at risk.
Even then, Camacho said, studies of about 70 such cases from the first Gulf War have shown no long-term health problems.
But medical experts critical of the use of depleted uranium weapons, as well as some of the Army's own early studies of depleted uranium, say exposure to it can cause kidney damage. Some studies have shown that it causes cancer and chromosome damage in mice, according to the experts.
Depleted uranium, a waste product of the uranium enrichment process, has been used by the U.S. and British militaries for more than 15 years in some artillery shells and as armor-plating for tanks. It is valued for its extreme density -- it is twice as heavy as lead.
Amid growing controversy in Europe and Japan, the European Parliament called last year for a moratorium on its use.
--------
GIs Tested for Depleted Uranium Exposure
April 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Soldier-Testing.html
FORT DIX, N.J. (AP) -- The U.S. Army is conducting medical tests on a handful of GIs who complained of illnesses after reported exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq.
Up to six soldiers from a National Guard unit based in Orangeburg, N.Y., have undergone exams at Fort Dix, and three of them remain there under observation, Fort Dix spokeswoman Carolee Nisbet said Monday.
``We are following up on this. We are on top of it. It's not something that has fallen by the wayside,'' she said.
Of nine members of the unit examined by a doctor at the request of the New York Daily News, four had ``almost certainly'' inhaled radioactive dust from spent U.S. artillery shells containing depleted uranium, the newspaper reported Monday.
Six of the nine contacted the newspaper after unsuccessfully appealing to the Army for testing because of unexplained illnesses, the Daily News reported.
The soldiers complained of headaches, fatigue, shortness of breath, nausea, dizziness, joint pain and unusually frequent urination.
The exposures apparently occurred last summer when the 442nd Military Police Co. served in Samawah, Iraq. Most members of the unit, which includes many New York police officers, firefighters and prison guards, remain in Iraq.
Military medical officials from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and the Army's Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine conducted testing at Fort Dix, Nisbet said.
The Army would not identify the soldiers or say whether testing revealed contamination or illness.
All National Guard and Reserve soldiers mobilized through Fort Dix receive physical exams upon their return from overseas, Nisbet said. The soldiers who complained of ailments asked for and received a second round of evaluations, she said.
Depleted uranium, which is left over from the process of enriching uranium for use as nuclear fuel, is an extremely dense material that the U.S. and British militaries use for tank armor and armor-piercing weapons. It is far less radioactive than natural uranium.
Army spokeswoman Cynthia O. Smith would not comment Monday on whether other troops have complained of similar ailments or whether the Pentagon would take precautions aimed at preventing future exposure.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistan Offers Nuclear Disarmament Talks with India
Ayaz Gul,
Voice of America,
April 5, 2004
http://www.truthnews.net/daily/2004040020.htm
Pakistan has offered to hold nuclear disarmament talks with India next month in Islamabad. A foreign ministry statement says Pakistan has proposed May 25 and 26 for an expert-level meeting to discuss concerns both neighbors have about each other's nuclear weapons. The proposal was conveyed to the Indian embassy in Islamabad and is part of efforts to reduce tensions and improve bilateral relations. Pakistani officials say the discussions are primarily meant to reduce the risk of a nuclear conflict in case another war breaks out between India and Pakistan.
The unresolved territorial dispute over Kashmir is the main source of bilateral tensions. The divided region has sparked two wars between India and Pakistan since they gained independence from Britain in 1947. The two countries have in the past few years equipped their armies with nuclear weapons, making the South Asian region one of the world's most feared potential nuclear flash points.
"Pakistan has adopted a first-use posture, which means that if it feels that its security is threatened, it can use the nuclear weapons even though the other country has not used nuclear weapons," said Abdul Hamid Nayyar, a senior research fellow at Islamabad's private Sustainable Development Policy Institute. "And Pakistan also fears that India's conventional superiority can always corner it into a situation where it will have to use nuclear weapons. That makes India very worried about Pakistan."
Pakistan and India resumed talks in February, after a gap of nearly three years. Officials from the two countries finalized what they call a "basic road map" in those discussions to resolve the Kashmir dispute and address other issues straining relations.
Under the agreement, foreign ministers from India and Pakistan are expected to meet in August to review the progress in the talks. Indian and Pakistani officials are to meet in Islamabad this week to discuss opening a new bus service across the disputed border in Kashmir.
----
Closing Pandora's Box:
Pakistan's Role in Nuclear Proliferation
Sharon Squassoni,
April 5, 2004
Arms Control Association
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2004_04/Squassoni.asp?print
On February 4, 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, self-styled father of the Pakistani nuclear bomb, appeared on Pakistani television to apologize to his nation. Revealing few details, Khan stated that a government investigation, which followed "disturbing disclosures and evidence by some countries to international agencies" (read "Iran and Libya to the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA]"), confirmed "alleged proliferation activities by certain Pakistanis and foreigners over the last two decades." Khan admitted the allegations were true and said "there was never ever any kind of authorization for these activities by any government official." Pakistani officials a few days earlier claimed that Khan provided technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.[1]
On February 5, Khan was pardoned by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, with no mention of confiscating the millions of dollars he had acquired in more than 20 years of nuclear moonlighting. When asked about Khan's pardon, U.S. Department of State spokesperson Richard Boucher replied, "I don't think it's a matter for the United States to sit in judgment on."
In fact, it is critically important for the United States to judge whether Pakistan has adequately addressed Khan's proliferation behavior. The administration's failure to do so may be symptomatic of a deeper problem in its nonproliferation strategy. By focusing on "hostile states and terrorists"[2] as the main proliferation threat, the Bush strategy ignores friendly countries, such as Pakistan, that host terrorists, place insufficient controls on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), and are threatened with political destabilization. Ironically, the threat of terrorist access to weapons of mass destruction is probably greater in Pakistan than in Iraq, Libya, North Korea, or Iran-all targets of Bush counterproliferation policy. Even more, Pakistan has remained locked in a nuclear confrontation with India, which has several times escalated to the point of all-out war.
The Khan case illustrates a practical reality: separating "good guys" and "bad guys" in this fashion will not work over the long term. The reason is the phenomenon of secondary proliferation. Whereas 20 years ago we worried about single states acquiring the bomb, Khan has raised the stakes. Although some may argue that Khan acted independently and that his role is unlikely ever to be replicated, Pakistan's continuing struggle with Islamic fundamentalism makes the prospect of rogue nuclear-weapon scientists even more problematic than government-directed proliferation. If Khan is not unique, how effective is the Bush administration's targeted counterproliferation policy? Can tweaking supplier controls, as President George W. Bush recently suggested, stop this kind of proliferation? What practical routes are left for slowing nuclear proliferation?
Is Khan's Role Unique?
The press has focused on the sexier aspects of Khan's story: money launderers in Dubai, Swiss and British intermediaries, plants in Kuala Lumpur, and shipments intercepted in Mediterranean ports. Yet, nuclear proliferation is no stranger to intrigue, spies, and foreign travel. What may be most shocking about the unfolding tale of Khan's nuclear weapons marketing is how utterly familiar it sounds. To be sure, leaks of high technology used to emanate mostly from North America, Europe, and Russia.[3] Sources now have expanded to Asia and Eurasia, despite attempts to strengthen supplier controls and nuclear safeguards in the wake of Iraq's embarrassing nuclear shopping spree before the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
If the modes of covert nuclear commerce appear to have changed little, what is particularly egregious about the Khan case? One answer may lie in Khan and his associates' apparent ability to provide "one-stop shopping."[4] Khan sold blueprints; components; full centrifuge assemblies; uranium hexafluoride feedstock; and, from some accounts, a nuclear-weapon design.[5] If he had desired, Khan also could have provided some missile technology because Khan Research Laboratories (KRL) developed missiles in collaboration with North Korea.[6] Was Khan able to provide this one-stop shopping because of his unique position within the Pakistani nuclear weapons program and heroic popular image or because the Pakistani government helped?
Khan's assistance to Iran in centrifuge uranium-enrichment apparently began in the late 1980s and continued at least until the mid-1990s.[7] Assistance to Libya began in the early 1990s and may have continued into 2002. Beyond blueprints, components, full assemblies of centrifuges, and low-enriched uranium, Libya also received-startlingly-a nuclear weapons design.[8] In both cases, it is clear that Khan provided technology for an advanced centrifuge design (the P-2).[9] There is no confirmation that the nuclear-weapon design Libya received in 2001 or 2002 is from Pakistan, but some sources have reported that the design contained Chinese text and step-by-step instructions for assembling a vintage 1960s, highly enriched uranium (HEU) implosion device, which could indicate that Khan passed on a design that Pakistan is long rumored to have received from China.[10]
Whether Khan gave North Korea nuclear-weapon-related technology or equipment is still disputed. U.S. officials and sources close to Khan have said he did; the Pakistani and North Korean governments have denied any technology transfers.[11] One popular theory is that Pakistan bartered uranium-enrichment technology for missile technology from North Korea, but Musharraf has stated that "whatever we bought from North Korea is with money."[12] A Pakistani official involved in Khan's investigation reportedly said North Korea ordered P-1 centrifuge components from 1997 to 2000.[13] Separately, other evidence points to Pakistani nuclear assistance. As far back as 1991, a German intelligence investigation concluded that Iraq, and possibly Iran and North Korea, obtained uranium-melting information from Pakistan in the late 1980s.[14]
Investigating Khan
The Pakistani government began to investigate allegations of nuclear transfers in 2000.[15] The Inter Services Intelligence Agency (ISI) raided a plane chartered by Khan bound for North Korea but found nothing. Further, although Musharraf admitted that he "forcibly retired" Khan from the KRL in 2001 to prevent him from transferring more nuclear secrets, Khan ultimately was undone not by his government, but by his clients. Forced to prove to the IAEA that it had not enriched uranium to HEU levels, Iran revealed the existence of foreign suppliers in October 2003. Iran had held back information on the procurement network for months. Apparently, Khan had written letters to Iranian clients, urging them to destroy some of their facilities and tell the IAEA that their Pakistani contacts were dead.[16] Libya's decision to give up its WMD programs voluntarily, however, unleashed a torrent of information about Pakistani assistance, forcing the Pakistani government to conduct a two-month investigation.
The Pakistani government has been slow to admit that there were nuclear transfers and quick to deny any official complicity. Initially, official Pakistani responses ranged from "our nuclear weapons are secure" to "there is no smoking gun."[17] In December 2003, the Foreign Ministry spokesman claimed that Pakistan never authorized transfers but that individuals may have been involved in transfers to Iran. On January 6, 2004, when asked about transfers to Libya, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said "This is total madness." An interview in February 2004 with Musharraf noted that Pakistan's investigation had not uncovered evidence of transfers to countries other than Iran and Libya."[18]
The structure of the nuclear establishment in Pakistan and the key role of the military, as well as long-standing ties between Pakistan and all three countries, raise doubts that Khan acted completely without government knowledge. Pakistan's military is widely believed to control the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. Musharraf has taken pains to clarify that Pakistan established civilian control of the nuclear weapons program (embodied in himself) under the National Command Authority, but until Musharraf steps down as army chief of staff, this distinction may be irrelevant. Moreover, a key feature of Pakistan's export control regulations allows for an explicit exemption for Ministry of Defense agencies, which suggests that weapons programs under military leadership could skirt domestic export control laws.[19]
Khan has alleged that military officials, including former Chiefs of Army Staff (COAS), knew of the transfers. One account claims that equipment to Iran was transferred at the request of the late General Imtiaz Ali between 1988 and 1990.[20] Another states that Musharraf was aware of aid to North Korea, that General Mirzla Aslam Beg knew about aid to Iran, and that two other COAS (Generals Jehangir Karamat and Abdul Waheed) knew of aid to North Korea.[21] General Beg long has had a reputation for being an Islamist and an admirer of the Iranian revolution. Beg officially denied knowledge of aid to Iran, although former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said she was approached several times from 1988 to 1990 (the period when Beg was COAS) by military officials and scientists who wanted to export nuclear technology. According to Bhutto, "it certainly was their (scientists') belief that they could earn tons of money if they did this." But Bhutto had established a policy in December 1988 not to export nuclear technology.[22] Bhutto also said that "no Pakistani thought Mr. Khan was acting alone."[23]
Reports of extensive official cooperation between Pakistan and the three countries lend credence to claims that Pakistan's government might have known of transfers. Pakistan reportedly signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with Iran in 1986, although the terms of that agreement are unknown, and Iranian scientists received training in Pakistan in 1988. Libyan funding of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program in the early years long has been alleged.[24] Pakistan's well-documented missile cooperation with North Korea beginning in the early 1990s may have provided either a convenient excuse for rogue nuclear scientists to ply their trade or sparked the plan for a barter arrangement as Pakistani foreign currency reserves fell dangerously low in 1996.[25]
Khan reportedly made more than $100 million from selling nuclear technology to Libya alone.[26] Musharraf has stressed the role of greed, but Khan reportedly told investigators he hoped to deflect attention from Pakistan's nuclear program and support other Muslim countries (i.e., Iran and Libya) by providing nuclear assistance.[27] In the late 1980s, when cooperation with Iran allegedly began, the argument for deflecting attention from Pakistan could have been plausible, particularly as pressure from the United States grew with each new revelation of Pakistan's nuclear progress.
U.S. Policy Toward Pakistan
For 30 years, the U.S. government has tried to restrain Pakistan from acquiring nuclear weapons using such tools as diplomacy, aid, and interdiction. When those failed, sanctions were developed specifically against Pakistan to slow its nuclear program (see sidebar). U.S. policy implementation, however, has been inconsistent, particularly when other U.S. national security interests at times have taken precedence. Less than six months after cutting off aid in 1979 to Pakistan for its uranium-enrichment activities, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan and negotiations to resume aid to Islamabad began. In 1990, after the Soviets pulled out, President George H.W. Bush determined he could not certify that Pakistan did not possess a nuclear device, and so aid was cut off again, this time for several years. In 1998, aid was cut off following Pakistan's nuclear tests, but this lasted less than a year. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed legislation allowing Pakistan to circumvent the remaining restrictions on aid (related then to its foreign debt arrears and 1999 military coup).
Over time, the U.S. threshold of proliferation tolerance has risen from Pakistan's acquisition of technology to its possession of a nuclear device and then to nuclear testing (in 1998). Has the threshold now risen to the point where the United States is seeking to sidestep laws aimed at penalizing states that supply nuclear technologies, rather than those that receive such aid? This could explain why the United States has not strenuously pursued the question of potential Pakistani government cooperation in Khan's activities. The State Department concluded in a letter to key members of Congress on March 12, 2003, that "the administration carefully reviewed the facts relating to the possible transfer of nuclear technology from Pakistan to North Korea, and decided that they do not warrant the imposition of sanctions under applicable U.S. laws." Given administration statements alleging such nuclear transfers, the United States appears to have accepted Islamabad's explanation that it had no role.
Pinning the blame on individuals is a time-tested and obvious circumvention (ŕ la the 1996 provision of Chinese ring magnets to Pakistan, which was not deemed a sanctionable offense). Although individuals engaging in proliferation are barred under U.S. law from receiving U.S. government contracts, there are few other ways for the United States to punish them. Nonetheless, a determination that Libya and Iran received such equipment, even from an individual, might not relieve Bush of an obligation to make a determination and then perhaps waive sanctions. In particular, receiving a nuclear weapons design is a trigger for cutting off aid under Section 102 of the Arms Export Control Act. In the case of both Libya and Iran, new sanctions would add little to the broader burden already imposed on them by virtue of their status as a state sponsors of terrorism. With respect to Pakistan, draft Senate authorizing legislation on the foreign affairs budget (S. 2144) currently contains a waiver of sanctions (including those for proliferation) previously in force.
The line in the sand appears to be drawn now at the transfer of nuclear weapons technology to terrorists. Unfortunately, such activities are incredibly difficult to deter, detect, identify, and stop. The 2002 U.S. National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction identifies this problem as "one of the most difficult challenges we face." Whether the threat of terrorists acquiring and using nuclear weapons is greater now than before is unclear, but the ability to influence terrorists in this regard, in contrast to states, remains extremely limited.
U.S. officials have intimated they knew about Khan's network for several years, and the U.S. government seems to have been quietly working with the Pakistani government to limit the damage from Khan's nuclear network.[28] Shortly after Khan's dismissal in 2001, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage reportedly stated that "people who were employed by the nuclear agency and have retired" could be spreading nuclear technology to other states, including North Korea.[29] Nonetheless, after U.S. intelligence officials leaked the news in 2002 that Pakistani enrichment technology was transferred to North Korea, Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that "President Musharraf gave me his assurance, as he has previously, that Pakistan is not doing anything of that nature....The past is the past."[30] But Powell put Musharraf on notice: "I have made clear to him that any, any sort of contact between Pakistan and North Korea we believe would be improper, inappropriate, and would have consequences."[31]
Clearly, another key factor here is the priority of counterterrorism over counterproliferation policy in the Bush administration. In 2002, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer was asked whether countries that provided assistance to North Korea on the enrichment program would risk being cut off from U.S. assistance and he responded that "September 11th changed the world." Two months later, the United States decided to impose sanctions on North Korea for sending Scud missiles to Yemen, yet waived sanctions against Yemen for receiving them. The reason: According to State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, "because of the commitments that they [Yemen] had made and in consideration of their support for the war on terrorism."
Missiles to Yemen may be one thing, but tacitly condoning past nuclear weapons cooperation with three state sponsors of terrorism is counterproductive. Secretary of State Powell's announcement on March 18th that Pakistan would be designated a "major non-NATO ally," a step that facilitates military cooperation and assistance, reinforces the impression that for the Bush administration, counterterrorism trumps counterproliferation cooperation.
Next Steps
There is no telling how much information Khan's 12-page confession contains, whether it is accurate or complete, or how much will be revealed either to the IAEA or other states. So far, Musharraf has denied the need for an international investigation or any international inspections of Pakistani nuclear facilities.[32] He has said he will share some information with the IAEA, and U.S. officials apparently are content with that approach.[33]
The main U.S. response so far has been to focus on closing down Khan's covert nuclear network. On February 11, 2004, Bush unveiled new efforts aimed partly to accomplish this.[34] Briefly, Bush proposes to expand interdiction efforts (under the Proliferation Security Initiative) to "shut down labs, to seize their materials, to freeze their assets;" criminalize proliferation through a new U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council resolution; expand cooperative threat reduction measures to states such as Libya; ban enrichment and reprocessing capabilities beyond those states that already have them; make the Additional Protocol (to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty [NPT]) a prerequisite for nuclear-related imports; and create a special committee at the IAEA to investigate compliance.
Strengthening export controls is laudable and necessary, but these measures, even taken together, are unlikely to prevent another Khan affair. Above all, supplier controls rely on the fundamental premise that slowing the leakage of technology (which itself is inevitable) buys time for the world community to persuade states not to acquire nuclear weapons. This premise is undone by the emergence of a supplier who can supply it all. In one sense, Khan's success is the natural result of a well-known NPT loophole: states outside the treaty that have acquired nuclear weapons. Pakistan, India, Israel, and possibly North Korea are likely to remain outside the NPT and therefore are not bound by the treaty's prohibitions on sharing nuclear weapons technology.
Despite this, the United States and other supplier countries have their own means to impose penalties for actions that undermine the NPT (see sidebar), as well as ample carrots to offer Pakistan. The Bush administration has proposed a $3 billion aid package to Pakistan over the next five years. At a minimum, the United States should condition this aid on requiring Pakistan to give the United States full access to Khan, as well as to improve transparency, export controls, and personnel reliability in its nuclear program.
Conclusion
By treating Libya, the "axis of evil" countries, and Pakistan as separate and distinct problems, the United States is missing an opportunity to develop a common and consistent nuclear nonproliferation policy.
Events in Iraq, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, and North Korea all point to the lesson that nothing can substitute for on-site inspection of suspicious activities. Inspections in Iraq failed to come up with evidence of a reconstituted nuclear program, whether conducted by the IAEA and the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) or the Iraq Survey Group. Inspections in Iran have slowly revealed capabilities Iran had been loathe to admit and which were not revealed by overhead imagery alone. Inspections in Libya surprised some with revelations of centrifuge and weapons design procurement but basically confirmed long-held views that Libya's nuclear weapons program did not amount to much. Finally, the lack of inspections in North Korea has left the United States guessing about North Korean enrichment capabilities.
Although Pakistan has rejected the NPT and any kind of international inspections into Khan's activities, there may be ways of introducing more transparency into its nuclear program. Serious discussions with Pakistan on export control only began in 2003 and the Bush administration has asked for just $1 million in the FY05 State Department budget for export control assistance, a tiny fraction of the $700 million in assistance to Pakistan for next year. U.S. export control assistance should be expanded, with a particular focus on eliminating exemptions for Pakistani defense agencies and assisting Pakistan to adhere to Nuclear Suppliers' Group guidelines. The United States could also offer specific assistance in physical protection of nuclear material and personnel security under the auspices of a cooperative threat reduction program. Nonetheless, even if Pakistan accepted this offer, this may not produce adequate transparency. [35]
Ultimately, it would be far better to get international inspections at Pakistani facilities and to draw Pakistan into a fissile material cutoff treaty (FMCT). U.S. policy has supported such a treaty since 1993, but little diplomatic capital has been expended on it. Pakistan has said it will support an FMCT. At a minimum, a cutoff agreement would place all enrichment and reprocessing worldwide (given universal adherence) under inspection. In this way, it would require inspections at facilities that have operated covertly for many years, opening them up to international scrutiny and making it more difficult for covert supplier networks to flourish. A treaty also could go further and close down unneeded production capacity or incorporate international management or control of fissile material.
Finally, although Pakistan's current importance to the war on terrorism makes U.S. sanctions unlikely, the United States needs to make clear that there will be severe consequences for further transgressions, regardless of the counterterrorism issue. U.S. policymakers also need to reevaluate their tepid support for multilateral nonproliferation approaches. If anything, the globalization of the black nuclear market should provide a warning that one country cannot halt this problem alone.
Retracing Khan's Path
Abdul Qadeer Khan's unlikely route to nuclear stardom began in 1972. As a trained metallurgist subcontracted to the fledgling URENCO consortium, he was asked to translate classified documents on centrifuge technology from their original German into Dutch. Khan's access, as well as overt Pakistani procurement attempts, began to attract notice from Dutch authorities in late 1975. Transferred to a less sensitive position, Khan fled Holland for his native Pakistan in December 1975. His intimate knowledge of suppliers and a weak international export control regime allowed him to build a centrifuge enrichment plant at Sihala in just a few years.[1] The construction and operation of the Kahuta enrichment facility, known then as the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL), followed. Khan's hard work was rewarded in 1981 when President Muhammed Zia ul-Haq renamed the ERL as the Khan Research Laboratory (KRL).[2] According to some reports, a competition was encouraged between the KRL and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) to develop two routes to the bomb-HEU and plutonium. Khan himself has described his activities as supporting the PAEC's reactor development program, enriching uranium to use as fuel in the Chasma nuclear reactor.
By many accounts, the KRL and Khan were given remarkable autonomy. This independence only grew after the uranium-enrichment program, once thought of as a fallback in case the French reprocessing plant at Chasma fell through (which it did in 1978 under strong U.S. pressure), became the cornerstone of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.[3] One aide close to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf stated, "Khan had a complete blank check. He could do anything. He could go anywhere. He could buy anything at any price."[4] Musharraf himself has noted that "there was a covert program for maybe 30 years, and there was a lot of autonomy given to the organization and individuals running the program. There was a lot of chance for leakages."[5]
A critical question is why the Pakistani government permitted this autonomy. Politics likely played a key role. After taking power in 1999, Musharraf began to receive reports of corruption (skimming government contracts and nepotism) at Kahuta.[6] Khan's lavish lifestyle, despite his modest salary, was "the worst-kept secret in town," said one Pakistani official.[7] Still, Musharraf did not remove him as KRL head until 2001, allegedly under considerable pressure from the United States. Even then, he was appointed special adviser to Musharraf. After Khan's confession, Musharraf called him a personal hero and a hero to the nation.[8] Musharraf declared that, "since [Khan] had acquired a larger-than-life figure for himself, one had to pardon him to satisfy the public."[9]
Khan further cemented his importance to the entire nuclear weapons program through KRL development of missiles in the 1980s. Reportedly, a competition was encouraged between the plutonium team (PAEC), working toward Chinese-derived nuclear-capable missiles, and the HEU team (KRL), collaborating with North Korea on a Scud derivative.[10] Khan's frequent trips abroad for "legitimate" missile cooperation with North Korea might have provided cover for his nuclear deals.
The nuclear program prior to 1998, according to Pakistani officials, was handled by just a few people at the top.[11] Despite Pakistan's claims to have tightened controls by creating the National Command Authority (NCA) in February 2000, high-level officials still seem to be exempt. Reportedly, key people in the Pakistani nuclear weapons program are screened every two years (since 2000) by the Inter-Services Intelligence Agency (ISI), Military Intelligence, the Intelligence Bureau, and the Strategic Plan Division of the NCA. However, "top-level people (including scientists) are controlled by their organizations and not psychologically screened."[12] Musharraf has suggested in interviews that it is virtually impossible to stop security breaches by institution leaders. Referring to himself, he stated, "If there was a security problem here and if I myself am involved in the breach, do you think anyone is going to check me?"[13] This analogy might reflect the unique status of Khan, a fundamental flaw in Pakistani nuclear security procedures, or both. Moreover, it is yet to be established that some or all of these exchanges were not matters of national policy.
NOTES
1. For an excellent account, see Steve Weissman and Herbert Krosney, The Islamic Bomb (New York: Times Books, 1981).
2. Simon Henderson, "We Can Do It Ourselves," Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (September 1993), p. 27.
3. The KRL began to produce enriched uranium in 1984 and, by some estimates, HEU by 1986, whereas plutonium for weapons did not become available until after the 1998 nuclear tests. See Leonard Spector, The Undeclared Bomb (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1988), p. 143.
4. "A Tale of Nuclear Proliferation: How Pakistani Built His Network," The New York Times, February 12, 2004.
5. "Q&A: Pervez Musharraf; Confronting the Nuclear Underworld," The Washington Post, January 25, 2004.
6. "Delicate Dance for Musharraf in Nuclear Case," The New York Times, February 8, 2004.
7. "Musharraf Named in Nuclear Probe," The Washington Post, February 3, 2004.
8. "General Defiant in Face of Scandal Over Scientist's Nuclear Secrets," Financial Times, February 18, 2004.
9. "Pakistani Leader Suspected Moves by Atomic Expert," The New York Times, February 10, 2004.
10. Simon Henderson, "Pakistan's Nuclear Proliferation and U.S. Policy," PolicyWatch, no. 826, January 12, 2004.
11. See report from a visit to Pakistan by Paolo Cotta-Ramusino and Maurizio Martellini in 2001, "Nuclear safety, nuclear stability and nuclear strategy in Pakistan: A concise report of a visit by Landau Network-Centro Volta."
12. Ibid.
13. General Defiant in Face of Scandal Over Scientist's Nuclear Secrets," Financial Times, February 18, 2004.
Retracing Khan's Path
During the past three decades, the United States has imposed and lifted sanctions on Pakistan many times. The changes have reflected modifications in U.S. foreign policy priorities as much as shifts in Pakistan's nonproliferation behavior.
1976 Congress amends the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (FAA) to bar aid to countries that transfer uranium-enrichment or reprocessing equipment, materials, or technology in violation of specified conditions (Symington amendment, Sec. 669, FAA).
1977 Congress amends FAA to bar aid for countries that detonate a nuclear explosive (Glenn amendment, Sec. 670, FAA, which also covers reprocessing transfers). Aid suspended in September
1977 because Pakistan is found to be seeking reprocessing technology from French companies.
1978 Aid resumed in October 1978 after France cancels reprocessing deal.
1979 Aid cut off in April 1979 because of Pakistan's enrichment activities (Symington invoked).
1980 Negotiations to resume aid begin after Soviets invade Afghanistan.
1981 Aid resumed (Symington waived by Congress (Sec. 620E, FAA) of Sec. 669) for Pakistan but restrictions added for transfers of nuclear weapons and design information.
1985 Solarz amendment (amends Sec. 670, FAA) bars aid for illegal export from the United States of any material, equipment, or technology that would contribute significantly to the ability of a country to build a nuclear explosive device. Pressler amendment (Sec. 620E(e), FAA) prohibits the transfer of military equipment or technology to Pakistan specifically unless the president certifies to the Congress that Pakistan does not possess a nuclear explosive device and that the proposed U.S. aid program would reduce significantly the risk that Pakistan will possess such a device.
1987 Symington waiver expires; renewed for 30 months.
1990 Aid suspended under Pressler amendment. Symington waiver expires.
1995 Brown amendment relaxes cut-off so that only military aid and transfers barred.
1998 May: aid suspended after nuclear tests. July: Congress provides waiver for wheat purchases. Aid resumes for one year, except military assistance, dual-use exports, and military sales (India-Pakistan Relief Act of 1998 (Brownback I).
1999 Aid resumes permanently (Brownback II gives president permanent waiver authority for proliferation sanctions). However, foreign debt arrears and military coup bar aid to Pakistan.
2001 Presidential executive order lifts remaining restrictions.
NOTES
1. David Rohde and David E. Sanger, "Key Pakistani Is Said to Admit Atom Transfers," The New York Times, February 2, 2004.
2. National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (December 2002), p. 1.
3. A 1982 Senate Foreign Relations Committee report, Analysis of Six Issues About Nuclear Capabilities of India, Iraq, Libya, and Pakistan, concluded that from 1978 to 1981 India acquired technology from France, the United States, and the United Kingdom; Iraq from Brazil, Germany, France, Italy, Niger, Norway, Portugal and Russia; Libya from Argentina, Finland, India, Niger, the United States, and Russia; and Pakistan from Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Niger, Norway, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Russia. By the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland were also found to have supplied Iraq with nuclear technologies. See "Who Armed Iraq?" The New York Times, July 18, 1993.
4. Pakistan's investigation also included Mohammed Farooq, who supervised the KRL's contacts with foreign suppliers; Yasin Chohan, a KRL metallurgist; Major Islam ul-Haq, a personal staff officer; Nazeer Ahmed, a KRL director; and Saeed Ahmed, head of centrifuge design. Between 11 and 25 KRL employees were questioned, as well as the generals in charge of KRL security, Generals Beg and Karamat. Simon Henderson, "Link Leaks," National Review Online, January 19, 2004.
5. See Karen Yourish and Delano D'Souza, "Father of Pakistani Bomb Sold Nuclear Secrets," Arms Control Today, March 2004, p. 22.
6. In fact, U.S. sanctions were imposed in early 2003 on the KRL for receiving MTCR Category I missiles from North Korea.
7. Iran told the IAEA its centrifuge enrichment program began in 1987; Lieutenant General Khalid Kidwai, who briefed journalists on February 1, 2004, on Khan's confession, reportedly stated that cooperation began in 1989 and Khan transferred technology from 1989 to 1991. "Key Pakistani Is Said to Admit Atom Transfers," The New York Times, February 2, 2004. An IAEA report states that Iran received P-2 drawings from "foreign sources" in 1994. IAEA, "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran," GOV/2004/11, February 24, 2004, p. 8 (hereinafter GOV/2004/11 report).
8. An IAEA report states that in 1997 foreign manufacturers provided 20 pre-assembled L-1 (equivalent to P-1) centrifuges and components for an additional 200 L-1 centrifuges, including process gas feeding and withdrawal systems, UF6 cylinders, and frequency converters. IAEA, "Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement of the Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya," GOV/2004/12, February 20, 2004 (hereinafter GOV/2004/12 report).
9. Libya received two of the P-2-type centrifuges in 2000 and placed an order for 10,000 more. Iran has claimed that it received P-2 plans, but no centrifuge components, and tried to develop a carbon-composite rotor on its own, with no success. GOV/2004/11 report and GOV/2004/12 report.
10. William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, "Warhead Blueprints Link Libya Project to Pakistan Figure," The New York Times, February 4, 2004; Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin, "Libyan Arms Designs Traced Back to China," The Washington Post, February 15, 2004.
11. Asked by Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) what the United States knows about Pakistan's involvement in helping North Korea, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage replied that "[w]e know it's both ways and we know a good bit about a North Korean-Pakistan relationship." Richard Armitage, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 4, 2003.
12. Farhan Bokhari, Steven Fidler, and Edward Luce, "Pakistan Rejects Nuclear Inspection," Financial Times, February 18, 2004. For additional evidence related to a barter arrangement, see Sharon Squassoni, "Weapons of Mass Destruction: Trade Between North Korea and Pakistan," CRS Report for Congress, RL 31900, March 11, 2004.
13. Mubashir Zaidi, "Scientist Claimed Nuclear Equipment Was Old, Official Says," The Los Angeles Times, February 10, 2004.
14. Mark Hibbs, "Agencies Trace Some Iraqi URENCO Know-How to Pakistan Re-Export," Nucleonics Week, November 28, 1991, pp. 1, 7-8. See also Mark Hibbs, "CIA Assessment on DPRK Presumes Massive Outside Help on Centrifuges," Nuclear Fuel, November 25, 2002.
15. "Pakistan Informed U.S. of 'Personal' Nuclear Technology Transfer: Report," Agence France-Presse, December 25, 2003. According to this report, the United States asked the Pakistani government to look into alleged nuclear transfers to North Korea, and Pakistani officials concluded from the deposit of large sums of money in Kahuta scientists' bank accounts that nuclear technology had indeed been transferred on an individual basis.
16. Ibid.
17. Glenn Kessler, "Pakistan's N. Korea Deals Stir Scrutiny; Aid to Nuclear Arms Bid May Be Recent," The Washington Post, November 13, 2002. Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, reportedly stated that "[n]o material, no technology ever has been exported to North Korea "and "[n]obody can tell us if there is evidence, no one is challenging our word. There is no smoking gun."
18. Bokhari, Fidler, and Luce, "Pakistan Rejects Nuclear Inspection," Financial Times, February 18, 2004.
19. Anupam Srivastava and Seema Gahlaut, "Curbing Proliferation from Emerging Suppliers: Export Controls in India and Pakistan," Arms Control Today, September 2003, pp. 12-16.
20. "Nuke Leak May Cost Pak $3b," The Times of India Online, February 5, 2004.
21. John Lancaster and Kamran Khan, "Musharraf Named in Nuclear Probe," The Washington Post, February 3, 2004.
22. See David Rohde, "General Denies Letting Secrets of A-Bomb Out of Pakistan," The New York Times, January 27, 2004; Steven Fidler, "Bhutto 'Rejected Request to Sell N-Technology,'" Financial Times, February 24, 2004.
23. On the other hand, Bhutto stated she did not think it probable that centrifuge parts were exported from Pakistan to Iran from 1994 to 1995 (while she was prime minister), despite revelations of exactly that in a Malaysian police report connected to the Iran investigation.
24. Steve Weissman and Herbert Krosney, The Islamic Bomb (New York: Times Books, 1981).
25. Daniel A. Pinkston, "When Did WMD Deals between Pyongyang and Islamabad Begin?" http://cns.mis.edu.
26. David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, "Pakistani's Nuclear Earnings: $100 Million," The New York Times, March 16, 2004.
27. John Lancaster and Kamran Khan, "Musharraf Named in Nuclear Probe," The Washington Post, February 3, 2004.
28. CIA director George Tenet stated that U.S. intelligence had penetrated Khan's network, including its subsidiaries, scientists, front companies, agents, finances, and manufacturing plants, in a February 5, 2004, speech he gave at Georgetown University, available at www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/index.html.
29. Steven Fidler and Edward Luce "U.S. Fears North Korea Could Gain Nuclear Capability through Pakistan," Financial Times, June 1, 2001.
30. Carla Anne Robbins, "North Korea Got a Little Help from Neighbors-Secret Nuclear Program Tapped Russian Suppliers and Pakistani Know-How," Wall Street Journal Europe, October 21, 2002; ABC's This Week, October 20, 2002 (transcript).
31. Ahmed Rashid, "US Grows Unhappier with Pakistan-Despite Official Friendship, Three Areas of Contention Are Straining the Alliance," The Wall Street Journal, December 2, 2002.
32. Bokhari, Fidler, and Luce, "Pakistan Rejects Nuclear Inspection," Financial Times, February 18, 2004.
33. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher stated in the daily press briefing on February 17, 2004, that "we look forward to hearing from the Pakistani government about the facts as they have developed them during the course of their investigation."
34. Available at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/02/20040211-4.html. See also Wade Boese, "Bush Outlines Proposals to Stem Proliferation," Arms Control Today, March 2004, pp. 24-25.
35. For specific impediments to providing cooperative threat reduction assistance to Pakistan and India, see Sharon Squassoni, "Nuclear Threat Reduction Measures for India and Pakistan," CRS Report for Congress, RL 31589.
Sharon Squassoni is a specialist in national defense issues with the Congressional Research Service. The views presented here are the author's own and do not reflect those of the Congressional Research Service or the Library of Congress.
-------- iran
US slaps sanctions on alleged Iran nuke suppliers
REUTERS USA:
April 5, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24586/newsDate/5-Apr-2004/story.htm
WASHINGTON - The United States has imposed sanctions on 13 foreign companies in seven countries because of "credible information" that they sold equipment and technology to Iran that could be used in nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programs, a State Department spokesman said.
The companies will be banned from exporting goods to U.S. government agencies or receiving assistance from the United States and U.S. firms will be barred from doing business with them for two years, spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters.
Ereli said the sanctions were being imposed under the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 and would be in effect until March 31, 2006.
A top U.S. official last month accused Iran of concealing a nuclear weapons program and vowed to maintain international pressure on Tehran to reveal its efforts.
The 13 companies include five Chinese companies, two in Macedonia, two in Russia and one each in North Korea, Taiwan, Belarus and the United Arab Emirates, Ereli said, noting the sanctions affected only the specific companies, not their respective governments or countries.
"The penalties were imposed ... because there was credible information indicating that these companies had transferred to Iran, since January 1, 1999, either equipment and technology on the ... multilateral export control lists" or items that could make a "material contribution" to weapons of mass destruction or cruise or ballistic missile systems, he said.
Ereli said the United States had imposed sanctions on a total of 23 entities since the law took effect, including four companies sanctioned last year.
On April 1, sanctions were lifted on six Russian companies after U.S. authorities determined that the companies had stopped the activity for which they were originally sanctioned.
Ereli said U.S. officials regularly discussed the issue of exports to Iran with the governments of China and Russia, and were in the process of informing officials in the remaining countries.
"There is always, I think, more that we can all do, in terms of enforcement of regulations and making the regulatory environment more strict and implementing export control, existing export control mechanisms," Ereli said.
He did not name the companies concerned, except for the one in North Korea, a state-run company named Changgwang Sinyong Corp., which he said had been sanctioned previously under the same U.S. law, specifically in January and June of 2001 and June 2003.
----
U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Criticizes Iran
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer
April 5, 2002
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran has not been cooperating as openly or quickly as it should to dispel the suspicion it wants to build nuclear weapons, the chief U.N. inspector said Monday as he left for Tehran to apply new pressure on the Islamic regime.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, was slated for talks in Tehran amid indications of continued nuclear cover-ups and signs that even previously reluctant U.S. allies are moving closer to Washington's view that Iran should be penalized.
ElBaradei said he would address two key points with top Iranian officials: The origins of traces of highly enriched uranium found in the country, and details on Iran's advanced P-2 centrifuges - equipment that could be used to enrich uranium for use in a weapon.
"We need to satisfy ourselves that there are no undeclared activities that have taken place in Iran," ElBaradei told reporters before leaving for Tehran.
"I and the international community would like to bring the issue to a conclusion," he said. "It obviously cannot go on forever."
Vienna-based diplomats familiar with the IAEA's activities in Iran, where experts have been examining nuclear sites and programs for signs of past and present weapons ambitions, said there is lingering doubt about whether Iran is revealing all of its activities.
Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful and geared only toward producing electricity. The United States and other nations contend it masks a covert effort to build a nuclear weapon.
"At the end of the day, the issue is to really create confidence that this is a program for peaceful purpose," ElBaradei said Monday, calling on the Tehran regime to "turn over a new leaf."
ElBaradei was to arrive in Tehran early Tuesday and return to Vienna on Wednesday after meeting with senior government and Iranian nuclear agency officials.
He said last month's resolution by the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, which censured Iran for hiding suspicious activities, showed that the board is "getting a little bit impatient and they would like to see progress."
"I sense some slowdown," ElBaradei said. "We have seen some delay in the inspection process ... in getting the information we would like to receive. I would like to make it clear in my visit that restoring and accelerating the speed of cooperation is in the interest of everybody."
On Sunday, Iran denied it has hidden any nuclear facilities by shifting them to easier-to-conceal sites.
Iranian officials were responding to alleged intelligence from the United States and an unnamed country suggesting that within the past year, Iran had moved nuclear enrichment programs to less detectable locations.
ElBaradei said last month that Iran has much to do before the IAEA can declare Tehran's nuclear program peaceful.
Iran's nuclear ambitions first came under international scrutiny last year, when the IAEA discovered that Tehran had not disclosed large-scale efforts to enrich uranium, which can be used in nuclear warheads. Finds of traces of weapons-grade uranium and evidence of suspicious experiments heightened concerns.
Critics say that Iran since has reneged on commitments to win international trust - such as a promise to suspend enrichment - as IAEA inspectors have discovered new evidence of past experiments that could be used to develop weapons.
"There is a growing feeling that the Iranians are playing games instead of honoring pledges of full disclosure," one diplomat said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Adding to the skepticism was Iran's announcement last month that it inaugurated a uranium conversion facility in Isfahan, 155 miles south of Tehran, to process uranium ore into gas - a crucial step before uranium enrichment.
Iran insists the move does not contravene its pledge to suspend enrichment. But Britain, France and Germany - who have blunted past U.S. attempts to come down hard on Iran - were critical. They said the Isfahan plant sent the wrong signal.
Last year, the three secured Iran's agreement to suspend enrichment and cooperate with the IAEA in exchange for promised access to western technology. They have stymied U.S. attempts to have Tehran brought before the U.N. Security Council for allegedly violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency: http://www.iaea.org
----
UN nuclear chief voices impatience with Iran
FRANKFURT (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405183309.f2803wv1.html
UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei said Monday he was running out of patience with Iran over its failure to fully assure the international community that it does not have a secret nuclear weapons program.
ElBaradei, on his way to the Islamic republic, said the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was "impatient with Iran's cooperation."
The international probe into Iran's program "cannot go on forever. We have to discuss how to accelerate cooperation," he said. "We need to satisfy ourselves there are no undeclared nuclear activities in Iran."
The IAEA director general is due in Iran on Tuesday on the nuclear issue, although the Islamic republic insists it is not hiding any of its facilities from UN inspectors.
"We have a transparent and constructive cooperation with the agency, and this will continue," Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told reporters on Sunday.
Iran also declared that its resumption of work on a key part of the nuclear fuel cycle was not a violation of its commitment to suspend uranium enrichment activities.
In a deal with the IAEA brokered last year by the European Union's big three -- Britain, France and Germany -- Tehran agreed to suspend uranium enrichment and related activities while UN inspectors delved into its program.
However, an IAEA board resolution on March 13 condemned Iran for failing to report sensitive nuclear activities, such as the possession of designs for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges that can make bomb-grade uranium.
Since then, ElBaradei said, Iran has delayed a crucial IAEA inspection mission to research the P-2 question.
"We were supposed to do the P-2 (investigation) last month and now we are going in on April 10," ElBaradei, making his third trip to Iran since February 2003, told reporters on a stopover in Frankfurt.
He said no date had yet to be set for Pakistan -- a nuclear power -- to allow IAEA inspectors in to the country to carry out so-called "environmental sampling" to compare certain key components with those sold on the international black market to Iran.
Iran has always claimed that the presence of highly enriched uraniumdiscovered by the IAEA was due to contamination from particles on the imported components.
HEU can be used both as nuclear fuel in civilian reactors or as the raw material for an atomic bomb.
IAEA inspectors have found traces of HEU at two sites in Iran. The United States says the particles are proof that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, despite Iran's claims of contamination.
The IAEA board is to hear a report on Iran's nuclear program when it meets in Vienna in June to consider "progress in verifying Iran's declarations and of how to respond" to Iran's omissions in reporting on its atomic activities.
Asked if the delay in inspections would make it impossible to file a full report, ElBaradei said: "A month is still four weeks."
He said there has been "some slowing of cooperation" from Iran since it filed in October what it said was a full report on its nuclear activities.
The report also did not mention that Iran had the P-2 designs.
During his visit, ElBaradei will meet with Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, Iran's top nuclear policy-maker Hassan Rowhani and the head of Iran's atomic energy organization Gholamreza Aghazadeh.
ElBaradei said he "would like to make clear in my visit that restoring and accelerating cooperation is in the interests of everybody."
"After all this time, there has been ample time for us to come to a conclusion," he said.
-------- iraq / inspections
Prober: I knew in days U.S. 'wrong' on WMD
By JAMES GORDON MEEK
NY DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
April 5, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/180602p-156891c.html
WASHINGTON - The CIA's former weapons hunter in Iraq realized within days of arriving in Baghdad last summer that dictator Saddam Hussein was no longer stockpiling a banned arsenal, according to a new report.
David Kay, with whom the Bush administration placed its hopes of finding Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, sent a startling E-mail to CIA Director George Tenet in early July 2003.
"I wrote that it looks as though they did not produce weapons," Kay reveals in an interview with the new Vanity Fair.
It wasn't until late January this year that Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "we were almost all wrong" on Iraq.
Kay told Vanity Fair, in its 22,000-word opus, "The Path to War," that he was actually ready to come home in mid-December. Tenet said no.
"If you resign now, it will appear that we don't know what we're doing and the wheels are coming off," he said Tenet told him. "So I said, 'Fine, I'll wait.'"
Vanity Fair's look at the war in Iraq portrays Vice President Cheney as among the lead advocates for war.
The veep made at least 10 trips to the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters, said Richard Kerr, a retired CIA official who did an internal review of prewar intelligence. "There was a lot of pressure, no question," Kerr said.
The magazine also bolstered the contention from some critics that President Bush was obsessed with Saddam.
A former British ambassador recounts a dinner meeting Bush had with Prime Minister Tony Blair on Sept. 20, 2001 - nine days after the terror attacks on America - where Bush pressed for an attack on Iraq.
The magazine also details extraordinary pressure on Secretary of State Powell to tie Saddam to the 9/11 attacks. Powell, who on Friday conceded the intelligence in his UN speech making the case for war in Iraq was faulty, refused.
-------- japan
Japan denies early deployment of US anti-missile system
TOKYO (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405062152.od3awqv1.html
The Japanese government denied a press report Monday that the United States was considering deploying a missile defense system on its soil in an emergency before Tokyo completes its anti-missile network.
The major Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported earlier that Washington had informally sounded out Tokyo on the plan aimed at protecting US military bases and other facilities in Japan from ballistic missile attacks.
Citing Japanese and US sources, the Yomiuri said Tokyo intended to discuss the plan soon.
The US military is considering deploying the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3), a US army surface-to-air guided missile that is capable of intercepting such missiles as the North Korean Rodong, which has a range of about 1,300 kilometers (810 miles), the report said.
But the report was denied by the press offices of both the Foreign Ministry and the Defence Agency.
"It is not true that the US side has consulted our government on the possible early PAC-3 deployment," a foreign ministry spokeswoman said. A similar denial was made by Defence Agency press officer Midori Sasaki.
Washington is considering a plan to transport anti-ballistic missiles and radars in C-5 transport planes from the United States to Japan when an armed attack on this country is believed to be imminent, the report added.
Japan plans to deploy in the year to March 2008 an anti-missile system consisting of the seaborne Standard Missile 3 (SM3) and the land-based PAC-3.
SM-3s intercept ballistic missiles when they reach their highest point outside of the atmosphere and then PAC-3 missiles are used to finish off the missiles that have escaped SM-3 attacks.
The PAC3 is an advanced version of the PAC-2 which the air defence force is deploying at 27 anti-aircraft artillery units nationwide.
Japan has hastened to build up a missile defense system since North Korea lobbed a suspected Taepodong missile into the Pacific in 1998, shocking the region and the world.
-------- korea
N.Korea Can Make 'Unlimited' Nuclear Arms
Mon Apr 5, 2004
By Sebastian Alison
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4754122
BRUSSELS - North Korea can probably make unlimited quantities of nuclear weapons from its own plutonium stocks, the head of a consortium that until recently was building nuclear power stations there said Monday.
"I feel very confident that their plutonium program is now in full operation and it's one that can produce almost unlimited quantities of nuclear weapons," Charles Kartman, executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) told the European parliament.
KEDO, of which the European Union is a member, had been building two light-water nuclear reactors, which could not be used for weapons programs, in North Korea, in exchange for a 1994 pledge by Pyongyang to freeze its own nuclear program.
KEDO's work was suspended on December 1 for a year to try to persuade North Korea to make good on its offer to abandon its nuclear weapons program.
Kartman said he believed North Korean scientists probably had the expertise to weapons the plutonium.
"There are people who consider themselves to be expert on this question who believe that...they've had enough years now to work on it that they should be able to weapons the plutonium that they have," he said.
"The plutonium program is a very real and very large problem."
He was less sure about Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program: "Although I have no doubt whatsoever that there is a problem there, its dimensions are beyond my knowledge," he said. China has been the driving force behind six-nation talks involving North and South Korea, Japan, Russia, the United States and China itself, to resolve Pyongyang's nuclear impasse.
But South Korean experts said last week that North Korea appeared to have lost interest in the talks until after the U.S. presidential elections in November, despite strenuous efforts by Beijing to keep Pyongyang engaged.
KEDO unites Japan, South Korea, the European Union and the United States.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil refuse to let UN inspectors to nuclear facility: report
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405020956.kkxujl7v.html
The Brazilian government has refused to allow UN nuclear inspectors to examine a facility for enriching uranium under construction near Rio de Janeiro, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
Citing unnamed Brazilian officials and diplomats in Vienna, the newspaper said the International Atomic Energy Agency and Brazil were at an impasse over the inspections.
Brazil maintains that the facility in Resende will produce low-enriched uranium for use in power plants, not the highly enriched material used in nuclear weapons, according to the report.
Nonetheless, Brazil refuses to let IAEA inspectors see equipment in the plant, citing a need to protect proprietary information, the paper said.
In a statement, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said the issue was "a technical matter between Brazil and the International Atomic Energy Agency," and noted it had previously been discussed in the international news media over the past two months.
The Post said the diplomatic standoff plays into fears that a new type of nuclear race is underway, marked not by the bold pursuit of atomic weapons but by the quiet and lawful development of sophisticated technology for nuclear energy production, which can be quickly converted into a weapons program.
Brazil's project also poses a conundrum for US President George W. Bush, who has called for tighter restrictions on enrichment of uranium as part of a new strategy to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, the report said.
Nonproliferation specialists say that if the United States and the United Nations do not act to curtail Brazil's program, or at least insist on inspections, it could undermine White House calls for Iran and North Korea to halt their efforts to enrich uranium, according to The Post.
Brazil's science and technology minister Eduardo Campos said the "insinuation" made by The Post was "unacceptable."
"The Brazilian nuclear project is intended exclusively for peaceful purposes. What is more, that is how our constitution defines it. We are also signatories of the nuclear weapons non-proliferation treaty," Campos said.
In October 2003, Brazil announced that as of mid-2004, it would start producing industrially enriched uranium to feed its two nuclear power plants.
The minister at the time, Roberto Amaral, described the move as a major step forward for his country to reach autonomy in uranium production, underlining Brazil's commitment to peaceful purposes for the substance.
The plant in Resende belongs to a program considered legal under international treaties, but it remains subject to UN inspections aimed at making sure it is not used for producing weapons-grade material.
According to The Post, the IAEA has sent inspectors to Resende in recent months, only to find significant portions of the facility and its contents shielded from view.
-------- latinamerica
Brazil Says Its Nuke Program Is Peaceful
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 5, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Brazil-Nuclear-Program.html
SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Brazil's nuclear program is peaceful and the country remains committed to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Monday, in an effort to defuse tensions over international inspections.
Amorim's comments came as the Science and Technology Ministry confirmed that U.N. nuclear inspectors were denied access in February and March to uranium-enrichment centrifuges at a facility that is being built in Resende, near Rio de Janeiro.
The report of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors' being denied access was first reported Sunday by the Washington Post.
Amorim said Brazil's nuclear program is exclusively aimed at the production of cheap energy and that the ``country must have the right to protect its own technology.''
``Brazil is complying with all its international obligations'' pertaining to its nuclear program and reports indicating otherwise are ``groundless,'' Amorim told reporters.
He said the world's nuclear powers should make a concerted effort toward nuclear disarmament instead of focusing their attention on countries like Brazil that do not have nuclear weapons.
Science and Technology Minister Eduardo Campos said the inspectors had access to uranium that would be sent to Canada for enrichment ``but we are not obliged to show the technology that took us years to develop.''
Campos told the O Globo newspaper that Brazil had already invested close to $1 billion and years of research to develop its own technology to enrich uranium to be used in power plants.
Repeated calls to the IAEA in Vienna were not returned Monday.
Brazil has the world's sixth largest uranium reserve. The country has had the capacity to enrich uranium since the 1980s, but has so far only done so for research purposes. The country signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1997.
Brazil's ambassador of the United States, Roberto Abdenur, also defended the decision to deny inspectors access.
``Brazil has legitimate industrial and technological reasons for not allowing the inspectors to see the centrifuges,'' Abdenur told the O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper.
One of Brazil's top nuclear scientists, however, accused government officials of ``abusing the concept of national sovereignty.''
``Centrifuges are being used by many countries around the world and even if Brazil's has some kind of new technology, I am sure that technology is not earthshaking enough to hide,'' Jose Goldemberg told The Associated Press.
Refusing access to IAEA inspectors could lead to "suspicions that it indeed has something to hide and thus create a certain tension or impasse with the agency and the United States," Goldemberg said.
Uranium mined from the ground is run through centrifuges where it is enriched for use in either in nuclear power plants for electricity generation or in atomic weapons.
Brazilian officials hope to be enriching enough uranium by 2014 to run its only two nuclear power plants -- called Angra 1 and Angra -- plus a third that is expected to come on line that year. The country also expects to have a surplus of enriched uranium by then, which could be exported.
Brazil has also refused to sign on to another clause in the nuclear treaty, which would allow the IAEA to conduct spot inspections of Brasilia nuclear facilities.
Abdenur reiterated Brazil's long-held view against signing the additional protocol, saying some industrial countries, especially the United States, have unfairly made signing it a condition for obtaining new nuclear technology.
Associated Press writer Harold Olmos contributed to this report from Rio de Janeiro.
-------- missile defense
U.S. seeks Asian help on a missile shield
Norimitsu Onishi
Monday, April 5, 2004
The New York Times
http://www.iht.com/articles/513357.html
Plan could reshape balance of power
TOKYO 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 month, a few days after the U.S. 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 $1.78 billion in radar equipment to increase the nation's ability to detect ballistic missiles. Australia decided in December to join the U.S.-$ 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 say the shield is 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 that the radar sale to Taiwan sent the "wrong message" and 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 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 unproved. President George W. Bush, who withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, made a missile shield a campaign promise in 2000.
In Europe, Britain has signed on, but interest there has been tepid compared with the reception in Asia, where the missile buildup in China and North Korea, and the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan, is 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. China's successful launch of a manned satellite last year and the increasingly frequent movement of Chinese naval vessels near Japan's territorial waters have also unnerved the Japanese.
Japan has emphasized the North Korean threat, trying to persuade a skeptical China that the shield would be purely defensive.
Howard Baker, the U.S. 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.
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 Aegis-equipped destroyers would try to intercept it by firing a ship-to-air missile. If that failed, Patriot missiles based around important cities would have a second chance to knock down the 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.
The United States and Japan are expected 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 Lieutenant Commander 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.
Hideaki Kaneda, director of the Okazaki Institute here and a former admiral in the Japanese military, said that 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 with the United States.
Plan could reshape balance of power
TOKYO 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 month, a few days after the U.S. 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 $1.78 billion in radar equipment to increase the nation's ability to detect ballistic missiles. Australia decided in December to join the U.S.-$ 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 say the shield is 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 that the radar sale to Taiwan sent the "wrong message" and 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 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 unproved. President George W. Bush, who withdrew from the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, made a missile shield a campaign promise in 2000.
In Europe, Britain has signed on, but interest there has been tepid compared with the reception in Asia, where the missile buildup in China and North Korea, and the proliferation of nuclear technology from Pakistan, is 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. China's successful launch of a manned satellite last year and the increasingly frequent movement of Chinese naval vessels near Japan's territorial waters have also unnerved the Japanese.
Japan has emphasized the North Korean threat, trying to persuade a skeptical China that the shield would be purely defensive.
Howard Baker, the U.S. 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.
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 Aegis-equipped destroyers would try to intercept it by firing a ship-to-air missile. If that failed, Patriot missiles based around important cities would have a second chance to knock down the 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.
The United States and Japan are expected 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 Lieutenant Commander 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.
Hideaki Kaneda, director of the Okazaki Institute here and a former admiral in the Japanese military, said that 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 with the United States.
----
US mulls placing missile defense system in Japan: report
TOKYO (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405040452.9ew27pe3.html
The United States is considering deploying a land-based missile defense system in an emergency before Japan completes its network against ballistic missile attacks in four years, a daily said Monday.
Washington has informally sounded out Tokyo on the plan aimed at protecting US military bases and other facilities in Japan from such attacks, the major Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reported.
Citing Japanese and US sources, Yomiuri said Tokyo intended to discuss the plan promptly.
The US military is considering deploying the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3), a US army surface-to-air guided missile that is capable of intercepting such missiles as the North Korean Rodong, which has a range of about 1,300 kilometers (810 miles), the report said.
Washington is considering a plan to transport antiballistic missiles and radars in C-5 transport planes from the United States to Japan when an armed attack on this country is believed to be imminent, the report added.
Japan plans to deploy in the year to March 2008 an anti-missile system consisting of the seaborne Standard Missile 3 (SM3) and the land-based PAC-3.
SM-3s intercept ballistic missiles when they reach their highest point outside of the atmosphere and then PAC-3 missiles are used to finish off the missiles that have escaped SM-3 attacks.
The PAC3 is an advanced version of the PAC-2 which Japan's air defence force is deploying at 27 anti-aircraft artillery units nationwide.
Japan has hastened to build up a missile defense system since North Korea lobbed a suspected Taepodong missile into the Pacific in 1998, shocking the region and the world.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new york
Formal Hearing on Dry Cask Nuclear Waste Storage Rejected
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
April 5, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-05-01.asp
The pleas of residents and officials throughout the New York City area for a formal adjudicatory hearing on a plan to place Indian Point Nuclear Plant's spent reactor fuel in dry cask storage have been rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
The commission said it has received received "a large number of letters" requesting an adjudicatory hearing, but has decided that its regular public information meetings will be sufficient and an adjudicatory hearing is not necessary.
Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group that wants Indian Point shut down permanently, warns that above ground dry cask storage of 1,275 tons of spent nuclear fuel, classified as high-level radioactive waste, at the power plant would be a tempting target for terrorists.
Twenty million people live within a 50 mile radius of Indian Point's reactors which are located in northern Westchester County adjacent to the Hudson River, 24 miles north of Manhattan. A large radioactive release triggered by a terrorist attack on or accident at the facility could have devastating health and economic consequences, rendering much of the Hudson River Valley, including New York City, uninhabitable, Riverkeeper warns.
When nuclear fuel can no longer sustain power production for economic or other reasons, the spent fuel is removed from the reactor and placed in a spent fuel pool. There the hot radioactive spent fuel is cooled for at least one year, and generally five years, before being put into dry casks, the NRC says.
The need for alternative storage space has increased as spent fuel pools reach their capacity, and a permanent geological repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada is still not operational.
Dry casks, which are heavily shielded containers used to store radioactive material, are currently being used for interim storage in 24 of the 103 operating U.S. nuclear power plants, and their use is expected to grow in the near future.
In a letter dated December 29, 2003, Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., which operates Indian Point, notified the NRC of its intent to store spent nuclear fuel in dry casks on the Indian Point site in Westchester County.
The NRC wrote in its formal response to the petitioners for a adjudicatory hearing that the dry cask storage design that Entergy plans to use at Indian Point has been reviewed and approved by the NRC through the regular rulemaking process, which included a chance for public comment.
NRC's approval of a cask design is provided in a Certificate of Compliance. Entergy will be required to perform evaluations to ensure that the use of the specific dry cask storage system conforms to the Certificate of Compliance and the existing license requirements for Indian Point. Entergy's evaluations will be subject to NRC inspection.
But Riverkeeper is not satisfied that the storage containers, as designed, are sufficient to prevent the release of radiation in the event of a terrorist attack. "Nuclear watchdogs - as well as government and industry officials - contend that the casks are poorly made, unreliable, and vulnerable to terrorist acts," the groups says.
In its letter of response, the NRC assures the residents and official petitioners that the commission will perform inspections during construction, preoperational testing, and operational activities to ensure that all safety requirements are met for operation of a dry cask storage facility at Indian Point.
"We understand that residents and local elected officials have questions and concerns," about the dry cask storage facility, the NRC wrote.
During the Annual Assessment meeting with Entergy on April 27, the commission plans to provide an overview of NRC licensing and oversight of dry cask storage systems.
After the April 27, 2004 meeting, the NRC plans to hold a separate public meeting in the vicinity of Indian Point to discuss the NRC's role in the this part of thegeneral licensing process, dry cask storage system technical reviews, and inspection of storage activities.
But the public meeting was originally planned for the NRC's regional headquarters in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, 156 miles from Buchanan, New York where Indian Point is located, and Riverkeeper says that only by public pressure was the information meeting even brought to the the vicinity of the plant so that residents of the area could easily attend.
NRC says the intent of this public meeting is to provide information about the commission's oversight, including a discussion of the technical requirements for dry cask storage, and the nature of site specific assessments to be completed by Entergy to demonstrate the dry cask storage system meets all requirements.
Still, Riverkeeper says a formal hearing process is needed. "While the informal public meeting that the NRC is planning will allow for public statements and will feature a Q&A session, a formal hearing process will create an official record of individual comments and will ultimately result in a much more sound system of storing spent fuel at Indian Point," the advocacy group said.
That type of formal hearing was rejected by the commission.
When spent nuclear fuel has sat underwater in a spent fuel storage pool long enough to have burned off some of its radioactivity, it is removed from the pool and placed inside stainless-steel casks.
Those casks are then sealed, filled with an inert gas and transported to an outdoor concrete pad, where they are placed inside specially designed vaults made of steel reinforced concrete. Convective air flow through vents at the top and bottom of the vaults helps ensure that the fuel remains properly cooled.
With cask some designs, the steel cylinders containing the fuel are placed vertically in a concrete vault; other designs orient the cylinders horizontally. The concrete vaults provide the radiation shielding.
Other cask designs orient the steel cylinder vertically on a concrete pad at a dry cask storage site and use both metal and concrete outer cylinders for radiation shielding.
The commission says that dry spent fuel storage in casks is "safe and environmentally sound." Over the last 20 years, there have been no radiation releases which have affected the public, no radioactive contamination, and no known or suspected attempts to sabotage spent fuel casks, the NRC says.
Spent fuel is currently kept in dry storage at independent spent fuel storage installations (ISFSIs) located at 24 power plant sites, one decommissioned power plant site at Fort St. Vrain, two plants in the process of decommissioning - Rancho Seco and Trojan - and at an interim storage facility operated by the Department of Energy located at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho.
One additional ISFSI, the General Electric-Morris Operation in Illinois, is licensed for wet storage of spent fuel.
The NRC says the casks are "robust structures designed to withstand events potentially more damaging than earthquakes, such as cask drops, tip-overs, tornadoes, and wind-driven projectiles."
To view a map of the 24 power plants with dry cask storage go to: http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/locations.html
-------- us nuc waste
Plan Would Transport Nuke Waste by Rail
By KEN RITTER
April 5, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/8362426.htm
LAS VEGAS - Radioactive waste bound for a planned national nuclear dump in Nevada would be transported by trains on a 319-mile rail line to be built across the state, the federal government announced Monday.
The department has not said what routes it intends to use to transport the waste from 127 sites across the nation to a planned rail head near Caliente, 150 miles northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah line.
Nevada officials and anti-dump activists have derided the Caliente-to-Yucca Mountain route - which loops around the vast Nevada Test Site and Nellis Air Force Base bombing range - as expensive and dangerous.
Bob Loux, state nuclear projects chief, predicted Monday that despite the announcement, the Energy Department eventually will decide to ship nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain almost exclusively by truck.
Nevada consultants say it would take nearly 10 years to acquire necessary land and build the rail line, at a cost of more than $2 billion.
Allen Benson, spokesman for the federal project, said the Energy Department believes the rail line will cost $880 million and take four years to build.
Loux said state officials will challenge the rail plan. Nevada has accused the federal government of neglecting to inform ranchers, miners and rural residents about its plan.
Making rail the preferred method for shipping nuclear waste to the Yucca Mountain dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, with the Caliente corridor as the preferred route, becomes official when the decision is published in the Federal Register, Benson said.
The Caliente-to-Yucca route was one of five originally considered. One of the rejected routes skirted Las Vegas and its 1.6 million residents.
In July 2002, the Bush administration and Congress approved Yucca Mountain as the site to store 77,000 tons of radioactive waste now held in 39 states.
-------- us politics
New to the Job, Rice Focused on More Traditional Fears
April 5, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/politics/05COND.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 4 - Condoleezza Rice was, perhaps, in the best position to galvanize the government to prevent terrorist attacks before Sept. 11, 2001. As national security adviser she sat at the nexus of the intelligence, foreign policy, defense and law enforcement agencies who shared responsibility for counterterrorism.
That is why, as the White House scrambles to defend against charges that President Bush and his advisers paid too little heed before Sept. 11 to potential for terror attacks on American soil, Ms. Rice finds herself at the center of the storm.
On Thursday, testifying publicly in front of the commission examining the attacks, she will be pressed to square her account of events - one of heightened alerts and the development of new policies to oust Al Qaeda and the Taliban - with accusations by Richard A. Clarke, who served under her as counterterrorism adviser, that the new administration paid far less attention to these threats than President Clinton's did. Her task seemed to become even more difficult on Sunday, when the leaders of the commission said that it was likely to conclude that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.
Senior White House aides concede that Mr. Bush has a huge amount riding on how Ms. Rice does. "She's the one who can make our most forceful case," one close colleague of Ms. Rice said this weekend. "They don't call her the Warrior Princess for nothing," a reference to the moniker her staff gave her after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But a review of the record, from testimony and interviews, suggests that Ms. Rice faces a daunting challenge because her own focus until Sept. 11 was usually fixed on matters other than terrorism, for reasons that had to do with her own background, her management style and the unusually close, personal nature of her relationship with Mr. Bush.
Coit Blacker, a longtime friend and colleague of Ms. Rice at Stanford who is now director of that university's Institute for International Studies, said any blind spots she had upon taking office in January 2001 might have been rooted in the fact that she emerged from a generation of scholars trained to focus on great-power politics, with terrorism seen as a troubling but subordinate element.
"It wasn't until after Sept. 11 that most of us realized that for the first time in human history," Mr. Blacker said, "a nonstate actor, a group of religious extremists at the very bottom of the international system, had the capability to inflict devastating damage on the very pinnacle of the international system."
Ms. Rice, who is 49, is widely recognized as one of the most poised and effective public advocates of the administration, and she won praise from Democrats and Republicans for her private testimony before the commission. Even so, as she prepares for her public testimony this week, friends have been warning her that her personal style - which combines fierce loyalty to the president with the abiding self-confidence of a woman who ascended to powerful jobs, including the No. 2 post at Stanford, at a young age - leaves her prone to two potential missteps.
One would be to reveal the depth of her anger toward Mr. Clarke, who she believes she protected against those who wanted to oust him because of his closeness to the Clinton White House. Directly contradicting him, her colleagues fear, would exacerbate the politically polarizing debate that has captivated Washington for more than two weeks.
The other possible minefield, they said, would be to give no ground, to offer no room for self-doubt that the issue was handled with the right urgency and the right approach.
"Her attention was surely engaged," said another former senior official, also an admirer, who dealt with her every day on these issues before and after Sept. 11. "Did she register how serious the threat was to the United States of America? I don't know; that's what she'll have to answer."
Still, the reality is that Ms. Rice has virtually no public utterances about Al Qaeda to point to as evidence that she was as engaged in the issue as she was in Mr. Bush's other foreign policy agendas.
In February 2001, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, told Congress that terrorism was the top threat facing the United States.
Even four months later, as intelligence warnings about possible attacks by Al Qaeda began to surge, a June 2001 address that Dr. Rice delivered to Council on Foreign Relations on "Foreign Policy Priorities and Challenges of the Administration" made no mention of terrorism.
And the next month, speaking with a correspondent over a cup of coffee under an outdoor cafe umbrella during Mr. Bush's first major summit of world leaders in Genoa, Italy - a meeting many feared could become a Qaeda target - she expressed concern about the frenzy of terror reports, but indicated her biggest worry was a strike in the Mideast.
By the time she reached Genoa, Ms. Rice had already changed the nature of the National Security Council. She cut the staff by roughly 10 percent, though accurate numbers are elusive because the White House office is often staffed by employees on the payroll at the State Department, the C.I.A. or other agencies.
Her concern, dating back to her days as a young member of the council staff, was that the organization should look for problems that fell through the cracks, and to adjudicate disputes between agencies. But it was the cabinet agencies, she believed, that had to act on policy, whether it was renegotiating the anti-ballistic missile treaty or applying resources to fight terrorists.
Ms. Rice also created a hierarchical, corporate style in which she largely delegated policy development to others. To oversee the creation of a new strategy on counterterrorism, she relied on her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley. For Ms. Rice, in part, that preserved time to concentrate on issues more familiar to her, to tutor Mr. Bush and to translate his instincts and decisions into policy.
Administration officials said that even in the context of fighting terrorism, Ms. Rice was reluctant to budge from other matters that were higher on her agenda. They said that concern about an attack on the United States was usually in the context of the potential for a missile from North Korea or another rogue state, buttressing the case for missile defense.
Her public speeches and interviews tended to focus on more orthodox foreign-policy issues, including relations with China (particularly after an American surveillance plane was forced down there in the early weeks of the administration); the new relationship with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader; and the threat posed by Iraq and Iran, all of which she had emphasized in a lengthy essay in the January 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs. That essay became the blueprint for Bush's presidential campaign, in which he never mentioned Osama bin Laden or the Qaeda network.
Indeed, Ms. Rice's biggest vulnerability may have been that when she came to Washington in 2001, she was determined to quickly tackle three tasks that had little to do with terrorism: refocusing the nation's diplomacy on big-power politics, chiefly Russia and China; fulfilling Mr. Bush's pledge of a missile-defense system; and steamlining the security council, getting it out of what she called "operational matters."
Her background, as she acknowledged, was as "a Europeanist." And when she briefly dropped her self-confident tone, Ms. Rice, then a professor and former provost at Stanford, said in an interview in June 2000 that as a campaign adviser to Mr. Bush, she found herself "pressed to understand parts of the world that have not been part of my scope."
Among those relatively unfamiliar issues was the rise of radical Islamic movements in the Mideast and South Asia. Ms. Rice has said "we did everything we knew how to do" to combat terrorism in the months before the attack.
Ms. Rice openly concedes that her world view, and her priorities, have greatly changed since Sept. 11. The N.S.C. is now larger and more operational than ever, particularly since Ms. Rice, unhappy with the way the Defense and State Departments were running occupied Iraq, pulled the issue back into the White House under a new organization that reports directly to her.
A former senior administration official who has worked closely with Ms. Rice over the years painted this retrospective portrait of her as she took office in 2001: "She's a quick study, she's very smart, she has an orderly mind, and she has great self-confidence. On the other hand, she suffers in that she doesn't have a really broad background, especially in the history of different areas. So she's good on Russia, pretty good on Europe, but it drops off pretty sharply from there."
As she moved into her corner office in the West Wing of the White House, the need to retain expertise on issues related to terrorism was part of the reason she asked Mr. Clarke, President Clinton's counterterrorism chief on the N.S.C. staff, to stay on in that post. Even so, Mr. Clarke recalls, she also suggested at their first meeting that some of his day-to-day duties should be moved back to government departments, where she thought they belonged.
To what extent any failures in the Bush White House's response to terrorism should be laid at Ms. Rice's feet is a matter of some debate. Her insistence that the National Security Council play less of an operational role than in the past was one reason for the prickly relationship between her and Mr. Clarke, who as the senior director for counterterrorism had less access to high-level officials under Mr. Bush than he did under President Clinton.
Junior in age and experience to advisers like Colin L. Powell, the secretary of state, and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the defense secretary, Ms. Rice was also seen by some aides as more deferential than some of her predecessors. But as a friend, confidante and sometime workout partner as well as adviser to the president, Ms. Rice enjoyed by far the closest personal ties with Mr. Bush of any foreign-policy adviser.
"She's established a very good relationship with the president, and that is critical," said Brent Scowcroft, who as national security adviser under President Bush's father hired Ms. Rice onto the security council staff as an expert on the Soviet Union. "If you don't have that relationship, you're nowhere."
She told her staff in the opening days of the administration that she had an open door and asked for memorandums describing the most urgent problems facing them. Mr. Clarke responded with a lengthy e-mail message on Jan. 25 that he describes as presenting a full plan to combat Al Qaeda. Ms. Rice viewed it differently. "It was a hodgepodge of ideas about how to make life miserable for Osama bin Laden," said an official who has reviewed the still-classified memorandum.
The turning over of such issues to Mr. Hadley, Ms. Rice's alter ego in the N.S.C., has been a common practice in the White House. Precisely organized and deeply connected to the neoconservative wing of the administration, Mr. Hadley is a quiet bureaucratic operator who has said he knows it is his place to operate behind the scenes. He once joked that a middle-aged lawyer "shouldn't expect to have Condi's star power."
Mr. Clarke clearly chafed under the new management style. In the Clinton White House he dealt often with the "principals," the secretary of defense and the secretary of state, among others; in the Bush White House he was expected to deal with Mr. Hadley and Ms. Rice. He frequently skipped their morning meeting of senior directors of the N.S.C. He said he was too busy.
"Condi saw it as a dis," said one of her closest aides.
She sent him two stiff e-mail messages. "Look, I know how to manage people," Ms. Rice told reporters last month, "and I asked him to come once. We continued to have a problem. I asked him to come twice. We didn't have a problem after that."
-------- MILITARY
Indian, French navies to hold biggest ever exercise off Goa
BOMBAY (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405181852.ph0mxfpe.html
The Indian and French navies will hold their biggest ever joint exercise off the coast of Goa starting Tuesday, a French consulate statement said.
"Varuna 2004" will cover the entire spectrum of naval exercises such as anti-air warfare, anti-submarine warfare and air combat.
It will begin with the French fleet moving out of the Arabic-Persian Gulf to be met by the Indian fleet, and the two will combine in a wide range of wargames off the western state of Goa until April 15.
It represents the culmination of a series of Indo-French naval exercises initiated in 1998.
"It will enable our two navies which are of comparable sizes to undergo a sophisticated training and operate together," the statement said.
"Varuna 2004 will be unique by the number of aircraft and vessels involved by both the nations. An equal number of six vessels each will participate and will be placed alternately under French and Indian command."
The French will be represented by a huge aero-naval group led by the 40,000-tonne nuclear powered aircraft carrier "Charles de Gaulle", which can hold up to 40 aircraft.
-------- africa
RWANDA Genocide death toll is put at 937,000
April 05, 2004
Washington Times
World Scene
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
KIGALI - The 1994 Rwandan genocide claimed 937,000 victims according to a census the Rwandan government conducted in 2001, a Cabinet minister said yesterday.
Estimates of the genocide's death toll long have conflicted, ranging from 500,000 to 1 million people killed. The U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda estimates about 800,000 Rwandans were killed between April and July 1994.
Robert Bayigamba, Rwanda's minister for youth, culture and sports, said the figure could climb much higher after the completion of trials in which many defendants are expected to testify.
-------- arms
The planes of tomorrow
By Joab Jackson
04/05/04;
Vol. 19 No. 1 Washington Technology
http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/19_1/emerging-tech/23177-1.html
Networked, unmanned aircraft to play strong military role The skies of tomorrow's battlefields will be darkened by swarms of networked, self-propelled attack aircraft, if research that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants comes to fruition.
And the Defense Department will need assistance from systems integrators to make this happen.
At the annual DARPATech conference last month in Anaheim, Calif., program managers described the new types of technologies the agency wants to fund with its $3 billion research budget. Their plans indicate that they expect unmanned aerial vehicles to play a strong role in future military operations.
For example, a soon-to-be-released DARPA solicitation will call for an integrator to broker the development of a new operating system, called the Common Operating System, to be used by UAVs being developed by the Boeing Co. of Chicago and Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles.
"The key to the successful development of the Common Operating System is collaboration between the two prime contractors and the technology contributors in this consortium," said DARPA Program Manager Marc Pitarys. "The role of the integrator-broker is to be proactive in the integration process, mitigating the effects of the competitive forces between the two primes."
DARPA plans to award a contract for the integration project early this summer, Pitarys said.
Program managers also said the agency will build on successes, such as the reconnaissance support provided by UAVs in Iraq. Global Hawk and Predator UAVs, developed in part by DARPA, surveyed battle areas and sent back intelligence data. Human operators remotely control both.
DARPA wants to take the next step in what it sees as UAV evolution: unified, networked teams of aircraft systems. In October 2003, DARPA, the Air Force and the Navy set up the Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems program with a four-year, $5 billion budget.
J-UCAS will oversee development of "a collection of unmanned, weaponized, high-performance aircraft operating together in dangerous, hostile airspace and fed by information from a variety of other battlefield sources," said Mike Francis, J-UCAS program officer.
The operating system will provide a crucial element for these vehicles, Pitarys said. Rather than use an existing operating system, DARPA will fund development of one for networked UAVs. The Common Operating System will handle command, control, communications, weapons management and mission planning.
The Common Operating System will not be like other operating systems on the market, such as Unix or Linux, Pitarys said. Instead of controlling servers and desktop operating systems, this operating system will control all the parts of the aircraft, such as weapons, sensors, autonomic control and communications links.
It also will provide technical interfaces to command and control systems and other unmanned vehicles through networks such as the Global Information Grid and the ultra-high-frequency Link-16 of the Global Command and Control System.
"The system has to be interoperable [with other Defense Department elements] as well as interoperable with outside elements," Pitarys said.
The operating system will control the unmanned combat air vehicles known as X-45 that Boeing is developing, and the larger X-47 that Northrop Grumman is developing. Last October, the development programs for both crafts were folded into the J-UCAS office.
The operating system developers, he said, will work in a consortiumlike environment. The "integrator-broker" will coordinate input from Boeing, Northrop Grumman and other technical contributors.
"The J-UCAS enterprise requires a level of integration far exceeding what would be needed for individual platforms," Pitarys said.
UNMANNED GROUND VEHICLES
Aircraft are not the only vehicles that the Defense Department wants to put on automatic pilot. The Defense Department has stringent, if long-range, orders from Congress to run a third of all ground combat vehicles, such as supply trucks, unmanned by 2015.
Ground vehicles that defense teams can drive remotely or that are self-directed would take on many of a soldier's dangerous, dirty or dull tasks. Small sensor-heavy craft, able to stay alert far longer than human spies, also would conduct reconnaissance missions.
And in keeping with its goal of network-centric warfare, the Defense Department wants to network all these new ground and air vehicles so information they collect can be shared across units with greater reliability than via today's networks.
"As platforms enter a battle zone, the network must create itself, adjust and adapt to conditions as they occur, all without human interaction," said DARPA Director Anthony Tether. Combat networks "must bring new platforms into the network as they arrive and automatically drop departing platforms."
Why Uzbek women opt for bombs
Amid crackdown on Muslims, wives and mothers joined last week's attacks.
By Scott Peterson
The Christian Science Monitor,
April 05, 2004 edition
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0405/p01s04-wosc.html
TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN - Angry and hopeless, Latifa Nabieva threatens to set fire to herself - like an increasing number of frustrated Uzbek women - unless her men are released.
Ms. Nabieva says she has had enough, following the arrest on terrorism charges of two sons and a nephew - all devout Muslims - since 2000. The final straw came in January, when police smashed in her front door, beat her husband bloody, and imprisoned him, too.
Shortly before a wave of suicide attacks shocked Uzbekistan last week, leaving 42 dead - several of the 33 militants who died were female suicide bombers - Mrs. Nabieva fired off a letter to the authorities, vowing to immolate herself in front of top police officials.
A government crackdown against Muslims has led to the arrest of some 7,000 accused militants; torture, using a term of the United Nations, is "systematic." The result is a growing level of anger among Uzbekistan's Muslim wives and mothers that may serve as a funnel for more female suicide bombers.
"I am very angry, and feel hatred toward the police and government ... and I am ready to burn myself," says Nabieva.
"There are thousands of women like me; [some] may be willing to protest in this way."
So far, Nabieva has drawn a line: "Suicide is not allowed in Islam, and it is one of the things that holds me back," says the head-scarved matriarch, adding that taking other lives with hers is not an option. She condemns the recent attacks as "terrorist acts" forbidden by her faith.
Analysts draw parallels to the recent phenomenon of female suicide bombers deployed by Palestinian militants against Israel, and Chechen rebels against Russia - the so-called Chechen "black widows," whose husbands have been killed by Russian forces.
They also point out that Uzbekistan has a history of female suicide - as an extreme way to protest domestic violence or fiscal hardship - that goes back centuries.
Not all angry Uzbek women draw the line where Nabieva does. Across town, another mother with imprisoned relatives declined to give her name for fear of retribution from the regime. She says: "If I'm going to kill myself, I'll take one of those [police officers] with me."
Such sentiment does not surprise Uzbeks, since uncompromising government efforts to stamp out any sign of Islamic militancy date from the late 1990s, and were stepped up after 1999 bomb blasts in the capital killed 16. It remains unclear, however, who may have been able to link such distraught, ready-to-die Uzbek women with an armed militant network.
"We condemn [the attacks], but whoever was behind it, we can only blame the government," says Husniddin Nazarov, the son of a well-known religious cleric who disappeared in 1998. "If they start again this kind of repression, there may be an even bigger reaction. Many religious people have been arrested, and now the government should stop and think [how] they've pushed people to the edge. If dozens are committing suicide now, maybe later there could be thousands. It's a real threat to the government."
Changing gears may not be easy for a former Soviet republic that inherited its communist party boss as president. Mr. Karimov has been feted by Washington since the 2001 Afghanistan campaign as a "strategic partner" that provides a key logistics base to American troops. The US continues to condemn widespread human rights abuses, but so far with limited effect.
"The political elites in Uzbekistan were trained in the Soviet period, and there is still a belief that repression can work to hold onto power, to keep potential rivals afraid and at bay," says Acacia Shields, author of a Human Rights Watch report released here last week called "Creating Enemies of the State."
Choosing that tactic may stem from the regime's success in crushing all political opposition in the early 1990s, by banning and forcing key players and groups into exile, says Ms. Shields. Public reaction has been muted.
"Western observers look at levels of Uzbek repression, and expected some uprising, but what we've seen in the last six years is a very quiet population that is not ready for that," adds Shields.
Accused Islamists have been killed in custody, and their relatives threatened with rape. "Uzbekistan has almost become synonymous with torture," Shields says, but until last week, "we've seen no violence so far. It would represent a dramatic departure."
But some Uzbeks may now have been pushed to that point. The country's prosecutor general Friday night displayed an array of explosives, ready suicide belts, several hundred detonation devices, cash, and fake passports meant for use by the 33 dead militants.
"I think the Chechen [black widow] phenomenon can happen here," says Iskandar Khudayberganov, a pro-democracy activist. "Now people are so repressed there is no other choice - [they think] it's better to die than live such a life," says Mr. Khudayberganov. "Before, the government believed that repression and spreading fear will help them keep control. But ... you can only be frightened so far."
While there is widespread anger among Uzbek Muslim women about the fate of their relatives - and even a history of suicide, that has in the past translated into cases of self-immolation in police offices - hooking up with militants was not easy.
"Where could an ordinary woman find these explosives?" says Rana Azimova, a human rights activist. "Muslim Uzbek women do not commit such acts. Women with men arrested ask God for patience, and expect a better life in Heaven."
Still, rights activists say that female suicide is prevalent. Some estimate a yearly toll of 60 suicides; in the province of Djizzakh alone, Ms. Azimova says there were 27 cases last year. Such incidents usually occur in private, as a result of domestic violence or financial hardship. In one case, a woman killed herself in protest because her husband refused to let her watch Western soap operas.
Uzbeks say such actions with fire have pre-Islamic Zoroastrian roots, the religious system of the Persians dating back to the 6th century BC.
Connecting the dots may not prove too difficult in a nation where Uzbeks say that many applauded the attacks on police forces despised for corruption and a heavy hand. The regime's reaction - to crack down, or to moderate - will frame the long-term result.
"This is the government's product," says Tolib Yokubov, head of the Uzbek Human Rights Society. "Cursing the president has become common; many people feel sympathy toward the attackers. It doesn't matter who is behind those blasts, but now people know how to confront the government, to protest."
----
Poll result puts peace plans in doubt
By Mark Baker
The Age
April 5, 2004
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/04/1081017034294.html
The future of Sri Lanka's fragile peace process has been thrown into doubt after voters in weekend elections spurned the ruling coalition that had secured a ceasefire and was shaping a deal to end two decades of civil war.
Opposition parties aligned with President Chandrika Kumaratunga, which have vowed to roll back concessions to Tamil Tiger rebels, claimed victory after winning close to a majority of seats in the national Parliament.
With more than two-thirds of votes counted by early yesterday, the opposition United People's Front Alliance was projected to win about 110 seats in the 225-seat Parliament, compared with 81 for the United National Party of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. The alliance had captured 47 per cent of the vote against 37.9 per cent for the UNP.
"This is a clear repudiation of the Prime Minister and his Government," declared presidential spokesman Harim Peiris, who claimed the alliance would easily secure the support of the few extra MPs needed to govern. "The alliance has received the people's mandate to form the next government."
The electoral commission delayed the announcement of final voting figures after reports of polling irregularities in several parts of the country.
The results are a vindication for Mrs Kumaratunga's controversial decision to force the snap election - Sri Lanka's third in four years - after she suspended Parliament, seized control of several key government ministries and briefly declared a state of emergency last November.
The President, who accused the Wickremesinghe Government of making too many concessions to the rebels, insists she wants to continue with the peace talks and the Tigers have said they will deal with whoever forms the next government.
But analysts expect a volatile future for the peace process, with the opposition victory built largely on an unholy alliance between Mrs Kumaratunga's Freedom Party and the Marxist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, which strongly opposes the granting of autonomy to areas of northern and eastern Sri Lanka under rebel control.
A new party formed by Buddhist monks, who have a long history of defending the rights of the country's Sinhalese majority over the Hindu Tamil minority, is also tipped to win at least seven seats, giving it an influential voice in the new Parliament.
The prospects for peace, already shaken by months of bickering between the President and the Prime Minister, are also threatened by a serious rift in the ranks of the Tigers after the commander of rebel forces in the eastern region broke away with thousands of his fighters last month.
The Tamil National Alliance, which is controlled by the rebel leadership, is predicted to win up to 20 seats after capturing as much as 90 per cent of the votes in some of the Tamil-dominated areas. But election monitors accused the Tigers of directing widespread fraud and intimidation.
Electoral Commissioner Dayananda Dissanayake ordered the withholding of results from two districts in the central and eastern parts of the country after reports of serious irregularities. He indicated that fresh ballots might have to be ordered.
Presidential spokesman Mr Peiris said the results vindicated Mrs Kumaratunga's stand against the Wickremesinghe Government's mishandling of the peace talks and economy.
"Clearly the President has been critical of the way the Prime Minister has been handling the peace process and I think the people have probably agreed," he said.
-------- business
Boeing back in Pentagon's good graces
April 05, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040405-094022-2885r.htm
WASHINGTON, April 5 -- Chicago's Boeing is about to regain its ability to bid for lucrative U.S. Air Force contracts, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
In particular, the Air Force's decision to return Boeing's "presently responsible contractor" status makes the aerospace company eligible for a share of government rocket work valued at as much as $5 billion through 2010.
An announcement of the company's rehabilitation is expected in the next several weeks.
As part of a related agreement, Boeing said it will pay the Air Force's investigative costs, implement various ethics programs and pledge to provide regular updates to the Pentagon on compliance efforts.
A settlement wouldn't resolve pending Justice Department criminal and civil investigations, likely to take many more months to play out and could cost Boeing $250 million or more in fines and penalties.
----
US to lift bar on Boeing bids for government rocket work: report
NEW YORK (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405173841.fgnx0blj.html
The US Air Force is preparing to end an eight month suspension on Boeing Co. bidding for government rocket contracts, the Wall Street Journal said Monday.
Air Force and Boeing officials expect to announce an agreement in the next few weeks that paves the way for the number two US defense contractor to resume bidding for contracts valued at up to five billion dollars up to 2010, the daily said citing confidential sources.
The Air Force stripped Boeing of one billion dollars in launch contracts and suspended three of the company's units from bidding on new rocket business in July 2003, over an industrial espionage scandal.
Officials took the step after concluding that Boeing improperly came by thousands of pages of documents from rival Lockheed Martin Corp., that gave Boeing an unfair advantage in the bidding process for a rocket launch contract.
Under the deal reported by the Journal, Boeing will pay the costs of the Air Force probe into the espionage affair, estimated at several million dollars.
It will also implement ethics programs and provide regular updates to the authorities on compliance efforts, the Journal said. The report comes as senior Boeing officials work to repair rifts with the Pentagon and lawmakers following a series of scandals that have rocked the company, and either cost it or jeopardised lucrative government contracts.
A Boeing Co. official could not immediately be reached for comment.
----
Contracts Awarded
States News Service
Monday, April 5, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50489-2004Apr4?language=printer
Anteon International Corp. of Fairfax won a $34.9 million contract from the Army to support the reorganization of all combat divisions based in the United States.
Lockheed Martin's Maritime Systems & Sensors Division of Manassas won a $24.25 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for engineering/technical services and associated materials for the design and development of upgrades and systems support for the acoustic rapid commercial off-the-shelf insertion program.
Pragmatics Inc. of McLean won a contract valued at up to $15.23 million from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Northrop Grumman's Defense Mission Division of Reston won a $13.08 million contract from the Army for professional, administrative and management support services.
Team Logistics J.V. of Fairfax won a $12.25 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command's Aircraft Division for maintenance planning and design interface technical/management support services.
Software Productivity Consortium of Herndon won a contract valued at up to $10 million from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for management, organizational and business improvement services.
EDO Professional Services of Arlington won a $9.29 million contract from the Navy for marine mammal engineering services.
Innovative Concepts Inc. of McLean won an $8.97 million contract from the Army's Aviation and Missile Command for a software upgrade of the improved data modem.
William V. Walsh Construction Co. Inc. of Rockville won a $7.32 million contract from the Architect of the Capitol for construction of the National Garden at the Botanic Garden.
QED Systems Inc. of Virginia Beach won a $6.64 million contract from the Navy for mission essential engineering and technical services for ships engineering planning support services.
BAE Systems Technologies Inc. of Rockville won a $6.43 million contract from the Naval Air Systems Command's Aircraft Division for engineering and technical support for air-traffic control and landing systems.
Maden Tech Consulting Inc. of Arlington won a $5.77 million contract from the Navy for scientific, engineering and technical assistance support services.
American Truck Corp. of McLean won a $5.59 million contract from the Marine Corps' Systems Command for logistics vehicle system replacement cargo variant prototype vehicles.
Remtech Services Inc. of Newport News, Va., won a $5.41 million contract from the Army for information services.
CACI International of Chantilly won a contract valued at up to $4.04 million from the Navy's Office of Naval Research for hardware/software engineering, system analysis and data collection analysis.
Innovative Concepts Inc. of McLean won a $4 million contract from the Army's Aviation and Missile Command for miscellaneous communication equipment.
ICF Consulting of Washington won a $2.7 million contract from the Homeland Security Department for the Critical Infrastructure Protection Plan.
Technology & Management Services Inc. of Gaithersburg won a contract valued at up to $2 million from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for energy services.
Jaguar Properties LLC of Washington won a $1.64 million contract from the General Services Administration's public buildings service for lease or rental of facilities.
Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock Corp. of Norfolk won a $1.63 million contract from the Navy's Military Sealift Command for maintenance, repair and rebuilding of equipment.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum Heights won a $1.63 million contract from the Air Force Materiel Command for power transformers.
FGM Inc. of Dulles won a $1.3 million contract from the Navy for command control translator database research and development.
Technology Concepts & Design Inc. of Alexandria won a contract valued at up to $1.25 million from the General Services Administration's federal supply service for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Dimensions International Inc. of Alexandria won a $754,677 contract from the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command for research and development services.
Raytheon Co. of Baltimore won a $683,103 contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for electronic components.
Electro-Tec Corp. of Blacksburg, Va., won a $452,900 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for slip ring assemblies.
Chesapeake Sciences Corp. of Millersville, Md., won a $446,894 contract from the Navy's Office of Naval Research for enhanced acoustic intercept array for torpedo detection research and development.
Norfolk ShipRepair & Drydock Inc. of Norfolk won a $397,582 contract from the Homeland Security Department 's Coast Guard for drydock and repairs to the USCGC Bainbridge Island.
Tesoro Corp. of Virginia Beach won a $372,107 contract from the Homeland Security Department's Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit for miscellaneous interior and exterior building repairs.
Unisys Corp. of McLean won a $343,653 contract from NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center for information technology services, including telecommunications services.
Motion Control Systems Inc. of New River, Va., won a $313,046 contract from the Navy for motor controls.
Northrop Grumman's Electronic Systems Division of Linthicum Heights won a $273,591 contract from the Air Force Materiel Command for circuit card assemblies.
Leadership Training Associates LLC of Baltimore won a $233,500 contract from the Homeland Security Department's Secret Service for the Leadership School and performance management courses.
Safety Tech International Inc. of Frederick won a $208,351 contract from the Army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command for safety and rescue equipment.
Eagle Fire Inc. of Richmond won a $174,130 contract from the Navy's Facilities Engineering Command for maintenance to fire protection systems.
MCIS Corp. of Gaithersburg won a $160,790 contract from the Navy's Military Sealift Command for computer hardware, software, training and preventive and corrective maintenance.
National Cooperative Bank Development Corp. of Washington won a $160,000 contract from the National Council on Disability for long-term services and supports financing and systems reform.
Syntegra Federal Inc. of Rockville won a $159,796 contract from NASA's George C. Marshall Space Flight Center for information technology services, including telecommunications services.
PerformTech Inc. of Alexandria won a $125,000 contract from the Transportation Department's Federal Highway Administration for federal aid training.
INTEK Marine Technology LLC of Fairfax won a contract valued at up to $125,000 from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for cleaning equipment, accessories, janitorial supplies, cleaning chemicals and sorbents.
Alamo Flag Co. of Falls Church won a contract valued at up to $125,000 from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for signs and safety zone products, trophies, awards, promotional items, trade show displays and exhibit systems.
Sunshine Home Services Inc. of Arnold, Md., won a contract valued at up to $125,000 from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for cleaning equipment, accessories, janitorial supplies, cleaning chemicals and sorbents.
Breakell Inc. of Roanoke won a $106,960 contract from the Veterans Affairs Department for building repair services.
Davis Instruments LLC of Baltimore won a $94,395 contract from the Defense Supply Center for power sensors.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Charlottesville, Va., won a $65,447 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for power supply equipment.
Comptech Corp. of Rockville won a $65,209 contract from the Defense Supply Center for engine coolant radiators.
Cenna International Corp. of Waldorf won a $61,672 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for alternating current motors.
Blue Ridge Diesel Injection Inc. of Salem, Va., won a $59,394 contract from the Defense General Supply Center for direct current generators.
These contracts were awarded by the federal government to companies in Maryland, Virginia and the District. For more information, call States News Service at 202-628-3100, ext. 266.
--------
Federal Contracts Defense Department Orders Viisage Printers
By Anitha Reddy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page E04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50488-2004Apr4.html
The Defense Department agreed to buy 1,700 printers from Viisage Technology Inc. to print up to 10 million employee identification cards that could eventually store a range of biometric information, from fingerprints to retinal scans.
Bernard C. Bailey, president and chief executive of the Littleton, Mass., company, said a major reason for the award was Viisage's acquisition in February of Trans Digital Technologies Corp., an Arlington company with printers that are used by the State Department to produce passports.
That kind of experience helps when executives are trying to convince government officials that their printers are up to the task of producing documents with high-security requirements, Bailey said. The contract would be worth $6 million to $10 million once cards and ink are ordered, he said.
"This just further validates the value of that acquisition," Bailey said.
Viisage paid $49 million in stock and cash for Trans Digital, which has 30 employees.
Shares of Viisage jumped 22 percent on Friday, to $9.36, on the news. Last year, Viisage lost $17.7 million (26 cents per share) and had revenue of $37.4 million.
The cards are part of the Common Access Card Program, and 4 million are already in use at the Defense Department. Winning the Defense Department card contract might give Viisage an edge when it goes after other identification card jobs, Bailey said. One closely watched identification card program is the Homeland Security Department's plans to issue cards to all transportation workers, such as airline crew members and truck drivers. The department has not awarded any contracts for printers for those cards, Bailey said, adding that 20 million to 30 million cards eventually could be issued under the program.
Viisage's acquisition of Trans Digital and its work for the Defense Department reflect a push to expand beyond its two major business areas, facial recognition technology and driver's license production. The company printed 25 million driver's licenses last year, Bailey said, including licenses for the state of Maryland.
--------
Paper: Air Force to Allow Boeing to Bid
April 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Boeing-Rockets.html
CHICAGO (AP) -- The U.S. Air Force is expected to allow The Boeing Co. to begin bidding on government rocket contracts again in the next few weeks after banning the company from doing so since last July for illicitly using a rival's records to help win deals, a published report said Monday.
The Wall Street Journal, citing unidentified sources, said senior officials from Boeing and the Air Force are putting the final touches on an agreement that would restore the company's full privileges as a military contractor.
Boeing will pay the Air Force's investigative costs and commit to regular updates to the Pentagon on compliance with new ethics policies it implemented after last year's scandal, the report said, citing industry and government officials.
The deal would make Boeing eligible again for government rocket work that could total as much as $5 billion through the end of the decade. The Air Force's suspension of Boeing last year left Lockheed Martin as the government's only launch contractor.
However, the agreement would not resolve Justice Department criminal and civil investigations, which the Journal said could cost Boeing $250 million or more in fines and penalties.
Air Force spokeswoman Angela Billings declined to comment on the report.
Boeing spokesman Dan Beck said the company has been working with the Air Force toward an agreement but he could not discuss the terms or a timetable. He said Boeing has, among other steps, created an Office of Internal Governance for ethics and procurement issues and revised its employee training and outreach.
``We've worked closely with the Air Force ever since the suspension last year to provide them with everything they needed,'' Beck said.
Boeing took unspecified personnel actions in the wake of the scandal, in which employees are alleged to have illicitly acquired and hidden from the Air Force thousands of pages of documents of Lockheed Martin Co. in order to gain a competitive edge in bidding for contracts. The Chicago-based company has consistently blamed since-dismissed employees for the wrongdoing.
The Air Force stripped Boeing of $1 billion in launch contracts and suspended three of the company's units from bidding on new rocket business.
Air Force officials initially said the punishment was likely to last only a few months, pending completion of related criminal and civil proceedings. But federal prosecutors have progressed more slowly than expected, according to the Journal.
Boeing shares rose 70 cents to close at $42.54 on the New York Stock Exchange.
On the Net:
www.boeing.com
--------
Air Force Could Lift Boeing Sanctions
April 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/business/business-arms-boeing-report.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Air Force on Monday said it could soon lift rocket launch sanctions against Boeing Co. (BA.N), as the Pentagon forecast a 55-percent surge in the cost of launching spy satellites to $32 billion.
Lt. Gen. Brian Arnold, commander of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, has predicted a decision ``very soon'' to lift the sanctions, imposed last July after investigators found Boeing illegally obtained over 25,000 documents from rival Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT.N) during a 1998 competition.
Art Haubold, spokesman for the National Reconnaissance Office, whose satellites are launched by Boeing and Lockheed rockets, said no date had yet been set, but a decision was expected within the next month.
Haubold said Boeing could bid for a third series of 20 rocket launches under its Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program once the sanctions issue was resolved.
The ``Buy Three'' contracts were expected to cost over $2 billion, but an expected increase of 20-50 percent could drive the price as high as $3 billion, analysts say.
Air Force Undersecretary Peter Teets last month said Boeing had responded ``in a strong way'' to avert new ethics problems, and the Air Force was working out an administrative agreement with Boeing that would allow sanctions to be lifted.
Teets is slated to meet this month with acting Pentagon acquisitions chief Michael Wynne, who must certify the program's necessity to avoid a congressionally mandated shutdown when a program's costs run over by 25 percent.
The Pentagon late on Monday said overall costs for the EELV program were expected to balloon by 55.5 percent to $32.3 billion, mainly due to the collapse of the commercial rocket launch market, which the companies had expected to help offset the cost of government rocket launches.
It said the resulting price increases would add $7.5 billion to program costs, with inflation adding another $3 billion, and changes needed to accommodate the growing weight of the spy satellites driving the price up by another billion.
Boeing spokesman Dan Beck confirmed the company's discussions with the Air Force on ending the sanctions, but could not say when the agreement would be completed, or what its terms would be. He said Boeing had implemented many changes to prevent future ethics violations.
-------- china
Taiwan Opposition Wants Election Voided
April 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Taiwan-Election.html
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) -- Taiwan's opposition asked the High Court on Monday to nullify last month's presidential election. President Chen Shui-bian urged rival China to begin talking to him and accept that there's a rising ``Taiwan identity.''
The opposition request for a new election was issued about a week after the losing candidate, Lien Chan of the Nationalist Party, petitioned for a recount of the March 20 vote. Lien claims the election was marred by irregularities and the unexplained shooting of Chen, who narrowly won the race.
Lien was not expected to win under a recount, and his push for a court ruling for re-elections was seen as an attempt to keep his political hopes alive.
But the process could drag on for months, and analysts have said that Lien lacks solid evidence for a new election.
One of Lien's lawyers, Lee Fu-dan, told reporters that the president broke the law by holding an unprecedented referendum on the same day as the presidential election. The referendum focused on rival China's missile threat and starting peace talks with the communist neighbor.
During the campaign, Lien complained that the referendum was illegal, but he didn't challenge its legality at the time. Many believe that Lien feared he would appear to be undemocratic if he blocked the referendum -- the first such islandwide vote in Taiwan's history.
The opposition has also alleged that the March 19 shooting that grazed Chen's stomach and hit Vice President Annette Lu's knee unfairly affected the election by giving Chen last-minute sympathy votes. Chen won by a margin of 0.2 percent, or only 30,000 ballots.
Hours after the shooting, Lien opposed delaying the election because he said he was confident Taiwanese voters would not allow their emotions to influence their decisions. Many polls also said that Lien was leading the race.
But Lien's lawyer said on Monday that officials should have postponed the vote because ``there were many rampant violations of the law and the Central Election Committee didn't deal with them properly.''
The Nationalists listed some of these alleged violations in a statement that claimed the president misled voters by withholding information about his injury. The statement also accused Chen of not promptly telling the public that he was not seriously harmed.
The presidential office has said that it was being low key about the shooting because Chen didn't want to be accused of using it for campaign purposes.
Lien's petition to nullify the election also alleged that after the shooting, an unknown number of soldiers and police were placed on special alert and were unable to vote. The government denies this, but Lien has demanded that an independent task force be created to investigate the matter.
As Lien sought a new vote, the president discussed China relations with visiting U.S. academics. Chen said that his election victory should pressure Chinese leaders to begin talking to him. So far, Beijing has refused to deal with Chen, labeling him a separatist who rejects the sacred Chinese goal of unification. The two sides split amid civil war in 1949.
``After this election, the Beijing authorities could no longer regard us as a minority government and be reluctant to deal with us,'' Chen said.
The election reflected a rise in ``Taiwan identity,'' which has gained momentum partly because Beijing has refused to drop its claim of sovereignty over the self-ruled island and sought instead to isolate Taiwan, Chen said.
``Recent opinion polls have indicated more than 50 percent of people consider themselves Taiwanese and not Chinese,'' Chen said. ``If the Beijing authorities could not adjust their Taiwan policy, things would not turn out to favor them more.''
-------- europe
EU defense ministers to mull joint military body, Bosnia force
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405030052.lf7qh96y.html
EU defense ministers meet Monday in Brussels for a two-day informal meeting to discuss a landmark joint military body under preparation and possible leadership of the peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.
The EU military planning agency, a move toward unprecedented cooperation between the countries, raised eyebrows in NATO and Washington when it was approved last December.
The unit will consist of a few dozen military officers based with the EU's existing military staff in Brussels and focus on planning and carrying out operations which NATO would prefer to avoid.
Diplomatic sources said the EU "still has to agree on what its ambitions are" for the cell, which is being overseen by the bloc's foreign policy envoy Javier Solana.
The defense ministers, who are meeting for the first time since Ireland took over the rotating EU presidency in January, are also to discuss a related plan to create rapid-reaction battle groups to deploy to global hotspots.
That initiative, announced late last year by France, Germany and Britain, is based directly on the experience of the EU's first-ever military mission outside Europe, a French-led force that helped quell fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo last summer.
According to initial plan, 1,500-strong troop contingents would be deployable within 15 days and able to remain on the ground for a month.
Other EU countries are expected to be invited to join in the initiative, which are due to be finalized by the end of the Irish EU presidency in June.
Also on the agenda in Brussels are plans for the European Union to take over the Stabilization Force in Bosnia (SFOR), currently headed by NATO.
The EU launched its first-ever peacekeeping operation in Macedonia, last March.
The ministers will also cover defense issues related to terrorism, the war in Iraq, and recent ethnic violence in Kosovo, where NATO heads peacekeeping forces.
--------
Spain Says Blast Killed Head of Terror Cell
Four Dead Believed To Be Group's Core
By Pamela Rolfe
The Washington Post
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50284-2004Apr4.html
MADRID, April 4 -- The alleged ringleader of the March 11 train bombings in Madrid was among four suspects who blew themselves up Saturday night as police stormed an apartment where they were hiding, Spain's interior minister said Sunday.
Sarhane Ben Abdelmajid Fakhet, known as "The Tunisian," was killed after he and other suspects detonated explosives in the four-story building, Interior Minister Angel Acebes said. Fakhet had been the target of an international manhunt launched after arrest warrants were issued last week for him and five Moroccan suspects.
About 200 copper detonators and 22 pounds of Goma 2 Eco explosives were discovered in the apartment in Leganes, a suburb of Madrid, after the explosion on Saturday night, Acebes said. The explosives were similar to those used in the bombings last month and, Acebes said, an indication that the suspects were preparing to attack again.
As many as four suspects might have escaped the building shortly before the explosion, witnesses told authorities. But Acebes said that the nucleus of the group that organized the train attacks, which killed 191 people and wounded 1,800, had been eliminated with the deaths Saturday.
"The core of the group that carried out the attacks is either arrested or dead in yesterday's collective suicide, including the head of the operative commando" unit, Acebes said at a news conference.
Abdennabi Kounjaa, a Moroccan also sought in connection with the attack, was identified as among those who died in the explosion, officials said. The body of Asri Rifaat Anouar, who was not on the list of wanted suspects, was also found among the remains. The fourth suspect, who has not been identified, was wearing a belt loaded with 41/2 pounds of dynamite, Acebes said.
A special forces police officer was killed and 15 police officers were wounded in the explosion, which followed a two-hour shootout between police and the suspects in the apartment building they had used as a base.
The slain officer, Javier Torrontera, was the first casualty of the elite group since it was created in 1978. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar and Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero attended a funeral for the officer on Sunday.
The events Saturday took place a day after police found a package bomb under the track of the high-speed train that links Madrid and Seville. Police said the detonator and explosives used in that bomb were the same as those used in the March 11 attack.
Meanwhile in Leganes, tension continued to run high Sunday as police evacuated a building near the blast site and cordoned off the area after finding a backpack filled with explosives and a detonator.
"Rage, impotence and fear. That's how I feel," said one resident, who declined to give his name. "If I see you're carrying a backpack, I'm going to get away from you. That's the mood now."
Residents of the building the suspects had used said they did not know much about the men, who had moved in three weeks ago. But sources close to the investigation said people in the area had grown suspicious and alerted police to the apartment, the Spanish daily El Mundo reported.
A man identified as Alberto said he had noticed that the men "were always covered, with a hat and their jacket collar up."
A man identified only as H.B. who lived in the apartment across from the suspects told El Mundo that he had grown suspicious of his neighbors. "Everyone makes noise when they close the front door of the building," he said. "When they came in, it never made a sound."
The man also said that his wife had complained to him that she often heard people going in and out of the apartment all night.
As events unfolded Saturday night, officers swarmed the area and ordered tenants to leave the building. Nearly 800 apartments in the area were also evacuated.
"Police kept asking us to stay calm, but we couldn't avoid feeling panic," one woman said.
A woman identified as Concha told El Mundo that from her window she could see some men firing guns but thought they were playing "cowboys and Indians" with the kids on the playground, until they identified themselves as police and ordered her to close her windows.
"Then the children got down on the ground and the police began yelling to the neighbors to get inside and close the shutters," Concha said. "The police's voices mixed with cries in Arabic from one of the apartments."
Police had said earlier that the suspects were shouting "Allah is great" and "We will die fighting."
After the shootout with police, the suspects apparently detonated the explosives. The blast tore off the walls of the building, leaving the second and third floors exposed. Residents said they watched in horror from afar as black smoke rose from their homes.
--------
Huge Basque Arsenal Found in Southwestern France
April 5, 2004
By DALE FUCHS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/europe/05FRAN.html
MADRID, April 4 - The police have uncovered in southwestern France what may be "one of the largest arsenals" of the Basque separatist group ETA, Spain's interior minister, Ángel Acebes, said Sunday.
The site, which contained grenades, other weapons and explosives, may also have been an arms factory, Mr. Acebes said at a news conference here. The French police raid on Sunday morning also resulted in the arrests of two people suspected of being ETA members, he said.
Mr. Acebes said the arrests of three other ETA suspects in France on Friday had led the police to the arsenal in St.-Michel, a village in southwestern France. During those arrests, computer files, false identification papers and explosives were found, an Interior Ministry statement said.
In the operation on Sunday, the French police arrested Félix Alberto López de la Calle, who is believed to be ETA's military mastermind, the statement said. Mr. López de la Calle, 43, is accused of six killings from 1978 through 1980, and is thought to have taken charge of terrorist training later.
Also arrested Sunday was María Mercedes Chivite Berango, 45, who is suspected of being ETA's supply chief. She is accused of shooting an army general, the statement said.
Among those arrested Friday was Félix Ignacio Esparza Luri, 41, who is believed to be ETA's logistics coordinator and is suspected in seven killings in the 1980's and the kidnapping of a businessman, the ministry said.
ETA has claimed responsibility for more than 800 deaths in its three-decade fight for an independent Basque state in parts of northern Spain and southwest France.
The recent arrests are the latest blows to the armed Basque separatists. The man believed to be the band's supreme leader was taken into custody in December, and dozens of others were sent to prison.
-------- iraq
Angry over attacks, Spaniards want troops out of Iraq
By Elisabeth O'Leary
05 Apr 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05201099.htm
LEGANES, Spain, April 5 - Spaniards whose sleepy neighbourhood was rocked by a weekend shootout and suicide bombing turned their anger on Monday against the outgoing government they say invited trouble by sending troops to Iraq.
"Most of the blame is due to the government for having put us in the firing line," said Manuel Cobo, a 58-year-old car factory worker, one of several thousand Spaniards who joined a peace march in a Madrid suburb on Monday evening.
The march was called in Leganes two days after militants thought to be behind the Madrid train bombings last month blew themselves up, refusing to surrender when crack police agents surrounded their apartment. One police officer was killed.
Three days after the bombings which killed 191 people, voters threw out the strongly pro-U.S. Popular Party of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, many citing his handling of the attacks.
Aznar's government initially insisted that Basque separatist guerrillas ETA were the prime suspects in the bombings, even though evidence increasingly pointed to Islamic militants.
Spain sent 1,300 troops to Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein against the wishes of many Spaniards.
"Bring back the troops now," the crowd chanted angrily. Some carried banners such as: "No more blood for oil" and "Damn wars and those who back them".
The march came as Spanish troops came under pressure in Iraq, turning up the heat on incoming Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero who has pledged to withdraw troops unless the United Nations takes charge in Iraq by June 30.
At the weekend, Spanish troops come under attack in Shi'ite areas south of Baghdad and returned fire. Twenty Iraqis, an American and a Salvadoran soldier died, and the Spanish continued to come under mortar fire on Monday.
Aznar's Popular Party said it had decided not to join the Leganes march because it had been turned into a protest against the Iraq war.
Alberto Juarez, a 21-year-old student, said there was more of a backlash against the outgoing government than against the North African Muslim community even though some of the militants in Saturday's siege and in custody were Moroccans.
"People link this directly to the presence of troops in Iraq," Juarez said.
Investigators were analysing a letter purportedly from Osama bin Laden's militant al Qaeda network to ABC newspaper threatening more bombs unless Spain withdraws troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"If our demands are not satisfied, we declare war and we swear by Almighty God that we will turn your country into an inferno and we will make blood flow like rivers," the letter said, according to an ABC Spanish translation.
--------
Shiite cleric spurs uprising in Iraq
Coordinated attacks by militiamen erupt from Baghdad to southern cities
Jeffrey Gettleman / NYT
The New York Times
Monday, April 5, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/513317.html
BAGHDAD Iraq was racked Sunday by the most violent civil disturbances since the occupation started, with a coordinated Shiite uprising spreading across the country, from the slums of Baghdad to several cities in the south.
By day's end, witnesses said Shiite militiamen controlled Kufa, a city south of Baghdad, with armed men loyal to a radical cleric occupying the police stations and checkpoints. More than eight people were killed by Spanish forces in a similar uprising in Najaf, which is adjacent to Kufa.
In Baghdad, American tanks battled militiamen loyal to the radical cleric, Moqtada al-Sadr, who has denounced the occupation and has an army of thousands of young followers.
At nightfall Sunday, Sadr City, a mostly Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad, shook with explosions and tank and machine gun fire. Black smoke choked the sky. The streets were lined with armed militiamen dressed in black. American tanks surrounded the area. Attack helicopters thundered overhead.
"The occupation is over!" people on the streets yelled. "We are now controlled by Sadr. The Americans should stay out."
Witnesses said Sadr's militiamen had tried to take over three police stations in Sadr City, a poor neighborhood north of central Baghdad named after his father.
Doctors at Baghdad hospitals reported that several people had been wounded in the fighting, but there were no details on casualties.
Franco Pagetti, an Italian photographer, said he had been caught in the crossfire and had witnessed several American tanks firing into the streets. "The tanks were shooting into the pavement, not at the height of the people," Pagetti said. "It looked like they were trying to clear the streets."
Pagetti also said he had watched a group of militiamen launch three rocket-propelled grenades at U.S. Humvees but the militiamen had missed each time. "The situation is getting worse," Pagetti said. "I saw injured people getting put in cars. The people said they had been wounded by American helicopters." As the fighting raged, Sadr called on his followers to "terrorize" the enemy as demonstrations were no longer any use. Last week his weekly newspaper, Hawza, was shut down by the American authorities after it had been accused of inciting violence. The closure began a week of protests that grew bigger and more unruly at each turn. "There is no use for demonstrations, as your enemy loves to terrify and suppress opinions and despises peoples," Sadr said in a statement distributed by his office in Kufa on Sunday. "I ask you not to resort to demonstrations because they have become a losing card and we should seek other ways," he told his followers. "Terrorize your enemy, as we cannot remain silent over its violations."
S.-led occupation ends on June 30, Reuters reported from New York. "There they will cooperate with the parties to assist them in the transitional process," a UN statement released in New York said. The UN does not announce staff visits to Iraq in advance for security reasons.
Another UN team, led by Carina Perelli, head of the UN electoral unit, arrived in Baghdad a little over a week ago.
The teams were sent at the invitation of the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, and their visits were also endorsed by the UN Security Council, which issued a statement calling on all the parties in Iraq to fully cooperate with their work.
Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, last went to Iraq in February to study the feasibility of holding elections and to discuss proposals for an interim government.
But in March some Shiites in the Iraqi council, including Ahmad Chalabi, the former exile leader, voiced opposition to a UN return, mainly because Brahimi had advised against direct elections before June 30.
In the end, however, the council invited him back.
Brahimi still faces a confused situation. The office of Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has urged the United Nations not to endorse the country's interim constitution, raising another obstacle to U.S. plans to hand over power to Iraqis.
In a letter to Brahimi, Sistani said the temporary constitution, already approved by the Iraqi council, should not be mentioned in any new Security Council resolution the United States and Britain want adopted in May. The planned resolution is expected to define the UN role in Iraq and to endorse an interim government and a multinational force under U.S. command.
A new resolution is also sought by the incoming Socialist government in Spain, which wants to withdraw 1,300 troops from Iraq unless the United Nations has a key role.
----
Apaches swoop on Shia militiamen
Police joined the militants' protest in Basra
Monday, 5 April, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3599771.stm
US helicopter gunships have been firing at targets in a Shia Muslim district of Baghdad on the second day of a revolt across Iraq by a religious militia.
Supporters of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr have been involved in violent protests against the US-led coalition.
The coalition accuses Mr Sadr of trying to usurp its power and says the revolt will not be tolerated.
US troops also began an offensive in Falluja, a Sunni town where four Americans were killed and mutilated.
The protests were triggered by the closure of Mr Sadr's main newspaper a week ago; they intensified after the arrest on Saturday of one of his top aides, Mustafa Yacoubi.
Many of Iraq's majority Shia Muslims, repressed under Saddam Hussein, welcomed last year's US-led invasion, and attacks on coalition forces were largely confined to the minority Sunni community before Sunday's violence.
However, Mr Sadr has become an increasingly outspoken opponent of the occupation.
The US administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, said on Monday that Mr Sadr's followers had effectively placed themselves outside the law.
Ambush
Apache gunships targeted militiamen of Mr Sadr's Mehdi Army on the streets of the capital's mainly Shia district of al-Shuala as a battle raged on the ground, correspondents report.
One US vehicle was reported to be in flames, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
At least nine coalition soldiers and 46 Iraqis have been killed in confrontations related to the protests.
Local resident Abbas Amid told the AFP news agency that fighting had flared after a US troop convoy tried to enter Shuala and came under heavy fire.
There was also tension in Sadr City, a district which saw eight US troops and a reported 22 Iraqis killed in Sunday's fighting.
American tanks were blocking approaches to the area and soldiers were carrying out vehicle searches as angry protesters gathered again.
In Basra, about 150 Mehdi Army members occupied the governor's office at dawn on Monday as part of the protests, but said they were staging a peaceful sit-in.
Brief exchanges of gunfire have been reported outside the office with soldiers from the city's UK garrison, but there is no indication of casualties.
Four Shia Iraqis were killed in clashes with UK forces in the south-eastern city of Amara on Sunday, while a protest which turned violent near the holy city of Najaf left a coalition soldier from El Salvador dead, along with about 20 Iraqis.
Coalition forces arrested Mustafa Yacoubi in connection with the murder last year of a rival cleric, Abdel-Majid al-Khoei, and closed down the Al-Hawza newspaper on the grounds that it was inciting violence.
Paul Bremer accused Mr Sadr of seeking to "establish his authority in the place of the legitimate authority".
"We have a group under Moqtada al-Sadr that has basically placed itself outside the legal authorities, the coalition and Iraqi officials..." he said in Baghdad.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's leading Shia cleric, appealed for calm and negotiations on Sunday, as a call to "terrorise the enemy" circulated among Moqtada al-Sadr's followers.
----
61 die as Iraq arrest sparks wave of riots
April 5, 2004
UK Evening Times
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/print/news/5025263.shtml
At least 50 Iraqis, ten US troops and one Salvadoran soldier died in one of the worst days of violence in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Hundreds were wounded as supporters of an anti-US cleric rioted in four Iraqi cities, including the southern town of Amarah where protesters clashed with British troops.
The riots were ignited by the weekend arrest of an aide to anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Mustafa al-Yacoubi, a senior aide to al-Sadr, was arrested in connection with the murder of Abdel-Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite cleric.
The unrest appeared to be a show of force by al-Sadr, a 30-year-old Shiite cleric, backed by an illegal militia and hundreds of students.
They are devoted to him because of his anti-US stance and the memory of his father, a Shiite religious leader gunned down by suspected Saddam agents in 1999.
Al-Sadr issued a statement later, calling off street protests.
Yesterday's violence - along with the unrelated killings of two US marines in Anbar - pushed the US death toll to 610.
In Sadr city, near Baghdad, a militia loyal to al-Sadr attacked police stations - touching off battles that killed seven US soldiers.
Near Najaf, supporters of al-Sadr opened fire on a garrison.
The US, Spanish and Salvadoran soldiers inside the allied garrison fired back.
Two soldiers - a Salvadoran and an American - died and at least nine other soldiers were wounded.
At least 50 Iraqis died and more than 200 were wounded.
In Amarah, British troops returned fire after coming under attack.
No British troops were injured, but a Ministry of Defence spokesman said there were Iraqi casualties.
----
Eight U.S. Troops Killed in Shiite Uprising
Occupation Forces Battle Cleric's Followers As Widespread Demonstrations Erupt in Iraq
By Karl Vick and Saad Sarhan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50348-2004Apr4?language=printer
KUFA, Iraq, April 4 -- An armed Shiite revolt against the U.S.-led occupation erupted Sunday in Baghdad and other cities across Iraq's normally quiescent south. Nine soldiers, eight of them Americans, were killed, and three dozen were wounded, U.S. officials said.
The day's events constituted the most serious challenge yet to the U.S.-led occupation by an element of the country's majority Shiite population, which for most of a year has observed a broad tolerance of the United States and its allies.
The fighting pitted forces led by the United States, Britain and Spain against the Mahdi Army, a militia controlled by Moqtada Sadr, a junior cleric whose following is concentrated among the urban poor. At least 20 Iraqi demonstrators were also killed.
On the decrepit eastern side of Baghdad in Sadr City, a sprawling slum named for Sadr's father, protesters attempted to overrun police stations and other government buildings.
Militiamen fired rocket-propelled grenades and assault weapons at members of the 1st Armored Division, the U.S. military said. News photos showed militiamen and children cavorting near two Humvees in flames. Tracer fire was visible in the night sky from downtown, and residents reported loud explosions in the neighborhood after dark.
The militias were believed to have abandoned the police stations during the night after U.S. troops cordoned off the slum, home to an estimated 2 million people. Television footage broadcast from Sadr City hospitals showed bloodied young men being wheeled into emergency rooms on gurneys and in wheelchairs.
The Army's 1st Armored Division issued a statement saying the Mahdi Army had "attempted to interfere with security in Baghdad, intimidate Iraqi citizens and place them in danger. . . . Coalition forces and Iraqi security forces prevented this effort and reestablished security in Baghdad at the cost of seven U.S. soldiers killed and more than two dozen wounded."
Before the death toll from the violence in Baghdad was announced after midnight, the day's most dramatic conflict had taken place in Kufa, near the Shiite holy city of Najaf. A lengthy firefight erupted in the city between Salvadoran troops and a crowd of thousands of Sadr followers. The clash occurred less than a mile from the mosque where two days earlier, Sadr, who has been at odds with occupation authorities for months, for the first time urged his followers to strike occupation forces "where you meet them."
Sadr issued new instructions after the firefight in Kufa, which continued for hours and eventually drew in Apache attack helicopters and U.S. warplanes. The statement advised followers to give up on demonstrations and "resort to other things." The Arabic instruction that followed could be interpreted as "intimidate your enemies" or "terrorize your enemies."
A Sadr spokesman said about 30 demonstrators were killed in Kufa. The Reuters news agency quoted a health official, however, as saying the death toll was 20. Protesters said the day began with a peaceful demonstration against the arrest of a Sadr aide on Saturday on charges of conspiring in the year-old killing of a senior Shiite cleric friendly to the United States.
Military officials said one U.S. soldier and one Salvadoran soldier were killed in Kufa and that 12 soldiers were wounded. Witnesses said they saw militiamen capture a Salvadoran soldier and execute him by forcing a live grenade into his mouth.
Fighting also erupted in the southeastern city of Amarah, where British troops said they returned fire during a protest, according to a military spokeswoman in London. News reports said one Iraqi was killed and five wounded.
In Nasiriyah, about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad, demonstrators took control of three bridges over the Euphrates River. The episode ended without violence after negotiations among Sadr officials, the Italian troops who control the city and the local office of the Coalition Provisional Authority, said Tobin Bradley, the CPA political adviser in the city.
Sadr officials were meeting in Basra, the country's second-largest city, where residents said tensions were also rising.
The violence appeared to open a fresh front in resistance to the year-old occupation, during which more U.S. soldiers have been killed than in the war that overthrew the government of President Saddam Hussein. Attacks on U.S.-led forces had been focused in the so-called Sunni Triangle west and north of Baghdad, where residents with ties to the former government mounted hit-and-run attacks on U.S. patrols. Waves of terrorist bombings have also targeted Westerners and Iraqis who have worked with the occupation.
Sadr loomed as an additional threat, having organized and armed a militia in the months since the war. But except for a firefight in October in Sadr City's central square -- an encounter U.S. commanders termed an ambush -- the Mahdi Army had not raised arms against occupation forces.
The posture changed over the weekend, however, with Sadr's call for attacks on forces he said were trying to impose their will on Iraq.
"The Sayyid Moqtada Sadr did not call for resistance directly, but the demands of the Iraqi people are not being met," said Abu Haider Ghalib Garawi, a Sadr official introduced as a leader of the Mahdi Army.
"But there's no more patience. We can't guarantee the behavior of the wise people and the ordinary people."
Garawi spoke under the swaying lanterns of the main Kufa mosque, where militiamen cradling AK-47s squatted on thin woven mats and a plainclothes policeman strode about smiling, an American-issued Glock 9mm pistol on his hip. Much of Kufa's American-trained police force joined the side of the Sadr forces when the firefight started in late morning. By 2 p.m., the police checkpoint at the edge of town was manned by militiamen. White-shirted traffic police remained on duty but said the Mahdi Army was in charge.
A half-hour later, the checkpoint was abandoned and the Sadr followers -- most of them unarmed -- boarded buses to return to Baghdad, where most had traveled from the previous night. "Moqtada has ordered us to withdraw," said one, carrying an AK-47.
The order suggested that the day's events may have been intended not as a declaration of war on the occupation so much as a taste of what Sadr's organization might unleash if senior occupation officials persist in their efforts to neutralize the junior cleric.
Senior Sadr officials in Kufa said the next demonstration of power would be a general strike.
Immediately after the Kufa firefight, Sadr representatives arrived to consult with officials from the Badr Organization, the militia of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, and a delegation from the Dawa party, the two most prominent Shiite parties represented on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.
But armed men from Fallujah and Baqubah -- centers of resistance in the Sunni heartland west and north of Baghdad -- also appeared at the mosque, offering their support.
The Kufa demonstration began with armed marchers taking over the city's courthouse and traffic police headquarters. Several thousand chanting marchers then proceeded toward the city's occupation military base.
Journalists at the scene said Salvadoran troops manning the post first fired noise charges to disperse the crowd, then followed with live fire. A senior U.S. officer in Baghdad denied that occupation forces fired first.
The militiamen fired small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. At one point, several dozen swarmed toward a military vehicle caught outside the base, capturing and killing the Salvadoran soldier after warning bystanders to stand aside. Two other badly beaten Spanish-speaking soldiers were seen being taken into Sadr's headquarters at the Kufa mosque, and though the military adjusted its initial report of fatalities from four to two in the hours after the conflict, Sadr officials denied holding any prisoners.
Military officials announced Sunday that two U.S. Marines were killed in Anbar province west of Baghdad in separate violence, the Associated Press reported. The day's deaths brought to 611 the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq in hostile and non-hostile situations.
----
Protests Unleashed by Cleric Mark a New Front in War
By Anthony Shadid and Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50349-2004Apr4?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 4 -- By unleashing mass demonstrations and attacks in Baghdad and southern Iraq on Sunday, a young, militant cleric has realized the greatest fear of the U.S.-led administration since the occupation of Iraq began a year ago: a Shiite Muslim uprising.
Fighting with U.S. troops raged into the night in a Baghdad slum, and hospitals reportedly took in dozens of casualties. But even before sunset, there was a sense across the capital that a yearlong test of wills between the American occupation and supporters of Moqtada Sadr had turned decisive, and its implications reverberated through Iraq.
The unrest signaled that the U.S. military faces armed opposition on two fronts: in scarred Sunni towns such as Fallujah and, as of Sunday, in a Shiite-dominated region of the country that had remained largely acquiescent, if uneasy about the U.S. role. If put down forcefully, a Shiite uprising -- infused with religious imagery, and symbols drawn from Iraq's colonial past and the current Palestinian conflict -- could achieve a momentum of its own.
During the last year, Sadr has appealed to poor and disenfranchised Shiites, the majority of Iraq's population, with a relentless anti-occupation message. A junior cleric, the 30-year-old's authority is far overshadowed by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's leading religious figure. Sadr and his followers remain distinctly unpopular in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, where the more established clergy hold sway. But he commands a street following in Baghdad and the long-neglected cities of the south, and his militia of several thousand men has grown in strength and influence.
Hours into Sunday's violence, Sadr publicly called for an end to the protests, and it was unclear whether his followers would persist in a fight with an overwhelmingly more powerful U.S. military. But the calculus of Iraq's politics had already appeared to shift.
"Just give the order, Moqtada, and we'll repeat the 1920 revolution," supporters chanted in Baghdad, a reference to a Shiite-led uprising against the British occupation that has grown in political mythology to serve as Iraq's founding act. Across town, outside the headquarters of the U.S.-led administration, Sheik Hazm Aaraji warned, "The people are prepared for martyrdom."
The unrest Sunday followed a series of calibrated moves by each side that appeared to be designed to test the resolve of the other.
The latest round of tension began March 28, with the U.S. closure of Sadr's al-Hawza newspaper. With an estimated circulation of 10,000, the weekly was mainly marketed at mosques loyal to Sadr's followers and, for months, had printed articles that U.S. officials deemed inflammatory. The closure sent thousands of protesters into the streets, many of them marching in military cadence in Baghdad and Najaf and wearing the black uniforms of Sadr's militia, which is known as the Mahdi Army.
Supporters of Sadr suggested that a show of force would discourage U.S. officials from broadening the crackdown. In his Friday sermon, Sadr appeared to call for attacks on U.S. forces, crossing a line that he had carefully avoided for months. Citing what he called attacks by "the occupiers," he told followers, "Be on the utmost readiness and strike them where you meet them."
Early Saturday morning, one of Sadr's top aides, Mustafa Yaqoubi, a familiar face in Sadr's office in Najaf, was detained. U.S. officials said he was held along with 12 people for the killing of a moderate Shiite cleric from one of Iraq's most prestigious religious families. The cleric, Abdul-Majid Khoei, was hacked to death on April 10, 2003, a day after the fall of Baghdad. U.S. officials said the warrants were issued months ago and offered no explanation about why they were not executed until Saturday.
The detention of Yaqoubi prompted protests by thousands on Sunday across southern Iraq. As the fighting surged in Baghdad and the southern cities of Najaf and Amarah, Sadr issued a statement calling on his followers to stop the protests, saying they were futile. But he added: "Intimidate your enemy. . . . It is not possible to remain silent before their violations."
U.S. officials insisted Sunday that they had not decided whether to crack down on Sadr's group. But L. Paul Bremer, the civilian administrator of Iraq, suggested that the violence would have consequences.
"A group of people in Najaf have crossed the line," Bremer said at a news conference. "This will not be tolerated. This will not be tolerated by the coalition, this will not be tolerated by the Iraqi people, and this will not be tolerated by the Iraqi security forces."
For months, occupation authorities have been divided over how to respond to Sadr's challenge.
Since last summer, U.S. authorities had tried to persuade Iraq's more senior and moderate clergy to rein in Sadr, whom one senior official described at the time as "a populist, a critic and a rabble-rouser." "We're watching him and some of the big [ayatollahs] are watching us, and we're both hoping the other does something," the official said.
Part of the reservation was motivated by the fear of a Shiite backlash. Since the start of the occupation, the desire to maintain Shiite support -- or at least acquiescence -- has served as one of the administration's key objectives.
At least in public, Sadr's profile had appeared to fade in recent months, as Sistani played a more assertive role in Iraqi politics and criticized various U.S. plans for Iraq's political transition. Given Sistani's stature among the country's Shiites, Sadr had refrained from direct criticism of him. But in private, his followers express resentment of Sistani's influence. They view their movement as Arab and nationalist, and endorse a far greater role for the clergy in politics and social affairs than Sistani has espoused.
In part, the rivalry dates back to Sadr's father, Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who competed with Sistani for influence and was assassinated in 1999. Sadr has claimed the mantle of his revered father.
Sadr kept a lower profile after a clash in October between U.S. troops and his followers in Baghdad, but his movement's militia grew in size and influence. Numbering just 500 in August and often ridiculed for its ragtag quality, its membership has since grown to as many as 10,000 men, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and light weapons.
With security deteriorating in the south, the militia has vied for authority with the larger Badr Organization, a militia operated by a leading Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Other, smaller militias belong to the Dawa party, another Shiite group with a long history in Iraq, and a mystical cleric named Sarkhi Hassani. One of Sistani's representatives, Abdel-Mehdi Salami, a ranking Shiite cleric, is believed to be organizing armed followers in Karbala, another city sacred to Shiites.
The rising influence of the Mahdi Army, along with accusations of their intimidation, death threats and illegal detentions, has alarmed U.S. officials, who fear it will compete for power after the U.S. administration of Iraq ends June 30. In recent weeks, pressure has grown within the occupation administration to crack down on militias, particularly Sadr's, before they gain more power.
"We were so patient and now you can see the result," said Abu Heidar Ghalib Garawi, a leader of the Mahdi Army in Kufa, a city near Najaf. "You can see the rage of the people. What do you think? Will they [occupation authorities] respond with oppression or will they respond to the demands?"
Correspondent Karl Vick in Kufa contributed to this report.
----
A Young Radical's Anti-U.S. Wrath Is Unleashed
April 5, 2004
New York Times
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/middleeast/05SADR.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 4 - For months, as American occupation authorities have focused on a moderate Shiite leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a radical young Shiite cleric named Moktada al-Sadr has been spewing invective and threatening a widespread insurrection. On Sunday, he unleashed it.
At his word, thousands of disciples, wearing green headbands and carrying automatic rifles, stormed into the streets of several cities and set off the most widespread mayhem of the occupation. Witnesses and occupation officials said the disciples occupied police stations, fired rocket-propelled grenades at American troops and overran government security in Kufa, the town in south central Iraq where Mr. Sadr lives. "The occupation is over!" many yelled. "We are now controlled by Sadr!"
Mr. Sadr, 31, is the son of a revered Shiite cleric who was assassinated in 1999 by hit men under the rule of Saddam Hussein. He comes from a long line of clerics. A famous uncle was also silenced by Mr. Hussein in 1980.
Mr. Sadr had two older brothers, but they were killed with his father, leaving him the heir apparent.
In the prelude to the transfer of power from the American-led occupation authority to Iraqi civilians, planned for June 30, Mr. Sadr has been increasingly caustic, issuing statements denouncing Americans and any Iraqis who work with them. A newspaper that has been his official mouthpiece was shut down by the American occupation a week ago.
On Friday, he announced that he was opening Iraqi chapters of Hezbollah and Hamas, militant pro-Palestinian groups that Israel and the United States consider terrorist organizations. "I am the beating arm for Hezbollah and Hamas here in Iraq," he said.
Mr. Sadr is one of many powerful Shiite clerics calling for an Islamic government, though his following seems especially devoted. His men wear black shirts and black pants and carry larger-than-life portraits of him. He has a ruddy face and a thick black beard, and most photos feature him angrily shaking a finger.
On a recent day in Kufa, hundreds of boys marched around the town's main mosque, holding up posters of Mr. Sadr and chanting his name.
"It's true Moktada inherited a lot of support," said Hamid al-Bayati, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a prominent Shiite political party. "But there is also a lot of new passion for him."
On Sunday night, townspeople in Kufa said Mr. Sadr was holed up in its main mosque. Many said they would die before they would allow occupation forces to capture him.
In the past year of the occupation, Mr. Sadr has shown many faces. At times he is isolated by the Shiite leadership, at other times he is embraced. In the world of Shiite clerics, Mr. Sadr is an upstart. He is several ranks and many years away from attaining the title of ayatollah, which would mean his rulings would carry the weight of religious law.
Immediately after the invasion, Mr. Sadr deployed black-clad disciples to patrol the streets of Baghdad's Shiite slums. His men handed out bread, water and oranges. They also provided much-needed security. Mr. Sadr had seen a void and filled it. In return, leaders in the Shiite district of Baghdad that had been known as Saddam City decided to rename the area Sadr City, after Mr. Sadr's father, Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr.
Whether justified or not, Mr. Sadr has a reputation for vengefulness. Last April, Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite cleric, was hacked to death by a mob, a crime one of Mr. Sadr's henchmen is now accused of committing.
In June, Mr. Sadr formed a militia called the Mahdi Army. Many groups in Iraq have private armies. But Mr. Sadr's men, estimated to number in the tens of thousands, also formed their own religious courts and prisons.
This fall and winter, Mr. Sadr was eclipsed by Ayatollah Sistani, the septuagenarian cleric who demanded direct elections sooner rather than later and emerged as the most influential Shiite leader. The two do not talk.
As Mr. Sadr's popularity faded, his talk grew more militant.
In February, he declared his militia "the enemy of the occupation."
Last week, the American authorities shut down Mr. Sadr's newspaper, Al Hawza, after they accused it of inciting violence. Although the paper did not print any calls for attacks, the American authorities said false reporting, including articles that ascribed suicide bombings to Americans, could touch off violence.
The closing, set to last 60 days, began a week of protests that grew bigger and more unruly at each turn.
"Death to America! Death to Jews!" Mr. Sadr's supporters shouted.
The newspaper was an important symbol for many Shiites. Al Hawza took its name from a loose-knit Shiite seminary that dates from a thousand years ago. Its clerics have played pivotal roles in Middle Eastern history - and often militant ones. In 1920, Hawza clerics in Najaf encouraged the revolt against British rule in Iraq. In 1979, they played a similar role in the Islamic revolution in Iran, which like Iraq is mainly Shiite.
On Sunday, Mr. Sadr called for his followers to "terrorize your enemy."
"There is no use for demonstrations, as your enemy loves to terrify and suppress opinions, and despises peoples," he said in a statement.
"I ask you not to resort to demonstrations because they have become a losing card and we should seek other ways," he said. "Terrorize your enemy, as we cannot remain silent over its violations."
----
U.S. Announces Warrant for 'Outlaw' Iraqi Cleric's Arrest
April 5, 2004
New York Times
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and KIRK SEMPLE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/middleeast/05CND-IRAQ.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 5 - American officials confirmed today that a warrant had been issued for the arrest of Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose followers launched a coordinated anti-American uprising in several cities over the weekend. The top American official in Iraq labeled him an "outlaw."
The officials said the warrant had been issued by an Iraqi judge after Mr. Sadr was implicated in the death of Abdul Majid al-Khoei, a rival Shiite cleric who was hacked to death by a mob in April. The officials did not say when they would attempt to serve the warrant or try to detain the cleric.
"There will be no advance warning," Dan Senor, spokesman for the American occupation authority, said in a televised news conference here. The spokesman suggested that Mr. Sadr's arrest had been postponed because it would be "difficult" and did not directly answer questions seeking to link the announcement of the warrant to the violence over the weekend by Mr. Sadr's supporters.
The announcement of the warrant came as American troops stepped up military action against the various centers of armed resistance to the occupation, cordoning off the volatile city of Falluja and rolling American tanks and combat vehicles into the impoverished Baghdad slum of Sadr City, the scene of the fiercest fighting over the weekend.
The militants said they had rioted in response to the arrest of an aide to Mr. Sadr in connection with the murder of Mr. Khoei and to protest the closing of a Baghdad newspaper by American officials.
President Bush told reporters today in Charlotte, N.C., that he remained committed to the June 30 deadline for transferring power in Iraq in spite of the violence. "The deadline remains firm," Mr. Bush said.
In Baghdad, the top American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, labeled Mr. Sadr an "outlaw" and said the 31-year-old cleric was trying to replace "legitimate authority," news agencies reported.
"Effectively, he is attempting to establish his authority in the place of the legitimate authority," Mr. Bremer said, according to The Associated Press. "We will not tolerate this. We will reassert the law and order which the Iraqi people expect.
Mr. Sadr was defiant in response. "I'm accused by one of the leaders of evil, Bremer, of being an outlaw," he said in a statement read in Kufa, near Najaf, Reuters reported. "If that means breaking the law of the American tyranny and its filthy constitution, I'm proud of that and that is why I'm in revolt."
Mr. Senor did not fully explain why American and Iraqi authorities had not already tried to detain Mr. Sadr even though an Iraqi judge had issued an arrest warrant "within the last several months." While 12 suspects connected to the Khoei murder case were taken into custody during an initial round of arrests, the spokesman explained, Mr. Sadr was among another group of suspects that is now being pursued.
"It was more difficult to target some of the other individuals," Mr. Senor said.
Now, however, the judge is prepared to take the case to trial and has ordered that the remaining suspects be rounded up, Mr. Senor said. "He thought he would take another shot at trying to gather up other individuals involved with the case, and that's when warrants were issued and this matter came - sort of bubbled up, if you will, recently," Mr. Senor said.
In a statement ussed by the American military headquarters in Iraq, officials said that an eighth American soldier had died from wounds sustained in the uprising, which began on Sunday among militiamen loyal to Mr. Sadr. Dozens of Iraqis and one Salvadoran soldier have also died in the fighting.
In Falluja, some 1,200 marines and two battalions of Iraqi security forces sealed off the city as part of an operation intended to crush an armed resistance in the city by Sunni Muslims, who were Saddam Hussein's main constituency, news agencies reported. The Associated Press said that explosions and gunfire could be heard coming from the center of the city. An American marine was killed in fighting in the area today, the American military said.
American commanders have been promising to respond to the killing last Wednesday of four Americans working for a security company who came under attack as they drove through town. A frenzied mob beat and mutilated the men's charred corpses.
The troops were poised to raid the city in pursuit of suspected insurgents, officials said.
The Arabic television station Al Jazeera reported today that six Iraqis had been killed in an attack there.
In Baghdad, American troops patrolled the dusty, garbage-strewn streets of Sadr City, where hospital officials said about two dozen Iraqis had been killed in overnight fighting with American troops. The American military reported today that in addition to the eight soldiers killed, more than two dozen had been wounded in the fighting in the slum.
According to a list of the Iraqi casualties posted at the Chuwadir Hospital in Sadr City, 18 people had been killed and about 80 were wounded. A hospital official said the number of dead was higher than 22.
The fighting in Sadr City started late Sunday, when militiamen loyal to Mr. Sadr, the radical cleric, tried to take over police stations in the neighborhood, firing small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, according to the United States military. Iraqi residents said that American troops in tanks opened fire on a demonstration by Sadr supporters.
News agencies reported that Apache helicopters fired missiles at targets in the Shuala district of northwest Baghdad today, and Al Jazeera reported that five Iraqis were killed in a helicopter strike on an office belonging to Mr. Sadr's supporters.
Frantic Iraqi residents of Sadr City gathered today around the handwritten notice on the gates of the emergency entrance, scanning it for familiar names.
Families waited their turn to bring out the dead, sitting next to corpses until minivans or pickup trucks arrived, and then tying the wooden coffins to the luggage racks. The body of one old man was laid on a blanket in the parking lot, a white sheet flapping loosely around his bloody feet and head. Relatives squatted silently next to him.
In other violence, the American military reported today that a marine had been killed in the Anbar province, where Falluja is located. The military also said that two soldiers had been killed by explosive devices in Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq.
In the southern town of Basra, a large group of Sadr supporters took over the buildings of the American-appointed governor. The police had been warned that the supporters were coming and were advised to leave, but the governor and police were not in the building at the time of predawn takeover, which was described by one man as a peaceful sit-in.
The violence among the Shiite radicals opens a new front for American-led forces already struggling to contain the Sunni Muslim insurgency centered in Falluja and nearby cities. The fighting also complicates the task of the United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who arrived in Baghdad on Sunday to discuss American plans to pass sovereignty to Iraqis at the end of June.
----
Contractor tells why he left Iraq
By BOB FOWLER
Scripps Howard News Service
April 05, 2004
http://www.knxv.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=IRAQ-CONTRACTOR-04-05-04&cat=AN
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - Jerry Kuhaida says he was eager to go to Iraq and take a job as a contractor helping local governments.
But months later, the former Oak Ridge mayor says he was even more eager to get out of that troubled country, which he says is descending into chaos and likely civil war.
Frustrated by a maze of bureaucracy, stymied by cultural roadblocks and embittered by what he calls a "total lack of postwar planning" by the United States, Kuhaida said he left when it became obvious that things were becoming more and more dangerous.
"I wanted ... out of there. It was getting too nasty," he said.
The incident last week where four U.S. contractors were burned, mutilated and hung from a bridge in Fallujah sadly confirmed that he made the right decision, Kuhaida said.
"That was an awful thing that happened, and it's happening everywhere. It points out the severity of the risk to those people who ride around in SUVs, and that's what I was doing," he said.
In February, six months into his stay in Iraq, Kuhaida said he grew "paranoid" after being told he and other subcontractors of the Research Triangle Institute would be grouped into one part of Al Hillah, Iraq, as a precaution against possible kidnappings.
The announcement came shortly after a wave of truck bombings and other terrorist attacks hit that previously peaceful city in southern Iraq.
"I can remember standing at the window of my room and watching a truck drive up and thinking, 'There could be explosives in there,' " Kuhaida said.
By then, Al Hillah, a city of about 300,000, had turned into a war zone, with sounds of bombs and gunshots echoing across the city.
Soon, Kuhaida said, "I started ignoring gunshots. Then, I started ignoring little explosions, and then I began to ignore the big explosions."
Kuhaida's interest in going to Iraq started in September 2002 as "sabers were being rattled" as part of the buildup to the conflict. He said he went to an Army recruiter's office to inquire about signing up.
"I was told I was too old," the 61-year-old Kuhaida said.
After the decision was made to invade Iraq, "we had to help those people," Kuhaida said.
He said contacts he has with government organizations eventually resulted in a job offer from the International City/County Management Association. That organization has a subcontract with the Research Triangle Institute, a nonprofit organization under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Kuhaida's job was to help restore basic services and develop local governments.
Preparations for the move to Iraq included an August resignation from the Oak Ridge City Council, where he was in the middle of a two-year term as councilman.
He landed in Kuwait City on Sept. 4 in 120-degree heat and headed north as a member of a convoy into Iraq.
Kuhaida was first assigned to Karbala, a city of 500,000 people about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
"The average people, they're friendly," he said. "I can't remember anybody not telling me they wanted the Americans there. What they wanted were peace, security and a job, which were things they hadn't had under Saddam."
Kuhaida said he quickly discovered that there had been no postwar plan by the United States.
"There was no plan at all after the war," he said. "In spite of what (U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald) Rumsfeld said, there was absolutely no plan. The whole thing was running on a whim, basically. There wasn't even a bad plan out there."
What few accomplishments there were, were "fluffed up," he said.
"We kept getting pressure to make reports look as positive as possible."
Kuhaida said he was reassigned from Karbala to Al Hillah in November.
Also in November, Kuhaida said that Paul Bremer, administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority, announced that the CPA would end June 30, and the Iraqi governing council would take authority beginning July 1.
"From my perspective, the mindset of the CPA was, 'We're getting out of here. We're leaving.' That seemed to have a negative effect on everything that was done from then on."
There became a direct correlation between "bad decisions" by the CPA and increases in terrorist activities, Kuhaida said.
Kuhaida said he decided to apply for early leave shortly after officials in February announced that contractors' living quarters and offices would be consolidated.
"You ended up in an environment where you're at risk," he said.
The day before he departed on March 12, Kuhaida said, was a terribly difficult day because of the tremendous outpouring of emotion from Iraqis he had befriended.
"I'd go back right now if it was peaceful," he said. "I would love to be there working with the Iraqis now because they need help and appreciate help."
(Contact Bob Fowler of The Knoxville News-Sentinel in Tennessee at http://www.knoxnews.com.)
----
Chiefs named for defense, intelligence
April 05, 2004
(AP)
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040404-114139-6013r.htm
BAGHDAD - The U.S.-led coalition announced the appointment of an Iraqi defense minister and chief of national intelligence yesterday, less than three months before the United States turns over political power to Iraqis.
Ali Allawi, the interim trade minister, will become defense minister. It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Allawi would continue to hold the trade ministry portfolio.
L. Paul Bremer, the coalition's administrator, said Mr. Allawi was one of those who "rejected" Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party.
The coalition also announced the appointment of Muhammad al-Shehwani as head of the Iraqi National Intelligence Service.
"These organizations will give Iraqis the means to defend their country against terrorists and insurgents," Mr. Bremer said at a press conference.
Mr. al-Shehwani, a former Iraqi air force officer and regional pole-vaulting champion, fled Iraq in 1990. Attempts by Saddam to force him to return, including executing three of his sons, failed.
Mr. Bremer said both the ministry and the intelligence body will be open to public scrutiny. The intelligence service will not have the power to arrest people and will not be allowed to intervene in politics.
The coalition announced the formation of the Defense Ministry last month, nearly 10 months after it dissolved Saddam's entire security and defense apparatus.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon: Withdrawal a Blow to Palestinians
By KARIN LAUB
Associated Press Writer
Apr 5, 2004
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- A unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and four West Bank settlements could delay Palestinian dreams of statehood for many years, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in interviews Monday.
Israel also is no longer bound by a pledge to the United States not to harm Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Sharon said. The White House said killing Arafat was "not part of the solution to the situation in the Middle East."
In Gaza, soldiers killed three Palestinians, ages 18 and 19, near the fence with Israel. Troops fired during the night at three figures they deemed suspicious, the army said.
Israeli forces also set up a new security position east of the Rafah airport, Palestinians said. The Israeli army said it was checking the report.
Israeli security forces were on high alert for possible attacks by Palestinian militants during the weeklong Passover holiday, which began at sundown Monday. Police urged all licensed gun owners to carry their weapons and security forces deployed reinforcements to synagogues and malls.
Israel also maintained a tight closure of the West Bank and Gaza, barring all Palestinians from entering Israel. The closure, imposed after Israel's March 22 assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin, will remain in effect until at least April 27 - Israel's independence day.
Israel's outgoing air force chief, Dan Halutz, said the nation's targeted killings of wanted Palestinians have hampered the ability of militant groups to carry out attacks. Halutz told the Maariv daily newspaper that Israel has launched 110 airstrikes in the past three years, hitting its targets 80 percent of the time.
Sharon gave wide-ranging interviews to Israeli daily newspapers and radio stations Monday, a Passover tradition.
The prime minister has been accused by Israeli hard-liners of rewarding Palestinian militants by proposing to withdraw from Gaza and four West Bank settlements.
Sharon - in interviews with the Maariv, Yediot Ahronot and Haaretz daily newspapers - defended the plan, saying it serves the interests of Israel, not those of the Palestinians.
"The Palestinians understand that this plan is to a large extent the end of their dreams, a very heavy blow to them," he told Haaretz.
He told Yediot, "In the unilateral plan, there is no Palestinian state. This situation could continue for many years."
Sharon repeatedly has said the Palestinians would receive more land in a negotiated settlement. However, he insists he does not have a Palestinian partner, accusing Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia of not confronting militants.
Arafat said he welcomed an Israeli withdrawal, but only as a first step.
"He (Sharon) has to remember that he has to withdraw also ... from the West Bank," Arafat said at his West Bank headquarters in Ramallah.
Palestinians say the withdrawal plan is an Israeli ruse to trade Gaza for a permanent hold over most of the West Bank. They say a withdrawal must be coordinated as part of the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan, which envisions a Palestinian state by next year.
The prime minister said he plans to evacuate all 21 Israeli settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank. A patrol road between the Gaza Strip and Egypt would remain under Israeli control for the time being, he said.
Sharon said he initially would seal off Gaza after a withdrawal.
"Until we see what happens, we will continue to have control of an envelope around Gaza," Sharon told Maariv. "The contacts between us (Israel and Gaza) will be like between two countries, selling and buying, but we won't have control over what happens inside.
"But there won't be a Palestinian state in the disengagement plan. There won't be any such thing."
Sharon said Israel would not destroy settlements it evacuates. Israel intends to get the property evaluated by international organizations and already has raised the issue with the World Bank, he said.
Regarding Arafat, Sharon said three years ago he promised President Bush that Israel would not harm the Palestinian leader, but circumstances have changed.
Asked whether Arafat and Hassan Nasrallah, chief of the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah, could become targets for assassination, he said: "Whoever aims to kill Jews, whoever sends murderers to kill Jews, is marked for death."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the United States remains opposed to exiling or killing Arafat.
"Our views are very well-known to Prime Minister Sharon," McClellan said. "We have made it clear that sending him into exile or otherwise dealing with him is not part of the solution to the situation in the Middle East."
Israel accuses Arafat of encouraging and financing attacks on Israelis. Nasrallah said recently his group will help Hamas avenge Yassin's death.
Sharon plans to travel to Washington this month in hopes of winning Bush's endorsement for his disengagement proposal. After his return, he is expected to ask the 200,000 members of his Likud Party for their approval.
--------
Sharon Hints He Has Dropped Vow Not to Harm Arafat
April 5, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/middleeast/05CND-MIDE.html?hp
JERUSALEM, April 5 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has suggested that he no longer feels bound by a three-year-old commitment to President Bush not to harm Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader.
Mr. Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, said that Israel had no immediate intention to act against Mr. Arafat. But the substance and timing of Mr. Sharon's threatening remarks, in an interview published here today, were significant.
His comments came as Israelis entered the Passover holiday braced for threatened retaliation by the militant group Hamas for the killing two weeks ago of its spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. Mr. Gissin said that, with 58 intelligence warnings of possible attacks, "The level of alerts is at an all-time high today."
Mr. Sharon appeared to be signaling that he felt new freedom to act against Mr. Arafat in the event of a devastating terrorist attack.
Further, Mr. Sharon is trying to shore up support among right-wing Israelis alarmed by his plan for a unilateral withdrawal from most or all of the Gaza Strip and possibly part of the West Bank. At a cabinet meeting on Sunday, he clashed over the plan with far-right members of his governing coalition.
Last, Mr. Sharon is concerned that his withdrawal proposal might be perceived as a reward for terrorism, emboldening Palestinian violence
"The important thing is to exert a stern warning: `Don't even try to use this to instigate more terrorist activity,' " Mr. Gissin said. "It's more of a deterrent measure than an operational message."
But Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official, said that the threat was "very serious."
"It's consistent with Sharon's exit strategy from the peace process," Mr. Erekat said. "That is, destroy the Palestinian Authority, kill Arafat, throw it all into chaos and anarchy and extremism, and say, `I don't have a partner.' "
On Friday, the Israeli newspaper Maariv released an excerpt of an interview in which Mr. Sharon threatened Mr. Arafat by saying he had "no insurance policy." At the time, Mr. Sharon's aides said that he still felt bound by his pledge to President Bush.
But according to the transcript of the interview published today, Mr. Sharon noted that since he made his vow to Mr. Bush, Mr. Arafat's circumstances had changed.
"That was a time when he was still walking on the red carpets," Mr. Sharon said of Mr. Arafat. He added, in a reference to the United States and other governments, "Today, all these people also know the exact extent of the damage he has caused."
In another interview, with Israel radio, Mr. Sharon said when asked about Mr. Arafat, "Those who kill Jews and order that Jews be killed, because of the fact that they are Jews, are sentenced to death."
On Friday, the Bush administration said it opposed any action to harm Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Arafat, who on Saturday shrugged off the warnings from Mr. Sharon, says he is committed to a negotiated two-state solution to the conflict. But Israel accuses him of fomenting terrorism, and the Bush administration, regarding him as an obstacle to peace, has refused to deal directly with him for almost two years.
In his interviews, granted to the Israeli news media in advance of Passover, Mr. Sharon repeatedly said that his plan to "disengage" from the Palestinians would rule out a Palestinian state, at least for years.
"These steps of ours will harm the Palestinians severely," he told Maariv. "It will bring their dreams to an end. When you fence in regions and settlements with fences, you end a lot of their dreams. They can get a lot more through negotiations."
Mr. Sharon says he will not hold substantive negotiations with the present Palestinian leadership because it has not acted to stop terrorism. Mr. Erekat and other Palestinians officials accuse Mr. Sharon of trying to avoid negotiations that would force him to yield more territory than he plans to part with unilaterally.
Mr. Sharon is to meet with Mr. Bush on April 14 in a bid to secure American support for his plan. He told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that the Americans had insisted that Israel withdraw from some West Bank settlements as part of the plan.
"The Americans' position was that the evacuation of Gaza alone would only serve Israel," he said.
Mr. Sharon is planning to propose withdrawing from four small settlements in the northern West Bank. But he said he would take that step "only if we are satisfied with the negotiations with the Americans."
Mr. Sharon said that he had already reached an understanding with the Bush administration that, after a withdrawal, Israel would remain free to send its forces back into any area from which it is attacked. He said he also expected the Bush administration "not to criticize" the route of the barrier Israel is building against West Bank Palestinians.
Israeli officials say that Mr. Sharon is also seeking some kind of assurance from the United States that, as part of any eventual peace agreement, Israel will not be expected to withdraw from all territory it occupied in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. Mr. Sharon wants in particular to retain three large blocks of West Bank settlements.
Mr. Sharon is under pressure from his right to gain a commitment from the United States to oppose any "right of return" to what is now Israel for refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and their descendants.
He also wants the United States to help secure international financing to develop Gaza and Israel's Negev region, one possible home for the 7,500 settlers now living in Gaza. A senior Israeli official said that Mr. Sharon envisioned using not American money but "World Bank loans and guarantees to start economic development."
Late Sunday, Israeli forces near a Jewish settlement in Gaza killed three Palestinian men that the army said had entered an area it has declared off-limits to Palestinians. Palestinian medics who recovered the bodies said that three were unarmed, Reuters reported.
-------- pacific
Singapore ends military presence in Iraq
5 April 2004
(AFP)
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/focusoniraq/2004/April/focusoniraq_April24.xml§ion=focusoniraq
SINGAPORE - Singapore no longer has a military presence in Iraq after the last of its troops returned home on Monday from a two-month stint in the war-torn country, the government said.
Thirty-one Singaporean Armed Forces personnel and a C-130 transport plane were deployed on February 4 to help the US-led forces in Iraq conduct supply and humanitarian aid delivery missions.
With the expiry of the scheduled two-month deployment, a first batch of troops returned to Singapore with the C-130 on Sunday while a second group arrived home aboard commercial flights on Monday.
"With the return of the troops today, we have no more personnel in the Gulf," defence ministry spokeswoman Felicia Tang told AFP in an e-mailed response to questions.
The crew, which previously had never experienced a hostile environment, came under fire on about one quarter of the sorties flown in Iraq, the Straits Times newspaper said on Monday.
"This was by far the riskiest exercise we undertook and the first time we were operating in a non-benign area," contingent leader Major Francis Ngooi, who returned on Sunday, said.
Singapore has consistently shown a strong commitment to the United States in its campaign in Iraq, giving strong political and limited military support.
Aside from the C-130 crew, 160 personnel on a landing ship tank returned to Singapore in February after two months in the Gulf and 32 Singaporean police personnel were deployed last year to train the local police force.
Tang was non-committal, however, when asked if Singapore intended to send more military personnel to help the United States in Iraq.
"We will continue to evaluate in what way we can play a useful and meaningful role in the reconstruction of Iraq," she said via e-mail.
"What we contribute will also have to take into account our resource situation."
-------- pakistan / india
Reference of alliance
NAFTA, yes: NATO, no
Monday April 05, 2004
Muhammad Ahsan Yatu
http://paktribune.com/news/index.php?id=60701
Military operation in tribal areas against the foreign militants has initiated a hot debate on the Pak-US relationship. These militants were being asked since 9/11 to leave or live peacefully but persuasion was not working; yet their presence was being ignored---and that too, in spite of their odd and damaging activities---due to the respect that Pakistani establishment has for tribal elders and their culture. Now, an under pressure Pakistan due to nuclear businesses of its scientists and two deadly attacks on its President had to act aggressively.
Mujahids or militants or terrorists whatever they are they came initially to Pakistan because Americans and westerners, and Arabs and Pakistanis needed them. They were required by the first two to destroy USSR, by the third to entrench and extend tribalism in the region, and by the fourth as supporters within their so-assumed strategic depth. Things changed first due to withdrawal of the soviets from Afghanistan, second due to American disengagement, third due to some of the groups acting on their own, fourth due to 9/11.
Without going into the morality of operation, the fact remains that security and economy of the state are foremost, and any country would have done the same under the kind of circumstances and pressures that we are facing. However, it is not the first time; our American connection has come under serious questions even before, through three major reasons, which are again the core of the present debate. 1) Internally, it did not help us in evolving an indigenous knowledge based economy. Comparison is made with the Russia-India friendship that helped India in developing an advance technical base. 2) Externally, it did not help us in wars against India; and once the Jihad in Afghanistan, against the Soviets, was over, it left us on our own to face the grave consequences. 3) Morally, it "cheated" us because it was one sided, and at times even at the cost of our sovereignty.
Americans too have their questions. 1) That they gave unprecedented economic assistance to Pakistan, which was wasted. 2) That Pakistan exceeded its agreed limits on nuclear programme. 3) That Pakistan did not solve the Afghan problem through consensus. Instead it inducted Taliban into Afghanistan with the help of Arabs, and maintained strong links with them, while ignoring their militancy that was in action the world over.
With that much intensity of doubt on both sides, our siding with the US in its war against terrorism was not endorsed wholeheartedly by most of our media experts and analysts, and hence by the majority of the Pakistanis. They were worried that militants will strike back in a manner, which might destabilise us. They were further worried that the fresh engagement might prove one sided again, and in case it did, repercussions would be worse. To some it meant to be cheated again. Less reward for cooperation, maltreatment of Pakistanis in America, activities of FBI in Pakistan, aggressive reaction of militants through deadly attacks on common Pakistanis, foreigners and the President, confirm their apprehensions. However, the Americans have been forwarding their own reservations on our conditional and limited support against terrorism. Hopefully, doubts would end, once our tribal belt and rest of Pakistan becomes as normal as they used to be before Jihads started in Afghanistan, and also in Kashmir valley.
Keeping our apprehensions and American reservation apart, American engagement helped us and also harmed us. However, in both the cases, choice was mainly ours. Had we acted wisely, we could have avoided much of the harm, and extracted substantial and sustained benefits also. Though America's intervention was another reason for early end of British rule and hence for partition of India, our active engagement with the Americans began when in early fifties we needed food. American wheat came, along with the friendship that still continues, in spite of doubts and intermittent divorces. Americans also helped us in securing our lifeline, water, through Indus Basin Treaty. On Kashmir, they stood by us in the UN, but not beyond. Though, some other way out, other than the plebiscite, could be found, had America guided us sincerely. That it did not because corner stone of its policy was to keep our region fragmented by creating a barrier between the USSR and India. Unfortunately we were to act as the said barrier. Since our American friendship was anti-USSR (about China US had soft corner since mid fifties, in spite of its communism), it was our contractual obligation to confront USSR, when asked; but towards India we should have adopted pragmatic approach, as US had done towards China: And that we did not because we had entered into American Bloc, primarily, to win Kashmir through influence and might of the alliance.
That is why we were, only, interested in weapons and dollars. We got plenty during Ayub and Zia rule. In return we provided bases, borders, mujahids and their training camps and much more. A part of Ayub era dollars helped swell the wallets of the high officials and the rich, so it amicably served personal purposes. That with the remaining dollars we purchased more weapons, in addition to the ones that came free, served our "wise" India-centric strategy. Meanwhile no one cared about the escalating miseries and the poverty of the people, and rising internal ethnic distrust. Loaded with weapons and confidence of being an ally of America, we fought wars of 1965 and 1971 and lost, and also lost half of the country.
Zia needed legitimacy and the dollars, the high officials and the rich needed bigger accounts, the Mullahs needed prosperity and end of pagans, Arabs needed a tribal state or even a tribal region, and the Americans and the westerners needed defeat of the Soviets. A bargain was struck. Jihad against Soviets was launched in Afghanistan. Zia government got 4.35 billion dollars, legitimacy and the fringe benefits, and Zia's friends and the high officials, and the Mullahs and the others traded arms and drugs freely, within and without. The militants spread militancy during and after the Jihad, the world over. Jihad forced USSR to withdraw, but it did not spare its sponsors either. Pakistani is in trouble, so are Arabs and the westerners. Not to forget the Americans, who got 9/11?
Thus military side of our American connection proved fatal internally as well as externally. The economic side did help but not as much as it could have, it was and is entirely due to our rulers. Their financial management was and is not pro-people. Ayub created twenty-two rich families. America did not stop him from creating more through development of society; but he was busy with the war preparation and self-preservation. Zia in contrast created hundreds of rich families, who in turn created Muslim League for him, which is now, mostly, in league with Musharraf. Zia spent dollars and mammoth state loans on his constituencies and cronies---which were Military, Muslim League, Mullahs, militants and the rich---simply to remain in uniform. No one, including the Americans, stopped him from spending on the people and from changing the dress. And they are not stopping General Musharraf either.
Musharraf got legitimacy through the Judiciary and the so-called referendum. Dollars again came from America or due to a reason based in America. Whatever General and his managers may say the fact remains that a day before 9/11, the Government of Pakistan owned only 1.5 billion dollars. Most came through buying from open market. Enormous pressure of loans and balance of payment existed, despite rescheduling and low imports. The country was virtually in the grip of increasing economic chaos. Before anarchy could take over, 9/11 came. Courtesy America; today and for the time being we are facing less or no pressure from the lenders; and our foreign currency reserves have increased many fold. Yet, not much is changing for the people, rather magnitude of poverty is more than that of Ayub period, because we are still more interested in the prosperity of constituencies and cronies, and in bombs and missiles, and not in peoples' uplift.
Poverty as in individuals is also a curse for the nations. Factually sovereignty is directly proportional to prosperity; or dependence is a function of poverty. And poverty will only be alleviated through earned dollars, and not through rewards, aids and alms. Begging bowels, ultimately, become black holes---nothing escapes from falling into, be it pride or sovereignty or unity---or even ray of hope. Thus, what is needed is that we should turn down America's offer of making us a Major Non-NATO Ally; we have enough of weaponry and army, instead we should seek a kind of economic alliance, which America has with Mexico. NAFTA should be taken as relationship reference, and not NATO. That is what political economy of our renewed American connection should mean to us, and that is what Americans must be conveyed; and that is how American sincerity with us, and our ruling elite's sincerity with the people will be tested.
----
The Masters of Jihad
By ERICH FOLLATH,
April 5, 2004
Der Speigel
Translated by Christopher Sultan
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/europe/05SPIEGEL.html?pagewanted=print&position=
poorhouse and a nuclear power, an ally of the United States and an incubator for Islamist violence: Pakistan is a land of contradictions and poses a danger to the world. Washington is backing Musharraf, who indulges radical mullahs but allows the CIA's special forces to hunt for bin Laden.
Betrayal, say the American members of congress. And the members of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States are convinced they know who the traitor is. In a report that is currently making waves in Washington, the politicians claim that the former Pakistani chief of intelligence, Hamid Gul, promised Taliban leaders in July 1999 that he would give them "three to four hours of advance warning" prior to each planned American missile attack.
These are embarrassing allegations, especially at a time when everyone is talking about the Islamabad-Washington alliance and about Pakistan, the US' most important ally in George W. Bush's war on terrorism.
Did the former chief of intelligence really betray Pakistan's American allies? Could it be that he is still doing so today, as Islamabad's elite troops, together with US military advisors, hunt down Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda compatriots in the wild, mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan, all the while encountering an astonishingly well-prepared enemy?
Is Gul responsible for the fact that bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, managed to elude the attackers in the eleventh hour, escaping through a secret tunnel?
A luxurious bungalow in Rawalpindi, Wembley lawns, tasteful rattan furniture. This is the refuge of Pakistan's rich and powerful, a place where former chief of intelligence and lieutenant general Hamid Gul has been able to retire with full honors. The accused shrugs his shoulders and says: "Oh, the Americans," as if that explained everything, and asks for tea to be served.
Then he proudly presents the souvenirs of his past. The prayer rug given to him by his former Saudi Arabian intelligence colleague, Prince Turki Ibn al-Faisal ("a great friend of the Taliban and bin Laden"); the plaque from the German Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst), which contains a piece of the Berlin Wall and the inscription: "To our respected ally, for his valuable contribution."
Of course, says Gul, who sympathizes with the Islamists, he knew bin Laden well, calling him a "modest and brilliant warrior." He says that he was the Taliban's guest of honor a government function in Kabul. "However, I did not depart from the common line. It was the Americans and the Europeans who made the shift. Once upon a time, they were all in favor of the holy war, and jihad was one of their favorite expressions. In the 1980s, when the Mujaheddin were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan, they couldn't supply them with enough weapons, and they continued to have dealings with the Taliban later on. Back then, the USA used my services. Now they are slandering me. I have long since lost my access to exclusive information."
The telephone rings. Gul is invited to an exclusive Pakistani conference on intelligence and security issues. Gul says he will think about whether to attend.
In his opinion, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf is in the process of become George W. Bush's lackey and, in doing so, digging his own grave. "American soldiers operating on our territory; our proud people will not forgive him for that." And then former spy chief Gul, suddenly the conspiracy theorist, leans forward and whispers: "A few of my CIA counterparts, the US military and the Israeli Mossad must have been in the know about the attack on the Twin Towers." Otherwise, he says, why so long before the fighter jets took off?
Welcome to Pakistan, the land of schizophrenia and stark contrasts: a poorhouse (it has an illiteracy rate of about 54 percent) and nuclear power (it has up to 50 nuclear warheads; home to some of the world's top teams in the colonial sport of cricket as well as the age-old equestrian sport of Buskashi, in which the object of play is a decapitated calf. It's Bush country and at the same time it's bin Laden country: a close ally of the United States, but also an incubator for Islamist terrorism.
Pakistan, created during the bloody partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 into a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim "land of the pure," is the only country in the world that owes its existence to Islam. Upon being founded, Pakistan was immediately catapulted into the center of global politics, and three wars with India followed. By no later than September 11, 2001, and in light of its dramatic shift toward the West, the world's attention once again became focused on Pakistan, a country wracked by terrorism and at risk of nuclear war with its neighbor and of breaking apart.
The Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche calls Pakistan "the world's most dangerous country," and CIA advisor Robert Galluci says that it poses "the greatest threat to the future of the United States." Of the 620 suspected terrorists currently in detention at the US base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, 540 were arrested on Pakistani soil.
Islamabad has made global headlines three times during the last three months alone, in each case for increasingly alarming incidents. In December, there were two attempts in the space of twelve days to assassinate President Musharraf, 60. In both cases, Musharraf survived the attacks, apparently planned by a member of his innermost circle, by a hair's breadth. In February, nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, responding to international pressure, swore an oath of disclosure. He admitted to having passed on top secret nuclear secrets to North Korea, Libya and Iran, supposedly on his own and without the knowledge of Pakistan's military or political establishment. By the day after his confession, the president had already pardoned the sinner, referring to him as "my hero."
Washington accepted the farce, and US Secretary of State Colin Powell even gave a Musharraf a special gift during his visit to Islamabad in mid-March: Pakistan was upgraded to the privileged position of a "non-NATO ally," a status enjoyed by such traditional allies as Israel, South Korea and Japan, but not by Pakistan's long-time arch enemy, India. This status enables Pakistan to purchase state-of-the-art US weapons at preferred prices. Musharraf was all too happy to accept: Faustian pact number one.
In return, Musharraf apparently gave the Americans free rein to combat terror. Military advisors from Washington and Special Forces Unit 121, which was already partly responsible for tracking down Saddam, are playing a key role in the current operation. However, it's an operation that is also costing many civilian casualties. US politicians proudly speak of their new "hammer and anvil approach" on both sides of the border. With the help of Musharraf's army and regional tribal warriors, they intend to lure Al Qaeda fighters across Pakistan's mountain passes and into their trap in Afghanistan.
Washington finds this plan so promising that the US government is treating Musharraf, who came to power in a military coup in October 1999, like a raw egg, and is even praising him for his "steps toward democracy."
"And what would they be?," asks Samina Ahmed, a social scientist working for the International Crisis Group in Islamabad.
"George W. Bush would not accept such an absence of democracy from any other ally," says this resolute woman. And then she lists her grievances: massive electoral fraud during the referendum on General Musharraf's extension of his presidential mandate and during parliamentary elections; the blasphemy law, which clears the way for religious despotism; the "Hudud" ordinance, under which a woman's testimony in court, even in the case of sex-based offences, counts as only a fraction of a man's (this is why 88 percent of women imprisoned in Pakistan are convicted of "sexual offences," even though investigations by independent attorneys have shown that almost all were abused.)
Musharraf is not considered particularly devout. He enjoys his evening glass of whisky, pleads for a more tolerant Islam and, in an interview with Der Spiegel in April 2002, outed himself as an admirer of the secular reformer Ataturk. In the dispute over Kashmir, he has initiated cautious steps toward rapprochement with India. But this did not prevent him, for purely political reasons, from breaking his most important promise: his self-proclaimed "jihad against extremism."
Almost none of the country's radical Islamic schools has been registered. The madrassas, which educate more than 1.5 million young men, are still not required to submit lesson plans. After having been outlawed, extremist organizations that promote violence have simply renewed their operations under new names, and none of their leaders has been brought to trial. In spite of having been accused of involvement in terrorism in 20 pending lawsuits, extremist Azam Tariq was permitted to run for a seat in parliament and, after being elected, has supported the Musharraf administration.
The general continues to exclude the political leaders of the secular opposition parties, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who have been forced into exile. Last December, he concluded a dubious deal with the opposition party Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), an alliance of six Islamist parties. The MMA agreed to accept Musharraf as president until 2007, provided he resigns his position as head of the military by the end of 2004: Faustian pact number two.
But the general's attempt to curry favor with religious extremists is unlikely to do him any good, at least not if the Jamia Darul Uloom Haqqania ("Truth and Reality") madrassa in the city of Akora Khattak becomes an educational model for religious schools throughout the country.
The school's true purpose is already clear at its entrance, where posters depict its director, Sami ul-Haq, 66, facing hundreds of his followers and holding the Koran in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other. The man, who holds the religious title of Maulana, is viewed as a parliamentary leader of the MMA's most radical wing, and as a supporter of both Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Eight former ministers received religious, and possibly military, training at his school. For many years, Mullah Omar sent messages of greeting to this West Point of the Islamist movement, and bin Laden is said to have preferred sending his Arab followers to the school.
Sami ul-Haq, as a senator in the upper house of the Pakistani parliament, is entitled to a large Toyota sedan as his official vehicle. Most of the time, however, he drives a brand-new turbo-charged SUV, a gift from Saudi fellow believers.
The Maulana is delayed, and Sami ul-Haq's nephew invites me into the house for pastries and oranges. One of the last Western visitors to set foot in the plain visiting room, furnished only with cushions, was here just over two years ago: American Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. The claim that his abduction and murder a short time later had something to do with his visit to the "University of the Jihad" is part of the realm of speculation.
The Sami ul-Haq arrives. He is a stately man with a long black beard, rimless glasses and a surprisingly soft voice. He says that his father founded the madrassa in 1947, and that almost 3,000 students currently live on the campus and study the Koran. The youngest is five years old. According to its most senior teacher, the school is funded exclusively through donations, which include computers "that are supplied from various sources." He says that the school deliberately declined to accept government subsidies, because it wishes to remain independent.
Does he preach terror? When Sami ul-Haq is asked this question, his severe mouth is distorted into a smug smile. "Well, first we must define terror. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are fighting against American oppression. Their methods may not always be our methods, but they have the right to do so. Bush should ask himself what it is that prompts young people to sacrifice the holiest thing they can give, their lives."
Senator Sami ul-Haq has tried his hand at politics, as a member of the MMA, but now he no longer believes in parliamentary government. "By taking sides with the Americans, Musharraf has given up any common cause," says the manager of the holy war, ending the conversation. It sounds as if the president's fate has already been sealed.
The Koran school is only an hour's drive from Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province. The NWFP is Pakistan's Wild West, a mountainous, inaccessible region which, like the Afghan provinces on the other side of the border, Kunar, Nangarhar, Paktia and Khost, is inhabited almost exclusively by Pashtuns. The troops of Alexander the Great, the great Moguls and the British colonial rulers were all unable to tame or even subdue these proud and obstinate fighters for any extended period of time. Their gruesome tribal blood feuds involving disputes over "zar, zan and zamin" ("gold, women and land")are offset by a code of honor that grants guests unconditional protection. And almost every man carries a weapon, something so matter-of-fact that he would feel castrated without one.
Peshawar, the last major station before the legendary Khyber Pass, was always a wild frontier city filled with weapons merchants and opium dealers, news dealers and spies, and their preferred meeting place was the Qissa Khawani, the storytellers' bazaar. Last Monday, not far from this traditional abode of the tall tale, the spokesman of the Pakistani military issued a statement. According to the statement, the army, during its major offensive into the largely autonomous tribal regions of South Waziristan near Wana, lost about 50 soldiers in fierce battles with foreign fighters and, admittedly, local tribesmen, but also achieved significant successes. The army claimed that it had arrested 163 militants, including 73 foreigners, and that "the Al Qaeda chief of intelligence, Mister Abdullah, was killed."
But what about the captures of those truly "high-ranking targets" mentioned by the Pakistani military leadership, most importantly Ayman al-Zawahiri?
It is no longer believed to be entirely certain that bin Laden's deputy was in fact among the approximately 500 militants who were surrounded by the Pakistanis. The week before last, shortly after al-Zawahiri had supposedly come under siege, the Al Jazeera TV network broadcast a taped message. In the message, al-Zawahiri declared that it was the duty of all Pakistani Muslims to overthrow Musharraf. And Al Qaeda's supposed number ten man, Uzbek extremist Tahir Yuldash, appears to have escaped his pursuers, in spite of apparently having been injured. Presumably, he was brought to safety through a labyrinth of mountain tunnels, if he was even in the region.
That evening, in the foreigners' club in Peshawar, an inebriated American shook his head and said: "The thing our friends are trying to sell as a great success, such as this Mister Abdullah, whom no one knows." Ever since the MMA's extremists came to power in the provincial parliament, even the hotels have been forced to close their bars reserved for non-Muslims. This club is the only place in the city where alcohol is served. Music CDs have also disappeared from the market, as have "un-Islamic" film posters portraying Indian beauties, as well as all "sexually suggestive" window mannequins. They have been replaced by bin Laden candies, bin Laden posters and bin Laden telephone cards.
"What a military disaster," continues the bar patron. "And in spite of all our logistical assistance with satellites and, more recently, with manpower..." Then the man falls silent. Judging by the reproachful looks he is getting, he has already said too much.
Both Washington and Islamabad have urged Americans in the Pakistani border region to make themselves as invisible as possible. Any member of the US military sighted in the fighting zone, which is already off-limits to journalists, could create a problem for Musharraf, and could trigger an uprising. The US ambassador in Kabul, of all people, carelessly mentioned that "a few of the most important Al Qaeda people" are already on the Pakistani side of the border and that they should be hunted down there, prompting Islamabad to issue a furious denial.
The US military advisors have withdrawn to their command centers, built not far from the airfields they are using at Mianwali and Kohat. If one is to believe intelligence reports, Osama bin Laden's latest number one opponent, US Rear Admiral William McRaven, head of Task Force 121, has spent the past few days in Kohat, a town 90 kilometers south of Peshawar.
The clandestine special unit includes intelligence agents from the CIA's Pashtu-speaking unit, military veterans from the army's Delta Force, and capable specialists from the air force and marines. They are said to be able to respond "with lighting swiftness" whenever reconnaissance locates bin Laden with one of its unmanned Predator drones.
As in the case of the successful capture of Saddam Hussein, the US task force also places a premium on "humint," the "human" intelligence gathered through local contacts.
Each appearance of a key Al Qaeda figure is recorded on a map, as is each family relationship. Many of the "Arab Afghans" surrounding Osama bin Laden have been in the Pashtun regions for decades and have married in local villages. At the Americans' request, the Pakistani military is now also focusing on arresting women, so as to learn more about the Al Qaeda leadership and their whereabouts. They use money as an enticement (a 50 million dollar reward for bin Laden and 25 million for Al-Zawahiri), as well as new weapons, schools and roads.
Task force leader McRaven is considered a boy wonder in Washington. He has written a book about special forces and, after 2001, became one of the key counterterrorism advisors at the White House. "If anyone is clever enough to catch bin Laden, it would be McRaven and his task force," General Wayne Downing told Newsweek, which quoted a former commander as having said that McRaven is also extremely physically fit. According to the commander, he could "stick a knife into the ribs of any enemy within a nanosecond."
But is it even possible to develop a spider web in Waziristan like the one that was used in Iraq to ultimately ensnare target number one? Isn't bin Laden vastly more popular here than Saddam was in his target territory, and isn't the terrain, with its mountain passes and caves, much more difficult?
According to the most recent, unconfirmed report, bin Laden was sighted near the Pakistani border village of Arnawai, while crossing into Afghanistan's Kunar Province. Taliban leader Mullah Omar was injured during a US bombing attack. Depending on the source, his injuries were mild, moderately severe, or life-threatening. "Shabnamah" leaflets, letters containing his personal instructions, have turned up, supposedly brought into the border recently by messengers. Are they authentic? If so, could an arrest be a matter of financial negotiation?
The saying goes that "Pashtuns cannot be bought." At the command center, McRaven and Co. have apparently added their own take on the saying: "But sometimes they can be rented."
-------- prisoners of war
Commander Punished as Army Probes Detainee Treatment
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50227-2004Apr4?language=printer
The Army is investigating an allegation that U.S. troops killed an Iraqi detainee when they forced him and another man to jump from a bridge into the Tigris River, and a battalion commander has been disciplined for impeding the probe, officers familiar with the investigation said.
The action against Lt. Col. Nate Sassaman marked the second time in recent months that a battalion commander in the 4th Infantry Division has been disciplined in connection with mistreatment of Iraqis. Sassaman, well-known in the Army since he was a star West Point quarterback two decades ago, received a reprimand for helping subordinates mislead Army investigators as they began their inquiry, an officer familiar with the situation said. Several other soldiers received similar punishment.
Army officers said they are working to understand what happened on the bridge Jan. 4 near the Sunni Triangle town of Samarra, including such basic facts as whether anyone died in the river that night. The soldiers have admitted they forced the two men into the river but say they saw both men swim to shore and emerge, officials said.
"There are elements of what happened in Samarra . . . that still are under investigation and in dispute," said Col. Frederick Rudesheim, commander of the brigade that includes Sassaman's battalion. "What we don't know is what really happened that evening. What I know is that we did something wrong."
That night, Rudesheim said, an infantry patrol picked up two Iraqi men on curfew violations. "For no explicable reason," he said, soldiers in the patrol, from the battalion's Alpha Company, forced the two men to jump into the Tigris River.
At least one of the men made it to shore and filed a complaint about the incident some days later. He said his compatriot had drowned, according to Rudesheim, who said he later met with the man who filed the complaint.
A body was recovered from the river about 10 days after the incident, Rudesheim said, but military authorities are not sure it is the man who was detained that night. Investigators have received another report that the man is alive in Samarra. To this day, Rudesheim said, soldiers in the patrol "still contend they saw both men getting out of the water, up a slight embankment, as they departed."
In any case, he said, "forcing these detainees into the water was very wrong, and soldiers are facing either judicial or nonjudicial action, pending the outcome of the investigation."
Sassaman's "lapse in judgment," Rudesheim said, was in not telling investigators that it was true the Iraqis had been forced into the river. "What was being said initially was that they were dropped off, and the flex cuffs cut off them, and that was all there was to it. . . . They left that piece out, that they had actually been in the water."
He added: "It came as a complete shock to me that there was any cover-up -- it just floored me."
Rudesheim declined to say how many soldiers had been reprimanded and how many more remain under investigation. Sassaman's letter of reprimand came from Army Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, officials said.
Sassaman did not respond to repeated requests for comment made by telephone and e-mail over several days. Odierno did not respond to a request to comment for this article.
Lt. Col. Bill MacDonald, the spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, said by e-mail when initially queried in February, "There is an ongoing investigation still pending and discussing anything beyond that would be speculation." He did not respond to subsequent e-mails and telephone calls.
There has been a spate of allegations recently against U.S. troops concerning treatment of detainees.
Late last month, the Army charged six U.S. soldiers with abusing and mistreating prisoners at the military jail west of Baghdad. In January, three Army reservists were discharged for kicking and punching prisoners at a detention center near the southern city of Basra. In October, eight Marine reservists were charged with mistreating prisoners of war at a camp near Nasiriyah, about 200 miles south of Baghdad. Two of them were charged with negligent homicide in a prisoner's death in June.
Another battalion commander in the 4th Infantry Division was disciplined a few weeks before the January incident in Samarra. Late last year, Lt. Col. Allen B. West, commander of an artillery unit, pleaded guilty to beating and threatening to kill an Iraqi prisoner. He was accused of firing his pistol near the prisoner's ear. He was fined $5,000 and relieved of his post.
The January incident was not the first of its kind in the battalion, said one soldier in the battalion who spoke on condition of anonymity. A few months earlier, he said, troops forced an Iraqi to jump from a bridge into the Tigris near Balad. The man survived, subsequently complained and sought compensation, the soldier said. Rudesheim would not discuss details but confirmed such a complaint had been made.
The soldier said that rough handling of detainees was common in his unit but that he thought it was often warranted. "It's a little like the French colonel in 'The Battle of Algiers,' " he said, referring to the 1965 film about the Algerian uprising against French colonial rule. That is, he explained, the French officer said, " 'You're all complaining about the tactics I am using to win the war, but that is what I am doing -- winning the war.' "
Sassaman is one of the Army's higher-profile lieutenant colonels. Twenty years ago he quarterbacked West Point's team to its first bowl game: the 1984 Cherry Bowl, played against Michigan State University (Army won, 10-6). He made headlines for playing much of the season with three cracked ribs, wearing a flak jacket under his uniform to protect his injured torso.
Over the past year, as Sassaman commanded the 1st Battalion of the 8th Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, he was frequently quoted in news accounts. He caused some controversy for a remark he made to the New York Times in December. "With a heavy dose of fear and violence, and a lot of money for projects, I think we can convince these people that we are here to help them," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
Poor discipline and acts of brutality generally are seen as indications of troubled, low-morale units.
But Rudesheim said Sassaman's battalion performed well in Iraq. "This unit has performed superbly for almost an entire year in combat in the Sunni Triangle," he said.
He added, "There were also mitigating circumstances regarding the decisions." Two days before the Samarra incident, he said, one of Sassaman's favorite subordinate officers, an engineering unit captain named Eric T. Paliwoda, had been mortally wounded, and Sassaman had held the dying officer before putting him aboard a medical evacuation flight. "He basically died in Nate's arms," Rudesheim said.
Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
-------- spies
Security Posts Created in Iraq
U.S. Administrator Appoints Defense, Intelligence Officials
By Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50228-2004Apr4.html
BAGHDAD, April 4 -- On a day when violence raged throughout much of Iraq, the U.S. official in charge of the country announced the appointment of a defense minister and an intelligence director, who he said would help protect the nation.
At a brief news conference Sunday during which he took no questions, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, said he had signed orders officially creating a new Defense Ministry and an Iraqi National Intelligence Service.
"These organizations will give Iraqis the means to defend their country against terrorists and insurgents," Bremer said. "Given Iraq's recent history, it has also been important to ensure that Iraq's national security organizations are open to public scrutiny and under political control."
The much-feared armed forces and intelligence services of former president Saddam Hussein were dissolved after a U.S.-led invasion toppled his government a year ago. Bremer has taken months to reconstitute the agencies and select people to fill their politically sensitive leadership positions.
Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi, a financier who has served as interim trade minister since September, will take over the defense portfolio.
Born in Baghdad, Allawi holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard and worked at the World Bank and other financial institutions while remaining active in expatriate groups opposed to Hussein.
"I am not a military officer and do not have military experience, but I am an individual who believes in the rule of law, democracy and the constitutional system," Allawi said. "I believe civil control of the military will help to build democratic institutions and respect for law."
Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed Shehwani, who fought with the U.S.-led forces during the war last year, was named director of the intelligence agency.
After nearly 30 years in the Iraqi army, Shehwani was forced into retirement in 1984 and later placed under surveillance. He fled to Britain and ran an underground opposition group for five years. He said that after Iraqi officials discovered its existence, his three sons were killed.
"I personally suffered from the former Iraqi intelligence service," said Shehwani, a native of Mosul. "I was chased for about 19 years, I was exposed to several assassination attempts and my three sons were executed."
Massoud Barzani, a Kurd who holds the rotating presidency of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, acknowledged that the defense and intelligence agencies had dark legacies to overcome.
"In the past the Defense Ministry supervised an army that oppressed the people," he said. "The intelligence services also terrorized citizens and detained them, putting them in unknown mass graves."
Iraqi and U.S. officials said the new intelligence agency would not have the power to arrest or detain anyone and would primarily conduct research on behalf of the interior and defense ministries, which are responsible for the country's five new security forces. The agency will be subject to regular legislative oversight, and citizens who believe it has abused its powers will have the right to appeal, the officials said.
--------
Researcher Is Found Guilty of Espionage
April 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Russia-Spy-Case.html
MOSCOW (AP) -- Researcher Igor Sutyagin was found guilty of espionage Monday, Russian news agencies reported, in a case that raised fears of a resurgence of Soviet-style tactics and alarmed the scientific community.
Sutyagin, a scholar at Moscow's respected USA and Canada Institute, was jailed in October 1999 on charges he sold information on nuclear submarines and missile warning systems to a British company that Russian investigators claim was a CIA cover.
Sutyagin maintained the analyses he wrote were based on open sources and that he had no reason to believe the British company was an intelligence cover.
He faces up to 20 years on the conviction, but a sentence was not immediately announced and officials at the Moscow City Court could not be reached for comment
The Interfax news agency quoted Sutyagin's lawyer, Boris Kuznetsov, as saying only four of the 12 jury members recommended mercy when the judge determines the sentence.
Kuznetsov said he would appeal and that the judge gave the jury incorrect instructions by asking them to determine whether Sutyagin had passed along the information -- which the defendant did not deny -- rather than whether he had passed state secrets.
The judge ``was manipulating the jury's opinion and the main manipulation was that the questions raised by her did not reflect the essence of the charge,'' he said in comments shown on the NTV television channel.
Human rights advocates say the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the KGB's main successor, is deeply suspicious of Russian scientists' contacts with foreigners. They say that its agents have been emboldened by the rise of ex-KGB agent and FSB director Vladimir Putin to the presidency.
In only a few cases have courts challenged such cases. In December, a jury acquitted Valentin Danilov, a professor at Krasnoyarsk Technical University in Siberia, who had been charged with selling classified information on space technology to China and misappropriating university funds.
Russia's constitution provides for jury trials, but until recently they existed only on an experimental basis.
A court had been expected to deliver a verdict in the case in 2001, but instead instructed prosecutors to continue investigating and left Sutyagin in jail. Russian courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly denied his request to await trial out of jail.
Other high-profile spying cases involving open sources in recent years included the arrest of former navy Capt. Alexander Nikitin, charged with divulging state secrets after co-authoring a report on environmental dangers posed by Russia's northern submarine fleet. He said the information he used had been published before, but spent 11 months in jail. He was later acquitted.
In 2000, U.S. businessman Edmund Pope was convicted of espionage for trying to purchase plans for an underwater propulsion system, which his supporters said had already been sold openly. He was later pardoned by Putin.
The 2001 arrest and conviction of U.S. Fulbright Scholar John Tobin on marijuana charges attracted wide attention after officials alleged he was a spy in training. He was later released.
-------- us
The hidden cost of war
What the Pentagon isn't telling you about friendly fire.
By David Morris
April 5, 2004
Salon
http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/05/friendly_fire/index_np.html
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/salon3.html
Send us a Letter to the Editor http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/05/friendly_fire/print.html/about/letters/index.html
The Marines of Charlie Company had been cut off from their comrades early in the battle, fighting for their lives behind enemy lines for two hours before the vaunted American air armada finally showed up. They had already taken five wounded and lost a mechanized vehicle by the time they heard the friendly jet's fire echoing against the buildings. It was an Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt, a gangly airplane expressly designed to kill tanks. Its huge 30 mm cannon shot slugs the size of milk jugs, and the Marines hoped that as it flew low it would kill the scores of fedayeen who were swarming around them.
Then the Thunderbolt pressed its attack, and it became clear that it was the Marines, not the fedayeen, that the pilot was aiming at.
"Abort air! Abort air!" one of Charlie's officers screamed into the black handset of his radio, while others fired red flares into the air, but the Thunderbolt made seven more gun runs that day. Eyewitnesses say the American jet killed 10 U.S. Marines -- although because of the disparate fire from friendlies, fedayeen and the Thunderbolt, it was impossible to tell with any semblance of clinical certainty who had shot whom.
Taken in context, the incident at Nasiriyah seems to fit into a larger pattern of overwhelming American power and technology, intersecting with a pervasive fog of war. Whereas in all of America's previous wars, the fratricide rate hovered between 2 and 12 percent of the total casualties suffered, in Operation Desert Storm this figure jumped to 24 percent. Further, some Gulf War veterans contend that the 24 percent figure is too low and point to instances where commanders urged their troops to keep a lid on accusations of friendly fire for fear of the crisis of confidence that it might engender in the ranks. In one way, friendly fire is like rape on college campuses: It is frequently underreported.
Comparing Nasiriyah to the Gulf War's deadliest engagement, the battle for Khafji, one sees a familiar script emerging: American and Iraqi forces clash unexpectedly, and in the ensuing chaos, the Iraqis are defeated but with an unnecessary loss of American lives via fratricide. All 11 U.S. Marines who lost their lives at Khafji in 1991 did so by friendly fire, seven of them notably by an Air Force A-10.
For many Marines, the Air Force A-10 has become the symbol of all that is wrong with the modern American fighting machine. To them, it seems that whenever A-10s show up, their buddies start dying. Critics of the A-10 point to ill-trained pilots who aren't proficient in distinguishing friendly fighting vehicles from enemy ones and who don't train alongside their Marine counterparts nearly enough. Lt. Col. Jim Braden, a Marine attack helicopter squadron commander who helped orchestrate the latter stages of the Nasiriyah battle, personally ordered two A-10 pilots to abort a rushed airstrike there. Braden says, "A lot of Air Force pilots I've worked with just seem to be looking for an excuse to pull the trigger and aren't really concerned about where friendlies are located. Their attitude is 'Just give me a GPS grid coordinate and let me do my thing.'" And while he concedes that, on the whole, Air Force pilots are a committed, professional bunch, he argues that their perception of ground-support tactics varies widely from that of chest-thumping Marine pilots who pride themselves on their nap of the earth modus operandi.
The A-10 controversy has also had ramifications on the larger American-led coalition in Iraq. In January 2003 -- two months before the battle for Nasiriyah -- British Army Lt. Col. Andrew Larpent, whose unit suffered nine dead and 12 wounded when an U.S. Air Force A-10 mistook them for enemy troops in 1991, called on the British military to implement a system to protect British troops from American fighter pilots before sending them into battle in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Asked to characterize the nature of problem, Larpent responded, "It is a lack of care by U.S. pilots who should take more care."
On March 29, 2004, more than a year after the battle of Nasiriyah, U.S. Central Command released its investigation of the alleged friendly-fire incident. The inquiry board, overseen by an Air Force brigadier general, blames the deaths on a poorly oriented Marine forward air controller who was located behind Charlie Company's position. The board pointed out that the A-10 pilots had been repeatedly "cleared hot" by the controller to engage what were thought to be Iraqi fedayeen. The investigation goes on to say that laboratory tests determined that no Marines were killed and that only one Marine was wounded by the Air Force jets, contentions that fly in the face of virtually every eyewitness account of the battle.
Another Marine forward air controller operating in the Nasiriyah area at the time of the incident argues that although the Marine blamed for authorizing the A-10 strikes was clearly in the wrong, the pilots still had a responsibility to visually confirm their targets before squeezing the trigger: "They made eight passes before finally breaking off their attack. They knew there were friendlies nearby. The pilots never confirmed what it was that they were shooting at." This officer, who controlled 42 airstrikes in the opening stages of the war, further asserted that given the atmospheric conditions -- it was daytime and there was no ground haze -- and the very low flight of the A-10s, the pilots had acted recklessly.
In response to those charges, a Central Command spokesman said that because of the reported threat of Iraqi ground fire, the A-10s had been loitering above Nasiriyah at high altitude and had descended into visual range only when they were cleared by the Marine forward air controller. According to Air Force regulations, pilots are not obligated to visually confirm their targets before engaging.
Other former military officers have criticized the Central Command report for failing to tackle possible technological solutions to the friendly-fire problem. In an article in the Houston Chronicle, Ralph Hayles, a former Apache attack helicopter pilot, said the investigation's findings missed the bigger picture. "Blaming a forward air controller on the ground doesn't address the problem of having no way for combat aircraft to identify who they are targeting on the ground," said Hayles, who mistakenly fired on U.S. troops during Operation Desert Storm, killing two. After the 1991 war, the Pentagon promised that it would make anti-fratricide technologies a high priority. Nevertheless, after spending $180 million over the course of the next decade, no anti-fratricide system was ever fielded.
For the survivors, friendly fire remains a difficult issue to process emotionally. One widow of a Marine killed by friendly fire during the Gulf War told this writer that she often feels like a second-class citizen among other surviving families, as if her loss were somehow less real and devastating than those whose loved ones had died at the hands of the enemy. Their deaths are treated by many as an embarrassment, a grim asterisk, something not easily fathomed and thus to be looked past. Fratricide occupies a strange place in the horrific panoply of war because it not only snuffs out the precious flicker of life but also creates a villain where before there was a comrade. War reduces us all with its grim report on the human condition: soldier, civilian observer, correspondent, all must cope with war's soul-crushing revelations, fratricide being but one element of the plague. Nevertheless, friendly fire remains, in a sense, the perfect metaphor for the evil of war as a whole: We are, in essence, killing ourselves.
-------- propaganda wars
So Much for Spinning the Positive
By Al Kamen
Monday, April 5, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50164-2004Apr4?language=printer
The Bush administration has been fuming for many months that the media keep getting things wrong about Iraq, that reporters just refuse to cover the really great things going on over there. So back in the fall, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld asked his Cabinet pals to help out.
There is all sorts of progress in Iraq, he wrote, thanks to many people, "including some of your staff members. . . . Unfortunately, the American people don't know much about the progress being made -- because the media has focused on the difficulty and challenges, not the successes."
He enclosed a six-page memo with suggestions for each Cabinet member who would be "taking along their respective press corps, who may be less jaded, and more open to good news, than those who regularly cover Iraq."
For Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, we find:
"MESSAGE: Crime is down in Baghdad and other cities. . . . Iraqi courts are operating again. . . . More than 30,000 Iraqi police are trained, armed and are conducting joint patrols with Coalition forces.
"EVENTS:
• Watch a police training session. . . .
• Go on a joint patrol (in a permissive neighborhood) with Iraqi police. . . .
"PRESS CORPS INVITED: Justice/legal correspondents of major news organizations."
And so it went for each agency. A LexisNexis search by our colleague Lucy Shackelford shows that since late September, five of the 12 members invited have been to Iraq: Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.
It is not clear whether they took their own press corps. Some, such as Mineta, did not get much coverage. Others, such as Veneman and Chao, received excellent press. Sometimes the coverage was a mix of good news and bad news.
For example, Evans told reporters on a visit to Iraq Oct. 14 that his own presence showed Iraq is safe. "But just moments before," the Associated Press reported, "U.S. soldiers delivered the bad news: They'd found a roadside bomb on the route. The bus would be diverted."
Some Cabinet types could improve their skill in staying on message. For example, Thompson, who has demonstrated a willingness to travel overseas regularly if that is what it takes to improve the health of all Americans, visited in February.
He toured a Baghdad hospital, as Rumsfeld's missive suggested, but it was filthy. "If they just washed their hands and cleaned the crap off the walls," Associated Press reporter Mark Sherman quoted him as saying, things would improve.
"No one bothered to mop up a puddle near one girl's bed when Thompson walked through the cancer ward Sunday," the story continued. "Two decades of war and international sanctions have rendered Iraqi hospitals decrepit and doctors woefully behind the times in terms of training. Looting after the U.S.-led invasion stripped many hospitals and clinics bare."
Oh, well.
No Skimpy Trip
Speaking of Thompson, his one-week AIDS delegation to five African nations in December cost about a half-million dollars, according to documents obtained by Science magazine. It would have been a lot more, but several dozen folks, including those from faith-based groups and industry leaders, who were hit up to contribute to anti-AIDS programs, paid their own way, ponying up nearly $100,000.
The $477,000 figure uncovered by Science magazine (after a little recalculation) includes $11,000 for cell phone charges, $10,000 for a PR firm and nearly $400,000 for a chartered plane. It does not include the cost of flying everyone to Frankfurt, Germany, where the trip started.
Asked about the cell phones, Health and Human Services spokesman Tony Jewell said international cell phone charges were expensive as staff put together a "logistically challenging trip. They weren't offering free nights and weekends to everyone."
In all, Thompson's trip included three dozen government employees, or about $14,000 per employee.
Your Shipping Papers, Please
The Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection office in Norfolk was concerned last fall that shipments of goods to China from various ports were being permitted without the requisite paperwork. So the port director issued "Information Bulletin #1295" to ensure "uniformity among the ports" when shipments are to go to certain "proscribed countries." Shippers sending goods to such countries, deemed to be bad guys, need to have detailed cargo information cleared and fulfill other requirements.
"The proscribed countries" listed include hardy perennials such as Cuba, Libya, North Korea and Iran. They also include new NATO allies Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Rumania, and other NATO allies and members of the Coalition of the Willing, Poland and Hungary. And then we have the nonexistent U.S.S.R and the German Democratic Republic. (There won't be any shipments to those places.) Ditto the "Soviet Zone sector of Berlin."
Shortlist for Iraq Ambassador
Speaking of Iraq, White House officials last week were said to have narrowed the search for a new ambassador to Iraq to a shortlist, said to include National Security Council Iraq troubleshooter and former ambassador to India Robert D. Blackwill and U.N. ambassador and veteran diplomat John D. Negroponte. An announcement is expected this week, possibly as early as today.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- drug war
Afghan Farmers Protest Opium Crop Plan
By AMIR SHAH
Associated Press Writer
April 5, 2004,
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/sns-ap-afghan-drugs,0,2538027.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Hundreds of farmers demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan on Monday against a government plan to destroy fields of opium poppies in an effort to crack down on rampant drug production, police said.
About 300 farmers gathered peacefully near the town of Kama in Nangarhar province, a poppy-growing region about 90 miles east of Kabul, said Ajab Shah, a senior provincial police official.
The government plan calls for the destruction of 75 percent of the opium crop in Nangarhar and two other key opium-producing provinces. Opium is used to make heroin.
The eradication is intended to destroy up to 30 percent of Afghanistan's crop before it can be harvested.
Nangarhar Gov. Din Mohammed said about 200 people traveled Sunday from Kama to the provincial capital, Jalalabad, to ask that the program be scaled back.
The provincial government had planned to destroy all the opium in the province, "but we received orders from the central government to destroy 75 percent in five districts," he said, adding that eradication will begin soon.
Last year, Afghanistan produced about three-quarters of the world's opium. Authorities suspect the lucrative trade benefits both the commanders of the irregular militias controlling much of the country and the anti-government rebels, including the ousted Taliban.
President Hamid Karzai's government has vowed to launch a crackdown on drug production, and foreign donors, including the United States and Britain, are spending millions of dollars training new Afghan security forces to destroy opium fields.
-------- homeland security
Patriot Act divides Bush loyalists
April 05, 2004
By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040405-121346-4789r.htm
Rarely has an issue so deeply divided Republicans as the USA Patriot Act, which is pitting conservatives critical of the law against President Bush's call to reauthorize it in an unusual election year intraparty debate.
The issue puts several Republicans in the peculiar position of defending Sen. John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, who opposes parts of the act as threats to constitutional protections.
"Kerry isn't a supporter of terrorism any more than I am, just because we both raised some questions about whether some things in the Patriot Act go too far," said former Rep. Bob Barr, a Georgia Republican who thinks aspects of the law violate personal privacy.
"The Fourth Amendment is a nuisance to the administration, but the amendment protects citizens and legal immigrants from the government's monitoring them whenever it wants, without good cause - and if that happens, it's the end of personal liberty," Mr. Barr said.
At a recent private gathering, former Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin I. Meese III, long a hero to many in his party, defended the act against a battery of critics that included such conservative stalwarts as former Virginia Gov. James S. Gilmore III, Mr. Barr and American Conservative Union Chairman David A. Keene.
Mr. Meese heatedly challenged them to come up with a single example of unlawful search and seizure and invasion of privacy by the government under the act.
"I don't care if there were no examples so far," Mr. Barr is said to have countered. "We can't say we'll let government have these unconstitutional powers in the Patriot Act because they will never use them. Besides, who knows how many times the government has used them? They're secret searches."
Some Republican critics, even though they are Bush loyalists, say that the Patriot Act was coined with the purpose of making it easy to label any critic of the act unpatriotic or soft on terrorism. They say Bush supporters plan to use that tactic against Mr. Kerry.
"Conservatives have always been split on the competing values of national security, on the one hand, and individual liberty and the mistrust of big government, on the other," Mr. Keene said.
"I believe it's a wedge issue they will try to use against Kerry. There have been several signals - Bush's State of the Union speech and [Attorney General John] Ashcroft's response to [Sen. Larry E.] Craig's legislation - which attempt to characterize anyone who questions security [legislation] as not completely loyal."
Backed by 30 other lawmakers in both parties, Mr. Craig, an Idaho Republican on the Judiciary Committee, and Rep. C.L. "Butch" Otter, Idaho Republican, are sponsoring bills to add what they say are needed provisions to protect personal liberty and privacy to the Patriot Act.
Opponents of the antiterrorism act say it lets the government "sneak and peek" at what a person has been reading in a public library, keeps on his home computer or has in his office financial records. The targeted person does not have to be informed of the searches before or, in some cases, afterward. Nor does the act require that the targeted person be a terrorism suspect.
Defenders counter that the measures are constitutional and there is nothing wrong with using the act to sweep up bad guys even if they aren't terrorists.
"We did not write a criminal law to be limited to terrorism, except where we said so, and Congress intended these laws to be tools to protect us from all kinds of crimes," said a House Judiciary Committee counsel who asked not to be identified.
In his State of the Union speech in January, Mr. Bush urged Congress to make permanent provisions in the act that are scheduled to expire Dec. 31, 2005.
Mr. Ashcroft has toured the country opposing the Craig-Otter proposal, saying it would weaken the government's ability to fight terrorism. Mr. Bush has threatened to veto the legislation if enacted.
With conservative icons such as Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly and Free Congress Foundation President Paul M. Weyrich also among the Patriot Act's critics, Republicans on both sides of the issue say such a public division on so basic an issue is painful - especially in the middle of a presidential campaign. Some deny the rift exists.
"I don't believe for a minute that the Patriot Act debate has created a rift in the Republican Party or among conservatives," Mr. Otter said.
But Mr. Barr said the debate "has Republicans arguing among ourselves and our own president to an extent I've never seen before."
-------- investigations
Rice to Face Questions on Clarke
9/11 Panel to Look For Contradictions
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50188-2004Apr4.html
The chairman of the national commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks outlined his strategy yesterday for questioning national security adviser Condoleezza Rice when she appears Thursday for public testimony. Thomas H. Kean (R), the former governor of New Jersey, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the commission would probe Rice for any contradictions between her recollections of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policy-making process and those of former National Security Council counterterrorism aide Richard A. Clarke.
Rice will be before the committee for 21/2 hours, "as long a session as we've had with any witness," Kean said.
"We expect it to be very exciting," he said, "because we want to know so much. . . . We want to know what she heard and what she knew, and of course what differences there may be between her, Mr. Clarke and a number of other people we've heard."
Kean and Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton (D), a former congressman from Indiana, denied suggestions that the committee might go easy on Rice because the commission's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, is close to her.
Zelikow served on the National Security Council staff with Rice during the first Bush administration and later wrote a book with her. In recent media reports, some family members of Sept. 11 victims have said that could taint the commission's deliberations.
But Kean said that neither he nor Hamilton had found "any evidence to indicate in any way that he's partial to anybody or anything. In fact, he's been much tougher, I think, than a lot of people would have liked him to be."
Kean said that the commission and the White House are "planning" to have a final report available to the public by July, but he acknowledged in response to questions from Tim Russert that he could not guarantee an early release date. The White House will vet the report to protect intelligence sources and methods, a process that could become time-consuming.
"This is one of the big remaining obstacles, for us to get the report declassified," said Hamilton, also appearing on "Meet the Press."
Hamilton insisted, however, that "we're not going to let them distort our report."
Kean, Hamilton and other commission members who made the rounds of Sunday morning talk shows yesterday emphasized that the commission was united and determined to produce a report that would apportion blame equally among all of those who are responsible -- and would make all necessary policy recommendations.
Still, there was an echo of last week's partisan feuding over Clarke's testimony when former Navy secretary John F. Lehman, a Republican, and former senator Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who represented Nebraska, appeared on CBS's "Face the Nation."
Lehman said Clarke was "not credible now, because he's chosen up political sides, and he's retelling history in the light of where we are in the campaign today and what sells his books, in my judgment."
But Kerrey said, "Nobody who knows Dick Clarke could say anything other than, this guy's a pile driver when it comes to terrorism. That's all he cared about morning, noon and nighttime, too."
-------
Leaders of 9/11 Panel Say Attacks Were Probably Preventable
April 5, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/politics/05PANE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 4 - The leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks agreed Sunday that evidence gathered by their panel showed the attacks could probably have been prevented.
Their remarks drew sharp disagreement from one of President Bush's closest political advisers, who insisted that the Bush and Clinton administrations had no opportunity to disrupt the Sept. 11 plot. They also offered a preview of the difficult questions likely to confront Condoleezza Rice when she testifies before the panel at a long-awaited public hearing this week.
In a joint television interview, the commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, indicated that their final report this summer would find that the Sept. 11 attacks were preventable.
They also suggested that Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, would be questioned aggressively on Thursday about why the administration had not taken more action against Al Qaeda before Sept. 11, and about discrepancies between her public statements and those of Richard A. Clarke, the president's former counterterrorism chief, who has accused the administration of largely ignoring terrorist threats in 2001.
"The whole story might have been different," Mr. Kean said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," outlining a series of intelligence and law enforcement blunders in the months and years before the attacks.
"There are so many threads and so many things, individual things, that happened," he said. "If we had been able to put those people on the watch list of the airlines, the two who were in the country; again, if we'd stopped some of these people at the borders; if we had acted earlier on Al Qaeda when Al Qaeda was smaller and just getting started."
Mr. Kean also cited the "lack of coordination within the F.B.I." and the bureau's failures to grapple with the implications of the August 2001 arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, a French citizen who was arrested while in flight school and was later linked to the terrorist cell that carried out the attacks.
Commission officials say current and former officials of the F.B.I., especially the former director Louis J. Freeh, and Attorney General John Ashcroft are expected to be harshly questioned by the 10-member panel at a hearing later this month about the Moussaoui case and other law enforcement failures before Sept. 11.
Mr. Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Intelligence and International Relations committees, said, "There are a lot of ifs; you can string together a whole bunch of ifs, and if things had broken right in all kinds of different ways, as the governor has identified, and frankly if you'd had a little luck, it probably could have been prevented." He said the panel would "make a final judgment on that, I believe, when the commission reports."
Mr. Kean has made similar remarks in the past, but commission officials said it appeared to be the first time Mr. Hamilton, the chief Democrat on the panel, had said publicly that he believed the attacks could have been prevented.
Mr. Kean and other members of the commission also agreed in interviews Sunday that the Bush administration's skepticism about the Clinton administration's national security policies might have led the Bush White House to pay too little attention to the threat of Al Qaeda.
Also appearing on "Meet the Press," Karen P. Hughes, one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers and an important strategist for his re-election campaign, rejected the suggestion that the attacks could have been prevented.
"I just don't think, based on everything I know, and I was there, that there was anything that anyone in government could have done to have put together the pieces before the horror of that day," Ms. Hughes said. "If we could have in either administration, either in the eight years of the Clinton administration or the seven and a half months of the Bush administration, I'm convinced we would have done so."
Since Mr. Clarke made his charges against the Bush administration in a new book and in highly publicized testimony before the Sept. 11 commission, public opinion polls have suggested that while Mr. Bush's overall approval rating is unchanged, public support for his handling of terrorism has slipped.
The commission has said it intends to make its final report public on July 26, which Congress has set as the commission's deadline, although Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said there could be a struggle with the White House over whether the full document can be declassified. Large portions of the Congressional report on the Sept. 11 attacks remain secret at the insistence of the White House.
Mr. Kean said Andrew H. Card Jr., President Bush's chief of staff, had set up a special declassification team to "look at the report in an expedited manner and try to get it out just as fast as possible - nobody has an interest in this thing coming out in September or October in the middle of the election."
Despite allegations from Congressional Republican leaders that Mr. Clarke is not telling the truth, he received new support for his account on Sunday from a prominent Senate Republican, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
On the ABC News program "This Week," Mr. Lugar said he did not recall any contradictions between Mr. Clarke's testimony to the Sept. 11 commission and information he had previously provided to the joint Congressional investigation of the attacks. Asked if he would join his Republican colleagues in attacking Mr. Clarke's credibility, Senator Lugar replied, "I wouldn't go there."
The commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, is expected to send staff members to the White House on Monday to begin reviewing thousands of classified Clinton-administration foreign policy documents that the White House acknowledged last week it had not turned over.
Responding to criticism from former Clinton aides, the White House explained that it had withheld the files from the commission because they duplicated other material, were not responsive to the commission's requests or contained "highly sensitive" national security information. The White House has agreed to allow the commission's staff to review the documents but has made no promise on giving any of them to the panel.
"We have to ascertain for ourselves that we have had access to what we need," said a commission spokesman, Al Felzenberg.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Inmate backs Nichols' defense
April 05, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040405-121346-9771r.htm
McALESTER, Okla. (AP) - A federal death-row inmate who is scheduled to testify in the state murder trial of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols says Nichols wasn't the man who helped Timothy McVeigh make the bomb.
Prosecutors contend that Nichols and McVeigh made the bomb at a lake in north-central Kansas the day before the April 19, 1995, attack, but David Paul Hammer claims McVeigh told him that other co-conspirators helped him assemble the device the night before in an Oklahoma City warehouse.
"Nichols backed out. He didn't show up," Hammer said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Hammer, who served on death row with McVeigh, could bolster the argument of defense attorneys that Nichols was set up by unknown co-conspirators to take the blame for bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 persons.
But prosecutors, who are seeking the death penalty against Nichols, 49, will vigorously attack Hammer's credibility if he takes the stand.
Prosecutors have described Hammer as "one of the least credible sources ever to serve time" in an Oklahoma prison. Assistant District Attorney Lou Keel said Hammer once threatened to kill him and a judge and blow up the Oklahoma County Courthouse.
Testimony is scheduled to resume today in Nichols' case. Already serving a life sentence in federal prison for the deaths of eight federal law enforcement officers, he is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of the other 160 persons and one victim's fetus. Oklahoma is seeking the death penalty against Nichols.
Hammer, 45, who is scheduled to be executed June 8 for killing his cellmate in 1996, claims McVeigh revealed secrets about the bombing plot during almost two years of conversations at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.
McVeigh, convicted of federal murder charges, was executed in 2001.
Hammer said McVeigh claimed he planned the attack and gathered components for the ammonium-nitrate-and-fuel-oil bomb with help from a bank robbery gang made up of members of the Aryan Republican Army, a white-supremacist group.
Defense attorneys may question a member of the gang at Nichols' trial.
Although Nichols participated in the plot, McVeigh said others were responsible for the theft of explosives from a Kansas rock quarry and the robbery of an Arkansas gun dealer, Hammer said. Prosecutors attribute those activities to Nichols.
McVeigh "said that Nichols did help him gather the stuff and helped him store it," Hammer said. But McVeigh claimed Nichols cooperated only because he was concerned for the safety of his family.
"He told us flat out that he threatened to kill Nichols' family," Hammer said.
Judge Steven Taylor has authorized Hammer to testify at the state trial to rebut Michael Fortier, the prosecution's star witness against Nichols. Fortier is serving a 12-year federal prison sentence for knowing about the bomb plot and not telling authorities.
-------- terrorism
Spain Labels as Credible a Letter Threatening New Attacks
April 5, 2004
By DALE FUCHS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/05/international/europe/05CND-SPAI.html
MADRID, April 5 - Spanish authorities are giving credence to a letter received from a self-described spokesman for Al Qaeda threatening more attacks like the Madrid train bombings unless Spain withdraws its troops "completely and immediately" from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The letter is seen as credible in that it could have been sent by a cell with a certain relation to Al Qaeda that could have been involved in the attacks," a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said today. "We do not think this is a joke or the exaggeration of some group seeking notoriety."
The letter, handwritten in Arabic and sent by fax on Saturday to the conservative Spanish daily ABC, claims responsibility for the "blessed attacks of March 11" that left 191 people dead. It also asserted that the partly assembled bomb found on Friday on a high-speed train line was a warning intended to demonstrate the group's strength.
"We placed bombs on the high-speed line near Toledo and we could have made the trains that passed there Thursday or Friday blow up," said the letter, translated and printed in ABC today, "but we didn't because our objective is only to warn you and show that we have the force and capability - with permission of Allah the Highest - to attack whenever we want and however we want."
Intelligence agents cited by the Spanish news agency Efe say the letter's objective is to "derive some profit for the frustrated attack on the Madrid-Seville line."
Madrid's mayor, Alberto Ruíz Gallardón, announced additional security measures today as part of the nationwide alert since the discovery of the bomb on the high-speed rail linking Madrid and Seville. For the first time, the municipal police will patrol the subways throughout the capital, he said, and a remote baggage check has been suspended at the bustling Nuevos Ministerios transport hub.
At a news conference on Sunday, Interior Minister Ángel Acebes said that the "core group" responsible for the March 11 blasts had either been arrested or killed in the suicide explosion on Saturday in the working-class Madrid district of Leganés. He added, however, that "two or three" suspects might have escaped from the building, where assembled bombs were found "ready to commit future attacks."
Until now, the investigation has pointed to the Morocco-based Islamic Combatant Group, which the authorities linked to last year's suicide attacks in Casablanca, Morocco, that killed more than 40 people. Mr. Acebes said that now the focus had shifted to "connections with international terrorist groups."
The Interior Ministry identified a fourth man killed in the suicide explosion as Jamal Ahmidan of Morocco, who was considered a main suspect in the Madrid attacks. Mr. Ahmidan is one of six men named in a European arrest warrant issued last week in connection with the bombings.
According to the warrant, Mr. Ahmidan rented the house outside Madrid where the authorities say fingerprints, traces of explosives and other evidence in the March 11 bombings were found. The warrants identified the rundown house, in the town of Morata de Tajuńa, as the site where bombs were made.
The letter's purported author, Abu Dujana al Afgani, who described himself as the spokesman in Europe for Al Qaeda, is believed to be the same person who appeared in a videotape taking responsibility for the Madrid attacks, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.
The video, found two days after the attacks in a garbage can near a Madrid mosque, said the train bombings were revenge for the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq.
The Spanish government has been one of the staunchest supporters of the American-led war in Iraq, despite the opposition of the majority of the population. The country has 1,300 troops stationed there.
The video's discovery, on the eve of the national elections, prompted angry protests by voters, many of whom saw the March 11 bombings as the deadly price of Spain's close - and unpopular - alliance with the United States.
"This is all the fault of the United States, they got us into this," Santiago Ruíz, a 55-year-old electrician, said on Sunday, standing before the shattered building a block from his home in Leganés where four prime suspects in the Madrid bombings blew themselves up.
The government's initial handling of information on the investigation also contributed to the surprise defeat of the ruling Popular Party.
The newly elected Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has repeated campaign pledges to withdraw the troops by June 30 unless the United Nations takes control of the occupation forces. High-ranking Socialist Party officials have said that Mr. Zapatero may send more troops to Afghanistan, however, as a symbol of his commitment to fighting terrorism and a gesture of good will to the United States.
The letter accused the Spanish state of "injustices and aggression against the Muslims," including the Spanish plan "to send more troops to Afghanistan."
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- energy
US oil companies say SEC asking reserves questions
Story by Joseph A. Giannone
REUTERS USA:
April 5, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24588/newsDate/5-Apr-2004/story.htm
NEW YORK - The three biggest U.S. oil companies have confirmed the Securities and Exchange Commission is asking questions about their reserves as the industry faces closer scrutiny after Royal Dutch/Shell Group slashed its reserves estimates.
Shell (RD.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) (SHEL.L: Quote, Profile, Research) shocked investors Jan. 9 when it revealed it had overstated "proved" reserves by 20 percent. The disclosure prompted SEC and Justice Department probes at Shell and sparked investor fears of further scrutiny and revisions.
Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) received a "comment letter" from the SEC in "mid-January" posing questions about its 2002 annual report, a spokeswoman for the world's largest publicly traded oil company told Reuters this week.
ChevronTexaco (CVX.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and ConocoPhillips (COP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) this week also confirmed receiving reserves questions from the SEC.
Officials from the three companies declined to elaborate on their SEC correspondence.
The SEC declined to comment on whether its investigation had expanded beyond Shell.
"The risk for shareholders is that the outcome of the SEC's review of Shell is tighter definitions of booking standards for all," Deutsche Bank analyst J.J. Traynor said in a note.
Under SEC rules, resources can be designated as "proved" only if a producer is reasonably certain the oil or gas can be produced at current prices. Reserves are closely watched as a measure of an oil producer's drilling success and its potential for future growth and profits.
Analysts say the concern is tighter standards could prompt producers to reduce reserves estimates, hurting their market value and stock price.
CLOSER SCRUTINY
Since hiring two petroleum engineers in 1999, the SEC has pushed companies to defend reserves figures in their financial filings.
Late in 2002, for example, the SEC asked producers about reserves booked from deepwater Gulf of Mexico fields. More recently the SEC has posed tougher questions about bonuses linked to reserves and the use of third-party audits.
Investors, too, seek more disclosure of reserves estimates and the assumptions behind them, such as when proved but undeveloped reserves are first booked. Such reserves not developed after several years could trigger questions.
Even as the SEC digs deeper, analysts and engineers say they don't expect widespread revisions.
"I don't see an epidemic breaking out," said Steve Enger, a Petrie Parkman & Co. analyst. "I don't think there is a systematic overstatement of reserves."
So far, only a few isolated cases have emerged.
Struggling gas producer El Paso Corp. (EP.N: Quote, Profile, Research) slashed its estimates by 41 percent, while independent Forest Oil Corp. (FST.N: Quote, Profile, Research) and British giant BP Plc (BP.L: Quote, Profile, Research) reported smaller cuts. Shell last month trimmed its reserves a second time.
The most likely outcome from the heightened scrutiny will be wider use of independent auditors to review estimates. While common among smaller and middle-tier producers, the use of outside engineers is rare among the biggest energy companies.
Shell hired Houston's Ryder Scott to review its reserves. Russian venture TNK-BP hired DeGoyler & MacNaughton to review its reserves.
(Additional reporting by Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington)
-------- genetics
Farmers' Right to Use Their Own Seeds Protected by Treaty
ROME, Italy, (ENS)
April 5, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-05-03.asp
The advent of genetically engineered patented plants has prompted the negotiation of an international treaty to protect the rights of farmers to save, use, exchange and sell seeds and cuttings saved on their farms. It is aimed at providing protection for farmers who otherwise might be forced to buy each season's seed anew from the owner of a patented crop.
That treaty, known as the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, is about to become legally binding on June 29, 2004 now that at least 40 countries have ratified it.
Egypt, plus 11 European countries, and the European Community as a member organization, ratified the treaty on Wednesday, triggering the 90 day countdown to the Treaty's entry into force, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
"This is a legally binding treaty that will be crucial for the sustainability of agriculture," said FAO Director-General Dr. Jacques Diouf. "The treaty is an important contribution to the achievement of the World Food Summit's major objective of halving the number of hungry people by 2015."
On every continent except South America, some of the countries with the greatest plant biodiversity have ratified the treaty - India, Syria, the Central African Republic, the European Union, Canada, and El Salvador.
For farmers such a level of protection is literally a matter of life and death. Dr. Vandana Shiva of India wrote in April 2003, "That the independent farmer is struggling to survive against immeasurably difficult odds is borne out by the number of suicides by farmers throughout the country. By 2000, more than 20,000 farmers from all over the country had fallen victim to the high costs of production, spurious seed, crop loss, falling farm prices, and rising debt.
There has been a shift from "food first" to "trade first" and "farmer first" to "corporation first" policies, says Shiva, a physicist and activist author who is particularly concerned about the effects of globalization and trade liberalization on the local farmers.
There has been a shift from diversity and multifunctionality of agriculture to monocultures and standardization, chemical and capital intensification of production, and deregulation of the input sector, especially seeds, she says.
Despite the efforts of farmers, there has been a dramatic reduction of biodiversity. Since the beginning of agriculture, around 10,000 species have been used in food and fodder production. Today just 150 crops feed most human beings and just 12 crops provide 80 percent of food energy - wheat, rice, maize and potato alone provide 60 percent.
"Years of multilateral negotiations under the auspices of FAO's Intergovernmental Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture have finally been successful," said José Esquinas-Alcázar, Secretary of the Commission.
Farmers' rights are protected under the agreement which recognizes "the enormous contribution that the local and indigenous communities and farmers of all regions of the world."
More than a complimentary pat on the back for the world's hard working farmers, the system also provides for the obligatory sharing of monetary benefits from utilization of their genetic resources by the private sector, including from commercialization of new plant varieties.
The contracting parties have agreed to establish a new multilateral system to ease access to plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, and to share, in a fair and equitable way, the benefits arising from the utilization of these resources.
The new system will not include plants that are put to chemical, pharmaceutical and/or other non-food/feed industrial uses.
The benefits to be shared will be contributed by the companies that commercialize products incorporating genetic material accessed from the multilateral system. When that product is selling, the company will pay to the mechanism an "equitable share of the benefits" arising from the commercialization of that product. The treaty's Governing Body shall, at its first meeting, determine the level, form and manner of the payment, in line with commercial practice. The Governing Body may decide to establish different levels of payment for various categories of recipients who commercialize such products. It may also decide on the need to exempt from such payments small farmers in developing countries and in countries with economies in transition, the Secretariat said.
Parties to the treaty agree to strengthen research to enhances and conserve biological diversity for the benefit of farmers, "especially those who generate and use their own varieties and apply ecological principles in maintaining soil fertility and in combating diseases, weeds and pests."
Esquinas-Alcázar said, "the treaty provides an international legal framework that will be a key element in ensuring food security, now and in the future. The challenge is now to ensure that the treaty becomes operative in all countries."
Operating at the meeting point between agriculture, the environment and commerce, the agreement will benefit consumers, the Secretariat says, because they will have access to a greater variety of foods, and of agriculture products, as well as increased food security.
The scientific community will benefit through access to the plant genetic resources crucial for research and plant breeding.
International Agricultural Research Centers whose collections the Treaty puts on a safe and long-term legal footing will benefit.
The Secretariat says both the public and private sectors will benefit because they are assured access to a wide range of genetic diversity for agricultural development.
The environment, and future generations will benefit because "the treaty will help conserve the genetic diversity necessary to face unpredictable environmental changes, and future human needs," the Secretariat says.
Animal Losses Alarming
Loss of domestic animal breeds around the world is continuing at an alarming rate, FAO warned on Wednesday, as 130 national coordinators on animal genetic resources opened a four day meeting in Rome. They discussed national and regional action plans and a global strategy for the better management of farm animal genetic resources.
The trend of animal genetic erosion, outlined by the FAO World Watch List in 2000, is continuing, the UN agency said.
According to the World Watch List, out of the around 6,300 breeds registered by the FAO, 1,350 are threatened by extinction or are already extinct.
A preliminary assessment of new data received from more than 80 country reports shows now that the number of breeds threatened by extinction is further increasing.
Fourteen out of the about 30 domesticated mammalian and bird species provide 90 percent of human food supply from animals.
"Genetic diversity is an insurance against future threats such as famine, drought and epidemics," said Irene Hoffmann, chief of the Animal Production Service.
"The existing animal gene pool may contain valuable but unknown resources that could be very useful for future food security and agricultural development," said Hoffmann. "Maintaining animal genetic diversity allows farmers to select stocks or develop new breeds in response to environmental change, diseases and changing consumer demands," she said.
The FAO expects more than 140 country reports to be submitted by June 2004. Final results will be published in FAO's first Report on the State of the World's Animal Genetic Resources, to be issued in 2006.
-------- health
A 'Flip-Flop' on Patients' Right to Sue?
Monday, April 5, 2004; Page A15
By Charles Lane
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A50163-2004Apr4?language=printer
On Oct. 17, 2000, in a presidential debate against Democratic candidate Al Gore, then-Gov. George W. Bush of Texas promised a patients' bill of rights like the one in his state, including a right to sue managed-care companies for wrongfully refusing to cover needed treatment.
"If I'm the president . . . people will be able to take their HMO insurance company to court," Bush said. "That's what I've done in Texas and that's the kind of leadership style I'll bring to Washington."
Today, legislation for a federal patients' bill of rights is moribund in Congress. And the Bush administration's Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to block lawsuits under the very Texas law Bush touted in 2000.
To let two Texas consumers, Juan Davila and Ruby R. Calad, sue their managed-care companies for wrongful denials of medical benefits "would be to completely undermine" federal law regulating employee benefits, Assistant Solicitor General James A. Feldman said at oral argument March 23.
Moreover, the administration's brief attacked the policy rationale for Texas's law, which is similar to statutes on the books in nine other states, arguing that the benefits to patients are outweighed by costs to managed-care companies -- which, passed on to employers, "could make employers less willing to provide health benefits."
"The big story is the total flip-flop here," said M. Gregg Bloche, a professor of law at Georgetown University who specializes in health care issues.
The White House says there is no contradiction.
"The president continues to support Texas's law, which applies to actual health care treatment decisions," White House spokesman Trent Duffy said. "However, decisions of an HMO to deny coverage have always been covered by federal law."
Bush's position is clearly consistent in the sense that he was actually never as strongly in favor of the Texas statute as he said at the debate. As governor, he vetoed it in 1995, then let it become law without his signature in 1997, saying, "This legislation has the potential to drive up health care costs and increase the number of lawsuits. I hope my concerns are proven wrong."
Also, his administration did support a separate patients' rights provision -- independent review of managed-care coverage decisions -- at the Supreme Court two years ago. The court upheld state independent review laws, 5 to 4.
In 2001, Bush backed a federal bill that would have permitted suits against HMOs; it died because Bush wanted to limit damage awards and Democrats disagreed.
But the Bush administration's current position on a part of the president's Texas record that he had once unequivocally praised is also a case study in the shifting politics of health care.
In the two consolidated cases argued at the court last week, Aetna Health v. Davila, No. 02-1845 and Cigna Healthcare of Texas v. Calad, No. 03-83, the president is not only taking the side of powerful Republican constituencies at the national level, such as large employers and health insurers. He is also reflecting changed public priorities: Voters no longer place as high a value on suing HMOs as they do on other concerns, such as drug costs.
A February 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 6 percent of Americans identify "insurance company concerns" as the top health care issue. By contrast, in a July 2000 Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University poll, 15 percent of registered voters said "protecting patients' rights in health plans" would be the most important health care issue in deciding their votes for president.
In part, health care analysts say, this is because the problem a federal patients' bill of rights was meant to solve -- denial of doctor-recommended treatment by health insurance companies -- has abated.
During the full-employment boom of the late 1990s, employee bargaining power grew, and, through their employers, workers were able to demand more flexible coverage, albeit at higher cost later on. Today, 44 percent of Americans identify "costs" as the top health issue, the Kaiser poll found.
"With HMOs doing so much less as far as denying specific instances of care, there were fewer instances to sue them over," said Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a Washington-based nonprofit funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "The public does not feel vulnerable like it did five years ago."
Developments in state and federal law also aided consumers -- a trend the Bush administration is now asking the Supreme Court to curtail.
In 2000, the Supreme Court said that federal employee-benefit law prevents patients from suing HMO doctors in federal court in cases in which the doctor decided both whether a particular treatment was needed and whether it should be covered. But it left open the possibility that such "mixed" decisions can still be challenged under state malpractice law.
Patients Davila and Calad say the logic of the 2000 case should be extended to their situations. Both say they suffered physical harm when managed-care firms denied coverage for treatments their physicians had recommended. Paying for treatment is tantamount to treatment itself, they argue.
"None of these patients would have needed health insurance if they . . . could just whip out a gold card," their lawyer, George Parker Young, told the justices.
But the Bush administration says the two cases are completely different. The 2000 ruling should not apply to cases "where, as here, the HMO and its representatives are not treating the patient but are making benefits determinations," the administration's brief says.
The U.S. government is highly influential at the court, and at oral argument, the justices seemed receptive to the administration's case.
Justice David H. Souter, who wrote the court's unanimous opinion in the 2000 case, Pegram v. Herdrich, observed that "in Pegram you were dealing with a treating physician. We're not dealing with a treating physician" now.
A decision is expected by July.
-------- ACTIVISTS
The barnyard at Barnum
April 05, 2004
Washington Times
Letters to the Editor
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040404-100417-8204r.htm
We at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are disappointed that The Washington Times chose to promote Bello Nock and Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus ("Juggling family life, clowning for circus," Weekend, Thursday) without mentioning the circus' horrible record of animal abuse and neglect.
In one case, Ringling forced an endangered baby elephant to perform even though he was sick. He died just hours after his third appearance in the ring in one day. Ringling officials also took a baby elephant away from his mother before she could teach him to swim. He drowned while fleeing from a handler who was prodding him with a bullhook. In another tragic case, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) warned Ringling for causing "unnecessary trauma, behavioral stress, physical harm, and discomfort" to two other baby elephants who suffered painful injuries when they were dragged, crying and struggling, from their mothers.
In another case, a captured sea lion was found dead in the carrier Ringling used to transport her. Government inspectors have also cited Ringling for endangering tigers who were nearly baked alive in a boxcar, for failure to provide animals with sufficient space and for failure to provide animals with adequate exercise. Readers are encouraged to read more about Ringling's animal deaths and USDA citations, investigations, penalties and warnings at Circuses.com before deciding to go to the circus.
HEATHER MOORE
Staff writer People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Norfolk
--------
Veterans Call for Nuclear Disarmament
From: charles@nuclearpolicy.org
Date: Mon Apr 5, 2004 6:24am
Dear Friends:
I am writing to you about a critical change in U.S. defense policy and to ask fellow veterans for their help.
As you may know, in 2002 we founded Veterans for Common Sense, an organization devoted to pragmatic approaches to protecting American and global security. Emphasizing international cooperation, diplomacy and fair dealings with other countries are the only means to guarantee our security.
The current U.S. administration has abandoned long-standing treaties, angering our allies and demonstrated that the U.S. will rely on military force to protect its interests around the globe. In fact, since 2001, the United States has strengthened its reliance on nuclear weapons as a key component of our national security strategy â€" which is a grave mistake on many levels.
During the next few weeks, Congress will debate proposed changes in U.S. policy that will cost us dearly. While U.S. and allied troops are dying in Iraq with inadequate numbers and equipment, the administration is advocating spending billions of dollars on programs which will not protect the troops and make us all more vulnerable. While cutting the budget for Veterans Administration hospitals and medical care, the administration is spending billions on defense contracts designed to enrich executives and stockholders of massive defense contractors;
Among the costly proposed changes are:
- Big spending increases for nuclear bomb production at the new "Modern Pit Facility" and at Los Alamos National Laboratories
- Millions more for research into "bunker buster" weapons and tactical mini-nukes
- Billions for research into a national missile defense system, which our nation's leading scientists have demonstrated will not work
The stakes are enormous. Just last week, the Russian defense minister announced that if current trends continue, Russia will increase the readiness of its nuclear forces. China is also rapidly modernizing its nuclear arsenal. O ur increased reliance on nuclear weapons has made the world a much more dangerous place.
For the past year, I've worked as executive director of the new Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI) to help change the status quo of U.S. nuclear policy, NPRI is partnering with Veterans for Common Sense to pressure our policymakers to lead the rest of the world by ending our reliance on nuclear weapons.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY
Join fellow veterans in signing the “Veterans Call for Nuclear Disarmament” letter. It will be delivered to members of Congress as they debate funding increases for nuclear weapons. Partner with NPRI and VCS to help make our world a safer place.
Click here to sign the letter.
If you are not a veteran, you may join us by signing the Commitment to Oppose the New Nuclear Arms Race. Click here to learn more.
With best regards,
Charles Sheehan-Miles Executive Director, Nuclear Policy Research Institute Board of Directors , Veterans for Common Sense
Veterans' Letter to Congress
Dear Members of Congress:
As patriotic Americans and military veterans, we are writing to you concerning the misappropriation of billions of dollars from protecting our troops overseas, to be spent on nuclear programs and policies which endanger, rather than protect, American security.
The Department of Energy budget request of $24.3 billion, larger than any in history, includes programs which represent a danger to American security and diverts desperately needed funds for our troops and veterans.
In particular, we oppose the increased reliance on nuclear weapons signaled by the current administration, and specifically any increase in funds for the following:
- $6.6 billion for management and modernization of the nuclear weapons complex.
- $9 million for "Advanced Concepts" programs, supporting research into new types of nuclear weapons
- $27.6 million for bunker buster weapons
- Expansion of nuclear weapons production at Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories
While DOE is requesting increased funding in all these areas, they are only seeking $1.35 billion for a program critical to our security - securing loose nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union to prevent those materials and technologies from falling into the hands of terrorists and aspiring nuclear states.
At a time when funding for critical health care activities for veterans are falling short, when American troops are going into combat without critical equipment such as armored humvees and flack vests, it is unconscionable that billions will be appropriated for programs which will, in fact, not make us safer.
Recently the Russian Defense minister announced that should current U.S. policy trends continue, Russia will be forced to increase its nuclear reliance as well. China is modernizing its nuclear forces, and other countries are struggling to obtain the bomb. Further, the U.S., in order to obtain support in its search for Osama bin Laden, essentially ignored the fact that Pakistan has become the world's leading proliferators of nuclear technologies.
Nuclear weapons do not provide real security to the United States. As General Charles Horner, former commander of NORAD, said in January 2004 at Nuclear Policy Research Institute's conference on nuclear weapons, "I realized that nuclear weapons are only good for taking out cities, they're not good for war fighting. They have little or no utility for war fighting."
The United States should be leading the world in stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and negotiating open, multilateral agreements for eventual disarmament. Instead, by announcing our intention to continue to develop new weapons, and signaling a new policy that targets non-nuclear states with nuclear weapons, we are encouraging their spread, and risking the beginning of a new arms race.
As veterans who have experienced and know the details of war, who know the costs of war to persons and society, who know the losses to victors and losers and who have learned that nuclear weapons have no rational use in armed conflict and know that future security depends upon ridding the world of reliance upon nuclear weapons, we respectfully call on Congress resolve that it is the sense of Congress to:
- Meet the commitment of the United States under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and begin good faith negotiations leading to disarmament
- Zero out funding for programs, including the Modern Pit Facility and new-weapons research, which do nothing for American security and waste billions of dollars while our troops are dying overseas.
- Redirect funding from these programs into funding for programs to reduce nuclear proliferation, secure nuclear materials around the globe, better protect both our troops and provide for homeland security needs.
- Urge the administration to take a leading role in halting global proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Ronald Reagan once said, "A nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought." Our service to our country did not end with leaving the military, and that service now requires us to take part as citizens in the debate over the security of our country. We hope you will join us in that service, and take the right steps to ensure a safe and free America.
Sincerely,
----
Hungary suspends NATO radar construction after green protests
BUDAPEST (AFP)
Apr 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040405162116.yipwoywm.html
Hungary on Monday halted construction of a NATO radar station on a protected nature reserve following a series of protests, the defense ministry said.
"Defense Minister Ferenc Juhasz on Monday suspended the construction until an independent commission completes its studies," about possible environmental damage, defense ministry spokesman Istvan Bocskai said, quoted by MTI state-run news agency.
More than 200 protesters on Saturday blocked roads leading to the Mecsek reserve at Pecsvarad, 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Budapest, preventing trucks from heading to the construction site.
In February, Greenpeace activists chained themselves to trees in Mecsek to highlight their concerns about the nature reserve.
The radar station would aim to secure Hungary's airspace and its construction is financed by NATO, Bocskai said.
Hungary joined NATO in 1999 and is one of 10 mostly central and eastern European countries scheduled to join the European Union on May 1.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.