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NUCLEAR
Mexico Backs Brazil in Nuclear Inspections Dispute
Livermore Scientists Contribute To New Measurements
More cases emerge of Soldiers turning against the war
Exclusive: Bhutto on Pakistan nuclear history
Pakistan Says It's Sharing Info on Nukes
U.N. team to verify uranium work halt
When Puppets Pull the Strings
New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq
IAEA head repeats demand for return of nuclear inspectors to Iraq
Pakistani Tells of North Korean Nuclear Devices
Pakistani scientist says he saw three North Korean nuclear bombs
Pakistan's Khan Saw N. Korean Nuclear Devices - NYT
Libya Disposes of Phantom Arsenal to Curry Washington's Favor
AG office wants in on NRC hearing
Kerry Cites 'Misjudgment' by Bush on Iraq
Republicans Walk Out Of Federal Hearing On Voting Machines,
A Strategy for Iraq
MILITARY
Two spy planes crash in Afghanistan
Afghans Vow to Pursue Disarmament After Unrest
X-45A UACV Demonstrator Drops Inert Bomb
Israel arrests 10 over cross-border weapons smuggling
Taiwan to Buy PAC - 3 Anti - Missiles in June - Paper
Experts Ask Boston to Nix Bioterror Lab
Albright seeks profits in occupied Kosovo?
Missing Workers Point Up Halliburton Danger
Ex - Boeing Executive Agrees to Plea Deal
As Cheney Arrives, China Tells U.S. to Stop Arming Taiwan
Poland rules out sending more troops to Iraq
Revolt in Kut Echoes in Ukraine
Fallujah marines in strange world
Iraqi security forces disappoint 2 U.S. generals
Militia Withdraws At Key Iraqi Sites
Fallujah Gains Mythic Air
Iraqi Security Forces Fall Short, Generals Say
Copter Crashes in Iraq While Uneasy Diplomacy Continues
Troops in Iraq Strain to Hold Lines of Supply
Palestinian children killed by Israel
Bush Qualifies Praise for Israeli Plan
Bush Welcomes Gaza Plan, Without Backing It Fully
Sharon Promises to Retain 5 Big Settlements in West Bank
Australian defence adviser 'sacked for refusing to sex up WMD reports'
No need for Australians to get out: Howard
US renews request for Pakistani troops
Opposition leader sent to prison
Philippines considers withdrawing troops from Iraq
Charges Dropped In Iraqi's Death
Lift the Veil on Space Weaponization
China To Launch Space Solar Telescope
Bush Weighs Overhaul of Intelligence Services
Bush Sees Need for Reorganizing U.S. Intelligence
Annan Rules Out Large U.N. Team for Iraq
U.N. Chief Juggling Far - Flung Commitments
Nader tells youths to brace for draft
78 Troops Killed This Month in Iraq
More Limits Sought for Private Security Teams
Transcript of President Bush's press conference
Saddam's wife could not recognize her husband
CBS, 12 Others Among 'Muzzle' Winners
Forest Service Photos Raise Flap
Milosevic Wants Blair, Clinton as Witnesses
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Scalia Apologizes for Erasure of Reporters' Tapes of Speech
Scalia Apologizes for Seizure of Recordings
Ashcroft denied anti-terror funds on Sept. 10
Fear of Flying
Deadline Is Set for Rail Cargo Security
Ashcroft's Pre-9/11 Priorities Scrutinized
9/11 Panel Is Said to Offer Harsh Review of Ashcroft
Commission Seeks Author of Brief Interview With CIA Analyst Requested
Ex-Director of F.B.I. Defends Agency's Efforts Before 9/11
Staff Report Portrays a Divided and Backward Pre-9/11 F.B.I.
Suspicious Powders, Packages Keep FBI Unit on Edge
FBI Probes About 40 Abductions in Iraq
ENERGY AND
Govs to salute renewable energy
What role will wind power play in our energy future?
Homeowners warm to tankless water heaters
OTHER
Clear Skies No More for Millions as Pollution Rule Expands
ACTIVISTS
Flats meeting Wednesday in Broomfield
Star to welcome out Vanunu
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- brazil
Mexico Backs Brazil in Nuclear Inspections Dispute
April 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-brazil-mexico.html
BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - Mexico offered support on Tuesday for Brazil, which is resisting U.S. pressure to sign a protocol allowing surprise, intrusive inspections of nuclear facilities.
In an unusual show of support from a country which often sides with the United States on security issues, Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said that Brazil clearly renounced any non-peaceful nuclear ambitions.
Brazil has signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which declared Latin America free of nuclear weapons, he said.
``Brazil is a signatory, it has ratified it, and as such it seems to us that both the government and the country has given its word and no further action is necessary in respect to this issue,'' Derbez said during a trip to Brasilia.
Brazil is preparing to start enriching uranium for nuclear power this year, making it one of a small group of countries to master such technology. The move drew attention after reports that Brazil had denied inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency access to the plant.
Washington wants Brazil to sign the protocol to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which would allow for more intrusive inspections of the plant. Brazil has said it does not want to put its proprietary research at risk.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Brasilia was ``extremely happy'' to have Mexico's support. ``We expect from our friends that they have confidence in us,'' he said.
Brazil and Mexico are Latin America's largest countries. Although they sometimes jostle for regional clout, they were united by their common opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
Some Brazilian officials have bristled at the idea of it signing the protocol because there has been a failure to differentiate it from Iran, which the United States says has nuclear ambitions. Brazil's constitution bans it from producing the bomb.
A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia said the pressure to sign the protocol should be seen in the overall context of President Bush's administration calling on all countries to sign it.
The Bush administration wants countries to sign the protocol as part of its drive to ensure nuclear materials never fall into the hands of militants. The European Union also wants Brazil to sign the protocol.
The issue could heat up in coming days with a visit to Brazil by U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
-------- conversion
Livermore Scientists Contribute To New Measurements Of Stratospheric Ozone
Apr 13, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/ozone-04d.html
Livermore CA - A team of scientists, including two from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, have identified a new method to measure the amount of stratospheric ozone that is present at any given time in the upper troposphere.
Working with researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Colorado, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, NASA Ames Research Center and Harvard University, atmospheric scientists Cyndi Atherton and Dan Bergmann successfully quantified ozone transport down from the stratosphere during NASA's 2002 CRYSTAL-FACE mission over Florida.
The research was published in the April 9 edition of the journal Science.
The atmosphere has several levels: the lowest is the turbulently mixed troposphere, which extends from the Earth's surface up to approximately 10 kilometers, and the second level is the more stable stratosphere, which extends from 10 to 50 kilometers above the surface and contains 90 percent of the world's ozone. The tropopause is the transition zone between the two and is appoximately the altitude of commercial aircraft flight.
A team of scientists within LLNL's Atmospheric Science Division created a computer model that can simulate how both ozone (O3) and hydrogen chloride (HCl) in the stratosphere travel downward across the tropopause and into the upper troposphere. Atherton and Bergmann used this model to simulate specific atmospheric events.
These results, when compared to measurements, validated a novel technique that uses Hcl measurements to better understand the contribution of the stratosphere to upper tropospheric ozone concentrations.
Upper tropospheric ozone plays an important role in global warming and climate change. Ozone is a highly reactive and toxic gas. Although it blocks incoming harmful radiation, it also acts as a greenhouse gas, respiratory irritant, and can damage materials and crops.
"This research shows that there are times when a significant amount of the ozone found in the upper troposphere was due to stratosphere-to-troposphere transport events," Atherton said. "Continued use of this measurement method will lead to a better understanding of how much of this material is transported to the upper troposphere, where it affects climate and the chemical balance of the atmosphere."
Until now, no experimental technique could reliably quantify stratospheric ozone in the upper troposphere.
-------- depleted uranium
More cases emerge of Soldiers turning against the war
By Dustin Langley,
April 13, 2004
Workers World
http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/mejia0415.php
While ruling class politicians pretend to debate the war, focusing on tactical questions like whether the Bush administration has enough troops on the ground, working people in uniform are entering the debate in earnest and calling for an end to the war.
Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a Nicaraguan immigrant, refused to return to Iraq from leave, saying, "This is an oil-driven war, and I don't think any soldier signs up to fight for oil. I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression. We were all lied to when we were told we were looking for weapons of mass destruction or we were going to fight terrorism."
Lt. John Oliveira, former public affairs officer for the Navy, resigned his commission after 16 years and now marches in anti-war demonstrations.
These are among hundreds in the military who are now turning against the war.
In the past year, more than 600 have gone AWOL -- absent without leave. (Chicago Tribune, March 15) Many more are exploring ways to get out. The Army granted five conscientious objector discharges in January alone, compared with 31 in all of 2003, 17 in 2002, and just 9 in 2001. (New York Times, March 16)
Some soldiers change their minds when they face the reality of war. Sgt. Mejia said, "When I saw with my own eyes what war can do to people, a real change began to take place within me. I have witnessed the suffering of a people whose country is in ruins and who are further humiliated by the raids, patrols and curfews of an occupying army. My experience of this war has changed me forever. I went to Iraq and was an instrument of violence, and now I have decided to become an instrument of peace."
Others are learning of the Bush administration's callous disregard for the soldiers. Families of soldiers in Iraq have to pay as much as $1,400 for body armor because the Pentagon is not supplying it. (Boston Globe, March 20)
A recent report from the Pentagon found dirty and unsafe conditions in four mess halls operated by Halliburton in Iraq, including, "blood all over the floor ... dirty pans ... dirty salad bars ... rotting meats ... and vegetables."
A recent investigation found that at least four returning soldiers from a local National Guard Company tested positive for radiation "likely caused by dust from depleted uranium shells fired by U.S. troops." (New York Daily News, April 4-5)
While GIs are getting sick, eating rotten food, and facing a lack of equipment, the real beneficiaries of the war--the multinational corporations--are raking in enormous profits and paying their civilian contractors top dollar. Halliburton lists more than 450 openings in Iraq on its website. Chris Boyd of Kroll-Crucible Security told CNN, "There's a lot of contracts that pay anywhere from $350 a day to $1,500 a day."
As GIs become fed up with being cannon fodder for the multinational corporations, it is imperative that the anti-war movement stand with these brave resisters. Camilo Mejia is facing a court martial and could receive up to a year in prison. SNAFU, an organization that supports military resisters, is asking activists to call Gen. William Webster (912-767-7667) at Fort Stewart, and tell him to release Camilo Mejia.
"Members of the military who have doubts about their government's policies often feel isolated," said Alex Majumder, a SNAFU organizer. "They are in an environment that does not tolerate dissenting viewpoints. For this reason, it is important for military personnel to connect with a strong civilian anti-war movement. This movement has to educate soldiers with an anti-imperialist perspective and help them to stand up for their rights and against the war machine."
Lt. John Oliveira says of the antiwar movement, "I'm thankful for those people today. And I was thankful for them back then."
-------- india / pakistan
Exclusive: Bhutto on Pakistan nuclear history
By Anwar Iqbal
Washington (UPI)
April 13, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/upi/20040413-17465600.html
Pakistan's nuclear bomb never had an Islamic character, said the country's former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto whose father used the term "Islamic bomb" from his death cell.
In an exclusive written response to United Press International's questions, Benazir Bhutto provided this and other information on Pakistan's nuclear arms development.
Pakistan's nuclear program, launched in 1974 soon after India's first nuclear test, has been controversial from the very beginning. Since the then two superpowers -- the United States and the former Soviet Union -- were opposed to Pakistan having a nuclear bomb, Pakistani leaders had to use all the overt and covert means available to them.
This led them to numerous underground dealers who provided them with the equipment needed for making the bomb. The Pakistanis were also unusually lucky because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, making Pakistan a much sort-after ally in the West whose leaders wanted to fight the Soviets. This forced the United States to ignore Pakistan's nuclear program, although various sanctions were imposed in 1990, months after the Soviets left Afghanistan.
More sanctions were imposed in May 1998, when Pakistan tested its nuclear devices followed by similar tests by India. The United States might have tightened the sanctions further but Pakistan got lucky again. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Washington and New York, the U.S. administration once again needed the country to fight al-Qaida and other militant networks.
Despite the administration's soft position, the U.S. media have always strongly opposed Pakistan's nuclear program, often calling it an Islamic bomb. The term was coined by the media but also adopted by Bhutto's father and former prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who was later hanged by military ruler Gen. Zia ul-Haq on a murder charge.
"As far as I recall, he did not call it an Islamic bomb" when he launched the nuclear program, said Bhutto in a letter to UPI.
"He called it an Islamic bomb sometime in 1978 or 1979 from the death cell. It was here that he wrote for the first time that the Christian, Jewish and Hindu civilizations had a nuclear bomb, and that he had made one for the Islamic world," she wrote.
Bhutto was invited by UPI to comment on some of the issues raised by the media about Pakistan's nuclear program.
The reports claim that Libyan and Iranian governments had financed Pakistan's nuclear program, offering hundreds of millions of dollars. They also claimed that senior Pakistani military and civilian officials had pocketed some of the money offered for the program while some was used for making the bomb as well.
Benazir Bhutto tackled all these issues with the knowledge gained as a prime minister and tried to answer some of the allegations, particularly those leveled against her father.
Throughout the letter, she emphasized that Pakistan's bomb was never an Islamic bomb and that no Muslim country financed the country's nuclear program.
"I would disagree with the conclusion that Muslim countries funded the nuclear program during my father's tenure. Pakistan did acquire nuclear capability. Is it really relevant how Pakistan did that now that it has it?" asked the former prime minister.
She, however, appreciates the desire in the West, particularly in the United States, to trace the money trail because "deterrence lies in ensuring that powerful people know they can be called to account for illicitly dealing with nuclear exports."
"Ultimately, when the dust dies down, I predict it will be seen that the same elements that destabilized my governments and supported al-Qaida exported nuclear technology," she claimed.
She said that in 1989, some scientists of the former Soviet Union did approach her government offering to sell uranium to Pakistan but the government turned down the offer.
She refused to confirm a media report that Pakistan's former army chief, Gen. (retired) Aslam Beg, had informed Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, of a deal to sell nuclear technology to Iran for an additional $12 billion. She said she did not know anything about this deal because she was not in the government then.
She also refused to comment on another report that some senior military officials were trying to negotiate a deal between Sharif and Iran, saying that all these reports refer to a period when she was not in power.
Bhutto said that in 1979 "a junior former bureaucrat from the Ministry of Information" told the British Panorama television show that the Libyans had funded Pakistan's nuclear program. "That was untrue and the source, as a Ministry of Information junior officer, had no access to the nuclear committee or its program," she said.
Bhutto recalled that Col. Moammar Gadhafi attended the 1974 Islamic Summit her father had hosted in Lahore but that Libyan leader was never asked to "financially support the nuclear program nor taken into confidence about it."
She also dismissed media reports as speculative that Gadhafi had visited the Canadian-built reactor in Karachi. She said the project in Karachi started in the 1960s. "Munir Ahmed Khan was indeed the long-term chairman of the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission and considered by many as the real 'father' of Pakistan's bomb," said Bhutto.
Munir was the predecessor of A.Q. Khan who confessed on Feb. 6 to selling nuclear secrets and technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
She was also asked to comment on a report that Mohammed Beg, who claimed to be a senior official in her father's government, had revealed that Gadhafi "supervised transfers of suitcases filled with U.S. dollars to Pakistan on Pakistan Airlines flights."
"Mohammed Beg was never a confidante of my father. I do not even recall him, and I can recall the small group of people that could call on my father," said Benazir Bhutto.
She also rejected the suggestion that Z.A. Bhutto had renamed the Lahore stadium after Gadhafi because he had financed Pakistan's nuclear program. Similarly, she also disagreed with the suggestion that another Pakistani city, Lyallpur, was renamed Faislabad because the late Saudi King Faisal had financed the nuclear program. She said although the city was renamed by Gen. Zia, "I doubt that Zia renamed the city because he was getting money in suitcases from the Saudi King on planes."
She said she did not know if the late shah of Iran had given $500 million to Pakistan to suppress an insurgency along Iran's border but said even if the money was given, it was not used for financing Pakistan's nuclear program, as some reports had suggested.
Bhutto visited Libya during her first term as prime minister, between 1988 and 1990. "Col. Gaddafi did not ask me to help Libya with the bomb," she said.
According to her account, in July 2000, the current Musharraf government published advertisement in Pakistani newspapers, inviting tenders for sale of nuclear-related products.
She said as prime minister she had sanctioned the purchase of ballistic missile technology from North Korea during her second term 1994-96, but declined to approve a budget to locally develop the technology because of her policy of "keeping parity with India and not develop(ing) longer ranged missiles than theirs."
Bhutto said that after Pakistan detonated nuclear devices in May 1998, it came under great financial pressure. "If any swap (of nuclear technology for money) took place, it would be sometime after May 1998 when Pakistan no longer had money to make payments."
"After Pakistan's financial crisis in May 1998, there were hawks who argued that Pakistan could earn money selling nuclear technology," she said.
-----
Pakistan Says It's Sharing Info on Nukes
April 13, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-Nuclear.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan said it was sharing with other countries information divulged by disgraced top scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, but refused comment on a report he had visited a secret underground plant in communist North Korea and seen nuclear devices.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, told interrogators he inspected the weapons briefly during a trip to North Korea five years ago. If true, it would be the first time that any foreigner has reported inspecting an actual North Korean nuclear weapon, the newspaper said.
The report cited unnamed Asian and American officials who have been briefed by the Pakistanis.
Khan, long regarded as a national hero for helping Pakistan obtain a nuclear deterrent against rival India, confessed in February to transferring sensitive technology to North Korea, Iran and Libya.
He received a pardon from Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally, but remains under house arrest in Islamabad as investigators continue a probe into his illicit nuclear deals.
Jon Wolfsthal, who served as a U.S. government monitor at North Korea's main plutonium site in the 1990s, said Washington has believed for more than a decade that North Korea had enough material for one or two bombs.
Khan is not a credible source, however, Wolfsthal said.
``A.Q. Khan is a liar, and he's doing whatever he feels necessary to protect his own interests and protect the government that has pardoned him,'' said Wolfsthal, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
``One way of doing that is saying, 'It doesn't matter what we sold to North Korea because they had weapons already,''' he said.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said Tuesday that Pakistan had shared information arising from its investigations of Khan to other countries, but he did not elaborate.
``We have investigated scientists. We are in touch with the world,'' he told a press conference in Islamabad.
Pakistani officials have previously said they have offered information on the investigation to China, Japan, South Korea, as well as the United States and the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The Times said that Pakistan has begun to provide classified briefings to nations within reach of North Korea's missiles.
The CIA believes that North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs, although some U.S. intelligence analysts believe it may have more.
A high-level South Korean official confirmed Tuesday its government had received information linked to the Times report from Pakistan and ``related countries.''
``But we are trying to further confirm it as there are many unclear points about its contents and circumstances,'' the official said on condition of anonymity in Seoul.
A Japanese Foreign Ministry official, who also did not want to be named, said the government was aware of the report and was cooperating with other countries to gather information about North Korea's nuclear activities. He declined further comment.
The Times reported that Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on Khan's assertions before he left on a trip to Asia over the weekend.
It said Cheney was expected to cite the intelligence to China's leaders on Tuesday to press the point that six-country talks that have been held in Beijing over disarming North Korea are going too slowly and that the Bush administration may seek stronger action against Pyongyang, including sanctions.
The report said Khan told Pakistani officials that he began dealing with North Korea on the sale of equipment for a uranium-based nuclear weapons program as early as the late 1980s but did not begin major shipments to North Korea until the late 1990s agreed with the United States to a moratorium on its plutonium-based program. North Korea has since renounced that agreement.
Pakistan denies any official involvement in nuclear proliferation, although doubts remain over how top military and government officials remained in the dark for years over Khan's activities.
Pakistani officials said Saturday they've released three men questioned about the nuclear black market led by Khan. Four others -- two scientists and two administrators who worked at the same laboratory -- are still being held for questioning.
-------- iran
U.N. team to verify uranium work halt
By Ali Akbar Dareini
ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 13, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040412-100510-7282r.htm
TEHRAN - Five U.N. nuclear inspectors arrived yesterday to determine whether Iran has stopped suspect nuclear activities, including the building of centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
Muhammad Saeedi, a top Iranian nuclear official, said the experts from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency have arrived for a series of meetings and inspections.
The visit coincides with a call by Iranian radicals that their government should defy the nuclear agency, expel U.N. inspectors and resume uranium enrichment. The government, though, appears determined to stick to a more moderate approach in hopes of avoiding international isolation.
The United States and other nations accuse Iran of having a covert nuclear weapons program and are pushing the United Nations to impose sanctions. Tehran insists that its nuclear activities are peaceful and aimed at generating electricity.
Mr. Saeedi said that to win "greater international trust," Iran stopped building and assembling centrifuges Friday, as it had promised during a one-day visit last week by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
It was the second such promise. Iran said March 29 that it had stopped building centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
Mr. ElBaradei had welcomed the centrifuge announcement and said the inspectors who arrived yesterday would try to verify that all uranium enrichment activities had stopped.
Later yesterday, Mr. ElBaradei arrived in his native Egypt from Vienna, Austria, for a three-day visit, during which he is expected to discuss the issue of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.
In Cairo, Mr. ElBaradei said Iran has been "slow" to cooperate with the IAEA, but that he hoped that after his visit to Tehran, negotiations over Iran's nuclear program would improve.
He also discussed Iraq, saying IAEA inspectors would return to the country once "conditions calm there."
The IAEA has said that it found no evidence of an active nuclear weapons program in Iraq. However, because its inspectors had to withdraw before they could complete their work, the agency has cautioned repeatedly that its initial findings are not conclusive.
-------- iraq / inspections
When Puppets Pull the Strings
By Martin Sieff
Salon.com
Tuesday 13 April 2004
http://truthout.org/docs_04/041404I.shtml
Ahmed Chalabi, the neocons' choice to run Iraq, appears to have been responsible for the disastrous decision to move against Muqtada al-Sadr.
Why did they do it? It seemed a safe bet to the civilian echelon policymakers at the Department of Defense when they approved Coalition Provisional Authority administrator L. Paul Bremer's fateful decision to close down the newspaper of Muqtada al-Sadr and to arrest an aide to the young firebrand Shiite cleric. Even after Shiite Iraq had erupted into fury over the moves on Saturday, April 3, top-level Pentagon policymakers were privately still convinced it was all a storm in a teacup.
A small event on Sunday, April 4, the very day after the move against al-Sadr prompted the revolt, provides the missing piece to the puzzle. For that was when the CPA announced the name of Iraq's putative new defense minister for the post-June 30 government. His name is Ali Allawi and he is a loyal, close associate of Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress. More, he is Chalabi's nephew.
Chalabi, longtime exile leader, has never had a power base within Iraq. He is a smooth operator, convicted of embezzling millions from the Petra Bank of Jordan -- sentenced in absentia to 22 years of hard labor -- but championed by the neoconservatives of Washington. They had lined up Chalabi to be their man in Baghdad years before the conquest of Iraq. Although he is a Shiia, the 60-year-old Chalabi had not lived there since age 12, and when he returned he surrounded himself with a U.S.-paid personal militia but had no political following. Without his U.S. sponsors, he would not last five minutes as a force. He is widely suspected of profiting enormously from U.S. contracts in the country. After the war, Chalabi proudly boasted of providing misleading intelligence to the U.S. government that was indispensable in spurring the invasion. He remains on the Pentagon's payroll -- $340,000 a month -- not counting the $40 million that he's received at the insistence of the Republican-dominated Congress over the past decade. He is a focal point of mistrust on all sides within Iraq.
Just as Bremer will not make the slightest move without the approval of his Pentagon bosses, the Defense Department policymakers continue to rely on Chalabi alone for their political assessments on Iraq. In private conversation, as in public, they remain amazingly enthusiastic about Chalabi's supposed political skills, and even genius, and proclaim repeatedly that he is the only man with the brilliance to hold Iraq together and make it work. Give Chalabi a free hand after June 30 and give him all the U.S. firepower he wants to crush his foes -- this is their master plan; there is no other.
The CPA actually had some "hard" data to support this wildly inaccurate interpretation. For U.S. military intelligence assessments in Iraq had concluded that al-Sadr was a fading force. The crowds attending his sermons were smaller. The number of armed supporters he could count on to exert his will was decreasing. The tone of his public pronouncements was becoming shriller and more desperate as the June 30 hand-over date to Iraqi leaders approved by the U.S. authorities came closer.
This information was not false or wishful thinking. It appears to have been entirely accurate. The problem was that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, without whose say-so Bremer does not even dare to breathe, misinterpreted it. By moving against al-Sadr when they did not have to, they revived the firebrand's credibility throughout Iraq's 65 percent majority Shiite community. And they also opened the door for something neoconservative pundits had unanimously agreed was impossible: They made common ground between Sadr's Shiite supporters and the Sunni Islamist guerrillas who have been fighting the United States implacably in their own heartland of central Iraq.
There is no way that the move against al-Sadr was undertaken without Chalabi's prior knowledge and explicit approval. Instead, given the extraordinary degree to which the Pentagon policymakers and Vice President Dick Cheney continue to privately disparage the far more accurate, sober and reliable professional assessments of the U.S. Army's own tactical military intelligence in Iraq, it appears clear that, yet again, Chalabi was the tail that wagged the dog. He could have been expected to urge the move on al-Sadr in the first place.
The benefit to him is obvious. Chalabi believes -- as do his still-worshipful Pentagon backers -- that he has the blessing of supposedly moderate Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the mainstream chief religious authority of the Iraqi Shiites, to take power on July 1 with the force of 110,000 U.S. soldiers and their automatic weapons behind him.
However, just as the neocons lead President Bush by the nose, and Chalabi leads them by the nose, Sistani and the Iranians have been leading him by the nose.
Sistani's policy toward the CPA and Chalabi has been no different from the way he survived as an ayatollah all those years under Saddam Hussein, which was no mean feat. Sistani is playing a cautious waiting game and avoiding the ire of those who currently are top dog in Baghdad. He will drop Chalabi -- and the United States -- at the drop of a hat as soon it becomes clear that they cannot run or tame Iraq.
Chalabi and the neocon geniuses in the Pentagon are all willfully blind to the wafer-thin nature of the "support" they enjoy from Sistani. From their perspective, Muqtada al-Sadr was the only fly left in the ointment. Much better, from Chalabi's point of view, to have the United States to do the dirty work and get al-Sadr out of the way so that he could then emerge as Iraq's unifying leader with his hands clean on July 1 rather than risk the opprobrium of eliminating al-Sadr himself.
Of course, it has not worked out that way. Instead, the Shiite rising has spread like wildfire across all southern and central Iraq. The Sunni insurgents have rallied to al-Sadr's cause as well. The worst thing that could possibly happen now is that al-Sadr, whom Bremer rapidly proclaimed an outlaw, may be killed by U.S. forces, thereby activating the most passionate and extreme martyrdom emotions of young Shiites across Iraq. And as soon as the rising began, the much-touted Iraqi police and security forces that Bremer had claimed were progressing so impressively turned tail and ran from every confrontation.
The myth of Iraqization of this war is now dead. The Pentagon masterminds remain determined to push Chalabi through as prime minister and absolute ruler of Iraq de facto on July 1. GOP heavyweights have even been assured around Washington that hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks from U.S. companies to Chalabi to do business in Iraq will be used for a good cause: to spread democracy in -- read, destabilize -- neighboring Saudi Arabia and Iran.
But the al-Sadr revolt means Chalabi will now only be able to rule on the shoulders of at least 110,000 U.S. soldiers. It may take twice as many. That means that Iraq will not settle down nicely in time for the Republican National Convention in New York. Far from dramatically reducing the level of U.S casualties by Iraqizing security, the hand-over will almost certainly dramatically boost the scale and rate of U.S. fatalities and casualties. U.S. forces will not be able to remain in the passive-reactive mode of hunkering down in their bivouacs that they have followed in recent months in central Iraq to reduce casualties. They will likely be forced to take the offensive in cities across Iraq on a far wider front against infinitely more enemies than they had faced before April 2.
This latest catastrophic bungle by Bremer and his bosses to clear the way for Chalabi is the biggest yet. You think this is bad? To quote Al Jolson, "You ain't seen nothin' yet."
----
New Reports on U.S. Planting WMDs in Iraq
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
by the Mehr News Agency (Tehran, Iran)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0413-02.htm
Original http://www.mehrnews.com/wfNewsDetails_en.aspx?NewsID=70071&t=Political
BASRA -- Fifty days after the first reports that the U.S. forces were unloading weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in southern Iraq, new reports about the movement of these weapons have been disclosed.
Given the recent scandals to the effect that the U.S. president was privy to the 9/11 plot, they might try to immediately announce the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to overshadow the scandals and prevent a further decline of Bush's public opinion rating as the election approaches.
Sources in Iraq speculate that occupation forces are using the recent unrest in Iraq to divert attention from their surreptitious shipments of WMD into the country.
An Iraqi source close to the Basra Governor's Office told the MNA that new information shows that a large part of the WMD, which was secretly brought to southern and western Iraq over the past month, are in containers falsely labeled as containers of the Maeresk shipping company and some consignments bearing the labels of organizations such as the Red Cross or the USAID in order to disguise them as relief shipments.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, added that Iraqi officials including forces loyal to the Iraqi Governing Council stationed in southern Iraq have been forbidden from inspecting or supervising the transportation of these consignments. He went on to say that the occupation forces have ordered Iraqi officials to forward any questions on the issue to the coalition forces. Even the officials of the international relief organizations have informed the Iraqi officials that they would only accept responsibility for relief shipments which have been registered and managed by their organizations.
The Iraqi source also confirmed the report about suspicious trucks with fake Saudi and Jordanian license plates entering Iraq at night last week, stressing that the Saudi and Jordanian border guards did not attempt to inspect the trucks but simply delivered them to the U.S. and British forces stationed on Iraq's borders.
However, the source expressed ignorance whether the governments of Saudi Arabia and Jordan were aware of such movements.
A professor of physics at Baghdad University also told the MNA correspondent that a group of his colleagues who are highly specialized in military, chemical and biological fields have been either bribed or threatened during the last weeks to provide written information on what they know about various programs and research centers and the possible storage of WMD equipment.
The professor also said these people have been openly asked to confirm or deny the existence of research or related WMD equipment. A large number of these scientists, who are believed to be under the surveillance of U.S. intelligence operatives, have claimed that if they refuse to comply with this request, they may be killed or arrested on charges of concealing the truth if these weapons are found by the Bush administration in the future.
He said that the Iraqi scientists believe their lives would be in danger if they decline to cooperate with the occupation forces, especially when they recall that senior U.S. officer Michael Peterson once said, "Iraqi scientists are at any case a threat to the U.S. administration, whether they talk or not."
A source close to the Iraqi Governing Council said, "In the meantime, many suspect containers disguised as fuel supplies have been moved about by some units of the U.S. special forces. The move has been carried out under heavy security measures. Also, there are unofficial reports that the containers held biological and bacteriological toxins in liquid form. It is possible that the news about the discovery of the WMDs would be announced later."
He also said that such mixtures had been used by the Saddam regime in the 1990s.
The source added that some provocative actions such as the closure of Al-Hawza periodical by U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, the secret meetings between his envoys with some extremist groups who have no relations with the Iraqi Governing Council, the sudden upsurge in violence in central and southern Iraq, a number of activities which have stoked up the wrath of the prominent Shia clerics, and finally, the spate of kidnappings and the baseless charges against the Iranian charge d'affaires in Baghdad are providing the necessary smokescreen for the transportation of the WMD to their intended locations.
He said they are quite aware that the White House in cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has directly tasked the Defense Department to hide these weapons. Given the recent scandals to the effect that the U.S. president was privy to the 9/11 plot, they might try to immediately announce the discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to overshadow the scandals and prevent a further decline of Bush's public opinion rating as the election approaches.
----
IAEA head repeats demand for return of nuclear inspectors to Iraq
CAIRO (AFP)
Apr 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040413212742.ekkud0kp.html
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reiterated Tuesday a call for arms inspectors to return to Iraq, saying he had asked the UN Security Council for a green light to do so.
Mohamed ElBaradei, speaking at a conference at the University of Cairo, said the IAEA's "mandate for the inspection of weapons of mass destruction (in Iraq) is still in force."
He said IAEA "inspectors should return there and the Security Council should give its green light for that return."
The inspectors pulled out of Iraq just before the outbreak of the US-led war to unseat Iraqi president Saddam Hussein that began in March 2003.
On March 24, ElBaradei called for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East as part of the peace process and urged the US-led coalition in Iraq to allow his organization to return to the country.
"Peace will never be established and will never be permanent if it is not accompanied by the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction -- chemical, biological and nuclear -- in the region and the reduction of traditional arms," he said.
He noted that prior to the war, the IAEA issued a report to the effect that it had no proof that Baghdad had reconstituted its nuclear program.
The United States has said it does not want UN disarmament inspectors to return to Iraq, where its own search for mass destruction weapons -- the principal justification for the invasion and occupation of the country -- has found nothing.
-------- korea
Pakistani Tells of North Korean Nuclear Devices
By DAVID E. SANGER
April 13, 2004
NY TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13NUKE.html
ASHINGTON, April 12 - Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology around the world, has told his interrogators that during a trip to North Korea five years ago he was taken to a secret underground nuclear plant and shown what he described as three nuclear devices, according to Asian and American officials who have been briefed by the Pakistanis.
If Dr. Khan's report is true, it would be the first time that any foreigner has reported inspecting an actual North Korean nuclear weapon. Past C.I.A. assessments of North Korea's nuclear capacity have been based on estimates of how much plutonium it could produce and assessments of its technical capability to turn that plutonium into weapons.
Dr. Khan, known as the father of the Pakistani bomb, said he was allowed to inspect the weapons briefly, according to the account that Pakistan has begun to provide in classified briefings to nations within reach of North Korea's missiles. American intelligence officials caution that they cannot say whether Dr. Khan had the time, expertise or equipment to verify the claims. But they note that the number of plutonium weapons roughly accords with previous C.I.A. estimates that North Korea had one or two weapons and the ability to produce more.
White House officials declined to discuss the intelligence reports, saying through a spokesman that the subject was "too sensitive." But Vice President Dick Cheney was briefed on Dr. Khan's assertions before he left for Asia over the weekend, and he is expected to cite the intelligence to China's leaders on Tuesday to press the point that talks over disarming North Korea are going too slowly, administration officials said. They expect him to argue that the Bush administration is losing patience and may seek stronger action, including sanctions.
Dr. Khan also told Pakistani officials that he began dealing with North Korea on the sale of equipment for a second way of producing nuclear weapons - through the enrichment of uranium, as opposed to plutonium - as early as the late 1980's. But he said he did not begin major shipments to North Korea until the late 1990's, after the country's plutonium program was frozen under an agreement with the United States. North Korea has since renounced that agreement.
According to officials who have reviewed the intelligence reports from Pakistan, Dr. Khan admitted that he shipped to North Korea both the designs for the centrifuges used to enrich uranium and a small number of complete centrifuges. He also provided a "shopping list" of equipment that North Korea needed to produce thousands of the machines.
"We think they've pretty much bought everything on the list, with the possible exception of a few components," said one American official, adding that the Bush administration is still uncertain exactly where the uranium weapons program is, or whether it has begun production.
As the intelligence briefing by the Pakistani officials has flowed through South Korea and Japan, it has set off alarms among senior Asian officials. Until now, they have tried to finesse the subject of whether North Korea is already a nuclear power, or was simply bluffing as it works to develop weapons. China, in particular, has cast doubt on the American and South Korean claims that North Korea is developing a uranium weapon, perhaps hoping to take at least one problem off the table after a year of so-far fruitless talks in Beijing.
"Asia can ignore a lot of things when it deems it convenient," said Kurt Campbell, a senior defense official in the Clinton administration. "But these reports make it very hard for the regional powers - China, South Korea and Japan - to pretend publicly that North Korea doesn't already have a significant nuclear capacity."
Many critical details are missing from the account that Pakistan has given to the United States and its Asian allies. Because Pakistani officials are not permitting American intelligence agencies to interrogate Dr. Khan directly, American officials are getting their information second-hand. Some officials suspect that Pakistan is withholding crucial details, including any evidence about countries that Dr. Khan dealt with beyond North Korea, Iran and Libya.
According to officials with access to the intelligence reports, Dr. Khan described being taken to a secret plant that appears to have been different from the main North Korean nuclear plant at Yongbyon. "It was about an hour out of the capital, Khan says," according to one senior Asian official. "But it's not clear in what direction."
It is unclear to American intelligence officials whether Dr. Khan was taken to a site that Americans previously suspected was a nuclear plant or to a site they were previously unaware of.
Dr. Khan was shown what was described to him as three plutonium devices, he reported. He told his interrogators that the weapons appeared to be complete, not just a jar full of warm material that the North Koreans handed to a visiting American weapons expert earlier this year, telling him it proved their "nuclear deterrent force."
Because Dr. Khan is a metallurgist by training, not a nuclear scientist, it is unclear whether he would have the expertise to know the difference between an actual weapon or a mock-up. But he may have been familiar with the basic design of such a weapon: he was present at the test site in 1998 when Pakistan tested four weapons, including one that American intelligence officials believe was a plutonium bomb. There is an argument under way in the American intelligence community over whether that explosion was conducted with North Korean assistance.
A former American official noted that if North Korea produced three actual weapons by 1999, it was either more skilled at using its then relatively small supply of plutonium than experts thought, or it had obtained an additional source of the bomb-making material.
But now it has plenty. North Korea says it has moved 8,000 nuclear spent-fuel rods out of a storage pond in Yongbyon, and claims that it has reprocessed all of them into bomb-grade plutonium. Many American, Japanese and South Korean experts say they doubt that North Korea has reproceessed all those rods into weapons. That many rods would produce six or more weapons.
Moreover, since it evicted international inspectors 16 months ago, North Korea says it has restarted a reactor at Yongbyon, and American officials confirm that claim. It is about due to have its fuel reloaded, and the spent fuel rods from that reactor would provide about another bomb's worth of material.
American officials have known about the Pakistani reports for at least three or four weeks, Asian and American officials say. But they have kept them quiet, and President Bush has not mentioned the country in public for weeks. Many Democrats say they believe that Mr. Bush is trying to play down the issue in an election year, especially because North Korea may be making more bombs as talks drag on.
Mr. Bush's aides say that they are making progress, and that there is no use publicly denouncing North Korea while diplomacy continues. If the country already has a few nuclear weapons, they say, a few more would not make a strategic difference.
"It's an untenable argument," said Samuel R. Berger, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser. "There's a difference between two or three and eight and it's called the market in weapons for global terrorists."
----
Pakistani scientist says he saw three North Korean nuclear bombs: report
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040413055508.wt3tc139.html
Pakistan's top nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan told interrogators he was shown three nuclear devices at a secret underground nuclear plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times said Tuesday.
Although US officials were unclear about Khan's ability to discern a real nuclear device from a mock-up during his visit, his account if true would roughly match previous US Central Intelligence Agency estimates of North Korea's nuclear capabilities, the daily said.
US Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to cite the intelligence report when he meets with Chinese leaders Tuesday in Beijing, the daily said quoting US officials, who declined to discuss it in detail saying it was "too sensitive."
The account of Khan's 1999 visit to North Korea has been provided in classified briefings to nations within reach of North Korea's missiles, Asian and American officials who were briefed by the Pakistanis told the daily. Pakistan does not allow US intelligence agencies to interrogate Khan directly.
Khan, who has been a national hero in Pakistan since he helped test its first nuclear bomb in 1998, also told interrogators he began dealing with North Korea on the sale of equipment for a second way of producing nuclear weapons as early as the late 1980s.
However, he said he began major shipments of equipment for the enrichment of uranium in the late 1990s, after North Korea's plutonium program was frozen under an agreement with Washington that the secretive communist country has since renounced.
Khan sent Pyongyang both the designs for the centrifuges used to enrich uranium and a small number of complete centrifuges, as well as a "shopping list" of equipment it needed to produce thousands of the machines, said the officials briefed by the Pakistanis.
"We think they've pretty much bought everything on the list, with the possible exception of a few components," a US official said.
The sources said Khan said the secret underground nuclear plant he visted was different from North Korea's main nuclear plant at Yongbyon.
"It was about an hour out of the capital (Pyongyang)," a senior Asian official told the daily. "But it's not clear in what direction."
United States, China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and North Korea have held two rounds of talks which so far have failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
The US, Japan and South Korea decided at a meeting last week in San Francisco that the third meeting should be held no later than the end of June.
----
Pakistan's Khan Saw N. Korean Nuclear Devices - NYT
April 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-northkorea-report.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of his country's nuclear program, told interrogators he saw three nuclear devices during a trip to North Korea five years ago, the New York Times said on Tuesday.
During the trip to North Korea, Khan said he was taken to a secret underground nuclear plant and saw what he described as nuclear devices, the Times said, citing Asian and American officials who have been briefed by the Pakistanis.
If what Khan said is true, it would be first time any foreigner has reported seeing a North Korean nuclear weapon, the newspaper said.
In the past, the Central Intelligence Agency assessments of North Korea's nuclear program were based on the amount of plutonium it could make and estimates of its ability to convert that plutonium into weapons.
Khan inspected the weapons briefly, the Times said, but added that U.S. intelligence officials are unsure if he had the time, expertise or equipment to verify the nuclear devices claim.
The news of Khan's findings has come out because Pakistan has been briefing countries within reach of North Korea's missiles, the Times said.
American intelligence officials have said the CIA estimated that North Korea had one or two weapons and the ability to make more.
-------- libya
Libya Disposes of Phantom Arsenal to Curry Washington's Favor
by Norm Dixon,
April 13, 2004
New Standard News
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=115
On January 14, Libya made official its signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which, if ratified by the remaining twelve holdout nations, would prohibit all parties to the agreement from detonating nuclear devices. However, until other states ratify the agreement -- including the US, which has stated it will do no such thing -- the ban is toothless. Thus marked the latest in a recent series of effectively empty gestures on Libya's part, each heralded as a diplomatic success for George Bush's "war on terror."
To hear Washington's narrative of Libya's apparent capitulation, it would seem Tripoli is running scared. But there is more to the Libyan developments than the portrayal popularized inside the Beltway.
On December 19, the Libyan government issued a statement announcing that -- after months of secret talks with agents of the British and US governments -- it had agreed to get rid of "substances, equipment and programs that could lead to [the] production of internationally banned weapons."
The statement explained that "in view of the international environment that had prevailed during the Cold War and the tension in the Middle East, [Libya] has urged the countries in the region to make the Middle East and Africa a region free of weapons of mass destruction. As its calls have received no serious response, [Libya] had sought to develop its defence capabilities."
Washington and London insisted that Qadhafi present a much-needed propaganda coup and boost for the "war on terror" by admitting to having weapons "programs," albeit ones that exist virtually in name only. Libya also announced that it would restrict itself to missiles with a range of less than 300 kilometers. Tripoli stated all of the proposed changes will be made transparently, and that it will accept "immediate international inspection." The statement added, "Libya will abide by the [Nuclear] Non-Proliferation Treaty, the [International Atomic Energy Agency] Safeguards Agreement and the Chemical Weapons Treaty."
In almost simultaneous announcements on December 19, Blair and US President George Bush sought to take credit for the apparent reversal in Libya's policy. Both speeches presented the Libyan regime's announcement as the direct result of, and a further justification for, the US-led assault on Iraq. "In word and action, we have clarified the choices left to potential adversaries," Bush declared. "And when leaders make the wise and responsible choice, when they renounce terror and weapons of mass destruction, as [Qadhafi] has now done, they serve the interest of their own people and they add to the security of all nations."
The US and UK governments and their media outlets took their cues, dutifully portraying the Libyan weapons program as highly sophisticated. The Associated Press reported on December 20 that a "senior Bush administration official," who briefed reporters at the White House "on condition of anonymity," claimed that Libya had a program intended for development of nuclear weapons and that Libya's "nuclear effort" was "more advanced than previously thought." Reporters were told that Libya also had "a significant amount of mustard agent."
Further, the anonymous White House official claimed Libya has "acknowledged having chemicals that could be used to make nerve agent" and has confessed to "contacts with North Korea, a supplier of long-range ballistic missiles." In another December 20 AP report, anonymous "senior [US] intelligence officials" claimed that Libya had "built a working centrifuge for uranium enrichment." Significant amounts of uranium can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
The December 20 New York Times reported that an anonymous British official told journalists in London that Libyan scientists were "developing a nuclear fuel cycle intended to support nuclear weapons development." While Libya did not have nuclear weapons, "it was close to producing one," the official said.
However, in an apparently less newsworthy development, it soon emerged that Washington and London - as they had previously done with Iraq - were blatantly exaggerating the true extent of Libya's weapons programs and capabilities. On a trip to Libya, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director-general Mohammed Al Baradei said on December 28 that Libya was far from producing nuclear arms. Al Baradei visited sites previously inspected by US and British officials.
IAEA inspectors found hundreds of unused, imported centrifuges still in their unopened crates. Thousands of such devices (known as a "cascade") are required to produce sufficient enriched uranium to fuel a nuclear weapon. Al Baradei described it as "a program in its very initial stages of development. We haven't seen any industrial-scale facility to produce highly enriched uranium. We haven't seen any enriched uranium." Speaking on CNN on December 29, Al Baradei added that a small cascade was "developed years ago as a pilot and that has been dismantled now, and they haven't developed an industrial or large-scale cascade." Most of Libya's nuclear equipment was "quite dismantled," he said.
An unnamed Western diplomat told the December 30 Washington Post that Libya did not systematically shop for equipment, but picked up pieces where and when they could at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars; a concerted drive to attain nuclear weapons would have cost billions, the diplomat noted.
A diplomat also told the Associated Press on December 30 that Libyan scientists interviewed by the IAEA inspectors "swore up and down they never had any weapons activities. They said they were never told to develop a weapon, they were only told to develop enrichment capability."
Joseph Cirincione, chief of non-proliferation research at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the Los Angeles Times that Libya's stocks of mustard gas which amounted to 100 tons, were produced before 1990, when the plant that made them closed. This amount would be insufficient for an offensive military purpose.
The Libyan government has little to lose, and much to gain, by "abandoning" inactive and/or non-viable WMD "programs." The more Washington and London hype the significance of the removal of Tripoli's phantom weapons, the greater the likelihood that drastic US sanctions imposed upon Libya will finally be lifted. By playing along with Washington's latest WMD pantomime, the Qadhafi regime hopes to reestablish cordial relations with the US government and big business.
The past month's diplomatic developments could mark a turning point in US and UK relations with the North African country they've long labeled a terrorist state. Since the nationalist ruler Muamar Qadhafi took power in 1969 and began enacting programs that prioritized himself and the Libyan people over the interests of Western multinational oil and other companies, the US has been distant at best in its policy toward Libya. In 1991, after a decade of American hostility toward Qadhafi's regime, suspicion that Libya was somehow behind the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing seemed to seal US policy against Libya.
While the Libyan government continues to deny that it ordered the Pan Am bombing, Tripoli agreed last year to accept "responsibility" for the bombing and pay the Lockerbie victims a whopping $2.7 billion in compensation. In return, the Security Council finally lifted crippling UN sanctions on Libya in September.
But Washington is demanding far more. It wants nothing less than, in pledge and practice, Libya's total abandonment of its previous commitment to economic and political independence domestically, and rejection of its support for anti-imperialist causes (lumped together as "terrorism") internationally.
Bogged down in Iraq, with the primary justification for the war - weapons of mass destruction - being increasingly exposed as a lie, Washington and London insisted that Qadhafi present a much-needed propaganda coup and boost for the "war on terror" (plus a symbolic surrender of national sovereignty) by admitting to having weapons "programs," albeit ones that exist virtually in name only.
While Bush indicated on December 19 that the Libyan government would be rewarded for its decision to "disarm," US state department spokesperson Adam Ereli told the BBC on January 3: "We've made it clear that as Libya moves forward in fulfilling its commitments to divorce itself from any connection to terrorism and to abjure and dismantle its WMD programs, we would be willing to discuss bilateral relations. But it hasn't got to that point."
And so the US -- itself a critical holdout to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and the driving force behind the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq which has so far caused 10,000 civilian deaths -- is holding Libya accountable for its alleged ties to terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. While accepting the bulk of credit for Libya's recent, essentially hollow gestures, Washington won't be satisfied until Qadhafi has rolled over completely.
For its part, Libya appears to be jumping through Bush's hoops, reluctantly or otherwise, though the threat of invasion may be less of a catalyst than is the hope of normalized relations. And if Bush and Blaire have in fact demonstrated the ability to threaten "rogue states" into compliance, the threat is that they can fake evidence to justify the overthrow of any government that doesn't ask "how high?" when the West says "jump."
~~ Norm Dixon is a former editor of Green Left Weekly, Australia's leading radical newsweekly.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
AG office wants in on NRC hearing
By Ruth Friedberg
Odessa American,
Tuesday April 13, 2004
http://www.oaoa.com/news/nw041304d.htm
LEA COUNTY, N.M. - Concerns about how a proposed uranium enrichment facility near Eunice, N.M., will dispose of its waste have prompted the New Mexico Attorney General's Office and others to file for standing in an upcoming Nuclear Regulatory Commission hearing on the plant.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not set a date for the hearing yet. Washington, D.C.-based organizations Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service have filed a combined petition with the NRC. The New Mexico Attorney General's Office has filed separately as has the New Mexico Environment Department.
"The waste is really the concern," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service in Washington. Mariotte said people fear waste from the plant will stay on the site and be a danger to them. He said waste from the plant will be UF6, or uranium hexafluoride, a dangerous substance.
According to a news release from Public Citizen and the organizations joined with it, "the license application presented by LES (Louisiana Energy Services) is replete with inaccuracies and blatant omissions." "We intend to call LES to task on these deficiencies," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Energy and Environment program.
Marshall Cohen, vice president of communications and government for LES, which wants to build the National Enrichment Facility near Eunice, said the corporation is analyzing the petitions to intervene and will be responding to the issues raised in them.
Public Citizen and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service have followed LES' efforts to build a uranium enrichment plant for many years. "We don't think the case has been made that this plant is necessary," Hauter said.
Mariotte said there is no place in the country to dispose of uranium hexafluoride. To deplete it, Mariotte said the hydrogen fluoride can be stripped out of UF6, but you have to have the facility to do it. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to build two facilities to deplete uranium in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky.
Hauter said there are many site issues with the proposed plant:
- Public Citizen is concerned that the NRC has not adequately assessed the impact of the facility on local ground and surface water.
- The plant won't use too much water, but it is "one more strain" on the arid environment.
- The organization is concerned about LES' deconversion plans; the company's plans to dispose of spent uranium.
- Public Citizen is also concerned about plant security issues, especially given the current world climate, Hauter said. In line with that, there is also concern about the natural gas lines that run fairly close to the plant and the chance for explosion and fire. Cohen said NRIS and Public Citizen are "admittedly out to kill the project."
The New Mexico Attorney General's Office has the following concerns:
- "Ultimately, if the plant is not economically viable, the 90 percent majority owners, which are foreign entities, may simply abandon their investment," the filing said. In that case, problems of cleanup and plant dismantling might fall on New Mexico. Cohen said this is not going to happen. He said LES has not had a chance to talk to the Attorney General's Office to see what their thinking is on this issue.
- If UF6, known as tails, is left on the plant site for decades, it could pose environmental risk to the state, the filing said.
- In its current application, LES identified two "plausible" approaches for waste disposal: other private investors would construct a "deconversion" plant to change the depleted UF6 into U308, (where the hydrogen fluoride is stripped out) and the U308 would be buried in an exhausted uranium mine. Under the second plan, LES would require the Department of Energy to dispose of the waste at a price determined by DOE. DOE already has 704,000 metric tons of its own to dispose of, the filing said. "The actual obstacles to disposal are suggested by the Jan. 15, 2004, letter to NRC from Gov. Bob Taft of Ohio, who stated that waste from a New Mexico plant would not be allowed in Ohio," the filing said.
- How LES will pay for disposal is unclear also, the filing said.
- LES's estimates for disposing of the "tails" are "suspect" and will wind up being more costly than the company thinks. Cohen said LES will set aside money for decommissioning as set by the NRC. Cohen said LES believes the issues raised by the New Mexico Attorney General's Office and in a petition from the New Mexico Environment Department, can be resolved. "And we look forward to working with them," he said.
-------- us politics
Kerry Cites 'Misjudgment' by Bush on Iraq
Democrat Says U.S. Is Paying the Price for Policy Mistakes by Administration
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6463-2004Apr12.html
DURHAM, N.H., April 12 -- Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) sharpened his criticism of President Bush's handling of Iraq, saying Monday that the president failed to maximize international participation and minimize the risk to U.S. military personnel and that the nation is "bearing the enormous burden of that misjudgment."
Kicking off a week of events on college campuses aimed at challenging Bush on economic policy, Kerry delivered his verdict on the administration and Iraq during a question-and-answer session with students in a class on U.S. foreign policy. He continued to challenge Bush's failure to make the concessions that Kerry said would have resulted in a much greater role for the United Nations and participation by other nations.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said that when Bush decided to go to war with Iraq, there should have been three overriding priorities.
"Number one, maximizing the possibility of success; number two, minimizing the cost financially to the American people; number three, minimizing the risk to our soldiers, to our young men and women in uniform," Kerry said. "I believe the president did the reverse in all three. . . . We're now bearing the enormous burden of that misjudgment."
Kerry said that he "would be prepared to turn over to the U.N. the authority for the political transformation of Iraq and for the reconstruction of Iraq." He suggested that Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy in Iraq working on the planned June 30 transfer of power to the Iraqis, would make an excellent successor to American L. Paul Bremer to oversee the transition to a democratic government.
Although he has been critical of the administration's decision to set a firm deadline for transferring power, Kerry said the date has taken on such significance in Iraq that the handover probably cannot be delayed. But he challenged the administration to explain more clearly the terms of the transfer.
"The president has been silent on this," he said. "The administration has not described who they're transferring authority to in about 80 days. Nor have they described how they're going to maintain stability for whomever it is we do transfer it to. So I think there are a lot of explanations this administration owes America about its policies and how they're going to proceed in the next days."
Asked later by a reporter about the controversy over the release of the President's Daily Brief from Aug. 6, 2001, showing al Qaeda activity in the United States, Kerry said he had read the PDB but declined to comment on it. He said he will wait until the independent commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, finishes its report.
"There's plenty of time," he said. "I really would like to just leave it outside of the race right now. I think it deserves to be digested by the special commission. That's what they're there to do."
After his appearance in the classroom, Kerry attended a boisterous rally on the University of New Hampshire campus. It is the first of a series this week designed to energize the student vote and highlight what the campaign said was the negative impact of Bush's policies on middle-class Americans.
Kerry appeared with former New Hampshire governor Jeanne Shaheen and the band Guster, and he will take his campaign to campuses in three other states this week. He also will pick up millions of dollars more for his campaign with fundraisers in Boston, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
Campaign advisers said the college tour adds another layer to Kerry's economic message. "It's a chance to talk about not just George Bush's failures but also to lay out John Kerry's vision," spokesman David Wade said.
The campaign released a five-page document titled "Record Deterioration in the Middle-Class Misery Index," which focused on the impact of rising costs for health care, college tuition and gasoline on working families.
The campaign stole a page from campaigns past with the middle-class misery index. In 1976, candidate Jimmy Carter combined the unemployment and inflation rates under President Gerald R. Ford to create what he termed the misery index. Four years later, after economic conditions worsened, Republicans used the index against Carter.
Kerry's campaign has put together seven economic indicators to calculate what has happened under Bush and concluded that the incumbent's record is the worst of any of the five most recent presidents.
Kerry economic adviser Gene Sperling, who was President Bill Clinton's chief economic adviser, said the misery index was designed to be "a more accurate reflection of how this economy has not been working for American families" than broader statistics such as the gross domestic product.
Bush campaign spokesman Scott Stanzel said Kerry was using the misery index to "try to distract voters from the fact that he voted for higher taxes more than 350 times."
Staff writer Mike Allen in Washington contributed to this report.
----
Republicans Walk Out Of Federal Hearing On Voting Machines,
While Some Civil Rights Groups Support "Paperless" Elections
by Lynn Landes
April 13, 2004
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/April2004/Landes0413.htm
As the battle over voting machines rages across the country, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights met on Friday, April 9th, to examine the "Integrity, Security and Accessibility in the Nation's Readiness to Vote." Two scientists and four representatives of civil rights organizations were invited to brief the Commission.
But, before the panelists had a chance to share their views, three Republican commissioners and one (notably conservative) Independent commissioner walked out, ostensibly over a personnel dispute. But, others are not so sure.
It appears that voting technology is a topic that the Republican leadership wants to tightly control. It is without doubt that Republicans own most of the companies that manufacture, sell, and service voting machines. And President Bush and the Republican Congress appear determined to control and limit oversight of the elections industry. The Bush Administration has stacked the Election Assistance Commission with supporters of paperless voting technology, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) got walloped with a $22 million budget cut in fiscal 2004, which means that NIST will have to cut back substantially on its cyber security work, as well as completely stop all work on voting technology for the Help America Vote Act.
With no mandatory federal standards or certification in place and no funding available, the Bush Administration and Republican-controlled Congress have ensured that their friends in the elections industry maintain control of voting technology and, in effect, election results.
So, at Friday's hearing, Republican members of the Commission of Civil Rights decided that the issue of voting - the lynchpin of democracy - should take a back seat to employee contract buyouts. Chairperson Mary Frances Berry, a Professor of History and Adjunct Professor of Law, at the University of Pennsylvania, decided to soldier on with the hearing.
And that's when the second big disappointment of the hearing became apparent. Some of America's largest civil rights organizations have lined up with the Republicans on this subject. They support 'paperless' voting technology. No fuss, no muss.
They are: Meg Smothers, Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Georgia, Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Jim Dickson, Vice President, American Association of People with Disabilities, and Larry Gonzalez, Director, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.
Only one panelist at Friday's hearing spoke out against paperless elections, Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, one of the nation's leading experts on computer voting security. It's a familiar muddle for Mercuri. Last year she was the only election official kicked out of the annual conference of the International Association of Clerks, Recorders, Election Officials, and Treasurers (IACREOT). The complaint was that she wasn't really an election official, which she really was. So, it was perverse justice that at Friday's hearing Mercuri found herself the only panelist invited in to defend the voter's right to verify their own paper ballot.
Make that, "alleged" ballot. Since a machine-processed ballot can only produce circumstantial evidence of the voter's intent. There was no one at the hearing to represent the point of view that only voters have the right to vote, not machines; that only voters can produce real evidence of their own intent, not machines; and that with voting machines there is no effective ability to discover vote fraud, no ability to enforce the Voting Rights Act, no real integrity or security to the voting process, at all.
The hearing was a replay of many meetings this writer has attended on the subject of voting machines. The focus was on regaining the voters' trust and confidence in voting machines, while blaming poll workers for machine "glitches" and malfunctions, and blaming the public for not being computer savvy.
The over-all request of the panelists was for increased education of poll workers and the public.
Jim Dickson continued to insist that the blind could not vote without touchscreen machines, despite the fact that the paper ballot template with an audiocassette (a combination that is used in Rhode Island, Canada, and around the world), is a simpler and easier solution. As I have written in previous columns, if election officials want a fast ballot count, they can limit the size of the voting precincts or increase the number of election officials. If more elections officials are needed they can be drafted into public service as is done all year around for jury duty. Likewise, voters who don't understand English could order ballots in their own language in advance of an election.
Then there was the incredulous argument put forward that voting machines save money, as reports filter in that some communities already need to replace their 3-year-old touchscreen voting machines due to rampant equipment malfunctions, costly millions more in taxpayer dollars.
Most of the panelists insisted to Commission members that paperless touchscreen technology is the best performing voting system. But, how could they know? And performing at what? Accuracy, accessibility, vulnerability? What about performing under the U.S. Constitution and the law?
Incredibly, there has been no comparative study conducted of all voting systems on any level. The lack of comprehensive studies or standards is an issue that the General Accounting Office (GAO) complained about in an October 2001 report. The GAO report states, "Voting machines do not have effective standards...The standards are voluntary; states are free to adopt them in whole, in part, or reject them entirely."
Forgetting for a moment about the Constitutional issue, even if there was a comprehensive technical analysis of all voting systems, it is "vulnerability" - the ease at which votes can be manipulated or lost - that should trump concerns about accuracy and accessibility. Let's just assume that picking up the phone and calling-in our votes was the most accurate and accessible way to vote. Can anyone reasonably argue that it would be a secure voting method?
Logic dictates that even if lots of people incorrectly fill out their ballots and lots of election officials incorrectly count up the ballots, the ability to move massive numbers of votes through technology (whether deliberately or by accident), cannot compare to simple ballot box stuffing or similar petty election crimes.
Even when we do look at the limited studies done on technical performance (overvotes and undervotes), voting machines take a back seat to hand marked, cast, and counted paper ballots. The latest Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study actually puts hand counted paper ballots at the top of the list for voting system performance for overvotes and undervotes. "The difference between the best performing and worst performing technologies is as much as 2 percent of ballots cast. Surprisingly, (hand-counted) paper ballots-the oldest technology-show the best performance." This is the finding of two Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) political science professors, Dr. Stephen Ansolabehere and Dr. Charles Stewart III, in a September 25, 2002 study entitled, Voting Technology and Uncounted Votes in the United States. This study was an update of a previous CalTech/MIT study.
Some of the panelists misrepresented the results of the California Recall election, once again claiming that touchscreens performed the best, when in fact, they did no such thing.
Dr. Mercuri, who has extensively studied that particular election, says, "Essentially, what the California Recall Election showed was that it was not the type of (voting) system (that matters), in other words, DREs(direct recording electronics)/touchscreen, optical scan, or punchcard, but rather the models within each of the types that could be either good or bad. For example, the second best performing system in terms of residual votes (undervotes or overvotes) was actually one of the punchcard systems. But, (it was) the type that sucks the chad out rather than leaves it hanging there. Even within particular systems, it (performance) could also be good or bad. For example, the Diebold touchscreen, which out-performed all of the systems in the yes/no California Recall question, was the eighth worst in the candidates selection. This demonstrates that it is inappropriate to characterize an entire family of systems, or even a particular system, as good or bad just on the basis of their type. Further research has been needed for a long time on improving the usability of voting systems, but to date, funding has been lacking in comparison with the purchasing allocations."
Again, it doesn't take a PhD in computer science to conclude that vote fraud or system failure in a machine-free election simply cannot compare to the unlimited damage technology can do to the voting process. It is really a question about how risk should be managed. Should the risk of election fraud or system failure be spread out among millions of voters and thousands of poll watchers, or should it be concentrated in the hands of a few technicians - otherwise known as "putting all your eggs in one basket"?
On a personal note, having been informed by the Commission staff a few days before the hearing about the composition of the panel, that the deck was going to be stacked against voters and in favor of machines, I called and offered to testify. As one of the lead journalists covering this subject, I thought my contribution would help round out the testimony. Although my offer was declined, a member of the Commission indicated that there might be room for me at the next meeting, on May 17th. I sure hope so. Apparently, that's when the voting machine manufacturers will be speaking.
Fundamentally, it doesn't really matter if corporations or government officials control voting technology. The real issue is that 99.4% of Americans aren't really voting, machines are. But, if C-SPAN covers the hearing, perhaps the public will finally get the picture - that voting machines aren't some passive technology designed to 'assist' with the voting process. Instead, voting machines constitute a grab for power, a grab for our votes. Having voting machine manufacturers appear before the Commission could put a face on the farce that is voting in America today. And I'd sure like to be there to help that process along.
Lynn Landes is the publisher of EcoTalk.org and a news reporter for DUTV in Philadelphia, PA. Formerly Lynn was a radio show host for WDVR in New Jersey and a regular commentator for a BBC radio program. She can be reached at (215) 629-3553, or by email: lynnlandes@earthlink.net.
Other Related Articles by Lynn Landes
- Faking Democracy: Americans Don't Vote, Machines Do, & Ballot Printers Can't Fix That
- Questions Mount Over New Hampshire's Primary
- Democrats Send Mixed Signals in Voting Technology Debate
- NIST Ignores Scientific Method for Voting Technology
- Republicans and Brits Will Count California's Recall Votes
- How We Lost The Vote - How To Get It Back
- Internet Voting - The End of Democracy?
- Voting Machine Fiasco: SAIC, VoteHere and Diebold
- Offshore Company Captures Online Military Vote
- Suspicion Surrounds Voter News Service
- Mission Impossible: Federal Observers & Voting Machines
- Republican Voting Machines, Election Irregularities, and "Way-Off" Polling Results
- Voting Machines - A High Tech Ambush
- Election Night Projections: Cover For Vote Rigging Since 1964?
- Elections In America: Assume Crooks Are In Control
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A Strategy for Iraq
By John F. Kerry
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Washington Post; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6753-2004Apr12?language=printer
To be successful in Iraq, and in any war for that matter, our use of force must be tied to a political objective more complete than the ouster of a regime. To date, that has not happened in Iraq. It is time it did.
In the past week the situation in Iraq has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. While we may have differed on how we went to war, Americans of all political persuasions are united in our determination to succeed. The extremists attacking our forces should know they will not succeed in dividing America, or in sapping American resolve, or in forcing the premature withdrawal of U.S. troops. Our country is committed to help the Iraqis build a stable, peaceful and pluralistic society. No matter who is elected president in November, we will persevere in that mission.
But to maximize our chances for success, and to minimize the risk of failure, we must make full use of the assets we have. If our military commanders request more troops, we should deploy them. Progress is not possible in Iraq if people lack the security to go about the business of daily life. Yet the military alone cannot win the peace in Iraq. We need a political strategy that will work.
Over the past year the Bush administration has advanced several plans for a transition to democratic rule in Iraq. Each of those plans, after proving to be unworkable, was abandoned. The administration has set a date (June 30) for returning authority to an Iraqi entity to run the country, but there is no agreement with the Iraqis on how it will be constituted to make it representative enough to have popular legitimacy. Because of the way the White House has run the war, we are left with the United States bearing most of the costs and risks associated with every aspect of the Iraqi transition. We have lost lives, time, momentum and credibility. And we are seeing increasing numbers of Iraqis lashing out at the United States to express their frustration over what the Bush administration has and hasn't done.
In recent weeks the administration -- in effect acknowledging the failure of its own efforts -- has turned to U.N. representative Lakhdar Brahimi to develop a formula for an interim Iraqi government that each of the major Iraqi factions can accept. It is vital that Brahimi accomplish this mission, but the odds are long, because tensions have been allowed to build and distrust among the various Iraqi groups runs deep. The United States can bolster Brahimi's limited leverage by saying in advance that we will support any plan he proposes that gains the support of Iraqi leaders. Moving forward, the administration must make the United Nations a full partner responsible for developing Iraq's transition to a new constitution and government. We also need to renew our effort to attract international support in the form of boots on the ground to create a climate of security in Iraq. We need more troops and more people who can train Iraqi troops and assist Iraqi police.
We should urge NATO to create a new out-of-area operation for Iraq under the lead of a U.S. commander. This would help us obtain more troops from major powers. The events of the past week will make foreign governments extremely reluctant to put their citizens at risk. That is why international acceptance of responsibility for stabilizing Iraq must be matched by international authority for managing the remainder of the Iraqi transition. The United Nations, not the United States, should be the primary civilian partner in working with Iraqi leaders to hold elections, restore government services, rebuild the economy, and re-create a sense of hope and optimism among the Iraqi people. The primary responsibility for security must remain with the U.S. military, preferably helped by NATO until we have an Iraqi security force fully prepared to take responsibility.
Finally, we must level with our citizens. Increasingly, the American people are confused about our goals in Iraq, particularly why we are going it almost alone. The president must rally the country around a clear and credible goal. The challenges are significant and the costs are high. But the stakes are too great to lose the support of the American people.
This morning, as we sit down to read newspapers in the comfort of our homes or offices, we have an obligation to think of our fighting men and women in Iraq who awake each morning to a shooting gallery in which it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish friend from foe, and the death of every innocent creates more enemies. We owe it to our soldiers and Marines to use absolutely every tool we can muster to help them succeed in their mission without exposing them to unnecessary risk. That is not a partisan proposal. It is a matter of national honor and trust.
Sen. Kerry (D-Mass.) is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Two spy planes crash in Afghanistan
Tuesday April 13, 2004,
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2004-daily/13-04-2004/world/w11.htm
KABUL: Two unmanned American spy planes crashed in southeastern Gardez as US President George W. Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan was making a speech in the city, an official said on Monday.
The drones slammed into the ground as US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was speaking at the opening of a newly reconstructed provincial courthouse on Sunday.
"Two spy planes crashed one after another near the courthouse, one near the governor's residence and the other near the police main headquarters nearby," Mohammed Kandahari, a provincial police spokesman, told AFP.
The planes crashed just kilometres (miles) from the inauguration ceremony of the US-funded court building in Gardez, some 110 kilometres (68 miles) southeast of Kabul.
The aircraft were flying low over the courthouse as the ambassador, surrounded by several dozen US guards and with Afghan police and soldiers sealing off the area, spoke in the garden. The incident did not interrupt the ceremony, but US soldiers rushed to the crash site.
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Afghans Vow to Pursue Disarmament After Unrest
April 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-afghan.html
KABUL (Reuters) - President Hamid Karzai's government will press ahead with plans to disarm Afghanistan's regional militias ahead of elections, his spokesman said on Tuesday, calling the private fighters a threat to fair polls.
Violence in southern and eastern Afghanistan, where Taliban remnants and their militant allies are active despite being toppled from power more than two years ago, prompted Karzai to delay June's planned elections to September.
Security fears were heightened by fighting last month between forces of the provincial governor and a pro-Karzai commander in the western city of Herat, previously known as a safe region, and clashes last week in the northern provinces of Faryab and Balkh.
Asked at a news conference if factional fighting was a threat to elections, Karzai's chief spokesman Jawed Ludin replied ``Yes.''
``We believe that the main reason for the remaining problems is the presence of militias and the issue of warlordism. As long as this situation continues, unfortunately, progress on all spheres will be threatened.''
Regional commanders and their private militias, mostly from former Mujahideen (holy warrior) factions that fought Soviet occupation in the 1980s, helped the U.S.-led military topple the radical Taliban regime in late 2001.
But many have since concentrated on consolidating fiefdoms at the expense of Karzai's U.S.-backed government, which is trying to unite and rebuild the country after nearly 25 years of war.
TROOPS DEPLOYED
One of the most powerful, Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum, is one of Karzai's nominal advisers, but his troops overran Faryab and its provincial capital Maimana last week, forcing its governor and top military commander to flee.
Karzai had to rush soldiers from the infant U.S.-trained national army to both Herat and Maimana to maintain a presence.
Dostum's men withdrew from Maimana Saturday but they remain in Faryab province despite orders to leave.
The government has announced ambitious plans to disarm 40 percent of an estimated 100,000 fighters loyal to regional commanders such as Dostum and Herat Governor Ismail Khan by June.
``Disarmament is the only solution at the end of the day for the problem of warlordism and presence of militias,'' said Ludin.
``The process of disarmament will be pursued vigorously and with it we hope to be able to get rid of this evil. Our position is to deal legally with those who interrupt security.''
A spokesman for the United Nations, which is backing the disarmament effort led by Japan, said the factional fighting should not derail plans for elections and Faryab was now calm.
``There is no fighting there,'' said the spokesman, David Singh. ``Our people in Faryab are briefing us daily.''
``In the north typically one day it's peaceful. The next day there is an outbreak of violence. That's the way it's been since the fall of the Taliban. At the moment there is no reason to believe this would have any impact on the elections in any way.''
In the latest fighting, forces loyal to Dostum fought those of rival northern strongman Ustad Atta Mohammad on the outskirts of the main northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on the weekend, killing two people and wounding several, witnesses said.
-------- arms
X-45A UACV Demonstrator Drops Inert Bomb
Edwards AFB
Apr 13, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/unmanned-combat-04a.html
The Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program conducted a weapons separation test of an inert bomb from a X-45A technology demonstrator, marking the first time that an unmanned aircraft has released a weapon from an internal bay, and the first time that a weapon has been released from a high-speed, high-performance, unmanned aircraft with a stealthy shape.
On March 20, during its fourth flight in 10 days, X-45A air vehicle 1 took off from the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The release went flawlessly and the separation was clean, smooth, and stable. The jettison, at 0.67 Mach and 35,000 feet, was conducted over the Edwards Precision Impact Range Area.
The weapon release used an inert (non-explosive), unguided 250-pound Small Smart Bomb. In the coming weeks, an X-45A will release a guided, inert Small Smart Bomb in a joint demonstration at the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division, China Lake, Calif. That release will mark the first time that a GPS-guided weapon has been released from an unmanned system.
The weapons separation test demonstrates the potential of the J-UCAS to complement manned aircraft in some of the most dangerous lethal missions expected in the 21st century, such as suppression of enemy air defenses and precision strike.
"This demonstration is part of the J-UCAS program's look at the challenges of designing a system to penetrate the heaviest defenses, deliver weapons, and keep the human-in-the-loop where required for rules of engagement," explained DARPA's X-45 program manager, CAPT Ralph Alderson, USN.
The J-UCAS program is a joint DARPA/Air Force/Navy effort to demonstrate the technical feasibility, military utility, and operational value of a networked system of high performance, weaponized unmanned air vehicles to effectively and affordably prosecute 21st century combat missions.
The Boeing X-45A vehicles are tools for demonstrating the initial technical feasibility of the J-UCAS concept. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are now developing the next generation of vehicles (the X-45C and X-47B, respectively) to demonstrate the military utility and operational value of the JUCAS concept.
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Israel arrests 10 over cross-border weapons smuggling
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Apr 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040413113905.jimknk9u.html
Ten people were arrested after Israeli security forces smashed a cell which smuggled weapons to the Palestinian territories across the Israeli-Egyptian border, security sources said Tuesday.
The five Egyptians, four Israeli bedouins and one Palestinian were detained after around 140 rifles as well rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and a large cache of ammunition were seized in a joint operation between the police, army and intelligence services.
The group, eight of whom have been indicted, are suspected of smuggling the weapons across the border in the southern Negev desert which were then transported to the West Bank, the sources said.
The Israeli army has staged regular raids into the southern Gaza Strip to uncover and demolish tunnels used to smuggle weapons under the Israeli-controlled border with Egypt.
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Taiwan to Buy PAC - 3 Anti - Missiles in June - Paper
April 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-arms-taiwan-china.html
TAIPEI (Reuters) - Taiwan will buy advanced anti-missile systems from the United States in June to counter the threat from hundreds of warheads pointed at the island by rival China, a local newspaper said on Tuesday.
The report by the China Times, quoting unidentified sources, comes hours before Vice President Dick Cheney arrives in China for a visit likely to focus on Chinese calls to halt U.S. arms sales to the island.
China views Taiwan as a breakaway province and has threatened to attack if the island declares independence. It views arms sales as encouraging Taiwan's ruling pro-independence party.
The China Times said the defense ministry planned to buy anti-missile weapons, including six Patriot PAC-3 missiles, worth T$100 billion ($3 billion).
The order is part of a huge weapons deal offered by President Bush to Taiwan in 2001. Taiwan proposed a $15 billion special budget last year to pay for the anti-missile systems as well as submarines, Kidd Class destroyers and submarine-hunting aircraft.
Defense Minister Tang Yao-ming said in February the plan was to push through the $15 billion special budget after the Taiwan presidential election on March 20.
The China Times said Tang and other ministry officials reported the planned PAC-3 purchase to President Chen Shui-bian on Monday, but gave no other details.
Ministry officials were not available for comment.
The Pentagon said last month it planned to approve the sale to Taiwan of long-range early warning radar equipment worth as much as $1.78 billion, a deal that triggered an angry response from China.
The radar deal and the newspaper report come weeks after Chen narrowly won re-election in a fiercely contested poll.
China has about 500 missiles arrayed against the island and is adding one missile every six days, according to Chen.
The United States acknowledges China's claim to Taiwan, but makes no statement about Taiwan's status. It remains the self-ruling island's main arms supplier, major trade partner and biggest ally.
The weapons sale that Bush offered three years ago would be the largest arms sale to Taiwan in a decade and has been delayed by budget constraints.
-------- biological weapons
Experts Ask Boston to Nix Bioterror Lab
April 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Bioterrorism-Lab.html
BOSTON (AP) -- Nearly 150 scientists and scholars asked city officials Tuesday to block the building of a bioterrorism lab in the heart of the city, saying it could pose ``catastrophic risks'' to the community.
The scientists, along with neighborhood and environmental groups, sent a letter to Mayor Thomas Menino and city councilors asking them to reject Boston University's plan to do research on deadly agents in Boston's South End.
``There are real and potentially catastrophic risks to the health and safety of people in the local and surrounding communities,'' the letter said.
Menino spokesman Seth Gitell said the mayor supports the lab and is confident it does not pose a risk. ``It means jobs now and into the future,'' Gitell said.
The scientists who signed included Harvard, MIT, BU and Boston College faculty members. Among them were Dr. Eric Chivian and Dr. Bernard Lown, co-founders of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. Noam Chomsky, the MIT linguistics professor and political activist, also signed.
``I have become very strongly convinced that this laboratory does not serve a public health function,'' said BU School of Public Health professor Dr. David Ozonoff. ``In fact, it's counterproductive with respect to public health, and it does present risk to the community.''
BU got a $128 million federal grant for the lab last fall, and the University of Texas received funding for a similar lab. The two facilities will join the five other North American labs that already handle such germs as anthrax, plague and Ebola.
The project still needs federal and state environmental reviews and approval from the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
BU spokeswoman Ellen Berlin said that the laboratory will be safe and that the plan has support from researchers in the region. ``We believe that Boston is the best place for this laboratory,'' she said.
-------- business
Albright seeks profits in occupied Kosovo?
Antiwar.com,
April 13, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/more.php?id=745_0_1_0_M
Clinton's Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was unversally acknowledged as a major advocate of intervention in the Balkans, from her sponsorship of the Hague Inquisition to her drive for the bombing of Serbia in 1999. Now officially retired from politics, Albright has a lucrative "consultancy" business. According to a Belgrade-based news agency Inet (scroll down to the entry "17:20"), the Albright Group, LLC will "advise" the board of Ipko Net, a Kosovo (Albanian) ISP seeking a mobile telephony concession in the occupied province. Here is the text of the report, translated by Inet:
"Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, or her consultancy firm Albright Group LLC, has taken over the job of special adviser of the chairman of the board of managers of the Kosovo Internet Provider Ipko Net, which will compete for a new mobile provider in the province. As it was stated from Ipko Net, the company recently founded a joint firm, with mixed capital, with the American Western Wirless International from Seattle, with which, as it was said, it intended to compete for a 'second mobile operator' in Kosovo."
Posted by: Nebojsa Malic on Apr 13, 04 | 9:21 pm
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Missing Workers Point Up Halliburton Danger
April 13, 2004
New York Times
By SIMON ROMERO
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/national/13HALL.html
HOUSTON, April 12 - The families of six civilian contractors who have been missing since an ambush last week in Iraq were waiting in anticipation of information about their loved ones, with company representatives by their sides, the Halliburton Company said Monday.
Unlike another Halliburton employee, Thomas Hamill, whose hometown, Macon, Miss., has been emblazoned with yellow ribbons since his capture was videotaped and broadcast around the world over the weekend, the six employees and their families remain unidentified. No images of the missing workers have surfaced, either from the ambush on Friday or afterward, as with the hostages seen on videotape.
"This is a grueling and difficult development, and we are working diligently to assist the families and the military any way we can," Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Halliburton, an oil and military services company based in Houston, said in a statement on Monday.
Ms. Hall would not disclose any details about the six workers. They were part of a transportation convoy on a routine mission for the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program, or Logcap, which provides services for the Army Materiel Command. Halliburton won the Logcap contract in 2001, taking over tasks like preparing food, supplying water and collecting trash for the military. Halliburton has contracts in Iraq and Kuwait valued at $6 billion
The missing workers are just a few of the 24,000 employees and contractors Halliburton has in the Iraq-Kuwait region. Halliburton has lost 30 employees and contractors in the last year, Ms. Hall said.
The hazards of working in the region were vividly described Monday by returning Halliburton employees whose convoys were ambushed in a separate incident on Thursday.
"I had to jump out of the truck while it was exploding and they were chasing us with rocks and sticks, guns," Stephen Heering told reporters upon arriving at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Mr. Heering, 33, a truck driver from Magnolia, Tex., said he had decided to leave Iraq four months into a one-year contract after encountering waves of violence.
"It was just out of control," Mr. Heering said.
Despite the spike in violence against civilian workers, Ms. Hall said the company had not slowed its recruitment efforts for Iraq rebuilding contracts, which have lured thousands to apply for jobs offered by Kellogg, Brown & Root, a large subsidiary of Halliburton. Ms. Hall said the company was continuing to process hundreds of applicants this week for positions like truck driver, trash collector and plumber. A trucker working for Halliburton in Iraq can make as much as $80,000 a year tax-free, as many Americans who work abroad can.
Lines of prospective workers have formed regularly at the Greenspoint Mall in Houston. The applicants are immediately informed of the risks, Ms. Hall said. "During the training process we spend most of our time giving recruits all the reasons they should not accept this job," she said. "In Iraq, however, we have a situation that is constantly changing. Both the military and our employees have to change with it."
For the families of Halliburton employees, the war's chaotic aftermath has brought the conflict closer to home. Steve Daniel, a truck driver from Weatherford, Tex., who is working in Iraq, knows Mr. Hamill, and Mr. Daniel's voice was laced with tension in his phone calls home. "In the past few days, he's been crying because he doesn't know whether he'll make it out alive," said his daughter, Leighann Daniel, 19. "He never cries. He told us the airport had been bombed so we were home all Sunday waiting to hear from him so it was a pretty bad Easter."
With no word on Mr. Hamill's fate, friends and relatives gathered at his 92-year-old grandmother's house to eat and watch the news.
"There's nothing else to do but look at the television, wait for some word and pray," his grandmother, Vera Hamill, said in a telephone interview from her home in Macon.
Mr. Hamill, 43, a dairy farmer who took a job in Iraq as a fuel truck driver, was seized when gunmen attacked his convoy outside Baghdad. His captors had threatened to kill him by Sunday if American troops did not withdraw from Fallujah, but the deadline came and went without any word. Dorothy Baker Hines, the mayor of Macon, said she had spoken to Mr. Hamill's wife, Kellie, and was relieved the deadline had seemed to pass without incident.
"The way she sees it, no news is good news," Ms. Baker Hines said. In downtown Macon, a weathered collection of picturesque buildings surrounded by farmland, a yellow ribbon hung in front of Jim's Gym and bows were wrapped around the massive pillars of the Noxubee County Courthouse. Yellow ribbons festooned posts in front of the Hamills' brick home, and a line of yellow police tape kept reporters at bay.
At Calvary Baptist Church, the Hamills' congregation, parishioners organized a round-the-clock prayer vigil, with church members taking assigned times through the day and night.
In the evening, residents gathered at the Independent Methodist Church, where they prayed for Mr. Hamill's safety as well as for the souls of his captors. "Lord, we pray you will send a legion of angels to stand among them," said Beth Brown, 36, the wife of the pastor, who was kneeling at the front of the church. "Open the eyes of these captors so they will see these angels."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Maureen Balleza in Houston; Ariel Hart in Macon, Miss.; and Andrew Jacobs in Atlanta.
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Ex - Boeing Executive Agrees to Plea Deal
April 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Boeing-Tankers.html
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) -- A former top executive at Boeing under investigation for her role in helping the company obtain a $23 billion contract from the Air Force has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy, according to court records.
Darleen Druyun, who had been an Air Force procurement officer before accepting a job from Boeing as deputy general manager of its Missile Defense Systems unit, has not been charged with a crime, though she has been under investigation by a grand jury. A document filed last week in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria indicates that she plans to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy on April 20. The charge carries a maximum of five years in prison.
The Washington Post, citing federal sources familiar with the investigation, reported Tuesday that Druyun is cooperating in the probe.
Boeing fired Druyun, 56, of Vienna, and chief financial officer Mike Sears in November. The company alleged that Sears improperly contacted Druyun about a possible top-level job for her at Boeing back in 2002, when Druyun played an influential role in deciding whether Boeing should get a multibillion dollar contract to lease or sell 100 aerial tankers to the Air Force.
The contract was eventually awarded to Boeing. Before it was awarded, Druyun -- while still working for the Air Force -- had informed Boeing that Airbus had submitted a bid of $5 million to $17 million less per plane than the Boeing offer, according to internal documents.
The deal has been criticized by some in Congress, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. And last week, the Pentagon's inspector general said significant changes should be made to the deal before it is allowed to proceed.
In response to the inspector general's report, Boeing spokesman Doug Kennett said the contract ``negotiated long and hard for over 18 months, has been the most scrutinized and debated we have ever seen. There is no question that the 767 tanker is the best in the world and the only one that meets the needs of the U.S. military and its allies.''
Boeing officials said last month that they expect the deal to go forward but were prepared to take a $310 million charge if it collapses.
``The company has been cooperating with authorities since we uncovered inappropriate conduct involving our hiring practices,'' said spokeswoman Deborah Bosick, but she declined to comment specifically on the plea deal.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Wiechering, who according to court records is prosecuting the case, declined to comment Tuesday.
Druyun's attorney, John Dowd, also declined comment. There was no telephone listing for Druyun in the Vienna area.
Boeing shares fell 37 cents to close at $41.78 Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
-------- china
As Cheney Arrives, China Tells U.S. to Stop Arming Taiwan
April 13, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-china-usa-taiwan.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - China demanded the United States to correct its ``mistaken practice'' of selling weapons to Taiwan on Tuesday, but said it hoped Vice President Dick Cheney's three-day visit would narrow differences.
Cheney arrived in Beijing on the second leg of his east Asian tour on Tuesday after a four-day trip to Tokyo was overshadowed from the start by the kidnapping of foreigners in Iraq.
The Taiwan Relations Act, which mandates U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, ``violates China's sovereignty and interferes in China's internal affairs,'' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.
``We demand the American side change their mistaken practice.''
China, which regards Taiwan as a wayward province, has been ``resolutely opposed to the Taiwan Relations Act from the very beginning,'' Kong said, adding arming the self-ruled island would send the wrong signal to separatists in Taiwan.
The U.S. Congress passed the act in 1979 after Washington switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, but Kong said the act runs counter to three Sino-U.S. joint communiques in which Washington pledged to gradually reduce arms sale to Taiwan.
Cheney is due to meet his Chinese counterpart, Zeng Qinghong, on Tuesday. He meets President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, who remains military chief, on Wednesday before flying to Shanghai.
Aside from Taiwan, Cheney was expected to discuss the North Korea nuclear crisis with Chinese leaders, Kong said.
Cheney first visited China in 1975 with then U.S. President Gerald Ford. He made a second trip in 1995.
Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi is due to visit the United States from April 19 to 25 to try to narrow trade differences, Kong said.
Kong urged the United States to adhere to its ``one China'' policy which dictates Taiwan is a part of China and to oppose formal independence for the island of 23 million.
Beijing has threatened to attack Taiwan if it declares independence. The two have been bitter rivals since their split at the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, but trade, investment and tourism have blossomed since the late 1980s.
Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, who Beijing suspects is pushing the island toward independence, was re-elected in March after a mysterious election eve assassination attempt which is being challenged by the opposition.
On Friday, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said in a statement marking the anniversary that the act had made a ``vital contribution'' to peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits and provided a strong framework to ensure Taiwan's stability.
-------- europe
Poland rules out sending more troops to Iraq
AFP Warsaw,
April 13
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_680262,0005.htm
Poland has ruled out sending more troops to Iraq, outgoing Prime Minister Lezsek Miller said on Tuesday.
"We rule out increasing our (Iraq) contingent. The government plans rather to decrease rather than increase the contingent," Miller told Polish public radio.
Poland commands 9,000-strong multinational force in southern Iraq, which includes some 2,500 of its own troops.
The government of Bulgaria has come under pressure to pull out its 480 troops, who are stationed in Karbala in the Polish force, since five died in multiple car-bombings in the city on December 27.
Families of the Bulgarian soldiers have formed a committee to press for their return after four were injured in the heavy fighting that erupted across Iraq between US-led forces and radical Muslims and a Shiite militia issued an ultimatum for the Bulgarians to leave.
On Sunday Spanish Socialist party secretary Jose Blanco also said the new Madrid government, expected to take office later this week under Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez, would stick by its election pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from the Polish-led force, by the end of June if there is no UN mandate.
----
Revolt in Kut Echoes in Ukraine
Pressure for Troop Pullout Builds as Mission Turns Deadly
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6482-2004Apr12.html
KIEV, Ukraine, April 12 -- As mortar shells fell around them, a detachment of Ukrainian soldiers beat a hasty retreat last week, abandoning the Iraqi city of Kut to insurgents in a significant setback to the U.S.-led occupation forces.
With one of their own dead and five others injured, the Ukrainians pulled back to the relative security of a base camp outside the city. But that wasn't far enough for many countrymen following news of the event from here. As the revolt against the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq grew, so did pressure to bring home Ukraine's 1,650 soldiers.
"It was one thing when we gave our troops the role of peacekeepers, and a completely different thing when our troops found themselves in the very center of a civil war by the people of Iraq," said Mykola Katerynchuk, a leading opposition member of parliament from the Our Ukraine bloc, which is pushing to withdraw the nation's troops from Iraq. "As it turns out, we completely misunderstood our role in that country."
With the fourth-largest contingent among U.S. allies in the occupation force behind Britain, Italy and Poland, Ukraine reflects the stresses and emotions evident in most of the three dozen nations with troops in Iraq. Street protests against military deployments have erupted in Japan, Australia and South Korea. Opposition parties or newspapers in Poland, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, Australia, South Korea, Latvia and Thailand have called for troop withdrawals. Parents of soldiers met with Bulgaria's president on Monday to beg him to save their sons.
Since Spain's incoming Socialist prime minister announced a withdrawal of his country's troops if the United Nations did not take over the military operation, the United States has sought to persuade Ukraine and other nations to keep their troops in Iraq. Although forces from most of those nations have not played a significant military role, U.S. officials say their presence is a symbol of support for Bush administration policies in Iraq.
So far, most U.S. allies in Iraq have vowed to stay the course, with varying degrees of determination. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi of Japan has resisted demands to call forces home despite the kidnapping of three Japanese civilians. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, which has 10,000 troops deployed in southern Iraq, offered a spirited defense of its Iraq policy over the weekend, while Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy paid a surprise visit to his forces in Iraq to demonstrate his resolve.
South Korea on Monday reaffirmed its commitment to dispatch 3,600 troops to the Kurdish region of northern Iraq despite the unrest of the last week. Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon told reporters in Seoul that although the situation in Iraq had grown worse than expected, there was "no possibility of change" in the deployment plan.
But others appear increasingly apprehensive about events. Kazakhstan's defense minister last week said his nation would withdraw its 30 troops, only to be contradicted later by a government statement that said a decision would be based on security considerations. The Philippines said it would defer a decision on a pullout until it could reevaluate its deployment. Hungary and Thailand held out the possibility of removing their troops if conditions in Iraq worsened.
"Bulgaria will be there. So far," Zlatin Traupkov, the Bulgarian president's secretary for foreign policy, said by telephone on Friday. "There is no political decision for withdrawal from operations."
President Bush called Berlusconi and the presidents of Poland and El Salvador on Friday to shore up support. Vice President Cheney is traveling in Japan and South Korea, where he is encouraging perseverance despite the kidnappings of their citizens.
In addition to the U.S. military force of about 135,000, 34 countries have contributed a total of 26,500 troops to the Iraq occupation force. Most of them are engaged in humanitarian or peacekeeping efforts.
The Ukrainians arrived last year with no tanks or heavy weaponry -- but plenty of defective helmets -- anticipating the sort of policing activities they performed in the former Yugoslavia in recent years. The soldiers volunteered for the duty to collect far larger paychecks and receive better training. Many of them were deployed in Kut, about 100 miles southeast of Baghdad, and elsewhere in Wasit province, manning checkpoints and destroying old ammunition depots.
Maj. Gen. Leonid Holopatiuk, a top officer on the Ukrainian general staff and head of the military's Euro-Atlantic cooperation department, acknowledged that the mission has changed dramatically in recent days.
"The majority of our contingent in Iraq was ready for a more classic peacekeeping mission," he said in an interview. But he added, "The question of withdrawal is not on the table. . . . If we start to withdraw our troops under the pressure of such actions, as we saw in Spain, what was the use to start the whole operation? I think we have to go to the end."
The participation of Ukrainian troops has been particularly important for President Leonid Kuchma in repairing relations with the United States, which were strained two years ago by allegations that Ukraine had sold Saddam Hussein, then Iraq's president, a sophisticated $100 million radar system. Although Kuchma denied the charge, the FBI authenticated an audiotape smuggled out of the country by a former bodyguard on which the president allegedly authorized the sale.
Kuchma's domestic opponents now accuse him of sacrificing Ukrainian soldiers for the sake of business backers who value ties with the United States. "The people of Ukraine demand the withdrawal of our troops while the ones who make the decisions don't want to accept this because it will spoil their financial position," the leader of the country's Communist Party, Petro Symonenko, said in an interview.
Symonenko pushed for a vote in parliament on Friday to withdraw the troops, but the president's supporters thwarted the move.
With elections looming in October, the issue seems certain to remain hot. "The troops in Iraq might become part of the political struggle in Ukraine against the backdrop of the presidential campaign," said Sergei Zgurets, a military and political analyst here. "That's where we are now."
-------- iraq
Fallujah marines in strange world -- half war, half humanitarian mission
FALLUJAH, Iraq (AFP)
Apr 13, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040413153827.9qrji3z8.html
Underneath a highway overpass, 1st Lieutenant David Denial watches Iraqi wounded leave the city, many of them young men.
He is almost certain they were hurt fighting the Americans, but he lets them go.
"I know in my heart they were there for a reason, that we probably shot them in battle, but they need help," he says.
He and the rest of the marines are in an dilemma, caught between war and peace as they observe a halt to offensive operations in Fallujah.
They take mortar rounds and are ambushed by insurgents, but are forbidden to advance into the city while negotiations are underway between a delegation of the US-installed Governing Council and Fallujah representatives.
They are asked to manage the flow of refugees from the trouble spot and assist the flow of humanitarian supplies into town.
"We know a lot of people are hurting inside the city, but a lot of the relief is going to the other side," Denial said.
The marines are asked to be peacekeepers and fighters all at once. The mission is nothing like what they expected.
Before they arrived in Iraq in March, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marineshad trained intensively for peace-keeping duties.
Twenty-five Marines from the battalion were sent to Arabic language school for a month, and went through extensive seminars and training drills on cultural sensitivity.
"A lot of the talk was about shifting marines from knocking down doors, kicking ass and taking names," said Captain Chris Chown.
But all the talk of hearts and minds has been suspended since the marines launched Operation Vigorous Resolve on April 5.
There is no more telling barometer of how much the mission has changed than the saga of facial hair.
The battalion's commander, Lieutenant Colonel Brennan Byrne, ordered his men to grow mustaches before they arrived in Al-Anbar province in March.
The mustaches were supposed to deliver the message that the marines respected Arab culture.
"We were coming with our mustaches, to show them we were willing to adapt to their culture," Chown said.
There would be more foot patrols and interaction with people than under the US Army. The marines had 540 million dollars to spend on reconstruction in Anbar.
But after the March 31 killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, everything was put on hold. Byrne told his men to shave off their mustaches.
"It will take a while for things to wind down and get back to the mustache phase," Chown said.
The battalion was told to pull out of Qarna, Zaina and Abu Ghraib -- towns east of Fallujah -- where they had been carrying out goodwill missions, meeting with tribal leaders and discussing long-term projects there.
They stormed Fallujah but are now waiting the results of the ceasefire talks and find themselves securing their positions and tending to the humanitarian emergencies that arise.
In the past three days, marines have escorted a pregnant woman in labour to hospital in the middle of the night and they have checked homes to make sure families have enough food and water.
But the attacks do not stop, which haunts them.
A rocket thudded Saturday into Lance Corporal Angel Quinles' humvee and nearly killed him. After being treated, he fired off a Javelin missile at snipers firing on his platoon.
"I'm supposed to be dead right now. I was practically hugging that rocket. There must have been a wall of God protecting me," Quinles said.
"I'm glad I destroyed them but it's not going to make me feel any better. I saw my life flash before my eyes."
----
Iraqi security forces disappoint 2 U.S. generals
April 13, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040413-121655-1738r.htm
The two top American generals in Iraq expressed disappointment yesterday in the refusal of many U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces to fight insurgents in last week's violence, saying it showed flaws in the way the coalition assembled the police.
Army Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, said he was especially unhappy with the security forces' performance in southern Iraq, where firebrand cleric Muqtada al-Sadr unleashed his private militia to attack coalition personnel. In many cases, police abandoned government buildings rather than defend them. A few joined Sheik al-Sadr's Mahdi's Army of black-clad militia.
"A number of units, both in the police force and also in the [Iraqi Civil Defense Corps] did not stand up to the intimidators of the forces of Sadr's militia and that was a great disappointment to us," Gen. Abizaid said at a joint press conference with Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, his top commander in Iraq.
The two spoke after one of the deadliest weeks for American troops since Saddam Hussein's statue fell one year ago. A weeklong, limited uprising by Sunni Iraqis in Fallujah and Shi'ites in the south killed more than 40 U.S. troops and cast doubt on the timetable for bringing democracy to post-Saddam Iraq by June 30.
Gens. Abizaid and Sanchez did not offer a clear strategy for escaping from the escalating violence. They are awaiting word on whether Iraqi-to-Iraqi talks bring an end to fighting between U.S. Marines and Sunni insurgents in Fallujah. To the south, the end of a Shi'ite religious holiday and the exodus of thousands of pilgrims could bring a decision on whether to confront Sheik al-Sadr.
In wide-ranging remarks in an audio feed to the Pentagon press corps from Baghdad, Gens. Abizaid and Sanchez also said:
•"There are some Iranian activities going on that are unhelpful" in southern Iraq. The coalition has beefed up patrols on the Iranian border to stop the influx of foreign fighters. Military sources have said Iran is funneling money to Sheik al-Sadr, which he has used to expand his power by paying his private army, publishing a newspaper and offering social services.
•Gen. Abizaid has asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for at least two additional combat brigades, or about 12,000 troops. He declined to say whether the extra troops would come from the 1st Armored Division, which is due to leave next month, or from units outside his theater.
The Washington Times reported on Saturday that the four-star general had decided he needed more forces than the level planned for this stage of the occupation. About 135,000 American troops are in Iraq, but that number is scheduled to drop to 110,000 once troop rotation ends.
•Al Jazeera, the Arab-language satellite TV channel, is broadcasting falsehoods that the United States is deliberately killing Iraqi civilians.
"We are being very deliberate and precise in the application of that combat power to prevent any wounding or injuring of noncombatants," Gen. Sanchez said.
On training Iraqis, Gen. Abizaid's frank acknowledgment means that the Pentagon's much-ballyhooed program to field more than 200,000 officers and soldiers has failed on many fronts and must be revamped.
Gen. Abizaid said he is recruiting more senior members of Saddam's old military to run the Interior Ministry and to establish a functional chain of command that apparently was missing when Mahdi's Army attacked.
"The truth of the matter is that until we get well-informed Iraqi chains of command ... it's going to be tough to get them to perform at the level we want," said Gen. Abizaid, adding that some pro-U.S. Iraqis did fight insurgents in Fallujah.
Gen. Sanchez added, "Clearly, there's things that we have to do better with the police. ... Some of it has to do with vetting. Some of it has to do with training. But most of it has to do with time and confidence, which is what we're going to have to work on the most."
Ongoing negotiations are reported between moderate Shi'ites and Sheik al-Sadr, who is believed to be holed up in the holy city of Najaf.
--------
Militia Withdraws At Key Iraqi Sites
9 Americans Missing in Convoy Attack
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Sewell Chan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A4788-2004Apr12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 12 -- A week after seizing control of Najaf, Iraq's holiest city, members of a militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr relinquished their hold on police stations and government buildings Monday as hundreds of U.S. soldiers mobilized in preparation for an assault on the city.
The withdrawal of Sadr's forces, the continuation of a cease-fire in the violence-wracked city of Fallujah and the release of seven kidnapped Chinese civilians amounted to the most positive developments for U.S. occupation forces since a two-front war with Shiite militiamen and Sunni Muslim insurgents erupted a week ago.
At the same time, senior military officials reported that two U.S. soldiers and seven employees of the American construction company Kellogg Brown & Root were missing after an attack on a convoy near Baghdad's airport Friday, and witnesses said 11 Russian energy workers were kidnapped Monday in Baghdad. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, said he had formally requested thousands of additional troops to help combat a surge in attacks by militants.
Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, also pulled out of some government installations and police stations in two other cities in Iraq, Kufa and Karbala, according to witnesses interviewed by news service reporters. The black-clad militiamen also have melted away in a teeming Baghdad slum where they had spent the past week skirmishing with U.S. troops.
The militia's withdrawal appeared to reflect an effort by Sadr to resolve a violent confrontation with the U.S. occupation authority that began with the closure of his newspaper and the arrest of his top deputy. But it was not immediately clear how the occupation authority and military commanders would respond.
The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, said earlier Monday that troops had moved to "the vicinity of Najaf to ensure that we're all prepared to conduct offensive operations to eliminate the final elements of Moqtada al-Sadr influence down there." Sanchez said the troops approaching Najaf, where Sadr is said to be hiding, had orders to kill or capture the cleric, who is wanted in connection with the killing of another Shiite leader.
But Shiite members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council urged the occupation authority to seek a negotiated solution with Sadr, using senior Shiite clerics as interlocutors. Several Shiites on the council want legal proceedings against Sadr to be delayed until the planned handover of sovereignty on June 30 in exchange for a commitment from Sadr to dissolve his militia.
The pullout of Sadr's militiamen occurred as a cease-fire -- described by Sanchez as "tenuous" -- continued to hold in Fallujah, a turbulent city about 35 miles west of Baghdad that has been a hotbed of Sunni resistance to the occupation. While local Iraqi leaders and a delegation from the Governing Council held talks aimed at brokering a truce, U.S. military officials said Marines encircling the city continued to be fired on by insurgents. Although U.S. offensive operations remained on hold for a third day, additional units moved into place around the city to prepare for more fighting.
[The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday that the seven Chinese captives in Iraq had been released and taken to a safe residence in Baghdad, where they were found to be in good health. Previous reports from the official New China News Agency and Beijing newspapers said they had entered Iraq from Jordan Sunday in search of work.]
A statement issued Monday by Halliburton Co., the parent company of Kellogg Brown & Root, confirmed that seven employees were missing, including Thomas Hamill, a truck driver from Mississippi. The identities of the six others were not disclosed. Three Czech journalists also were reported missing and believed abducted. Residents of the Zayuna neighborhood in Baghdad said on Monday night that 11 Russians living in a house were abducted by gunmen. Three Japanese also remained in the hands of kidnappers. In the first full fatality estimates since widespread fighting erupted a week ago, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's top spokesman in Iraq, said about 70 Americans and 700 insurgents had been killed this month, making it the deadliest since the fall of Saddam Hussein's government a year ago. Kimmitt also said there were no reliable figures for Iraqi civilian casualties in the latest fighting and dismissed reports from Fallujah of hundreds of civilian deaths as "propaganda."
Once Fallujah is brought back under control, he said, the Iraqi Health Ministry would be asked to "get a fair, honest and credible figure."
Seven U.S. troops were killed in combat from Friday to Sunday, the military reported. The 1st Infantry Division lost three soldiers. One was killed Friday evening by a rocket-propelled grenade near Buhriz and another died Saturday in an attack on his reconnaissance patrol near Khalis. A third was slain Sunday in an attack on a patrol near Samarra. A 1st Armored Division soldier died Sunday of wounds suffered in a roadside bombing in Baghdad the night before. Three Marines were killed Sunday in two separate attacks in Anbar province, home to Fallujah.
Abizaid, who heads the U.S. Central Command, said he had requested reinforcements in the form of two U.S. combat brigades, but he declined to specify where they would come from or how many troops they would include.
Military officials said some of the additional troops would be used to address a problem that plagued U.S. forces during the invasion of Iraq last year: attacks on supply convoys. Over the past week, insurgents have repeatedly attacked military and commercial trucks and passenger vehicles on two major highways that run west and south from Baghdad, slowing the movement of troops and supplies and rendering both roads off-limits to most foreigners, U.S. military commanders said Monday. In an attack Sunday, a Romanian private security guard was killed and another was wounded in an ambush on a convoy near Baghdad, the Romanian Foreign Ministry said.
The two highways provide the major links to the densely populated agricultural zone in the south and to Fallujah and Ramadi to the west. In the past week, armed bands of as many as 60 men have ambushed fuel convoys, kidnapped foreign civilians and shot down aircraft.
Military commanders "remain very concerned" about the two motorways and have declared them dangerous but not impassable, Kimmitt said. He said it could take several weeks before the roads were completely safe for traffic.
The attacks have led many truck drivers working for Kellogg Brown & Root and other private contractors to refuse to drive, delaying the delivery of much-needed supplies to troops, military officials said. Private contractors are responsible for providing about half the military's supplies in Iraq, the officials said.
A spokesman for the Army Field Support Command, Dan Carlson, confirmed that there have "been some delays" in supply lines "due to the recent hostilities." He said the Army was assessing their impact.
The U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, met with members of the Governing Council to discuss the violence of the past week. Several council members said afterward that they hoped to negotiate an end to the violence in Fallujah and the confrontation with Sadr's militia.
Although a Governing Council delegation met with local leaders in Fallujah on Sunday and Monday, it was not clear whether city officials have enough sway to persuade the insurgents to lay down their arms. Council members said people involved in the killing and mutilation of four American security contractors in the city on March 31 must be handed over as a condition of a peace deal.
To broker a deal with Sadr, Shiite council members said attempts to arrest and try the cleric should be postponed until after June 30. If presented with such an offer, they said, Sadr might be willing to dissolve his militia. They said Sadr already had offered in talks with one member to transform the Mahdi Army into a "civil organization."
Delaying legal proceedings "will be more legitimate in the eyes of Iraqis," said one council member, Ahmed Barak. "It will be more acceptable."
With U.S. troops near Najaf, Barak said, time was running out to strike a deal. He said if soldiers entered the city, which is regarded as one of the most sacred places for Shiites, "it would be a disaster."
Staff writer Jackie Spinner in Washington, special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf and correspondent Edward Cody in Beijing contributed to this report.
--------
Fallujah Gains Mythic Air
Siege Redefines Conflict for Iraqis in Capital
By Karl Vick and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6462-2004Apr12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 12 -- The U.S. Marine siege of Fallujah, designed to isolate and pursue a handful of extremists in a restive town, has produced a powerful backlash in the capital. Urged on by leaflets, sermons and freshly sprayed graffiti calling for jihad, young men are leaving Baghdad to join a fight that residents say has less to do with battlefield success than with a cause infused with righteousness and sacrifice.
"The fighting now is different than a year ago. Before, the Iraqis fought for nothing. Now, fighters from all over Iraq are going to sacrifice themselves," said a Fallujah native who gave his name as Abu Idris and claimed to be in contact with guerrillas who slip in and out of the besieged city three and four times daily.
He spoke in a mosque parking lot emptied moments earlier of more than a ton of donated foodstuffs destined for Fallujah -- heavy bags of rice, tea and flour loaded into long, yellow semitrailers by a cluster of men who, their work done, joined a spirited discussion about the need to take the fight to the enemy. They included a dentist, a prayer leader, a law student, a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi police and a man who until 10 days earlier had traveled with U.S. troops as a member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
"Our brothers who went to Fallujah and came back say: 'Oh, God, it is heaven. Anyone who wants paradise should go to Fallujah,' " Abu Idris said.
The lopsided battle 35 miles to the west -- where 2,500 Marines have been deployed -- has had a profound impact here, redefining for many in Baghdad the nature of the campaign against U.S. troops.
Intense, sympathetic and often startlingly graphic coverage on Arab channels has deepened a vein of nationalism, stirred in part by still unconfirmed reports of high civilian casualties. Over the weekend, in the living room of a decidedly secular family, a woman wept over the images on a screen she finally leaned forward and kissed.
Headlines in Iraq's newly free press reinforce the video images: "Fallujah Wakes to a Grave Massacre" read the banner in Monday's edition of the daily Azzaman. Fresh graffiti sprayed in sweeping Arabic letters is turning up across the city. On one wall in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad, the messages were spaced 10 yards apart: "Long live Fallujah's heroes." "Down with America and long live the Mahdi Army," a Shiite militia. Then: "Long live the resistance in Fallujah." And finally, "Long live the resistance."
The popular response -- of Shiite and Sunni giving aid, shelter to refugees and even volunteers to the fight -- has pushed fears of an Iraqi civil war to the background. The fighters in Fallujah are said to include Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. A housewife in Baghdad's Salaam neighborhood told of a passionate argument with her husband, a Shiite who insisted on joining friends volunteering to fight in Fallujah.
"This is jihad," she quoted him as saying. She added: "It was the first time he ever slapped me."
Some here are already speaking with the sense of history -- that powerful, deeply symbolic myths are being created.
"What is striking is how much has changed in a week -- a week," said Wamid Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University. "No one can talk about the Sunni Triangle anymore. No one can seriously talk about Sunni-Shiite fragmentation or civil war. The occupation cannot talk about small bands of resistance. Now it is a popular rebellion and it has spread."
"I think it will be bigger than Karameh," he added.
For a generation, the battle of Karameh created the myths that propelled a movement. On March 21, 1968, an Israeli force of 15,000 struck at the Jordanian village of Karameh. The raid was retaliatory -- guerrillas had staged attacks from the village, just across the Jordan River. But in a rare success, Palestinian guerrillas forced an embarrassing Israeli withdrawal with the help of Jordanian artillery and armor.
For an Arab world accustomed to humiliating defeats, a draw can assume mythic proportions. Repelling the Israeli army amounted to the guerrillas' biggest victory up to that time and energized Palestinians.
Fallujah is producing a mythology of its own. In the parking lot of the former Mother of All Battles Mosque, now renamed for the sacred shrine in Mecca, Abu Idris told of a Saudi who came to Fallujah to fight. Hearing that a Marine was sniping from a minaret, the Saudi asked for a sniper rifle of his own, "and whenever a man came to stand on the minaret, he killed him," Abu Idris told the assembled crowd.
The account inverts the reports from the Marine side of the front, where U.S. officers warned infantry of insurgents' efforts to draw fire to the mosque towers. But veracity may be a secondary concern in a capital preoccupied by the belief that Fallujah is undergoing an unjust collective punishment for the mutilation of four American security contractors by a handful of men two weeks ago.
"It's natural that many fighters from Baghdad want to go to Fallujah and fight," said Abdulqadir Mohammad Ali, prayer leader at the modest Great Mosque in Baghdad's Washash neighborhood. A Sunni mosque in a mixed neighborhood, it displayed a Sadr poster on one wall.
Ali's office smelled like a bakery, so fresh were the cookies young men poured into the dozen bulging bags that crowded the room, more food for Fallujah. The imam spoke over the din of the Koranic verses that have been booming out of the mosque's loudspeakers since the siege began more than a week ago. On a bench beside a window, an elderly man read a battered copy of the holy book and occasionally sobbed. Abdullah Hussein Othman, a 70-year-old ethnic Kurd, explained he had two daughters in Fallujah.
"The exact image I want to give you is the young men heading to fight in Fallujah are more than the refugees coming out of Fallujah," Ali said. "We cannot control the feelings of the young."
The fighters, he added, reject the label "fedayeen," the name for deposed president Saddam Hussein's most zealous fighters, who, like the new insurgents, favor black attire. "We say 'mujaheddin,' " he said, Arabic for sacred combatants.
Slang has also evolved. Many Shiites recall a slogan they saw written on the barrel of an Iraqi tank dispatched to crush a 1991 Shiite uprising: "No more Shiites after today." In the tumultuous aftermath of Hussein's fall a year ago, new slogans went up across cities in Shiite-dominated southern Iraq: "No Baathists after today."
Monday, in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, there was another variation: "No occupation after today."
The resistance also recently acquired a logo. Two fingers form a victory sign over an image of Iraq on posters that appeared in Baghdad on Monday. The words "No to the occupation" appear over the date Baghdad fell: April 9, 2003. Sadr makes the same gesture in a poster of his own.
"I don't think any honorable Iraqi could stand by and do nothing when he sees women and children killed," said Abu Ali, a merchant in the once avowedly pro-Hussein neighborhood of Karrada. "An Iraqi must either fight or leave the country. It is better for him to be hosted by the graves than just watching and doing nothing."
How many Iraqis are volunteering to fight in Fallujah cannot be easily determined. The Baghdad man who quit the Civil Defense Corps because of Fallujah said he could name 30 friends who have joined the fight. But the man, who gave his name only as Ahmed, also spoke of Saudi fighters recently arrived in the city "to sacrifice themselves" and of word passing through the resistance that Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian blamed by U.S. officials for many suicide bombings, is sending a group into the country.
"There is no number to count the army that will fight the Americans," Ahmed said. "It's so big, it's limitless."
Abu Idris said some Fallujah natives insisted that they did not need help, leaving many volunteers to roam the region between the city and the capital. The area has become a no-go zone in recent days, with several journalists kidnapped and convoys attacked.
"Mujaheddin are just killing the agents who are supplying the Americans," said a teenager who gave his name as Abu Hanifa. He smiled, then scampered into the back of a blue truck with the other volunteers. Calling out for a photograph, they laughed and held up two fingers in a victory sign.
As the truck pulled away, the teenager called out: "We will defeat you, God willing."
--------
Iraqi Security Forces Fall Short, Generals Say
After Refusing to Fight, Units Will See Changes in Leadership and Training
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6525-2004Apr12?language=printer
Top U.S. military commanders in Iraq yesterday acknowledged serious shortcomings in efforts to establish new Iraqi security forces and said the program is being reassessed in light of the failure over the past week of Iraqi units to join U.S. troops in combating militants.
Expressing disappointment with the response of the Iraqi forces, some of whom were seen fighting alongside militia loyal to radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, the commanders spoke of the need to overhaul the training, vetting and leadership of the Iraqi units.
"We're taking a very hard look at it, and we are going to make some changes, because we want to understand what we must do better," said Army Gen. John Abizaid, who oversees U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf region.
As one measure to stiffen the forces, Abizaid said, some former senior members of the disbanded army that served deposed president Saddam Hussein will soon be named to leadership posts in the new army.
Since the U.S. decision to dissolve Hussein's army last spring, the development of a set of reconstituted Iraqi security services has been a linchpin of the U.S. strategy for ensuring long-term stability in the country and enabling the withdrawal of U.S. troops. The Iraqi forces, which include police, border patrolmen and building guards as well as army soldiers and paramilitary troops, now number about 200,000.
But the rush to create these groups from scratch has proved a mammoth undertaking that has been marked by persistent reports of poor vetting, inadequate training, equipment shortages and command gaps.
Last week's surge in violence by Sunni and Shiite militants presented the first extensive test of the willingness and ability of the fledging Iraqi force to fight alongside U.S. troops. But a number of units quickly took themselves out of the battle.
On April 5, a new Iraqi battalion of several hundred Iraqi soldiers refused to join U.S. Marines in the offensive in Fallujah. In the south, police units as well as members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, equivalent to the National Guard in the United States, refused to engage Sadr's forces.
Abizaid said he had seen films of Iraqi police fighting along with the militia.
"I think that these numbers are not large, but they are troubling to us. And clearly we've got to work on the Iraqi security forces," Abizaid told reporters at the Pentagon in a videoconference from Baghdad.
He said part of the problem has been the absence of a command structure linking units in the field with a central headquarters. Not until last week did L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator of Iraq, appoint Iraqis to head the departments of defense and the interior.
For months, U.S. authorities have sought to avoid enlisting former senior members of Hussein's military and security services. But Abizaid made it clear yesterday that the decision had been made to move in this direction.
"It's also very clear that we've got to get more senior Iraqis involved, former military types involved in the security forces," he said. "And in the next couple of days, you'll see a large number of senior officers being appointed to key positions in the Ministry of Defense and in Iraqi joint staff and in Iraqi field commands."
Abizaid added that he and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commands U.S. forces in Iraq, "are very much involved in the vetting and placing of these officers." He described competition for these positions as "fierce."
Plans also call for a review of training procedures and the use of additional U.S. Special Forces to mentor Iraqi units.
"We've got to make sure that we are mentoring and training these security forces after they have gone through their initial training, and give them the mentorship and the supervision necessary for them to be credible and capable once they're fielded," said Sanchez, who joined Abizaid at the news conference.
Both commanders declined to predict how long it might take to strengthen Iraqi forces sufficiently to enable the United States to reduce U.S. troop levels. But Sanchez insisted that the weakness of the Iraqi security services will not delay the transfer of power to an Iraqi government, scheduled for June 30.
On plans to bolster U.S. forces in Iraq, Abizaid said he had formally asked the Pentagon for two more combat brigades than he had intended to have in Iraq this summer. A brigade usually contains about 5,000 soldiers but can require additional support personnel.
A senior Pentagon official said Abizaid's request is likely to be met in the near term by keeping a substantial part of the Army's 1st Armored Division in Iraq. The division, which arrived in Iraq last May, had been scheduled to transfer responsibility for operations in the Baghdad area to the 1st Cavalry Division this week and then begin returning to its home base in Germany.
As an example of the kind of reinforcing function the division's troops are now expected to play, some 1st Armored units were dispatched from Baghdad last week to regain control of the southern city of Kut from Sadr's militia.
Asked about the size of the insurgency confronting U.S. forces, Abizaid said he will stick with his estimate last November of about 5,000 fighters.
"But it's a very imprecise thing when you deal with insurgency and counterinsurgency operations," he added.
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Copter Crashes in Iraq While Uneasy Diplomacy Continues
April 13, 2004
By KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/international/13CND-IRAQ.html?hp
As Iraqi envoys on two fronts continued to seek a diplomatic resolution to the anti-American resistance in Iraq, turmoil and violence persisted today, and included the crash of an American military helicopter and, according to witnesses, a rebel ambush that killed an American soldier.
A Sikorsky H-53 helicopter made a crash landing near the city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, when it came under fire from gunmen on the ground, The Associated Press reported, citing the United States military. An insurgent told the news agency that he had shot down the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade. Three crew members were injured in the incident, the military said.
American troops who rushed to the scene were attacked by gunmen, news agencies reported.
The H-53 series helicopters are among the largest in the United States military fleet, and they are used for a variety of missions, including troop transport and special operations. The Marine Corps was the first service to begin using them, beginning in Vietnam in the 1960's, and CH-53 Sea Stallions remain workhorses of the Corps.
Delegates from the Iraqi Governing Council have been trying to broker an end to a confrontation between Sunni insurgents in Falluja and more than 1,300 American and Iraqi troops who have laid siege to the city. A unilateral American cease-fire in Falluja, which has allowed the intermediaries to enter the city, was in its fourth day.
But though calm has largely prevailed in the city, the crucial transportation corridor east to Baghdad, where the helicopter crashed, has been the scene of heavy fighting. An American convoy was attacked near the same site earlier today, causing casualties, witnesses told The Associated Press.
In southern Iraq, near the city of Najaf, rebels ambushed an American military convoy with gunfire and roadside bombs late on Monday, killing one soldier and wounding two others and an American civilian contractor, news agencies reported today, citing witnesses. The convoy was traveling to Najaf where a large American force is gathering to pressure a radical Shiite cleric and his followers to abandon a nine-day-old armed resistance.
On Monday, a delegation of esteemed Shiite clerics met in Najaf with the rebellious cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, opening negotiations that could end the standoff. In the first signs of easing tensions, militia members withdrew from police stations in Najaf and allowed Iraqi police officers to reoccupy the facilities.
But in declarations today, Mr. Sadr, whose followers seized control of several southern Iraqi cities last week, suggested that he had not relented at all in his quest to drive out the American-led occupation forces.
"I am ready to sacrifice" myself, he told Lebanon's al-Manar television, according to Reuters. "I call on the people not to allow my death to cause the collapse of the fight for freedom and an end to the occupation."
The rebellion in southern Iraq, which began on April 4, has pulled foreign troops and contractors more deeply than ever into the Iraqi conflict. Among the latest incidents involving the United States' allies, one Ukrainian soldier was killed and several wounded, the Russian news agency Tass reported today. The agency gave no further details about the death, the fifth among the 1,600-strong Ukrainian contingent deployed in Iraq.
Spanish forces also came under fire today when insurgents loyal to Mr. Sadr opened fire on a Spanish patrol near Kufa, The A.P. reported. In a separate event, a Spanish garrison between Kufa and Najaf was attacked by a mortar bomb overnight and Spanish forces rebelled a militia attack on a nearby water distillation plant, the news agency said.
The rash of kidnappings that has affected coalition forces in the last week continued today. Al Jazeera television broadcast a tape showing four men described as Italian hostages being held by an Iraqi Islamist group that demanded Italy's withdrawal from Iraq, Reuters reported.
But in a positive development for coalition forces, five Ukrainians and three Russians - civilian employees of an energy company who were kidnapped in Iraq on Monday - were released today, the Interfax news agency reported, citing the company and the Russian Embassy in Baghdad.
About 40 hostages from 12 countries are being held in Iraq, a spokesman for the top American administrator, said today, according to news agencies. The spokesman, Dan Senor, said the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation was working with coalition troops and Iraqi security force to search for the hostages.
--------
NEW MISSIONS
Troops in Iraq Strain to Hold Lines of Supply
April 13, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13MILI.html
WASHINGTON, April 12 - American troops in Iraq are battling insurgents to keep open vital military supply lines in and out of Baghdad. The attacks on the supply lines are posing new hazards to civilian contractors who operate many of the convoys and siphoning short-handed combat forces away from the main fight against militants, senior commanders said Monday.
Over the weekend, American forces fought pitched battles to clear the north-south and east-west routes to and from Baghdad, and also near Falluja, for trucks to haul food, fuel, water and ammunition to soldiers and marines, top officers said. Many convoys have been delayed; others have been suspended, officials said.
The attacks on convoys, along with sabotage to roads and bridges, have opened yet another front in the week-old surge in violence in Iraq.
Two American soldiers and seven employees of the American contractor Kellogg Brown & Root were missing and feared abducted after an attack on Friday on a fuel convoy near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad.
The growing concerns over securing supply lines came as Gen. John P. Abizaid, the American commander in the Middle East, told reporters he had requested from the Pentagon the equivalent of two more combat brigades - as many as 15,000 to 20,000 troops - to keep American forces in Iraq at about 130,000 for the foreseeable future. Levels had been scheduled to decline to about 110,000 during the present troop rotation.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who had signaled last week that such a step was in the offing, is considering options to honor the request, from extending the tour of thousands of First Armored Division soldiers now in Iraq to drawing on marines or soldiers elsewhere. Mr. Rumsfeld could decide as early as Tuesday, defense officials said.
"We've had to take extraordinary steps to get stuff to them, fighting to open up some of the routes," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of military operations, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad about clearing the supply routes.
General Kimmitt told reporters that none of the routes in Iraq were now classified by the military as "black" or "red," meaning too dangerous to use. But he said most were "amber," a classification that means convoy operators assume "a certain measure of risk." He added, "It is certainly not green yet."
The risks to civilian contractors and military convoys moving supplies from Kuwait and around Baghdad have become menacingly clear. After the attack on the Kellogg Brown & Root convoy, military officials said Monday that they feared that the nine people had been taken hostage by militants.
On Monday, a convoy of flatbed trucks carrying M-113 armored personnel carriers was attacked and burned on a road in Latifiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, according to The Associated Press. Witnesses said three people had been killed. A supply truck was also ambushed and set ablaze on Monday on the road from Baghdad's airport. Looters moved in to carry away goods from the truck as Iraqi policemen looked on without intervening, The A.P. reported.
Commanders and contractors have said American forces are in no immediate danger of running low on essential supplies. Most units are said to keep at least a week's supply of fuel, food and water at their bases.
Kellogg Brown & Root vowed Monday "to stay the course and move forward with the logistical support to troops," but with unspecified changes in delivery and security procedures, a spokeswoman said.
"We are all concerned about the recent incidents in Iraq, and when hostilities intensify we revise and step up our precautions in support of our security efforts," said Wendy Hall, the spokeswoman for Kellogg Brown & Root, which has more than 700 trucks in Kuwait and Iraq.
But John C. McCarthy, the director of projects for T.T.S. Group, a British company whose Kuwaiti affiliate ships cargo into Iraq, said his company would not operate north of Basra, in the relatively secure south.
The American-led military operation is responsible for providing overall security through Iraq, but specific protection depends on the cargo, area and threat level, officers said. Fuel and ammunition convoys routinely have armed escorts, Army officials said. Food and water shipments might have military escorts, depending on how risky the route. But as in the case of the four American security contractors killed in Falluja this month on a convoy to pick up kitchen equipment, companies hire their own private security guards for some trips.
Army and Marine helicopter gunships frequently patrol the most traveled routes, but that has not deterred some of the latest attacks.
In a teleconference from Baghdad with reporters at the Pentagon, General Abizaid also said some Iraqi security forces performed very poorly during the recent violence and underscored the need to improve their training and leadership.
"In the south, a number of units, both in the police force and also in the I.C.D.C., did not stand up to the intimidators of the forces of Sadr's militia, and that was a great disappointment to us," General Abizaid said, referring to the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. "In other places, such as in and around Falluja, we've had good, strong performances by several units."
General Abizaid, who expressed concern that some new Iraqi police officers defected to the rebel militia loyal to the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, said the American trainers, including Army Special Forces, would have to improve the training, vetting and leadership of police, Iraqi militia and Iraqi army units.
General Abizaid also signaled that American officials would now seek greater involvement from former senior Iraqi military officials, who up to now had been largely excluded from aiding the new security forces because of their ties to Saddam Hussein's government.
"We've got to get more senior Iraqis involved - former military types involved in the security forces," General Abizaid said.
-------- israel / palestine
Palestinian children killed by Israel
By Khalid Amayreh in the West Bank
Tuesday 13 April 2004,
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C3994F6B-9576-4702-94E3-73EA1470182E.htm
One of the most disturbing aspects of the strife between Israel and the Palestinians has been the killing and maiming of children.
The Israeli occupation army and paramilitary Jewish settlers have killed 545 Palestinian children and minors since the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada in September 2000.
Among these victims, 266 children were 14 or younger while the ages of the remaining 279 ranged from 15 to 18. Moreover, as many as 20,000 Palestinian children were injured, with nearly 1500 sustaining life-long disabilities.
The total number of Palestinians killed by Israel during the current Intifada is around 2700, the vast majority of them civilians.
Casualties
On the other hand, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinians during the same period is around 840 soldiers, settlers and civilians, including about 100 Israeli children and minors.
Nearly 2500 Israelis were injured, mostly suffering from light wounds and shock. Many of the Israeli victims died in bombings inside Israel.
In 2003, a total of 130 Palestinian children and minors were killed by Israeli troops and a further 22 have been killed in the first three months of this year.
One of the latest Palestinian children to be killed by the Israeli army was six-year-old Khalid Mahir Walwil from the Balata refugee camp near Nablus.
He was shot in the back as he turned away from the window on the second floor of his house.
Khalid had reportedly stayed at home that day, too frightened to go to school because Israeli soldiers were "operating" in the area.
Targeting denied
Despite the facts, Israeli officials continue to vehemently deny that their army targets Palestinian children.
Amira Dotan, a spokeswoman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told Aljazeera.net it was inconceivable that the Israeli army targeted Palestinian civilians, let alone children.
Khalid Walwil was the latest victim of the Israel's killings
"We are a democratic state, our government would be toppled if it was proven that our defence forces had indulged in targeting Palestinian civilians and children," she says.
"This sort of thing just doesn't happen in Israel."
When asked to explain the death of nearly 550 Palestinian children and minors by the Israeli army during the past 44 months, Dotan said the deaths were "accidental, collateral but not deliberate". However, when further pressed to explain how the Israeli army decided to drop one-tonne bombs on apartment buildings in Gaza and carry out devastating air strikes targeting markets and crowded streets, killing scores of children and women, Dotan invoked the mantra of terror.
"Yes, we knew there were children, but we had to kill the terrorists."
Like other Israeli officials and spokespersons, Dotan believe that these actions were justified so as to protect Israeli lives.
"If we hadn't killed those Palestinian children, then the terrorist would have killed three or four times as many Israelis."
'Macabre reasoning'
Palestinian officials, including jurists and human rights activists, strongly reject and condemn this "macabre reasoning".
"Killing knowingly is killing deliberately and premeditatedly. It is a war crime which no amount of verbal juggling can extenuate," said Hanna Issa, a prominent Palestinian legal expert and Director-General of the Palestinian Ministry of Justice.
"They know in advance that children are sleeping in the targeted building, none the less, they carry out the killing without batting an eyelash ... and then they shed the crocodile tears and claim that the killing was accidental or happened by mistake"
Hanna Issa, director-general, Palestinian Justice Ministry
"They are killing with malice aforethought ... they know in advance that children are sleeping in the targeted building, none the less, they carry out the killing without batting an eyelash ... and then they shed the crocodile tears and claim that the killing was accidental or happened by mistake ...there is no such thing as killing deliberately by mistake."
Stressing his point, Issa argued that Israel would never even contemplate bombing a building or a market or a crowded street if it knew that Israeli Jews were in the vicinity of the target.
He gave as an example an Israeli decision to call off an operation to assassinate Hamas founder and spiritual leader Shaikh Ahmad Yasin last year after it was found out that Israeli journalists were interviewing him.
"My question is would the Israeli army have cancelled the operation if the journalists had been Palestinians, not Israelis?"
Yasin was assassinated by Israel along with 10 other Palestinian civilians outside a Gaza mosque on 22 March.
Issa condemned all attacks on civilians, Israeli and Palestinian alike. "Murder is murder, period."
However, he added: "I don't believe that Israel stands on a higher moral ground just because Israeli soldiers are dressed in khaki and use F-16s, apache helicopters and flechette shells (deadly dart bombs) to kill and maim Palestinian children while Israeli civilians are killed by suicide bombers."
'Deliberate killings'
Since the outbreak of the Intifada, several human rights organisations have thoroughly investigated the circumstances of thousands of Palestinian civilian deaths, reaching the conclusion that the Israeli army "kills civilians knowingly and deliberately".
One of these organisations is Physicians for Human Rights-USA, which investigated the number of Palestinian deaths and injuries in the fist months of the Intifada.
A total of 266 children killed were 14 or younger It concluded that "the pattern of injuries seen in many victims did not reflect IDF use of firearms in life-threatening situations but rather indicated targeting solely for the purpose of wounding or killing".
In some cases, the killing of Palestinian youths by Israel assumes a brazen and dastardly nature.
Nearly two years ago, Chris Hedges, a Western journalist covering events in Gaza reported how Israeli soldiers lured Palestinian kids to walk towards them for the purpose of hunting them down with their machineguns.
What is more shocking though is that virtually none of these killings has been investigated by the Israeli army or justice system, underscoring the striking ease with which the Israeli army kills Palestinians.
Twelve and up
Some Israeli soldiers have admitted that the army gives them "carte blanche" to shoot and kill Palestinian above the age of 12.
The noted Israeli award-wining journalist Amira Hass interviewed an Israeli sniper nearly two years ago in which the soldier described the commands he received from his superiors:
"The blood of their children is not more precious than that of our children. Let them stop killing our civilians, and we will stop killing theirs"
Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, Hamas leader in Gaza
"Twelve and up, you are allowed to shoot. That's what they tell us," he said. "So," responded the reporter, "according to the IDF, the appropriate minimum age group at which to shoot is 12."
The soldier replied: "This is according to what the IDF says to its soldiers. I do not know if this is what the IDF says to the media."
Many Palestinians are convinced that these atrocities fuel the fire of further attacks against Israel.
"The blood of their children is not more precious than that of our children," said the new Hamas leader in Gaza, Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi. "Let them stop killing our civilians, and we will stop killing theirs."
----
Bush Qualifies Praise for Israeli Plan
Gaza Pullout Won't Replace 'Road Map'
By Dana Milbank and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5610-2004Apr12.html
CRAWFORD, Tex., April 12 -- President Bush, hosting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, called Israel's proposed withdrawal from the Gaza Strip a "positive step" Monday but said it would not take the place of a U.S.-backed plan for a negotiated settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"We both are in agreement that if Israel makes the decision to withdraw, it doesn't replace the road map," Bush said, a reference to the plan calling for a two-state solution. "The point is, that decision doesn't replace the path toward the establishment of a Palestinian state that will provide hope for the Palestinian people and provide continuity."
Mubarak agreed that Israel's determination to withdraw settlers and soldiers from the overwhelmingly Arab Gaza Strip is "very highly appreciated."
But he indicated there is widespread skepticism in the Middle East about Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's intentions and reiterated the Arab world's desire that Israel be compelled to compromise on its occupation of the West Bank and other issues.
The session at the president's ranch marked the opening of a busy stretch of Middle East diplomacy for Bush. He will listen to Sharon's ambitious bid for U.S. support on Wednesday at the White House and to the concerns of Jordan's King Abdullah one week later.
Bush wants Abdullah and Mubarak on his side because he needs their support in Iraq; he also will rely on Egypt to keep terrorists from crossing its border with Gaza, which Egypt administered before the 1967 war.
The Bush administration intends to offer its qualified support of Sharon's unilateral initiative, endorsing the Gaza pullout but stopping short of approving Sharon's more extensive ideas for the annexation of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, a well-placed U.S. official said.
Sharon, preparing to fly to Washington, demonstrated the complications of his approach, which in effect begins to draw boundaries between Israelis and Palestinians without input of Palestinian leaders. Standing in the Jewish settlement of Maleh Adumim on the West Bank, Sharon for the first time named five settlements he wants to keep "under Israeli control."
"Only an Israeli initiative will assure the future of the large settlement blocks and the security zones," said Sharon, who is attempting to wall off Israel from violent assaults. "Only this will allow us to wage a relentless war on terror."
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, dismissed Sharon's announcement. "With this statement, Sharon is closing the door before any Palestinian-Israeli peace deal," Erekat said. "The withdrawal from Gaza cannot be exchanged for maintaining Israeli occupation in Jerusalem or in the West Bank."
In Crawford, Bush and Mubarak discussed Sharon's plans and the U.S.-backed road map, with Mubarak emphasizing the need for a comprehensive settlement and "ever-greater" U.S. engagement. They also discussed the worsening security situation in Iraq, with Mubarak urging a stronger role for the United Nations.
Groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch had appealed to Bush to call Mubarak to account for torture and other human rights abuses in Egypt. But Bush, who has criticized Egypt on such matters, refrained Monday.
Bush is pushing a Middle Eastern democracy initiative that includes a revamping of U.S.-supported development programs in Egypt, and he said he is "encouraged" by the debate over reform in Egypt. He predicted that Egypt "will set the standard in the region for democracy by strengthening democratic institutions and political participation."
In his public comments on Israel, Bush appeared to acknowledge the objections of Mubarak, Abdullah and other Middle East leaders to Sharon's most ambitious proposals. He declined to offer details of intensive U.S. discussions with Israeli officials, saying plans for a Gaza withdrawal were "rumors."
"Let us not prejudge what Prime Minister Sharon is going to tell me," Bush said. "Let's wait until the prime minister comes. But if he were to decide to withdraw from the Gaza, it would be a positive development."
Israeli officials said Sharon is seeking Bush's strong support -- preferably in writing -- for the Gaza withdrawal and broader disengagement plan, which will help him sell the proposals to reluctant Likud Party cabinet ministers and the party's rank and file. An advisory referendum is set for April 29.
Particularly important, Israeli officials said, is the support of Finance Minster Binyamin Netanyahu, a Likud stalwart who has not taken a public position on Sharon's plan. He is a former prime minister who carries much weight with Likud's far right.
"Netanyahu has laid down markers that are a prerequisite for his support" and which Sharon considers vital to obtain from Bush, according to an Israeli source familiar with Sharon's thinking. Without U.S. support on these issues, he said, "it will be hard to secure Netanyahu's support and therefore the complete backing of the Likud."
Israeli officials said Sharon wants U.S. approval of the path of the security fence being constructed between Israel and the West Bank as it was originally approved by Sharon's cabinet. That would place the huge settlement blocks of Ariel, Maleh Adumim and Gush Etzion on the Israeli side of the fence.
The Israeli leader is also seeking a U.S. statement that the final border will not be the 1949 armistice line between Israel and the West Bank. Such an endorsement would indicate the White House approves of the eventual Israeli annexation of some Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Slevin reported from Washington. Correspondent John Ward Anderson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
--------
Bush Welcomes Gaza Plan, Without Backing It Fully
April 13, 2004
By JOEL BRINKLEY and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13prex.html
CRAWFORD, Tex., April 12 - President Bush said Monday that he would welcome a withdrawal of Israeli forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip but warned that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for such a pullback should not replace the White House's stalled proposal for negotiations that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state.
After meeting with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt at his ranch here, Mr. Bush stopped short of endorsing Mr. Sharon's plan for a unilateral pullback from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.
Mr. Bush, who will meet with Mr. Sharon at the White House on Wednesday to discuss the Israeli plan, signaled that the United States would be happy to see a withdrawal from Gaza, but he was silent on Israel's hopes of securing approval from the administration for its plan to hold on to contested portions of the West Bank.
Administration officials and their Israeli counterparts said negotiations were continuing over whether the United States would explicitly support Israel's desire to retain a number of settlement clusters in the West Bank and near Jerusalem in any final negotiated agreement on its borders.
Israel is seeking Washington's blessing for its demand that it not be forced in any final agreement to withdraw to the borders that existed before the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. It is also asking the United States to recognize its position on a number of other issues, including its right to send military forces back into Gaza if necessary to deal with terrorists there.
One American official said the White House had been close to an agreement with Israel several weeks ago about the status of the settlements.
But the official said the administration had backed away, in large part because of concern that the deal would not commit Israel to any specific steps to keep alive Mr. Bush's broader plan, known as the road map, for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians about the creation of a Palestinian state.
Answering questions from reporters alongside Mr. Bush, Mr. Mubarak said he had emphasized to Mr. Bush "the centrality" of the Arab-Israeli conflict to hopes of promoting political and economic reform throughout the Middle East.
Regarding Mr. Sharon's plan, Mr. Mubarak signaled that Egypt was willing to help somewhat by using its influence to rein in some Palestinian factions in Gaza and to help maintain security there after Israeli forces left.
"I think we could help a lot in Gaza by training their police, by giving them advisers, by sending in some groups to'' help the Palestinians make plans, Mr. Mubarak said.
"We have contacts with them,'' he said. "We have contacts with the different factions that could create problems every now and then."
Mr. Bush's meeting with Mr. Mubarak began a week in which the White House will confront head on the ways in which its role in the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict intersect with its efforts to stabilize Iraq and promote democracy throughout the region.
Mr. Bush acknowledged as much after his meeting with Mr. Mubarak, saying, "We also believe that the future of the Middle East and the future of Iraq are closely linked."
After meeting with Mr. Sharon on Wednesday, Mr. Bush will have a visit from Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain on Friday. Mr. Blair, reflecting a view widely held in Europe, has been pushing the United States since before the war with Iraq to do more to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians and to address the perception that the United States is too closely allied with Israel.
British and other European officials have said the United States will find it more difficult to build support for the operation in Iraq from around the world - and especially among moderate Arab states - as long as it is perceived by many people in the Middle East and Europe to be taking Israel's side in the conflict with the Palestinians.
American and Israeli officials scoffed at the assertion of some Iraqis that Israel's killing last month of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of the Palestinian group Hamas, had helped incite the current anti-American uprising in Iraq. But they said that every new flare-up in the battle between Israel and the Palestinians made rallying international support for the job of creating a stable democracy in Iraq more difficult - never mind the broader goal of rooting out the forces that breed anti-Western terrorism in Arab and Muslim nations.
"From the Arab world's perspective, it is all connected," said one administration official, who agreed to speak freely about delicate diplomatic and political issues only on condition of anonymity.
By sandwiching Mr. Sharon's meeting with Mr. Bush between the visits by Mr. Mubarak and Mr. Blair, the official said, the administration was "trying to give the impression that the United States is not going it alone, that it is trying to coordinate with the Arab world and European partners."
Speaking to reporters in Crawford, Tex., with Mr. Mubarak at his side, Mr. Bush he and the Egyptian leader "both are in agreement that if Israel makes the decision to withdraw, it doesn't replace the road map, it is part of the road map, so that we can continue progress toward the two-state solution."
If Mr. Sharon goes ahead with a withdrawal from Gaza, Mr. Bush said, "it would be a positive development."
--------
Sharon Promises to Retain 5 Big Settlements in West Bank
April 13, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/international/middleeast/13mide.html
JERUSALEM, April 12 - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel on Monday listed five major settlement blocs in the West Bank that he promised to retain as part of his unilateral separation plan from the Palestinians and visited the largest of them.
Mr. Sharon spoke in Maale Adumim, a settlement just east of Jerusalem and home to more than 30,000 Israelis, shortly before his departure for the United States, where he will meet with President Bush at the White House on Wednesday.
Mr. Sharon has been a leading supporter of Israeli settlements for decades. But his proposal for Israel to withdraw unilaterally from its settlements in the Gaza Strip has drawn protests from settlers and raised questions about the possible similar moves in the West Bank, where a vast majority of settlers live.
He said his plan was the best way to keep large settlements under Israeli control and to head off other Middle East proposals that could demand greater Israeli concessions.
"Only an Israeli initiative will assure the future of the large settlement blocs and the security zones," he told residents of Maale Adumim.
The other settlements that he said would remain under Israeli control are Givat Zeev, just north of Jerusalem; Ariel, deep inside the West Bank and farther north of Jerusalem; Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem; and Kiryat Arba, which borders the West Bank city of Hebron. Several tiny Jewish settlements in Hebron would also be retained, Mr. Sharon said.
The list was the most specific provided by the prime minister, and providing it was seen as an effort to reassure settlers before his trip to Washington. The five settlement blocs he listed would include a large proportion of the roughly 230,000 settlers who live in the West Bank.
Israel has more than 120 settlements in the West Bank, and so far, only a handful have been cited as possible candidates for dismantling.
On his Washington visit, Mr. Sharon will seek American backing for his proposal to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from Gaza, where 7,500 settlers live. In addition, Mr. Sharon wants the Americans to endorse the idea that Israel will be able to retain parts of the West Bank in any future political settlement.
The Bush administration remains formally committed to the Middle East peace plan, known as the road map, which stalled shortly after it was introduced last summer.
But the Bush administration has been warming to Mr. Sharon's proposals, and the Wednesday meeting is expected to signal the level of American support.
The Palestinian leadership wants all of the West Bank and Gaza for a future state and has demanded the removal of all Jewish settlements in those territories, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, said American pledges to Israel would not be accepted by the Palestinians, who insist that all disputed issues be negotiated by the two sides.
"We warn, starting from now, that there should not be promises made at the expense of our issues," Mr. Qurei said after a cabinet meeting on Monday in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "We will not accept anything that will prejudice the outcome of permanent status negotiations."
He has offered conditional support of the Gaza withdrawal plan, saying the Palestinians could support it if it is part of a comprehensive peace effort. But the Palestinians say they believe that Mr. Sharon is proposing the limited move in order to avoid negotiations on the range of issues that divide the sides.
Mr. Sharon says he sees no prospect of successful negotiations with the Palestinians and has repeatedly accused the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, of encouraging violence against Israel.
In violence on Monday, Israeli soldiers shot and killed two Palestinian gunmen as they tried to infiltrate a combined Jewish settlement and army base at Netzarim in the central Gaza Strip, the Israeli military said.
The Israeli troops spotted the gunmen just outside the settlement after 5 a.m., the military said. The Palestinians opened fire, and Israelis shot back, killing one gunman. A second attackers was shot dead trying to reach the settlement from another side, the military added.
Up to eight Palestinians may have been involved in the attack, the military said in a statement. But the Palestinian factions that claimed responsibility said that only three gunmen had been involved, and that the third had escaped.
Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed collective responsibility for the assault. Until recently, they usually acted independently, but in recent months they have cooperated in many attacks.
-------- pacific
Australian defence adviser 'sacked for refusing to sex up WMD reports'
David Fickling in Sydney
Tuesday April 13, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1190665,00.html
A former senior Australian defence adviser claimed yesterday she was edged out of her job because she refused to lie about the case for war in Iraq.
Jane Errey, a former adviser to Australia's chief defence scientist working in the department's science and technology organisation, said she had been sacked after taking leave because of her refusal to mislead the public. "I felt like I was part of the propaganda machine," she said.
The case puts a further question mark over the Australian government's handling of intelligence in the run-up to the war, when it is already under attack from the opposition for its foreign policy record. Ms Errey's job gave her access to information from the government's two top-level intelligence agencies. She said she went on leave as the war started after being instructed to compile media advice on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction for defence minister Robert Hill. "I believe I was being asked, as was the rest of the department, to perpetuate the lie that the government was putting forward in so far as the weapons of mass destruction existed and that they were a grave threat to the rest of the world," she told ABC radio.
A spokesman for the department said Ms Errey, a former candidate for the Democrat party, was sacked last week because she had failed to turn up for work since March 2003, despite completing all agreed terms of leave.
"The result of management differences on her future was such that she is leaving, but it's got nothing to do with work that she may have done in the past," Mr Hill told the Nine Network.
John Howard's government has been under attack in recent weeks from the opposition leader, Mark Latham, who claims a briefing with the defence department's chief intelligence official in January left him convinced Australia "went to war on a lie".
"I walked away from that briefing knowing and understanding the government's policy on Iraq was a fiasco, an absolute fiasco," he told parliament. His claims were rejected by the government, which said notes of the briefing mentioned no significant discussion of Iraq.
Ms Errey's criticisms are not the first time a senior intelligence official has criticised the handling of the Iraq war. Andrew Wilkie, a senior analyst at Canberra's intelligence clearing-house, the Office for National Assessments (ONA), resigned a week before war in protest at the government's misrepresentation of evidence about Iraq's WMD and claims of links between the Iraq and al-Qaida.
A parliamentary committee report in February concluded the government's case for war in Iraq had not been supported by the evidence available to it, and suggested the ONA had caved in to political pressure in ramping up its assessments of Iraq's weapons capability late in 2002.
A further internal report into the ONA was commissioned as a result of heavy criticism from the committee.
----
No need for Australians to get out: Howard
April 13, 2004
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/13/1081621927205.html
There was no need to order Australian civilians working in Iraq to leave the war-torn country despite a spate of hostage taking, Prime Minister John Howard said today.
Eleven Russians working for an energy company have been kidnapped in Baghdad today, amid growing fears for at least 16 foreigners who have been abducted or are reported missing in Iraq.
Three Japanese hostages are still being held by their captors, while seven kidnapped Chinese have been freed.
But Mr Howard said while the hostage situation was worrying, it did not mean Australians should pull out of Iraq.
"Everybody is at some degree of risk and we are in contact through our office as best we can with the 60-80 Australian contractors who are doing different things there," Mr Howard told the Nine Network.
"I am not asking them to get out.
"I act on advice in matters relating to this.
"Obviously the whole situation is more difficult, but it is certainly not a situation where there can be any weakening of the resolve of countries involved.
"We must see it through. Any suggestion that we get out now in the face of this now will just award victory to the terrorists, award victory to hostage takers, award victory to people I know the great majority of Australians don't want to appear victorious."
Mr Howard said Australia had an obligation to see its work in Iraq through and that Australian troops would remain "until the purpose for which they were sent no longer requires their presence".
"I get regular reports about the welfare of our own people and I will continue to do that," he said.
"They are my prime concern.
"But in concert with our friends and allies we have to remember that if there's a weakening now it will be an enormous victory for terrorists and hostage takers and an enormous blow to the authority of not only those countries but also the values that we hold very dear as a nation."
Mr Howard described the hostage situation in Iraq as difficult, but said there was still much progress being made by the coalition there and he was confident things would improve.
"The most worrying development is the indiscriminate taking of hostages and this is occurring irrespective of the citizenry of the people being taken hostage," he said.
"It is difficult but that is all the more reason why we don't turn our backs on it.
"This is the worst time in the world to turn your back on a difficult situation.
"It couldn't send a worst signal not only to those who would destroy and terrorise but also to our friends.
"At a time like this you need to display strong friendship, not fly by night friendship."
-------- pakistan / india
US renews request for Pakistani troops
By Qudssia Akhlaque
April 13, 2004
Dawn (Pakistan)
http://www.dawn.com/2004/04/13/top9.htm
ISLAMABAD, April 12: The US government has made a renewed request to Pakistan for sending its troops to Iraq as part of a multinational UN force that may be dispatched there after the transfer of power in June, Dawn learnt on Monday.
US ambassador in Islamabad Ms Nancy Powell conveyed Washington's new request for Pakistani troops during a recent meeting at the Foreign Office here, diplomatic sources said.
"US has approached Pakistan again for contribution of troops for a potential UN force after the transfer of power," these sources told Dawn, adding that Pakistan had made no commitments yet.
Pakistan's stated position on this question has been that it would only consider sending troops to Iraq under the UN umbrella. Last year when the US government asked for a contribution of 10,000 troops Pakistan reiterated this position.
The US-led occupation forces are scheduled to formally hand over power to an interim Iraqi government on June 30. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has made it clear that the Bush administration would stick to its June 30 target for handover of power to an Iraqi transitional government.
However, the Democrats have warned the Bush administration about the timing, saying the plans to transfer power in June may unleash a civil war. The US is expected to push for a UN resolution calling for a multinational force in Iraq ahead of the June 30 deadline.
The US State Department confirmed last week that Washington was in regular contact with some dozen new countries, including India and Bangladesh, for contribution of troops to Iraq.
Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are among the five leading contributors to the UN peacekeeping operations around the world with Pakistan currently topping the list.
Meanwhile, for the US the job in Iraq is getting tougher with the fresh spate of attacks across the country. A slow and steady depletion through casualties of its own troops is making Washington feel the need for foreign troops even more.
The Bush administration has come under scathing attack from the international community and human rights organizations for its unilateral adventurism in Iraq that has led to a humanitarian crisis and worsened the security situation there.
----
PAKISTAN
Opposition leader sent to prison
April 13, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
ISLAMABAD - A top Pakistani opposition leader critical of President Pervez Musharraf for his 1999 coup was convicted yesterday of trying to incite an army rebellion and sentenced to 23 years in prison, the public prosecutor said.
Javed Hashmi, leader of the 15-party Alliance for Restoration of Democracy coalition, was convicted of sedition, mutiny and forgery by the District and Session Court in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital, Islamabad, said Munir Ahmed Bhatti.
The trial was held in prison for security reasons, and journalists were not allowed to cover the proceedings.
-------- philippines
Philippines considers withdrawing troops from Iraq
4/13/2004
(AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04-13-philippines-troops_x.htm
MANILA - President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said Wednesday that mounting violence in Iraq had prompted her government to study whether to withdraw its 100 troops from the Mideast nation.
"The decision on whether or not to withdraw our peacekeeping forces will depend on the security situation in Iraq in the days to come," said Arroyo, a staunch support of the war on terror.
The Philippine contingent of military and civilian personnel in central Iraq has suffered no fatalities. Military spokesman Col. Daniel Lucero said the deployment has been open-ended with no date set for withdrawal.
"We stand shoulder to shoulder with the international community in this commitment and that is why we are not making any rush decisions," Arroyo said in a statement.
She said while the government remains committed to helping rebuild Iraq, "the safety of our peacekeeping forces in Iraq is still our utmost concern."
Filipino peacekeepers are serving under Polish command.
Last month, 28 policemen and soldiers returned home to a hero's welcome after seven months of peacekeeping work. A similar number of policemen and soldiers are preparing to leave for Iraq later this week, officials said.
Left-wing groups have demanded the withdrawal of the Filipino contingent from Iraq, saying the Philippines could be targeted by Washington's enemies. Some of Arroyo's rival candidates in the May 10 presidential election have also opposed her deployment of the peacekeeping mission, citing America's failure to find weapons of mass destruction.
-------- prisoners of war
Charges Dropped In Iraqi's Death
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7064-2004Apr13.html
HOUSTON, April 12 -- Charges against a Marine reservist accused in the death of an Iraqi prisoner last year were thrown out, a defense attorney said Monday.
Lance Cpl. Christian Hernandez and his commanding officer, Maj. Mark A. Paulus, were accused of negligent homicide in the death of Nagem Sadoon Hatab, 52, a Baath Party member who prosecutors said was punched, kicked and dragged by the throat while in the officers' custody in Iraq.
Maj. Gen. William Bowdon, the commanding general at Camp Pendleton, Calif., made the final decision to drop charges. Administrative punishment, such as loss of pay, was advised for Paulus.
-------- space
Lift the Veil on Space Weaponization
Op-ed by CDI Research Analyst Victoria Samson
April 13, 2004
Center for Defense Information
http://cdi.org/program/document.cfm?DocumentID=2175&from_page=../index.cfm
Reprinted with permission from the April 12, 2004 edition of Space News.
The United States for decades has had a policy to eschew putting weapons in space. Even during the height of the Cold War, when tensions were greatest about U.S.-Soviet rivalry and who would get the upper-hand, U.S. decision-makers held back on taking the step toward fielding weapons in space because the consequences would be so deleterious.
Since then, the United States has become even more dependent upon its space assets. Top military space brass have seized upon this to justify what they call "space control," claiming that all they want to do it protect our space assets from attack. If only it were that innocent.
Instead, the 2005 defense budget has, tucked away in various unlit corners, weapon systems which go beyond the mere protection of space assets. It is becoming clear that the United States intends to fund research and development for programs which, in the words of Air Force Space Command Master Plan for 2006, could eventually allow it to fight war "in, from, and through space."
In the Air Force's 2005 budget request, there is funding for lasers with anti-satellite capabilities ($23.8 million). There is funding for space control technologies, both offensive and defensive ($15.8 million). There is funding for a hypersonic delivery vehicle that would have a global reach ($25 million). But, as is often the case these days, it is the Pentagon's golden boy, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), which is pushing the envelope the most.
MDA's 2005 budget documents include a request for funding for a space-based kinetic energy intercept test bed that would become part of its Block 2012 capabilities. This is the third year that the [U.S. President George W.] Bush administration has included in its defense request funding for such a program. In 2003, MDA asked for $30 million; in 2004, $14 million; now in the 2005 budget request, $10.5 million. Apparently, the thinking at MDA is that there is some sort of magic number which, if they go low enough, will allow them to escape outside scrutiny, at which point their request will be granted and they can then use it as a toe-hold to establish a larger program.
MDA's 2005 budget documents also include $68.5 million for the Near-Field Infrared Experiment, or NFIRE. This has been protrayed as merely a risk-reduction effort for its work on its missile defense interceptors. NFIRE is supposed to lob a small object at a target missile in-flight in order to capture data that could be incorporated into later test modeling and simulation. However, NFIRE - which includes a "kill vehicle" - could be tweaked to provide an anti-satellite capability because any small vehicle with that kind of maneuvering skill could be used to crash into orbiting satellites. ABCNews.com recently quoted a senior government official as saying that with NFIRE, "We are crossing the Rubicon into space weaponization."
In a military budget that has ballooned past $400 billion, the response to the above line item requests might be: "so what?" These numbers are mere drops in the bucket and make up a very small percentage of overall military spending. The problem here is not the numbers themselves - it is waht they represent. These funds indicate that - public comments to the contrary - the United States is gearing up for putting weapons in space. If the U.S. military isn't forced to justify this titanic shift in its planning, then a few years down the road we will wake up to discover that the decision to weaponize space has been made. Americans' opportunity to insist on accountability will have come and gone.
Which is not to say that our space assets shouldn't be protected. It would be foolish to claim otherwise. But there are ways of defending our national security without putting weapons in space. The leaning toward doing so taps into an American attitude of almost religious fervor for technology. It seems that for most of the U.S., the high-tech, quick-fix, military-hardware solution is the better one. Why waste time on diplomacy when you could build missile defenses? Why harden satellites and bulwark ground control stations when you could create anti-satellite weapons? We put a man on the moon - we can accomplish what we put our minds to. At the risk of sounding like a heretic, there are times where throwing more money and technology at a problem won't solve it.
If, however, it turns out this is one of these times where a high-tech, weaponized solution is the better one, then the Pentagon needs to make that case in a clear and open manner. This isn't just for oversight purposes. The aftermath of the war in Iraq has shown what can happen if we go down a controversial road without fully examining reasons for doing so, deciding ahead of time if or when we will turn back.
Willfully plunging along blindly without taking into consideration the possible consequences of weaponizing space, deflecting criticism of military space spending with the generic "space control" excuse, and putting off an evaluation of U.S. space policies to some later date means this decision, and therefore future policy, will be made on an ad hoc basis. U.S. naional security is too important to be slapped together in a piece-meal fashion.
Victoria Samson is a research analyst at the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
-------- spies
China To Launch Space Solar Telescope
Apr 13, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/telescopes-04e.html
Beijing - Chinese scientists plan to launch China¡¯s first space solar telescope into orbit during the period from 2006 to 2010.
The news was released by Ai Guoxiang, head of the National Astronomical Observatory and a member of Chinese Academy of Science.
The telescope would be the Chinese version of the Hubble telescope.
The telescope is to be fixed on a space satellite and launched into orbit 750 kilometers above Earth.
Orbiting high above the atmosphere, the telescope would be free from atmosphere disturbances and operate around the clock sending data back to Earth, expert said.
The telescope will be one of the most advanced devices of its kind. Its high performance and resolution will be at advanced world levels.
----
Bush Weighs Overhaul of Intelligence Services
Aides Say He Will Await 9/11 Panel's Suggestions
By Dana Milbank and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6558-2004Apr12.html
CRAWFORD, Tex., April 12 -- President Bush said Monday that he is contemplating a major overhaul of the nation's intelligence services and scheduled a prime-time news conference for Tuesday to build domestic support for his strategy in Iraq.
Bush, speaking to reporters at his ranch with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at his side, said that "now may be a time to revamp and reform our intelligence services." Aides said he is likely to wait for recommendations, scheduled for this summer, from the independent commission investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"We look forward to hearing recommendations," Bush said. "We're thinking about that, ourselves, and we look forward to working with the commission."
Bush has come under renewed scrutiny because of a newly declassified document showing he was warned a month before the attacks about al Qaeda's presence in the United States and its interest in hijackings and a suspected desire to hit Washington and downtown Manhattan.
Bush's suggestion that he might support a restructuring of intelligence agencies could shift some attention about the administration's response to pre-attack warnings from the White House to the CIA and FBI. Such a review also could affect the campaign debate over Bush's decision to invade Iraq using information that turned out to be erroneous.
Iraq and the administration's response to threats before the attacks promise to be prominent topics as Bush meets reporters in the East Room at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. By requesting such a visible forum to explain his actions, Bush departed markedly from the past week, in which he has been mostly out of view on his Texas ranch as he endured a stream of criticism about the adequacy of his plans for suppressing an uprising against the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
The news conference will give Bush a forum to address concerns that have caused a dip in his election-year popularity. A Newsweek poll, released Saturday, found that six in 10 Americans thought the administration underestimated the threat of terrorism before the attacks. At the same time, most Americans do not share Bush's optimistic view about the Iraq insurgency, which he reiterated Monday. In a Time magazine poll released Sunday, 45 percent viewed the recent violence as a major uprising that will have a long-term effect in Iraq, and 17 percent saw it as the start of a new war. A third believed the attacks are short-term, isolated incidents.
Bush took the unusual step of announcing the news conference himself. "I'm interested in answering more questions for you all," he said during his brief question session with Mubarak. "Pick out a red or blue tie."
Bush noted that national security adviser Condoleezza Rice had signaled the administration's plans for reviewing the intelligence services when she testified before the independent commission Thursday. Rice said that Bush "recognizes that our work is far from complete."
"More structural reform will likely be necessary," Rice testified. "Our intelligence gathering and analysis have improved dramatically in the last two years, but they must be stronger still."
Jim Wilkinson, a National Security Council aide, said Bush "is interested in new reforms" to make the government more effective.
Bush's remarks at his ranch included a vote of confidence in the FBI's handling of the spike in threat information picked up in the summer of 2001. "The FBI was running down any lead," he said. "I'm confident that had they found something that was a direct threat to America, they would have brought it to my attention."
In late 2002, Rice and other senior administration officials briefly considered, then dropped, the idea of forming a separate domestic intelligence service similar to Britain's MI5. The administration has since opposed creation of such an agency, contending that the new Department of Homeland Security and a joint CIA-FBI threat center are able to adequately assess and combat terrorist threats.
Members of the independent commission, including Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, have said they are likely to recommend a significant restructuring of the FBI, possibly including creation of an MI5-type agency. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who runs the House committee that holds the purse strings of the Justice Department and the FBI, is pushing for a compromise to create a "service within a service" that would cordon off intelligence and counterterrorism within the FBI and give those programs a separate budget.
Bush's appearance with Mubarak allowed reporters to return to the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing on al Qaeda declassified Saturday night by the White House. Reporters tried to find out whether Bush sought any further action after receiving the warning, something the White House has declined to divulge. The president sidestepped the question. "There was nothing in there that said, you know, there's an imminent attack," Bush said. He said the fact that the memo included information that the FBI was pursuing 70 field investigations related to al Qaeda "comforted me."
On Iraq, Mubarak said he had warned Bush about ramifications of the week's violence, which some Arab leaders believe could further destabilize the Middle East. "I conveyed to the president our serious concerns about the current state of affairs, particularly in the security and humanitarian areas," he said. "I further stressed the importance of restoring Iraq's sovereignty as soon as possible within a context that preserves its territorial integrity and unites all Iraqis toward a common future."
Mubarak's worry echoes concern expressed last week by the foreign minister of Qatar, who warned that "we fear that we are facing a civil war in Iraq" akin to Lebanon. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said that "the lid on the pressure cooker has come off" in Iraq.
But Bush, wearing an open collar and black cowboy boots, gave an upbeat assessment of the Iraq uprising. "The situation in Iraq has improved," he said. He repeated his view that the rebellion is by "a few people," which he defined as "enough to cause harm, but a few relative to the rest of the peoples."
In response to an Egyptian reporter's question about whether the heavy military response could turn more Iraqis against the United States, Bush said: "We're a compassionate country that cares about the loss of innocent life, and it grieves us when we see innocent life lost. However, we will defend ourselves."
Allen reported from Washington. Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
-------
Bush Sees Need for Reorganizing U.S. Intelligence
April 13, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13BUSH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 12 - President Bush said Monday that "now may be a time to revamp and reform our intelligence services," opening the way for consideration of changes at the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and other agencies.
The Bush administration has not acted on a number of far-reaching proposals to reorganize the government's intelligence organizations, including recommendations made last year by a Congressional inquiry into the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other independent intelligence panels.
Expanding the powers of the director of central intelligence and establishing a domestic intelligence agency like the MI5 in Britain are among ideas now circulating in Washington as the independent commission looking into the attacks holds hearings and prepares to make its own recommendations.
Mr. Bush, speaking to reporters at his ranch in Texas at an appearance with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, did not mention any specific changes but said he looked forward to receiving the commission's proposals. "We're thinking about that ourselves and we look forward to working with the commission," he said.
The president's comments are an indication that he is turning attention to intelligence matters at a moment when the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are under intense criticism by the commission.
Draft reports by the commission say Attorney General John Ashcroft did not deeply involve himself in counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11, despite intelligence warnings that summer that Al Qaeda could be planning a large attack in the United States, panel officials and others who have seen the reports have said.
Aides to Mr. Ashcroft, who is scheduled to testify before the commission on Tuesday, say he will tell the panel that he was briefed throughout the year on terrorist threats and was never informed, by either the F.B.I. or the C.I.A., that he needed to take special action, because intelligence reports suggested that any attack would be overseas.
The president said that the commission hearings - at which witnesses have at times depicted Mr. Bush and his advisers as out of touch in the summer of 2001 - were a "good thing, particularly when they address weaknesses in the system."
On Tuesday, the commission will resume its hearings with two days of testimony by former and current F.B.I. and C.I.A. officials that will focus on the performance of the country's law enforcement and intelligence agencies before the attacks.
The commission's investigation has already turned up evidence that the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. failed to grasp the significance of warnings of possible attacks and failed to share information that might have led the agencies to detect the Sept. 11 plot in the summer of 2001.
In response, the commission seems certain to embrace proposals for change that have been discussed in national security circles since the attacks. One of the most far-reaching would strip the F.B.I. of its authority over counterespionage and counterterrorism, replacing it with a domestic intelligence agency modeled on MI5, which functions as an internal security service but has no law enforcement powers.
A senior Bush administration official said Monday that the president had discussed the subject with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, but had not settled on a new approach. "They talk about it; there is a focus on the issue," the official said. "But I don't think it is there yet."
Other administration officials said Ms. Rice had privately expressed considerable skepticism that an MI5 structure would work in the United States and was seeking alternative steps.
These officials said the president and Ms. Rice were seeking substantive change that went beyond shuffling the organization charts of the country's intelligence agencies. At the same time, they want to find a proposal that would have strong support in Congress.
Some national security experts have suggested less-extreme steps to reorganize the F.B.I. One proposal would create a semiautonomous intelligence and counterterrorism agency within the bureau, with a separately hired and trained group of agents who would have access to the bureau's criminal files.
Other proposals would create a new domestic security agency within the Department of Homeland Security and would establish a similar agency under the director of central intelligence but subject to legal control by the attorney general.
A commission headed by Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser, recommended that the director of central intelligence be given budget authority over all of the agencies involved in intelligence, a move the Pentagon has long resisted.
Robert M. Bryant, a former F.B.I. deputy director, was part of a group of senior intelligence, law enforcement and Pentagon officials who last year proposed the creation of a separate counterintelligence and counterterrorism service within the bureau.
Mr. Bryant said it would be a mistake to take away the bureau's authority over domestic intelligence. "It would take you 10 years to create a new intelligence agency," he said. "You don't want to change teams in the middle of the Super Bowl. You're better off to work with what you've got, to fund it and make it better."
After the 2001 attacks, Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, put in motion a series of steps that he said were intended to shift the bureau's focus to the prevention of terrorism and away from its traditional orientation on arrests and convictions.
Mr. Mueller centralized the bureau's counterterror operations and strengthened its ability to gather information about terrorist threats by adding analysts, language specialists and agents trained in counterterrorism. He set up an office of intelligence within the bureau and expanded the intelligence capabilities of its 56 field offices. He also began an upgrade of the F.B.I.'s antiquated computer systems.
F.B.I. officials said the bureau was now functioning as a domestic intelligence agency with agents who, unlike intelligence officers, were experienced at working inside the United States within the framework of constitutional liberties and privacy rights. Bureau officials have said that criminal investigations are a highly effective means of gathering intelligence about other plots.
F.B.I. officials said they hoped that the changes ordered by Mr. Mueller as well as the Bush administration's creation of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, where F.B.I. agents worked alongside analysts from the C.I.A. and the Pentagon, would restore confidence in the government's ability to assemble and analyze information about terrorism threats. They also said they hoped the measures would keep the bureau intact.
But neither the Bush administration nor the F.B.I. has been able to stop the flow of proposals by lawmakers and blue-ribbon panels. Last year, the joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence committees concluded that the idea of a domestic security agency should be re-examined and called for a cabinet-level director of intelligence.
In her testimony last week before the commission, Ms. Rice acknowledged that before the 2001 attacks the government was not equipped to detect and analyze terrorist threats properly.
"The real lesson of Sept. 11 is that the country was not properly structured to deal with the threat that had been gathering for a long period of time," she said. "I think we're better structured today than we ever have been. We've made a lot of progress. But we want to hear what further progress we can make."
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Annan Rules Out Large U.N. Team for Iraq
April 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-UN-Iraq.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Tuesday virtually ruled out sending a large U.N. team to Iraq ``for the foreseeable future'' because of the recent upsurge in violence and kidnappings.
He also called for the immediate release of civilians held hostage and greater efforts to reduce the violence so the transfer of power from the U.S.-led coalition to Iraqis can go ahead in a positive political atmosphere.
Speaking to reporters on his arrival at U.N. headquarters, Annan said he did not believe the June 30 date for the transfer could be changed, a view backed by the United States.
``It has been embraced by the Iraqis themselves who are anxious to see the end of occupation as soon as possible, and I believe that it is going to be difficult to pull it back,'' Annan said.
``That having been said, I hope we are going to be able to bring down the violence and control the situation between now and then because the kind of violence we are seeing on the ground is not conducive for that sort of political process and transition.''
Annan said the upsurge in fighting had made things ``rather difficult'' for the small U.N. team trying to help the Iraqis decide on an interim government that will take power. Team leader Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, has been holding meetings in Iraq for the last nine days with political, religious, academic, professional and civil society leaders.
Annan said he was waiting for Brahimi to return to New York to discuss what kind of transitional government would be most acceptable. He said he also needed to check with U.N. experts now in Iraq on whether the legal framework was in place to hold elections by January.
With the upsurge in fighting and growing opposition to the U.S.-led coalition, some political figures in the United States and other countries have called for a much greater U.N. presence on the ground in Iraq.
Annan, who pulled all U.N. international staff out of Iraq in October following a spate of attacks, including two bombings of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad, said Tuesday he was in no hurry for them to return because of the increased violence.
The first bombing, on Aug. 19, killed 22 people, including top U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello, and sparked intense criticism of U.N. security failures.
``For the foreseeable future, insecurity is going to be a major constraint for us and so I cannot say right now that I'm going to be sending a large U.N. team,'' Annan said. ``Obviously, we are monitoring the situation very closely and we are doing the best we can.''
To deal with the current crisis, the United States announced plans to increase the U.S. troop strength in Iraq by 10,000, reportedly to about 120,000. Annan was asked whether he believed other countries would be prepared to contribute troops.
``Of course, the deterioration we've seen on the ground doesn't really encourage other governments to go in,'' he said. ``But I think governments are also aware that it is in our collective interest to do everything we can to bring the violence down in Iraq, to stabilize Iraq, and ensure that we have a peaceful Iraq in the midst of that region.
``That collective responsibility, I think, is going to play a major role as we move forward.''
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U.N. Chief Juggling Far - Flung Commitments
April 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Annan-in-the-Hot-Seat.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- From Iraq and East Timor to Cyprus, Haiti and more than a half-dozen African countries, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has his hands full these days.
Just over a year after President Bush warned that the United Nations would ``fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant, debating society'' if it didn't help him confront Saddam Hussein, the world body is involved in major missions across the globe -- with Washington's blessing.
At the same time, the U.N.'s credibility has been called into question over allegations of corruption in the U.N. oil-for-food program which helped feed Iraqis for seven years. Annan also faces criticism over the Aug. 19 bombing of U.N. headquarters in Baghdad that killed 22 people. U.N. staff are still angry that senior officials have not been held accountable for the security lapses.
It's a lot to juggle, even for a career diplomat who's been in the global hot seat for more than seven years, dealing with America the lone superpower and with the often conflicting demands of 190 other U.N. member states.
The Bush administration remains ideologically hostile to the United Nations, but now that it has its hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan, it doesn't mind a larger U.N. role in operations in crises it regards as being of ``second-order priority,'' said Lee Feinstein, a Clinton administration official now on the Council on Foreign Relations.
``At the moment, that is everything but Iraq and Afghanistan,'' he said.
That still leaves plenty on Annan's plate, including Iraq and Afghanistan, even if no U.N. forces are there.
His top aide, Lakhdar Brahimi, is in Baghdad despite the upsurge in fighting, trying to help political, religious and civic groups agree on an interim government to take power from the U.S.-led coalition on June 30. He did much the same in Afghanistan.
Another U.N. envoy, Alvaro de Soto, is in Cyprus pushing voters to approve a U.N. plan to reunify the divided island in plebiscites on April 24.
In Congo, U.N. forces are struggling to protect a fragile peace, with recently toughened orders to shoot back when attacked. And Annan is looking for troops to ensure security and disarm fighters in Ivory Coast, Burundi and Haiti. Sudan, Africa's largest country, is expected to get a U.N. force after a peace agreement takes effect to end two decades of civil war.
U.N. peacekeeping reached a high of nearly 80,000 troops during the Bosnian war in 1993-94, then gradually fell below 15,000. But new conflicts, especially in Africa, increased the number to about 50,000 today -- and with new missions expected in Burundi, Sudan and Haiti, it's likely to rise to near 70,000.
Meanwhile, at his Manhattan headquarters overlooking the East River, Annan is expected to name an independent panel this week to investigate the oil-for-food program. He is also overseeing a sweeping overhaul of U.N. security.
The 66-year-old Ghanaian is the first career U.N. diplomat to hold the top job, but like his predecessors, he can only influence. Any action can be vetoed by one of the five permanent members of the decision-making Security Council -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China.
Nor can he draft a peacekeeping army; he can only negotiate, because it's up to member states to decide whether to contribute troops.
``Member states at the U.N. pursue their own interests, with little regard for the institutional interests of the United Nations, as France and the United States did last year on Iraq, and Kofi Annan is then left to pick up the pieces,'' said David Malone of the International Peace Academy.
Countries turn to the United Nations only with problems they can't solve themselves, offer halfhearted support, he said, ``and this helps explain why the U.N. experiences as many diplomatic and peacekeeping failures as it does.''
Nonetheless, Terry Taylor, who heads the Washington office of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, says the United Nations has a crucial role to play as mediator, and he believes a bigger U.N. role in Iraq would draw more countries into the reconstruction effort.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, President Reagan's U.N. ambassador, says Annan's criticism of the United States for launching a war on Iraq without U.N. authorization has led to ``some real estrangement between the U.N. secretariat and the United States.''
Nonetheless, she said, the United States can't do without it.
``I believe that the United Nations is surely one of the most exasperating institutions ever conceived and developed,'' she said. ``But I also think it's indispensable.''
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Nader tells youths to brace for draft
April 13, 2004
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040412-114403-9384r.htm
Presidential candidate Ralph Nader this weekend warned his constituents that a military draft is pending, and asked younger voters to prepare.
The independent candidate noted that the federal government is filling seats on local draft boards as preparation for a reinstatement of the draft, which was eliminated in 1973.
"The Pentagon is quietly recruiting new members to fill local draft boards, as the machinery for drafting a new generation of young Americans is being quietly put into place," Mr. Nader said in a press release sent out to constituents and posted on his Web site during the weekend.
"Young Americans need to know that a train is coming, and it could run over their generation in the same way that the Vietnam War devastated the lives of those who came of age in the sixties."
Kevin Zeese, a spokesman for the Nader campaign, said draft boards are being rebuilt "right now" and that the demands on the U.S. military are growing.
"I don't think that Ralph feels that the draft is imminent, but we are looking at the shortage of troops in Iraq and the calls from [Senator John] Kerry for 40,000 more troops. What Ralph is saying is that if students don't start to organize right now, it will be too late," Mr. Zeese said.
Rumors of a draft reinstatement emerged in the fall when the Selective Service announced that it was recruiting members for the nation's 2,000 local draft and appeals boards. A Selective Service spokesman said yesterday that the announcement was made to help fill spots on the boards, as many members' 20-year terms ended.
"It was misread then," said the spokesman, Pat Schuback. "Their terms are expiring right now, and that's what is going on."
"We're prepared to do our jobs here if needed," he said. "And it is important for us to be ready. The administration has been very clear about wanting to keep this volunteer, and we understand that. We let the politicians do the politics."
He noted that Selective Service, a branch of the Justice Department, has seen personnel numbers drop recently. The agency went from 166 full-time staffers in fiscal 2003 to 156 this year.
Another third-party candidate, Libertarian Aaron Russo, has joined Mr. Nader in warning Americans that a draft is a real possibility, despite denials from all quarters of the Bush administration.
Mr. Russo, one of three front-runners vying for the Libertarian nomination, said at a party forum in Virginia last month that "the draft is a bipartisan effort between Republicans and Democrats that will start after the 2004 presidential election, for obvious reasons," a prediction he repeats on his campaign Web site.
It would take legislative action by Congress to reinstate the draft, which was ended in 1973, about two months before the last U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam. Registration with the Selective Service was halted from 1975 to 1980, but was reinstated under President Carter after Russia invaded Afghanistan.
A bill was drafted by South Carolina Sen. Ernest F. Hollings in January 2003, putting in place the parameters for a draft. Its House companion legislation was introduced simultaneously by New York Rep. Charles B. Rangel. Both lawmakers are Democrats.
The bills have gone nowhere, though, and nothing is expected to come from them.
Young men today are still required to register with the Selective Service within 30 days of their 18th birthdays. There are 15 million men ages 18 to 25 registered with the agency.
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78 Troops Killed This Month in Iraq
April 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq-Casualties.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- At least 78 U.S. troops were killed and 561 were wounded in Iraq in the first 12 days of April, a senior Army general said Tuesday.
It is quickly becoming the deadliest month since the Iraq war began in March 2003. Since then, at least 674 U.S. troops have died, according to the Pentagon's figures.
Lt. Gen. Richard Cody, the deputy chief of staff for operations, said 41 of the 78 killed during April were Army soldiers; most of the rest were Marines. Of the 561 wounded troops, 297 were soldiers, Cody said.
The general also predicted that the flare-up in violence this month would soon ease, although he stressed that Iraq would continue to suffer periodic surges of violence for a long time.
``I think it is a last-ditch effort'' by the insurgents to derail U.S. plans to restore a form of sovereignty to Iraq by June 30 and to nourish the creation of a democratic government, Cody said.
``The enemy has decided they want to attack and die, and that's what's happening to them: They attack and they die,'' he added.
Cody said the pace of Army operations around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan as well as long-standing commitments in South Korea and elsewhere, is the fastest in his 32 years in the Army.
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More Limits Sought for Private Security Teams
By Mary Pat Flaherty and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6612-2004Apr12.html
With hostilities flaring in Iraq, the U.S.-led authority wants to tighten controls over the surging number of private armed security teams being hired to protect U.S. government agencies and contractors involved in rebuilding.
With an estimated 20,000 private security workers on the ground, the Coalition Provisional Authority is increasingly concerned about the quality of the security teams, the weapons they use and the rules that will govern them after June 30, when the authority transfers political power to an interim Iraqi government.
"It's an important issue that needs to be addressed, and that's what we're doing," said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
A draft CPA document on vetting and registering the security firms said many "are already operating in Iraq without the benefit of appropriate registration and authorization of the Ministry of Interior." "Appropriate mechanisms must be put into place" to register them, the draft said.
The draft plan would require security companies to list all employees working in Iraq, and to provide copies of the contracts under which they are working and the serial numbers of their weapons. If the company sought to increase its weapons cache after its initial registration, it would have to coordinate with the Ministry of Interior, the draft states. Weapons could be carried by employees only while "on duty" and would be stored in an armory or "secure facility" otherwise.
"Due consideration will be given to the need to vet companies, their directors and employees in order to ensure that criminal elements are identified and to avoid situations such as militias trying to legitimize themselves," according to the draft.
Many operational details are spelled out only in the contracts between security firms and the companies and government agencies that hire them, according to several private security firms.
The CPA now restricts the weapons private security teams may use to small arms with ammunition as large as 7.62mm and to some other defensive weapons. A Dec. 31 coalition rule spells out circumstances under which security firms can use deadly force, including self-defense, the defense of people or property specified in their contracts, and the defense of civilians.
Coalition contractors and their employees currently are subject to the legal jurisdiction of their parent countries because there is no Iraqi legal system, a CPA order states.
But with the June 30 handover, that condition "becomes a major issue," and "there is not a lot of clarity yet" on what laws will govern security firms, said Mike Baker, chief executive of D.C.-based Diligence LLC, which provides security for both government and private operations in Iraq.
Attempts to coordinate operations between private security firms and the military -- and operations among the companies themselves -- have been underway for months. But that pace has quickened.
The CPA's program management office is reviewing bids on a master contract to coordinate security among the 10 largest prime contractors and their subcontractors working on $18.4 billion in U.S.-backed reconstruction as they deploy throughout Iraq. In the meantime, the program management office is "trying to get at least some level of intelligence sanitized from the military that could be given to contractors," said Capt. Bruce A. Cole, spokesman for the program management office in Baghdad.
As violence increased in the last two weeks, private security firms learned that they could not rely on U.S. or coalition forces to rescue them under attack. The companies have begun to band together to share information and to coordinate their own rescue teams for life-threatening situations.
Col. Jill Morgenthaler, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military in Baghdad, said "the military cannot guarantee the safety of civilians" in Iraq. "When we can, we respond."
Military operations against insurgents take precedence, although commanders can decide to rescue civilians depending "on mission, situation, conditions," Morgenthaler said by e-mail.
One CPA official said the unexpected central role played by contractors in Iraq has forced the U.S. government to pay more attention to what everyone had expected to be a low-key, auxiliary protection force. "We're growing the capacity of the industry in a way we did not anticipate," said the official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. "The industry realizes they have to impose some kind of standards" on their employees.
The brutal killings of four American security contractors in Fallujah two weeks ago prompted 13 Democratic senators led by Jack Reed (R.I.), to ask the Defense Department to provide a tally of how many private armed non-Iraqi security personnel are in Iraq. In their letter, the senators said that "security in a hostile fire area is a classic military mission. Delegating this mission to private contractors raises serious questions."
"Policy is way overdue in this area," Reed said. Not only do troops need better guidance on dealing with private guards, he said, but also the CPA should want assurances that insurgents cannot infiltrate the companies as "may already be occurring in the new Iraqi police and civil defense forces."
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Transcript of President Bush's press conference
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
(AP)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2004/04/13/bush13.DTL
Text of President Bush's press conference at the White House on Tuesday, April 13, 2004, as transcribed by eMediaMillWorks Inc.:
BUSH: Good evening.
Before I take your questions, let me speak with the American people about the situation in Iraq.
This has been tough weeks in that country. Coalition forces have encountered serious violence in some areas of Iraq. Our military commanders report that this violence is being instigated by three groups. Some remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime, along with Islamic militants, have attacked coalition forces in the city of Fallujah. Terrorists from other countries have infiltrated Iraq to incite and organize attacks.
In the south of Iraq, coalition forces face riots and attacks that are being incited by a radical cleric named al-Sadr. He has assembled some of his supporters into an illegal militia and publicly supported the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah.
Al-Sadr's methods of violence and intimidation are widely repudiated by other Iraqi Shia. He's been indicted by Iraqi authorities for the murder of a prominent Shia cleric.
Although these instigations of violence come from different factions, they share common goals. They want to run us out of Iraq and destroy the democratic hopes of the Iraqi people.
The violence we have seen is a power grab by these extreme and ruthless elements. It's not a civil war. It's not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable. Most Iraqis by far reject violence and oppose dictatorship.
In forums where Iraqis have met to discuss their political future, and in all the proceedings of the Iraqi Governing Council, Iraqis have expressed clear commitments. They want strong protections for individual rights. They want their independence. And they want their freedom.
America's commitment to freedom in Iraq is consistent with our ideals and required by our interests. Iraq will either be a peaceful, democratic country or it will again be a source of violence, a haven for terror and a threat to America and to the world.
By helping secure a free Iraq, Americans serving in that country are protecting their fellow citizens. Our nation is grateful to them all and to their families that face hardship and long separation.
This weekend, at a Fort Hood hospital, I presented a Purple Heart to some of our wounded, had the honor of thanking them on behalf of all Americans.
Other men and women have paid an even greater cost. Our nation honors the memory of those who have been killed, and we pray that their families will find God's comfort in the midst of their grief.
As I have said to those who have lost loved ones, we will finish the work of the fallen.
America's armed forces are performing brilliantly, with all the skill and honor we expect of them. We're constantly reviewing their needs. Troop strength now and in the future is determined by the situation on the ground. If additional forces are needed, I will send them. If additional resources are needed, we will provide them.
The people of our country are united behind our men and women in uniform, and this government will do all that is necessary to assure the success of their historic mission.
One central commitment of that mission is the transfer of the sovereignty back to the Iraqi people. We have set a deadline of June 30th. It is important that we meet that deadline.
As a proud, independent people, Iraqis do not support an indefinite occupation, and neither does America. We're not an imperial power, as nations such as Japan and Germany can attest. We're a liberating power, as nations in Europe and Asia can attest as well.
America's objective in Iraq is limited, and it is firm. We seek an independent, free and secure Iraq.
Were the coalition to step back from the June 30th pledge, many Iraqis would question our intentions and feel their hopes betrayed. And those in Iraq who trade in hatred and conspiracy theories would find a larger audience and gain a stronger hand.
We will not step back from our pledge. On June 30th, Iraqi sovereignty will be placed in Iraqi hands.
Sovereignty involves more than a date and a ceremony. It requires Iraqis to assume responsibility for their own future.
Iraqi authorities are now confronting the security challenge of the last several weeks.
In Fallujah, coalition forces have suspended offensive operations, allowing members of the Iraqi Governing Council and local leaders to work on the restoration of central authority in that city. These leaders are communicating with the insurgents to ensure an orderly turnover of that city to Iraqi forces, so that the resumption of military action does not become necessary.
They are also insisting that those who killed and mutilated four American contract workers be handed over for trial and punishment.
In addition, members of the Governing Council are seeking to resolve the situation in the south. Al-Sadr must answer the charges against him and disband his illegal militia.
Our coalition is standing with responsible Iraqi leaders as they establish growing authority in their country. The transition to sovereignty requires that we demonstrate confidence in Iraqis. And we have that confidence. Many Iraqi leaders are showing great personal courage, and their example will bring out the same quality in others.
The transition to sovereignty also requires an atmosphere of security, and our coalition is working to provide that security.
We will continue taking the greatest care to prevent harm to innocent civilians, yet we will not permit the spread of chaos and violence. I have directed our military commanders to make every preparation to use decisive force if necessary to maintain order and to protect our troops.
The nation of Iraq is moving toward self-rule, and Iraqis and Americans will see evidence in the months to come. On June 30th, when the flag of a free Iraq is raised, Iraqi officials will assume full responsibility for the ministries of government. On that day, the transitional administrative law, including a bill of rights that is unprecedented in the Arab world, will take full effect.
The United States and all the nations of our coalition will establish normal diplomatic relations with the Iraqi government. An American embassy will open, and an American ambassador will be posted.
According to the schedule already approved by the Governing Council, Iraq will hold elections for a national assembly no later than next January. That assembly will draft a new permanent constitution, which will be presented to the Iraqi people in a national referendum held in October of next year.
Iraqis will then elect a permanent government by December 15, 2005 - an event that will mark the completion of Iraq's transition from dictatorship to freedom.
Other nations and international institutions are stepping up to their responsibilities in building a free and secure Iraq. We're working closely with the United Nations envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, and with Iraqis to determine the exact form of the government that will receive sovereignty on June 30th.
The United Nations Election Assistance Team, headed by Karina Perelli, is in Iraq developing plans for next January's election. NATO is providing support for the Polish-led, multinational division in Iraq. And 17 of NATO's 26 members are contributing forces to maintain security.
Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of State Rumsfeld and a number of NATO defense and foreign ministers are exploring a more formal role for NATO, such as turning the Polish-led division into a NATO operation and giving NATO specific responsibilities for border control.
Iraqis' neighbors also have responsibilities to make their region more stable. So I'm sending Deputy Secretary of State Armitage to the Middle East to discuss with these nations our common interest in a free and independent Iraq, and how they can help achieve this goal.
As we've made clear all along, our commitment to the success and security of Iraq will not end on June 30th. On July 1st and beyond, our reconstruction assistance will continue and our military commitment will continue.
Having helped Iraqis establish a new government, coalition military forces will help Iraqis to protect their government from external aggression and internal subversion.
The success of free government in Iraq is vital for many reasons:
A free Iraq is vital because 25 million Iraqis have as much right to live in freedom as we do.
A free Iraq will stand as an example to reformers across the Middle East.
A free Iraq will show that America is on the side of Muslims who wish to live in peace, as we've already shown in Kuwait and Kosovo, Bosnia and Afghanistan.
A free Iraq will confirm to a watching world that America's word, once given, can be relied upon, even in the toughest times.
Above all, the defeat of violence and terror in Iraq is vital to the defeat of violence and terror elsewhere and vital, therefore, to the safety of the American people.
Now is the time, and Iraq is the place, in which the enemies of the civilized world are testing the will of the civilized world. We must not waver.
The violence we are seeing in Iraq is familiar. The terrorists who take hostages or plants a roadside bomb near Baghdad is serving the same ideology of murder that kills innocent people on trains in Madrid, and murders children on buses in Jerusalem, and blows up a nightclub in Bali and cuts the throat of a young reporter for being a Jew.
We've seen the same ideology of murder in the killing of 241 Marines in Beirut, the first attack on the World Trade Center, in the destruction of two embassies in Africa, in the attack on the USS Cole, and in the merciless horror inflicted upon thousands of innocent men and women and children on September the 11th, 2001.
None of these acts is the work of a religion. All are the work of a fanatical political ideology. The servants of this ideology seek tyranny in the Middle East and beyond. They seek to oppress and persecute women.
They seek the death of Jews and Christians and every Muslim who desires peace over theocratic terror. They seek to intimidate America into panic and retreat, and to set free nations against each other. And they seek weapons of mass destruction, to blackmail and murder on a massive scale.
Over the last several decades, we've seen that any concession or retreat on our part will only embolden this enemy and invite more bloodshed. And the enemy has seen, over the last 31 months, that we will no longer live in denial or seek to appease them.
For the first time, the civilized world has provided a concerted response to the ideology of terror - a series of powerful, effective blows.
The terrorists have lost the shelter of the Taliban and the training camps in Afghanistan. They have lost safe havens in Pakistan. They lost an ally in Baghdad. And Libya has turned its back on terror.
They've lost many leaders in an unrelenting international manhunt. And perhaps more frightening to these men and their movement, the terrorists are seeing the advance of freedom and reform in the greater Middle East.
A desperate enemy is also a dangerous enemy. And our work may become more difficult before it is finished. No one can predict all the hazards that lie ahead or the cost that they will bring.
Yet, in this conflict, there is no safe alternative to resolute action. The consequences of failure in Iraq would be unthinkable.
Every friend of America in Iraq would be betrayed to prison and murder, as a new tyranny arose. Every enemy of America in the world would celebrate, proclaiming our weakness and decadence, and using that victory to recruit a new generation of killers.
We will succeed in Iraq. We're carrying out a decision that has already been made and will not change. Iraq will be a free, independent country, and America and the Middle East will be safer because of it.
Our coalition has the means and the will to prevail. We serve the cause of liberty, and that is always and everywhere a cause worth serving.
BUSH: Now I'll be glad to take your questions. I will start with you.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half of Americans now support it.
What does that say to you? And how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?
BUSH: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy.
Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And yet we must stay the course because the end result is in our nation's interest.
A secure and free Iraq is an historic opportunity to change the world and make America more secure. A free Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have incredible change.
It's hard. Freedom is not easy to achieve. I mean, we had a little trouble in our own country achieving freedom.
And we've been there a year. I know that seems like a long time. It seems like a long time to the loved ones whose troops have been overseas. But when you think about where the country has come from, it's a relatively short period of time.
And we're making progress. There's no question it's been a tough, tough series of weeks for the American people. It's been really tough for the families. I understand that. It's been tough on this administration. But we're doing the right thing.
And as to whether or not I made decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way. I fully understand the consequences of what we're doing. We're changing the world, and the world will be better off and America will be more secure as a result of the actions we're taking.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. What's your best prediction on how long U.S. troops will have to be in Iraq? And it sounds like you will have to add some troops. Is that a fair assessment?
BUSH: Well, first of all, that's up to General Abizaid, and he's clearly indicating that he may want more troops. It's coming up through the chain of command. And if that's what he wants, that's what he gets.
Generally, we've had about a 115,000 troops in Iraq. There's 135,000 now as a result of the changeover from one division to the next.
If he wants to keep troops there to help, I'm more than willing to say, yes, General Abizaid.
I talk to General Abizaid quite frequently. I'm constantly asking him does he have what he needs, whether it be in troop strength or in equipment. He and General Sanchez talk all the time. And if he makes the recommendation, he'll get it.
In terms of how long we'll be there, as long as necessary, and not one day more. The Iraqi people need us there to help with security. They need us there to fight off these, you know, violent few, who are doing everything they can to resist the advance of freedom. And I mentioned who they are.
And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, our commanders on the ground have got the authorities necessary to deal with violence, and will -- will in firm fashion.
And that's what by far the vast majority of the Iraqis want. They want security so they can advance toward a free society.
Once we transfer sovereignty, we'll enter into a security agreement with the government to which we pass sovereignty, the entity to which we pass sovereignty. And we'll need to be there for a while.
We'll also need to continue training the Iraqi troops. I was disappointed in the performance of some of the troops. Some of the units performed brilliantly. Some of them didn't. And we need to find out why. If they're lacking in equipment, we'll get them equipment. If there needs to be more intense training, we'll get more intense training.
But eventually, Iraq's security is going to be handled by the Iraqi people themselves.
Oh, let's see here. Terry.
QUESTION: Mr. President, before the war, you and members of your administration made several claims about Iraq: that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers; that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for most of the reconstruction; and that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction but, as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, we know where they are.
How do you explain to Americans how you got that so wrong? And how do you answer your opponents who say that you took this nation to war on the basis of what have turned out to be a series of false premises?
BUSH: Well, let me step back and review my thinking prior to going into Iraq.
First, the lesson of September the 11th is that when this nation sees a threat, a gathering threat, we got to deal with it. We can no longer hope that oceans protect us from harm. Every threat we must take seriously.
Saddam Hussein was a threat. He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders. He was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States.
That's the assessment that I made from the intelligence, the assessment that Congress made from the intelligence. That's the exact same assessment that the United Nations Security Council made with the intelligence.
I went to the U.N., as you might recall, and said, either you take care of him, or we will. Any time an American president says, if you don't, we will, we better be prepared to. And I was prepared to.
BUSH: I thought it was important for the United Nations Security Council that when it says something, it means something for the sake of security in the world.
See, the war on terror had changed the calculations. We needed to work with people. People needed to come together to work. And therefore, empty words would embolden the actions of those who are willing to kill indiscriminately.
The United Nations passed a Security Council resolution unanimously that said, disarm or face serious consequences. And he refused to disarm.
I thought it was very interesting that Charlie Duelfer, who just came back -- he's the head of the Iraqi Survey Group -- reported some interesting findings from his recent tour there. And one of the things was, he was amazed at how deceptive the Iraqis had been toward UNMOVIC and UNSCOM, deceptive in hiding things.
We knew they were hiding things. A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught, and that was part of our calculation. Charlie confirmed that.
He also confirmed that Saddam had the ability to produce biological and chemical weapons. In other words, he was a danger. And he had long-range missiles that were undeclared to the United Nations. He was a danger. And so we dealt with him.
And what else was part the question? Oh, oil revenues.
Well, the oil revenues, they're bigger than we thought they would be at this point in time. I mean, one year after the liberation of Iraq, the revenues of the oil stream is pretty darn significant.
One of the things I was concerned about, prior to going into Iraq, was that the oil fields would be destroyed, but they weren't. They're now up and running. And that money is -- it will benefit the Iraqi people. It's their oil, and they'll use it to reconstruct the country.
Finally, the attitude of the Iraqis toward the American people -- it's an interesting question. They're really pleased we got rid of Saddam Hussein, and you can understand why. This guy was a torturer, a killer, a maimer. There's mass graves.
I mean, he was a horrible individual that really shocked the country in many ways, shocked it into a kind of a fear of making decisions toward liberty. That's what we've seen recently. Some citizens are fearful of stepping up.
And they were happy -- they're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either. They do want us there to help with security.
And that's why this transfer of sovereignty is an important signal to send, and it's why it's also important for them to hear we will stand with them until they become a free country.
Elisabeth? Excuse me.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE), Mr. President. To move to the 9-11 commission, you yourself have acknowledged that Osama bin Laden was not a central focus of the administration in the months before September 11th. I was not on point, you told the journalist Bob Woodward. I didn't feel that sense of urgency.
Two and a half years later, do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?
BUSH: Let me put that quote to Woodward in context, because he had asked me if I was -- something about killing bin Laden. That's what the question was.
And I said, you know, compared to how I felt at the time, after the attack, I didn't have that -- and I also went on to say, my blood wasn't boiling, I think is what the quote said.
I didn't see -- I mean, I didn't have that great sense of outrage that I felt on September the 11th. I was -- on that day, I was angry and sad. Angry that al-Qaida -- I thought at the time al-Qaida, found out shortly thereafter it was al-Qaida -- had unleashed this attack. Sad for those who lost their life.
Your question, do I feel -- yes?
QUESTION: Personal responsibility for September 11th?
BUSH: I feel incredibly grieved when I meet with family members, and I do quite frequently. I grieve for, you know, the incredible loss of life that they feel, the emptiness they feel.
There are some things I wish we'd have done, when I look back. I mean, hindsight's easy. It's easy for a president to stand up and say, now that I know what happened, it would have been nice if there were certain things in place.
For example, a Homeland Security Department. And why -- I say that because that provides the ability for our agencies to coordinate better and to work together better than it was before.
I think the hearings will show that the Patriot Act is an important change in the law that will allow the FBI and the CIA to better share information together.
We were kind of stovepiped, I guess is a way to describe it. There was, you know, kind of departments that at times didn't communicate -- because of law, in the FBI's case.
And the other thing I look back on and realize is that we weren't on a war footing. The country was not on a war footing, and yet the enemy was at war with us. And it didn't take me long to put us on a war footing.
And we've been on a war ever since.
The lessons of 9-11 -- one lesson was we must deal with gathering threats, and that's part of the reason I dealt with Iraq the way I did.
The other lesson is, is that this country must go on the offense and stay on the offense. In order to secure the country, we must do everything in our power to find these killers and bring them to justice before they hurt us again. I'm afraid they want to hurt us again. They're still there.
They can be right one time; we got to be right 100 percent of the time in order to protect the country. It's a mighty task.
But our government has changed since the 9-11 attacks. We're better equipped to respond. We're better at sharing intelligence. But we've still got a lot of work to do.
Dave?
QUESTION: Mr. President, I'd like to follow up on a couple of these questions that have been asked.
One of the biggest criticisms of you is that whether it's WMD in Iraq, postwar planning in Iraq, or even the question of whether this administration did enough to ward off 9-11, you never admit a mistake. Is that a fair criticism, and do you believe that there were any errors in judgment that you made related to any of those topics I brought up?
BUSH: Well, I think, as I mentioned, you know, the country wasn't on war footing, and yet we're at war.
And that's just a reality, Dave. I mean, that was the situation that existed prior to 9-11, because the truth of the matter is most in the country never felt that we'd be vulnerable to an attack such as the one that Osama bin Laden unleashed on us.
We knew he had designs on us. We knew he hated us. But there was nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.
The people know where I stand, I mean, in terms of Iraq. I was very clear about what I believed. And, of course, I want to know why we haven't found a weapon yet. But I still know Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the world is better off without Saddam Hussein.
I don't think anybody can -- maybe people can argue that. I know the Iraqi people don't believe that, that they're better off with Saddam Hussein -- would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power.
I also know that there's an historic opportunity here to change the world. And it's very important for the loved ones of our troops to understand that the mission is an important, vital mission for the security of America and for the ability to change the world for the better.
Let's see. Ed?
QUESTION: Mr. President, good evening. I'd like to ask you about the August 6th PDB.
BUSH: Sure.
QUESTION: You've mentioned it at Fort Hood on Sunday. You pointed out that it did not warn of a hijacking of airplanes to crash into buildings, but that it warned of hijacking to obviously take hostages and to secure the release of extremists that are being held by the U.S.
Did that trigger some specific actions on your part in the administration, since it dealt with potentially hundreds of lives and a blackmail attempt on the United States government?
BUSH: And I asked for the briefing. And the reason I did is because there had been a lot of threat intelligence from overseas. And so, I -- part of it had to do with the Genoa G-8 conference that I was going to attend. And I asked at that point in time, let's make sure we are paying attention here at home, as well. And that's what triggered the report.
The report itself, I've characterized it as mainly history. And I think when you look at it, you'll see that it was talking about a '97 and '98 and '99.
It was also an indication, as you mentioned, that bin Laden might want to hijack an airplane but, as you said, not to fly into a building, but perhaps to release a person in jail. In other words, he would serve it as a blackmail.
And of course that concerns me. All those reports concern me. As a matter of fact, I was dealing with terrorism a lot as the president when George Tenet came in to brief me. I mean, that's where I got my information.
I changed the way that the relationship between the president and the CIA director. And I wanted Tenet in the Oval Office all the time. And we had briefings about terrorist threats. This was a summary.
Now, in the -- what's called the PDB, there was a warning about bin Laden's desires on America. But, frankly, I didn't think there was anything new. I mean, major newspapers had talked about bin Laden's desires on hurting America.
What was interesting in there was that there was a report that the FBI was conducting field investigations. And that was good news, that they were doing their job.
The way my administration worked, Ed, was that I met with Tenet all the time. I obviously met with my principals a lot. We talked about threats that had emerged. We have a counterterrorism group meeting on a regular basis to analyze the threats that came in. Had there been a threat that required action by anybody in the government, I would have dealt with it.
BUSH: In other words, had they come up and said, this is where we see something happening, you can rest assured that the people of this government would have responded and responded in a forceful way.
I mean, one of the things about Elizabeth's question was, I stepped back and I've asked myself a lot, is there anything we could have done to stop the attacks? Of course I've asked that question, as have many people in my government. Nobody wants this to happen to America.
And the answer is that had I had any inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings, we would have moved heaven and earth to save the country, just like we're working hard to prevent a further attack.
Let's see -- Jim?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You mentioned the PDB and the assurance you got that the FBI was working on terrorism investigations here. The number they had used was 70.
But we learned today in the September 11th hearings that the acting director of the FBI at the time now says the FBI tells him that number was wrong, that he doesn't even know how it got into your PDB. And two of the commissioners strongly suggested the number was exaggerated.
Have you learned anything else about that report since that time? And do you now believe you were falsely comforted by the FBI?
BUSH: No, I heard about that today, obviously, and my response to that was, I expect to get valid information. As the ultimate decision maker for this country, I expect information that comes to my desk to be real and valid.
And I presume the 9-11 commission will find out -- will follow up on his suggestions and his recollection, and garner the truth. That is an important part of the 9-11 commission's job, is to analyze what went on and what could have perhaps been done differently so that we can better secure America for the future.
But of course I expect to get valid information. I can't make good decisions unless I get valid information.
QUESTION: Has the FBI come back to you, sir?
BUSH: No, I haven't talked to anybody today yet. I will, though. We'll find out.
John?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
Two weeks ago, a former counterterrorism official at the NSC, Richard Clarke, offered an unequivocal apology to the American people for failing them prior to 9-11. Do you believe the American people deserve a similar apology from you, and would you prepared to give them one?
BUSH: Look, I can understand why people in my administration are anguished over the fact that people lost their life. I feel the same way. I mean, I'm sick when I think about the death that took place on that day. And as I mentioned, I've met with a lot of family members, and I do the best to console them about the loss of their loved one.
As I mentioned, I oftentimes think about what I could have done differently. I can assure the American people that had we had any inkling that this was going to happen, we would have done everything in our power to stop the attack.
Here's what I feel about that: The person responsible for the attacks was Osama bin Laden. That's who's responsible for killing Americans. And that's why we will stay on the offense until we bring people to justice.
John?
QUESTION: Mr. President, thank you. You mentioned that 17 of the 26 NATO members providing some help on the ground in Iraq. But if you look at the numbers -- 135,000 U.S. troops, 10,000 or 12,000 British troops. Then the next largest, perhaps even the second- largest contingent of guns on the ground are private contractors, literally hired guns.
Your critics, including your Democratic opponents, say that's proof to them your coalition is window dressing. How would you answer those critics?
And can you assure the American people that, post-sovereignty, when the handover takes place, that there will be more burden-sharing by allies in terms of security forces?
BUSH: Yes, John, my response is I don't think people ought to demean the contributions of our friends into Iraq. People are sacrificing their lives in Iraq from different countries. We ought to honor that, and we ought to welcome that.
I'm proud of the coalition that is there. These are people that have got leaders that have made the decision to put people in harm's way for the good of the world. And we appreciate that sacrifice in America, and we appreciate that commitment.
I think that one of the things you're seeing is more involvement by the United Nations, in terms of the political process. That's helpful. I'd like to get another U.N. Security Council resolution out that will help other nations to decide to participate.
One of the things I've found, John, is that, in calling around, particularly during this week -- I spoke to Prime Minister Berlusconi and President Kwasniewski -- there is a resolve by these leaders that is a heartening resolve. Tony Blair is the same way.
He understands, like I understand, that we cannot yield at this point in time, that we must remain steadfast and strong, that it's the intentions of the enemy to shake our will. That's what they want to do. They want us to leave. And we're not going to leave. We're going to do the job.
And a free Iraq is going to be a major blow for terrorism. It'll change the world. A free Iraq in the midst of the Middle East is vital to future peace and security.
Maybe I can best put it this way, why I feel so strongly about this historic moment. I was having dinner with Prime Minister Koizumi, and we were talking about North Korea, about how we can work together to deal with the threat. The North Korea leader is a threat.
And here are two friends, now, discussing what strategy to employ to prevent him from further developing and deploying a nuclear weapon. And it dawned on me that, had we blown the peace in World War II, that perhaps this conversation would not have been taking place.
It also dawned on me then that when we get it right in Iraq, at some point in time an American president will be sitting down with a duly elected Iraqi leader, talking about how to bring security to what has been a troubled part of the world.
The legacy that our troops are going to leave behind is a legacy of lasting importance, as far as I'm concerned. It's a legacy that really is based upon our deep belief that people want to be free and that free societies are peaceful societies.
Some of the debate really centers around the fact that people don't believe Iraq can be free; that if you're Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can't be self-governing or free. I'd strongly disagree with that.
I reject that. Because I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul, and if given a chance, the Iraqi people will be not only self-governing, but a stable and free society.
Let's see here, hold on. Michael?
QUESTION: Mr. President, why are you and the vice president insisting on appearing together before the 9-11 commission? And, Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?
BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.
And, secondly, because the 9-11 commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request.
BUSH: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9-11 commission is looking forward to asking us. And I'm looking forward to answering them.
Let's see. Hold on for a minute. Let's see. Oh, Jim.
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
BUSH: I've got some must-calls. I'm sorry.
QUESTION: You have been accused of letting the 9-11 threat mature too far, but not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough. First, could you respond to that general criticism?
And, secondly, in the wake of these two conflicts, what is the appropriate threat level to justify action in perhaps other situations going forward?
BUSH: Yes. I guess there have been some that said, well, we should've taken pre-emptive action in Afghanistan, and then turned around and said we shouldn't have taken pre-emptive action in Iraq.
And my answer to that question is, is that, again I repeat what I said earlier, prior to 9-11, the country really wasn't on a war footing. And the, frankly, mood of the world would have been astounded had the United States acted unilaterally in trying to deal with al-Qaida in that part of the world.
It would have been awfully hard to do, as well, by the way. We would have had - we hadn't got our relationship right with Pakistan yet. The Caucus area would have been very difficult from which to base. It just seemed an impractical strategy at the time. And, frankly, I didn't contemplate it.
I did contemplate a larger strategy as to how to deal with al-Qaida. You know, we were shooting cruise missiles and with little effect. And I said, if we're going to go after al-Qaida, let's have a comprehensive strategy as to how to deal with it, with that entity.
After 9-11, the world changed for me, and I think changed for the country. It changed for me because, like many, we assumed oceans would protect us from harm. And that's not the case. It's not the reality of the 21st century. Oceans don't protect us. They don't protect us from killers.
We're an open country. And we're a country that values our openness. And we're a hard country to defend. And therefore, when we see threats overseas, we've got to take them - look at them in a new light. And I've given my explanation of Iraq.
Your further question was, you know, how do you justify any other pre-emptive action?
The American people need to know my last choice is the use of military power. It is something that - it's a decision that is a tough decision to make for any president, because I fully understand the consequences of the decision.
And therefore, we'll use all other means necessary when we see a threat to deal with a threat that may materialize. But we'll never take the military off the table.
We've had some success, Bill, as a result of the decision I took. Take Libya, for example. Libya was a nation that had - we viewed as the terrorist - a nation that sponsored terror, a nation that was dangerous because of weapons. And Colonel Gadhafi made the decision, and rightly so, to disclose and disarm for the good of the world.
By the way, they found, I think, 50 tons of mustard gas, I believe it was, in a turkey farm, only because he was willing to disclose where the mustard gas was. But that made the world safer.
The A.Q. Khan bust, the network that we uncovered thanks to the hard work of our intelligence-gathering agencies and the cooperation of the British, was another victory in the war against terror. This was a shadowy network of folks that were willing to sell state secrets to the highest bidder. And that, therefore, made the world more unstable and more dangerous.
You've often heard me talk about my worry of weapons of mass destruction ending up in the hands of the wrong people. Well, you can understand why I feel that way, having seen the works of A.Q. Khan. It's a dangerous - it was a dangerous network that we unraveled, and the world is better for it.
And so what I'm telling you is, is that sometimes we use military as a last resort, but other times we use our influence, diplomatic pressure and our alliances to unravel, uncover, expose people who want to do harm against the civilized world.
We're at war. Iraq is a part of the war on terror. It is not the war on terror; it is a theater in the war on terror. And it's essential we win this battle in the war on terror. By winning this battle, it will make other victories more certain in the war against the terrorists.
Let's see here. Judy?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
Sir, you've made it very clear tonight that you're committed to continuing the mission in Iraq, yet, as Terry pointed out, increasing numbers of Americans have qualms about it. And this is an election year.
BUSH: Yes.
QUESTION: Will it have been worth it, even if you lose your job because of it?
BUSH: I don't plan on losing my job. I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror. And I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes.
Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching.
One of my hardest parts of my job is to console the family members, who've lost their life. It's a chance to hug and weep and to console, and to remind the loved ones that the sacrifice of their loved one was done in the name of security for America and freedom for the world.
One of the things that's very important, Judy, at least as far as I'm concerned, is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it's not going to happen under my watch.
The American people may decide to change. That's democracy. I don't think so. I don't think so. And I look forward to making my case. I'm looking forward to the campaign.
Now's the time to talk about winning this war on terror. Now's the time to make sure that the American people understand the stakes and the historic significance of what we're doing.
And no matter where they may stand on this war, the thing I appreciate most about our country is the strong support given to the men and women in uniform. And it's vital support. It's important for those soldiers to know America stands with them, and we weep when they die, and we're proud of the victories they achieve.
One of the things I'm also proud of is what I hear from our soldiers. As I mentioned, I pinned the Purple Heart on some of the troops at the hospital there at Fort Hood, Texas. A guy looks at me and says, I can't wait to get back to my unit and fulfill the mission, Mr. President.
The spirit is incredible. Our soldiers who have volunteered to go there understand the stakes, and I'm incredibly proud of them.
John?
QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President.
In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.
You've looked back before 9-11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9-11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have learned from it?
BUSH: I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it.
John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could've done it better this way or that way. You know, I just - I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with answer, but it hadn't yet.
I would've gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would've called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein.
See, I'm of the belief that we'll find out the truth on the weapons. That's why we sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth as to exactly where they are. They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.
One of the things that Charlie Duelfer talked about was that he was surprised of the level of intimidation he found amongst people who should know about weapons and their fear of talking about them because they don't want to be killed.
You know, there's this kind of - there's a terror still in the soul of some of the people in Iraq. They're worried about getting killed, and therefore they're not going to talk. But it'll all settle out, John. We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time.
However, the fact that he had the capacity to make them bothers me today just like it would have bothered me then. He's a dangerous man. He's a man who actually not only had weapons of mass destruction - the reason I can say that with certainty is because he used them.
And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to have inflicted harm, or paid people to inflict harm, or trained people to inflict harm, on America, because he hated us.
I hope - I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't - you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.
Yes, Ann?
QUESTION: Looking forward about keeping United States safe, a group representing about several thousand FBI agents today wrote to your administration begging you not to split up the law enforcement and the counterterrorism ...
BUSH: Yes.
QUESTION: ... because they say it ties their hands, it gives them blinders, that they're partners.
Yet you mentioned yesterday that you think perhaps the time has come for some real intelligence reforms. That can't happen without real leadership from the White House.
Will you? And how will you?
BUSH: Well, you're talking about one aspect of possible - I think you're referring to what they call the MI5. And I heard a summary of that from Director Mueller, who feels strongly that we - and he'll testify to that effect, I guess tomorrow. I shouldn't be prejudging his testimony.
But my point was that I'm open for suggestions. I look forward to seeing what the 9-11 commission comes up with. I look forward to seeing what the Silberman-Robb commission comes up with. I'm confident Congress will have some suggestions.
What I'm saying is, let the discussions begin, and I won't prejudge the conclusion. As the president, I will encourage and foster these kinds of discussions, because one of the jobs of the president is to leave behind a legacy that will enable other presidents to better deal with the threat that we face.
We are in a long war. The war on terror is not going to end immediately. This is a war against people who have no guilt in killing innocent people. That's what they're willing to do. They kill on a moment's notice, because they're trying to shake our will, they're trying to create fear, they're trying to affect people's behaviors. And we're simply not going to let them do that.
And my fear, of course, is that this will go on for a while, and therefore, it's incumbent upon us to learn from lessons or mistakes, and leave behind a better foundation for presidents to deal with the threats we face. This is the war that other presidents will be facing as we head into the 21st century.
One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we're asking questions, is, can you ever win the war on terror? Of course you can.
That's why it's important for us to spread freedom throughout the Middle East. Free societies are hopeful societies. A hopeful society is one more likely to be able to deal with the frustrations of those who are willing to commit suicide in order to represent a false ideology.
A free society is a society in which somebody is more likely to be able to make a living. A free society is a society in which someone is more likely to be able to raise their child in a comfortable environment and see to it that that child gets an education.
That's why I'm pressing the Greater Middle East Reform Initiative to work to spread freedom, and we will continue on that. So long as I'm the president, I will press for freedom. I believe so strongly in the power of freedom.
You know why I do? Because I've seen freedom work right here in our own country. I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country's gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world.
And as the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to help feed the hungry. I think the American people find it interesting that we're providing food for the North Korea people who starve.
We have an obligation to lead the fight on AIDS, on Africa. And we have an obligation to work toward a more free world. That's our obligation. That is what we have been called to do, as far as I'm concerned.
And my job as the president is to lead this nation and to making the world a better place. And that's exactly what we're doing.
Weeks such as we've had in Iraq make some doubt whether or not we're making progress. I understand that. It was a tough, tough period. But we are making progress.
And my message today to those in Iraq is, we'll stay the course, we'll complete the job.
My message to our troops is, we'll stay the course and complete the job, and you'll have what you need.
And my message to the loved ones who are worried about their sons, daughters, husbands, wives is, your loved one is performing a noble service for the cause of freedom and peace.
BUSH: Let's see. Last question here. Hold on for a second. Those who yell will not be ask - I tell you a guy who I have never heard from.
Don?
QUESTION: Thank you, sir. Appreciate it.
BUSH: This was - it's a well-received ...
QUESTION: Following on both Judy and John's questions, and it comes out of what you just said in some ways, with public support for your policies in Iraq falling off the way they have, quite significantly over the past couple of months, I guess I'd like to know if you feel, in any way, that you have failed as a communicator on this topic.
BUSH: Gosh, I don't know. I mean ...
QUESTION: Well, you deliver a lot of speeches, and a lot of them contain similar phrases and may vary very little from one to the next. And they often include a pretty upbeat assessment of how things are going, with the exception of tonight. It's pretty somber.
BUSH: A pretty somber assessment today, Don, yes.
QUESTION: But I guess I just wonder if you feel that you have failed in any way. You don't have many of these press conferences where you engage in this kind of exchange. Have you failed in any way to really make the case to the American public?
BUSH: You know, that's, I guess, if you put it into a political context, that's the kind of thing the voters will decide next November. That's what elections are about. They'll take a look at me and my opponent and say, let's see, which one of them can better win the war on terror? Who best can see to it that Iraq emerges a free society?
And, Don, you know, if I tried to fine-tune my messages based upon polls, I think I'd be pretty ineffective. I know I would be disappointed in myself.
I hope today you've got a sense of my conviction about what we're doing. If you don't, maybe I need to learn to communicate better.
I feel strongly about what we're doing. I feel strongly it's the course this administration is taking will make America more secure and the world more free and, therefore, the world more peaceful. It's a conviction that's deep in my soul. And, you know, I will say it as best I possibly can to the American people.
I look forward to the debate in the campaign. I look forward to helping - for the American people to hear, you know, what is the proper use of American power. Do we have an obligation to lead, or should we shirk responsibility? That's how I view this debate.
And I look forward to making it. Don, I'll do it the best I possibly can. I'll give it the best shot. I'll speak as plainly as I can.
One thing is for certain, though, about me, and the world has learned this: When I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom.
Thank you all very much.
----
[The only place I've seen this is Pravda. I'd like to see some corroboration. et]
Saddam's wife could not recognize her husband
04/13/2004
Maxim Pogodin, Pravda
http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/366/12494_saddam.html
Last week, American authorities arranged a meeting of the former Iraqi dictator with his wife.
She was the first of Hussein"s relatives to meet with the ex-leader of Iraq at a new place, at the American military base in Qatar. Accompanied by Sheikh Hamad Al-Tani, Sajida Heiralla Tuffah has arrived from Syria on his private jet in the end of March.
The outcome of their meeting turned out to be quite scandalous. Sajina claims that the person she encountered was not her husband, but his double. If someone were to say for sure that it was not insinuation, it would have been easy to believe the wife with a 25-year experience. It is also possible to assume that Saddam has simply changed since the day of his sons' deaths, June 24, 2003. This however is highly unlikely. In case we believe Hussein's wife, all DNA testing of the ex-Iraqi leader should be considered a mere fake. Overall, today there remain more questions than there are answers.
On the other hand however, those statements of Hussein's wife can in fact be quite understandable. After all, this is the easiest way to demoralize an enemy.
Hussein's younger daughter Hala has also arrived at the base in Qatar along with Saddam Hussein's two grandsons and two sisters, total of eight people. They were all invited by Shekh"s wife Muza to stay in one of the palaces. Eldest daughters Ragad and Rada along with five Hussein"s grandchildren have recently arrived to Doha from Jordan.
"Elaf" newspaper writes that, most likely, the entire Hussein's family will stay in Qatar permanently.
Saddam Hussein was captured by the American forces in December 2003 and held in one of the palaces in Baghdad in a region controlled by the coalition forces. Afterward, due to security reasons, he was transferred to the American military base in Qatar, where he is expected to remain until the trial.
----
CBS, 12 Others Among 'Muzzle' Winners
April 13, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Muzzle-Awards.html
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- CBS Television, which passed on the miniseries ``The Reagans'' amid conservative pressure, and the Martha Stewart trial judge are among this year's winners of the dubious Jefferson Muzzle awards for suppression of free speech.
A federal judge and the Secret Service also earned ``muzzles'' awarded Tuesday.
CBS was cited ``for acts of self-censorship demonstrating both hypocrisy and an unwillingness to stand up to public and political pressure,'' the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression said in a statement.
CBS also refused to air a 30-second commercial from Moveon.org, a group critical of the Bush administration, during the Super Bowl, while it allowed erectile dysfunction commercials and the halftime show featuring Janet Jackson's bared breast, it said.
Other muzzles recipients announced in the 13th annual edition of the awards include Baseball Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey, who canceled a 15th anniversary showing of ``Bull Durham'' because of opposition to the Iraq war by its stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.
``Although the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and more recently the war in Iraq have created new pressures on free speech, an examination of this year's and previous Jefferson Muzzle winners reveals that threats to free expression come from all over the political spectrum,'' said Robert M. O'Neil, director of the center.
The autonomous, not-for-profit center is associated with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Its trustees include Judith G. Clabes, president of the Scripps Howard Foundation, columnist James J. Kilpatrick, and Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek.
Each year, the muzzle awards are handed out on the birthday of Thomas Jefferson. Recipients receive a T-shirt that depicts the nation's third president and First Amendment advocate with a muzzle.
U.S. District Judge Miriam G. Cedarbaum received a muzzle for barring reporters from jury selection in the Martha Stewart trial. An appeals court later said she erred, but by that time jury selection had been completed.
The Secret Service was cited for investigating whether Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez of the Los Angeles Times could be charged with ``threatening the life'' of President Bush for a cartoon depicting a man pointing a gun at Bush.
On the Net:
http://www.tjcenter.org
--------
Forest Service Photos Raise Flap
Old Images Depicting Sparse Conditions Taken After Logging
By Scott Sonner
Associated Press
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6413-2004Apr12.html
RENO, Nev. -- The U.S. Forest Service has been accused of misrepresenting forest conditions by using misleading photographs in a brochure that urges more logging to prevent wildfires in the Sierra Nevada.
The pamphlet says fire risks have risen as the Sierra's forests have grown more dense over the past century. Six photos spanning 80 years appear beside descriptions of how the "forests of the past" had fewer trees and less underbrush, making them less susceptible to fire.
The 1909 photo shows an open, parklike forest with large trees spaced widely apart. More trees and underbrush appear in each successive picture -- 1948, 1958, 1968, 1979 -- and finally a photograph thick with trees in 1989.
"Today's forests, dense with green, may seem beautiful, but in fact are deadly," the pamphlet reads. "Our old-growth forests are choking with brush, tinder-dry debris and dead trees which make the risk of catastrophic fire high."
But the 1909 photo does not depict natural conditions -- it was taken just after the forest had been logged. And the pictured forest is nowhere near the Sierra Nevada. It is in Montana.
"I was looking at the picture, and I thought it looked awful familiar," said Chad Hanson, director of the John Muir Project in Cedar Ridge, Calif. "I started looking around, and sure enough, the industry has used it before in Montana."
Then Hanson used a magnifying glass to make another discovery: "You can see huge slash piles and stumps in the background. They give the impression this represents natural, pre-settlement conditions, but the picture was taken after logging had occurred and most of the trees had been removed."
The same shot taken near Como Lake in the Bitterroot National Forest southwest of Hamilton, Mont., appeared in a 1983 Forest Service research report. The caption said the photo shows "cleanup operations on the Lick Creek timber sale."
The agency has used the same photos -- minus the pre-logging shot -- in support of logging in the Pacific Northwest, too.
Forest Service officials confirmed the photos in the Sierra brochure are from Montana. They were used because they were typical of pine stands across much of the West, officials said.
"It is difficult to find a good series of repeat photographs of the same place over almost 100 years," Forest Service spokesman Matt Mathes said. "We used this one because it is an accurate record of how stands -- including those in the Sierra Nevada -- become increasingly dense without active management or wildfire."
The Forest Service spent $23,000 to produce and print 15,000 copies of the brochures, created by a public relations firm, as part of the "Forests for a Future" campaign that brought criticism from some lawmakers because the agency hired a PR shop.
Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Nick J. Rahall II (D-W.Va.) asked for an inspector general's investigation into whether the agency broke any laws by spending $90,000 on the contract with OneWorld Communications Inc. of San Francisco.
The Forest Service defended using outside help and said the photos from Montana were not intended to mislead.
"The idea here was to show increasing density over time, which visibly did occur," Mathes said. "Our goal here was to . . . increase the clarity and understandability of our message. We needed to be accurate but not necessarily precise to the 99th degree."
-------- war crimes
Milosevic Wants Blair, Clinton as Witnesses
Tue Apr 13, 2004
(Reuters)
By Monika Lajhner and Fredrik Dahl
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4817971
BELGRADE - Slobodan Milosevic wants British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former U.S. President Bill Clinton to be called as witnesses at his war crimes trial, a legal adviser of the ex-Yugoslav president said Tuesday.
Milosevic, due to being his defense case on June 8, submitted a list of 1,631 people he wants to appear as witnesses in the United Nations court in The Hague, lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic said.
This would be over five times the number called by the prosecution during the first two years of Europe's biggest war crimes trial since Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg after World War II.
It is up to the judges to decide which witnesses can appear.
Milosevic is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
Blair and Clinton were key Western leaders behind NATO's 11-week bombing campaign to halt Serbian repression of Kosovo's Albanians in 1999. Clinton was in power when the United States brokered the peace deal that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
"The list includes a group of witnesses Slobodan Milosevic marked as hostile witnesses," Tomanovic told Reuters by phone from The Netherlands.
"Milosevic is asking the court to call Clinton, Blair, Albright, Cook...," he said, referring to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.
Milosevic, ousted by Serb reformers as Yugoslav president in 2000 and sent the following year to The Hague, is defending himself and has vigorously cross-examined witnesses.
He has dismissed the charges against him as politically motivated lies and says he does not recognize the court.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Scalia Apologizes for Erasure of Reporters' Tapes of Speech
Justice Vows to Permit Recordings by Print Journalists
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6415-2004Apr12.html
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has issued written apologies for the destruction of two reporters' audiotapes by a deputy U.S. marshal in guarding him last week, and has promised to permit print journalists to record his public speeches in the future, according to a letter by the justice made public yesterday.
In an April 9 letter to Lucy A. Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which had protested the incident, Scalia said he had written to the two reporters, Antoinette Konz of the Hattiesburg American and Denise Grones of the Associated Press, "extending my apology and undertaking to revise my policy so as to permit recording for use of the print media."
Scalia called Dalglish's concern "well justified" and said he had been "as upset as you were" to learn of the deputy marshal's action, which, he said, "was not taken at my direction."
His letter was posted on the Internet yesterday by the Reporters Committee. It was his first known response to the incident, which occurred April 7.
Both Scalia and the U.S. Marshals Service have come under fire from advocates of media freedom, who said the erasure of the reporters' recordings was contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment, and possibly to a federal law that prohibits federal officers from confiscating news material even while investigating crimes.
Yesterday, Democratic Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.) took the issue a step further, sending a letter to Leonidas Ralph Mecham, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, denouncing the April 7 incident and asking that standards be set for media access to the speeches of federal judges.
It was unclear yesterday whether Scalia's apology and change in policy would satisfy his critics. Though he indicated a willingness to let print reporters record his remarks for the sake of accurately quoting him, he rejected suggestions that he permit radio and television reporters to record his remarks for broadcast.
"We greatly appreciate Justice Scalia's prompt response to our letter," Dalglish said in a written statement. "However, we remain disappointed with his policy regarding electronic media coverage of his speeches, and hope he will reconsider."
Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, sent Scalia an open letter saying that his policy "discriminates against television and radio journalists, fosters less accurate reporting and undermines the principle at the very core of the First Amendment."
Frank Fisher, the Associated Press's Jackson, Miss., bureau chief, and Jon Broadbooks, executive editor of the Hattiesburg American, said their reporters had not received the letters from Scalia.
Fisher and Broadbooks both used the word "gratified" to sum up their feelings about Scalia's apologies, but said the issue of the deputy U.S. marshal's conduct remained unresolved. Both news organizations have protested to federal authorities.
"There is still the lingering question of why the marshal seized the recordings," Broadbooks said. "We feel it was illegal."
The 1980 Privacy Protection Act says government agents investigating a crime may not "search for or seize any work product materials possessed by a person reasonably believed to have a purpose to disseminate to the public a newspaper, book, broadcast or other similar form of public communication."
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service, Nikki Credic, said the service had no comment on Scalia's letter. As for possible corrective action by the service related to the incident, she said that "they are still looking into the matter."
Scalia was delivering an address about the Constitution at Presbyterian Christian High School on April 7 when Grones and Konz were confronted by Deputy U.S. Marshal Melanie Rube and ordered to turn over their recordings, which Rube then erased.
Rube cited Scalia's policy of not permitting audiotaping or videotaping of his public appearances. But the policy had not been announced to the reporters.
--------
Scalia Apologizes for Seizure of Recordings
April 13, 2004
By ADAM LIPTAK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13SCAL.html
Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court has apologized to two Mississippi reporters who were required to erase recordings of a speech he gave at a high school there on Wednesday.
The reporters, for The Associated Press and a local newspaper, had been told by a deputy federal marshal to destroy the recordings at the end of a half-hour speech by the justice at the Presbyterian Christian High School in Hattiesburg.
The marshal cited the justice's standing policy prohibiting the recording of his remarks. The policy had not been announced at the high school.
On Friday, Justice Scalia wrote the reporters to apologize, but his letters had not yet arrived on Monday, the two news organizations said, and the Supreme Court declined to release them.
Justice Scalia referred to the apologies in a separate letter mailed on Friday to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which had protested the marshal's actions. The committee released the letter on Monday.
Calling the organization's concern "well justified," the justice wrote: "You are correct that the action was not taken at my direction. I was as upset as you were."
One of the reporters, Antoinette Konz of The Hattiesburg American, expressed appreciation for the apology. She said she was disturbed that her tape was confiscated. It was returned to her only after she promised to erase the justice's speech from it.
"I think it's very honorable of him," she said. "I accept his apology. I am still upset about the entire incident."
Justice Scalia said in the letter to the Reporters Committee that the controversy had caused him to revise his policy "so as to permit recording for use of the print media" to "promote accurate reporting." He suggested that he had been misquoted in some accounts as saying "people just don't revere" the Constitution "like they used to." But the letter did not set out his version of what he said, and a court spokesman declined to comment.
Justice Scalia indicated he would continue to ban the recording of his speeches by the broadcast press.
"The electronic media have in the past respected my First Amendment right not to speak on radio or television when I do not wish to do so," he wrote, "and I am sure that courtesy will continue."
Barbara Cochran, president of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, objected to that distinction in a letter to Justice Scalia yesterday. "There is no legal basis for such discrimination," she wrote. "To exclude television cameras and audio recording is the equivalent of taking away pencil and paper from print reporters."
Frank Fisher, Mississippi bureau chief for The Associated Press, said the apparent apology to its reporter, Denise Grones, represented progress. But he, too, noted discomfort at the varying treatment of the broadcast press.
"The First Amendment covers all of us," he said.
In his letter, Justice Scalia said he did not have the power to "direct security personnel not to confiscate recordings."
"Security personnel, both those of the institutions at which I speak, and the United States marshals, do not operate at my direction," he wrote, "but I shall certainly express that as my preference."
-------- homeland security
Ashcroft denied anti-terror funds on Sept. 10
Attorney general to testify today in front of 9/11 commission
CURT ANDERSON
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Apr. 13, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1081853108053&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
WASHINGTON - The day before the Sept. 11 attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft rejected an FBI appeal for an extra infusion of money for counterterrorism, according to a Sept. 11 commission staff statement released today. The statement, issued as the independent panel's spotlight turned to the FBI and Justice Department, said Ashcroft on Sept. 10, 2001, rejected a request made earlier by acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard for "further counterterrorism enhancements" in the 2002 budget, which already would have boosted FBI spending by 8 percent.
That rejection came four months after Ashcroft, in testimony at a Senate terrorism hearing, said the Justice Department "has no higher priority" than protecting Americans from terrorism at home and abroad. And the decision occurred after months of rising concern at high government levels that Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network might be preparing a major attack against U.S. interests.
The commission staff statement quotes a former FBI counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying he "almost fell out of his chair" when he saw a May 10 budget memo from Ashcroft listing seven priorities, including illegal drugs and gun violence, but not terrorism.
The statement opened a two-day round of hearings today on how law enforcement responded to the terror threat, with testimony from Ashcroft, former FBI Director Louis Freeh, Pickard and former Attorney General Janet Reno. Former CIA counterterrorism centre director Cofer Black also was scheduled to testify.
Ashcroft aides said the attorney general wanted to rebut criticism that he was less focused on terrorism than other law enforcement priorities. In a statement released Monday, FBI Director Robert Mueller, who testifies Wednesday, said that since his tenure began on Sept. 4, 2001, he and Ashcroft "have been in lockstep" in working to secure adequate counterterrorism resources for the FBI.
According to a commission document obtained by the Associated Press, Pickard also raised questions about the presence of former deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick on the panel. The document said that Pickard found her membership "surprising" because she and Reno had developed the policy to counter international terrorism primarily using law enforcement techniques.
Commission members say it is critical to learn what law enforcement officials did to confront the rising threat of terrorism inside the United States.
"The FBI is going to have to answer the question: 'Why didn't they deliver the information up? Did they get clear instructions from the top that it should be delivered up?'" said former Sen. Bob Kerrey, a Democratic member of the Sept. 11 commission.
The commission staff statement discussed a long list of FBI shortcomings on terrorism, including a culture in which agents got credit and promotions for making cases and arrests but not for intelligence work that resulted in fewer prosecutions. Counterintelligence and counterterrorism, the report said, "were viewed as backwaters" within the FBI.
Other problems included outmoded computer systems that prevented proper information sharing, lack of strategic analysis, a legal barrier called "the wall" that barred most contact between criminal and intelligence investigators, and a decentralized structure that kept terrorism cases in the 56 field offices instead of FBI headquarters.
"It was almost impossible to develop an understanding of the threat from a particular terrorist group," the staff statement said.
Mueller and other officials were scheduled to testify about steps the FBI has taken to improve its counterterrorism programs since Sept. 11.
The law enforcement hearings follow sessions by the commission that featured allegations - and rebuttals - that the Bush administration did not consider Al Qaeda an urgent priority before Sept. 11.
Over the weekend, the White House released a previously classified Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence memo that warned Al Qaeda was operating in the United States and might be looking to hijack airplanes. The memo did not provide specific times or places for potential attacks.
President Bush, speaking Monday with reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, repeated his view that the memo - the president's daily brief, or PDB - was "kind of a history" of bin Laden's intentions but contained no warning that "something is about to happen in America.''
"There was nothing in there that said, you know, 'There is an imminent attack,'" Bush said.
Still, he added that now might be the right time to "revamp and reform our intelligence services.''
Freeh defended his actions in Monday's editions of The Wall Street Journal, writing that the FBI expanded its overseas legal attaché offices from 19 to 44 during his tenure, which ended three months before the attacks, and increased the prominence of joint terrorism task forces that include personnel from other agencies.
Freeh also said that at his first meeting with Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, four days after they took office, they discussed terrorism, Al Qaeda and several recent overseas attacks targeting American interests.
But Freeh and Pickard, the interim FBI director in summer 2001, said there were budgetary constraints. For example, Freeh said, the FBI asked for 1,895 special agents, linguists and analysts for counterterrorism in fiscal 2000, 2001 and 2002 - and wound up with just 76.
Still, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a letter Monday to Mueller that total FBI spending rose some 132 percent from 1993 to 2003, with counterterrorism requests nearly always met or exceeded.
----
Fear of Flying
Why did Ashcroft stop flying commercial only weeks before 9-11?
April 13th, 2004
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0415/mondo1.php
WASHINGTON, D.C.-Like most of the Bush cabinet, Attorney General John Ashcroft took commercial jets when he traveled. But on July 24, 2001, he changed that practice and began flying in chartered government jets. Asked by CBS News at the time about the change, the Justice Department cited a "threat assessment" by the FBI and said Ashcroft had been advised to travel only by private jet for the remainder of his term. "There was a threat assessment, and there are guidelines. He is acting under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. But as CBS went on to report, "Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department, however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected, or who made it." A "senior official" at the CIA said he wasn't aware of specific threats against any cabinet member, and Ashcroft himself declared, "I don't do threat assessments myself, and I rely on those whose responsibility it is in the law enforcement community, particularly the FBI. And I try to stay within the guidelines that they've suggested I should stay within for those purposes." When asked if he knew details of the threat or who might have made it, Ashcroft said, "Frankly, I don't. That's the answer."
The Justice Department did say that it wasn't Ashcroft who wanted to fly in leased airplanes, but that it was the idea of his FBI security detail. The FBI had no comment. All other Bush cabinet members flew on commercial airliners, save for the secretaries of Energy and the Interior when they traveled to remote areas. Janet Reno, Clinton's attorney general, traveled by commercial jets.
----
Deadline Is Set for Rail Cargo Security
April 13, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Cargo-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rail shippers on July 12 will have to start sending electronic manifests identifying their cargo before reaching the first stop, the government said on Tuesday.
The rule will help customs officials identify rail shipments that pose a potential terrorist threat. The rule was delayed because the government had to adapt its computer software.
July 12 is the first deadline for rail shippers calling at 24 ports of entry. Those that call at four ports of entry in Maine have until Aug. 10, and those calling at three ports along the Mexican border have until Sept. 9.
Congress ordered the changes last year because of fears that terrorists could smuggle chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons into the country.
On the Net:
Homeland Security Department: http://www.dhs.gov
-------- investigations
Ashcroft's Pre-9/11 Priorities Scrutinized
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6589-2004Apr12?language=printer
On Aug. 9, 2001, three days after President Bush was given a memo outlining Osama bin Laden's intent to mount attacks on U.S. soil, the Justice Department completed a draft of its seven strategic goals and 36 main objectives for the next four years.
The internal document, which mirrored many of the priorities in previous memos and statements by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, focused on drugs, violent crime and civil rights. Combating "terrorist activities" was mentioned once -- as the third objective under enforcement of criminal laws.
Aides characterize the list as a preliminary report never seen by Ashcroft and say it reflected the priorities of the previous attorney general, Janet Reno. But according to some members of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and others familiar with its findings, the memo reflects the low priority that Ashcroft placed on terrorism during his first seven months in office.
Ashcroft will face sharp questioning about the period, and whether he was sufficiently focused on the al Qaeda threat, during his appearance today before the commission. The line of inquiry will be unusual in its focus on Ashcroft's actions before the attacks. Most of the criticism aimed at the attorney general over the past 21/2 years has centered on whether his anti-terrorism strategies after the attacks have been too zealous.
Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a Republican, said in an interview that "we will be looking hard at the attorney general, at the FBI, CIA and many other parts of that community" in the hearings.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo yesterday pointed to Senate testimony in May 2001 in which Ashcroft endorsed additional funding for counterterrorism programs and said "our number one goal is the prevention of terrorist acts." Corallo also said that Ashcroft was briefed regularly by the CIA and FBI on the al Qaeda threat in the summer of 2001 but was told that there was no indication of a domestic plot.
"At every one of those briefings, he asked for more information, he asked them if there was any evidence of a domestic threat," Corallo said. "He was repeatedly told that there was no evidence of any threat against the United States."
Ashcroft will be among several current and former Justice and FBI officials to appear before the panel today and tomorrow. Reno, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, former FBI director Louis J. Freeh, former acting director Thomas J. Pickard and CIA Director George J. Tenet are among those scheduled to appear.
The FBI already has endured harsh criticism from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, as the panel is formally known, and its predecessor, the joint House-Senate inquiry into intelligence failures before the attacks. Investigators from both have cited the FBI's failure to act aggressively on a July 2001 report from a Phoenix FBI agent that al Qaeda operatives might be taking flight training in the United States and an August 2001 CIA report that two al Qaeda associates had entered the country. The pair took part in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Commissioner Timothy J. Roemer, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said, "We're going to have a plethora of questions for the FBI and for Justice . . . and I'm not sure they are going to have any good answers to those questions."
The shift in attention to the FBI and the Justice Department comes after weeks of focus on the public dispute between national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her former counterterrorism coordinator, Richard A. Clarke, who alleges that the Bush administration gave short shrift to combating bin Laden. On Saturday, the White House declassified an Aug. 6, 2001, presidential intelligence memo titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US," which said there was evidence that al Qaeda operatives might be planning aircraft hijackings or attacks with explosives and that the FBI had about 70 active field investigations "that it considers bin Ladin-related."
Bush, speaking to reporters in Texas yesterday, said that the briefing contained no "actionable intelligence" about an "imminent attack" and that he was "comforted" by the description of the FBI's efforts.
"It meant the FBI was doing its job, the FBI was running down any lead," Bush said, adding that "had they found something, I'm confident they would have reported back to me. . . . That didn't happen."
Much of the questioning of Ashcroft and others today is expected to center on the summer of 2001, when the U.S. government was experiencing an unprecedented surge in intelligence information indicating plans for a terrorist attack by al Qaeda.
On Sept. 10 of that year, Ashcroft formally denied a $50 million request from the FBI to hire more counterterrorism agents and intelligence researchers, according to witnesses and Justice Department documents. Pickard, who took over as acting director after Freeh left in June 2001, has privately told the commission that he was frustrated by Ashcroft's lack of interest in terrorism, officials familiar with his remarks say.
Corallo dismissed Pickard's complaints and noted that when the Justice Department issued its final strategic plan after the attacks, terrorism was its top priority. "When people say [Ashcroft] seemed disinterested, that is not borne out by his actions," Corallo said. "He was beating on the FBI for information. . . . His actions speak a lot louder than whatever some of these folks had impressions of."
Commissioner Jamie S. Gorelick, a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, said at a hearing last week that FBI bulletins issued in this period were "feckless" and "don't tell anybody anything. They don't bring anyone to battle stations." She said that although Ashcroft was briefed on potential threats, "there was no evidence of any activity by him about this."
Gorelick said in an interview that she will refrain from asking questions of Reno, her former boss, or Freeh, with whom she worked closely, but will pose questions to Ashcroft and others.
In a sign that budget issues will be prominent in this week's testimony, Mueller also issued a statement yesterday defending Ashcroft's financial priorities.
"Since I became director of the FBI in September 2001, the Department of Justice and the attorney general have provided substantial support to FBI budget requests, including increases for our counterterrorism needs," said Mueller, who is scheduled to testify tomorrow.
But a budget document dated Oct. 12, 2001, shows that the White House slashed an emergency request for FBI counterterrorism funds by two-thirds and that Ashcroft, working within those limits, cut the FBI's request for items such as computer networking, foreign-language intercepts and cybersecurity.
Freeh, echoing his 2002 testimony before the joint House-Senate inquiry, wrote in an article in the Wall Street Journal yesterday that "the FBI relentlessly did its job of pursuing terrorists" but was hobbled by insufficient funding. Although the bureau's counterterrorism budget had tripled by 1999, Freeh wrote, "it wasn't enough."
The former FBI director, who works at MBNA America in Wilmington, Del., said, "The political will to declare and fight this war [against terrorism] didn't exist before Sept. 11."
But Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a frequent FBI critic, released a Congressional Research Service study yesterday that he said casts doubt on Freeh's budgetary complaints. "Congress consistently granted the FBI huge amounts of money for its counterterrorism mission, often at levels more than the administration was requesting," Grassley wrote in a letter to Mueller.
--------
9/11 Panel Is Said to Offer Harsh Review of Ashcroft
April 13, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON and LOWELL BERGMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13PANE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 12 - Draft reports by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks portray Attorney General John Ashcroft as largely uninterested in counterterrorism issues before Sept. 11 despite intelligence warnings that summer that Al Qaeda was planning a large, perhaps catastrophic, terrorist attack, panel officials and others with access to the reports have said.
They said the draft reports, which are expected to be completed and made public during two days of hearings by the commission this week, show that F.B.I. officials were alarmed throughout 2001 by what they perceived as Mr. Ashcroft's lack of interest in terrorism issues and his decision in August 2001 to reject the bureau's request for a large expansion of its counterterrorism programs.
The draft reports, they said, quote the F.B.I.'s former counterterrorism chief, Dale Watson, as saying he "fell off my chair" when he learned that Mr. Ashcroft had failed to list combating terrorism as one of the department's priorities in a March 2001 department-wide memo.
They said the reports would also quote from internal memorandums by Thomas J. Pickard, acting director of the F.B.I. in summer 2001, in which Mr. Pickard described his frustration with Mr. Ashcroft and what he saw as the attorney general's lack of interest in the issue of how the bureau was investigating terrorism suspects in the United States.
Commission officials said the Justice Department, which was provided with a draft copy of the report, had mounted an aggressive, last-minute effort on Monday to persuade the commission to rewrite the parts of the report dealing with Mr. Ashcroft, describing them as one-sided and unfair to him.
Aides to Mr. Ashcroft, who is scheduled to testify before the commission on Tuesday, said he would tell the panel that he was briefed throughout the year on terrorist threats and was never informed - by either the F.B.I. or C.I.A. - that he needed to take special action, since intelligence reports suggested that any attack would be overseas.
"He asked over and over again if there was any evidence of a domestic threat, and he was told over and over again that there was no evidence of one," said Mark Corallo, Mr. Ashcroft's spokesman.
Mr. Corallo said that Mr. Ashcroft had not seen the top-secret intelligence briefing report that was presented to President Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, and that referred to an active presence of Al Qaeda in the United States. But Mr. Corallo said the memo would not have made a difference, since it listed "no specific threats" that needed to be addressed.
Commission officials said that Mr. Ashcroft might also be asked about why he stopped flying commercially on government business in the summer of 2001 - the department has said the move was requested by the F.B.I. in response to threats to Mr. Ashcroft's safety unrelated to Al Qaeda - and his extensive use thereafter of a luxurious F.B.I. jet, a $40 million Gulfstream 5. The plane had been purchased for use in special investigations and for the transport of terrorists and other dangerous suspects.
Current and former F.B.I. officials have told the commission that they were infuriated by Mr. Ashcroft's use of the jet and that it was seen as emblematic of his detachment from the needs of investigators.
Mr. Corallo said Mr. Ashcroft used the plane only when it was not needed for other business by the F.B.I., which is part of the Justice Department. Previously, Mr. Ashcroft, like others attorneys general, had flown on commercial airlines when traveling on government business.
Law enforcement officials say the hearings this week by the commission, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, are expected to produce an intense round of finger-pointing between current and former F.B.I. and Justice Department officials.
Panel officials said that the commission's interim reports this week, which will form part of its final report this summer, will also offer a harsh assessment of the F.B.I., saying that the bureau bungled a series of clues throughout 2001 that suggested that Al Qaeda might be preparing for an attack within American borders.
But while the F.B.I.'s failures before Sept. 11 are well-documented - especially the bureau's failure to follow up on warnings from agents in Phoenix and Minneapolis about their suspicions that Islamic extremists were training at American flight schools - Mr. Ashcroft's actions before Sept. 11 have not faced this sort of scrutiny before.
Administration officials say it is not clear how the commission's portrayal of Mr. Ashcroft might affect his standing with the White House or whether it could jeopardize it if Mr. Bush is re-elected in November.
Mr. Ashcroft has long been a lightning rod for criticism from Mr. Bush's critics, especially Congressional Democrats and civil liberties advocates who say that Mr. Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, has used the Sept. 11 attacks as a vehicle for a severe clampdown on personal liberties and the rights of immigrants.
Commission officials said that there was irony in the panel's finding that before Sept. 11, Mr. Ashcroft may have been too timid about seeking electronic surveillance of terror suspects. They said their investigation suggested that until the attacks, Mr. Ashcroft had resisted signing emergency warrants that would have allowed eavesdropping in terrorism investigations, apparently because he had only a rudimentary knowledge of how the warrant process worked.
The commission's investigation, they said, had centered on Mr. Ashcroft's actions in the summer of 2001, when intelligence agencies received a flood of evidence of an imminent attack by Al Qaeda.
Current and former F.B.I. officials said that in the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Ashcroft weighed whether to approve an elaborate counterterrorism plan that had been conceived with the support of his Clinton administration predecessor, Attorney General Janet Reno.
The plan, known by the code name MAX CAP 05, or Maximum Capacity by 2005, had been assembled by Mr. Watson, the bureau's former counterterror chief, with the help of outside consultants and called for a huge build-up in the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism operations.
On Aug. 20, they said, Mr. Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director, was told by Mr. Ashcroft and his then-deputy at the Justice Department, Robert S. Mueller III, that the budget increases had been rejected. Mr. Mueller is now the F.B.I. director.
A senior F.B.I. official who was part of the counterterrorism division at the time said that Mr. Ashcroft's denial of the extra counterterrorism resources came as a "heavy blow to morale." He continued: "Given the resources we had at the time, it was hard to be enthusiastic or optimistic since we knew there was a clear possibility of an attack."
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Commission Seeks Author of Brief Interview With CIA Analyst Requested
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6590-2004Apr12.html
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, rebuffed once previously, asked again yesterday to interview the CIA analyst who wrote the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing given to President Bush on al Qaeda's threat to the United States, according to administration sources.
"A new request from the commission has just come in, and it is being considered," said a senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity because such negotiations are supposed to be conducted privately.
The commission wants to interview the author of the article in the now-famous President's Daily Brief to determine her purpose in assembling the document and how much information she sought in doing so.
Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean (R), a former New Jersey governor, said yesterday the Bush administration in the past refused to allow the panel to interview CIA analysts responsible for assembling the briefs, which are among the government's most sensitive and closely held intelligence documents.
"I don't know if we'll ever get that," Kean said. In the past, he added, the White House has argued that those who supply information to the president should not be subjected to external inquiries.
The senior intelligence official said the commission made its previous request before last Saturday, when the 11/2-page memo was declassified and released publicly.
The analyst, who works in the Directorate of Intelligence on terrorism matters, was questioned more than a year ago by the joint House-Senate committee that studied intelligence failures before the terrorist attacks. But the interview did not cover the memo, which was not given to the congressional panel.
The origins and purpose of the briefing document have become the subject of more intense scrutiny since national security adviser Condoleezza Rice described it last Thursday as "not a warning" but "an historical memo prepared by the agency because the president was asking questions."
Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat, said Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition" that he thought "the author of this memo was alerting the president to the possibility that the strike that we were all anticipating in the summer of 2001 might well occur within the United States." Ben-Veniste said he recognized that the document did not give a time or place for an attack, and was "not a silver bullet," but that it should have prompted a government response.
According to senior intelligence officials familiar with the document, work on it began at the end of July, at the initiative of the CIA analyst. She wanted to raise the issue because almost all the threat information sent to the White House over the summer of 2001 -- when U.S. intelligence agencies detected a sharp increase in intercepted conversations about a major terrorist event -- focused attention on possible attacks overseas.
Without the analyst knowing it, the same topic -- threats to the U.S. mainland -- was raised within the same week by Bush, one senior intelligence official said yesterday.
In preparing the document, the analyst went back to information about Osama bin Laden and his desire to strike the United States that surfaced during interviews with a former al Qaeda operative. The operative testified for the government during the trial of terrorists convicted of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
That informant had worked closely with bin Laden. He said the al Qaeda leader had always wanted to conduct attacks in the United States and wanted to follow the example of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted and jailed for his failed attempt to destroy the World Trade Center in 1993.
The first paragraph of the document recalled that interview and included indications that bin Laden had attempted in 1999 to achieve that goal. It added that he had a history of long-term planning and recruitment of cells inside the United States that could support and carry out such missions.
The document notes a 1998 report that bin Laden wanted to hijack a U.S. passenger aircraft to gain the release of imprisoned Muslim extremists. It said FBI information "indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." A senior administration official told reporters Saturday that the CIA analyst got that information from an FBI analyst after calling "for information that would be relevant." The administration official said the CIA analyst based her observation on just one event -- two Yemenis taking pictures of buildings in downtown New York City.
The document provides more historic context than most articles included in the highly classified daily brief delivered to the president each day. Most elements contain more human intelligence and intercepts of telephone and radio communications, current and former intelligence officials said yesterday.
A senior intelligence official contended that the document "was not designed to be a screaming headline" and contained much less classified material than an average President's Daily Brief article "because we had not had hard evidence, only desires." But that official did not know how much information on the subject was reviewed before the document was prepared.
One commission member, who asked not to be identified because the final report is not completed, said yesterday he also wanted to question the FBI analyst involved to determine how thoroughly that person reviewed information about aircraft hijackings held by the FBI as late as July and early August. One document sent to FBI headquarters in Washington in July by a Phoenix agent raised the possibility that al Qaeda supporters were taking pilot training in the United States.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
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Ex-Director of F.B.I. Defends Agency's Efforts Before 9/11
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/politics/20040413_PANEL_LIVE/
The former director of the F.B.I., Louis J. Freeh, today told the panel investigating the 9/11 attacks that his agency had done everything it could with the resources it had at the time to head off terrorism by Al Qaeda, which he said declared war on the United States as early as 1996 in a call to arms issued by Osama bin Laden.
Two years later, Mr. Freeh said, Mr. bin Laden issued another so-called fatwa that was ``much more specific.''
Mr. Freeh, who became director in 1993 and left the agency three months before 9/11, faced tough and persistent questioning from both Democrats and Republicans on the panel. In particular, Richard Ben-Veniste, a Democrat, pressed Mr. Freeh on the agency's consideration of the possible use of airplanes as weapons.
Mr. Freeh said he believed that the subject was mentioned in planning for security for the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, when President Bill Clinton was in office.
Mr. Ben-Veniste said: ``So it was well known in the intelligence community that one of the potential areas or devices to be used by terrorists, according to our intelligence information, was the use of airplanes, either packed with explosives or otherwise, in suicide missions.''
Mr. Freeh agreed, but said later that he did not recall that the subject came up again in the approximately six months he served under President Bush.
Mr. Freeh testified shortly after the commission issued a staff report that characterized the F.B.I. as almost at war with itself over how to deal with the threat of terrorism, describing the bureau as torn by internal strife and shackled by woefully outmoded computers.
The commission chairman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, said that he interpreted the staff statement as an indictment of the F.B.I. over a long period of time.
``You tried reforms,'' Mr. Kean told Mr. Freeh. ``You tried very hard to reform the agency. According to our staff report, those reforms failed.''
Mr. Freeh frequently restated his belief that a lack of resources and a lack of legal authority that was provided for under the Patriot Act of 2002 prevented the Federal Bureau of Investigation from doing ``what was easily done after Sept. 11.''
``All of these things being said, the point I guess I want to make to you this morning, and which I tried to make in my statement, is that we had a very effective program with respect to counterterrorism before September 11, given the resources, in my view, and given the authorities that we had,'' he said.
Mr. Freeh added that after the bombings of American embassies in East Africa in 1998, he and the head of the C.I.A., George Tenet, intensified efforts against Al Qaeda. ``Bin Laden was indicted in June of 1998,'' Mr. Freeh said. ``He was indicted again after the African bombings. He was put on our top 10 list. George Tenet and I reviewed plans to have him arrested and taken into custody in Afghanistan and brought back to the United States.''
The F.B.I. operated a web of informants, he said, conducted electronic surveillance and had opened investigations in a number of offices, including New York, Chicago, Detroit, San Diego and Minneapolis.
Another question from Mr. Ben-Veniste centered on the degree of cooperation between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., a relationship that panel members and previous witnesses, including the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, have criticized.
Mr. Freeh, however, offered a different view. He said his experience in eight years was that there was extremely ``good cooperation'' between the two agencies.
Mr. Freeh was followed before the panel by former Attorney General Janet Reno. Later witnesses today will be the acting director of the F.B.I. during the summer of 2001, Thomas J. Pickard; a former C.I.A. official, J. Cofer Black; and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Mr. Freeh had already staked out his position in an article on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal on Monday, in which he wrote that the F.B.I. ``relentlessly did its job pursuing terrorists'' before the Sept. 11 attacks but was hampered by lack of resources and political will.
Mr. Freeh said it took the attacks in New York City and Washington to make others see the danger posed by Al Qaeda.
A Congressional inquiry into 9/11 found that F.B.I. headquarters had only one full-time agent focused on Al Qaeda, and that much of the agency's attention was devoted to overseas attacks, like the October 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole in Yemen.
``The Al Qaeda threat was the same on Sept. 10 and Sept. 12,'' Mr. Freeh wrote. ``Nothing focuses a government quicker than a war.''
He pointed out that the F.B.I. expanded its overseas legal attachÀe offices from 19 to 44 during his tenure, which ended three months before 9/11, and increased the prominence of joint terrorism task forces that include personnel from other agencies.
Terrorism and the war against Al Qaeda were not even an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign, he asserted, while conceding that more could have been done to protect the nation.
``As F.B.I. director, I share in that responsibility,'' he wrote.
In a statement posted at www.9-11commission.gov, the official Web site of the independent, bipartisan panel, its chairman, Thomas H. Kean, said the hearing today and on Wednesday ``will focus on four important questions.''
They are, Mr. Kean said: ``How was our government structured before 9/11 to address the terrorist threat inside the United States? What was the threat in 2001 and our government's response to it? How did the intelligence community address the threat? What reforms have been taken since 9/11 to respond to the terrorist threat inside the United States, and what have these reforms achieved?''
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Staff Report Portrays a Divided and Backward Pre-9/11 F.B.I.
April 13, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/politics/13CND-FBI.html?hp
WASHINGTON, April 13 - In the years before Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was almost at war with itself over how to deal with the threat of terrorism, an investigative unit said today, describing the bureau as torn by internal strife and shackled by woefully outmoded computers.
The F.B.I. leadership, traditionally preoccupied with statistics on arrests and convictions, did not reward good work in fields like counterterrorism and counterintelligence, the investigative unit said. Indeed, those areas, which by definition generally led to fewer prosecutions, "were viewed as backwaters," the inquiry found.
And the F.B.I.'s primary computer system for managing information was "designed using 1980's technology already obsolete when installed in 1995," the inquiry said. It said that, because the agency's computers were obsolete, F.B.I. people could not communicate adequately with outsiders - or with one another.
"In short, analysts didn't know what they didn't know," said the staff of the bipartisan commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many of the staff's conclusions, released today in a document titled "Law Enforcement, Counter-terrorism and Intelligence Collection in the United States Prior to 9/11," have been reported before, or at least hinted at.
But the document offered fresh examples of intelligence analysts bumping up against frustration within the bureaucracy. The panel staff said it had found instances of "poorly qualified administrative personnel" being promoted to positions as analysts as rewards. Meanwhile, those analysts who were truly well qualified were often diverted to ordinary criminal cases, or even treated as "uber-secretaries," reduced to answering the telephones.
The release of the document coincided with an especially important day in the work of the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. The panel was hearing former F.B.I. Director Louis J. Freeh today; it was to hear testimony later today from Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Attorney General Janet Reno and others.
Mr. Freeh, F.B.I. director from September 1993 to June 2001, told the commission today that he and the F.B.I. did everything possible to address the peril of terrorism, given the resources at his command. But he was facing tough questioning from members of the commission, whose chairman is former Gov. Thomas H. Kean of New Jersey, a Republican. The co-chairman is former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, a Democrat from Indiana.
Mr. Freeh is well known for his personal aversion to computers, although the staff report did not pursue whether those feelings permeated the F.B.I. culture and helped to put the bureau on a slow track in the age of instant information.
A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft has already offered a defense of the attorney general, asserting that neither the F.B.I. nor the Central Intelligence Agency made sufficiently clear before the Sept. 11 attacks that terrorists might strike within the United States, instead of overseas.
Like previous reports issued by the commission staff, the one released today told a story of bureaucratic choices that seem, in retrospect at least, to have been questionable. And despite the deliberately understated language, it stirred haunting questions of what might have been.
The commission staff said it was ready to revise its conclusions, if warranted. And it noted that the F.B.I. had several "success stories" on its record, including the arrests and convictions of the men who carried out the first attack on the World Trade Center, in 1993.
Nevertheless, the commission staff said, it found an F.B.I. culture in which agents built information in support of their own cases, not as part of a broader, strategic effort. "Given the poor state of the F.B.I.'s information systems, field agents usually did not know what investigations agents in their own office, let alone in other field offices, were working on," the staff said.
Because of this balkanized culture and a reluctance, or inability, to share information, "it was almost impossible to develop an understanding of the threat from a particular international terrorist group, the staff said.
While the F.B.I. created a Counterterrorism Center and made other organization changes in the 1990's, including the creation of a unit focused solely on Osama bin Laden, it was still hampered by two "fundamental challenges," the staff said.
One was the bureau's existing agenda, which regarded illegal drugs, white-collar crime, organized crime and other more traditional areas as its real mission. The other was "a legal issue that became a management challenge as well," namely the "wall" between intelligence-gathering and criminal prosecutions, a barrier that has yet to be negotiated.
Some findings in the staff report may remain open to interpretation. For instance, former Attorney General Reno, interviewed by the staff before today's testimony, said that Mr. Freeh "seemed unwilling to shift resources to terrorism from other areas such as violent crime."
But Mr. Freeh told the staff that he remembered "begging and screaming" for money to improve the F.B.I.'s information technology, although it is by no means clear that he had counter-terrorism entirely in mind.
As for choices and priorities that are sad in retrospect, there was Mr. Ashcroft's rejection of a request from Acting F.B.I. Director Thomas Pickard, who took over from Mr. Freeh in 2001, for more money in the budget for "counterterrorism enhancements."
Mr. Ashcroft made that decision on Sept. 10, 2001. As of the morning of the next day, only about 1,300 agents, or 6 percent of the F.B.I.'s people, were assigned to counterterrorism.
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Suspicious Powders, Packages Keep FBI Unit on Edge
By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6638-2004Apr12?language=printer
The mail facility at Reagan National Airport shut down for 90 minutes last month after a grainy, green powder spilled from a package from Ethiopia, raising fears of a biological hazard. It turned out to be ground-up dried peas.
The Columbia Heights Metro station was shut down recently after something mushy was spotted there. It was chicken and brown rice. A few weeks ago, traces of a white substance were found on a package at the Pentagon, triggering concern. An analysis showed that the mystery material was Alfredo sauce.
Ever since the deadly anthrax mailings 21/2 years ago, the FBI's National Capital Response Squad has responded to thousands of false alarms involving suspicious substances or packages. Lately, the squad has handled an average of five to 10 incidents a week, but the numbers can jump much higher, often depending on events at home or abroad.
"In the very beginning, it was hard not to think every time you roll out the door that it's the end of the world," said FBI supervisor Jim Rice, who heads the squad. "Then you get a lot of historical perspective. We still treat each one like it's real until we prove that it's not."
Interviews with Rice and other agents on the squad provided a look at the challenges they face in Washington, where hypersensitivity over unfamiliar substances and unattended packages can lead to evacuations, road closures and traffic jams. Nowhere in the nation are the scares more prevalent than here.
Nearly every case has turned out to be a false alarm -- a result of suspicions that proved unfounded or a hoax. Agents still are attempting to determine how traces of ricin wound up in a letter-opening machine in the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). The traces were discovered Feb. 2, and squad members spent days at the scene. No one was harmed, but the episode was a reminder of the importance of this often tedious work.
The squad, created in 1999, more than doubled in size in fall 2001 to handle the spike in calls generated by fears about anthrax. It now has 15 agents, all of whom are hazmat specialists, bomb or crime evidence technicians or SWAT team members.
In most instances, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force, made up of members of 24 federal and local agencies, goes along and works on the follow-up investigation.
White Powder Alert
It's shortly before 9 a.m. on a recent Friday. On the fourth floor of the FBI's Washington field office, just blocks from the U.S. Capitol, some agents are at their desks, working on investigations of suspicious incidents.
A call comes in.
An agent from the National Capital Response Squad grabs a marker and begins writing on an oversize pad on an easel:
"White powder letter at the Navy yard. Threatens potus. Appears to be jail mail."
"Potus" is shorthand for "president of the United States." "Jail mail" is correspondence from a prisoner. Two agents head out to examine the letter, which initially aroused suspicion at a government mail-processing facility in Washington. It was then secured in a protective container and brought to the Washington Navy Yard in Southeast for further examination.
The D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services hazmat team, already on the scene, does field tests for biological hazards, radiation and explosives. Everything comes up negative. The team briefs FBI agents, who keep a distance from the letter for safety reasons.
The agents then call FBI headquarters to tell what they found. The case is not over: FBI officials decide that the threat to the president calls for a criminal investigation. They notify a Secret Service agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the probe begins.
The agents take the powdery material to a lab to confirm that it is not hazardous.
Jail mail is common, agents say, and often contains talcum powder, plaster or dried toothpaste. According to the agents, inmates in state prisons sometimes send the letters hoping a federal conviction will land them in a federal prison with better conditions. In other cases, prisoners send threatening letters and sign the names of enemies they want to get in trouble.
Kevin Finnerty, an agent on the Capital Response Squad, said prisoners typically would not have the expertise or the materials to send letters laced with anthrax. But he said all threats must be taken seriously.
Prisoners are not the only ones known to pull hoaxes. Finnerty recalled an episode in which someone left a package in the Friendship Heights Metro station. The unknown culprit wanted to write "anthrax" on the package, but kept misspelling the word and crossing it out.
Afterward, Finnerty said, some agents quipped: "If you can't spell anthrax, you probably can't make it."
Response Squad agents estimated that 40 percent of the calls they handle involve hoaxes. Staging such a hoax in a mass-transit system carries a maximum prison term of five years to life, depending on the circumstances, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Sending a threatening letter to a federal official carries a maximum prison term of 10 years.
Finnerty and other agents said that it is necessary to respond to false alarms but that their time could be better spent.
"I think it's a frustration for the police, the fire department, other agencies and us," Finnerty said. "You can be working on something very important when you have to go out and investigate, and then you have to do a follow up investigation. That eats up manpower."
Paste From 'Planet Earth'
At 12:05 p.m. on that recent Friday, the squad's phone rings again. An agent writes on the big pad: "letter containing brown paste to u.s. patent office; talks about C-4 at Navy yard; FPS; dcfd-hazmat on the scene."
The notation means that a threatening letter, addressed to the Patent Office, talks about explosives, that the letter is at the Navy Yard, that the Federal Protective Service has been alerted and that the fire department's hazmat crew has arrived at the scene.
Two agents rush to the Navy Yard and again find no evidence of a terrorist plot. The address on the large yellow envelope includes the words "Planet Earth" and "Milky Way." The "brown paste" appears to be a smushed sandwich or banana bread. The letter contains no reference to explosives, as originally thought. But this call, too, requires some follow-up.
Agents locate and interview the sender, who has some mental health problems but is deemed harmless. No criminal case is opened.
Many Types of False Alarm
The FBI squad does not go out every time a suspicious substance is reported. The U.S. Capitol Police hazmat team responds to more of these calls, an average of three to 10 a day on Capitol Hill. Most are cleared without summoning the FBI, said Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer.
Some fears are relatively easy to dispel: cleanser in a restroom, white powder near a box of powdered doughnuts, creamer near a coffee maker, a crushed mint or candy on a subway platform, talcum powder in jail mail. In one case, a local real estate broker sent sand in a mass mailing to promote beachfront property.
Still, agent Rice said, the recent discovery of ricin in Frist's office was a stark reminder that "the next real one is around the corner. You know it's coming. This is a place that knows it's a bull's-eye."
In the fall of 2001, after anthrax-laced letters killed five people, including two Washington postal workers, and sickened 17 others, the pace was much more hectic. The squad was inundated with thousands of calls about suspected anthrax. Some were handled by phone, Rice said.
A typical call, he said, was the one he got from a person who said something to the effect: "There's white powder. I'm scared to death."
"Where is it?" Rice asked.
"Next to the doughnuts."
"Can you describe it?"
"It looks like the white powder on the doughnuts"
"Well, have you had some of your doughnuts?"
"Yeah."
"It's your sugar."
Not all cases are solved so easily. On March 2, for example, six FBI agents at the postal facility at National Airport were puzzled by the dry, green substance that spewed from a package.
"The powder was everywhere. It got on other mail. It got on the floor," recalled one of the agents, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used.
"I was sitting on the scene thinking: 'If we can't explain this away, cancel my dinner reservations. This is not going to make a lot of people happy. It's going to be a long night, and it's going to become a much bigger deal.' "
The airport fire department conducted field tests, which turned out negative. But because field tests are not regarded as foolproof, the squad went a step further.
Two agents went to an apartment on 16th Street NW, to which the package was addressed. A man answered the door. He seemed a little surprised to see the FBI, one agent recalled. "Yes," he said, he was expecting a package from relatives in Ethiopia and explained that the product, made of ground-up peas, was used to season sauteed vegetables and chicken.
Complicating their work, agents said, it is not uncommon for hazmat squads to get false positives for dangerous substances in field tests.
On Nov. 6, field tests conducted by a private contractor showed traces of anthrax spores at the mail-sorting facility at Anacostia Naval Station. Consequently, postal officials closed 11 mail-handling and post offices in the Washington area the next day. But subsequent tests at the Naval Medical Research Center in Silver Spring were negative.
Other cities with high numbers of false alarms for hazardous substances are New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago and Birmingham, the FBI said.
FBI agent Stephen Fogarty of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington, who has responded to many scares, said: "We go to so many that a lot of times you think, 'Not another one.' I think sometimes you have to be cognizant that we may see all these strange things every day" but the public does not.
Authorities sometimes take extra precautions such as evacuating buildings, as they did at Union Station on April 5 when someone spotted an unattended backpack that smelled of petroleum. Inside was a leaking can of lighter fluid.
In most instances, the local police or fire departments decide which streets to close or which buildings to evacuate, sometimes with advice from the FBI. Agents say the measures may inconvenience the public. But they say the security steps are necessary.
Rice said he sees no end in sight to the false alarms.
"People are worried," he said. "People are scared because they see Madrid on the news. They see what goes on. They see stuff in Pakistan."
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FBI Probes About 40 Abductions in Iraq
April 13, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Kidnappings.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- About 40 foreign hostages from 12 countries are being held by Iraqi insurgents, and the FBI is investigating the abductions, a coalition spokesman said Tuesday.
Dan Senor, the spokesman for the U.S.-led administration, said it would not negotiate with ``terrorists or kidnappers'' to gain the hostages' release. He would not comment on efforts to free the captives.
``The FBI is working with coalition forces and Iraqi security forces to seek out the hostage-takers and the hostages,'' Senor said. ``We have a number of other law enforcement agencies from the international community who are working on this.''
Four Italians working as private security guards for a U.S. company in Iraq were reported missing Tuesday, and an Arab satellite TV broadcaster said they were kidnapped.
Nine Americans are also missing, including a Mississippi man whose abductors have threatened to kill him.
Earlier Tuesday, eight employees of a Russian energy company were released unharmed after being seized by masked gunmen who broke into their house in Baghdad. They spent less than a day in captivity, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
The Italian foreign ministry said its civilians worked for the U.S.-based DTS Security company and were first reported missing Monday. The Italian news agency AGI and other reports said the four were taken hostage in Fallujah, 35 miles west of Baghdad.
At DTS Security in northern Virginia, operations director Jim Villegas told The Associated Press, ``We have no personnel in Iraq.''
Al-Jazeera broadcast a video showing four Italians sitting on the floor holding their passports. Behind them were men with machine guns.
The kidnappers demanded the Italian government -- and specifically Premier Silvio Berlusconi -- issue an apology for Italy's insult to Islam and Muslims, Al-Jazeera said. They also want Italy, which has 3,000 troops in Iraq, to withdraw according to a specific timetable.
There was no immediate reaction from Berlusconi. European Affairs Minister Rocco Buttiglione told the ANSA news agency that there would be no negotiations with ``terrorists,'' although he added that Italy will do ``everything possible to guarantee the safety of the kidnapped Italian citizens.''
Italy has been a strong supporter of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. It did not send combat troops, but a contingent based in the southern town of Nasiriyah is helping with reconstruction.
The abduction of the five Ukrainians and three Russians at their residence Monday appeared to be a new tactic by kidnappers. All the past seizures have come on the roads, with civilians whisked away after their vehicles come under attack.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said no one had claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and no demands were known to have been made prior to the release. The men work for an energy company restoring a power plant near Baghdad.
The Foreign Ministry said the captives had returned to their residence in Baghdad and none was hurt.
Ukraine has 1,600 troops helping keep security in southern Iraq. Russia has none and opposed the U.S.-led war.
``Abductions of foreign citizens in Iraq have resulted from a sharp escalation of tensions in the country, for the security of which the coalition authorities are now responsible,'' he said.
The U.S. military said two American soldiers and seven employees of U.S. contractor Kellogg, Brown & Root were missing after their convoy was ambushed Friday near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad.
Only one, Thomas Hamill, a 43-year-old truck driver from Macon, Miss., is known to have been abducted. His captors have threatened to kill and mutilate him unless U.S. troops ended their assault on the city of Fallujah. The deadline passed Sunday with no word on his fate.
The Defense Department identified the two missing soldiers as Sgt. Elmer C. Krause, 40, of Greensboro, N.C., and Pfc. Keith M. Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio. Both were assigned to the Army Reserves 724th Transportation Company, Bartonville, Ill.
Seven Chinese men abducted in Fallujah on Sunday were freed a day later in good health and good spirits, Beijing said. A brief Foreign Ministry statement from Beijing said the men were released to an Iraqi religious group, which passed them on to diplomats.
China hasn't contributed troops in Iraq and it was unclear why the seven were there. The official Xinhua News Agency described them as villagers who went to the Middle East on their own from a region with a tradition of sending migrants abroad.
In Tokyo, optimism faded Monday that three Japanese civilians abducted last week would be released quickly after a top government spokesman suggested authorities were no longer confident of their safety.
The two aid workers and a photojournalist were being held by a previously unknown group calling itself the ``Mujahedeen Brigades,'' which demanded the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Iraq or it would kill the captives in three days. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has refused to consider such a move, and the deadline passed with no word on the fate of the hostages.
Also Monday, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council said at least 12 foreign hostages have been released. Mohsen Abdul-Hamid did not identify their nationalities or say where they were. A member of his office reached later said the number of those released was unclear.
Earlier, Islamic Clerics Committee spokesman Muthanna Harith said insurgents had released nine hostages of various nationalities, including Turks and Pakistanis. It was not clear if he and Abdul-Hamid were referring to the same hostages, or if the Chinese were included.
The nine were truck drivers for military supply convoys, which have come under heavy attack in recent days by gunmen on the western and southern outskirts of Baghdad.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Govs to salute renewable energy
By Hil Anderson
Los Angeles (UPI)
April 13, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/upi/20040413-15332400.html
Western state governors will dutifully salute the future prospects of renewable energy at their two-day energy summit in New Mexico this week and also tackle the fossil fuel issues that are of greater immediate urgency.
Endless supplies of solar and wind energy remain an alluring vision, but the Western Governors' Association's three-day summit in Albuquerque has a full plate of more-pressing concerns, such as soaring gasoline and natural gas prices as well as the need to expand the region's pipeline and power transmission infrastructures.
"This will be a results-driven summit," New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, the chairman of the WGA and official host of the summit, promised in a statement. "Key leaders from the United States, Canada and Mexico will offer their perspectives on the challenges we face in developing a reliable energy system that protects our environment and is affordable for citizens and businesses."
Richardson, who served as energy secretary in the Clinton administration, has long been an enthusiastic booster of renewable energy, and the notion of building commercial power plants fueled by the West's broiling sun and steady winds will be the topic of various workshops and panel discussions in Albuquerque.
The conventional wisdom, which is also the general thrust of the Bush administration's energy philosophy, is that renewable energy is a worthy goal and may become a significant part of the nation's energy mix some day down the road but that the technology still hasn't developed to the precise point that solar, wind, biomass and other so-called exotic energy sources can be counted on to shoulder a significant share of the nation's increasing energy burden.
Advocates of renewable energy at the meeting are expected to contend that the technology actually has advanced to the point that electricity produced by the sun or wind can be competitive with natural gas power, particularly since natural gas prices have been uncomfortably strong in recent years.
"Energy from traditional fossil resources is usually more predictable than power produced by wind or solar resources, since the availability of these renewable resources varies naturally," said a report on Colorado's energy picture written late last year by Public Policy Consulting. "On the other hand, wind and solar systems have essentially zero fuel cost, so that the price of their electrical output is unaffected by fluctuations in domestic natural gas markets and regional electric power markets."
The fact that such fluctuations in the price of natural gas and the electricity it produces was the genesis of California's electricity crisis in 2000 and 2001 will not be ignored by attendees. The realization that the demand for both gas and electricity is growing steadily also hasn't been lost on government officials -- at either the federal or state levels.
Some of the discussions will focus on the Bush energy plan that seeks a major expansion of access to gas and oil reserves on public lands -- much of which is in the Rocky Mountains -- and more transmission capacity for gas and for electricity being gobbled up, not only on the West Coast, but in the booming areas around Phoenix, Las Vegas and Southern California's Inland Empire region where air conditioning is a dire necessity for the entire populace rather than a luxury for the comfortably well-heeled.
Giving the green light to high-voltage power lines has long been primarily a state responsibility that some critics see as an impediment to the needed expansion of the North American power grid.
"The electricity transmission grid also has evolved into an interstate network. It has become increasingly difficult to obtain necessary siting permits from affected states, which may receive few direct benefits and thus have little incentive to approve new transmission construction," said a recent statement from the industry-supported Edison Electric Institute. "Some state laws may even prohibit approval if regional benefits exceed local benefits."
The power industry is urging that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which will be well represented at the meeting, take over as the ultimate authority for power-line siting so that these roadblocks can be kicked aside and beneficial projects moved forward forthwith.
Governors nationwide, however, have been reticent about handing over to Washington their authority to prevent a major power line from cutting through a pristine state park or a residential neighborhood, or even giving the federal government the power of eminent domain to kick voters out of their homes.
But the influential EEI, among other industry lobbies, sees the removal of as many regulatory roadblocks as possible as the way to avoid power shortages during times of soaring summer demand.
"In order to facilitate the formation of regional electricity markets and meet consumers' needs for reliable power," the group said, "siting processes for new transmission must be reformed."
Also to be discussed is the fact that states will want to retain as much control as possible over the design of the wholesale electricity market in order to prevent a repeat of California's deregulation efforts at the turn of the century.
Another area of growing interest will be the structure of the West's gasoline market.
The huge and influential California market is experiencing pump prices well above $2 per gallon that show no sign of slacking off any time soon. Because California has its own state-mandated formulation, it is largely unable to import gasoline from overseas or even out of the Pacific Northwest; on the flip side, California has to provide so-called conventional gasoline to Arizona and Nevada.
The easiest answer would be for the gas-guzzling Golden State to eventually downgrade to conventional gasoline; however that would presumably undo all of the fine environmental work that the pricey -- yet effective -- California-grade gasoline has accomplished in Los Angeles and other smoggy locales.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is as good a Bush Republican as any governor, has gone so far as to seek a temporary waiver for the state from the federal government's requirement for the use of oxygenate additives such as ethanol -- a sacred cow among the powerful farm lobby and its allies on Capitol Hill.
Schwarzenegger made the request to take some of the heat off pump prices in his state, proving that he and the rest of the western governors may have the national interest at heart when it comes to energy, but still treat their home states as their home turf and aren't willing to let Washington call the shots without question.
----
What role will wind power play in our energy future?
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
E/The Environmental Magazine
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-13/s_22512.asp
Dear EarthTalk: I've been hearing that wind power is going to play a significant role in our energy future. What's the story?
- Dorothy Raffman, Norwalk, Connecticut
Wind energy is zero-emissions energy, a renewable resource that many environmentalists and alternative energy proponents feel is one of our last, best hopes for staving off devastating climate change. According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the average wind turbine can prevent the emission of 1,500 tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Globally, wind energy has grown 500 percent since 1997. In 2003, 8,133 megawatts of wind-generating capacity were installed worldwide, according to a recent joint announcement from AWEA and the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA). This brought the world's total wind power generating capacity to 39,294 megawatts, enough to power 19 million European households, according to EWEA.
World wind leaders include Germany, the United States, Spain, Austria, and India, each with more than 1,000 megawatts. A number of other countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Japan, and Great Britain, are nearing the 1,000-megawatt mark.
In the United States, there are now wind energy installations in almost every state west of the Mississippi and in many Northeastern states. California leads with more than 2,000 megawatts of installed wind energy, followed by Texas with nearly 1,300 megawatts. In total there were nearly 6,400 megawatts of wind power in the United States as of January 2004, enough to power 1.6 million U.S. homes, and up 50 percent from the installed capacity in the United States at the end of 2001, said AWEA.
Offshore wind has enormous growth potential as well. Germany, for instance, recently finalized an agreement to build a 350-megawatt project (with 70 five-megawatt turbines) anchored on the ocean floor off the island of Rügen. In the United States in Massachusetts, the Cape Wind Project hopes to construct a $700 million, 420-megawatt, 130-windmill development that would stretch for five miles off Cape Cod, though it has drawn opposition from some residents, as has the German project, for fears that it will be an eyesore and could harm migrating birds.
Dear EarthTalk: Which are better for the environment: disposable or cloth diapers?
- Barbara Fritts, White Lake, Michigan
The "disposable versus cloth" debate has raged among environmentalists for years. Non-degradable disposable diapers can sit for decades, even centuries, in landfills and require thousands of tons of plastic and hundreds of thousands of trees to manufacture. However, the water and chemicals used to clean cloth diapers and the fossil fuels diaper services consume to transport them suggest that their relative environmental impact could be a wash.
However, modern advances in water- and energy-efficiency in washing machines and dryers have reduced the environmental impact of diaper laundering. Concerned parents should also consider the issue of sewage. The urine and feces in disposable diapers enter landfills untreated, possibly contaminating the ground water supply. Whether cloth diaper waste is flushed down the toilet or removed in the washing machine, that dirty water will enter a sewer system and, most likely, a wastewater treatment plant.
Also, John Shiffert, executive director of the National Association of Diaper Services (NADS), points out that the chlorine byproduct dioxin, a carcinogen, has been found in trace amounts in disposables.
Those concerned about the environment who want the convenience of disposables can try Nature Boy and Girl, which makes a competitively priced, cornstarch-based diaper that can be composted. Using flushable cloth diaper liners, made by Tiny Tush and other companies, means only the thinnest - and messiest - part gets thrown away. Parents who want to use cloth diapers can hire a cleaning service to do the dirty work. Their numbers have rebounded in recent years. Check the yellow pages or contact NADS to locate a service in your area.
Got an environmental question? Mail it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881. Or submit your question at www.emagazine.com or email us at earthtalk@emagazine.com.
-------- energy
Homeowners warm to tankless water heaters
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
By David Bradley,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-13/s_22726.asp
Americans love their hot water. Lots of it. And while tankless water heaters deliver unquenchable supplies of on-demand hot water, many homeowners are warming to other benefits of these appliances: big energy and water savings.
According to a water heater expert, tankless versions can lop 30 percent to 50 percent off water heating costs compared to traditional water heaters. On-demand heating doesn't waste water by allowing the flow to run until warm enough for use.
"A typical 40-gallon heater is like running your car all night in the garage until you drive it," said Peter LaRose of Nelson and Small, a Northeastern U.S. distributor of top-rated Rinnai tankless heaters. "Why have a water heater running when you don't need it? A tankless system uses no energy until you turn on the faucet."
Tank systems guzzle energy nearly all day to maintain a preset temperature. As water cools, the system kicks on to reheat water. The cycle repeats day and night whether anyone is home or not.
And as many morning bathers who are last in line for a shower can attest, a tank water heater often can't keep up with high volume demand for showers, spalike tubs, and whirlpools. LaRose says only about 30 percent of a tank is drawn off before water must be heated again. "It's an illogical way to heat water."
European homes use two or more tankless heaters to offset energy costs several times higher than in North America. But the demand for hot water - and lots of it - makes the U.S. market different.
Tankless heater maker Rinnai now markets a single unit better suited to American homes and American appetites for hot water. The compact natural gas unit is wall mounted inside or outside a home. Sensors detect when a faucet is turned on, forcing water over a thin copper plate heated by 32 small burners. The unit is vented outside.
The compactness of the heater - 18 inches wide by 27 inches high - makes it a space saver. No mechanical room is necessary.
Homeowners use digital keypads to preset water temperatures to various rooms. Control pads are typically installed in laundry rooms, master baths, or kitchens. The keypads resolve safety issues too.
Scalding water is a danger to small children or older adults. Tank systems heat water 130 F or higher, well above the 120 F comfort zone for most showers. Once set, tankless water cannot be heated above the preset limit.
Expect to pay $1,000 to $1,200 for a Rinnai system, including installation. This compares to $200 for the cost of a tank and $300 to $500 for professional installation. Tankless systems are not a do-it-yourself project. Homeowners can visit foreverhotwater.com for more information on dealer networks.
LaRose says beyond energy and water savings, homeowners will save on replacement costs. Tankless systems should last up to 20 years, nearly three to four times longer than tank systems.
"We think within 10 years, tankless systems will be the dominant source of hot water in North America," said LaRose. "As energy costs and water conservation become even bigger issues, homeowners will turn to tankless systems. It's the one responsible way to heat water for the home."
-------- environment
Clear Skies No More for Millions as Pollution Rule Expands
April 13, 2004
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/13/national/13AIR.html?pagewanted=all&position=
SAN ANTONIO, April 8 - More than half the nation's population lives in or around areas that violate clean air standards, according to a list to be released on April 15 by the federal government.
The list is a long-delayed result of federal standards revised in 1997 and will sweep beyond traditional smog-filled metropolises like Houston, Los Angeles and New York to encompass smaller cities like Little Rock, Ark., and Birmingham, Ala., where the air appears relatively clear. In San Antonio, which has begun taking steps to combat air pollution, the local government broadcasts warnings telling children not to play outside even on some days when the skies are azure blue.
Rural communities will be affected along with at least seven national parks, including the Great Smoky Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee, Acadia in Maine and Yosemite in California.
On April 15, the Environmental Protection Agency will release a list of about 500 counties that violate or contribute to violations of ground-level ozone, more than double the number listed under older standards. Ground-level ozone, which is odorless and invisible, is a major component of smog on hot summer days. Prolonged exposure causes the equivalent of sunburn to the lungs.
The revised federal standards have wide economic and environmental implications and the makeup of the list has been the subject of lobbying in Washington. Areas in violation face the loss of federal money for roads. Industrial development can be barred in those areas unless companies prove that they would not make pollution worse.
"A lot of counties feel if they are in, it will have negative impact on their economic development plans," said Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican of Ohio. Like many members of Congress, he said he has been deluged by letters and calls from local officials worried that the revised standards "will cause the loss of jobs, restrict economic growth, discourage plant location and encourage manufacturers to move overseas."
Since passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act, the country's air is significantly cleaner, but scientific research continues to ratchet down the amount of pollution that is considered healthy to breathe. One reason for the dirty-air designations is "to communicate to the residents of the areas that the air they are breathing is not as healthy as our national standards," said Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which makes the determinations.
The new designations are a result of a process that started in 1997 when the Clinton administration tightened standards for ozone and fine particulate soot, which lodges in the lungs and contributes to lung disease, heart attacks and premature death.
The old ozone rules measured peak exposures over one-hour periods. But dozens of studies showed that persistent exposure to low levels of ozone damages the respiratory and immune systems. The tighter standards measure ozone over eight hours.
Industry challenges to the revised standards rose to the Supreme Court, which unanimously rejected the arguments in 2001 and allowed the E.P.A. to begin the multiyear process to determine which areas were in violation. On April 15, the agency will release areas in violation of the ozone standards. In December, it will announce which counties exceed limits for soot.
A number of states contend that the revised standards are so strict that even if their counties drastically reduced their own air emissions, pollution from other states, notably power plant pollution that blows long distances, would still push them into violation.
"There are counties that could take all their cars off the roads, close their factories and clean up their power plants and still not be in attainment," Mr. Leavitt said at a Senate hearing last month. To combat that problem, the agency has proposed reducing pollution from coal-fired plants in the eastern United States by allowing plants to buy and sell the right to emit sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, with a lowering of overall pollution limits over time.
Almost 300 counties are expected to be deemed in violation of the revised ozone rules on Thursday. But about 200 neighboring counties will face restrictions because they are considered contributors to the ozone pollution in the counties that violate the rules. In all, about 160 million people will live in areas affected by the revised standards, up from 110 million affected by the old rules.
Many states and locales are reviewing strategies that would intimately affect how people live - from cutting speed limits by 5 miles per hour, to discouraging house painting during summer months, to giving tax breaks to businesses that encourage telecommuting.
"It will underscore vividly that almost all of our activities during the day directly or indirectly contribute to air pollution and smog levels," said William Becker, the executive director of the State and Territorial Air Pollution Program Administrators and the Association of Local Air Pollution Control Officials.
States will have three years to come up with detailed plans on how they would reduce the two main ingredients of ground-level ozone: nitrogen oxides, which are emitted through combustion, and volatile organic compounds, gases that evaporate from gasoline and paints.
Actions taken by some 30 metropolitan areas, including San Antonio, offer an early look at the kind of measures that will be adopted by states and cities over the next decade. These areas, which are in violation of the revised standards generally by slim margins, have signed agreements with the E.P.A. to reduce pollution early to avoid some of the regulatory consequences.
In San Antonio, where tractor-trailers, Ford F-150 pickup trucks and chunky S.U.V.'s ring the city on the shimmering highways, local officials are looking for ways large and small to nibble away at air pollution.
They are keen on maintaining a healthy-air designation, believing it helped them attract an $800 million Toyota plant last year while Dallas, a competitor, had additional regulatory burdens from clean-air violations.
San Antonio has asked refineries to reformulate gasoline to lower car pollution. School districts have pushed the start of the academic year after the hottest parts of August, in part to reduce the need for air-conditioning and the pollution from electricity generation that produces it. Schools also are organizing students to walk to and from school in groups with parental chaperons to cut back on cars using the roads and idling in front of schools.
Some companies are asking employees to bring lunch or eat in company cafeterias to cut down on traffic during the hottest part of the day. Some businesses are discouraging use of drive-through lanes, asking customers to park and come inside.
"We are looking for small habit changes that people can keep up over a lifetime," said Dorothy Birch, who manages the ozone outreach programs for the Alamo Area Council of Governments. "There is no crumb too small."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Flats meeting Wednesday in Broomfield
By RICHARD VALENTY,
April 13, 2004
Colorado Daily Staff Writer
http://www.coloradodaily.com/articles/2004/04/13/news/news04.txt
LeRoy Moore, consultant to Boulder's Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center (RMPJC), has been through years of public process regarding the cleanup of radioactive contamination at Rocky Flats.
On Wednesday, Moore will go through the process again. Citizens are invited to a meeting called the "Rocky Flats Cleanup Availability Session" since it is designed to make state and federal officials "available" to the public. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at the Broomfield City Hall.
A panel made up of representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will give brief presentations, then answer citizens' questions about possible future uses of the Flats site.
According to session facilitator John Huyler, a panel probably made up of David Abelson, Rocky Flats Coalition of Local Governments executive director, representatives from both the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and the Rocky Flats Citizen Advisory Board, and Moore will also give presentations and answer questions.
Huyler said "at least half" of the meeting time will be reserved for citizen question-and-answer sessions.
"It's an important opportunity to have an exchange about things that really matter to people," said Moore. "It's fascinating that the issue about what the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service is proposing has become enormously controversial. The community is quite divided over it."
According to current plans, the former Rocky Flats plutonium trigger manufacturing plant is scheduled to become the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. Kaiser-Hill Company -the site's cleanup operator - and DOE are performing a site cleanup which is scheduled to be completed Dec. 15, 2006.
If CDPHE and EPA determine the cleanup is sufficient, part of the Flats site will then be transferred from DOE to Fish & Wildlife control for operation as a refuge.
Fish & Wildlife is currently proposing four different alternative use plans, and favors Alternative "B," which will allow some human recreational uses on the site. The City of Boulder and RMPJC favor Alternative "C," which would bar recreation for at least 15 years and would require Fish & Wildlife to perform "ecological restoration" on the site.
"Alternative 'C' wouldn't allow hiking, biking, horseback riding or hunting on the Flats site," said Moore. "It allows only accompanied walks from the west gates of Rocky Flats to the overlook of Lindsay Ranch (a historic ranch on site). Because people must be accompanied, they wouldn't be running off into the surrounding environment and stirring up the dust."
According to Moore, people should be wary of using the Flats for recreation because of the possibility that the cleanup may not remove 100 percent of the contamination from the ground surface.
"Plutonium in miniscule quantities, too small to see, can be dangerous," said Moore. "Stirring up the dust could make it possible for someone to inhale or ingest a speck of plutonium. Once inside the body, it continues to bombard the surrounding cells, and in 20-30 years, that may result in cancer."
Moore said he began studying Rocky Flats issues in 1979 as a nuclear disarmament activist, but soon learned that public health issues were also of great concern.
"Rocky Flats had become a big issue because there had been fires and accidents that had released contamination into the environment," said Moore. "I became a serious student, trying to learn about radiation, especially from plutonium, and its health effects."
For example, in May 1969, a plutonium fire broke out at Rocky Flats, and soil tests after the accident found radioactive cesium-137 in samples up to 31 times background level, according to a passage in "A Citizen's Guide to Rocky Flats" by Marcia Klotz.
Still, representatives of Jefferson County and the cities of Arvada, Broomfield and Westminster favor Alternative "B" along with Fish & Wildlife.
Dean Rundle, Fish & Wildlife refuge manager for the Rocky Flats project, says his agency is taking public comment in favor of and opposed to "B" very seriously.
"It's not a done deal since the public comment process is not over," said Rundle. "We've received a lot of comments, both verbally at hearings and some very extensive and well-thought-out written comments from a diversity of individuals and organizations. There's no doubt in my mind that we will make some changes based on the input we got during this comment period."
Wednesday's meeting could be one of the last chances for the public to comment verbally, since the Fish & Wildlife comment period ends April 26.
Rundle said the final decision documents on the refuge plans are required to be signed by the end of December 2004.
Moore said that he still thinks well-stated public comments could change or at least delay plans to allow human recreational access.
"I believe in the integrity of public process," said Moore. "If I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't go through with it. I hope it's (alternative "B") not a done deal. One of the reasons they're having this meeting is to respond to the unhappiness in the community over what they're talking about."
To get to the meeting from Boulder, take U.S. 36 to the Broomfield exit, turn left, take a right at Midway, turn right at Main Street, and turn left on 1st Street. The address is One DesCombes Drive.
--------
Star to welcome out Vanunu
By Ian McKinnon in London
April 13, 2004
UK Sunday Times
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,9264098%255E2703,00.html
WHEN the stocky figure of Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's nuclear whistleblower, walks out through the forbidding gates of Shikma prison into the midday sun on Wednesday next week, British actress Susannah York will be there to embrace him.
The two have never met, but she will be among the welcoming throng of those who fought for Vanunu while he languished behind bars for 18 years -- almost 12 of them in solitary confinement -- after being convicted of treason and espionage for revealing Israel's secret nuclear weapons program.
After more than a decade of exchanging increasingly intimate letters, the two will finally hold one another beneath the razor-wire coils, sentry towers and forbidding walls of the high-security jail in Ashkelon.
"I feel there's a real bond between us that just became stronger and stronger," said York, 62.
"I feel he's a friend for life. I really, really like him, quite apart from what he has done. I'm sure I'll be very emotional when I finally see him."
Vanunu, now 50, was a middle-ranking technician at Israel's secret Dimona nuclear plant. He signed a contract promising secrecy when he took the job, but believed his work would be for civil, not military, purposes.
At the time, Israel was pursuing a policy of "nuclear ambiguity" and would not admit to having any weapons. But Vanunu soon discovered that it did, on a huge scale -- and the 60 photographs he secretly took during nine years at the Negev desert installation revealed plutonium spheres used for nuclear triggers, and led experts to conclude Israel possessed a stockpile of up to 200 nuclear bombs.
"He was pretty apolitical when he started working at Dimona but that changed as he realised what was going on there," says York. "He felt that in a democracy, people had the right to know what was being done in their name. He is a man of principle and ideas -- we should admire him."
Vanunu left Dimona -- and Israel -- with his two rolls of film and moved to Australia, where he became a Christian, which many Israelis see as another betrayal.
It was after a discussion at the Anglican church where he converted that Vanunu confided in a Colombian friend, who approached The Sunday Times in London with his story.
Peter Hounam, the reporter who flew out to meet him at the Sydney Hilton hotel, remembers Vanunu "shaking with fear" but convinced he was doing the right thing.
"I was immediately impressed by him," says Hounam. "He was unassuming, cautious, careful and courteous. I had been led to believe he was a professor or a top scientist but he didn't pretend to be anything other than what he was."
After 11 days of briefing in Australia, Vanunu flew to London while the newspaper checked the details. As several weeks passed he became frustrated and was reluctant to be accompanied 24 hours a day.
Walking across Leicester Square one day, his eye was caught by Cindy, an attractive American student. They started talking, then went on a number of dates.
Hounam was alarmed. "How do you know she isn't a Mossad agent?" he asked Vanunu. A little later, Cindy suggested a trip to visit her sister in Italy, and on September 30 they flew to Rome together.
Two Israeli agents were waiting at her apartment. They wrestled Vanunu to the ground, chained him up and plunged a syringe into his arm. This month, he revealed in a letter that he had tried to crash the car that was used to smuggle him to a commando boat lying off the Italian coast.
"I was assaulted by two men who drugged me with shots," he recalled.
"Under the influence of drugs I went with them to the car. In the car I came to and tried to cause an accident, but they attacked me again and drugged me."
The Israelis sentenced Vanunu to 18 years' jail. During the first 12 years he was held in solitary confinement and allowed only one 30-minute visit a month, where he could speak -- usually to his brother Asher -- through a metal grille. Other than guards shoving food his way and guiding him to his solo daily turn in the exercise yard, there was no human contact.
York became interested in Vanunu's case and began writing to him after being asked to read a poem at a benefit dinner for him in 1992. "He had stopped writing to anyone for quite a long time," she said. "My letters seemed to break the sound barrier, because he wrote back to me and resumed his correspondence with others."
By that time, Vanunu had served six years in solitary.
"He explained to me, 'It's wonderful to hear what you're doing and what you're thinking'. I suppose it was just the minutiae of my, in some ways, rather ordinary life that he liked. I told him of my work, my plays and my children. They were often quite family-orientated letters."
Censorship meant letters between them took three or four months to arrive. "I can't wait to see him," York said. "I haven't thought at all about what I'll say to him. I think I'll just give him an enormous hug. I'll be very emotional. I think he's an extraordinarily brave person."
Few Israelis await the release so eagerly. It will focus unwelcome attention on Israel's nuclear arsenal, and there are fears Vanunu could reveal more. He has applied to give up his Israeli citizenship, but is likely to be denied a passport.
Leaked stories have softened up the Israeli public for tough release conditions. They have highlighted Vanunu's conversion to Christianity, his anti-Judaism and his anger against Israel. He has also adopted a Christian name and is known as John or Johnny Crossman.
A smear campaign seems unnecessary. Jacob Mizrahi, 66, from the Israeli town of Rishon Letzion, reflected the view of many when he said: "He wants to sell us out and expose our secrets. No way should he go free."
Yossi Harush, 58, a former inmate who befriended Vanunu, said he burnt an Israeli flag, smashed a glass of sabbath ceremonial wine and celebrated suicide bombings. "This man burns with hatred for Israel," he said.
The Anglican bishop in Jerusalem has offered sanctuary but Vanunu has told York he wants to take the first plane to the US, find a "life partner", and travel. "His letters are talking about the future, not of the past or revenge," she said. "His preoccupation is not with the conditions of his imprisonment but with ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction."
York will remain in Israel for just a day after Vanunu's release. On April 23 she stages her solo show The Loves of Shakespeare's Women in Bristol. It is dedicated to Vanunu.
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