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NUCLEAR
Liberian fighters handing in arms
South Africa still divided by race, poverty
Cheney Pushes Asian Nations on N. Korea
Cheney Warns of Asian Nuclear Arms Race
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
EC: Sellafield must clean up nuclear waste pond
Cheney Urges China to Press North Korea on A-Bombs
Radioactive materials disappearing in Iraq
UN nuclear watchdog says material, buildings gone missing in Iraq
Iraqi Nuclear Gear Found in Europe
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Has No Regrets
Cheney fears NKorea will give terrorists nuclear knowhow
Preparations for next round of NKorea nuclear talks "stalled"
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
Seoul must push U.S. on nuclear issues
Old weapons, new terror worries
Hearings to probe impact of weapons lab
Researcher: Open Rocky Flats Slowly To Public
DOE Eliminates Oversight Group's Funding
Mottel joins nuclear council
Kerry Says Bush's Stubbornness Hurts Troops
Kerry debates anti-war activist in New York
MILITARY
China demands US to clarify arms sale report
7 states flout ban on arms to China
Cheney stands firm on U.S. weapons for Taiwan
U.S. teams cross DMZ to search for remains of Korean War MIAs
Government Considers New Smallpox Vaccine
EADS set to win giant NATO contract for surveillance aircraft: report
Cheney Warns China About Hong Kong
Purported Bin Laden'Truce' Is Rejected
Tehran says United States sought its help in Iraq
Iranians in Iraq to Help in Talks on Rebel Cleric
Iranians in Iraq to Aid in Talks; Tehran Diplomat Is Killed
Marshes revive in postwar Iraq, but old ways gone
Al-Sadr agrees to talks with U.S.
Bush Pirates Shipwrecked in Iraq
U.S. Denies Raid on Najaf Is Imminent
Attacks Test Truce in Fallujah
Marines Use Low-Tech Skill to Kill 100 in Urban Battle
U.S. REJECTS ISRAEL INVASION OF GAZA
Bush Backs Israel on West Bank
Palestinians Assail Bush for Backing Israeli Plan
Sharon Coup: U.S. Go-Ahead
Israel Orders Freeze on Settlement Funds
Iraqis Comb Northern Hills for Unexploded Mines
NATO mission in Afghanistan exposes chink in bloc's armour
Musharraf May Not Give Up His Army Post
Russian jet lands in Baghdad to evacuate Russian, CIS citizens
Tenet describes 5-year plan for U.S. intelligence
CIA failed to act on pilot-school alert
Envoy Urges U.N.-Chosen Iraqi Government
Return to U.S. For 20,000 Troops Halted
Full text: 'Bin Laden tape'
U.S. Reporters Unable to Probe Killings in Fallujah
Incredible Credibility
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Secret Surveillance Warrants Up After 9/11
Al Qaeda Unchecked for Years, Panel Says
Sept. 11 Panel Cites C.I.A. for Failures in Terror Case
9/11 Panel Comments Freely (Some Critics Say Too Freely)
Saudi Student's Trial Opens in Idaho
Convictions Dropped for Muslim Chaplain at Guantánamo Bay
C.I.A. Says Voice on Tape Likely Bin Laden
Tape Said to Be From bin Laden Offers 'Truce' to Europe
ENERGY
Clean Power Focus of North American Energy Summit
Renewable Energy Promotes Job Growth Better Than Fossil Fuels
OTHER
San Francisco Recycles, Reuses Majority of Waste
Rat-Poison Makers Stall Safety Rules
Vegetable Fiber Tied to Lower Prostate Cancer Risk
ACTIVISTS
Curbs on freedom for Israeli nuclear arms spy
Three Japanese Hostages in Iraq Freed
Idaho's nuclear watchdog celebrates 25 years with symposium at BSU
Nepal Police Detain 1,300 Protesters
U.S. Vets, Families March For End To War In Iraq
AN ANGRY MAN TALKS ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- africa
Liberian fighters handing in arms
Thursday, 15 April, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3628253.stm
A rebel hands in his rocket-propelled grenade to a Bangladeshi peacekeeper The long delayed disarmament process in Liberia has resumed after a two month information campaign.
The six-month long exercise begins in Gbarnga, a stronghold of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).
It was postponed in February after rows over how much cash fighters would receive for their guns.
The UN expects some 40,000 fighters in Liberia to hand in their weapons in return for about $300 each.
UN special envoy Jacques Klein said the rebels are now fully behind the process.
Empty rifles
"Rather than do five or six camps at the same time and overwhelm the system, let's start with one," said Mr Klein ahead of the re-launch of the exercise.
The BBC's Jonathan Paye-Layleh in Monrovia says the former combatants and their leaders have expressed commitment to the process.
UN military chief in Liberia, General Daniel Opande and Asha Conneh, the wife of Lurd rebel leader Sekou Conneh, toured Lofa country, the headquarters of the rebels on Wednesday, to assess preparations for the exercise.
"The fighters are ready to disarm and no problem will be there this time," Mrs Conneh told the BBC's Network Africa.
The UN peacekeepers aim to disarm some 250 fighters a day during the exercise.
The former fighters will still get a two-part, $300 stipend, food rations and the prospect of vocational training after handing over their guns.
Fighters handing over their weapons must first turn in ammunition and will only be allowed into a cantonment site with an empty rifle.
The UN has some 14,000 peacekeepers in Liberia.
Last year, a national reconciliation government took over following a peace deal and the departure of former President Charles Taylor into exile in Nigeria.
----
South Africa still divided by race, poverty
April 15, 2004
By Alexandra Zavis
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040414-102543-7673r.htm
JOHANNESBURG - On the fringes of the bright lights and skyscrapers of South Africa's "city of gold," tin shacks scattered among dusty mine dumps testify to the crumbling hopes of millions for a better life after apartheid's end.
Ten years after all-race elections sealed the end of a regime that brutally enforced segregation, the country remains divided into two nations.
Most of the 10 percent white minority still inhabit a world of California-like suburbs and shopping malls. Most blacks remain trapped in cluttered townships and isolated villages, many without running water or electricity.
"They say you get all the money in Johannesburg, the place of gold," Grace Obose, 45, said as she filled two jerrycans at a communal faucet and hauled them home in a wheelbarrow. "But there is no gold, only tears."
Full of hope, Mrs. Obose moved to Johannesburg with her two sons shortly before the historic election in 1994, when white housewives stood with their black maids and gardeners in long, snaking lines to elect Nelson Mandela as the country's first black president. She worked as a maid, but lost her job when she developed arthritis. She now lives in a leaky shack at the foot of a towering mine dump in a squatter camp optimistically called Jerusalem.
The miseries of poverty and joblessness are compounded by an AIDS epidemic that is killing at least 600 people a day. An estimated 5.3 million of South Africa's 45 million people - more than in any other country - are infected, and President Thabo Mbeki has been criticized internationally for his slow response to the crisis.
There was little doubt that Mr. Mbeki's African National Congress (ANC) would retain its sweeping majority in yesterday's elections.
Robert Maluleke, jobless and living in the Jerusalem shantytown, still remembers the excitement of casting his ballot for the first time. This year, he wasn't sure whether he would bother to vote.
"You see Mbeki," he said, holding up a smiling picture on an election leaflet. "He is laughing at us."
Mr. Mbeki, 61, an economist by training who spent decades in exile, was Mr. Mandela's designated successor as president. But he lacks Mr. Mandela's charisma and common touch and is seen as an intellectual who is detached from ordinary people's problems.
He asks his people to be patient and accentuates the positive. "We have always known that our country's blemishes, produced by more than three centuries of colonialism and apartheid, could not be removed in one decade," Mr. Mbeki recently told South Africans.
Nevertheless, he said, "We have made great advances." The achievements are striking. A new constitution, one of the world's most progressive, has been enacted. The hundreds of racist laws have been scrapped, and three successful national and local elections have been held.
The government has built 1.6 million houses, brought clean water to 9 million more people and delivered electricity to 70 percent of homes. Public schools have been desegregated, and free health care is provided to millions of children.
The ANC, formerly socialist, has revived an ailing economy by controlling spending, reducing debt and lifting trade barriers. The country, formerly an international pariah, now takes a leading role in African affairs.
But South Africa's biggest achievement often is forgotten. Until the end of apartheid, this was a nation wracked by fear and racial violence. Thousands disappeared into detention, and some never were seen again. Shadowy security forces stirred bloody clashes among black political groups. Whites stocked up on food and fuel in expectation of a blood bath once blacks were in power.
Today, South Africa has slipped from world headlines and become a "stable, boring democracy," in the words of government spokesman Joel Netshitenzhe.
"I really don't think anyone thought it would be going as well as it is now," said Nicola Boustred, 34, a white woman walking her dog along the polo field at Johannesburg's exclusive Inanda club. "Ten years ago, a lot of people were leaving, and you felt you were irresponsible if you weren't considering it. Now, I don't feel that way at all."
The club, like the moneyed elite it serves, has changed considerably over the years. Black business leaders now join their white counterparts sipping drinks on the terrace overlooking tidy lawns and a sparkling pool.
Across town, in the dusty townships and squatter camps, it is hard to be so optimistic. Unemployment of more than 30 percent has hit the poorly educated black majority especially hard.
Every day, Mr. Maluleke, 33, and his brother Selby, 25, get up early to hunt for factory work. But on every gate, a sign says: "No work."
The two are among hundreds of thousands of job seekers who have flooded the cities since the lifting of apartheid laws that confined blacks to poor townships and tribal "homelands."
Like Mrs. Obose, they have made a home in Jerusalem, one of the camps on the outskirts of Johannesburg built of scraps of wood, salvaged cardboard and corrugated iron. But there is little of the promised land here.
"Now we should change that name Jerusalem to Babylon," grumbled Selby Maluleke.
-------- asia
Cheney Pushes Asian Nations on N. Korea
TOM RAUM,
Associated Press
Thu, Apr. 15, 2004
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/local/8433081.htm
SEOUL, South Korea - Vice President Dick Cheney challenged Asian powers Thursday to do more to contain North Korea's nuclear program, saying that letting it grow unchecked could spark a new arms race in the region and create a weapons bazaar for terrorists.
"We must see this undertaking through to its conclusion," Cheney told a university audience in Shanghai, China. "Time is not necessarily on our side." He expressed clear frustration with the current diplomatic stalemate before flying to South Korea, his last stop of a weeklong Asia trip.
The speech was carried by China's state television without deletions or blackouts, which U.S. officials took as an encouraging sign of change.
Cheney praised China for setting up six-way talks to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program, but he prodded Chinese leaders to be more aggressive in bringing pressure to bear on Pyongyang.
The six-way talks include the United States, China, Russia, Japan and the two Koreas.
"We'll do our level best to achieve this objective through diplomatic means, and through negotiations. But it is important that we make progress in this area," Cheney said.
He suggested that North Korea represented a double threat - it could stock its own nuclear arsenal and sell weapons to the highest bidder, including al-Qaida and other terror organizations.
"The people of Asia are particularly vulnerable to the threats of (weapons) proliferation," Cheney said. "Many countries that have the means to develop the deadliest weapons have refrained from doing so."
But he said a continued North Korean nuclear threat could persuade other powers in the region to develop their own nuclear weapons, triggering a new arms race across the region "and the likelihood that one day those weapons would be used."
Cheney said recent information gleaned from a top former Pakistani nuclear scientist provided compelling evidence that Pyongyang has an active atomic weapons program.
The reclusive communist government "must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons," Cheney said.
During Cheney's Asia trip, citizens from all three countries he visited - Japan, China and South Korea - were seized by militants in Iraq. Three Japanese hostages were released Thursday. The South Korean and Chinese hostages were freed earlier.
Cheney has engaged in unusually blunt talk in his travels, urging allies with troops in Iraq not to bow to pressure from militants and telling Chinese leaders that U.S. defensive military sales to Taiwan are largely a response to their own military buildup on the Taiwan Strait.
In remarks at Shanghai's Fudan University, almost exactly 20 years after President Reagan spoke on the campus, Cheney praised China's economic advances but pointedly suggested they be coupled with "full freedom of religion, speech, assembly and conscience."
"Prosperous societies ... come to understand that clothing, cars and cell phones do not enrich the soul," he said.
The vice president arrived in South Korea on Thursday shortly before polls closed in parliamentary elections. A liberal party loyal to South Korea's impeached president won the most seats.
The win by the Uri party could result in the crafting of a foreign policy more independent of the United States, South Korea's traditional ally, and the forging of closer ties with the North.
Cheney came seeking South Korea's support on the North Korea nuclear issue and its commitment to a promise to send more than 3,000 troops to Iraq.
He was meeting with South Korea's acting president, Prime Minister Goh Kun, and visiting U.S. troops stationed in Seoul before returning Friday to Washington.
In a question-and-answer period, one student asked Cheney to describe his relationship with President Bush, given that he was often described as "the most powerful vice president in history."
"That's not a question I had anticipated," Cheney said to laughter.
He said the role of the U.S. vice president had evolved over recent years into one of more responsibility. But he said that the vice president's actual authority, other than his constitutional duty to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate, was "based strictly upon your relationship with the president."
"I've been fortunate," he said.
----
Cheney Warns of Asian Nuclear Arms Race
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
April 15, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Cheney-Asia.html
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney warned in China Thursday that failure to contain North Korea's nuclear weapons program could trigger a new arms race that could sweep across Asia.
He was bringing the same message to South Korea, arriving here in the middle of a national election on his final stop on a weeklong tour of the region.
``We have no alternative but to act with diligence,'' Cheney told students at Fudan University in Shanghai, China.
He suggested that North Korea, an impoverished communist country, posed a double threat -- either directly or if it decides to raise cash by selling nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. North Korea's nuclear program is also a top agenda item for Cheney in South Korea, but he arrived here at a challenging time.
Washington is not only looking to Seoul to help revive stalled six-nation nuclear talks with North Korea, but also is counting on South Korea's commitment of more than 3,000 troops for Iraq.
That commitment has been shaken by the recent kidnapping of dozens of foreigners in Iraq, including eight South Korean missionaries who were later released.
Opposition is also growing among many South Koreans to the continued presence of 37,000 U.S. troops here.
Cheney arrived in Seoul just before polls closed on a day in which South Koreans voted in closely contested parliamentary elections that could determine the future of impeached President Roh Moo-hyun and reshape relations with the United States.
The vice president planned to meet Prime Minister Goh Kun, the acting president and visit U.S. troops at Yongsan Garrison in downtown Seoul on Friday before returning to Washington.
Cheney in his speech in Shanghai praised China's leading role in seeking to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs. But he suggested more action was needed.
``We must see this undertaking through to conclusion,'' he said. ``Time is not on our side.''
``The people of Asia are particularly vulnerable to the threats of (weapons) proliferation,'' Cheney said. ``Many countries that have the means to develop the deadliest weapons have refrained from doing so.''
But he said a continued North Korean nuclear threat could persuade other powers in the region to develop their own nuclear weapons, triggering a new arms race across the region ``and the likelihood that one day those weapons would be used.''
Cheney praised China for its breakneck economic growth, but said that ``prosperous societies also come to understand that clothing, cars and cell phones do not enrich the soul.''
``That can only come with full freedom of religion, speech, assembly and conscience,'' Cheney said in the speech. U.S. officials said that the speech was broadcast on China's state television -- without any deletions or blackouts.
Cheney noted that his speech comes 20 years after then President Reagan spoke at the same university ``and expressed the essence of economic and political freedom.''.
In a question-and-answer period, Cheney defended the U.S. policy of providing military equipment to Taiwan such as the recent sale of a sophisticated radar system.
He said that the arms provided to Taiwan were only defensive ones, and that the United States had not changed its opposition to Taiwanese independence despite the recent independence movement on the self-governing island.
``We oppose unilateral action on either side of the (Taiwan) Strait to change things,'' he said. China views Taiwan as a renegade province.
One student asked Cheney to describe his relationship with President Bush, given that he was often described as ``the most powerful vice president in history.
``That's not a question I had anticipated,'' he said to laughter.
He said the role of the U.S. vice president had evolved over recent years into one of more responsibility. But he said that the vice president's actual authority, other than his constitutional duty to cast tie-breaking votes in the Senate, was ``based strictly upon your relationship with the president.''
``I've been fortunate,'' he said.
----
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
By REUTERS
April 15, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-asia-cheney.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in South Korea on Thursday warning of the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region if pressure is not brought to bear on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs.
Cheney, armed with new evidence of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities, is wrapping up a weeklong mission to persuade key Asian allies that the threat from their reclusive neighbor is real and that time may be running out to address it.
Cheney warned in a speech carried uncensored on Chinese state television that North Korea could not only spark a new Asian arms race, but ``could well'' provide nuclear technology to international terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.
``There are nations in the region that have the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons who have not done so,'' Cheney told students at Shanghai's Fudan University.
But Cheney added, ``If North Korea becomes a nuclear power then those nations may conclude that their only option is to develop their own capability, and then we'd have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia.''
Some analysts say Japan would feel the most pressure to go nuclear to counter the threat from North Korea.
Cheney's warnings about North Korea have become increasingly dire in the course of his weeklong Asia tour. ``Time is not necessarily on our side,'' he said of North Korea before flying to Seoul -- on its election day -- for a final round of regional talks.
``We worry that, given what they've done in the past and given what we estimate to be their current capability, that North Korea could well, for example, provide this kind of technology to someone else or possibly to, say, a terrorist organization,'' he said, noting al Qaeda had sought nuclear weapons in the past.
The North Korean crisis has simmered since October 2002, when U.S. officials say Pyongyang disclosed it was working on a clandestine program to enrich uranium -- in addition to a plutonium-based program that had been mothballed in 1994.
But Cheney came to the region bearing new intelligence from A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist believed to have sold nuclear technology to North Korea as well as to Libya and Iran.
U.S. officials said Khan has provided third-party confirmation that Pyongyang already has up to three nuclear devices -- evidence Washington hoped would help persuade skeptics in China of the urgency of the threat.
Cheney said the United States was ``greatly encouraged'' that China had taken a leading role in efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programs.
``We'll continue to ... do our level best to achieve this objective by diplomatic means and through negotiations,'' Cheney said. ``But it is important that we make progress in this area.''
He said North Korea needed outside support ``given the sad state of their economy... In order simply for that regime to survive, they must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons.''
ECONOMY, TAIWAN
Before wrapping up his three-day visit to China, Cheney also raised the touchy issue of trade, saying Beijing had a responsibility to lower barriers and to let financial markets determine the value of China's yuan currency.
Cheney's market-opening message could score him political points at home with key constituents -- manufacturers and their workers -- before the November presidential election.
He reiterated the U.S. position that it does not support the independence of Taiwan, an island China has considered a breakaway province since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949.
In his Shanghai speech, aired with a slight delay but without censoring, Cheney cautiously breached the subject of greater democracy in China by saying demands for individual liberties would grow with time.
``If people can be trusted to invest and manage material assets, they will eventually ask why they cannot be trusted with decisions over what to say and what to believe,'' Cheney said.
``And when they experience the benefits of economic liberty, they desire greater freedom in expressing their views and choosing their leaders.''
In Seoul, Cheney is meet on Friday with Prime Minister Goh Kun, South Korea's acting president during the country's presidential impeachment trial.
In addition to North Korea, Iraq is expected to figure heavily in the discussions. South Korea already has 600 military engineers and medics in Iraq. Seven South Koreans were taken hostage there but were later freed.
-------- britain
EC: Sellafield must clean up nuclear waste pond
Bellona Foundation, Russia,
April 15, 2004
http://www.bellona.no/en/energy/nuclear/sellafield/33360.html
A forty-year-old radioactive waste storage pond at Britain's Sellafield nuclear power installation-whose waste content is unknown-has become the centre of a European Commission, or EC, intervention that has requested British authorities to develop a plan to dismantle the aged storage pond by May. Bellona will inspect the pond in June.
The aged storage pond, which was built in the late 1950's, was originally used to hold spent nuclear fuel, or SNF, for reprocessing and eventual production of weapons grad plutonium. The storage pond is now closed, but still contains between 300 and 450 tonnes of SNF. Some of the waste within the pond has corroded or disintegrated, making the fuel removal and cleaning request from the EU especially difficult to fulfill.
Unfamiliar with the contents
British authorities will now have to clean up the old storage pond, officially refereed to as B30, but nicknamed "dirty 30" by workers at Sellafield. The EC has requested Britain develop a comprehensive plan for removal of the waste before the end of May 2004. If it misses that deadline, it may be necessary too take the United Kingdom government before the European Union, or EU, Court of Law.
Removal and destruction of the nuclear waste may be difficult. Because of the radiation near dirty 30, workers at the plant can only spend one hour at a day near the pond. Parts of the spent fuel have corroded, and no one knows precisely how much waste the pond is holding.
This is exactly what worries the EC. Since the EC first gained accesses to the plant in 1986, the B30 pond has been a security issue. But little has been done from the British side to improve conditions, and it seems evident patience has run out in Brussels, home to the EC and other branches of EU government.
According to an EC document cited in the British daily "The Sunday Herald," the EC is "strongly concerned about the situation regarding radioactive contamination of the environment surrounding the pond." According to the Euratom treaty from 1957, every European country within the 15-soon to be 25- member EU is obliged at all times to know the precise amount of fissile materials it possess.
Because the British government have no information about, or control over, the contents of B30, it's impossible to keep an accounting of dirty 30. This, according to the EC, is a violation of Euratom. The financially troubled British Nuclear Fuel plc, or BNFL, which owns the Sellafield nuclear facility, has told the commission that the derelict storage pond contains approximately 1,300 kilograms of plutonium. Of those 400 kilograms are likely corroded and lying at the bottom of the pond with other radioactive waste and sediment.
Radioactive leaks
According to The Sunday Herald, leaks have also occurred at the pond. Other tank installations at Sellafield have leaked in the past. Most notable, however, have been technetium-99, or Tc 99, leaks into the ground water. BNFL has begun efforts to reduce these leaks, which come from another tank on the Sellafield territory. Bellona inspected this tank installation in Spring, 2003. BNFL has also agreed to let Bellona representatives inspect the B30 storage pond in June this year.
Bellona wants to speed up decommissioning and clean-up work at Sellafield. Many old buildings in the plant's industrial area are in significant disrepair. This is especially so in Sellafield's now disused military complex, where weapons-grade plutonium was produced for British nuclear bombs. These plants are now empty-polluted ghost towns inside Sellafield.
Catastrophic fire
In October 1957, a catastrophic fire started in one of the military reactors at Sellafield. The fire caused two large spills of radioactivity. The largest spill happened early on the Friday, the 11th of October of that year. In a desperate attempt to extinguish the fire, Sellafield fire units doused the reactor with large amounts of water.
No one knew at that time what the results of fighting the reactor fire with water would be. It could have caused a explosion, but fortunately the water snuffed the fire out. The price was a massive cloud-like spill of radioactive steam, which drifted south through most of England and further, into the air over Europe.
By 11 o'clock on that catastrophic friday, firefighters brought the fire under control. Over 20 percent of the reactor was destroyed, and workers in the area were exposed to radiation levels 150 times higher than established limits. People in the local population were exposed to radiation levels of 10 times the maximum lifetime dose.
The old reactor is now hermetically closed. It's still uncertain how it would be possible to dismantle the damaged reactor.
In addition to the old military reactor, the British authorities have before them the task of decommissionin the first military reprocessing plant at the Sellafield, known as B204. This plant has been shut down since an accident in September 1973.
-------- china
Cheney Urges China to Press North Korea on A-Bombs
April 15, 2004
By JOSEPH KAHN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/international/asia/15chen.html
BEIJING, April 14 - Vice President Dick Cheney presented Chinese leaders with new evidence on Wednesday about the scope of North Korea's nuclear program and warned that "time is not necessarily on our side" in negotiations, a senior Bush administration official said Wednesday.
Mr. Cheney told President Hu Jintao and other top leaders that the United States remained committed to a series of six-nation talks under Chinese auspices, held twice so far without tangible progress, to find a solution to the nuclear standoff.
But he emphasized that the talks must show "real results" soon, though he set no timetable.
"It is important to stay engaged and to make progress," the senior official said. "But we need to keep in mind that we need results and that they are developing nuclear weapons as we deliberate."
The discussions about North Korea were held during Mr. Cheney's three-day visit to China, his first as vice president. The two sides also addressed Beijing's tense relations with Taiwan, its large trade surplus with the United States and American concerns about human rights abuses in China.
American officials also said they had held talks about China's encryption standards for wireless communications and its enforcement of intellectual property rights, among the top concerns of American companies that do business here.
Chinese leaders told Mr. Cheney that they planned to send Deputy Prime Minister Huang Ju to the United States later this year to discuss currency policy, another sore point in relations between the countries.
The visit was the most extensive exchange between the Bush administration and top Chinese leaders since the Communist Party handed power to Mr. Hu in late 2002. Mr. Cheney first came to China with President Gerald R. Ford in 1975 but had not visited during the decade-long economic boom that transformed the economy and the urban contours of Beijing.
On Wednesday, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Hu had two hours of talks over lunch in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound. Mr. Cheney also met with Jiang Zemin, Mr. Hu's predecessor as president and Communist Party chief, who remains China's top military official. He discussed economic issues with Wen Jiabao, the prime minister.
Vice President Zeng Qinghong, who is thought to exercise extensive influence behind the scenes in the ruling party, was Mr. Cheney's host for dinner Tuesday night at the Great Hall of the People.
Before leaving Beijing for Shanghai on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Cheney praised what he called the professionalism of the new leadership and talked of "shared concerns and strategic interests." But he said "it would be a mistake for us to underestimate the extent of the differences."
On North Korea, Mr. Cheney "brought to the attention" of Chinese leaders a report in The New York Times on Tuesday about the North's nuclear program, the senior official said.
That report quoted Bush administration and Asian officials as saying that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who has acknowledged selling weapons technology around the world, claims to have seen three nuclear devices in North Korea five years ago.
Chinese officials have raised doubts that the North, its neighbor and onetime ally, has working nuclear weapons. Beijing has cited faulty intelligence about Iraq's weapons as one reason that it is opposed to taking hasty action against North Korea.
The senior Bush administration official implied that China, which exercises considerable influence over North Korea, needed to achieve a breakthrough in coming talks to forestall sanctions against the North. China is expected to convene a third round of negotiations by the end of June, and may set up a working group before then to search for common ground.
China's main concern during Mr. Cheney's visit was Taiwan, which it claims as part of its territory, and the recent narrow re-election there of President Chen Shui-bian, whom Beijing views as determined to formally establish Taiwan as an independent nation. Mr. Cheney rejected a Chinese demand that Washington reduce its arms sales to Taiwan.
-------- iraq / inspections
Radioactive materials disappearing in Iraq
Associated Press,
April 15, 2004
Toronto Globe & Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040415.wnuke0415/BNStory/International/
http://www.dailycomet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040415/API/404150905
United Nations - Iraq's nuclear facilities remain unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the UN's nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrap yards.
The International Atomic Energy Agency sent a letter to U.S. officials three weeks ago informing them of the findings. The information was also sent to the UN Security Council in a letter from its director, Mohamed ElBaradei, that was circulated Thursday.
The IAEA is waiting for a reply from the United States, which is leading the coalition administering Iraq, officials said.
The United States has virtually cut off information-sharing with the IAEA since invading Iraq in March, 2002, on the premise that the country was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
No such weapons have been found, and arms-control officials now worry that the war and its chaotic aftermath may have increased chances that terrorists could get their hands on materials used for unconventional weapons or that civilians may be unknowingly exposed to radioactive materials.
According to Dr. ElBaradei's letter, satellite imagery shows "extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings" in Iraq.
In addition, "large quanitities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq from sites" previously monitored by the IAEA.
In January, the IAEA confirmed that Iraq was the likely source of radioactive material known as yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbour.
Yellowcake (uranium oxide) could be used to build a nuclear weapon, although it would take tonnes of the substance refined with sophisticated technology to harvest enough uranium for a single bomb.
The yellowcake in the shipment was natural uranium ore that probably came from a known mine in Iraq that was active before the 1991 Persian Gulf war.
The yellowcake was uncovered Dec. 16 by Rotterdam-based scrap-metal company Jewometaal, which had received it in a shipment of scrap metal from a dealer in Jordan.
A small number of Iraqi missile engines have also turned up in European ports, IAEA officials said.
"It is not clear whether the removal of these items has been the result of looting activities in the aftermath of the recent war in Iraq or as part of systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of their locations," Dr. ElBaradei wrote to the council.
The IAEA has been unable to investigate, monitor or protect Iraqi nuclear materials since the U.S. invaded the country in March, 2003. The United States has refused to allow the IAEA or other UN weapons inspectors into the country, saying that the coalition has taken over responsibility for illicit weapons searches.
So far those searches have come up empty-handed, and the CIA's first chief weapons hunter has said he no longer believes Iraq had weapons just before the invasion.
----
UN nuclear watchdog says material, buildings gone missing in Iraq
UNITED NATIONS (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415165134.540rlpm3.html
Contaminated metal, equipment and even entire buildings in Iraq that had been monitored by UN nuclear inspectors have disappeared since the war, the UN's nuclear watchdog said on Thursday.
Diplomats said the discovery, much of it from commercially available satellite pictures, raises concerns about whether the US occupation in Iraq has been able to effectively monitor sensitive Iraq sites.
"The imagery shows that there has been extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in a letter to the UN Security Council.
"Other information available to the agency, confirmed through visits to other countries, indicates that large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq," he said.
ElBaradei said it was unclear if the material had gone missing in the looting that engulfed Iraq in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster or "as part of systematic efforts to rehabilitate some of the locations."
He said that the United States had been informed of the discovery.
"We have seen the report and we are concerned, and we told the IAEA we are looking into the matter," a US diplomat said.
UN inspectors left Iraq in March 2003 on the eve of the US-led war, and ElBaradei said the movements of the material could have a major impact on their "continuity of knowledge" about whatever nuclear capacity Iraq still has.
There is also concern about the proliferation of so-called dual-use material, which could either serve as part of weapons systems or have civilian, non-military applications.
----
Iraqi Nuclear Gear Found in Europe
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13416-2004Apr14.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 14 -- Large amounts of nuclear-related equipment, some of it contaminated, and a small number of missile engines have been smuggled out of Iraq for recycling in European scrap yards, according to the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog and other U.N. diplomats.
Mohammed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, warned the U.N. Security Council in a letter that U.N. satellite photos have detected "the extensive removal of equipment and, in some instances, removal of entire buildings" from sites that had been subject to U.N. monitoring before the U.S.-led war against Iraq.
ElBaradei said an IAEA investigation "indicates that large quantities of scrap, some of it contaminated, have been transferred out of Iraq, from sites monitored by the IAEA." He said that he has informed the United States about the discovery and is awaiting "clarification."
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.N. inspectors discovered, inventoried and destroyed most of the equipment used in Iraq's nuclear weapons program. But they left large amounts of nuclear equipment and facilities in Iraq intact and "under seal," including debris from the Osirak reactor that was bombed by Israel in 1981. That debris and the buildings are radioactively contaminated.
The U.N. nuclear agency has found no evidence yet that the exported materials are being sold to arms dealers or to countries suspected of developing nuclear weapons. But ElBaradei voiced concern that the loss of the materials could pose a proliferation threat and could complicate efforts to reach a conclusive assessment of the history of Iraq's nuclear program.
"It is not clear whether the removal of these items has been the result of looting activities in the aftermath of the recent war in Iraq, or as part of systematic efforts" to clean up contaminated nuclear sites in Iraq, ElBaradei wrote. "In any event these activities may have a significant impact on the agency's continuity of knowledge of Iraq's remaining nuclear-related capabilities and raise concern with regards to the proliferation risk associated with dual use material and equipment disappearing to unknown destinations."
Richard Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, said, "We have seen the reports and are obviously concerned, and as we told the IAEA we are looking into the matter."
ElBaradei's letter is dated April 11 and was circulated privately this week among members of the Security Council.
Evidence of the illicit import of nuclear-related material surfaced in January after a small quantity of "yellowcake" uranium oxide was discovered in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam's harbor. The company that purchased the shipment, Jewometaal, detected radioactive material in the container and informed the Dutch government, according to the Associated Press. A spokesman for the company told the news agency that a Jordanian scrap dealer who sent the shipment believed the yellowcake came from Iraq.
ElBaradei did not identify the European countries where the materials were discovered. But U.N. and European officials confirmed that IAEA inspectors traveled to Jewometaal's scrap yard to run tests on the yellowcake. The search turned up missile engines and vessels used in fermentation processes that were subject to U.N. monitoring. The U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission informed the council about the finds in a letter, according to diplomats. The IAEA, meanwhile, ordered up satellite images to assess conditions at Iraq's former nuclear weapons sites. A senior U.N. official said they discovered that two buildings at one former site had vanished and that several scrap piles contained weapons-related materials were also missing. "In Europe, stainless steel goes for $1,500 a ton," the official said. "And that is worth transporting for the purpose of recycling."
Staff writer Joby Warrick contributed to this report.
-------- israel
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Has No Regrets
April 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Vanunu.html
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) -- Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu believes his disclosure of Israel's nuclear secrets provoked an essential debate on nuclear weapons and has no regrets over the action that sent him to prison for 18 years, his brother told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Vanunu is due to be released Wednesday after completing his term for treason and espionage. He plans to go to court to challenge restrictions on his movement, to be imposed after his release.
Vanunu disclosed details and photos of Israel's top-secret nuclear plant and the country's reputed nuclear weapons arsenal to The Sunday Times of London in 1986. He subsequently was seized in Europe by the Mossad intelligence agency and spirited to Israel for trial.
In an AP interview on Thursday, a day after visiting Vanunu in prison, his brother, Meir, said Vanunu has no second thoughts. ``It is obvious that Mordechai regrets nothing in his action,'' he said.
Based partly on photographs that Vanunu provided to the Sunday Times, it is widely believed Israel has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA recently estimated Israel has 200-400 nuclear weapons.
Israel has an official policy of ``nuclear ambiguity,'' saying only that it won't be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East.
Meir Vanunu said his brother's action put an effective end to the policy. ``Nuclear ambiguity -- there's not much left of it,'' he said.
Senior Israeli officials have suggested that Vanunu may still have sensitive security information and could divulge it after his release, but Meir Vanunu denied that. ``Mordechai spoke to the Sunday Times in 1986,'' he said. ``Everything he had to say he said then.''
Though Israeli military censorship still weighs heavily against specifics about Israel's nuclear programs, in recent years members of parliament have spoken out on the issue, and the subject of nuclear weapons has been debated at times in the local media.
Vanunu, who was a technician at the nuclear plant near the desert town of Dimona, served 12 years in solitary confinement in prison after being convicted in an Israeli court.
He has become a hero of anti-nuclear weapons activists around the world.
Vanunu was adopted by a family in Minnesota in the mistaken belief that the adoption would provide him with American citizenship. After visiting him Thursday in prison, Nick and Mary Eeloff expressed disappointment that they could not take him back to the United States.
``He just wants to lead a normal life and we just want to bring him home,'' Nick Eeloff told the AP.
Vanunu's cell has been emptied of books and other belongings, which are being checked as part of a pre-release routine, Moss said. The Prisons Authority declined comment.
On Sunday, Vanunu learned that following his release, Israel's Shin Bet security agency will impose a series of restrictions on him, including barring him from leaving Israel, approaching border terminals and foreign embassies, and communicating with foreigners, including foreign residents of Israel.
Security officials said the restrictions would be re-evaluated after six months and might be eased if Vanunu fulfills the conditions.
Meir Vanunu said his brother will challenge the restrictions in court.
``But our hopes are not high, because for more than 17 years, they have gone with the secret services against Mordechai,'' he said.
Meir Vanunu said his brother had expressed great frustration about the restrictions.
``It is unbelievable what they are doing now after 17 1/2 years of persecution,'' Meir quoted him as saying. ``I didn't believe they would do this after all this time.''
Meir Vanunu said his brother wants to live abroad ``as a free man.''
``He wants to go to the United States,'' he said.
-------- korea
Cheney fears NKorea will give terrorists nuclear knowhow
SHANGHAI (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415083310.bz7t1cgh.html
US Vice President Dick Cheney voiced fears Thursday that North Korea will provide nuclear technology to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, and warned of a nuclear arms race in Asia if it is not stopped.
"We worry given what they've done in the past, and given current capabilities, that North Korea could very well provide this technology to someone else, or terror groups," he told students at Fudan University in Shanghai.
"We know that there are terror groups like Al-Qaeda that have tried to acquire nuclear weapons before."
Few analysts however seem to believe the idea of North Korea as a major potential proliferator of weapons of mass destruction. They say Pyongyang's diplomats are more likely to use this option for blackmail, threatening to equip terrorists if the United States pushes them too hard.
"North Korea's primary interest in acquiring nuclear weapons is as a deterrance to prevent a US attack," said Timothy Savage, a North Korea expert at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies at South Korea's Kyungnam University.
"There is no ideological affinity between North Korea and Islamic terror groups and it is highly unlikely they will sell nuclear material to terrorists.
"The danger of retaliatory measures is too big."
Nevertheless Cheney, stepping up the pressure ahead of a third round of six-party talks expected before June, described North Korea as "one of the most serious problems in the region today".
Two rounds of six-party talks hosted by China -- and also including the two Koreas, United States, Russia and Japan -- to defuse the crisis have so far failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
The United States claims North Korea is pursuing uranium-enriched nuclear arms and says it has an intelligence assessment that Pyongyang has produced one or two plutonium-based nuclear weapons.
Cheney reaffirmed Washington's stance Thursday.
"We are confident that they have a program to enrich uranium," he said, praising China, the North's closest ally, for taking the lead role in trying to find a solution.
"President Bush and the American people are also greatly encouraged by the Chinese government's decision to take a lead role in matters of the international community and persuade North Korea to completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear program."
Pyongyang's rulers deny they have a uranium-based program, although US reports suggested this week North Korea's bomb-makers might have been much more successful than previously feared.
Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, told interrogators that he was shown three nuclear devices at a secret underground plant when he visited North Korea five years ago, The New York Times reported.
Cheney cited the intelligence report during his talks with China's top leaders in Beijing, US officials said.
China refused to be drawn into the fray, saying it knew nothing about North Korea's nuclear capability.
"We don't understand the specific situation on the nuclear plans or nuclear weapons," said foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan, but added: "The Chinese government is firmly opposed to any type of nuclear proliferation."
Cheney warned that if North Korea was allowed to possess nuclear weapons, other countries without the bomb, but which have the technical expertise, would feel compelled to build nuclear weapons.
"And then we would have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia," he said.
Analysts say nations such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are the most likely to follow suit. China is already nuclear capable.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when Washington accused Pyongyang of reneging on a 1994 bilateral nuclear freeze accord by setting up a clandestine atomic program based on enriched uranium.
----
Preparations for next round of NKorea nuclear talks "stalled"
BEIJING (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415103833.0nn5x7td.html
Differences among six nations involved in talks over North Korea's nuclear drive were delaying the establishment of a working group to prepare for the next round of negotiations, China said Thursday.
"Admittedly, there are some differences among the various sides on the agenda and operating mechanism for the working group," foreign ministry spokesman Kong Quan said.
"I'm not in a position to give you details. The various sides are still in discussions and consultations."
Kong declined to say whether US Vice President Dick Cheney's just-ended visit to China had helped push forward the process of organizing a third round of six-nation talks.
The talks involve China, Japan, North and South Korea, Russia and the United States.
"I hope that Vice President Cheney's visit to China, through the exchange of views between China and the United States, will be helpful to the early implementation of the consensus reached at the second round of six-party talks not long ago," Kong said.
At the last round of talks in Beijing in February all sides agreed to set up the working group to make preparations for a third round of six-party discussions.
Kong said Chinese leaders had told Cheney that Washington and Pyongyang should both be flexible and practical.
"Through this visit (Cheney's) ... the Chinese side expressed that during the process of resolving this issue, both sides face differences, even serious differences, and should show a practical and flexible attitude," Kong said.
"Only through this practical and flexible attitude can the working group be set up, to hold meetings of the working group and to make preparations for the third round of six-party talks."
The first two rounds of talks hosted by China failed to narrow differences over a US demand for the complete dismantling of Pyongyang's nuclear programs.
----
Cheney Prods Allies on N.Korea, Warns of Arms Race
April 15, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-asia-cheney.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - Vice President Dick Cheney arrived in South Korea on Thursday warning of the risk of a nuclear arms race in the region if pressure is not brought to bear on North Korea to dismantle its nuclear programs.
Cheney, armed with new evidence of Pyongyang's nuclear capabilities, is wrapping up a weeklong mission to persuade key Asian allies that the threat from their reclusive neighbor is real and that time may be running out to address it.
Cheney warned in a speech carried uncensored on Chinese state television that North Korea could not only spark a new Asian arms race, but ``could well'' provide nuclear technology to international terrorist organizations such as al Qaeda.
``There are nations in the region that have the technical capacity to produce nuclear weapons who have not done so,'' Cheney told students at Shanghai's Fudan University.
But Cheney added, ``If North Korea becomes a nuclear power then those nations may conclude that their only option is to develop their own capability, and then we'd have a nuclear arms race unleashed in Asia.''
Some analysts say Japan would feel the most pressure to go nuclear to counter the threat from North Korea.
Cheney's warnings about North Korea have become increasingly dire in the course of his weeklong Asia tour. ``Time is not necessarily on our side,'' he said of North Korea before flying to Seoul -- on its election day -- for a final round of regional talks.
``We worry that, given what they've done in the past and given what we estimate to be their current capability, that North Korea could well, for example, provide this kind of technology to someone else or possibly to, say, a terrorist organization,'' he said, noting al Qaeda had sought nuclear weapons in the past. The North Korean crisis has simmered since October 2002, when U.S. officials say Pyongyang disclosed it was working on a clandestine program to enrich uranium -- in addition to a plutonium-based program that had been mothballed in 1994.
But Cheney came to the region bearing new intelligence from A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist believed to have sold nuclear technology to North Korea as well as to Libya and Iran.
U.S. officials said Khan has provided third-party confirmation that Pyongyang already has up to three nuclear devices -- evidence Washington hoped would help persuade skeptics in China of the urgency of the threat.
Cheney said the United States was ``greatly encouraged'' that China had taken a leading role in efforts to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear programs.
``We'll continue to ... do our level best to achieve this objective by diplomatic means and through negotiations,'' Cheney said. ``But it is important that we make progress in this area.''
He said North Korea needed outside support ``given the sad state of their economy... In order simply for that regime to survive, they must understand that no one in the region wants them to develop those weapons.''
ECONOMY, TAIWAN
Before wrapping up his three-day visit to China, Cheney also raised the touchy issue of trade, saying Beijing had a responsibility to lower barriers and to let financial markets determine the value of China's yuan currency.
Cheney's market-opening message could score him political points at home with key constituents -- manufacturers and their workers -- before the November presidential election.
He reiterated the U.S. position that it does not support the independence of Taiwan, an island China has considered a breakaway province since the Chinese civil war ended in 1949.
In his Shanghai speech, aired with a slight delay but without censoring, Cheney cautiously breached the subject of greater democracy in China by saying demands for individual liberties would grow with time.
``If people can be trusted to invest and manage material assets, they will eventually ask why they cannot be trusted with decisions over what to say and what to believe,'' Cheney said.
``And when they experience the benefits of economic liberty, they desire greater freedom in expressing their views and choosing their leaders.''
In Seoul, Cheney is meet on Friday with Prime Minister Goh Kun, South Korea's acting president during the country's presidential impeachment trial.
In addition to North Korea, Iraq is expected to figure heavily in the discussions. South Korea already has 600 military engineers and medics in Iraq. Seven South Koreans were taken hostage there but were later freed.
--------
Seoul must push U.S. on nuclear issues
By Eugene B. Kogan
Apr 15, 2004
The Straits Times (Singapore)Asia News Network
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/04/15/200404150019.asp
"A friend in need is a friend indeed," a saying goes. South Korea's decision on April 2 to send some 3,600 troops to Iraq is a fitting illustration of the adage. The deployment will make the country the largest U.S. coalition partner in Iraq after Britain.
Unlike the impeached South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, who once declared that he "won't kowtow to the Americans," acting President Goh Kun has said that a strengthened relationship with Washington is his top foreign policy priority. Given this strategic outlook, the decision by the South Korean government to send troops to Iraq could not have come at a better time.
Goh must remember, however, that a strong friendship is founded not only on a supporting posture in a time of need, but also on a candid dialogue about mutual concerns.
Seoul must remind Washington about the urgency of resolving the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula - an issue that the Bush administration, overburdened by commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, seems to have put on the back burner. Goh should communicate this message to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, who will be visiting South Korea as part of his six-day Asia tour.
Upon his return from North Korea in early January, Jack Pritchard, former Bush administration envoy for negotiations with North Korea, quoted North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan as saying that "time is not on the U.S. side. The lapse of time will result in the quantitative and qualitative increase in our nuclear deterrent."
According to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, North Korea restarted the Yongbyon reactor in February last year. Siegfried S. Hecker, senior fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who accompanied Pritchard on the trip, noted that the reactor would produce 6kg of plutonium each year. Kim reportedly told the U.S. delegation in January that this plutonium would be used to "strengthen our deterrent."
The Bush administration has not taken this important point seriously. In the State of the Union Address on Jan. 20, President George W. Bush mentioned North Korea just once en passant, noting that "along with nations in the region, we're insisting that North Korea eliminate its nuclear program."
The lack of urgency in the Bush administration's actions indicates that Washington does not see the resolution of the nuclear standoff on the peninsula as a priority. Goh must warn his American counterpart against making this serious strategic mistake. Active engagement by the United States is critical if the crisis is to be defused.
First, the United States must provide a written assurance to North Korea that the stated goal of nuclear disarmament is not an Iraq-style masquerade for regime change.
Proclaiming one day that North Korea must completely and irreversibly dismantle its nuclear program, while simultaneously asserting that leader Kim Jong-il's regime is a powerful reminder that "freedom is not free," sends an unmistakable signal to Pyongyang that the United States is trying to cheat it into giving up its nuclear deterrent only to destroy the regime afterwards.
Clearly, this approach hinders rather than helps the efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff. South Korea, along with other nations participating in the six-way negotiations, must urge the United States to stop sending conflicting messages to Pyongyang
Second, the Bush administration must not allow negotiations with Pyongyang to be dictated by considerations of domestic politics.
This is a presidential election year in the United States, and the administration's unyielding demand for CVID - complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear program - smacks more of political expediency than hard-nosed realism.
The claim that the multilateral talks are somehow going to yield the grand prize of CVID may be a good sell at home, but, in the real world, it is strategically unacceptable.
The Bush administration must agree to negotiate a freeze of North Korea's nuclear program first, which would give the six nations breathing space. So far, it has refused to consider this gradualist approach, which it regards as a failed, Clinton-ra negotiation strategy.
The alternative is to keep insisting - for months or even years - on the grand prize of CVID, while Pyongyang continues to build its nuclear arsenal. The choice should be clear: to freeze, if not yet shut down, the North Korean nuclear Wal-Mart sooner rather than later.
This may not be as politically desirable as CVID for President Bush's reelection campaign, but it is both possible and necessary under the present strategic conditions.
It is time to get serious and realistic about negotiating a peaceful resolution to the nuclear crisis on the Korean Peninsula. This message from Mr. Goh to Mr. Bush would be a sign of a robust and frank relationship between the two nations and their leaders.
The writer is an independent international affairs analyst in Washington, D.C. - Ed.
-------- russia
Old weapons, new terror worries
April 15, 2004
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0415/p06s02-woeu.html
Russian and US experts meet this month to assess terror tactics, from hacking into systems to seizing a weapon. By Scott Peterson | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor MOSCOW - Imagine this scenario: Computer hackers working for Al Qaeda break into Russia's nuclear weapons network, and "spoof" the system into believing it is under attack, setting off a chain reaction, and a real nuclear counterattack.
Another doomsday possibility made headlines when Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's No. 2, was quoted last month boasting that Al Qaeda had already acquired "some suitcase bombs" - radioactive material packed with conventional explosives. Mr. Zawahiri said that anything was available for $30 million on the Central Asian black market or from disgruntled Soviet scientists. Russia immediately rejected the claim. But such what-ifs are among the nuclear terrorism threats that analysts are reexamining, as the learning curve of terror groups today comes closer to intersecting the vulnerabilities of atomic arsenals.
A handful of Russian and American nuclear experts, both military and civilian, are quietly convening a first meeting in Moscow later this month, to launch a year-long modeling exercise to specify the new dangers.
"These are future threats, but we must be ready for them today," says Pavel Zolotarev, a former major general in Russia's Strategic Rocket Forces, which inherited the vast Soviet nuclear arsenal. "There should be no chance that wrong signals get into the system, to provoke a presidential decision [to launch]."
In the past, top priority in Russia has been protecting its stocks of bomb-grade nuclear material. The US has been spending roughly $1 billion per year to upgrade Russia's nuclear security and dismantle warheads.
But experts are now looking at new terror tactics, from hacking to seizing a complete weapon.
"The threats are changing in the most radical way," says Vladimir Dvorkin, a former rocket forces major general, who was head of development for the Russian Defense Ministry's strategic forces, missile defense, and space systems until 2001.
Cyberwarfare meets 50s tech
Ironically, Russia's older systems may be less vulnerable than US weaponry to the most cutting-edge threats, particularly cyberwarfare.
Russia's strict centralized control system - a holdover from the Soviet era - makes it "harder, at some level, for terrorists to do something to break the safeguards and launch," says Bruce Blair, a nuclear security expert and former Minuteman launch officer who heads the Center for Defense Information in Washington (CDI).
In contrast, the US Department of Defense infrastructure consists of over 2.1 million computers, with 10,000 local area networks, and 1,000 long-distance networks.
Danger from hackers
Hackers have been active against government networks, if targeted US systems are any gauge. Mi2g, a digital security analyst company based in London, found that 2003 yielded a "meteoric rise in electronic crime," and that along with criminal scams, "extremist group activity" had risen by several hundred percent.
The sobering results of the still- classified work by a Pentagon "Commission on Nuclear Fail-Safe" - to which Mr. Blair testified about Soviet nuclear safeguards, inside a vault at the Pentagon around 1992 - point to US vulnerabilities that could also apply to Russian systems today. Investigators found an "electronic back door" into the US Navy's system for broadcasting nuclear launch orders to Trident submarines.
"This deficiency allowed unauthorized hackers, which could be terrorists or high school mischief makers, to potentially insert a launch order and transmit it to the Trident," Blair says. The gap was so serious that Navy launch order verifications had to be revised.
Indeed, few systems are safe. The US National Security Agency hired 35 hackers in 1997 to simulate a cyberterrorist attack. They were able to break into defense networks and shut down parts of the power grid and emergency services.
Such risks prompted the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to hold a first meeting on the issue of vulnerable electronic systems in October 2002.
"We are aware of the problem and addressing it as part of our broader nuclear security," says an IAEA official in Vienna. "It goes hand in hand with the ability of hackers to get into supposedly secure systems."
Russia's early warning and launch system is self-contained, however, and not connected in any way to the Internet or other outside portals, so it is widely deemed here to be secure. Like US nuclear command and control - some elements of which were built in the 1950s and 1960s - Russia relies on an antiquated system.
"It's like having a first generation Mercedes Benz that no modern repair center can fix," says Maxim Shingarkin, a former major in the 12th Main Directorate of Russia's Defense Ministry, which protects the nuclear arsenal.
Even when military cables are laid alongside nonmilitary ones, exposing the system to outside access, terrorists could "take the signal, but could not generate it" without being detected, Maj. Shingarkin says.
'Old scrap of metal'
A special project begun in the late 1990s took three years to get a modern computer to recognize and integrate information from "this old scrap of metal" that handles nuclear weapons systems, Shingarkin adds.
Even today, perforated punch cards are often used instead of normal computer passwords.
But Russia's underpaid and poorly maintained military poses its own terror risks, says the CDI's Blair. "There's now the question of insider collusion, and if you have people on the inside sharing information about potential vulnerabilities, you quadruple the problem."
$750,000 for a can of mercury
Tentative first signs of such collusion are already raising red flags, though making the link hasn't been easy, says Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom.
"The connection between the guy in a position to steal, and Al Qaeda, is a pretty difficult step," says Mr. Bunn. "It's not like you can walk in wearing a white turban waving a million dollars around, and expect to get anywhere."
Last year, however, a Russian businessman was found to have offered $750,000 for weapons-grade plutonium, and contacted scientists at a key Russian institute, Bunn says. They deceived him by selling him a canister of mercury.
The days of the "desperate insider" of the 1990s - when guards at nuclear sites left their posts to forage for food, or electricity to alarms and weapons systems was cut because bills had gone unpaid - are now giving way to the "greedy insider," Bunn adds.
And what money can't buy may be more easily acquired by force.
The US military has demonstrated this danger by staging successful mock terror attacks on American nuclear facilities that included setting off an improvised nuclear device within minutes on site. Secret Russian test exercises have also broken through security at nuclear sites.
Several terror-related events have been raising concern. In four incidents in 2001 and 2002, Chechens were caught scoping out two nuclear sites - so secret that even their location was supposed to be unknown - and two mobile missiles.
Chechen separatists have strong links with Al Qaeda, and have warned explicitly that they might take over a nuclear facility. Few doubt their chutzpah. Russians were shocked when 41 heavily armed Chechens seized a theater in downtown Moscow in October 2002 - a force that could easily overwhelm numerous remote nuclear sites, says Bunn.
"This is very worrisome," says Bunn. "The basic assumption is that the intelligence services are so good, they'll know [when intruders are] coming. [But] if they don't know, they're going to be in trouble."
Security kits remain in boxes
Bureaucracy is blunting the effectiveness of US efforts to tighten Russian nuclear security. Just half of the 123 US-supplied kits for making quick-fix upgrades at secret sites have been installed, four years after delivery. They each include a half a mile of multilayer fencing and an array of intrusion detectors.
"A huge part of security for those sites is that nobody knows where they are," Bunn says. "[The upgrade kits] are sitting on shelves, and terrorists apparently know where sites are. It's unbelievable."
Many Russian experts argue, though, that even if a terror group seized a nuclear weapon, they would not be able to use it. American and most Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles have various safeguards that can permanently disable a weapon if it is tampered with, or require an actual missile launch to arm the warhead.
"We can't exclude terrorists seizing a missile, but that will be the end of this terrorist act, because they will not be capable of launching it - never," says Dvorkin, who also discounts chances of an inside job. "There is not a single worker next to a nuclear weapon who is capable of giving this information, because the codes are only known to the highest command."
However, Russia is believed to have around 3,400 live "tactical" nuclear weapons - such as mines and artillery shells, which are sometimes triggered only by radar or radio signals. US experts suspect that these weapons are often not protected by much more than padlocks.
Beyond James Bond
Still, the amount of foresight Al Qaeda displayed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks deepens fears of nuclear terror.
"It's more complicated than slapping on an alarm clock and running a couple of wires, like James Bond," says Jon Wolfstahl, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "But we believe it's within the capability of more sophisticated, well-financed groups, especially if they can get their hands on scientists or engineers with knowledge of these systems."
Al Qaeda tops that short list.
"[Al Qaeda cells] are not very capable, technically, but they're learning more and more, and this isn't going to go away in one or two years," says David Albright, a physicist who heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. Searching for clues about the level of Al Qaeda nuclear expertise, he has examined troves of documents and videos uncovered in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban.
"They make a lot of mistakes, [but] they're becoming more capable over time," says Mr. Albright. Recruiting nuclear and computer experts could make the dangers surge.
"People have that capability, they may turn sympathetic to Al Qaeda, or be blackmailed by Al Qaeda," Albright says. "You can't build a defense on the premise that Al Qaeda can't do it."
Chart (2002 - 2003):
US and Russian nuclear arsenals RUSSIA US
Intercontinental ballistic missiles 2,915 1,600
Submarine-launched missiles 1,072 2,880
Bomber missiles 864 1,660†
Tactical weapons 3,380@ 800†
Total weapons 8,231@ 6,940
†"Deadly Arsenals" by Joseph Cirincione, 2002 figures
@Estimated
TOM BROWN - STAFF SOURCE: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (http://www.ceip.org), 2003 figures
• First of an occasional series on US-Russian strategic issues.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Hearings to probe impact of weapons lab
People's Weekly World Newspaper,
04/15/04 14:02
http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/5095/1/211
LIVERMORE, Calif. - While it's been known for some time that the U.S. government is developing new, earth-penetrating nuclear bombs and "mini-nukes," a new draft environmental impact statement by the nation's primary nuclear weapons design laboratory suggests the Bush administration's weapons program may be bigger than imagined.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's last environmental impact statement was issued in 1992 and is now obsolete. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which owns the lab, is now required to conduct a fresh survey and to issue a new Site Wide Environmental Impact Statement (SWEIS) for the lab. Moreover, to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, DOE must hold public hearings and solicit public comment on its plans.
Livermore Lab is located about 45 miles east of San Francisco and is managed by the University of California.
The environmental review of the Livermore complex comes against the backdrop of the Bush administration's 2002 "Nuclear Posture Review" and "National Security Strategy of the United States" documents, which advocate preventive war and the preemptive use of any weapon (including nuclear) for any reason of its own choosing.
The draft SWEIS was released in February and its 2,000-plus pages provide a rare glimpse into the lab's operations. It lays out a full buffet of dangerous new programs, called "proposed actions," to be implemented over the coming decade, including the following:
• More than doubling the plutonium storage limit at the lab, from 1,540 pounds to 3,300 pounds, enough for more than 300 nuclear bombs.
• Making Livermore the place to design and test new technologies for producing "pits," the sealed radioactive plutonium cores that serve as triggers for nuclear warheads. This technology is intended to be used at the Modern Pit Facility, a modern bomb-core production plant, which has not been built, nor has the final location been chosen. It would be capable of producing up to 450 new pits per year (and 900 if run on double shifts, which would approximate the combined nuclear arsenals of France and China - every year).
• Vaporizing plutonium at the lab and shooting laser beams through the hot plutonium to separate its isotopes for use in various weapons experiments. To do this, the lab plans to increase the amount of plutonium that can be used in any one room at any given time threefold, from 44 pounds to 132 pounds.
• Adding plutonium, highly-enriched uranium and lithium hydride to the mix of experiments to be conducted in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) mega-laser when its construction is completed, adding to the facility's cost and environmental risk.
• Manufacturing radioactive tritium targets for NIF on site, which will increase the amount of tritium allowed to be "at risk" at a time in any one room by nearly tenfold, from just over 3 grams to 30 grams.
• Preparing for a return to full-scale underground nuclear testing in Nevada by developing new diagnostics at Livermore to enhance U.S. "readiness" to conduct these tests, which were halted in 1992.
Peace and environmental activists are gearing up for the public hearings.
"At the end of this month, the public will have a once-in-a-decade opportunity to influence nuclear weapons policy and the future direction of Livermore Lab," said Marylia Kelley, the executive director of the Livermore-based Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment). "Will we be silent and let them develop new nukes? Hell, no."
Retired staff scientist Marion Fulk said, "I know first-hand that Livermore Lab has not been able to keep its contamination inside the fence line. It's already a Superfund cleanup site. If these programs go forward, there will be more accidents, spills and releases of plutonium, tritium and other radioactive materials into the environment. Cancer is only the tip of the iceberg."
Tara Dorabji, the outreach director for Tri-Valley CAREs, said, "Every peace advocate's voice is needed at the public hearings. It is our responsibility to show up and use the opportunity to oppose new nuclear weapons and the dangerous new lab programs that enable them."
Public hearings will be held on April 27 at the Double Tree Club Hotel in Livermore; on April 28 at the Holiday Inn Express in Tracy, Calif.; and on April 30 at DOE headquarters in Washington, D.C. For more information, call Tri-Valley CAREs at (925) 443-7148, e-mail loulena@trivalleycares.org, or visit the group's web site at www.trivalleycares.org.
-------- colorado
Researcher: Open Rocky Flats Slowly To Public
Apr 15, 2004
(AP)
http://news4colorado.com/localnews/local_story_106124109.html
GOLDEN, Colo. - A University of Colorado researcher says visitors will face little risk of contamination at a wildlife refuge at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant, but the area should be opened slowly to the public.
James Ruttenber of the CU's School of Medicine has conducted extensive studies of cancer rates among people who worked at Rocky Flats. He said the risk of contamination would be minimal in outlying areas of the 6,200-acre site northwest of Denver.
Still, Ruttenber said, the reasonable approach would be to take time in allowing visitors to the site, which will be a national wildlife refuge once cleaned up.
Boulder County, and the cities of Boulder and Superior say recreational use of the site should be restricted because of the plutonium and other materials that were at the plant for decades.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which will manage the refuge, is taking comments on plans for the site. Fish and Wildlife proposes limited public access on designated trails.
Ruttenber said a reasonable approach would be to monitor the area for a while before allowing regular visits. Fish and Wildlife workers should be on the lookout for places where things might be buried.
"A lot of this is perception and building confidence," Ruttenber said.
He noted that bomblets containing the nerve agent sarin have been found at the former Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Commerce City, also being converted to a federal wildlife refuge.
Parts of the arsenal, a Superfund cleanup site, were closed to public while crews searched for more munitions. Chemical weapons and pesticides were produced at the arsenal for decades.
Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons from the 1950s to 1989. The last weapons-grade plutonium was removed in August.
The site is home to diverse vegetation, including rare xeric tallgrass prairie and tall upland shrubland, the service said. Wildlife species include the threatened Preble's meadow jumping mouse and resident deer and elk.
-------- new mexico
DOE Eliminates Oversight Group's Funding
April 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-WIPP-Oversight.html
CARLSBAD, N.M. (AP) -- Layoff notices have been given to the entire staff of a New Mexico nuclear watchdog group that oversees the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The Department of Energy has cut funding to the Environmental Evaluation Group, which will shut down in two weeks if no new money is found.
``It looks to me like DOE is trying to kill EEG,'' said Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M.
The group's scientists have questioned the DOE's attempt to eliminate tests to see if drums headed to WIPP contain explosive chemicals. The DOE wants to eliminate the tests to save money.
EEG also questioned DOE's proposal to begin shipping nuclear waste to WIPP in single-walled containers. Current shipments use containers with double steel walls to prevent leaks in case of an accident.
Paul Detwiler, head of DOE's Carlsbad office, said the cuts are not related to the Environmental Evaluation Group's criticisms of DOE plans.
Detwiler said the department is merely trying to get EEG to stop overspending.
Sixteen Environmental Evaluation Group employees in Carlsbad and Albuquerque will be out of their jobs April 30 unless the DOE provides additional money.
EEG was set up in 1978 to help advise the state on WIPP issues. Its staff is formally employed by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
Before WIPP's opening, EEG's scientists provided independent analysis of the site's safety. Since the waste storage area opened in 1999, the group has shifted to analysis of the safety of waste operations, including review of DOE initiatives to bring new and different types of radioactive waste to the site.
DOE is forced to pay for EEG's operations by agreements with the state. But those agreements do not specify how much money is needed.
Members of New Mexico's congressional delegation repeatedly have had to intervene in recent years to persuade DOE to provide sufficient money, said Matthew Silva, EEG's director.
``WIPP's strongest advocates always saw EEG as a nuisance,'' Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., said Tuesday.
The DOE's Detwiler said he is not trying to kill EEG, but to get it to live within the terms of a $7.6 million, five-year contract signed in 2000 -- slightly more than $1.5 million per year.
Silva said the $1.5 million annually was only an estimate, and that DOE and EEG have negotiated an annual budget each year based on workload.
Last year DOE cut the funding to $1.6 million, and this year DOE is insisting on only giving EEG $1.5 million.
Rather than accept the budget cuts DOE was imposing and lay off part of his staff last year, Silva kept a full staff while he tried to negotiate with DOE for full funding at the previous $2 million level.
When that failed, he gave his entire staff their layoff notices Tuesday.
-------- south carolina
Mottel joins nuclear council
South Carolina Morning News
Thursday, April 15, 2004
http://www.lowcountrynow.com/stories/041504/LOCmottel.shtml
Town Councilman Bill Mottel of Hilton Head Island recently became a member of the South Carolina Governor's Nuclear Advisory Council.
The appointment of Mottel, 75, by Gov. Mark Sanford was confirmed by the state Senate on March 31.
The nine-member council makes recommendations on handling, transportation, storage or disposal of nuclear materials within or outside of South Carolina that might impact state citizens' safety, according to a news release from Town Hall.
It also provides advice regarding the Atlantic Compact Commission and on various nuclear waste programs of the U.S. Energy Department.
Before his 1991 retirement to Hilton Head Plantation, Mottel's 38-year career with the DuPont Co. included serving as manager of the Savannah River Plant from 1977 to 1979.
Now known as the Savannah River Site, the facility near Aiken was built starting in 1950 to produce plutonium and tritium, two ingredients essential to the hydrogen bomb.
Mottel, 75, was a research and development specialist when he began work at the plant in 1953, the year its first reactor became active. He served as a superintendent and in other upper management positions before becoming manager.
------- us politics
Kerry Says Bush's Stubbornness Hurts Troops
Policy in Iraq 'Costing Us Money And . . . Lives'
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12944-2004Apr14.html
NEW YORK, April 14 -- Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) said here Wednesday that President Bush's stubbornness in refusing to share authority and decision making with the United Nations and other countries has put U.S. forces at greater risk, unduly burdened American taxpayers and made success in Iraq far more difficult.
"I think the approach of this administration has been consistent and stubborn in the way that it persists in this American occupation and in proceeding down its own road," Kerry said. "It has made that mistake from Day One, and it is costing us money and I think it is costing us lives."
In his most extended comments about Iraq since the eruption of new violence there that has left more than 80 American soldiers dead this month, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee charged that Bush failed in his news conference Tuesday night to offer a clear exit strategy or to show any willingness to cede authority to gain greater international cooperation.
Kerry said withdrawal of U.S. forces should be determined by whether Iraq has been stabilized, not whether it has achieved democracy. Democracy "shouldn't be the measurement of when you leave," Kerry told reporters at an afternoon news conference. "You leave with stability. You hope you can continue the process of democratization -- obviously, that's our goal. But with respect to getting our troops out, the measurement is the stability of Iraq."
Kerry said more international support would help take the focus off the U.S. occupation. "The minute you have that international acceptance, you begin to reduce some of the capacity of people to focus on the infidel United States and to focus their energies on our occupation alone."
As Kerry stepped up his public criticism of Bush on Iraq, the president's reelection campaign struck back hard. Its chairman, Marc Racicot, accused Kerry of a "cynical and defeatist" approach and of "very, very seriously undermining" the U.S. effort in Iraq and forces fighting there.
Racicot, who was joined in his conference call by former defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, said Kerry was attempting "to cause division and erode confidence" and said the senator's comments were evidence of "why he shouldn't be president."
Kerry denied he was making any effort to politicize the war in Iraq, but he stood firm in his critique of the administration. "American soldiers are bearing the huge majority, the lion's share, of the risk in Iraq," he said. "It doesn't have to be that way, it never had to be that way."
The sharp exchanges underscored the growing debate over Bush's policies in Iraq and signaled the Democrats' belief that the president may be vulnerable on national security issues long presumed to be his greatest asset politically.
During a town hall meeting at City College, Kerry was confronted by Walter Daum, a retired mathematics teacher at the college, who said the United States should withdraw immediately, angrily accusing Kerry of backing an imperialist war and of having the same policy as the president.
Kerry took issue with that characterization, but said the United States could not cut and run. "I have consistently been critical of how we got where we are, but we are where we are, sir," he said, "and it would be unwise beyond belief for the United States of America to leave a failed Iraq in its wake."
Kerry said that "it may take a new president" to bring about the policy changes that he said are necessary to assure success and reduce the risk to U.S. forces in Iraq and said if he were president now he would be deeply engaged with other foreign leaders to spread the burden and the risk. He noted that the president had said he is counting on the help of U.N. special representative Lakhdar Brahimi to help arrange the terms of the transfer of power to the Iraqi people June 30 but said there is still a fundamental difference between Bush's approach and his own.
"Why doesn't the president just come out and say I want the U.N. to be a full partner and the resolution that we pass will turn the authority over to them?" he asked. "That's the argument right now -- whether or not we're prepared to turn the authority over to them or whether or not they're prepared to come in without the authority. That's the fight and the question is why the president won't do that."
The exchange over Iraq overshadowed an announcement by Kerry's campaign of an expanded plan for national service that seeks to put 500,000 young Americans in service to the country.
For those who give two full years of service, Kerry would have the federal government pay the cost of four years of in-state college tuition. A campaign fact sheet said Kerry could pay for the plan, whose cost the campaign estimated at $13 billion over 10 years, by ending the guaranteed profit for banks on student loans.
Kerry also continued to add to his campaign treasury, raising $6.5 million at two fundraisers Wednesday night, after a $4.1 million event in Boston on Tuesday night.
----
Kerry debates anti-war activist in New York
Bush campaign scolds Democrat over stand on Iraq
Thursday, April 15, 2004
(CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/14/kerry.iraq/index.html
NEW YORK -- Sen. John Kerry tried to outline a "more thoughtful and more achievable course" in Iraq during an impromptu debate with an anti-war activist Wednesday, but he said the United States cannot leave behind a "failed Iraq."
President Bush's campaign, meanwhile, accused Kerry of playing politics with the war in Iraq, where more than 80 American troops have been killed this month battling Sunni insurgents and Shiite militants.
And a Republican congressman accused Kerry of offering vague criticism of the occupation that only plants "seeds of doubt and confusion."
At a question-and-answer session at City College campus in Harlem, semi-retired math teacher Walter Daum accused Kerry -- a onetime anti-war activist -- of supporting an "imperialist war" in Iraq.
"You say you are a stark difference from George Bush," said the 64-year-old Daum. "People hate George Bush, but by the end of your presidency, they'll hate you for the same thing."
Kerry voted for the congressional resolution that gave Bush the authorization to invade Iraq, but he said Bush "made a terrible mistake to take us to war the way that he did."
"I have consistently been critical of how we got where we are," Kerry responded. "But we are where we are, sir, and it would be unwise beyond belief for the United States of America to leave a failed Iraq in its wake."
The Massachusetts senator, and presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said the Bush administration has failed to draw international support that would lend legitimacy to the occupation and a new Iraqi government.
A banner hanging at the campus forum demanded a U.S. withdrawal, but Kerry said that would leave "the potential for civil war."
"The course that I have proposed is to turn over to the United Nations the full responsibility for the transformation of the government and for the reconstruction," he said.
"Because I believe that as long as it is an American occupation, we will have great difficulty in staying any course and achieving the kind of stability we want to achieve."
At news conference after the forum, Kerry said: "We should not only be tough, we have to be smart -- and there's a smarter way to accomplish this mission than this president is pursuing."
Kerry campaigned in the city with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York --their first time on the trail together. They were joined at the City College forum by Rep. Charles Rangel of New York.
Kerry touted a scaled-back version of a national service program that would pay tuition for about 200,000 public college students in exchange for two years of national service and pay part-time fees for 300,000.
Kerry originally proposed paying tuition for 500,000 students, funding the program by reforming the direct student loan program.
But aides said he had to scale back that proposal due to the federal budget deficit, currently projected to run about $480 billion.
The Bush campaign and its Republican allies accused Kerry of trying to exploit the trouble in Iraq for his political benefit.
Former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, speaking on behalf of the Bush campaign, said Kerry's argument was "just a lot of criticism and pessimism." Kerry reads to a group of preschoolers Wednesday as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a child at a Jumpstart preschool in Manhattan.
"He is saying that we should hand over power to the United Nations," Weinberger said. "The United Nations is totally incapable of doing any kind of job as pacifying or removing terrorism from a country like Iraq."
Rep. Peter King of New York said Kerry has offered only "sideline criticisms and back-seat driving" as an alternative to Bush's proposals.
"If he is going to criticize the president, he should say what he would do differently and not just make general statements," King said.
"By putting out ambiguous statements like that, he's only sowing seeds of doubt and confusion."
King said Kerry's attacks on Bush were particularly dismissive of those U.S. allies who are contributing troops to the occupation.
"For him to be belittling that really flies in the face of how he's going to bring some allied coalition to assist us in Iraq," King said.
In a press conference Tuesday night, Bush acknowledged that the United States had suffered some "tough weeks" in Iraq, but he said his administration would "finish the work of the fallen."
He said American commanders would have as many troops as they felt necessary to battle the Shiite uprising south of Baghdad and the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
China demands US to clarify arms sale report
(Xinhua)
2004-04-15
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-04/15/content_323650.htm
China has demanded that the United States clarify the report by Taiwan media on US arms sales to Taiwan.
Taiwan media reported that the United States inclined to sell submarines, Patriot-III anti-missile system and anti-submarine planes to Taiwan, and the island is ready to propose a budgetary program for the sales.
The US arms sales to Taiwan violate the three Sino-US joint communiques, particularly the August 17 Joint Communique, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said in Beijing Thursday.
The move "interferes with China's internal affairs and may lead to further tension in situation across the Taiwan Straits," the spokesman said, adding that China has been opposing arms sales to Taiwan.
Chinese leaders have reiterated the stance to US Vice-President Dick Cheney during his China tour, Kong said.
"We urged the US side to honor its commitments, stop arms sales to Taiwan and stop any words or deeds in violation of the principles in the three joint communiques to avoid sabotaging the peace and stability across the Taiwan Straits and the development of Sino-US relations," Kong said.
----
7 states flout ban on arms to China
April 15, 2004
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/worldscene.htm
BRUSSELS - At least seven European Union states sell arms to China despite a 15-year-old ban, Amnesty International said yesterday, urging the bloc to close loopholes in its code of conduct for weapons exports.
The London-based human rights watchdog also called on the union to demand evidence that Beijing was improving its human rights practices before bowing to French pressure for an end to the arms embargo.
----
Cheney stands firm on U.S. weapons for Taiwan
April 15, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040414-113140-3779r.htm
SHANGHAI - Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday told Chinese leaders that the United States is committed to its arms sales to Taiwan, and prodded China to pressure North Korea to abandon its nuclear program.
During several hours of meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Central Military Commission Chairman Jiang Zemin, Mr. Cheney told the leaders the Taiwan Relations Act, which permits the arms sales, is "an important piece of legislation," said a senior Bush administration official who briefed reporters after the meetings on the condition of anonymity.
The senior official stated that U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, which China views as a renegade province, were a direct response to "significant increases" in Chinese military deployments near Taiwan, including the deployment of some 500 short-range missiles.
Chinese officials believe the arms sales encourage Taiwan's pursuit of complete autonomy and this week criticized the island's recent purchase of radar systems from the United States.
"It's important that there be a very clear open channel of communications between our two nations on that issue," Mr. Cheney said of his discussions about Taiwan, which has been a contentious issue with China for decades.
The Taiwan Relations Act commits the United States to preventing the forcible reunification of the island with China's mainland.
"From my perspective, it's been a very successful trip," said Mr. Cheney. "I've been pleased with the way we've been received."
On North Korea, Mr. Cheney said, "I didn't come expecting to alter Chinese policy.
"I did come with the mission of making clear what our views were, of hopefully sharing perspective with my hosts," Mr. Cheney said. "I think we achieved that."
Mr. Cheney told the Chinese leaders that information provided by the covert nuclear technology supplier group headed by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan should convince Beijing that North Korea obtained uranium enrichment technology through the network, the senior official said.
China's government in the past has said it does not believe North Korea has a covert uranium enrichment program, only the plutonium program that was reported to the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency.
The recent disclosures about Mr. Khan supplying nuclear technology to North Korea is ominous, the senior official said, noting that "time is not on our side with respect to the North Korean program."
"We think it's important to move forward aggressively to get this thing resolved as quickly as possible," the senior official said. The official stated that the six-nation talks on the problem is "the preferable method" for dealing with the issue.
Later, Mr. Cheney told reporters traveling with him that China and the United States both have made enormous progress since Mao Tse-tung's rule over China ended with his death in 1976.
China's leaders, including Mr. Hu, have shown "professionalism" that is impressive, Mr. Cheney said.
However, he stated: "I think it is a mistake for us, as Americans, to underestimate the extent to which there are differences, in terms of our approach, in terms of our political systems, in terms of our culture, history.
"By the same token, I think it's clear that there are broad areas where we share common strategic interests, and that with careful, thoughtful work on both sides going forward, there's no reason why we can't achieve a high degree of cooperation and avoid the kind of conflict and confrontation that would be a tragedy for everybody," Mr. Cheney said.
Mr. Cheney also raised U.S. concerns about the erosion of democracy in Hong Kong during the Beijing meetings, telling the Chinese "that to some extent the people of Taiwan might view what happens in Hong Kong as a bellwether of China to the one country, two systems approach," the senior official said.
Mr. Cheney expressed U.S. support for China's agreement in 1997 to allow Hong Kong to govern itself separately from Beijing under the one country, two systems idea, the senior official said.
Mr. Cheney passed on a letter from the Vatican asking China to allow the Vatican to send formal representatives to China. Beijing's official atheist communist government does not recognize the Roman Catholic Church or the Vatican and has created a state-run Catholic organization in its place.
-------- asia
U.S. teams cross DMZ to search for remains of Korean War MIAs
By Joseph Giordono,
Stars and Stripes Pacific edition,
Thursday, April 15, 2004
http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=20808&archive=true
YONGSAN GARRISON, South Korea - For the first time, U.S. remains recovery teams have crossed the Demilitarized Zone with equipment to search for servicemembers missing from the Korean War.
Pentagon officials also said that, for the first time since 1999, recovered remains will be returned across the DMZ at the end of each search operation. Previously, team members flew into the North to conduct operations, which began after lengthy negotiations in 1996.
"This year, the recovery work will be split between two sites for a schedule that will extend between April and October," read a Pentagon news release. "Twenty-eight U.S. team members will join with their North Korean counterparts for each of these approximately 30-day operations."
The sites have been identified as Unsan County and an area near the Chosin Reservoir, both sites of major Korean War battles that saw heavy losses of U.S. servicemembers. Five operations are scheduled, officials said.
There was no media coverage of the equipment as it crossed into North Korea on Monday, U.S. Forces Korea officials said Tuesday. However, repatriation ceremonies would be held at Yongsan Garrison for any remains.
Moving the supplies and equipment was made possible by negotiations between the North Koreans and the U.S. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office this February, the release said.
Separately, the office announced a "historic meeting" between Russian and U.S. archivists to examine the issue of information about American POWs and servicemembers missing in action. The meetings are to take place this week at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Md.
U.S. officials "invited the Russians in 2003 to discuss technical areas important to the effort to locate materials in the Russian archives about unaccounted-for American servicemen," officials said.
The conference will look at issues such as declassifying Russian political and military documents from World War II, the Korean and Vietnam conflicts and the Cold War; U.S. experts say these documents could prove invaluable in determining the fate of missing Americans.
A small team of U.S. specialists is already working in Moscow to recover such documents, but officials hope this week's conference will help smooth the process.
U.S. recovery teams have operated in North Korea for the past nine years, recovering more than 180 sets of remains in 27 separate operations, officials said. The Pentagon says more than 8,100 U.S. servicemen remain listed as missing in action from the Korean War.
More than 88,000 Americans are missing in action from World War II, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War and Desert Storm, officials said.
-------- biological weapons
Government Considers New Smallpox Vaccine
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13095-2004Apr14?language=printer
Buoyed by promising results in animal experiments, government officials are contemplating buying massive quantities of a new type of smallpox vaccine to supplement the national stockpile already assembled in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Scientists believe that unlike any of the vaccines now available, the new vaccine may be effective in protecting against the deadly infectious disease without the risk of serious -- and occasionally lethal -- side effects.
Efforts to develop the new vaccine, underway for several years, have taken on an air of urgency after safety concerns stalled a 2003 campaign to vaccinate millions of health care professionals and emergency workers who might be first to respond to a biological attack. Those concerns were underscored on Tuesday, when the vaccine that makes up the bulk of the U.S. stockpile was possibly linked to cases of heart inflammation.
As doubts grow about the existing vaccines, scientists are increasingly optimistic about the prospects for the experimental vaccine, called Modified Vaccinia Ankara, or MVA.
Scientists say recently conducted studies using MVA on mice and monkeys indicated the vaccine is both effective and safe, results that are especially encouraging for the some 30 percent of the population that is not supposed to take any of the vaccines now available because of a high risk of complications. That group includes people with HIV, those with compromised immune systems due to chemotherapy, pregnant women and individuals with the skin disease eczema.
But some government officials say MVA has shown such promise that it could do far more than merely fill the gaps left by other vaccines, and that it may become the nation's primary means of defense against a smallpox attack. They say, too, that it could help resuscitate the foundering national campaign to vaccinate millions of emergency workers who would be responsible for cutting off the deadly virus's spread in the event of an outbreak.
"As of now, the front-line vaccine we have is Dryvax," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, referring to the only vaccine now licensed for smallpox. "The question is whether we find something that comes along that can replace it. That's looking like it could be MVA."
But to get to that point, the cost of producing the drug would be well into the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not the billions. That sum is too high, some public health experts say, especially given that scientists may not know whether MVA truly works until there's an attack. Unlike Dryvax, which was used effectively during a global eradication campaign during the 1970s, MVA has never been put to the test during an outbreak.
Most experts believe the probability of a smallpox attack is low. Following eradication, only two known stocks of the virus remained in the world: one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and another in Russia. Vaccination campaigns in the United States ended decades ago because the risk of the vaccine was considered greater than that of the virus.
But national security experts fear that some of the Russian stockpile could be in the hands of terrorists. Smallpox is one of the most potent bioterror agents because it spreads from person to person and because it kills 30 percent of its victims while permanently disfiguring many of the rest.
After the 2001 anthrax attacks, the federal government made it a priority to develop a stockpile of smallpox vaccine large enough for every man, woman and child in the country. Now the question is whether a second stockpile of safer vaccine is needed, and if the government can afford it.
"The cost is unknown. But that has to be factored in," said D.A. Henderson, a science adviser to the Department of Health and Human Services and one of the principal forces behind smallpox's eradication.
Henderson said that dose for dose, MVA will end up being significantly more expensive than any of the smallpox vaccines now available because a lot more of the vaccine will likely be needed to induce immunity.
The current stockpile consists of three vaccines, including Dryvax from the government's decades-old stockpile. The second was donated from the stockpiles of Aventis Pasteur, the French vaccine maker. The third, made by Acambis PLC, is an update of Dryvax using modern production techniques.
They all protect people using the same basic method, one that dates back centuries. Although the vaccines in the stockpile are produced in different ways, they all involve a virus related to smallpox that, when injected, begins to replicate vigorously and spurs the body's immunity. The replication of the virus can have side effects, however, that range from the mild -- a fever or a swollen arm -- to the serious -- an inflammation of the brain known as encephalitis or, perhaps, an inflammation of the heart.
MVA is also alive when it's injected, but it doesn't replicate well in humans so researchers believe that it's much less likely to cause side effects. The vaccine was first discovered in Turkey, and was later given to more than 100,000 people in Germany.
Because Germany didn't have smallpox at the time, the vaccine's ability to combat the disease remains unknown. But in U.S. government studies completed earlier this year on animals, the vaccine surpassed experts' expectations.
In one experiment, monkeys were given Dryvax, MVA or no vaccine at all. They were then bombarded with monkeypox, a close cousin of smallpox. The monkeys that had not been immunized died, while all of those that had been immunized by either of the vaccines lived. Bernard Moss, who conducted the experiments for Fauci's NIAID, said he was impressed with how well the MVA-immunized monkeys held up to the challenge.
"We were very gratified. They showed absolutely no signs of illness," he said.
A second study tested MVA's effectiveness with mice whose immune systems had been compromised. Again, MVA did the job without causing adverse reactions. Future studies are intended to determine how quickly the protection takes effect, and how long it lasts.
The vaccine is scheduled to enter human trials in the United States within weeks, using samples from two competing companies. One of those companies, Acambis, has already produced an updated version of Dryvax called ACAM2000, some 200 million doses of which have been purchased in the past few years by the government. The company stopped adding volunteers to a study on ACAM2000 this week, however, after at least one person exhibited swelling in the heart. Acambis officials declined to comment on their MVA program.
The other company is the Danish firm Bavarian Nordic AS. The two companies are vying for a contract to produce several million doses of MVA that will likely be awarded later this year. Another contract, calling for 60 million doses or more, is slated to go out to bid in the fall. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office estimated such a purchase would cost $900 million.
Bavarian Nordic chief executive Peter Wulff said that, at least initially, government officials are looking at MVA as a niche vaccine for those who can't take one of the other vaccines because of the threat of complications. He thinks, however, the government will eventually want to use MVA for everyone.
"If you have something that is safe, why would you want to use something that is unsafe?" Wulff said.
Bavarian Nordic and Acambis are not the only companies hoping to produce the vaccine of the future, and MVA isn't the only contender for that title. In the long term, experts say that a genetically engineered vaccine may be the solution. In the shorter term, the California-based biotechnology firm VaxGen Inc. reported this week that its vaccine, known as LC16m8, protected rabbits and mice against a pox virus just as well as Dryvax after only one dose. Scientists have yet to determine how many doses of MVA are needed to induce immunity. The question is important because in the event of an attack, there may not be time for more than one dose. "MVA would have little utility in response to an outbreak," said VaxGen chief executive Lance K. Gordon.
Some worry, too, that MVA may not be available for several years, and that focusing on it so heavily may distract from the more immediate goal of getting emergency workers immunized with Dryvax.
"We have a misperception of risk with the existing vaccine," said William Bicknell, professor of international health at Boston University and a former Massachusetts health commissioner, who insists Dryvax is safe for healthy adults. "MVA would be even safer. So much the better. But MVA is still several years away and waiting is not the best idea."
Fauci said he believes MVA could be in the stockpile within a year or two, and that it may ultimately be used to immunize health care workers who had been reluctant to get a shot of Dryvax.
Before the vaccine can be licensed for use by the Food and Drug Administration, however, it has to undergo a full battery of human trials. Approval of any smallpox vaccine is complicated by the fact that researchers can't ethically expose humans to the disease. Up until now, the best they could do was to give the vaccine to humans to check for side effects, and then test the vaccine's effectiveness on monkeys using monkeypox. But Peter Jahrling, principal scientific adviser with the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, said he could take those efforts a step further by exposing monkeys to actual smallpox.
"I would be very surprised if it didn't work," Jahrling said. "But the only way to know is to do it, and I'll do it if asked."
Staff writer Justin Gillis contributed to this report.
-------- business
EADS set to win giant NATO contract for surveillance aircraft: report
PARIS (AFP)
Apr 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040415085353.t3jh7gj4.html
NATO is set to award a defence contract for a fleet of surveillance aircraft worth up to four billion euros (4.8 billion dollars) to a consortium led by European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, the Financial Times reported Thursday.
NATO's decision on what would be its largest defence contract for decades will not be formalised until next month, the newspaper said, quoting alliance and industry officials.
But chief procurement officers in NATO capitals have only until Friday to object to the EADS-led group, which also includes US company Northrop Grumman Corp, it said.
NATO hopes the decision to proceed with the long-delayed programme will signal the renewed commitment of the transatlantic alliance following the crisis over the Iraq war, the newspaper said.
Surveillance aircraft are used by the military as flying eyes and ears to monitor activity on the ground, at sea or in the air.
But the deal remains at risk due to a challenge by Raytheon Company, which also competed for the contract. The US company has accused NATO of pushing through the EADS bid under US pressure, it said.
According to Western diplomats, the US has backed the EADS contract because of the involvement of Northrop Grumman, which builds the US Air Force's J-Stars ground surveillance aircraft.
The United States had pushed NATO to buy J-Stars outright, but when several European members objected, Northrop joined EADS to produce a similar aircraft using a body by Airbus, EADS' aircraft division.
Shares in EADS climbed in early Paris trade, bucking the overall market's decline, on the report.
EADS shares were trading up 1.80 percent at 19.79 euros, while the CAC-40 index fell 0.24 percent to 3,724.48 points.
"This would be very good news for the company and it appears to be a large order," said one Paris dealer.
-------- china
Cheney Warns China About Hong Kong
Policy There Linked to Taiwan, He Says
By Glenn Kessler and Edward Cody
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10601-2004Apr14.html
BEIJING, April 14 -- Linking two contentious issues in U.S.-Chinese relations, Vice President Cheney warned China's leaders Wednesday that any efforts by Beijing to thwart democracy in Hong Kong would likely reinforce the budding movement in Taiwan to formally separate from China.
Cheney's message, which was described, on condition of anonymity, by a senior administration official, echoed the arguments of recently reelected Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian, who has vowed to draft a new constitution for the island by 2006. In the talks, Cheney reiterated the long-standing U.S. position that there is "one China," a statement prominently mentioned in China's state media. But his joining of the Taiwan and Hong Kong issues appeared to be intended to put the Chinese on notice that their actions in Hong Kong could have consequences for maintaining the status quo they seek in the Taiwan Strait.
Britain ceded authority over Hong Kong in 1997, but Beijing has increasingly disappointed democracy advocates by refusing to quickly broaden voting rights as anticipated under the agreement transferring the former colony to China.
Cheney, who met with President Hu Jintao for more than two hours, also told the Chinese that the negotiations over North Korea's nuclear ambitions needed to begin to show results, the official said. With new information emerging daily on North Korea's dealings with Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan, time was running short, the official quoted Cheney as saying. Some key officials in the Bush administration want to put significant pressure on North Korea, such as through sanctions, after the American presidential election. Cheney appeared to be signaling that a diplomatic impasse will not remain an acceptable option, though he did not set a timetable.
"I didn't come expecting to alter Chinese policy," Cheney told reporters traveling with him. "I did come with the mission of making clear what our views were, of hopefully sharing perspective with my hosts."
Overall, however, Cheney stressed that U.S.-Chinese relations are good. "This really is an amazing relationship," Cheney said. Noting the contrast with his first visit to Beijing, in 1975, Cheney said "it's gone from almost nothing to one of the most significant bilateral relationships anyplace in the world."
Cheney added, "It is a mistake for us, as Americans, to underestimate the extent to which there are differences -- in terms of our approach, our political systems, our culture, history." But he said there were areas of "common strategic interests" and, with careful consultation, both sides can "avoid the kind of conflict and confrontation that would be a tragedy for everybody."
Yet, as Cheney met in private with senior leaders in Beijing, China voiced a strong public warning about mounting dangers it sees in Taiwan now that Chen has been reelected. Chen, the government's Taiwan Affairs Office said, is following a timetable leading to a declaration of independence for the self-governing island by 2008.
"That will definitely bring tension and danger to the region of the Taiwan Strait," said Li Weiyi, the Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman.
China has deployed an estimated 500 short-range ballistic missiles directly across from the strait that separates Taiwan from the mainland. The Bush administration has cited the Chinese missiles as the reason for selling radar and military equipment to Taiwan, pointing out that the U.S. government is legally obligated to assist in the island's defense. Cheney rejected Chinese complaints that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan were destabilizing, making it clear that the administration believes the sales were a direct consequence of China's missile buildup aimed at Taiwan, the official said.
Cheney's discussions also covered economic disputes with China, the United States' third-largest trading partner. China said Vice Premier Huang Ju would travel to Washington later this year to meet with Treasury Secretary John W. Snow for further discussions on having China adopt a more flexible currency exchange rate. Cheney also suggested that U.S. companies be tapped to sell nuclear reactors to China as it seeks to substantially boost its use of nuclear power. China issued an international bid earlier this year to build four plants, and Westinghouse Electric Co. LLC is competing with Japanese and French firms for the multibillion-dollar contracts.
Premier Wen Jiabao told Cheney that the Bush administration should ease restrictions on exports of high-technology products to China and grant it full market status "as soon as possible" as part of a "five-point agreement" to develop bilateral trade, the official New China News Agency said. Full market status would insulate China against charges it is dumping its goods by selling them abroad for less than they cost to produce.
China, which views Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunited with the mainland, has declared that it seeks peaceful reunification with the island but is prepared to use force if it's necessary to achieve that end. The country's leaders have indicated a declaration of independence by Taiwan is a red line that, if crossed, would likely lead to military conflict. And that, they have said, seems to be where Chen is heading.
"What Chen has done during the last four years clearly shows such an intention," Li said, adding: "He has claimed in public many times that he will hold a referendum on a new constitution in 2006, that in 2008 the new constitution will be put into practice and that, in this way, Taiwan will become a normal and complete country. That is a timetable for Taiwan's independence."
Within hours, Chen's government responded by saying that plans for constitutional reform are not tied to independence, the Reuters news agency reported from Taipei. "Communist China has politicized and emotionalized every issue, and that is the chief reason why cross-Strait relations cannot develop steadily," said Chen Ming-tong, vice chairman of Taiwan's Mainland Affairs Council.
Cheney left Beijing on Wednesday afternoon for a one-day visit to Shanghai, China's business center.
-------- europe
Purported Bin Laden'Truce' Is Rejected
By MOHAMED KHALIFA
Associated Press Writer
Apr 15, 2004
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/E/EGYPT_BIN_LADEN_TAPE?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A man identifying himself as Osama bin Laden offered a "truce" to European countries that do not attack Muslims, saying it would begin when their soldiers leave Islamic nations, according to a recording broadcast Thursday on Arab satellite networks.
Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain quickly spurned what appeared to be an attempt to drive a wedge between Europe and America.
The tape, which ran in full at more than seven minutes, also vowed revenge against America for the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and denounced the United States as using the Iraq war for corporate profiteering.
"I announce a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries," the taped message said as the stations showed an old, still picture of al-Qaida leader.
The message said "the door to a truce is open for three months," but the time frame could be extended. "The truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries," the speaker said without elaborating.
A CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency conducted a technical analysis of the recording and concluded it is probably authentic. The official said the tape was likely recorded in the past several weeks because of its reference to Israel's killing of Yassin last month.
The tape made clear overtures to Europeans, calling them "our neighbors north of the Mediterranean," and tried to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States.
Several audio and videotapes of al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, have been released in recent months, but Thursday's tape was the first purportedly from bin Laden since September. Then, a videotape showed bin Laden climbing down a craggy mountainside with al-Zawahri.
Ayman Gaballah, editor of Al-Arabiya, said only that the pan-Arab television network received the tape from "our sources." He would not say if the tape was received at its headquarters in the United Arab Emirates or in a bureau elsewhere, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.
"From the voice, it seems it is bin Laden, but we are not experts to confirm it," Gaballah said.
Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based satellite station, also aired the tape in full. Its chief editor wasn't available for comment. Sen. Joseph Biden, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on NBC's "Today" show that bin Laden was "trying to separate us from the Europeans, and Europeans from the U.S. It's an example of how opportunistic he is."
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., expressed skepticism about the offer made on the tape.
"You cannot negotiate with terrorists, especially someone like Osama bin Laden," Shelby told "Today."
In London, the Foreign Office ruled out any deal with al-Qaida.
"Their attacks are against the very idea of co-existence," the Foreign Office said. "The right response is to continue to confront terrorism, not give in to its demands."
A British opposition spokesman said the purported truce offered was a sign that the al-Qaida network is rattled.
"It is obviously an attempt by al-Qaida or the associates of al-Qaida, to try and drive a wedge between the coalition," said Michael Ancram, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party.
"They are frightened about the effectiveness of the coalition," Ancram said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome that "it's unthinkable that we may open a negotiation with bin Laden, everybody understands this."
Germany is a leading contributor to the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. It opposed the Iraq war but is now helping train Iraqi police.
A German government spokesman said: "There can be no negotiations with terrorists and serious criminals like Osama bin Laden."
The voice on the tape defended al-Qaida's methods.
"They say that we kill for the sake of killing, but reality shows that they lie," the speaker said.
Russians, he said, were only killed after attacking Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechnya, Europeans after invading Iraq and Afghanistan and the Americans in New York after "supporting the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula."
"Stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling your blood," the message added. "This is a difficult but easy equation."
This truce, the message said, was to deny "the warmongers" further opportunities and because polls have shown that "most of the European peoples want reconciliation" with the Islamic world.
Germany rejected that notion.
"The international community must pursue the fight against international terrorism together," a government spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. "Germany will continue to make its contribution."
In a reference to terror attacks on the United States and Spain, the voice on the tape said that "what happened on Sept. 11 and March 11 was your goods delivered back to you."
"Security is a need for all humans and we could not let you have a monopoly on it for yourselves," the voice added. "People who are aware would not let their politicians jeopardize their security."
At the start of the recording, the voice called this a "message to our neighbors north of the Mediterranean, including a reconciliation initiative in response to the recent positive developments that have appeared."
It did not give any specifics, but the March 11 attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people and increasing violence in Iraq have prompted debate in Europe and Asia about keeping troops there.
Spain's outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's government, which strongly backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq despite popular and political opposition, was ousted in general elections three days after the attacks in Spain.
Incoming Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq by June 30 unless the United Nations takes control.
However, his incoming government rejected the offer of a truce with al-Qaida. Spain's incoming foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, speaking at his nation's parliament, said: "What we want is peace, democracy and freedom. We don't have to listen to or answer" the tape.
-------- iran
Tehran says United States sought its help in Iraq
April 15, 2004
By Nicholas Kralev
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040415-124445-2291r.htm
Iran stepped into the diplomatic spotlight yesterday when it was revealed that the United States and two of its coalition partners, Britain and Italy, had sought Tehran's help in dealing with the volatile security situation in Iraq.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi disclosed the rare contact between Tehran and Washington, which broke diplomatic relations in November 1979, when militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Iran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
"There has been a lot of correspondence with the U.S. about Iraq," Mr. Kharrazi told reporters in Tehran. "Naturally, there are such requests from the U.S. that we help improve the situation in Iraq, and we are making efforts in this regard."
Although Mr. Kharrazi sent a senior aide to Iraq yesterday, he said the dialogue with U.S. officials "has stopped because we felt we were going nowhere." He accused the United States of breaking its promises and "taking a wrong path." He also noted that the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, which represents U.S. diplomatic interests in the Islamic republic, played a mediating role in the recent exchanges.
In Washington, U.S. officials said it was Britain that invited the Iranian delegation to help calm the security situation in southern Iraq. The United States went along with the proposal, but it did not ask Britain to extend the invitation.
"They were invited by the British," a senior State Department official said of the Iranians. "Obviously, we did not object."
The official expressed hope that Iran would be helpful in ending the standoff between coalition forces and Shi'ite Muslim radical leader Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr.
"Since Iran does have some influence with the [Shi'ite] community, we hope they would make clear that they are not in any way supporting violence or confrontation and that, in fact, they are supporting the authority of the central government," he said.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, while denying any specific requests to Tehran from Washington, acknowledged that recent messages had been passed.
"We have made clear to Iran, as we've made clear to other of Iraq's neighbors, that they need to play a helpful role, they need to play a positive role and calm the situation," he told reporters.
Both the State Department and the Pentagon have accused Iran of interfering in coalition efforts in Iraq , but they have refused to address specific reports, such as those about Tehran's financing of Iraqi militants.
"We have been concerned about the role that Iran has been playing, and it's something that we monitor very closely," Mr. Boucher said.
The Washington Times on Tuesday quoted military officials as saying intelligence reports showed that Sheik al-Sadr was receiving funds from Iran, directly funneled by the Republican Guard, the enforcer of Iran's hard-line Shi'ite rule. The sources also said Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terror group set up by Iran, was diverting money to Sheik al-Sadr.
In Tehran yesterday, Mr. Kharrazi said Iran "is making its utmost efforts to help resolve the situation in Iraq as soon as possible so that the power is given back to the Iraqi people."
"The solution is for occupiers to leave Iraq," he said.
Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome yesterday that an Iranian delegation was on its way to Baghdad to help secure the release of four Italian hostages held in Iraq since Monday. It was later reported that one of the hostages was killed.
The unidentified abductors have reportedly demanded that Italy withdraw its 3,000 soldiers and paramilitary police from Iraq. The Italian government has ruled that out.
--------
Iranians in Iraq to Help in Talks on Rebel Cleric
April 15, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/international/middleeast/15IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 14 - An Iranian government delegation arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday to help mediate the standoff between American troops and a rebel Shiite cleric holed up in Najaf with hundreds of his militiamen, offering American officials an improbable ally in their quest to put Iraq on a peaceful path to self-government.
As political momentum built against the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, the hostage-taking crisis that erupted as he began his insurrection 11 days ago took a savage turn with the announcement by Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, that one of four Italian security guards seized in an ambush near Falluja earlier in the week had been killed.
Mr. Frattini said the killing had been confirmed by Italy's ambassador in Qatar, headquarters for Al Jazeera television network, after the diplomat had been shown a videotape of the killing, which the satellite channel said it would not broadcast because it was "too bloody."
Most of southern Iraq has quieted, but fighting has continued to flare in the Sunni city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, where American marines on Wednesday entered the sixth day of a cease-fire that has been repeatedly broken by heavy exchanges of rocket, mortar and small-arms fire, as well as by strikes from American combat jets and attack helicopters.
Also on Wednesday, Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy, ended an 11-day visit to Iraq by outlining the beginnings of a plan - he called it a "sketch" - for a transition to Iraqi sovereignty, one that suggested a weaker continuing role for the United States than the Bush administration has envisioned.
Among other things, he suggested that the Iraqi Governing Council, the American-appointed advisory body seen by United States officials as the most viable nucleus of a transitional government after June 30, should "cease to exist" on that date.
As the five-man delegation from Iran's Foreign Ministry settled into a Baghdad hotel on Wednesday, American officials in Baghdad and Washington said it was here at Britain's suggestion, although they said the United States had consented to the visit.
Some American officials saluted what they saw as a rare instance of cooperation in 25 years of enmity between Washington and Tehran - even if the Iranians intended to extend Iran's influence as well as broker a peace.
The situation was also odd for Iran and Iraq, which fought each other to a stalemate in their eight-year war in the 1980's. That conflict was prompted in part by Saddam Hussein's fears that Iraq's Shiite majority, about 60 percent of the country's population, would be influenced by Iran's militant form of Shiite Islam. That fear is a current one among some American officials and much of Iraq's Sunni minority.
The Iranian delegation held no formal meetings on Wednesday. It was headed by Hossein Sadeghi, the Foreign Ministry's director of Persian Gulf affairs. In remarks to reporters, he played down the delegation's role, saying it would be one not of mediation, but of gaining "a better understanding of what's going on in Iraq."
But the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said earlier in Tehran that the delegation was responding to an appeal for assistance and would do all it could to end the crisis.
An earlier hint of Iran's willingness to help head off more turmoil in Iraq came in remarks on Saturday by Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami. Greeting a visiting Iraqi official, he indirectly criticized the uprising led by Mr. Sadr, saying, "Iran considers any policy that would intensify the crisis in Iraq and jeopardize the establishment of security harmful for Shiites and Islam."
There were already signs that Mr. Sadr - who has been under pressure from a group of powerful Najaf-based clerics who have close ties with Iran - was moving away from confrontation. He announced on Wednesday that he had dropped all conditions for negotiating with the Americans.
Aides to Mr. Sadr told reporters that he would no longer insist that American troops leave Najaf, a Shiite holy city about 110 miles south of Baghdad, before his own militiamen did, and that he would no longer demand that the Americans free thousands of detainees. Haidar Aziz, a spokesman in Baghdad for Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army, said the cleric had decided to turn the militia into "a political and social organization with no military activities."
Finally, the aides said, Mr. Sadr had agreed to submit to a warrant for his arrest in the murder of a rival Shiite cleric last year, but only "after the formation of a legitimate and sovereign government" - meaning after American control of Iraq ends.
American commanders said they would wait to see whether Mr. Sadr's actions matched those statements, and a 2,500-man American military task force backed by attack helicopters tightened its grip on the approaches to Najaf. But the commitments the aides outlined appeared to tally closely with demands put to him at a crisis meeting on Monday night by a group representing the country's most influential ayatollahs. That group included Ali al-Sistani, the Iranian-born cleric who has emerged as the most powerful voice among Iraq's religious Shiites.
Although Ayatollah Sistani has refused to meet American officials and has been increasingly critical of American plans for a transition to Iraqi rule, he has also stressed the importance of securing Shiite majority rule peacefully - a principle violated by Mr. Sadr.
The uprisings reached their greatest intensity across Iraq two weeks ago, just as Mr. Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, arrived to begin weighing Iraqis' opinions about a transition plan. Despite the added difficulties the fighting posed to that mission, Mr. Brahimi said, he had formed a "few still tentative ideas" about how to move Iraq forward toward the first elected government in its history by January.
Mr. Brahimi suggested that some of the Governing Council's 25 members could be appointed to other government jobs, and that the transitional government might be formed from scratch, "led by a prime minister and comprising Iraqi men and women known for their honesty, integrity and competence."
Many Iraqis dismiss the council as unrepresentative, or too closely identified with the occupiers.
Mr. Brahimi also spoke of holding "a large national conference," possibly as early as July this year, to promote "national dialogue, consensus-building and national reconciliation," and said it should elect a consultative assembly to work with the transitional government.
The idea mirrors the recent political rebuilding process in Afghanistan, where Mr. Brahimi served as the United Nations' special envoy.
Marking his distance from the Americans, he went further than on any previous occasion in criticizing the occupation.
"I believe that what we have heard in Iraq from everybody, and from the Americans themselves, is that there is no military solution to the problems, and that the use of force, especially the excessive use of force, makes matters worse and does not solve the problem," Mr. Brahimi said.
In response to a reporter's question about reports of American soldiers' abusing Iraqis, he added: "No one should look at Iraqis as if Iraqis do not deserve respect. We do not accept this from any state or any person."
Before the killing of the Italian contractor, Fabrizio Quattrochi, became known, Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who visited Italian troops in southern Iraq last weekend, ordered a military plane sent to Baghdad to evacuate Italian citizens who could reach the capital, including Italian journalists.
The move was the most dramatic yet by any of the nations that has citizens among more than 20 hostages who have been seized in the last week and not released. They include seven American contractors and two American soldiers seized with them off an American military fuel convoy, as well as three Japanese, the three Italians seized with Mr. Quatrocchi, three Czechs, a Canadian, and an Israeli Arab.
There was no new information about unconfirmed reports of four bodies found near a highway at Abu Ghraib, where a fuel convoy was attacked last week.
The American arm's-length position on the Iranian mediator was consistent with its policy since last summer, when American intelligence experts said groups or individuals in Iran were responsible for the bombings in May of residential compounds in Saudi Arabia.
Since then, the United States has continued to accuse Iran of supporting Hezbollah, the violent militant group in Lebanon, and of aspiring to develop nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has tried without success to bring the nuclear issue before the United Nations.
Opposing a policy of confrontation, Britain has joined with France and Germany to try to use diplomacy to get Iran to cooperate in dismantling its nuclear arms programs. American officials said Wednesday that the British invitation to Iran over Iraq was an extension of that approach.
"If the British invitation results in something, that would be good," said an administration official, adding that he was not sure if it would.
Other administration officials acknowledge, meanwhile, that there was a vigorous debate among Mr. Bush's aides over whether Iran - which Mr. Bush included with Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil" two years ago - was playing a constructive role in Iraq.
Nazila Fathi contributed reporting from Tehran for this article, and Steven R. Weisman from Washington.
--------
Iranians in Iraq to Aid in Talks; Tehran Diplomat Is Killed
April 15, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/international/middleeast/15CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 15 - A senior Iranian diplomat was shot and killed as he was driving to Tehran's diplomatic mission in Baghdad today, an Iraqi policeman who guards the mission said.
The victim was killed on a side road near the embassy by unknown assailants traveling in another car, said the guard, First Lt. Meqdam al-Azawi. The Iranian foreign ministry said the diplomat, Khalil Naimi, was the mission's first secretary.
The killing could complicate the mission of an Iranian government delegation that is in Iraq trying to mediate the standoff between American troops and a rebel Shiite cleric. The delegation, which arrived in Baghdad on Wednesday, traveled today to the southern town of Najaf where the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, has been holed up.
Mr. Naimi was apparently not a member of the Iranian negotiating team, and it was unclear whether the killing was related to the delegation's visit.
"It was a very senseless shooting by unknown people," Lt. Azawi said.
Also today, three Japanese civilians held hostage in Iraq were released in Baghdad. The three - two men and a woman - were handed over to a Sunni organization that has been facilitating hostage releases, then driven to the Japanese embassy, Reuters reported. Their kidnappers had threatened to kill the captives unless Japan withdrew its 530 soldiers from Iraq, a demand the Japanese government refused.
The release of the Japanese civilians came a day after the announcement by Italy's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, that one of four Italian security guards seized in an ambush near Falluja earlier in the week had been killed.
Mr. Frattini said the killing had been confirmed by Italy's ambassador in Qatar, headquarters for Al Jazeera television network, after the diplomat had been shown a videotape of the killing. The satellite channel said it would not broadcast because it was "too bloody."
Most of southern Iraq has quieted, but fighting has continued to flare in the Sunni city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, where American marines today entered the seventh day of a cease-fire that has been repeatedly broken by heavy exchanges of rocket, mortar and small-arms fire, as well as strikes by American jets and attack helicopters.
An American soldier was killed on Wednesday and five were wounded in two bomb attacks on American convoys near Samarra, north of Baghdad, the military reported today. The names of the killed and wounded soldiers were not released.
On Wednesday, Lakhdar Brahimi, the special envoy, ended an 11-day visit to Iraq by outlining the beginnings of a plan - he called it a "sketch" - for a transition to Iraqi sovereignty; it suggested a weaker continuing role for the United States than the Bush administration has envisioned. Among other things, he suggested that the Iraqi Governing Council, the American-appointed advisory body seen by United States officials as the most viable nucleus of a transitional government after June 30, should "cease to exist" on that date.
A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, Hamid Reza Assefi, denounced the assassination of the Iranian diplomat today and blamed the United States for the conflict. "The insecurity, anarchy and the blood that is being spilled in Iraq today is because of United States' wrong and unwise policies in the region," the spokesman said in Tehran."The only solution to this crisis is for the occupiers to leave and allow the Iraqis to run the affairs of their country," he said.
American officials in Baghdad and Washington said the Iranian delegation was in Iraq at the suggestion of Britain, not the United States, although they said the United States had consented to the visit. But some American officials acknowledged that the moment marked a rare cooperation in 25 years of enmity between Washington and Tehran, even if the Iranians were trying to extend Iranian influence as well as broker a peace.
The situation was also odd for Iran and Iraq, which fought each other to a stalemate in an eight-year war in the 1980's. That conflict was prompted in part by Saddam Hussein's fears that Iraq's Shiite majority, about 60 percent of the country's population, would be influenced by the Iranian revolution in 1979 that brought a militant form of Shiite Islam to power. Many in Iraq's Sunni minority remain fearful that Iraq might fall under the domination of militant Shiite ayatollahs.
The Iranian delegation was headed by Hossein Sadeghi, the Foreign Ministry's director of Persian Gulf affairs. In remarks to reporters on Wednesday, he played down Iran's role, saying it would be one not of mediation, but of gaining "a better understanding of what's going on in Iraq."
But the Iranian foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, said earlier in Tehran that the delegation was responding to an appeal for assistance, and would do all it could to end the crisis.
Though no American officials accompanied the Iranian delegation that traveled to Najaf today, General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference here that L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq, "is deeply involved and Iraqi officials are deeply involved with him in this effort."
There were already signs that Mr. Sadr - who has been under pressure from a group of powerful Najaf-based clerics who have close ties with Iran - was moving away from confrontation. He announced on Wednesday that he had dropped all conditions for negotiating with the Americans.
Aides to Mr. Sadr told reporters that he would no longer insist that American troops leave Najaf, a Shiite holy city about 110 miles south of Baghdad, before his own militiamen did, and would no longer demand that the Americans free thousands of detainees. Haidar Aziz, a spokesman in Baghdad for Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army, said the cleric had also decided to turn the militia into "a political and social organization with no military activities."
Finally, the aides said, Mr. Sadr had agreed to submit to a warrant for his arrest in the murder of a rival Shiite cleric last year, but only "after the formation of a legitimate and sovereign government" - meaning after American control of Iraq ends.
American commanders said they would wait to see whether Mr. Sadr's actions match those statements, and a 2,500-man American military task force backed by attack helicopters tightened its grip on the approaches to Najaf, where Mr. Sadr has taken refuge with hundreds of his militiamen. But the commitments the aides outlined appeared to tally closely with demands put to him at a crisis meeting in Najaf on Monday night by a group representing the country's most influential ayatollahs, including Ali al-Sistani, the Iranian-born cleric who has emerged as the most powerful voice among Iraq's religious Shiites.
Although Ayatollah Sistani has refused to meet American officials and has been increasingly critical of American plans for a transition to Iraqi rule, he has also stressed the importance of securing Shiite majority rule peacefully - a principle violated by Mr. Sadr.
The uprisings reached their greatest intensity across Iraq two weeks ago, just as Mr. Brahimi, the United Nations envoy, arrived to begin weighing Iraqis' opinions about a transition plan.
Despite the added difficulties the fighting posed to that mission, Mr. Brahimi said, he had formed a "few still tentative ideas" about how to move Iraq forward toward the first elected government in its history by January.
Mr. Brahimi suggested that some of the Governing Council's 25 members could be appointed to other government jobs, and that the transitional government might be formed from scratch, "led by a prime minister and comprising Iraqi men and women known for their honesty, integrity and competence."
Many Iraqis dismiss the council as unrepresentative, or too closely identified with the occupiers. He also mentioned "a large national conference," possibly as early as July this year that could promote "national dialogue, consensus-building and national reconciliation," and said it should elect a consultative assembly to work alongside the transitional government.
Although Mr. Brahimi did not say so, this idea mirrored the broad gathering known as a loya jirga that was part of the political rebuilding process in post-Sept. 11 Afghanistan, where Mr. Brahimi previously served as the United Nations' special envoy.
Marking his distance from the Americans, he went further than on any previous occasion in criticizing the occupation. "I believe that what we have heard in Iraq from everybody, and from the Americans themselves, is that there is no military solution to the problems, and that the use of force, especially the excessive use of force, makes matters worse and does not solve the problem," he said.
In response to a reporter's question about American soldiers abusing Iraqis, he added: "No one should look at Iraqis as if Iraqis do not deserve respect. We do not accept this from any state or any person."
Before the killing of the Italian contractor, Fabrizio Quattrochi, became known, Italy's prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, who visited Italian troops in southern Iraq last weekend, ordered a military plane sent to Baghdad to evacuate Italian citizens who could reach the capital, including Italian journalists.
The move was the most dramatic yet by any of the nations that has citizens among more than 20 hostages who have been seized in the last week and not released. They include seven American contractors and two American soldiers seized with them off an American military fuel convoy, as well as three Japanese, the three Italians seized with Mr. Quatrocchi, three Czechs, a Canadian, and an Israeli Arab.
There was no new information about unconfirmed reports of four bodies found near a highway at Abu Ghraib, where a fuel convoy was attacked last week.
The American arm's-length position on the Iranian mediator was consistent with its policy since last summer, when American intelligence experts said groups or individuals in Iran were responsible for the bombings in May of residential compounds in Saudi Arabia.
Since then, the United States has complained of Iran's support for Hezbollah, the violent militant group in Lebanon, and especially Iran's nuclear weapons aspirations. The Bush administration has tried without success to bring the nuclear issue before the United Nations.
Opposing a policy of confrontation, Britain has joined with France and Germany to try to use diplomacy to get Iran to cooperate in dismantling its nuclear arms programs. American officials said Wednesday that the British invitation to Iran over Iraq was an extension of that approach.
"If the British invitation results in something, that would be good," said an administration official, adding that he was not sure if it would.
Nazila Fathi in Tehran contributed reporting for this article.
-------- iraq
Marshes revive in postwar Iraq, but old ways gone
By Alistair Lyon,
April 15, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L14492065.htm
HWAIR, Iraq - Water is reflooding parts of the Iraqi wetlands drained by Saddam Hussein to deny refuge to Shi'ite rebels, but the communities displaced by war and oppression may never recreate their ravaged way of life.
Ole Jepsen, an adviser in Iraq's Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the south, said 30 to 40 percent of the marshes had been reflooded since U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam a year ago. "This is more than anyone expected."
Jepsen said some 200,000 refugees from southern Iraq had returned, though not all to their ancestral homes.
"We prefer to stay here," said Qasim Hassan, who returned last year from Iran and now lives in a mud brick shack beside a broad canal built on Saddam's orders to drain the marshes.
"There is nothing where we used to live. Even if the water comes back, we have no money to buy animals or seeds," he said. His family survives on government food rations.
The marshes covered 10,000 square km (3,800 square miles) of southern Iraq before Saddam gouged out the "Victory Canal" between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers during the 1980-88 war with Iran, when whole communities ran from the fighting.
As the water receded, the people whose lives revolved around fish, water buffalo, rice and reeds were evicted or fled, mostly to Iran. The wetlands that cleansed Iraq's great rivers and sustained myriad migrant birds were blighted.
NEW ASPIRATIONS
In a hamlet near Hwair, 70 km (44 miles) northwest of Basra, returned refugees were making reed mats, but said much of their former livelihood was gone and they no longer felt bound by traditions that had survived for centuries.
"The water is rising beyond the dyke, which is good because this water is useless," said Aziz Nasr, 19, gesturing towards stagnant pools lying near his mud brick dwelling.
"We want the dyke to be repaired and raised to protect our houses. Now we prefer access by road, not boats."
His grandmother, Thuhriya Kadhim, dreams of electricity, a refrigerator, a fan -- and a house made of bricks, not mud. "We want to plant date palms," she added. "We could raise the family and have something to pass on to the children."
Striking a balance between environmental restoration and the wishes of returning villagers poses a challenge for the U.S.-led authorities and any future Iraqi government.
Jepsen, the CPA coordinator for food, agriculture and irrigation, said many people wanted to cultivate land, not just rely on fishing and buffalo milk. They were attached to their traditional culture, but also hankered after schools, clinics, roads, electricity and links with the rest of Iraq.
"There are studies on which areas to reflood, which to irrigate for farming and which to keep dry," said CPA spokeswoman Paola Della Casa. "There are pilot projects on soil, salinity and the eco-system."
The reflooding so far is partly the work of the CPA, partly action by villagers, and helped, Jepsen said, by higher than usual volumes of water in the Tigris and Euphrates.
NO REFUGE FROM SADDAM
For now, life is hard, even for those who never left the marshes despite Saddam's war with Iran, ruthless water engineering and crackdowns on Shi'ite dissidents, army deserters and criminals who once sheltered among the reed beds.
"We used to live on fish, melons and tomatoes before the water dried up," said Jita Abed Abdul-Aal, 37. "Now the water is salty and all I have is my military pension."
Abdul-Aal pointed to a tree in his courtyard where he said a shell fired by Republican Guards had exploded. He spent three years in jail after the local mayor denounced him as a rebel who had contacts with Iran. "It was true," he conceded wryly.
Fresh water may again flow over the mudflats and brackish pools left by Saddam's edicts, but the clock cannot go back to the 1950s when British explorer Wilfred Thesiger eulogised a culture already under threat from encroaching modernity.
"People used to fish from their houses here," recalled Laith al-Amari, 33. "There was water all around."
He sat cross-legged in a carpeted mudhif, or guesthouse, of the kind described in Thesiger's "The Marsh Arabs" -- a lofty barn made almost entirely of reeds, bound into flattened horseshoe arches to support poles overlaid by matting.
The mudhif's ceiling fans and electric lights are not the only reminders this is no longer Thesiger's watery idyll.
Outside are cement-walled houses in a dusty courtyard down a short track from an asphalt road. No water in sight.
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Al-Sadr agrees to talks with U.S.
April 15, 2004
By Willis Witter
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040415-124444-4930r.htm
BAGHDAD - Shi'ite cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr agreed yesterday to unconditional talks over his standoff with American forces that threatens to spark open warfare against the U.S.-led coalition in both southern Iraq and much of Baghdad.
Separately, kidnappings of Westerners sparked by the recent fighting in the Sunni Muslim city of Fallujah took an ugly turn when Al Jazeera television announced that it has video footage of a hostage being executed. The hostage was one of four Italians working for a U.S. security firm. Al Jazeera said it would not broadcast the film.
U.S. Marines with fresh reinforcements fought a series of ferocious battles in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, as the United Nations called for a peaceful end to the conflict.
U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, visiting Baghdad to help determine how and when elections can be held, said the violence threatens to delay voting for a national assembly that will pick the president and write a constitution.
"The elections scheduled to take place in January 2005 are the most important milestone," Mr. Brahimi said. "There is no substitute for the legitimacy that comes from free and fair elections."
He recommended that the coalition dissolve the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and hand over sovereignty to a caretaker government led by a president, two vice presidents and a prime minister when the occupation formally ends June 30.
The caretaker government would administer the country until elections, which, under the recommendation, would be held no later than Jan. 31. Washington, which is under growing pressure from other coalition members to give the United Nations a greater role in Iraq, reportedly favors expanding the present Governing Council.
Amid talk of peace in Baghdad, Marines under fire in Fallujah called in air support from helicopters and fighter jets.
The Marines control about one-fourth of the city, their plans for advancing halted by a Friday cease-fire and negotiations between clerics in the city and officials from the Governing Council.
The Associated Press reported yesterday that four more Marines had died, bringing the number of American combat deaths to at least 87 this month, surpassing the highest total for any month since the March 20, 2003, invasion to topple Saddam Hussein began.
In the south, 2,500 U.S. troops continued to dig in outside the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf, preparing for an assault against Sheik al-Sadr. An attack on the city likely would outrage Iraq's Shi'ite majority, a community that - aside from Sheik al-Sadr's militia - has shunned anti-U.S. violence.
Iraqi clerics and politicians have begun negotiations with Sheik al-Sadr, trying to get him to back down sufficiently to avert a U.S. attack.
An envoy for Sheik al-Sadr said a deal could be imminent with U.S.-led authorities who have vowed to kill or capture the rebel cleric.
Sheik al-Sadr, who launched an anti-American uprising this month and now is holed up in Najaf, was reported earlier to have offered the unconditional talks to spare Najaf a blood bath.
"I expect a solution within the next 24 hours. I met U.S. officials today, and the talks were extremely positive," said Abdelkarim al-Anzi, who was appointed by the defiant Shi'ite cleric to lead negotiations.
According to aides of Sheik al-Sadr, he has agreed to drop some key demands, including that the coalition free all detained fighters from his Mahdi's Army, and pull out troops from residential areas of major southern cities.
The coalition has issued an arrest warrant against Sheik al-Sadr in the killing of a rival Shi'ite leader last year. One report yesterday indicated he would be willing to surrender to a "new democratic government."
There was no comment available from U.S.-led authorities on these offers.
U.S. troops said earlier they had not seen any sign of Sheik al-Sadr's forces backing down.
"The indication I'm getting is that they are not retreating," Reuters news agency quoted Col. Dana Pittard, commander of the 3rd Brigade Task Force, as saying. The task force is poised outside Najaf.
In other developments, a French television journalist was freed yesterday. Alexandre Jordanov was kidnapped Sunday amid a wave of abductions in which at least 21 foreigners are still being held captive.
Japan, which also has troops in Iraq, said it was investigating reports that two more Japanese had been taken hostage, in addition to three held since last week.
U.S. officials and the top U.S. contractor in Iraq, Halliburton, were trying to determine whether four bodies found were any of the seven Americans missing since gunmen attacked their convoy near Abu Ghraib, 10 miles west of Baghdad, on Friday. One of the seven, Thomas Hamill of Macon, Miss., is known to have been kidnapped and threatened with death.
A rocket hit the Sheraton Hotel in central Baghdad yesterday, breaking windows but causing no casualties in the heavily guarded compound that houses many foreign contractors and journalists. A second rocket failed to go off and was found in the street outside the hotel compound.
The truce in Fallujah was severely shaken by fighting Tuesday and early yesterday - although Marines contended that their halt to offensive operations, called Friday, was still in effect.
"I don't forecast that this stalemate will go on for long," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "It's hard to have a cease-fire when they maneuver against us, they fire at us. We are trying to maintain the cease-fire, but the enemy is not maintaining the cease-fire."
A U.S. Cobra attack helicopter fired rockets and heavy machine guns before dawn at gunmen gathered on the northern edge of Fallujah. Rocket-propelled grenades streamed toward the helicopter and a second gunship providing support, but none apparently hit its target.
Early yesterday, an A-130 gunship pounded a row of buildings from which Marines say ambushes repeatedly have been launched in a residential area.
Gunmen repeatedly attacked one house in Fallujah that the Marines were using. At least 12 gunmen were killed in two nights of attacks.
Insurgents yesterday offered the Iraqi equivalent of $7,000 for anyone who kills Mouwafak al-Rubaie, the Iraqi national security adviser, after he called for Fallujah residents to hand over militants to the United States.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
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Bush Pirates Shipwrecked in Iraq
April 15, 2004
Black Commentator Cover Story
http://www.blackcommentator.com/86/86_cover_pirates.html
George Bush presided at a wake this week. White American Manifest Destiny is dead, rotting ignominiously somewhere in Iraq. Neither Bush nor the corpse knows it yet, but the stench is pervasive and unmistakable.
The zombie still has lots of thrashing around to do - some death-force to expend - but cold cadaverous hands cannot grip the globe with terror much longer. Incantations will not resurrect him.
"We're changing the world." Bush offered variations on the mantra five times during his session with the servile corporate press, April 13. Bush and his Pirates have been vowing to remake the world since at least 1992, when Bush Sr. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Under-Secretary Paul Wolfowitz drew up a strategy to "establish and protect a new order" (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3544.htm) that would deter "potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role." During the eight years of the Clinton presidency the expanding cabal refined their Plan for global U.S. hegemony, formalizing their conspiracy through the Project for the New American Century, in 1997 (http://www.newamericancentury.org/). The Plan to "change the world" by enslaving it became the defining foreign policy doctrine of the United States the minute George Bush walked into the White House, in 2000. The Bush men were consumed by the prospect of world conquest, compared to which al Qaida seemed less then a fly, a mere gnat, unworthy of diligent monitoring.
The Plan has come utterly undone in Iraq, in full view of a wired planet. Yet George Bush behaves as if nationalistic bombast will forestall the inevitable exit. Incapable of perceiving Iraqis as human beings, Bush conjures demons. "They seek to intimidate America into panic and retreat, and to set free nations against each other," said the President. But when a force cannot stay, it must retreat. The U.S. cannot remain in Iraq.
The magnitude of what has transpired since the U.S. invasion is not yet fully understood, even by much of the Left. The Bush men have already been defeated. What is unfolding is a terminal debacle, a crack in history. Bush made it so, and perversely confirmed the epochal nature of events when he told reporters, Tuesday, "Now is the time, and Iraq is the place."
Imperial overreach
Corporate media fog and flatulence, and the fixating horror of televised war cannot obscure the fundamental fact: The Pirates have failed, having bet everything on a swift takeover of Iraq and its transformation into a corporate "model" for the entire region, a springboard for further conquest and corporate colonization. The Plan envisioned that:
Once the U.S. military and its corporate camp followers were fully embedded on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the whole of the Eurasian land mass would be open to American power projection. Syria would swing wide the gates to Damascus, lest they be knocked down. Jubilant Iranians would sing Farsi songs in praise of Coca-Cola over Ayatollahs, while contributing their crude to the U.S.-controlled mix. Saudi Arabia would crumble from princely rot, ridding the U.S. of fat royal skimmers of profits rightfully belonging to people of Aramco. (June 19, 2003.)
The Plan assumed the Shock and Awe of "The Mother of All War Shows" (the title of our pre-war, January 30, 2003 Cover Story) would cow the entire planet, making the world "malleable, ready for reshaping in the not-yet-defined New Order."
What New Order? Even the "Coalition of the Bribed" is crumbling.
On August 28 of last year, just four months after the fall of Baghdad, it was clear to that "The Pirates Have Already Lost Iraq."
The purpose of the U.S. occupation is to achieve "transformation" - the key word in every Pirate script. Iraq must be made safe for a U.S. corporate makeover, a shining "example" to the rest of the region of what Dallas-type development can do. Yet that goal is far beyond the horizon, since the U.S. military cannot protect itself at present troop levels, and has no reserves to call upon. U.S. commanders need hundreds of thousands more troops simply to defend themselves and oil pumps and pipelines at the current level of Iraqi resistance. Too late, the corporate media now begin an urgent discussion of the need to "transform" the U.S. military into a force fit for occupation - raising the specter of a draft. "Transformation" appears to be working in reverse.
That was eight months ago. U.S. reserve units have since been effectively "drafted" - and still there are not enough troops to meet the "force protection" requirements of the casualty-averse U.S. military. There never will be. It is too late for a formal draft, which in any event would destroy the domestic social base of the Pirate enterprise. Mercenaries, who do not rate "force protection" and whose deaths are don't show up on "American" casualty lists, comprise the second largest "coalition" cohort. Their growing presence is another admission of U.S. failure.
The French daily, Liberation summed up the view from Paris:
The Sunni guerilla war continues, some of the Shi'ia are in rebellion, the Provisional Iraqi Authority is powerless, the country's reconstruction compromised by the lack of security, and GIs coming home in sinister body bags are ever more numerous. They are no longer even pretending to try to win "the hearts and minds" of a populace that Bush was supposed to want to liberate, and they have allowed themselves to be dragged into a true guerilla war..
The worst is not certain. However, what is sure is that Bush has no solution to the Iraqi problem. He is the problem.
The leftist French newspaper, in fact, understates the case, as if the personality of George Bush is at issue, rather than the future of world order. Iraq was the lynchpin in the Bush Pirate's lunge for global hegemony, a "crusade" which was to begin with the overthrow of the straw man, Saddam Hussein, and culminate in a glorious, U.S.-imposed "New Order." Despite the abject failure of The Plan, the Pirates see no option but to "stay the course" - a guarantee of even more colossal defeats. Bush told the White House press (inverting the meaning of the word "free"), "A free Iraq will change the world." It is precisely because the Bush men have staked the entire global imperial enterprise on Iraq that we must ask, "Will a U.S.-free Iraq change the world?" The answer is yes - profoundly so.
Lost control
Reality is comprised of things in motion. The Pirates understand this, in a degenerate fashion. They sprang at the "opportunity" (September 11, but any excuse would have sufficed) to set in motion a world conquest, at the time and place of their choosing: Iraq. The Plan failed, but other forces have now been set in motion, forces beyond the control of the initiator of the aggression. "It'll change the world," Bush insisted for the fourth time on Tuesday, reading the direction of events, backwards. Pirates should be careful what they wish for.
The projected June 30 transition to Iraqi "sovereignty" is nonsense, signifying nothing worthy of the term (see Jonathan Schell, "Phantom Sovereign"). The date serves mainly to illuminate the stupendous U.S. failure to create a politically significant comprador class willing to wear the American leash.
The Nation's Naomi Klein encapsulates the Americans' supremely arrogant and racist "transition" scheme:
"The United States will maintain its military and corporate presence through fourteen enduring military bases and the largest US Embassy in the world. It will hold on to authority over Iraq's armed forces, its security and economic policy and the design of its core infrastructure - but the Iraqis can deal with their decrepit hospitals all by themselves."
U.S. corporate media pretend there is "power" for the Iraqis somewhere in that formula - but that doesn't matter anymore, as events have overtaken and made irrelevant the Bush men's Potemkin transition structures. None of the Pirates have any idea to whom they will be handing over the chimera of sovereignty; the United Nations special envoy has called for the dismissal of the entire, hand-picked Governing Council on June 30 in favor of a "technocrat" body; and a number of council members have already resigned or signaled their intention to do so.
The U.S. has irreversibly lost control of events in Iraq. No amount of collective punishment of cities, Phoenix-type assassination programs, or reshuffling of the dwindling number of puppets, can change that. Iraqis - Arab Iraqis, certainly - are experiencing a national renewal, forged in opposition to the United States. The Washington Post noted the sea change, on Tuesday, in an article titled, "Fallujah Gains Mythic Air."
"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."
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.
Killing Sadr will not improve the U.S. position - indeed, there is no scenario rooted in Iraqi realities that can extricate the Bush men from their failure and its global ramifications.
The UN cannot save the Project for a New American Century's plan from ruin - even if the Iraqis acquiesced to UN supervision, which is problematic given the world body's collaboration with U.S. persecution of Iraq since 1991. In any event, the United Nations was (and remains) on the Bush men's liquidation list, as an impediment to American global rule. Any success for the UN represents a defeat for the Pirates.
Former National Security Advisor Zbignew Brezinski speaks of "generalized hatred" against the U.S. in the Arab world. Such hatreds can only increase with Bush's total capitulation, the day after his "Change the World" speech, to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's West Bank annexation plan. Yet the administration's favorite think-tankers persist in putting forward fantasies of an "Arab solution" to the American quandary in Iraq. They are hallucinating - cognitively damaged minds. Arabs will not save The Plan; no one can.
Brits recoil at U.S. behavior
At the beginning of this commentary we said White American Manifest Destiny is dead, having gasped its last deep breath in Iraq. More than a defeat for the Bush cabal, the Iraqi fiasco has exposed America's glaring unfitness to play a leading role in a modernizing world. Its armed forces, in particular, drawn from a population that has been reared in a continental bubble of ignorance and white supremacist delusion, are incapable of treating non-whites as people.
The blooming of Iraqi national solidarity is in part a result of American racism and, at times, barbarism. Among the soldiers are men who revel in ripping Korans, who used sniper rifles to murder women and children in Fallujah, and whose commanders have refused from the beginning of the occupation to even record the deaths of the Iraqi civilians whom they purport to protect.
Even the British, who former UN Ambassador Andrew Young once said "invented racism," are appalled and alarmed at American behavior in Iraq - conduct that threatens the lives of British soldiers in charge of the southern part of the country. The UK Telegraph reported the comments of a "senior Army officer."
Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen [German for "sub-human"]. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it's awful.
"The US troops view things in very simplistic terms. It seems hard for them to reconcile subtleties between who supports what and who doesn't in Iraq. It's easier for their soldiers to group all Iraqis as the bad guys. As far as they are concerned Iraq is bandit country and everybody is out to kill them."
American racial warfare was horrifically successful against Native Americans, Mexicans, Filipinos and many other victims of Manifest Destiny - but was defeated, at terrible cost, by the Vietnamese. The Iraqis are thwarting them again. The American worldview, stunted and deformed by racism, does not prepare the nation to interact with non-white populations without reverting to type. Thus, the American military is a blunt instrument with limited uses. Only its machines make the US a military superpower. The human resources of the United States, civilian and military, are patently unfit to rule the globe. This elemental fact will become more obvious with every deployment - even to Americans.
The U.S. can punish darker nations and peoples, but it cannot exercise lasting authority over them. Unless it learns to coexist with others on the planet, it will be shunned and eclipsed.
The Bush Plan for global conquest was doomed from the start, based as it was on peculiarly American delusions that are organic to the nation's hyper-racist history. John Kerry doesn't have a plan for Iraq. Good.
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U.S. Denies Raid on Najaf Is Imminent
As Talks to End Standoff Continue, Troops Prepare to Capture Cleric Sadr
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13125-2004Apr14.html
While U.S. military commanders in Iraq have massed forces on the outskirts of the holy city of Najaf, Pentagon officials said yesterday that the United States is in no hurry to send troops into the city and attempt to seize the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr.
More than a week of bloody fighting with Sadr's militia in Baghdad and other cities has left several hundred Shiite fighters dead, badly weakening Sadr's force and throwing the cleric on the defensive, the officials said.
At the same time, the Bush administration remains under strong pressure from moderate Shiite clerics and Iraqi political authorities to resolve the standoff in Najaf -- one of the holiest Shiite cities -- without more bloodshed.
As behind-the-scenes negotiations proceed with Sadr, a defense official privy to the U.S. position said Sadr's arrest remains an essential objective. The official also said that the administration opposes the option of exiling Sadr to Iran or anywhere else.
"The bottom line is, nothing is being considered in which he goes free," the official said. "In our view, the option of him staying in Iraq as a free man -- or leaving -- is not acceptable."
But with a number of Iraqi religious and political authorities involved in helping to resolve the situation, the ability of the United States to dictate the final terms may be limited, the official added.
In any case, several officials stressed that given the high stakes, key U.S. authorities, including L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, and Army Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, intend to proceed deliberately and cautiously. That is, unless Sadr's fighters resort to a fresh wave of attacks.
"If the militia surges forward and takes us on, we're going to go in," the defense official said.
But since the beginning of the week, when Sadr's fighters withdrew from most of the police stations they had occupied in Najaf, the sense of crisis has eased, bolstering the view that time may play to the advantage of the U.S. side.
"There is no sense of urgency to get a particular outcome," said another senior defense official, one of several who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity. "The sense is, rather, that it is very important to think through all the variables and develop a systematic approach. The implications of each potential action has to be weighed."
Privately, some Pentagon officials concede that they had misjudged how explosive the backlash would be from Sadr and his supporters when the decision was made last month to close the cleric's newspaper. That move, followed by the arrest of Sadr's top deputy, triggered the recent cycle of violence.
"We knew that there'd be a reaction and that it had the potential of being wide in scope," a third senior official said. "If there's anything we underestimated, it's that the reaction would come in at the high end in terms of numbers of locations."
The assault by U.S. Marines on the western city of Fallujah, in retaliation for the gruesome killing of four U.S. civilian security contract workers, has also underscored the risks of igniting even greater violence and negative Iraqi sentiments while attempting to enforce order and pursue justice.
Pentagon officials said the circumstances in Fallujah and Najaf are very different, but some dynamics are similar, inasmuch as any lasting solution must take into account a mix of Iraqi interests involving local religious leaders, tribal groups and members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
Shiite members of the Governing Council have pressed for a negotiated solution with Sadr, using senior Shiite clerics as interlocutors. One possible deal envisions Sadr agreeing to dissolve his militia for a commitment that legal proceedings against him would be delayed at least until after the planned handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30.
Sadr is facing an Iraqi arrest warrant charging him with complicity in the April 2003 slaying of a rival cleric. U.S. officials said they intend to see the warrant enforced, although they indicated possible flexibility over how and when that might happen.
"The negotiations are not for a get-out-of-jail-free card," an official said. "The question is, does Sadr turn himself over to us and we then turn him over to the Iraqis, or does he directly turn himself over to the Iraqis?"
To apply military pressure, the United States has moved 2,500 troops, backed by tanks and artillery, into place around Najaf and announced that U.S. troops have orders to kill or capture Sadr. In turn, Sadr has issued a defiant statement that he would rather die than surrender.
But several U.S. officials said they remain hopeful the situation can be resolved peacefully.
"It could be a strategic turning point," a senior defense official said. "The Shia majority, the so-called silent majority of moderates, has been watching carefully how we react.
"Because we've reacted decisively so far and have been careful not to alienate the population in the south, we are now getting the situation under control," the official added. "That has precluded the fence-sitting Shias who are intimidated by Sadr from going over to Sadr's side."
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Attacks Test Truce in Fallujah
4 Marines Die Despite Cease-Fire; Italian Hostage Killed
By Sewell Chan and Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12568-2004Apr14?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 14 -- U.S. troops drew heavy machine-gun and artillery fire Wednesday in the besieged Iraqi city of Fallujah, as a surge of attacks by insurgents threatened to undermine a shaky four-day cease-fire.
Four Marines were killed Monday and Tuesday in separate attacks in the Fallujah area, during an announced halt in offensive operations, the military said. Iraqi kidnappers killed an Italian hostage, the Italian government reported, while the al-Jazeera satellite television network reported that three other Italian hostages were threatened with death.
The Arab network said it had received footage of the killing but would not broadcast it because it was "too bloody," the Reuters news agency reported. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Italy's ambassador to Qatar had seen the footage and confirmed that the man, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, had been killed.
A French television reporter kidnapped Sunday was freed, and officials announced that three Czech journalists abducted the same day would be released. However, Japanese news agencies reported Wednesday that two Japanese had been taken hostage, adding to the three Japanese civilians who have been held captive since Friday.
The Russian government, one of several that have urged their citizens to leave Iraq, announced plans to evacuate more than 800 Russians and citizens of former Soviet republics starting Thursday.
Meanwhile, in Najaf, spokesmen for the radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr said he would retreat from a confrontation with the U.S. military, but the local commander disputed that, saying that Sadr's militia was fortifying its positions inside the sacred city.
An Iranian delegation was involved in negotiations with Sadr to mediate the standoff, an aide to the cleric said.
Officials at the Pentagon said about 20,000 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment would remain in Iraq past their one-year deployments. The units had been scheduled to return this month to their respective bases in Germany and Louisiana.
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, arrived in Iraq for his first visit since December. While acknowledging the volatile situation in Najaf, Myers said that capturing Sadr was a priority for the military. "It may well be if he is captured, violence could increase for a bit, but I think it would be very temporary," Myers said in Kuwait City before flying to an air base in southern Iraq.
Marine officials in Fallujah said they were prepared to extend the suspension of their offensive, announced Friday, to allow political negotiations to continue, but they predicted that the talks would not be fruitful. The Marines formally began their cease-fire on Saturday.
"We are not going on the offense," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division. "We will maintain the cease-fire with the assumption of good faith by the negotiators, but there is a clear lack of good faith by the fighters in town."
Since early Tuesday, insurgent forces in and around Fallujah have ambushed a Marine squad guarding a downed helicopter, as well as a military supply convoy. In the latter incident, an armored vehicle in the convoy caught fire after being rocketed and had to be rescued by Marine tanks, Humvees and ground troops.
Mattis said he agreed with the strategy of a diplomatic solution to the violence. "This is the best way to reduce suffering, and we certainly have enough patience to try it," he said.
But he said the insurgents had used the lull in Marine activity to mount attacks and plant explosive devices and that the Marines were fully prepared to resume the offensive.
"I don't forecast this stalemate will go on for long," he said.
A Cobra attack helicopter fired rockets and heavy machine guns before dawn Wednesday at gunmen on the city's northern outskirts, the Associated Press reported. Earlier in the day, an AC-130 gunship pounded a row of buildings from which the Marines said insurgents have repeatedly launched ambushes.
Near Najaf, the military's second front against the insurgency, another U.S. commander expressed pessimism about the strategy of negotiation.
"The indications we are getting is that they are not retreating," said Col. Dana J. H. Pittard, commander of an Army task force that finished assembling Wednesday at a new base outside Najaf. Rather, he said in an interview, intelligence indicated that members of Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, "were setting up positions in corners of buildings and on rooftops" in Najaf.
Throughout the day, Sadr's representatives gave conflicting signals about whether they would try to avert a showdown with U.S. forces.
Representatives of four senior Shiite clerics have been meeting with Sadr's followers in Najaf since Monday to reach a peaceful resolution to the impasse. Muhammad Ridha, the son of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the popular Iraqi religious leader, is representing the senior cleric in the negotiations, but Sistani's position has not been made clear. His presence, however, demonstrates the extent to which clerics now recognize Sadr's importance. Before his militia's insurgency, Sadr, 30, had often been ignored or disregarded.
The clerics reportedly were joined by two key secular Shiite leaders: Jawad Maliki, a representative of the Dawa party, and Abdul Karim Muhammadawi, a renowned resistance fighter from southern Iraq who suspended his membership on the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council last week to protest the escalation of violence.
In Najaf, Sadr's main spokesman, Qays Khazali, said the cleric had backed away from two earlier demands: the withdrawal of U.S. troops from urban residential neighborhoods and the release of many or all of the estimated 9,000 detainees in U.S. military facilities. "In the beginning, there were certain preconditions to start the negotiations: the withdrawal of the military forces from the residential areas and the release of the detainees," Khazali said at a news conference. "But as a result of the intervention by the religious leaders on Moqtada Sadr to cancel the preconditions, the negotiations will be conducted without the said preconditions."
Shortly after the news conference, however, Khazali said in an interview: "The media misunderstood my speech. If the negotiations will not be useful, Moqtada Sadr will not cancel his preconditions." He did not define what he meant by useful negotiations.
The nuances of the negotiations inside the city seemed to matter little to the military forces massed outside it.
Pittard's force began operating on all sides of Najaf, while keeping clear of the city limits. The colonel characterized Wednesday's movements as "reconnaissance in force" -- that is, an effort by units mainly to gain knowledge of the area, but conducted with sufficient force that they are ready to engage in combat with any enemy forces encountered.
"It is all under the umbrella of offensive operations," Pittard said.
Pittard said his troops found that "people in the area north of Najaf are very, very friendly," but added that he was "concerned" about the eastern side, near the adjacent town of Kufa.
Sadr delivered a fiery April 2 sermon at his mosque in Kufa, advocating confrontation with the American-led occupation and calling for an alliance with the militant groups Hezbollah and Hamas.
Constable reported from Fallujah. Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks at Forward Operating Base Duke in southern Iraq and special correspondent Saad Sarhan in Najaf contributed to this report.
--------
INSURGENTS
Marines Use Low-Tech Skill to Kill 100 in Urban Battle
April 15, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/international/middleeast/15URBA.html
ALLUJA, Iraq, April 14 - American forces killed more than 100 insurgents on Tuesday in close combat in a small village in central Iraq, Marine commanders said Wednesday.
The battle, classic urban combat that raged for 14 hours, was one of the heaviest engagements since the invasion of Iraq last year. It showed not only the intensity of the resistance but an acute willingness among insurgents to die.
"A lot of these guys were souped up on jihad," said Lt. Col. B. P. McCoy, commander of the Fourth Battalion, Third Marines. "They might as well been suicide fighters."
Marines fought house to house, roof to roof, doorway to doorway. They repelled attacks of machine-gun fire, volleys of rockets and repeated charges by masked fighters, Colonel McCoy said. Two marines were shot but their injuries were not life-threatening.
The fighting erupted in Karma, six miles northeast of Falluja, during a search-and-destroy mission.
"They hit us with everything they had," Cpl. Tom Conroy said. "This is a whole other world. The hostility is no longer hard stares or dirty looks. It's gunfire."
The fighting in and around Falluja is a throwback to a kind of urban warfare that most marines know only from the movies. It is the grueling, costly conflict American generals were bracing for when they invaded Iraq last year but have not seen on this scale until now.
And it does not look as if it is letting up, even though United States forces declared a cease-fire five days ago to allow Iraqi negotiators time to reach a peace accord with insurgents. No deal has been reached, and fighting continues, often from just across the street.
Marine commanders say the enemy in Falluja is increasingly well organized. On Wednesday morning, 15 fighters mounted a coordinated assault on marines who were stretched thin across a corner of the city. Marines lying on their stomachs along dark rooftops repelled the fighters, but only after calling in helicopter gunships.
Some insurgents have been spotted wearing Iraqi police flak jackets, originally supplied by the Americans. Some also used illumination flares during Wednesday's attack, another first.
"Last night, they were all around us - in front of us, in back of us, everywhere," said Lt. Lewis Langella, who commands a squad of snipers and infantry on Falluja's outskirts. "They were throwing a whole lot of lead at us, and we were throwing a whole lot back."
For the past week, marines have been fortifying positions across this dusty city of monochromatic tan brick. Even though urban warfare is compact and fluid, there are still front lines - here, a row of rooftops occupied by marines looking down on garbage-strewn streets.
One of the most important tools for this battle comes from the garden shed: sledgehammers. On Wednesday, marines punched "mouseholes," just big enough for gun barrels, in the brick walls of the homes they occupied. They also smashed windows to scatter shards of glass across the front steps.
"It's an early warning system," Capt. Shannon Johnson explained, as he crunched noisily across the glass, "something the old guys taught us."
Nearby, a squad of young men with crewcuts swung heavy hammers under a punishing sun. They were knocking down the low walls along the rooftops so they could move on catwalks from roof to roof.
"This is classic urban warfare," said Maj. Gen. Jim Mattis, commander of the First Marine Division. "It's all the stuff World War II taught us, along with Korea, Vietnam and Somalia. People will be studying Falluja for years to come."
The weaponry - mostly low-tech, like machine guns and mortars - is also reminiscent of earlier wars. There have been a few guided-missile attacks from the air. But Falluja is so densely populated - 300,000 people in only a few square miles - that commanders have been reluctant to call in airstrikes.
"And we don't want to rubblize the city," said Colonel McCoy, whose battalion of 800 clashes daily with insurgents. "That will give the enemy more places to hide."
Every night the quiet is shattered by the constant whoosh-bang, whoosh-bang of mortars, the loud whoosh as the shell blasts out of the tube and the thunderous bang when the shell slams into the ground. Two marines were injured Wednesday during a mortar attack on their base at the outskirts of the city.
Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, is predominantly Sunni Muslim, and it was closely tied to Saddam Hussein through tribal alliances. The town has been intensely anti-American since the invasion of Iraq.
Two weeks ago, insurgents here ambushed and killed four American security consultants and a mob dragged their bodies through the streets. That attack precipitated the marines' assault, which seemed to make Falluja even more anti-occupation, anti-American than ever.
"It's their Super Bowl," said Maj. T. V. Johnson, a Marine spokesman. "Falluja is the place to go if you want to kill Americans."
-------- israel / palestine
U.S. REJECTS ISRAEL INVASION OF GAZA
Thu, 15 Apr 2004
[MENL]
http://menewsline.com/stories/2004/april/04_16_3.html
WASHINGTON -- The United States has rejected an Israeli request for the right to invade the Gaza Strip following a unilateral withdrawal.
U.S. officials said the Bush administration refused to approve Israel's right to invade the Gaza Strip should the area be used as a staging ground for Palestinian attacks against the Jewish state. They said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sought a written commitment by President George Bush that the United States would understand such a military response in any Israeli effort to halt Palestinian attacks from the Gaza Strip.
Sharon, who met Bush on Wednesday, sought the inclusion of a U.S. understanding for massive Israeli military retaliation as part of the president's letter on the Israeli plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. Instead, Bush agreed to reaffirm U.S. support for Israel's right of self-defense. On Wednesday, Bush and Sharon exchanged letters regarding the Israeli withdrawal plan.
"It doesn't talk about a right to go back in [Gaza]," a senior administration official said of the Bush letter. "So what our hope is, that we can, working with states in the region, help the Palestinian institutions to take responsibility for security and to fight terror, because that's what's called for them to do in the roadmap and that will obviate all the rest of the discussion."
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Bush Backs Israel on West Bank
In Policy Shift, President Says Some Disputed Settlements Should Remain
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13124-2004Apr14?language=printer
President Bush yesterday endorsed Israel's claim to parts of the West Bank seized in the 1967 Middle East war and asserted that Palestinian refugees cannot expect to return to their homes inside Israel, an explicit shift in U.S. policy immediately attacked by Palestinian political leaders.
Standing alongside Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the White House, Bush said it would be "unrealistic" to return to the region's prewar boundaries, affirming that some large Israeli settlements long considered illegal by American and international diplomats would be allowed to remain.
Bush stopped short of specifying which settlements Israel could keep, but, in publicly backing an Israeli strategy developed without Palestinian input, he set aside years of U.S. policy that deemed the West Bank settlements obstacles to peace in the region. The shape of the border and the fate of refugees were to be settled in final negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.
The new U.S. approach is aimed at breaking a three-year stalemate in the peace process marked by deadly violence, reprisals and deepening despair. Bush administration officials said they concluded the best hope of jump-starting the process was to embrace Sharon's unilateral strategy, which includes withdrawing Israeli settlers from the Palestinian-controlled Gaza Strip and building a security wall between Israelis and Palestinians.
Some Middle East specialists warned Bush's embrace of Sharon and his plan risked undermining U.S. goals in the region.
Reaction from Palestinian leaders was swift and pointed. Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia told reporters at his home in the West Bank town of Abu Dis that the move "kills the rights of the Palestinian people" and said: "We as Palestinians reject that. We cannot accept that. We reject it and we refuse it."
Diana Buttu, legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team, said in Washington: "What the United States is doing is rewarding Israel for negotiations that failed."
Bush and Sharon each had domestic political reasons for reaching an agreement, with a U.S. presidential election less than eight months away and Sharon's Likud Party due to vote soon on his strategy of disengaging from the Palestinians.
A desire to avoid further alienating Arab opinion helped keep the White House from backing all of Sharon's plan, officials said. The administration, entangled in an increasingly bloody battle for Iraq and a global fight against Islamic extremism, is widely perceived abroad to favor Israel over the Palestinians.
Opposition to settlements has been official U.S. policy for more than 20 years, even as the Israeli population in Gaza and the West Bank steadily increased. By erecting tens of thousands of roofs on formerly Arab land, Israelis sought to create the reality that Bush said he is now simply acknowledging.
Former senator and Middle East mediator George J. Mitchell drafted a series of measures endorsed by Bush early in his term. Mitchell believed freezing settlement activity should be Israel's top priority, just as halting violence was the main Palestinian requirement.
President George H.W. Bush was so angered by settlement activity -- directed by Sharon at the time -- that he withheld $400 million in loan guarantees. By mid-2002, however, his son's White House had decided not to make a strong effort to curb continued settlement expansion.
Bush asserted in a written response to Sharon yesterday that the unilateral plan to withdraw Israeli soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip and small sections of the West Bank would "make a real contribution towards peace" and help fulfill Bush's own vision of two states side by side. At a news conference, he called Sharon's plan "historic and courageous."
"His future depends upon his capacity to convince the Israeli people he's doing the right thing, and I think he is," Bush said. "He's a bold leader. That's what people want. They want leadership. There is a process that got stuck, and the prime minister steps up and leads."
Sharon's moves race beyond the long-dormant peace talks advocated by Bush and his predecessors, which presumed a series of reciprocal steps leading to final negotiations over the most complex issues.
"I think the Palestinian people get a huge amount out of this, and we hope they will capitalize on the opportunity that has been provided," said one U.S. official, who briefed reporters on the condition that he remain anonymous. He said the administration is ready "to engage very vigorously" to help the Palestinian Authority run Gaza effectively.
Sharon proposes to withdraw 7,500 Jewish settlers from 21 Gaza settlements. He has also said he would close four small settlements with a total population of about 500 on the West Bank, where more than 200,000 Israelis have settled since Israel seized the land during the 1967 war. Far-right members of his governing coalition have objected to the withdrawals.
Sharon, who once directed Israel's aggressive settlement program, also wants Israel to retain control over six controversial settlements on the West Bank.
Naming them for the first time on Monday, Sharon said the communities must be strengthened for the sake of security. The settlements are Ariel, Maleh Adumim, Givat Zeev, Gush Etzion, Kiryat Arba and blocks in nearby Hebron.
In his letter to Bush, Sharon said Israel will speed construction of the security wall, but he accepted a U.S. position by saying it is "temporary rather than permanent, and therefore will not prejudice any final status issues including final borders."
The senior U.S. official told reporters that negotiators would have to resolve details later and said the president was not prejudging the outcome.
Bush said, "The realities on the ground and in the region have changed greatly over the last several decades, and any final settlement must take into account those realities and be agreeable to the parties."
The official noted that former president Bill Clinton and a host of experts have long concluded that the pre-1967 borders could never be reestablished, nor could all refugees return to Israel, a point acknowledged by various Palestinian negotiators.
Commentators said that, by backing much of Sharon's unilateral plan and declaring that refugees should expect to relocate to a future Palestinian state, Bush failed to offer much to the Palestinians. When negotiators were considering the future of Palestinian refugees in 2000, for example, Clinton discussed raising billions for Palestinians evicted from Israel since 1948.
Bush's endorsement changes the balance of future negotiations and "moves the line in favor of Israel," said University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami. "This obviously is a violation of that longstanding American position that opens up a whole new debate."
Former Middle East negotiator Dennis Ross, calling Sharon's Gaza withdrawal "revolutionary," described Bush's endorsement as less than Sharon sought, but more than many in the U.S. administration had originally wanted to give.
Israeli Ambassador Daniel Ayalon said Bush's support gives Israel "the assurances to move forward with taking the risks which it's going to take by giving up territory, by evacuating settlements."
He added, "This is obviously an opportunity, and we hope that Palestinians would seize the moment."
Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
--------
Palestinians Assail Bush for Backing Israeli Plan
Endorsement Called 'Slap in the Face'
By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12946-2004Apr14.html
JERUSALEM, April 14 -- Palestinian officials on Wednesday denounced President Bush's endorsement of an Israeli plan to keep several major settlements in the West Bank and deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to lands that are now part of Israel. They said the plan undermines prospects for negotiations and could spur an upsurge of violence by Palestinians who see no other alternative to resolving the conflict.
The Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and his top aides met in emergency session Wednesday afternoon and said in a statement that the endorsement would end "the chances of peace, security and stability in the area" and would unleash "the cycle of violence."
Ahmed Qureia, the Palestinian prime minister, said, "Bush is the first U.S. president to give legitimacy to Jewish settlements on Palestinian land." Speaking to reporters at his home in the West Bank town of Abu Dis, he added, "We reject this, we will not accept it."
Mohammed Hindi, a senior leader of the armed Palestinian group Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip, called Bush's position "a slap in the face to everyone who was counting on a pure position from Washington." He said the agreements would provoke an increase in violence because "they prove that resistance is the only choice that will benefit the Palestinian people."
Bush called Sharon's plan to withdraw Israeli settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip and evacuate a handful of settlements in the West Bank "historic and courageous actions." In a key concession to the Israeli prime minister, Bush also said Palestinian refugees should be settled in a future Palestinian state and not in Israel.
"The message tonight to the Palestinian public is, 'Don't count on negotiations to help you achieve your vital interests,' " said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and political analyst. "The overall trend will be more public support and more public demand for violence."
"President Bush has broken new ground here," Shikaki said. "I don't recall ever seeing an American position being so one-sided."
Officials in Israel were jubilant. Sharon's plan has faced strong opposition from within his Likud Party, and the prime minister has faced mounting pressure because of corruption investigations.
"He got the most he could from an American government, especially when the United States is in Iraq and needs the support of the Arabs," said Benny Kashriel, a senior Likud leader and the mayor of Maleh Adumim, the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank. Kashriel, who had opposed the withdrawal plans, said that after Sharon's political victory in Washington, he is considering changing his position. He said he now expects Sharon to win a party referendum on the plan set for May 2.
Sharon also faces pressure from two pro-settlement parties that form part of his governing coalition.
In a television appearance, Tourism Minister Benny Eilon, of the National Union party, called on Likud members to "remain faithful to the land of Israel" and oppose Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza.
Palestinian leaders said they felt betrayed by Bush, who had promoted a peace plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state by 2005.
"I don't think the president can negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians," said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel. "I can't sit with [British Prime Minister] Tony Blair and give Texas to China." "These guys are negotiating on issues that pertain to Palestinian statehood, Palestinian livelihood and our future, and that's not acceptable," said Ziad Abu Amr, a member of the Palestinian legislature from Gaza. "We expect the administration to play the role of an honest broker as the primary sponsor of the peace process, and now that has been set back."
-------
NEWS ANALYSIS
Sharon Coup: U.S. Go-Ahead
April 15, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/international/middleeast/15MIDE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, April 14 - By throwing his support on Wednesday behind an Israeli plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip, President Bush provided diplomatic assurances that represented a victory for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Mr. Sharon wanted three commitments: backing for the Gaza withdrawal, American recognition that Israel would hold on to parts of the West Bank, and an American rejection of the right of millions of Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1948 and their descendants to return to their lands in what is now Israel. He got them all by promising to trade something Israelis overwhelmingly do not want any more: the Gaza settlements and a handful of settlements in the West Bank. And he got them without having to negotiate with the Palestinians.
Palestinian officials knew that Israel strongly opposed yielding the whole West Bank or accepting the "right of return," and they had explored compromises in the past. But they relied on both demands as formidable negotiating levers. Mr. Bush has now moved to pluck both from their hands.
"Imagine if Palestinians said, `O.K., we give California to Canada,' " said Michael Tarazi, a legal adviser for the Palestine Liberation Organization. "Americans should stop wondering why they have so little credibility in the Middle East."
For the first time in American diplomacy in the Middle East, Mr. Bush announced that major Jewish settlements on the West Bank had achieved the status they aimed for: rooted "facts on the ground," or, as Mr. Bush called them, "already existing major Israeli population centers." The innovative, though risky, element in Mr. Sharon's strategy was to trade his concessions in Gaza and the West Bank not to the Palestinians as part of a negotiated agreement but to the Americans, over outraged Palestinian opposition.
For Israel, the risk is that the Palestinians will now reject as imposed on them any peace plan along the lines Mr. Bush laid out, in his White House statement and a letter he gave Mr. Sharon. For the United States, the risk is that, with Arabs and Muslims already suspicious of American motives, the Bush administration will be seen as teaming with Israel to void Palestinian rights.
Mr. Bush emphasized his support for an eventual Palestinian state. He repeatedly indicated that he was merely sketching the realistic outline of any peace agreement, as suggested by past, American-brokered negotiations over issues like settlements and the right of return. But Palestinians were not mollified.
"As far as I'm concerned, Sharon and Bush can decide to cancel Ramadan," Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said, referring to the Muslim holy month. "But that doesn't mean that Muslims will not fast."
All smiles and gentle jokes as they stood side by side at the White House Wednesday, Mr. Sharon and Mr. Bush looked like leaders who saw strong political and policy reasons for a close alliance.
Mr. Bush's statements will doubtless appeal to Jewish and Christian supporters of Israel in the United States. They are also consistent with the policy tilt toward Israel evident since he entered office, refusing to meet with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, whom he accused of being an obstacle to peace.
That tilt became more pronounced after the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, which led Mr. Bush to declare a war on terrorism that has often seemed to emulate Israel's military tactics, and to mirror its fears. Mr. Bush has rarely emphasized any role of Israeli settlements as an "obstacle to peace," the longstanding formulation in American policy. Noting that West Bank settlements doubled in size after the Oslo peace accords were signed, Palestinians point to them as evidence that Israel never intends to part with much of the West Bank.
Asked on Monday if settlements were an obstacle to his Middle East peace initiative, the road map, Mr. Bush spoke instead about terrorism. "The problem is, is that there's terrorists who will kill people in order to stop the process," he said.
For Mr. Sharon, the political benefits of Mr. Bush's statement and accompanying letter are obvious. Facing tough opposition from his political right, he can now present his withdrawal as an American-Israeli initiative in a referendum to take place in his Likud faction on May 2. Those who vote against him will now be voting against Israel's most important ally. Mr. Sharon, who has a record of relying greatly, and sometimes disastrously, on his own judgment, is once again taking a tremendous gamble. It was not without cause that Mr. Bush called his intentions "historic and courageous."
Settlers are vehemently opposed to any withdrawal. Many view the territory that Israel conquered in the 1967 war as part of Jews' birthright, delivered to them by God through what they consider Israel's miraculous victory. "Transfer Sharon, not settlements," read a sign one protester carried outside Mr. Sharon's residence here on Wednesday.
The most ideologically committed settlers - the very ones who live in the fringe settlements Mr. Sharon wants to evacuate, rather than in the sprawling, bedroom communities he wants to keep - view leaving a single settlement as shattering the rationale for retaining any. Many Israeli doves supportive of Mr. Sharon's plan share that view. They think that once Israel begins withdrawing from settlements, it will pull back from almost all of them.
Mr. Sharon is betting that he can use Mr. Bush's commitments to stop the withdrawal where he chooses and retain as much as half of the West Bank, a senior Israeli official said. This official compared the proposed withdrawal to a tactic he said baffled him when he first watched an American football game: he said he was astonished to see the ball hiked backward before it moved forward.
Mr. Sharon told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz last week that he was pursuing his plan now because "a situation has been created in which it is possible to do the things I want and to get an American commitment."
But if far-right parties bolt Mr. Sharon's governing coalition over the withdrawal plan, he could be compelled to turn to his left, to the Labor party, for support. Labor would almost certainly push for a more sweeping withdrawal, as well as renewed negotiations.
For Mr. Sharon, who is not a religious man, the settlements have always been an instrument of security and of negotiating leverage. He intended them to thicken Israel's borders against possible Arab attack. After the 1967 war, Mr. Sharon and other Israeli leaders saw moving civilians into the West Bank and Gaza as giving legitimacy to Israel's grip on that territory in a way that an occupation army alone never could.
Further, Mr. Sharon viewed settlements as deepening Israelis' attachment to the land and giving them incentive to hold it. "Yes, I want to put the children before the tanks," he told The New York Times more than 25 years ago.
But Mr. Sharon, who drew up the settlement plan in Gaza, believes that Israel's grip there has become a liability. In Gaza, just 7,500 Israelis live in fortified enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians. In the West Bank, about 230,000 settlers live among 2.3 million Palestinians. Another 200,000 Israelis live in areas of Jerusalem that Israel captured in 1967. Mr. Sharon argues that his plan means Israel will no longer be held responsible by the world for the well-being of Palestinians, at least in Gaza. That may be something of a leap of faith, since Mr. Sharon intends to keep military control of Gaza's boundaries, airport and seaport.
It is also not certain if, as some Middle East analysts have suggested, the United States will find itself with new obligations in Gaza, now that Mr. Bush has blessed Mr. Sharon's approach.
In fact, for all the points of American-Israeli agreement on Wednesday, there were hints of divergence in long-term strategy. Mr. Bush insisted that Mr. Sharon's approach would fit with his own road map and "open the door to progress toward a peaceful, democratic, viable Palestinian state." But Mr. Sharon, arguing that the Palestinians have proven themselves unworthy as peace partners for now, has said his approach closes the door to substantive negotiations and a Palestinian state for years. "It will bring their dreams to an end," he told the Israeli newspaper Maariv recently.
--------
Israel Orders Freeze on Settlement Funds
April 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israel's attorney general imposed an unprecedented freeze on all settlement construction funds Thursday, accusing settlers of illegally diverting money to build up unauthorized West Bank outposts that Israel is supposed to be taking down.
Palestinian leaders were scrambling for international support after President Bush suggested Israel would not have to give back all the West Bank or accept Palestinian refugees as part of a final peace deal. Palestinians saw those statements as a new U.S. Mideast policy favoring Israel.
Dozens of settlement outposts -- often no more than a trailer on a hilltop -- have received paved roads and electrical power lines in recent months even though Israel had promised to dismantle them under the U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan.
The United States and Palestinians have criticized the outposts as seeds of future West Bank settlements.
Israel has periodically evacuated a few of the more than 100 outposts. Early Thursday, it pulled down two more uninhabited ones and arrested seven settlers, the army said.
Last year, the government ordered all funds for the outposts frozen, but local settlement councils apparently continued to divert money to them, the Justice Ministry said.
On Thursday, Attorney General Meni Mazuz ordered construction and housing funds earmarked for settlements frozen until an oversight committee is set up, according to the Justice Ministry. He also said the transfer of government funds to illegal activities would result in disciplinary action.
West Bank settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein denied there had been any illegal money transfers and said Mazuz's order was an effort to ``delegitimize the settlers.''
Deputy Education Minister Zvi Hendel, who lives in a Gaza settlement, called the freeze collective punishment.
``Suddenly all of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip receive this indiscriminate punishment?'' Hendel told Israel TV. ``As if everyone's a criminal there, as if there are no normal communities that the Housing Ministry can finance.''
Yariv Oppenheimer of the anti-settlement group Peace Now praised the ruling and said it was ``the smoking gun'' that proved money has been going to outposts, he said. But settlement funds are buried in a myriad of budget items, and the ruling will be difficult to implement, he said.
On Thursday, Palestinian leaders gathered in the West Bank town of Ramallah for emergency meetings on how to deal with Bush's statement that it was unrealistic to expect Israel to withdraw to the pre-1967 Mideast war lines or absorb Palestinian refugees. Bush also endorsed Israel's plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank.
Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and with European and U.S. diplomats. Qureia told associates he was considering resigning, saying Bush had undermined the negotiating process.
Arafat said in a televised speech Thursday he would never give up the ``right of return'' of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled or were forced out of their homes during the 1948 Mideast War, as well as their descendants -- about 4 million people.
``Our destiny is to defend our land and sacred places and our rights in freedom and independence and the return of the refugees ... to their homeland,'' he said.
The PLO called Bush's statement a ``dangerous step.''
The Islamic militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad also denounced Bush's stance. Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi called it ``part of the American declared war against Islam ... in harmony with the American terrorism against our people in Iraq.''
The Palestinians appealed to the international community to support a negotiated peace agreement based on the 1967 borders and the road map.
In Brussels, the European Union, a road map sponsor, issued a statement saying it ``would not recognize any change to the pre-1967'' borders unless it was part of a negotiated solution.
A senior EU official said foreign ministers would discuss the matter at a meeting in Ireland this weekend and a high-level meeting of the ``quartet'' of road map sponsors -- the United States, EU, Russia and United Nations -- is expected this month.
Bush gave Sharon an important lift at home, where he faces hard-line opposition to his plan. Sharon has scheduled a May 2 referendum on the withdrawal among members of his Likud Party, and the chances of approval are uncertain.
Also Thursday, a 19-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli army gunfire in the Rafah refugee camp on the Gaza-Egypt border, witnesses said. Relatives said he was not armed. The military said soldiers shot at a Palestinian who opened fire on them.
Earlier, an Israeli helicopter fired two missiles during a raid at the Rafah camp, wounding at least 20 Palestinians, Palestinian hospital officials said.
The army said it had fired one missile at an open field to keep Palestinians away from ground troops and a second missile at a group of three militants. Troops pulled out of the camp after nightfall Thursday, residents said.
Near the West Bank settlement of Ariel, meanwhile, soldiers arrested a Palestinian woman carrying a bomb in a bag, the military said. The area commander, who identified himself only by his first name, Col. Tamir, said it weighed about 22 pounds. He said violent groups are using women and children to transport bombs and carry out attacks, assuming soldiers will have a harder time spotting them.
-------- landmines
Iraqis Comb Northern Hills for Unexploded Mines
Story by Seb Walker
REUTERS IRAQ:
April 15, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24717/newsDate/15-Apr-2004/story.htm
GRDASOOR, Iraq - From a small operations tent nestled in the hills behind the tiny hamlet of Grdasoor, Fakir Hamed looks out over a landscape typical of Iraq's northern Kurdish countryside in almost every way.
Across the verdant slopes, scores of men in blue protective suits and blast visors are kneeling down or slowly combing their way through the land looking for live anti-personnel mines hidden beneath the soil.
"The people that left these weapons were cowards," said Hamed, a team supervisor with the Kurdish de-mining organization, Aras. "This wasn't even the frontline for the army back then, they put (the mines) here for the civilians."
The "Bani-Rey-Grdasoor" or "road above the red hill" minefield was laid by the Iraqi army from 1974 to 1984 as protection for three small military outposts.
It lies between Kirkuk and Arbil, close to Iraq's border with the Kurdish autonomous zone that was created in 1991.
Hamed and his team do not keep count of the number of weapons they destroy, but since February 18 they have managed to clear around a third of the 1.3 million square feet area.
"We don't think about the scale of the problem," Hamed said. "If we destroy one mine that means we're saving a life or a limb, protecting our people and our country."
The conversation pauses for a moment as an explosion echoes across the hillside. A quick radio check confirms one of the specialized tractors used to cut grass before de-miners move in has just run over a mine, but the driver is unhurt.
RISKY WORK
Iraq is littered with land mines from conflicts dating back decades. The problem is especially bad in the north, where Saddam Hussein's forces laid mines in the 1980s to defend against a feared Iranian invasion through the Kurdish regions.
De-mining organizations clear land around known former military zones and also identify new land mines by talking to locals after a land mine accident occurs.
The first stage is to clear the area of excess vegetation using "de-mining machines," heavy agricultural-type vehicles with reinforced cabins, developed and constructed in Kurdistan.
Teams then use metal detectors to locate individual mines, and finally explode them at the end of the day.
The process is dangerous. In March, two Aras de-miners were killed and seven wounded when a tripwire on an Italian-made V69 anti-personnel mine was inadvertently activated.
"A small mistake can lead to a big accident," said one of Hamed's colleagues, his blood type written an identity badge around his neck.
The team said it had found Russian, Italian, Iraqi, Iranian and even Israeli-made land mines, but that the most dangerous were the U.S.-made M14s because of their low metal content, making them harder to detect.
Foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have been working in Kurdish territories since 1991. On March 23, the MAG de-mining organization said more than a million mines and unexploded ordnance had been removed.
The task of mine clearance is now shifting south toward the zone just below the Iraq-Kurdistan border, or green line, and de-mining officials and medical sources expect casualty rates to rise once more.
"Up until 21 November last year, NGOs were not allowed to go south of the green line," said Dlear Yaqoub, a senior official with the Regional Mine Action Center in Arbil, which took over from a United Nations program overseeing de-mining operations.
"They'd been in the autonomous zone for years so it was clear what the problem was and where the mines were, but south of the green line is unknown so far."
Yacoub said more urgent than actually destroying the ordnance was to identify and demarcate mined areas since 85 percent of the area was agricultural grazing land.
"The Iraqi government mined all along the green line up until maybe two months before the (recent) war," he said. "You can see the empty boxes, and some mines were laid with the safety pins still inside."
PROBLEM INCREASING
Most victims of land mine accidents are taken to the Emergency Surgical Center for War Victims hospitals in Arbil and Suleimaniya, set up for that purpose by an Italian NGO in the 1990s.
The hospitals work in tandem with the de-mining organizations, providing data for statistical records.
Ziad Kakamin, field supervisor at the Arbil hospital said the war had aggravated the problem, with Saddam's forces hurriedly planting mines in the run up to the conflict.
"The problem used to be huge but then it decreased," he said. "Now it's getting worse again because of the recent war, especially along the green line."
In 2003, the Arbil hospital treated 64 victims of land mine or unexploded ordnance accidents, compared to 31 in 2002. Last month there were eight. Children between 10 and 20 account for 70 percent of those hurt.
Nine-year-old Jagar Ramazan lay dazed in the hospital's intensive care ward after an accident near the green line. Both his legs had to be amputated above the knee. He also lost two fingers and a thumb.
"I'm a shepherd," he said. "I don't know what happened but I knew it was dangerous."
-------- nato
NATO mission in Afghanistan exposes chink in bloc's armour
Beyond Kabul, vows of troops and equipment haven't been met, PAUL KORING reports
By PAUL KORING
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Toronto Globe and Mail
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040415/NATO15/TPInternational/Asia
KABUL -- It was supposed to be a landmark military operation, inaugurating NATO's transformation into a nimble force capable of offering rapid security assistance anywhere in the world.
Instead, the 6,400-soldier foreign force in Afghanistan -- NATO's most ambitious and far-flung mission -- has exposed serious weaknesses in the European-American alliance.
In Kabul, the Afghan capital, NATO has delivered a powerful measure of security with constant patrols by its high-visibility International Security Assistance Force.
But its sweeping promises to expand the operation beyond Kabul have not been matched by commitments of troops and equipment, starving the force for crucial rapid-reaction forces, combat air support and logistics.
A case in point: Dozens of military transport aircraft from several nations fly into Kabul's airport every week.
But all, including those from the Canadian Forces, ferry supplies only for their own troops.
None are dedicated to ISAF for operations within Afghanistan. So even General Rick Hillier, the NATO force commander who is also Canada's top general, has to beg rides if he needs to move outside the capital.
That hardly seems appropriate for an alliance whose members pledged at a 2002 summit to launch a radical transformation.
Structured to confront the Soviet bloc during the Cold War, NATO was to become an organization that guaranteed the security of its members "against all threats and challenges." Its forces were to become more agile, more quickly deployable and more able to sustain themselves in combat.
Afghanistan, NATO's first direct involvement in peace-support operations, is the first test. "Afghanistan is a top priority for NATO," the alliance's Secretary-General, Japp de Hoop Scheffer, told a conference in Berlin this month. "Our security depends on Afghanistan's security. . . . If we want to win the war against terrorism, we must first win the peace in Afghanistan."
On the ground in Afghanistan, it's a different story.
NATO boasts that 36 countries -- including 12 non-alliance nations -- are contributing troops to ISAF. But 27 of those have sent fewer than 100 soldiers and nine have sent fewer than 10.
The minor contributors reap political credit for participating and help maintain a forest of colourful flags at ISAF's heavily guarded Kabul headquarters. But most add little military punch.
Canada and Germany, with nearly 4,000 troops between them, provide almost two-thirds of the force. Canada's contribution will be cut in August from 1,900 to about 600 and maintained at that level through 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin announced yesterday.
But finding troops isn't NATO's big problem. Plenty of nations will offer a few hundred infantrymen. It's vital and expensive elements such as combat aircraft, logistics support and air-mobile rapid-reaction forces that are missing.
No ISAF airplanes are based in Afghanistan. Its only attack helicopters -- six recently arrived Dutch Apaches -- can't fly over the Hindu Kush mountains. Therefore, they are unable to give support to a lonely German detachment in the northern town of Konduz -- the first outpost established outside Kabul by ISAF.
With elections planned for September, the alliance has agreed to expand throughout the north and west of the country -- a wide swath currently under the control of local warlords.
To be deployed by late summer, the troops that would do that should be training already. But where they will come from and how they will be supported and protected remains unclear.
The continuing low-level war against Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in southeast Afghanistan is being waged by a separate force consisting of nearly 15,000 U.S. troops and their coalition allies.
These forces are also on the hook to provide air support if ISAF peacekeepers get into trouble. They are also running so-called provincial reconstruction teams -- small military bases designed to curry favour with local populations and keep an eye on the warlords -- until NATO nations can take over.
Gen. Hillier said the alliance will find the necessary forces to operate beyond Kabul. But he acknowledges that there are still significant gaps in aviation, logistics and a rapid-reaction force.
"NATO is going to have to come up with an acceptable force," he said. But senior alliance officials are already warning that it is unlikely to be in place for the September vote.
No NATO nation has offered to provide a heavily armed, air-mobile rapid-reaction force capable of backing up the small outposts ISAF is planning to take over this summer and in the fall.
Indeed, most cannot do so, and the few that can are already heavily committed. Britain, for instance, maintains a large contingent in Iraq as well as contributions to both U.S-led forces in Afghanistan and ISAF.
Nor has any nation offered to handle the unglamorous but crucial forward logistics base needed to supply those outposts, which would require hundreds of troops and trucks.
Even the single provincial reconstruction team currently under NATO command -- the 230-soldier German contingent in Konduz -- gets mixed reviews. It says it has made good progress since taking over in January, but has yet to visit any of the four provinces in its area of operation.
A senior military officer of another NATO nation who is familiar with the area says the Germans spend most of their time inside their compound, venturing out only rarely for short daytime patrols. Perimeter security around the German base has been contracted out to locally hired Afghan gunmen.
-------- pakistan / india
Musharraf May Not Give Up His Army Post
April 15, 2004
By SALMAN MASOOD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/international/asia/15stan.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, April 14 - President Pervez Musharraf said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday that he may break an agreement he made with opposition parties that required him to resign as army chief by the end of the year. The plan had been praised as a step toward the restoration of full democracy in Pakistan.
In the interview, with the British Broadcasting Corporation, General Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, said he would consider several issues before deciding whether to give up his army post.
General Musharraf has faced bitter criticism over holding dual offices as president and head of the army from opposition political parties, the European Union and the Commonwealth of former British dependencies. In December, after months of negotiations with hard-line Islamist parties, he said he would resign from the army in 2004.
The agreement struck with the Islamists, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, strengthened hopes of an end to military rule in Pakistan, which has been dominated by the army for most of its modern history.
In the interview, Mr. Musharraf accused the Islamists of reneging on the agreement he reached with them. But his information minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, said the president would fulfill his promise and "will hold only one office."
-------- russia
Russian jet lands in Baghdad to evacuate Russian, CIS citizens
15.04.2004
TASS
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=696091&PageNum=0
BAGHDAD - A Russian jet Ilyushin-62M has landed at Baghdad airport to begin evacuation of Russian and CIS countries nationals working in Iraq, who are willing to leave the country in the light of a deteriorating situation here.
At the time of reporting, the airport, which the Americans have turned into an airbase, was about to receive two cargo jets Ilyushin-76.
In the meantime, a Russian diplomat told Itar-Tass Beirut bureau by telephone from Iraq that 360 Russian specialists had arrived at the airport area Thursday morning, awaiting evacuation. They have been working at the construction sites near Yusefia, a town 3 kilometers south off Baghdad.
"On the way to the airport, the Russian nationals were guarded by Iraqi tribe sheiks and policemen, well-disposed towards Russia," said Bashir Malsagov, the head of the Russian embassy's consulate department.
The Russian consulate in Baghdad is open round the clock these days, he said.
-------- spies
Tenet describes 5-year plan for U.S. intelligence
April 15, 2004
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040415-124444-8937r.htm
CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday said it will take five more years before U.S. intelligence agencies are in good shape, but members of the commission investigating the September 11 attacks said they may force a midcourse correction.
"It will take us another five years of work to have the kind of clandestine service our country needs," Mr. Tenet told the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. "There is a creative, innovative strategy to get us there that requires sustained commitment, leadership and funding."
He said the services suffered years of neglect following the end of the Cold War through the mid-1990s and have since begun a rebuilding program across all agencies, including intelligence analysis, imaging intelligence, and the National Security Agency.
Commission members, during a second straight day of testimony from FBI, CIA and other intelligence officials, said they believe they will make broad recommendations to fundamentally change the relationships between the various agencies and bureaus that play a part in intelligence gathering.
"There is a train coming down the track. There are going to be very real changes made," said Commissioner John F. Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy.
He and other commissioners used the appearances by Mr. Tenet and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III yesterday to bounce around their reform ideas.
Mr. Lehman peppered both men with questions about whether it would be better to create a director of central intelligence with the power to hire and fire directors of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence bureaus, and the power to propose budgets for intelligence operations.
Other commissioners mulled whether to separate the job of domestic intelligence collection from the FBI - something opposed by both Mr. Tenet and Mr. Mueller, who called that "a grave mistake."
"Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs," Mr. Mueller said.
Both Mr. Mueller and Mr. Tenet told the commission they have made giant strides to change both their agencies' structures and culture, something the commission acknowledged.
But Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean said the panel will have to decide in the end whether the status quo, including those changes, is good enough, or whether the problem is inherent in the way intelligence gathering and analysis is divided among U.S. agencies.
"I think it's too early to judge that," he told reporters after the hearings.
He and commission Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton said they were taken aback by Mr. Tenet's prediction it would take five more years to get the intelligence agencies in shape, though they said they accept his time estimate.
"I was personally kind of discouraged with that statement," Mr. Hamilton said. "This is not a new problem. We've been talking about the difficulty of developing human intelligence for 10 or 15 years."
The commission's staff released a report detailing indications the intelligence community had about the impending attacks, but the report said no broader examination was ever done.
In one example, the staff report said that the CIA learned that Zacarias Moussaoui, who has been charged as part of the September 11 plot, had taken flying lessons: "In late August, the Moussaoui arrest was briefed to the DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] and other top CIA officials under the heading, 'Islamic extremist learns to fly.' The news had no evident effect on warning."
One structural issue commissioners are likely to focus on is the lack of sharing among the intelligence agencies.
They were particularly surprised that then-acting FBI Director Thomas J. Pickard never saw the presidential daily brief from Aug. 6, 2001, which was declassified and released on Saturday, that laid out what the CIA knew of Osama bin Laden's desire to attack the United States.
And Commissioner Timothy Roemer, a former member of Congress, seemed incredulous that Mr. Tenet never briefed President Bush on the activities of Moussaoui that month. Mr. Tenet said he learned about Moussaoui on Aug. 23 or 24, but he just didn't have much contact with the president that August.
The staff report also said despite those and a series of other red flags, the CIA never produced an overall summary of bin Laden's links to terrorist attacks, including supplying Somalis with the technology and training to shoot down U.S. Black Hawk helicopters in 1993. The report said the intelligence community didn't recognize al Qaeda as an organization until 1999, more than a decade after it formed, and said that as late as 1997 bin Laden was considered merely a "financier of terrorism," rather than the head of his own terrorist army.
"I think if the president of the United States of America had come and said that Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda is responsible for shooting down a Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu in 1993, I believe that that speech would have galvanized the United States of America against bin Laden," said Commissioner Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska.
Mr. Tenet said he would have to check to see whether he ever made that connection for President Clinton, but he objected to many of the characterizations in the report.
"When the staff statement says the DCI had no strategic plan to manage the war on terrorism, that's flat wrong," he said. "When the staff statement says I had no program, strategic direction in place to integrate, correlate data and move data across the community, that's wrong."
----
CIA failed to act on pilot-school alert
PHILIP SHENON AND ERIC LICHTBLAU
NEW YORK TIMES / Toronto Star
Apr. 15, 2004
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1081980907467&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154
WASHINGTON-In August, 2001, George Tenet and his deputies at the CIA were given a briefing paper labelled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly" about the arrest days earlier of Zacarias Moussaoui - but they did not act on the information.
The incident was one of a string of glaring intelligence failures at the CIA cited yesterday by the Sept. 11 commission.
An interim report by the panel's staff offered a stinging assessment of the CIA under Tenet's leadership and was made public at a hearing where Tenet disclosed that he had little contact with President George W. Bush during much of the summer of 2001, a period when intelligence agencies were warning of a dire terrorist threat.
Tenet, appearing for the second time in three weeks, testified that he had no contact at all with Bush in August, the month in which the president received a CIA report suggesting that Al Qaeda terrorists were already in the United States and might be planning a domestic hijacking.
In fact, Tenet flew to Texas to brief Bush on Aug. 17, 2001, and briefed the president again on Aug. 31 when Bush returned to Washington, a spokesperson for Tenet said later in the day.
During the first eight days of September, Tenet briefed Bush at least six times, the spokesperson added.
In defending Bush from recent allegations that he was not sufficiently attentive to domestic terrorist threats before Sept. 11, the White House has cited his face-to-face contacts with Tenet as proof of his interest.
Robert Mueller, who was sworn in as director of the FBI only a week before Sept. 11, testified yesterday he was overseeing a "transformation" of the law enforcement agency and argued that a proposal being considered by the commission to create a separate domestic intelligence agency would be a "grave mistake."
`No matter how hard we worked, or how desperately we tried, it was not enough.
The victims and the families of 9/11 deserved better.'
CIA Director George Tenet
While praising Tenet's energy and his prescience in understanding the threat of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, several members of the bipartisan commission said their staff report showed the need for an overhaul of the CIA, possibly through the creation of a cabinet-level post for a national intelligence director who would control the budget of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
A Republican member of the panel, John Lehman, who was navy secretary in the Reagan administration, said the CIA report was a "damming evaluation of a system that is broken, that doesn't function."
Lehman accused the CIA of "smugness and even arrogance towards deep reform" and warned Tenet: "A train is coming down the track. There are going to be some very real changes.''
The panel's chairman, Thomas Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, described the report as an "indictment" of the CIA, the same word he used Tuesday in describing a separate staff report on the FBI's performance before and after Sept. 11.
Tenet was combative in his response to the panel's questions, telling them criticisms in the commission's staff's report were "flat wrong" and that he, like Mueller, had overseen broad improvements in an agency seen as dysfunctional.
The panel's report yesterday offered the first detailed evidence about the CIA's failure to follow up on the arrest of Moussaoui, a French-born Islamic extremist who was taken into custody in Minnesota in August, 2001, after arousing the suspicions of instructors at his flight school. After Sept. 11, Moussaoui, an avowed Al Qaeda member, was tied to the terrorist cell in Germany that carried out the attacks.
CIA officials have previously been unwilling to say what, if anything, had been known at the agency about Moussaoui before Sept. 11. But the commission disclosed this week that information about his arrest on Aug. 17 had been relayed within days to the highest levels of the CIA - including to Tenet - and the staff report revealed the name of the report.
"In late August, the Moussaoui arrest was briefed to the (director of central intelligence) and other top CIA officials under the heading `Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly,'" the staff report said, offering no other detail on what was contained in the document.
-------- un
Envoy Urges U.N.-Chosen Iraqi Government
Interim Administration Would Replace Council After U.S. Handover
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12030-2004Apr14?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 14 -- A U.N. envoy proposed on Wednesday that Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council be dissolved when the United States hands over power on June 30 and replaced with a caretaker government of technocrats who would rule until elections are held.
With less than 70 days before the handover of power, the initiative by Lakhdar Brahimi, a former Algerian foreign minister, amounts to a last-ditch effort to cobble together an interim government after repeated Iraqi objections to U.S.-crafted plans, including one to hold regional caucuses. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who will review Brahimi's proposal before it is formally released this month, dispatched the veteran diplomat to Iraq at the behest of the Bush administration to resolve disagreements among Iraqi leaders over the political transition.
Brahimi said at a news conference that the interim government should have a cabinet of ministers led by a prime minister, as well as a president who would serve as the head of state. Although some Iraqi politicians and officials of the U.S. government have favored handing power to the 25-member Governing Council or an expanded version of that body, Brahimi ruled out that approach because of questions about the council's lack of popular support.
Brahimi wants the ministers, the president and two vice presidents to be chosen by the United Nations, in consultation with the U.S. occupation authority, the Governing Council and other institutions, his spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi, said in an interview. Although that approach has been endorsed by Iraq's U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, and other administration officials, it could prove controversial among Iraqis, including some Governing Council members who want a more active role in selecting their interim government.
Brahimi and Bremer regard the selection of the government by the United Nations as a workable compromise that attempts to address Iraqi concerns about earlier transition plans, which would have allowed more American control, people involved in the process said. But despite a pledge to engage in broad consultations with Iraqis, Brahimi's proposal would effectively allow people here less participation in the choice of the interim government than they would have had under an American initiative to hold caucuses in each of Iraq's 18 provinces -- a plan that was rejected by the country's top Shiite Muslim cleric for being insufficiently representative.
It is not known how the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, feels about Brahimi's proposal. The U.N. envoy was unable to travel to the holy city of Najaf, where Sistani lives, because of a standoff there between U.S. troops and militiamen loyal to a rival cleric, Moqtada Sadr. Brahimi spoke to Sistani's son over the telephone, and U.S. officials have asked interlocutors to explain the proposal to Sistani directly.
A senior U.N. official said Brahimi was told by "almost everyone he talked to" that the United Nations should assume the lead role in shaping the interim government. "People told him they don't trust the people sitting on the [Governing] Council, that the [occupation authority] has also acted in ways that made it lose credibility with some segments of society," the senior official said.
"They said they would rather have the United Nations act as an arbiter in this whole process. They see us as bringing international legitimacy to the process."
The United Nations, Fawzi said, "has no agenda other than the interests of Iraqis."
The senior U.N. official said Brahimi was optimistic that Sistani would accept his proposal given the grand ayatollah's previously stated desire to have the United Nations involved in the transition.
But other Shiite leaders and politicians could pose a greater challenge. A handful of Shiite members of the Governing Council objected to the involvement of Brahimi, a Sunni Muslim, and delayed inviting him back to Iraq. The logjam was broken after Sistani sent a message to Annan urging him to dispatch Brahimi.
Among the Shiite politicians who opposed the return of Brahimi -- who angered some Shiites by announcing in February that Iraq would not be able to hold elections before June 30 -- was Ahmed Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress and a member of the Governing Council. Chalabi's spokesman, Entifadh Qanbar, said the nomination or selection of an interim government by the United Nations would not be acceptable to many Iraqis.
"Our position is that this process has to be led by Iraqis and not by the U.N.," Qanbar said. "The U.N. should have the role of consultation -- no more than that."
Another Governing Council member, Mahmoud Othman, said an interim government selected by the United Nations "will not be successful."
Bremer, however, issued a statement on Wednesday night welcoming Brahimi's recommendation. "Mr. Brahimi's recommendation follows broad consultations with hundreds of Iraqis from across the country," the statement said. "We are grateful to Secretary General Annan, Mr. Brahimi and all the U.N. personnel here for their highly constructive contribution."
Under Brahimi's plan, the interim government would be a caretaker administration with limited powers. Its primary role would be to organize elections, which must be held by Jan. 31, 2005, as stipulated by an interim constitution approved last month. Such restrictions could appeal to Sistani, who wants the interim administration's lawmaking powers to be limited.
"I am absolutely confident that most Iraqi people want a simple formula for this interim period of just six or seven months," Brahimi said. He said the ministers, the president and the vice presidents must be "competent, honest and independent people."
Brahimi favors choosing ministers who are technocrats, not representatives of political groups, Fawzi said. Because Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population, the president likely will be a Shiite, people familiar with the process said. One of the vice presidents likely will be a Sunni Arab while the other almost certainly will be an ethnic Kurd, they said.
Brahimi also said he favored holding a large national conference in July, similar to an Afghan loya jirga, to elect a "consultative assembly" to serve alongside the interim government.
The conference, he said, should "serve the all-important aim of promoting national dialogue, consensus-building and national reconciliation in Iraq."
Othman, the Governing Council member, said the national conference should be convened before the June 30 handover and used to select the ministers, the president and the vice presidents. "What's the point of having it after?" he said. "The people want to have a say. They want to be consulted. They want to participate. If not, they won't be satisfied."
But Brahimi argued that there would not be enough time to organize a conference to be held before June 30. He also worries that asking such a group to select an interim government would lead to political and ethnic rivalries overshadowing the meeting, Fawzi said.
"If that happens, you won't get national dialogue and reconciliation," Fawzi said.
Brahimi said he wants Iraq to hold elections before January 2005, but he noted that the security situation "has to improve significantly for these elections to take place in an acceptable environment."
He also denounced tactics used by the U.S. Marines to deal with Sunni insurgents in Fallujah, a strife-torn city west of Baghdad. Over the past week, Marines have surrounded the city and have largely permitted only women and children to leave.
"Collective punishments are not acceptable -- cannot be acceptable, and to cordon off and besiege a city is not acceptable," he said.
The use of force in Fallujah, he said, "especially of excessive use of force, makes matters worse."
-------- us
Return to U.S. For 20,000 Troops Halted
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13123-2004Apr14.html
About 20,000 U.S. soldiers due to return from Iraq to their home bases this month and next will have their tours extended at least three months in a plan the Pentagon finalized yesterday, defense officials said.
While the commander of U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf had said he would need more troops last week, the plan spells out for the first time how many soldiers will be affected and which units they are from. Some of the soldiers scheduled to leave Iraq -- and their families -- had held out hope they might be spared as Pentagon authorities worked out the details. But the final list, due for release today, shows that few escaped the extension.
The extensions apply to a range of forces, from infantrymen to air ambulance crews, adding up to the extra combat strength requested by Army Gen. John P. Abizaid. The extra forces are meant to confront a surge in Sunni and Shiite violence that has already made April the bloodiest month since the U.S. invasion a year ago.
The original plan was to bring troops home as a fresh contingent of about 110,000 moved into Iraq over the past few months. Most of the 20,000 being retained were winding up year-long tours. The decision to keep them in place breaks a Pentagon commitment last autumn to limit troop assignments in Iraq to 12 months.
The bulk of the retained force consists of combat troops -- 14,300 from the 1st Armored Division (including an attached aviation unit) and 2,800 from the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment. Filling out the list are smaller supporting elements, including three units of engineers totaling 1,150 soldiers, an air ambulance crew with 130 members, an aviation company with 114 troops, 70 military police and 20 surgical workers.
In addition, officials said, nearly 2,000 troops in Kuwait belonging to 12 transport companies and one maintenance company will be kept in jobs deemed critical to resupplying forces in Iraq. Most of these forces belong to the National Guard or Reserve.
The extensions will further stretch an Army already badly stressed not only by operations in Iraq but also by commitments in Afghanistan, the Balkans, South Korea and elsewhere. The service has few other forces available to substitute in Iraq.
Pentagon officials have raised the possibility that the next rotation of forces into Iraq, planned to start in September and run through January, could be moved up to sustain the higher troop level after the current extensions end.
Lt. Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's deputy chief of staff for operations, told reporters Tuesday that he expects Abizaid to decide by July whether to keep the troop level elevated by drawing more fresh forces from home bases.
Doing so, Cody added, would require the Army to break its plan to ensure that some troops get a full 12 months at home after a deployment before being sent out again.
Cody said the pace of Army operations around the world has lately been the most demanding in his 32 years in the Army.
President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have made it clear that they will fulfill any Abizaid requests for additional troops. Bush, in a prime-time news conference Tuesday night, said U.S. forces would be in Iraq "as long as necessary, and not one day more."
The extensions will leave the 2nd Armored Cavalry split. A squadron, consisting of about 700 troops, has already returned home to Fort Polk in Louisiana. A special welcome-home ceremony planned for June in the town of Leesville outside the base, including a parade and military flyover, has been indefinitely postponed.
Maj. Ron Elliott, a Fort Polk spokesman, said the Leesville relatives of those with extended deployments have been comforted by local "family readiness groups," which help spouses and children. But he said the parents of affected service personnel who live elsewhere have expressed some "concern and alarm."
The 2nd Armored Cavalry has had 12 fatalities since its deployment. Many of the 2,800 troops ordered to stay had already been transported to Kuwait in anticipation of a return flight home.
Col. Bradley W. May, the regiment's commander, anticipating the extension last week, told his troops: "We are being called to end the fight against Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army, and we will. We have accomplished too much and worked too hard during the past year to allow a common thug to dictate the direction of power in Iraq."
"I was disappointed and a little angry," said Letitia Edwards, a Leesville resident whose boyfriend, Master Sgt. Johnny McKenzie, was told last Thursday that he would likely have to stay longer in Iraq. "It drags down the morale of the soldiers. They are looking forward to that one-year mark so they can come home, and then they can't."
Staff writer R. Jeffrey Smith contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
Full text: 'Bin Laden tape'
Thursday, 15 April, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3628069.stm
An audiotape purported to be from Osama Bin Laden has been broadcast by the pan-Arab al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera satellite channels. In the tape the voice offers conditional reconciliation with Europe.
The following is the text of the tape as broadcast by al-Arabiya:
Praise be to Almighty God; Peace and prayers be upon our Prophet Muhammad, his family, and companions.
This is a message to our neighbours north of the Mediterranean, containing a reconciliation initiative as a response to their positive reactions.
Praise be to God; praise be to God; praise be to God who created heaven and earth with justice and who allowed the oppressed to punish the oppressor in the same way.
Peace upon those who followed the right path:
'Oppression kills the oppressors'
In my hands there is a message to remind you that justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out about them.
The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice and aggression. It was said: Oppression kills the oppressors and the hotbed of injustice is evil. The situation in occupied Palestine is an example. What happened on 11 September [2001] and 11 March [the Madrid train bombings] is your commodity that was returned to you.
It is known that security is a pressing necessity for all mankind. We do not agree that you should monopolise it only for yourselves. Also, vigilant people do not allow their politicians to tamper with their security.
Having said this, we would like to inform you that labelling us and our acts as terrorism is also a description of you and of your acts. Reaction comes at the same level as the original action. Our acts are reaction to your own acts, which are represented by the destruction and killing of our kinfolk in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine.
The act that horrified the world; that is, the killing of the old, handicapped [Hamas spiritual leader] Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, may God have mercy on him, is sufficient evidence.
We pledge to God that we will punish America for him, God willing.
Which religion considers your killed ones innocent and our killed ones worthless? And which principle considers your blood real blood and our blood water? Reciprocal treatment is fair and the one who starts injustice bears greater blame.
'Bloodsuckers'
As for your politicians and those who have followed their path, who insist on ignoring the real problem of occupying the entirety of Palestine and exaggerate lies and falsification regarding our right in defence and resistance, they do not respect themselves.
They also disdain the blood and minds of peoples. This is because their falsification increases the shedding of your blood instead of sparing it.
Moreover, the examining of the developments that have been taking place, in terms of killings in our countries and your countries, will make clear an important fact; namely, that injustice is inflicted on us and on you by your politicians, who send your sons - although you are opposed to this - to our countries to kill and be killed.
Therefore, it is in both sides' interest to curb the plans of those who shed the blood of peoples for their narrow personal interest and subservience to the White House gang. The Zionist lobby is one of the most dangerous and most difficult figures of this group. God willing, we are determined to fight them. We must take into consideration that this war brings billions of dollars in profit to the major companies, whether it be those that produce weapons or those that contribute to reconstruction, such as the Halliburton Company, its sisters and daughters.
Based on this, it is very clear who is the one benefiting from igniting this war and from the shedding of blood. It is the warlords, the bloodsuckers, who are steering the world policy from behind a curtain.
As for President Bush, the leaders who are revolving in his orbit, the leading media companies and the United Nations, which makes laws for relations between the masters of veto and the slaves of the General Assembly, these are only some of the tools used to deceive and exploit peoples.
All these pose a fatal threat to the whole world.
The Zionist lobby is one of the most dangerous and most difficult figures of this group. God willing, we are determined to fight them.
'Reconciliation initiative'
Based on the above, and in order to deny war merchants a chance and in response to the positive interaction shown by recent events and opinion polls, which indicate that most European peoples want peace, I ask honest people, especially ulema, preachers and merchants, to form a permanent committee to enlighten European peoples of the justice of our causes, above all Palestine. They can make use of the huge potential of the media. The door of reconciliation is open for three months of the date of announcing this statement.
I also offer a reconciliation initiative to them, whose essence is our commitment to stopping operations against every country that commits itself to not attacking Muslims or interfering in their affairs - including the US conspiracy on the greater Muslim world.
This reconciliation can be renewed once the period signed by the first government expires and a second government is formed with the consent of both parties.
The reconciliation will start with the departure of its last soldier from our country.
The door of reconciliation is open for three months of the date of announcing this statement.
For those who reject reconciliation and want war, we are ready.
As for those who want reconciliation, we have given them a chance. Stop shedding our blood so as to preserve your blood. It is in your hands to apply this easy, yet difficult, formula. You know that the situation will expand and increase if you delay things.
If this happens, do not blame us - blame yourselves.
A rational person does not relinquish his security, money and children to please the liar of the White House.
Had he been truthful about his claim for peace, he would not describe the person who ripped open pregnant women in Sabra and Shatila [reference to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon] and the destroyer of the capitulation process [reference to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process] as a man of peace. Reality proves our truthfulness and his [George Bush's] lie. He also would not have lied to people and said that we hate freedom and kill for the sake of killing. Reality proves our truthfulness and his lie.
The killing of the Russians was after their invasion of Afghanistan and Chechnya; the killing of Europeans was after their invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan; and the killing of Americans on the day of New York [reference to 11 September] was after their support of the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula.
Also, killing them in Somalia was after their invasion of it in Operation Restore Hope. We made them leave without hope, praise be to God.
It is said that prevention is better than cure. A happy person is he who learns a lesson from the experience of others.
Heeding right is better than persisting in falsehood.
Peace be upon those who follow guidance.
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
----
U.S. Reporters Unable to Probe Killings in Fallujah
By E&P Staff
April 15, 2004
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000487569
NEW YORK Normally, when charges of high civilian casualties in war emerge -- as they have this week in Iraq -- independent reporters attempt to arrive on the scene for a full assessment. But with kidnappings and other threats to the security of journalists rising in Iraq, those kinds of eyewitness probes, at least from Western reporters, may be few and far between.
This has already had dire consequences, with the truth in hot dispute, as the U.S. military denies wrongdoing in the siege of Fallujah while Arab television and other press accounts document an estimated 600 dead in that city and 1,200 wounded, many of them women and children.
The accusations of mass killings in Fallujah, and on a smaller scale in other cities in the past week, have led some Iraqi Governing Council members to criticize the U.S. military and threaten to resign. It has also fed rising anti-American anger in the country. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both expressed concerns about the civilian toll.
American reporters may be eager to provide some objective answers, but most are unable or unwilling to venture out of the relative security of downtown Baghdad.
Rick Atkinson, who covered the Iraq invasion last spring for The Washington Post (Click for QuikCap) and wrote the current bestseller on the experience, "In the Company of Soldiers," told E&P that the newspaper's Baghdad bureau chief indicated to him last week that "it's just so dangerous and hard to move about. Reporters have pulled back. It's very difficult to move around in a meaningful way, difficult to get a complete picture there."
Writing in The Wall Street Journal this week, Julia Angwin reported that no major U.S. news organizations had completely pulled out of Iraq but "the street violence has become so intense and unpredictable that many reporters are staying indoors, taking only short trips or traveling with the military rather than risk being kidnapped or killed."
Several journalists have been kidnapped or detained in Iraq in the past 10 days, including staffers from The New York Times (who were quickly released).
Paul Slavin, a senior vice president of ABC News, told Angwin the situation was "out of control. If it does stay out of control, we will have a huge problem in how we cover this story." Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, said his reporters in Baghdad had been asked to stay within city limits and admitted to Angwin, "I think you have to ask yourself periodically, 'Is it safe to be there at all?'"
A few American and British reporters have penetrated Fallujah, including Lourdes Navarro of The Associated Press and Jeffrey Gettleman of The New York Times.
The issue has become particularly significant, with the threats, and the toll of urban warfare casualties, now expected to go on for some time. Already this week, the American administration in Iraq has accused the Arab media of exaggerating civilian casualties with its footage of rows of dead in the streets and wounded children in hospitals, and accounts of families shot while trying to flee the city. The U.S. Marine commander in charge of Fallujah said that most of the 600 or more killed were legitimate targets, explaining that "95% of those were military age males."
Al-Jazeeera has rejected the complaint, calling it "a threat to the right of the media to cover the reality in Iraq."
Francis Harris, deputy news editor at London's Daily Telegraph, was quoted yesterday as warning, "If it becomes too dangerous you end up with journalists locked up in secure zones interviewing each other and relying on the authorities for information."
On Wednesday, Christine Hauser of The New York Times covered the carnage in Fallujah, but from a hospital in Baghdad, where some of the victims had been taken. Writing from Fallujah, her colleague Jeffrey Gettleman noted that the Marines in that city "have orders to shoot any male of military age on the streets after dark, armed or not."
A lance corporal told Gettleman he had seen an American helicopter fire a missile at a man with a slingshot. "Crazy, huh?" the soldier said.
----
Incredible Credibility
Richard Clarke's decision to step out publicly and write Against All Enemies is more shocking than the revelations within
By Jason Vest
4.15.04
In These Times
http://www.inthesetimes.com/comments.php?id=691_0_1_0_C
Men like Richard Clarke do not, as a rule, write books. Mandarins of the national security establishment who long ago embedded themselves in the bureaucracy, the closest they ever come to anything like public authorship is via the pens of others. They frequently speak to journalists, sometimes on the record as adjuncts of the political master du jour; other times, only on background, perhaps in the service of what they see as sounder policy than the White House does. They consider their import to be their possession of more focused experience and better institutional memory than the strictly politicals they work for; yet by and large they are committed to working within the system, and even in anger rarely consider transgressing the informal boundary that lies just beyond the utterance of an undermining anonymous quote to a major daily newspaper.
For any of these bureaucrats to step in erudite anger from the wings to center stage, then, is rare. For one to do it by name-and in no less than book form-is exceptional. That the author in this case would be Richard Clarke is all the more compelling. I doubt there is a diplomatic or national security reporter who hasn't occasionally talked with Clarke over the past two decades; even at his most forceful on-the-record or cryptic deep background, I can't think of a time when Clarke said anything that would have seriously jeopardized his national security chamberlain's privileges. Nor can I think of a politico/bureaucratic scrap in which Clarke hasn't at least held his own (or even relished, as only a street-fighting kid from Dorchester, Massachusetts, can). For a man like Clarke, then, the threshold for publicly turning on any president-by writing a detailed critical indictment of him and his administration-is naturally very, very high.
This is part of what makes Clarke's Against All Enemies-and his blunt statements to the 9/11 Commission and the press-so satisfying. Thus far, he's forced the White House to send Condoleezza Rice before the Commission, and has sent some partisan Republicans into such a tizzy they're demanding the declassification of previous closed-door Clarke testimony, hoping to find "discrepancies" between Clarke's current public and previous classified comments. Yet Clarke's broadside hasn't prompted righteous rioting in the streets. So far-if polls are to be believed-he's nudged both the pro- and anti-Bush numbers up a tad but produced no shift in the current myopic yin and yang that is the American polity.
I can't say I find this surprising. As H.L. Mencken once noted-in an epigram that perhaps sums up the gap between Americans' perceptions of the intelligence community and the realities for the best of those who work in it-"the public demands certainties ... but there are no certainties." For those who want to believe the worst about the Bush administration, Clarke's nuanced criticisms of the Clinton administration-and his own sleights of hand about mistakes that seem clear in hindsight-are to be ignored. For those deluded in their goal of realizing an easy "region transformed" by exploiting post-9/11 cognitive dissonance-or trying to defend a disengaged pre-9/11 president who easily acceded to a poorly considered endeavor in Mesopotamia-Clarke's renderings are nothing more than the revisionist self-justifications of a civil servant who dropped the ball. For partisans of one side, any inconsistency or error is proof positive of the self-serving or crypto-liberal; for the other, he's a folk hero, his role in dubious international activities, like undermining Boutros-Ghali and bombing the al-Shifa pharmaceutical plant, unacknowledged. In essence, he's either a demon by commission or a saint by omission.
Which is sad, because it's precisely Clarke's status as an unabashedly hawkish but realistic (and sometimes wrong) veteran of the morally ambiguous national security world that gives his account its gravitas. In that realm, things often are bungled in the execution of policies good or bad; its people like Clarke who generally help pick up the pieces and spin the press, even if they don't fully believe themselves. But when there is the absence of actual policy-or the presence of policy dangerously at odds with reality-it offends the sensibilities of smart, knowledgeable (and, like Clarke, arrogant) civil servants who live and breathe policy they consider paramount to the national interest.
When they run into this unpleasant reality too forcefully, many simply quit and keep to themselves-mere GS-12s know that being publicly critical even once they've left is an endeavor fraught with peril. I'm sure Clarke was well aware of what was to follow from his decisions-he's willing to risk a lot of long-term unpleasantness-because his book reads like it was written by a true civil servant. His motivations might be characterized as conservative in the best sense: He doesn't like seeing capital-political, financial, human-misspent. And it doesn't take much space for him to explain, with unadorned clarity, how the current Bush administration has wasted spirit, blood and treasure. (Of 11 chapters, only two are devoted to the W years.) Nor does he require much space to carefully assign responsibility for national security failures intrinsic and systematic.
But the primary utility of Against All Enemies lays not so much in the summations of failure and prescriptions for reform but in a storyline that explains how we came to be where we are today. For those citizens who have spent the post-Cold War days happily ignorant of the generalities and specifics of how the national security components of their government operate, it's an eminently useful and accessible primer on how strands of intransigence, myopia, and lack of leadership and new ideas have come to make up the rope the current administration has slipped around the neck of sound national security and foreign policy. For those already steeped in those realms, it's merely more validation of worst-case assumptions.
Not only does Clarke narrate an engaging tour of institutional recalcitrance and pettiness that most rightly assume is intrinsic to bureaucracy (the painfully slow evolution of making al Qaeda a priority; of FBI-CIA cooperation on al Qaeda; of ponying up money from jealously guarded budgets for innovative endeavors), he confirms that the hawks of the current administration are hopelessly stuck in the past. Though his characterization of Rice isn't quite as piquant as what one former colleague of hers told me several years ago ("She hasn't had a new idea in her head since 1989"), key is his briefly mentioned realization that neither the new national security adviser nor her deputy had "worked on the new post-Cold War security issues," as is his weary recollection of daily NSC staff meetings "filled with detailed discussion about the ABM Treaty and other issues that I thought were vestigial Cold War concerns." Indeed, if one looked at what most of the national security political appointees were doing for right-wing think tanks during the '90s, they seemed intent on continuing to fight a modified vision of the Cold War, obsessed with ways to both tie up loose ends (i.e., Fidel Castro) or find a new polarization of nation-states status quo.
And even in the wake of the bombings of U.S. embassies and an American warship, al Qaeda's terrorism was hardly on this crew's radar. After 9/11, Clarke once again confirms the worst, reporting that the ideologues could see only the tragedy through the retrospective prism of Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Perhaps most disturbing about Clarke's account is the cool certainty with which ideologues like Paul Wolfowitz discuss their warped view of reality and condescend to the career professionals who have been working al Qaeda and Iraq for years. One wishes one could have seen Clarke's face when Wolfowitz-back in government just five months after nearly a decade of dwelling in the ivory tower of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)-champions the daffy notions of right-wing conspiracy maven Laurie Mylroie, telling Clarke: "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor."
Clarke ends his book noting that he and his former colleagues are now teaching graduate students, "hoping we can help the next generation of national security managers to understand the dangers of simplistic and unilateral approaches to counter terrorism." One cannot help but rue the fact that Clarke wasn't teaching before-perhaps at SAIS, where Wolfowitz and others might have learned a thing or two had they sat in on his class.
Jason Vest, who specializes in national security issues, is a contributing editor at In These Times and is a senior correspondent for The American Prospect.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Secret Surveillance Warrants Up After 9/11
Apr 15, 2004
By CURT ANDERSON
(AP)
http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20040415/D81VFFVO0.html
WASHINGTON - The number of secret surveillance warrants sought by the FBI has increased 85 percent in the past three years, a pace that has outstripped the Justice Department's ability to quickly process them.
Even after warrants are approved, the FBI often doesn't have enough agents or other personnel with the expertise to conduct the surveillance. And the FBI still is trying to build a cadre of translators who can understand conversations that are intercepted in such languages as Arabic, Pashto and Farsi.
These findings are among those of investigators for the commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks, which has harshly criticized the intelligence-gathering efforts of the CIA and FBI.
FBI and Justice Department officials said Thursday they are working to address all three issues, which limit the government's ability to gather the kind of intelligence needed to head off another catastrophic terrorist attack.
The warrants, authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, allow for wiretaps, video surveillance, property searches and other spying on people believed to be terrorists or spies. After the 2001 Patriot Act and a key 2002 court decision crumbled the legal wall separating the FBI's criminal and intelligence investigations, use of FISA warrants has soared as sharing of information has become easier.
Since 2001, the number of warrants has risen from 934 to more than 1,700 in 2003, according to the FBI. The FBI adopted streamlined procedures to move the warrant requests quickly from the field offices to headquarters after the Sept. 11 attacks.
But a Sept. 11 commission report released this week found that the Justice Department approval process "continues to be long and slow" and that the mounting requests "are overwhelming the ability of the system to process them." Although there are provisions for the attorney general to issue emergency FISA warrants, these are good for only 72 hours before they must be reviewed by a special court.
The Justice Department and FBI are "attempting to address bottlenecks" in the system, the commission report found, but the difficulties suggest that some surveillance opportunities could be delayed or lost.
Attorney General John Ashcroft is issuing new guidelines for the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, which handles FISA requests, spokesman Mark Corallo said. The changes are aimed at reducing and preventing backlogs, he said.
"We have been in a constant state of revising and streamlining the FISA process," Corallo said. More attorneys also are being added to the unit so the warrant requests are more quickly reviewed and sent to the court for approval.
The inability to gather enough evidence for a FISA warrant caused the FBI problems in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks. He was taken into custody on immigration charges in August 2001 after his desire to learn to fly a Boeing 747 with little flight background aroused suspicions.
The FBI turned to the CIA to help produce evidence needed to show that Moussaoui might be connected to a foreign terrorist group, which would enable agents to get a FISA warrant to search Moussaoui's computer. That led to an Aug. 23-24 briefing memo to CIA Director George Tenet headlined "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly," but nothing was done before the 19 hijackers completed the Sept. 11 plot that took nearly 3,000 lives.
The Sept. 11 commission said it's possible that if the government had acted more quickly on the information involving Moussaoui it could have led authorities to the hijackers.
Some lawmakers and privacy activists worry that FISA remains ripe for abuse. Legislation introduced on Capitol Hill would require the Justice Department to publicly account for the number of Americans subjected to FISA surveillance and how often it is used in criminal cases.
"What it will do is go a long way toward assuaging growing public mistrust of the government," said Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Even if the FISA delays are solved, the FBI is struggling to provide the surveillance experts necessary to carry out the warrants. The Sept. 11 commission staff found shortages at every FBI field office they visited and noted that some of these personnel "are not treated as part of an integrated intelligence program" and do not meet regularly with case agents working terrorism suspects.
The FBI has two main surveillance programs: the Special Surveillance Group, or SSG, made up of non-agents who monitor foreign agents, spies and others not being targeted for a criminal investigation; and the Special Operations Group, or SOG, made up of agents who deal with dangerous people such as terrorists or organized crime figures.
Both types of surveillance are extremely labor-intensive, requiring personnel to work in shifts for round-the-clock coverage of the target. They also must handle other types of criminal cases, including those involving the Mafia, public corruption and violent street gangs.
In his testimony to the commission, Mueller said the FBI has requested money from Congress for additional surveillance capabilities to meet the growing demand. And he said that while the FBI still faces a shortage of translators, any counterterrorism intercept deemed important is reviewed by a language expert within 24 hours.
On the Net:
FBI: http://www.fbi.gov
-------- investigations
Al Qaeda Unchecked for Years, Panel Says
Tenet Concedes CIA Made Mistakes
By Walter Pincus and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13122-2004Apr14?language=printer
U.S. intelligence services failed to recognize the emergence of the al Qaeda terrorist network until more than a decade after it was founded in 1988, playing down a tide of reports that documented the danger posed by the group, according to findings released yesterday by the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The CIA's Counterterrorist Center never developed a plan to deal with the possibility that terrorists might use airplanes as weapons despite growing evidence during the 1990s that terrorist groups had attempted or were planning such plots, the commission's staff also found.
CIA Director George J. Tenet acknowledged yesterday that he did not brief President Bush, FBI leaders or Cabinet members after he was informed in late August 2001 of the arrest of Zacarias Moussaoui, who would later be charged as a conspirator in the terror attacks. The briefing for Tenet was titled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly."
"We made mistakes," Tenet told the panel yesterday, referring to the general failure to detect the terror plot that left 3,000 people dead. "We all understood bin Laden's intent to strike the homeland but were unable to translate this knowledge into an effective defense of the country."
Tenet also said it would take five more years to "have the kind of clandestine service our country needs."
The findings by the panel, formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, were the second time in as many days that the commission's investigators have unveiled a sweeping condemnation of the U.S. intelligence community, this time focused on the CIA. The same investigators released a report Tuesday that the panel's chairman had described as "an indictment of the FBI."
The staff found that major collection and analysis activities targeting al Qaeda were delayed even after a defector from the terrorist organization began providing details about the network in 1996.
The CIA had learned that Osama bin Laden was linked to the 1992 attacks on U.S. military personnel in Yemen and the 1993 downing of a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter in Somalia, the report said. The agency also received reports in 1997 that al Qaeda operatives were surveilling institutions in the United States as a precursor to a likely attack.
But still, the U.S. intelligence community "did not describe this organization, at least in documents we have seen, until 1999," according to the report.
During his testimony yesterday, however, Tenet disputed the claim that the CIA wasn't aware of al Qaeda and bin Laden until that late date. Tenet said the report's finding wrongly assumed that "people weren't getting this kind of data. That's just not true."
In one of its more stinging case studies, the staff report noted that Tenet learned on Aug. 23 or 24, 2001, about the arrest in Minnesota a week earlier of Moussaoui, a suspected jihadist who was attempting to learn how to fly jetliners.
Tenet said he did not tell President Bush, who was vacationing in Texas, or FBI management about the development. Nor did he mention the case at a Sept. 4 White House Cabinet meeting, where approval was given for a new presidential directive on terrorism.
Tenet said he assumed "that this was something that would be laid down in front of" the White House Counterterrorism Security Group. In fact, the Moussaoui information remained in the FBI's international terrorism division. Thomas J. Pickard, acting FBI director until a week before the attacks, has testified that he did not learn of it until the afternoon of Sept. 11, 2001.
Tenet testified that the case first came to his attention because the FBI agent was looking for any intelligence the CIA had about Moussaoui to get a court order to open his computer.
In a separate report released yesterday, the panel's investigators were critical of the FBI's attempts at reform since the Sept. 11 attacks. Although the bureau "is a stronger counterterrorism agency than it was before 9/11," the report said, it remains plagued by chronic computer problems, erratic training, shortages of linguists and intelligence analysts, and widespread confusion among agents over its counterterrorism mission.
In one example, "we heard from many analysts who complain that they are able to do little actual analysis because they continue to be assigned menial tasks, including covering the phones at the reception desk and emptying the office trash bins," the report said.
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said in testimony that "we've got to put our house in order, and I think we are putting our house in order."
"Change cannot be done overnight," he added. "Transitions take time. . . . I think we're on the right path."
Mueller urged the commission not to endorse the creation of a domestic intelligence service that would take over counterterrorism responsibilities from the FBI. The panel is seriously debating the idea of an agency akin to Britain's MI5; the prospect of an overhaul of the nation's intelligence apparatus gained further prominence this week when President Bush said he was considering it.
"I do believe that creating a separate agency to collect intelligence in the United States would be a grave mistake," Mueller said. "Splitting the law enforcement and the intelligence functions would leave both agencies fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs."
The idea has prompted widespread criticism from law enforcement officials. Former FBI director Louis J. Freeh on Tuesday likened the idea to the creation of a "secret police," and the 9,000-member FBI Agents Association said such an agency would "put blinders on agents in the field and tie their hands behind their backs in the fight against terrorism."
Although members of the 10-member bipartisan commission showered praise on Mueller and Tenet for their efforts at reform, the remarks were overshadowed by the sweeping criticisms found in yesterday's staff reports.
"I came to this job with less knowledge of the intelligence community than anybody else at this table," said Chairman Thomas H. Kean, who served as a Republican governor of New Jersey. "What I've learned has not reassured me. It's frightened me a bit, frankly."
The commission staff also confirmed an early clue to a Sept. 11 hijacker, reporting that in 1999, the German government provided the U.S. government with a telephone number and first name: "Marwan." The CIA pursued the lead but little was discovered. The individual would eventually be identified as Marwan Al-Shehhi, who piloted United Airlines Flight 175 into the World Trade Center and used the same telephone number given to the CIA before the hijackings.
Commissioner Bob Kerrey (D), who served on the intelligence committee as a senator from Nebraska, said he did not know in 1996 that bin Laden's operatives might have been involved in downing the Black Hawk in Somalia.
"Did you ever have a conversation with President Clinton" about the incident in order to "ramp this guy up to the top of the list?" Kerrey asked Tenet, adding that the evidence "would have galvanized the U.S. against bin Laden."
Tenet said he would have to check on what he told Clinton.
Tenet said the CIA's inability to penetrate the al Qaeda network has led to a long-term rebuilding of its human intelligence program, which was in "disarray" after the loss of 20 percent of its personnel in the 1990s. By 2001, he said, there were 25 sources inside Afghanistan who were nonproductive on the Sept. 11 plot but useful for the U.S.-led invasion.
Kean questioned why it would take five years to rebuild the CIA's clandestine service. Tenet said it takes time to create "access and cover" so that U.S. agents can take root in the rough societies where terrorist sources can be developed.
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Sept. 11 Panel Cites C.I.A. for Failures in Terror Case
April 15, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/politics/15PANE.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 14 - George J. Tenet and his deputies at the Central Intelligence Agency were presented in August 2001 with a briefing paper labeled "Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly" about the arrest days earlier of Zacarias Moussaoui, but did not act on the information, the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks said on Wednesday. An interim report by the panel's staff offered a stinging assessment of the C.I.A. under Mr. Tenet's leadership and was made public during a hearing at which Mr. Tenet disclosed that he had little contact with President Bush during much of the summer of 2001, a period when intelligence agencies were warning of a dire terrorist threat.
Mr. Tenet, the director of central intelligence since 1997, testified that he had no contact at all with Mr. Bush in August, the month in which the president received a C.I.A. report suggesting that terrorists of Al Qaeda were already in the United States and might be planning a domestic airplane hijacking.
The agency later telephoned reporters on Wednesday to correct Mr. Tenet's testimony, saying he met once with the president during Mr. Bush's nearly monthlong vacation that August at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., and once again when Mr. Bush returned to Washington later that month. In defending Mr. Bush from recent contentions that he was not sufficiently attentive to domestic terrorist threats before Sept. 11, the White House has cited his face-to-face meetings with Mr. Tenet as proof of his interest.
Mr. Tenet offered an aggressive defense, insisting that the agency had provided "clear and direct" intelligence about the larger danger posed by Al Qaeda before Sept. 11. "Warning was well understood, even if the timing and method of attacks was not," he said.
He said he had instituted several changes since Sept. 11 intended to make the agency more nimble in responding to terrorist threats. But he acknowledged that much remained to be done, and he said it would take five more years for the C.I.A. to rebuild the "clandestine service," its global network of spies, which he said had been in "disarray" when he arrived at the agency.
Also testifying before the commission on Wednesday, Robert S. Mueller III - who was sworn in as the F.B.I. director only a week before the Sept. 11 attacks - said he was overseeing a "transformation" of the law enforcement agency, arguing that a proposal the commission was considering to create a separate domestic intelligence agency would be a "grave mistake."
While praising Mr. Tenet's energy and his understanding of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, several commission members said the staff report showed the need for an overhaul of the C.I.A., possibly through the creation of a Cabinet-level post for a national intelligence director who would control the budget of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies.
A Republican member of the panel, John F. Lehman, who was Navy secretary in the Reagan administration, said the report on the C.I.A. was a "damming evaluation of a system that is broken, that doesn't function."
While calling Mr. Tenet "a very entrepreneurial, gutsy guy who has worked very, very hard," Mr. Lehman accused the agency of "smugness and even arrogance towards deep reform" and warned Mr. Tenet: "There are going to be some very real changes."
The panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, described the report as an "indictment" of the C.I.A., the same word he used on Tuesday to describe a separate staff report on the F.B.I.'s performance before and after Sept. 11.
Mr. Tenet was combative in his response to the panel's questions, telling them that criticisms in the commission staff's report were "flat wrong" and that he, like Mr. Mueller, had overseen broad improvements in an agency that was long depicted as dysfunctional.
The panel's report on Wednesday on the C.I.A. offered the first detailed evidence about the agency's failure to follow up on the arrest of Mr. Moussaoui, a French-born Islamic extremist who was taken into custody in Minnesota in August 2001 after arousing the suspicions of his flight-school instructors. After Sept. 11, Mr. Moussaoui, an avowed Qaeda member, was tied to the terrorist cell in Germany that conducted the attacks.
C.I.A. officials have been unwilling to say what, if anything, the agency had known about Mr. Moussaoui before Sept. 11. But the commission disclosed this week that information about his arrest on Aug. 17 had been relayed within days to the highest levels of the C.I.A., including to Mr. Tenet, and the commission's report on Wednesday revealed the headline of the briefing, which was part of a larger report about intelligence developments that summer.
"In late August, the Moussaoui arrest was briefed to the D.C.I. and other top C.I.A. officials under the heading `Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly,' " the staff report said, offering no other detail on what the document contained. "The news had no evident effect on warning."
Mr. Tenet said he could not recall details about the way the agency handled the Moussaoui reports.
Throughout August, the Moussaoui case was in the control of F.B.I. agents in Minnesota, who tried to get their superiors in Washington to take an interest because of their fear that he might be a terrorist. The information was passed to the C.I.A., and eventually to Mr. Tenet, through a F.B.I.-C.I.A. counterterror center.
The staff report also disclosed that the C.I.A. for years had intelligence in its files suggesting that Al Qaeda might hijack passenger planes and try to use them as missiles, but the reports were never drawn together in a larger analysis of the threat.
The reports cited a 1996 warning about a terrorist plot to fly a plane laden with explosives into an American city; a 1996 warning that Iranians intended to hijack a Japanese plane and crash it into Tel Aviv; and a 1995 warning that terrorists intended to fly a plane into C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va. The agency also knew that an Algerian terrorist group hijacked an Air France jet in 1994 with the intention of flying it into the Eiffel Tower, a plot that failed because none of the terrorists knew how to fly.
Mr. Mueller received glowing assessments from most panel members for his work in trying to remake the bureau as a counterterrorism and intelligence-gathering operation.
Lee H. Hamilton, the Democratic co-chairman of the commission, said after hearing Mr. Mueller that "the commission, I think, believes that he is moving in the right direction and has made much progress. We are cheering him on. The key question for us is whether he can succeed with the very difficult mission that he has set out, and we have not come to a judgment with respect to that."
Civil-rights advocates contend that a domestic intelligence agency with broad power to conduct surveillance and covert operations could lead to the types of abuses seen at the F.B.I. under J. Edgar Hoover. Commissioners said they were sensitive to that concern.
"It's terribly important that, whatever system you have for the collection of domestic intelligence, that it be done by an agency that has respect for the rule of law," Mr. Hamilton said. "And that's one argument, at least, for keeping domestic intelligence in the F.B.I."
Despite the praise for Mr. Mueller, the commission's latest staff reports found lingering problems that could hinder the bureau's ability to detect and prevent terror attacks. Those include a shortage of qualified translators, a potential understaffing of intelligence analysis units and a perception among some analysts that they receive second-class treatment.
Mr. Mueller said that creating a new agency for domestic intelligence would be the wrong answer, leaving both the F.B.I. and any new agency "fighting the war on terrorism with one hand tied behind their backs."
Also on Wednesday, the F.B.I. gave the commission its fullest accounting to date of what came of about 70 "bin Ladin-related" investigations that were cited in the briefing that President Bush received on Aug. 6, 2001. Mr. Bush said on Tuesday that he was satisfied after that briefing that the bureau was adequately investigating Qaeda links in the United States, but some commission members have questioned whether it overstated how aggressively it was pursuing those leads.
John Pistole, who oversees counterterrorism at the F.B.I., told the panel that the actual number of investigations at the time of the presidential briefing was 67. Twelve investigations were closed because the bureau determined there was no link to Al Qaeda or Sunni extremists, he said. Two people linked to the East African bombings in 1998 were arrested and indicted, he said. One was charged with a nonterrorist financial crime, six moved overseas and were tracked by the C.I.A., two died, and a number are still under investigation, though there are "obviously no links to 9/11," Mr. Pistole said.
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9/11 Panel Comments Freely (Some Critics Say Too Freely)
April 15, 2004
By JIM RUTENBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/politics/15MEDI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 14 - As President Bush was appearing at a news conference on Tuesday night, the two leaders of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks were not behind closed doors dissecting intelligence documents. They were sitting at a CNN studio here waiting to go on "Larry King Live."
One of them, Thomas H. Kean, the former New Jersey governor who is the commission's chairman, said he and his colleagues were so determined to be credible with Americans that they decided early on to conduct themselves in a very public manner.
"We made a conscious decision, and part of it was under strong pressure from the families, to make this commission as transparent and as visible as possible," Mr. Kean said in an interview.
But Democrats and Republicans alike have raised concerns about the degree to which commission members are discussing their deliberations on television and, even, in newspaper columns - to the point that they are spinning their views like the politicians that many of them are.
Americans can hardly turn on a television or pick up a newspaper these days without seeing or reading about a member of the commission. From the Fox News Channel to ABC to newspapers including The Wall Street Journal, panel members have been providing a running commentary about the investigation as it unfolds, sometimes drawing blunt conclusions months before the final report is to be published in late July.
The accessibility of the commissioners to the news media, not to mention the openness of their views, is a departure from similar independent commissions of the past. Its members' openness troubles some officials here, who say they worry that it is giving the panel an edge that will taint its conclusions - especially when coupled with what some have called a partisan tone to members' questions at the hearings here.
The two independent panels that Sept. 11 commission staff members say they consider to be most similar in their charge to this one are those that investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, both of which worked largely out of public view.
Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican who worked as a lawyer for the Warren Commission, which investigated the Kennedy assassination, said in an interview this week that it had operated like a jury. "When a jury goes out, you don't give a report in midstream on what you're doing, expressing opinions," Mr. Specter said. In the case of the Sept. 11 commission, he added, "Speaking so freely to the press while they're in midstream tends to politicize it when they come to their conclusions."
Former President Gerald R. Ford, who was a member of the Warren Commission, echoed that view. "I think they could do a better job if they were less public-relations related," he said. "I think it will have an adverse impact on their report."
One commissioner, Bob Kerrey, has written two newspaper opinion pieces, including one for The New York Times on Sunday in which he asserted "9/11 could have been prevented." Another commissioner, Richard Ben-Veniste, said on CNN last week that before the attacks "we had some very useful intelligence."
"It was not utilized effectively to protect us," Mr. Ben-Veniste said.
At times, commissioners have appeared on competing television networks at the same time. Some have gone on several networks in the course of a single day, to predict the direction of testimony that is to come or to analyze it - sometimes to disagree with it - afterward.
Late last month, John F. Lehman, a Republican commissioner, said of Richard A. Clarke, the former counterterrorism official who has said the Bush administration did not take his warnings about terrorism seriously before the attacks, "I think he has a credibility problem."
Last week, Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democrat on the commission, was asked if she agreed with testimony from Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, that there was no piece of evidence that "would have led to connecting all of those dots." Ms. Gorelick said on CNBC that she did not.
"There are dozens of pieces of information which, if they had been brought to one table," she said, "you have to believe we would have had a shot at preventing this."
On Wednesday night, Ms. Gorelick agreed to an appearance on "Hardball" on MSNBC to address a call for her resignation from the panel by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin, who appeared on the program to discuss charges that her work for the Justice Department in the Clinton administration posed a conflict.
Such accessibility has come to the delight of news producers. "It's refreshing that the principals in a really important moment in American history are available, and they're usually not," said David Bohrman, the CNN Washington bureau chief.
Yet even one of CNN's commentators, the conservative Tucker Carlson, cited on "Crossfire" on Wednesday what he said were Mr. Ben-Veniste's appearances on at least six programs over the course of the last five days and said, "He's destroying the credibility of these proceedings."
For his part, Mr. Ben-Veniste said, "Our chairman has encouraged us to discuss the open work of the commission, because a large part of our function is to inform the public."
Mr. Kean said the panel had closely studied the work of the commissions that examined the Pearl Harbor attack and the Kennedy assassination and concluded that their secrecy did not serve them well - particularly in the case of the assassination, about which conspiracies still abound. "Those other commissions failed in many ways," Mr. Kean said. "They were sometimes not looked on as credible."
Dr. Loch K. Johnson, a professor at the University of Georgia, said Mr. Kean's commission was conducting itself more like Congressional investigative committees - like the ones that looked into the Watergate break-in and the Iran-contra scandal - which have traditionally been far more open, and partisan, than their independent counterparts.
The Sept. 11 commission has come under attack from conservatives in the last two weeks, in particular, for what they say has been undue criticism of the Bush administration. Those assertions concern more than the members' public appearances; they take issue with the members' questioning of witnesses. As part of its posture, the commission has taken the unusual step of releasing several interim staff reports about the progress of its inquiry that point to missed or ignored clues.
The New York Post published a front-page editorial titled "National Disgrace" on Wednesday, criticizing as "sewn from whole cloth" a staff briefing paper that the newspaper said "paints a picture of alarm bells going off throughout Washington in the months before 9/11."
Last week, Senator Mitch McConell, Republican of Kentucky, charged from the Senate floor that the commission, made up of five Democrats and five Republicans, had "become a political casualty of the electoral hunting season." Mr. McConnell did not respond to requests for comment. The senator's remarks helped to persuade the commission leaders to urge their colleagues to tamp down any partisanship at the hearings, people close to the panel said.
But that did not stop Mr. Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska, who said: "Mitch McConnell is the Republican whip of the Senate and he's accusing us of being too partisan? He can go to hell for all I'm concerned."
Mr. Kerrey said the tough questioning and the television and print appearances had helped shake loose information from the White House that would not have otherwise been released.
Acknowledging that, Ivo H. Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who was on President Bill Clinton's national security staff, said that since this is an election year, "the commission ought to be well aware that too much public exposure will feed suspicion by those who are already so inclined of the commission's political motivation."
Mr. Kean said even if he wanted to avoid the news media, it would be next to impossible in the age of the major 24-hour news networks. "People are going to be talking about us anyway," he said. "We would rather have the commission talking about us rather than talking heads."
-------- prisons / prisoners
Saudi Student's Trial Opens in Idaho
Government Alleges 'Material Support' for Terrorism in Use of Internet
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13072-2004Apr14.html
BOISE, Idaho, April 14 -- A Saudi doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho hid his true agenda as webmaster and "money man" for a worldwide Internet network that sought to finance and recruit fighters for violent holy war abroad, prosecutors charged Wednesday in opening their case against Sami Omar al-Hussayen.
Hussayen, arrested a year ago in the tiny northern Idaho university town of Moscow, was a dual personality, federal prosecutor Kim Lindquist told the jury. The face he presented to the public was that of a studious family man, but his "private face" was that of a man who promoted "extreme jihad" and "provided recruitment and funding for terrorism," Lindquist said.
In a case that tests the contours of federal statutes barring "material support" for terrorists and terrorist organizations, federal authorities are seeking to prove that the use of the Internet to promote and recruit for jihad constitutes such support. Defense lawyers contend that Hussayen's Internet activity amounted to constitutionally protected free speech.
The case against Hussayen is the result of one of the most intensive terrorism-related investigations since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a massive two-year probe that is tied to other cases, including ongoing investigations of charities suspected of financing terrorism.
Hussayen is accused of conspiracy and providing support to terrorists in Chechnya and Israel, and of conspiracy to raise funds for the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, a designated terrorist organization also known as Hamas. His indictment charges that Hussayen "knew and intended that the material support he provided [was] to be used in preparation for, and to commit, violations of federal law involving murder, maiming, kidnapping, and the destruction of property," a contention the government repeated on Wednesday.
Defense attorney David Nevin portrayed his client as a well-liked leader of the university's Muslim Student Association who had been quick to publicly condemn the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hussayen, the father of three young boys, is not an angry Muslim who hates the West, he said. On the contrary, Nevin added, he comes from a well-to-do family that has traveled the world. "He doesn't hate the United States. He doesn't hate Western values. That's not who he is," Nevin said.
Hussayen, 34, a doctoral candidate in a computer science program sponsored by the National Security Agency, is accused of creating more than a dozen jihadist Web sites and of moderating a global e-mail group that in February 2003 posted an "urgent appeal" for Muslims in the U.S. military to supply information about American forces and facilities in the Middle East that could be selected as targets for acts of terrorism.
Displaying a chart that showed the links among more than a dozen Web sites, Lindquist told the jury that Hussayen managed "an Internet network -- a platform," and that "the content of this platform was extreme jihad -- terrorism."
The evidence will show, Lindquist said, that Hussayen, while working on the computer in the den of his Moscow, Idaho, apartment, posted four fatwas from Saudi sheiks extolling suicide martyrdom attacks in Chechnya, Israel and elsewhere. "He created Web pages and uploaded them onto the network on April 15, 2001."
Nevin acknowledged that the fatwas "are ugly and reprehensible," adding that "they are not Sami's views." But even those Internet postings were protected speech under the First Amendment, Nevin said.
He told the jury that Hussayen did not make "an affirmative decision" to post the fatwas, but merely uploaded them and other material on the Web site after fixing a glitch on the site. Nevertheless, he said, his client supports the cause of Muslims in Chechnya and Palestine "whose lands have been invaded," and believes they are justified in taking "defensive action" and in engaging in "lawful resistance" to oppressors.
Nevin denied that Hussayen conspired to raise money for Hamas or terrorists.
Five men recently convicted in terrorism-related cases in Portland, Ore., Lackawanna, N.Y., and Northern Virginia are expected to testify for the prosecution about watching videos on an Islamway.com Web server that showed mujaheddin fighters in Chechnya killing Russian soldiers. Lindquist told the jury that a video titled "Martyrs of Chechnya" was made and distributed "to instigate and recruit," and that witnesses who went to mujaheddin training camps will testify that they were shown the videos "as part of the recruitment process."
U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge turned down pretrial defense motions seeking the dismissal of the charges on legal grounds, ruling that the government's allegations fall within the definition of prohibited "material support," and that the government alleges that Hussayen's actions did more than "simply inspire others to act." Whether those facts can be proved, Lodge said in an order this month, "is a matter left to the jury."
Both sides in the case have proceeded with an eye toward the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. A federal judge in Los Angeles has found provisions of the 1996 material-support law unconstitutionally vague, including one of the elements in the Hussayen case -- a bar on "expert advice," added in the 2001 USA Patriot Act. An appellate panel has upheld the district court in one ruling, and the Justice Department has filed an appeal.
The case has strained recent cooperative efforts between the United States and Saudi Arabia to pursue terrorist groups. Though the Saudis have cracked down on militants at home in the wake of al Qaeda bombings there last year, the kingdom is quick to defend its citizens when they are suspects abroad -- even, as in this case, when the Saudi government has said the defendant and the Islamic Assembly of North America, a charity with which he was associated, are influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, a radical group opposed to the Saudi regime.
The Saudi Embassy has pressed for Hussayen's release and is paying for his top-flight legal defense team, which includes Joshua Dratel, who represented Wadih Hage, a former aide to Osama bin Laden.
In addition to the three terrorism charges, Hussayen is charged with 11 counts of false statements and visa fraud. The trial is expected to last six weeks.
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Convictions Dropped for Muslim Chaplain at Guantánamo Bay
April 15, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/15/national/15MUSL.html
MIAMI, April 14 (Reuters) - An Army general on Wednesday dismissed the convictions in the case of a Muslim chaplain who was initially suspected of espionage at the Guantánamo Bay prison for terror suspects but was found guilty only on lesser charges of adultery and downloading pornography.
The appellate decision by Gen. James Hill, the Army Southern Command chief who oversees military operations at Guantánamo, wiped the slate clean for Capt. James J. Yee, who ministered for 10 months to foreign terrorism detainees at the United States naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
"This means there will be no official mention of it in his military record," General Hill said.
The decision ended what one of Captain Yee's lawyers, Eugene Fidell, called a "hoax" case. Mr. Fidell said that Captain Yee was "obviously very pleased" at the decision but that the military owed him an apology.
Captain Yee, 36, was found guilty in March of noncriminal charges of committing adultery and storing pornography on a government computer. He was arrested on suspicion of espionage in September and faced six criminal charges that included mishandling classified information at Guantánamo. Court documents accused him of spying, mutiny, sedition and aiding the enemy, and he was held in solitary confinement in a military brig for 76 days.
The military dropped all the criminal charges in March, citing national security concerns that would arise from the release of evidence against him.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller of the Army, who at the time commanded the task force running the Guantánamo prison, then found Captain Yee, who is married, guilty of administrative charges of committing adultery and storing pornography on a government computer, and issued a written reprimand.
Captain Yee appealed the decision.
-------- terrorism
C.I.A. Says Voice on Tape Likely Bin Laden
April 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Bin-Laden-Tape.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA said Thursday that a tape of a man identifying himself as Osama bin Laden probably is an authentic recording of the al-Qaida leader.
A CIA official said it conducted a technical analysis of the voice on the tape, which was broadcast Thursday on Arab satellite networks.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the tape was probably recorded in the past several weeks because of its reference to Israel's killing last month of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin. In the tape, the speaker vows revenge against the United States for the killing.
In the tape, the speaker offered a ``truce'' to European countries that do not attack Muslims. The tape ran more than seven minutes.
The message said ``the door to a truce is open for three months,'' but that the time frame could be extended. ``The truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries,'' the speaker said without elaborating.
Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain quickly rejected the offer. The CIA official said the tape appeared to be an attempt by bin Laden or his al-Qaida network to drive a wedge between the United States and its allies.
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Tape Said to Be From bin Laden Offers 'Truce' to Europe
April 15, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Egypt-Bin-Laden-Tape.html
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A man identifying himself as Osama bin Laden offered a ``truce'' to European countries that do not attack Muslims, saying it would begin when their soldiers leave Islamic nations, according to a recording broadcast Thursday on Arab satellite networks.
Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain quickly spurned what appeared to be an attempt to drive a wedge between Europe and America.
The tape, which ran in full at more than seven minutes, also vowed revenge against America for the Israeli assassination of Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin and denounced the United States as using the Iraq war for corporate profiteering.
``I announce a truce with the European countries that do not attack Muslim countries,'' the taped message said as the stations showed an old, still picture of al-Qaida leader.
The message said ``the door to a truce is open for three months,'' but the time frame could be extended. ``The truce will begin when the last soldier leaves our countries,'' the speaker said without elaborating.
A CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency conducted a technical analysis of the recording and concluded it is probably authentic. The official said the tape was likely recorded in the past several weeks because of its reference to Israel's killing of Yassin last month.
The tape made clear overtures to Europeans, calling them ``our neighbors north of the Mediterranean,'' and tried to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States.
Several audio and videotapes of al-Qaida's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, have been released in recent months, but Thursday's tape was the first purportedly from bin Laden since September. Then, a videotape showed bin Laden climbing down a craggy mountainside with al-Zawahri.
Ayman Gaballah, editor of Al-Arabiya, said only that the pan-Arab television network received the tape from ``our sources.'' He would not say if the tape was received at its headquarters in the United Arab Emirates or in a bureau elsewhere, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.
``From the voice, it seems it is bin Laden, but we are not experts to confirm it,'' Gaballah said.
Al-Jazeera, a Qatar-based satellite station, also aired the tape in full. Its chief editor wasn't available for comment.
Sen. Joseph Biden, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on NBC's ``Today'' show that bin Laden was ``trying to separate us from the Europeans, and Europeans from the U.S. It's an example of how opportunistic he is.''
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., expressed skepticism about the offer made on the tape.
``You cannot negotiate with terrorists, especially someone like Osama bin Laden,'' Shelby told ``Today.''
In London, the Foreign Office ruled out any deal with al-Qaida.
``Their attacks are against the very idea of co-existence,'' the Foreign Office said. ``The right response is to continue to confront terrorism, not give in to its demands.''
A British opposition spokesman said the purported truce offered was a sign that the al-Qaida network is rattled.
``It is obviously an attempt by al-Qaida or the associates of al-Qaida, to try and drive a wedge between the coalition,'' said Michael Ancram, foreign affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservative Party.
``They are frightened about the effectiveness of the coalition,'' Ancram said in an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio.
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said in Rome that ``it's unthinkable that we may open a negotiation with bin Laden, everybody understands this.''
Germany is a leading contributor to the international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan. It opposed the Iraq war but is now helping train Iraqi police.
A German government spokesman said: ``There can be no negotiations with terrorists and serious criminals like Osama bin Laden.''
The voice on the tape defended al-Qaida's methods.
``They say that we kill for the sake of killing, but reality shows that they lie,'' the speaker said.
Russians, he said, were only killed after attacking Afghanistan in the 1980s and Chechnya, Europeans after invading Iraq and Afghanistan and the Americans in New York after ``supporting the Jews in Palestine and their invasion of the Arabian Peninsula.''
``Stop spilling our blood so we can stop spilling your blood,'' the message added. ``This is a difficult but easy equation.''
This truce, the message said, was to deny ``the warmongers'' further opportunities and because polls have shown that ``most of the European peoples want reconciliation'' with the Islamic world.
Germany rejected that notion.
``The international community must pursue the fight against international terrorism together,'' a government spokesman said on customary condition of anonymity. ``Germany will continue to make its contribution.''
In a reference to terror attacks on the United States and Spain, the voice on the tape said that ``what happened on Sept. 11 and March 11 was your goods delivered back to you.''
``Security is a need for all humans and we could not let you have a monopoly on it for yourselves,'' the voice added. ``People who are aware would not let their politicians jeopardize their security.''
At the start of the recording, the voice called this a ``message to our neighbors north of the Mediterranean, including a reconciliation initiative in response to the recent positive developments that have appeared.''
It did not give any specifics, but the March 11 attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people and increasing violence in Iraq have prompted debate in Europe and Asia about keeping troops there.
Spain's outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's government, which strongly backed the U.S.-led war in Iraq despite popular and political opposition, was ousted in general elections three days after the attacks in Spain.
Incoming Socialist leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq by June 30 unless the United Nations takes control.
However, his incoming government rejected the offer of a truce with al-Qaida. Spain's incoming foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, speaking at his nation's parliament, said: ``What we want is peace, democracy and freedom. We don't have to listen to or answer'' the tape.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Clean Power Focus of North American Energy Summit
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, (ENS)
April 15, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-15-09.asp#anchor1
A two year project to explore clean energy and energy efficiency opportunities in the American West is the first result of the three day North American Energy Summit that opened here Wednesday.
Hosted by the Western Governors' Association (WGA), participants represent national, state, provincial and tribal governments; industry; academia; and environmental groups, and officials from Canada and Mexico. On Thursday, they will help craft recommendations for action needed to ensure a secure, affordable and environmentally responsible energy system.
A letter to participants from Governors Bill Richardson of New Mexico, WGA Chairman, and Arnold Schwarzenneger of California, WGA's co-lead for energy issues, outlines the two year clean energy project. The two governors call for development of at least 30,000 megawatts of clean energy in the West by 2015 and an increase in the efficiency of energy use by 20 percent by 2020.
"The West is blessed with vast energy resources," the governors wrote, mentioning sources that have been developed, such as oil and gas, coal, and hydro, and other possibilities "relatively untapped, and hugely promising" - solar, wind, zero-emission coal, biomass, and energy conservation.
"We are committed to an approach that will help secure a diversified energy supply, energy efficiency, and best practices in energy development," the two governors wrote.
Richardson and Schwarzenneger suggest the formation of a clean energy working group of diverse stakeholders to create a set of western clean energy policy proposals for presentation to the Western Governors Association by June 2006.
Today Deputy Energy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow gives the conference's keynote address. Energy Department Under Secretary Robert Card will moderate a panel on natural gas prices, and Guy Caruso administrator of the Energy Information Administration will moderate a panel on high prices and disruptions in delivery of all petroleum products.
David Conover, director of the Energy Department's Climate Change Technology Program will run a panel called "Hedging Against Climate Change," and David Garman, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy will conduct a panel on what it takes to achieve a hydrogen economy.
Other Energy Department officials will handle panels on electricity distribution and a reliable grid, coal power, and the role of nuclear energy.
----
Renewable Energy Promotes Job Growth Better Than Fossil Fuels
Apr 15, 2004
Space Daily
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-04y.html
"Renewable energy is not only good for our economic security and the environment, it creates new jobs," Kammen said. "At a time when rising gas prices have raised our annual gas bill to $240 billion, investing in new clean energy technologies would both reduce our trade deficit and reestablish the U. S. as a leader in energy technology, the largest global industry today."
Berkeley - Investing in renewable energy such as solar, wind and the use of municipal and agricultural waste for fuel would produce more American jobs than a comparable investment in the fossil fuel energy sources in place today, according to a report issued today (Tuesday, April 13) by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.
"Across a broad range of scenarios, the renewable energy sector generates more jobs per average megawatt of power installed, and per unit of energy produced, than the fossil fuel-based energy sector," the report concludes. "All states of the Union stand to gain in terms of net employment from the implementation of a portfolio of clean energy policies at the federal level."
Daniel Kammen, a professor in UC Berkeley's Energy & Resources Group and Goldman School of Public Policy, and head of UC Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL), directed the team that reviewed 13 previous reports that looked at the economic and employment impacts of the clean energy industry in the United States and Europe. Though the independent studies used a range of different methods that made comparison difficult, their uniform conclusions held up under scrutiny, he said.
"Renewable energy is not only good for our economic security and the environment, it creates new jobs," Kammen said. "At a time when rising gas prices have raised our annual gas bill to $240 billion, investing in new clean energy technologies would both reduce our trade deficit and reestablish the U. S. as a leader in energy technology, the largest global industry today."
Kammen released the report at a forum in Seattle on the New Apollo Energy Project, an initiative toreplace the energy bill now languishing in Congress with a new bill emphasizing energy independence and weaning the country from a reliance on imported fossil fuels by 2010. The project is spearheaded by U.S. Representative Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), sponsor of the day-long forum at Seattle's Jackson Federal Building.
The UC Berkeley report found that a comprehensive, coordinated energy policy works best, emphasizing not only renewable energy sources but also energy efficiency and sustainable transportation. These, it said, "yield far greater employment benefits than supporting one or two of these sectors separately."
"While certain sectors of the economy may be net losers, policy interventions can help minimize the impact of a transition from the current fossil fuel-dominated economy to a more balanced portfolio that includes significant amounts of clean energy," the report continued. "Further, generating local employment through the deployment of local and sustainable energy technologies is an important and underutilized way to enhance national security and international stability."
In their study, Kammen and colleagues Kamal Kapadia and Matthias Fripp of the Energy & Resources Group at UC Berkeley considered all types of job creation, both direct - those created in the manufacturing, delivery, construction and installation, project management and operation and maintenance of the different components of the technology or power plant under consideration - and indirect, that is, those induced through multiplier effects of the industry under consideration. Installing wind turbines, for example, is a direct job, while jobs created to manufacture the steel used to build the wind turbine are indirect jobs.
They then calculated the jobs created by investing in renewable energy sources so that by 2020 they would constitute 20 percent of all energy sources. They assumed various mixes of renewable energy sources, from the current situation, where the bulk of renewable energy is from the burning of waste or biomass, such as corn stalks (85 percent, versus 14 percent for wind energy and a mere 1 percent from solar), to improved scenarios in which wind energy dominates at 55 percent of all renewable power sources, biomass energy makes up 40 percent and solar photovoltaic constitutes 5 percent.
The non-renewable alternative, in which fossil fuels comprise the 20 percent that could have been renewable sources by 2020, were assumed to be either half coal-powered and half natural gas, or 100 percent natural gas.
They found that for all feasible scenarios, the renewables industry consistently generated more jobs per average megaWatt generated in construction, manufacturing and installation, in operations and maintenance and in fuel processing, than the fossil fuel industries.
In the scenario assuming most renewable energy comes from biomass burning, this could amount to as many as 240,000 new jobs created by 2020, versus no more than 75,000 new jobs if the country sticks to fossil fuels. Investment in renewables also generates more jobs per dollar invested than does the fossil fuel energy sector.
Most states would benefit from the move to renewables, the study found. The Midwest, for example, has the best wind power resources in the United States. According to Greenpeace-USA, North Dakota alone has enough to produce 1.2 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity each year, which amounts to 32 percent of the total U.S. electricity consumption in 2002.
Part of the job-creating advantage of renewables over fossil fuels lies in the fact that the employment rate in fossil fuel-related industries has been declining steadily, Kammen said, for reasons that have little to do with environmental regulations. Though a shift from fossil fuels to renewables in the energy sector will create some job losses, these losses can be adequately compensated for through a number of policy actions.
"For too long, innovations in solar, wind, and biomass/waste technologies, green buildings, highly efficient vehicles, and construction practices that minimize waste have languished in the market despite impressive technical advances, cost reductions, and great potential that make these renewable energy technologies competitive with imported oil and gas supplies," Kammen said.
"Investment in new renewable energy sources leads to roughly 10 times more jobs than a comparable investment in the fossil-fuel sector. This difference underscores the economic benefits of moving our economy and society from one of energy 'hunter gatherers' to one of 'energy farmers' and innovators."
-------- environment
San Francisco Recycles, Reuses Majority of Waste
SAN FRANCISCO, California,
April 15, 2004
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-15-09.asp#anchor6
Recycling is part of life in San Francisco, with new statistics showing that the city kept 63 percent of all waste materials from going to the landfill in 2002, up from 52 percent the year before.
Recycling improved in many areas in 2002, with aggressive recycling and reuse of materials at construction and demolition sites accounting for the majority of the increase, the city's Environment Department (SF Environment) said Wednesday.
Residential and commercial programs were up about three percent, according to the figures for calendar year 2002, which SF Environment just filed with the California Integrated Waste Management Board.
San Francisco generated 1,882,490 tons of waste material in 2002. Of this 702,012 tons went to landfill, San Francisco's lowest disposal tonnage since 1995.
SF Environment says 1,180,478 tons were diverted through recycling, composting, reuse, source reduction and other efforts.
A full six percent of the tonnage collected in 2002 came from the demolition of just one complex - the Letterman Hospital in the Presidio, a project that processed 122,000 tons of concrete for recycling and reuse, making use of half the material for construction on-site.
Three of the top four recyclers identified in SF Environment's waste stream analysis were city agencies or facilities - the Recreation and Parks Department, the Department of Public Works, and the de Young Museum.
For instance, rather than disposing of sand that blew onto the Great Highway, the Department of Public Works started using this sand to fill erosion hotspots on Ocean Beach. This added nearly one percentage point of waste diversion.
"San Francisco's commitment to recycling is truly remarkable," said Mayor Gavin Newsom, congratulating businesses, residents, Norcal Waste Systems, and SF Environment.
"Recycling is tied directly to the economy, so the more construction we have going on, the more tonnage we can expect to recycle," observed SF Environment Director Jared Blumenfeld.
"If construction goes down we may see a drop in our recycling numbers next year, but the important thing is to keep our core recycling and composting programs moving in the right direction, as well as capture everything available in the construction realm."
San Francisco's core recycling programs, including the "Fantastic Three" three cart recycling program, are increasingly popular. More San Franciscans are using the composting collection program for food scraps and yard trimmings, with about 60,000 tons collected in 2002 - double that of 2001. This program, the most successful of its kind in the nation, now serves nearly 150,000 residences and over 2,000 businesses.
"Residents and businesses alike are utilizing the improved recycling programs including the color-coded carts," said Mike Sangiacomo, president and CEO of Norcal Waste Systems. "Recycle Central at Pier 96 and our new construction material recycling facility give San Francisco the ability to effectively sort recyclables and grow core programs by three percent over last year."
State law requires cities and counties to file recycling statistics with the California Integrated Waste Management Board. San Francisco has already met and surpassed the state mandated 50 percent recycling, and is focused on attaining the 75 percent goal the Board of Supervisors adopted in 2002.
Mayor Newsome, who sat on the Board of Supervisors for that vote, expressed support for "mandatory recycling" to achieve the 75 percent recycling target by 2010. The mayor would "hold manufacturers accountable for the environmental impacts of their products and packaging," he said.
-------- health
Rat-Poison Makers Stall Safety Rules
EPA Had Drafted Regulations To Protect Children, Animals
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 15, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13055-2004Apr14?language=printer
Over the past six years, the pesticide industry has fought off or stalled two regulatory initiatives designed to protect children and wildlife from becoming unintended victims of rat poisons, and public health and environmental groups charge that the industry had unusual access to block federal action.
Proposed child safety regulations were abandoned after more than five years of study, and an assessment of the impact of rat poisons on wildlife has been bogged down for about three years. Along the way, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the industry a rare opportunity to revise regulatory language for 15 months after it was in near-final form.
In the interim, the critics say, the toll has grown. Poison-control centers reported last year that more than 15,000 children younger than 6 accidentally ingested rat poison, up from fewer than 11,000 a decade ago. Wildlife organizations, meanwhile, charge that dozens of endangered animals die every year after ingesting rat poison spread to protect crops.
Officials from industry groups and the EPA, which first proposed new child safety regulations in 1998, reject the accusation of undue influence, saying they reached a consensus that the child safety proposals would do more harm than good by making the rat poisons less effective against a creature responsible for spreading serious disease. Instead, the agency decided to require stronger labeling and precautionary statements.
Industry spokesmen also say they pointed out mistaken scientific assumptions that underpinned EPA's ecological assessment.
"If you hire a pest-control operator who's certified, licensed, trained and skilled in the use of rodent-control products, they pose virtually no risk to children or non-target species, or we wouldn't use them," said Bob Rosenberg, government affairs director for the National Pest Management Association. "The benefits of using rat-control products are enormous."
But EPA documents obtained by an environmental group indicate that the agency consulted heavily with the industry before seeking comment from opponents and that manufacturers got officials to tone down their assessment of the risks associated with rat poison.
The process has raised questions at the EPA. At one point during the preparation of an ecological risk assessment issued by the agency in 2002 to lay the groundwork for deciding how to proceed, one unidentified official wrote, "Concerned that for a year the broad stakeholder community has been shut out -- some are asking why."
Aaron Colangelo, a staff attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who obtained the EPA's internal documents for the environmental advocacy group under a Freedom of Information Act request, said the documents highlight how the agency mishandled its effort to protect humans and animals.
"EPA's acquiescence to the demands of the rat poison industry is a disturbing example of the Bush administration EPA allowing industry literally to rewrite the rules," Colangelo said.
Jim Jones, director of the EPA's office of pesticide programs, disagreed. "We've got a very public process that allows everyone to participate in both the science and the agency's regulatory decision making," he said in an interview.
The fight over pesticides began in August 1998, when the EPA, under President Bill Clinton, published a document approving the use of rat poisons as long as the industry undertook certain precautions. The document concluded that rat poisons "pose a significant risk of accidental exposure to humans, particularly children, household pets, and non-target animals" but should remain on the market because they helped contain diseases rats and mice carry.
The agency, however, called for two new safeguards: adding an agent to make the poison taste more bitter and a dye that would make it more obvious if a child had ingested the poison.
In 2001 the agency reversed course, issuing a statement that it "came to a mutual agreement with the rodenticide [makers] to rescind the bittering agent and indicator dye requirements." According to one of the outside experts consulted by the EPA, Rose Ann G. Soloway, the associate director of the American Association of Poison Control Centers, the federal advisory panel she served on concluded that the proposed requirements were impractical, because they would make the poison less attractive to rats and damage household property.
Supporters of the two measures, however, point out that one company, Greensboro, N.C.-based Syngenta Crop Protection Inc., adds the bittering agent Bitrex to its Talon-G poison and says it has "the highest acceptance rate of any available rodenticide among both rats and mice."
"Some companies believe adding a bittering agents to their products may affect efficacy, but we have not found that to be the case," said John Hott, senior regulatory product manager at Syngenta. The bitter additive is used in rat poisons American companies sell in Australia because of that country's rules.
Even as the EPA was abandoning the idea of changing how rat poison is formulated, it was moving forward with an examination of the effects of the poison on wildlife. It conducted an ecological risk assessment to lay the groundwork for federal policies on rat poison. Because rat poison is a blood thinner, other animals occasionally bleed to death when they consume the poison directly or eat an animal that has been killed by it.
By September 2001, the agency was finalizing a document outlining the environmental risks inherent in nine rat poisons. It had just one stage of the procedure left: sending a copy of the report to the industry for an "error only" review that was supposed to take 30 days, giving manufacturers a chance to weigh in before the public did. (The agency is now collecting comments before issuing a final rule.)
Over the next 15 months, according to documents obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the agency did more than make technical corrections. At the behest of the industry, the EPA made broad changes to play down the dangers posed by rat poison, including rewriting a section describing the fatal poisoning of seven deer.
While refusing to meet with consumer and environmental groups, the agency held five closed-door meetings with members of the Rodenticide Registrants Task Force, whose members include Syngenta Crop Protection, Bell Laboratories Inc. and LiphaTech Inc.
EPA deleted language the industry objected to: At one point a staffer wrote in an e-mail that there would be "no references to mitigation and no words/phrases etc. that could evoke emotion on the part of" the industry task force. The document initially said that seven deer in New York state "have been poisoned by anticoagulants. . . . The incidents depict how toxic rodenticide baits can be even to large animals"; at the industry's suggestion this was amended to "Seven deer in New York state tested positive for anticoagulants," with the second phrase dropped altogether.
Jones, at the EPA, said the industry made a compelling case that the number of accidental poisonings was small considering the large amounts of the poisons in use.
"They had raised some very legitimate scientific issues that convinced us we had to go back and do more work on our risk assessment," Jones said.
Lynn L. Bergeson, a lawyer for the industry task force, said, "Some of the information EPA was relying on was outdated, incorrect, or the agency was simply mistaken."
Although the EPA continues to work on its risks and benefits assessment, health and wildlife advocates are angry that after five years of work, nothing has changed.
Michael Shannon, a toxicologist at the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Regional Center for Poison Control and Prevention, said he regularly treats children who ingest rat poison.
"It's just a disaster waiting to happen," Shannon said. "There's nothing to keep a child from getting their hands on it."
And Gerald W. Winegrad, vice president of policy at the American Bird Conservancy, noted that more than 250 animals have died after ingesting rat poison. They include endangered San Joaquin Valley kit foxes of California, golden eagles, great horned owls, mountain lions and bobcats.
"It's a travesty," he said.
-------
Vegetable Fiber Tied to Lower Prostate Cancer Risk
Story by Amy Norton
REUTERS USA:
April 15, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24712/newsDate/15-Apr-2004/story.htm
NEW YORK - Men who eat their veggies may be less likely than others to develop prostate cancer, a new study suggests.
Among more than 1,700 men with and without prostate cancer, those who ate the most fiber - particularly from vegetable sources - had a lower risk of developing the disease, Italian researchers found.
The benefit was "moderate," they report in the International Journal of Cancer, but the findings suggest that at least some forms of fiber offer prostate cancer protection.
A number of studies have suggested that eating plenty of fruits and vegetables may help ward off prostate cancer, while "Western"-style diets heavy in animal fat and dairy products may increase a man's risk of the disease. But not all studies have reached these conclusions, and the importance of diet in prostate cancer risk is still unclear.
There is evidence that fiber-rich foods may lower the risk of heart disease, diabetes and possibly certain cancers. However, studies looking at fiber and prostate cancer have generally yielded "null" findings, said Dr. Claudio Pelucchi, a researcher at the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan and lead author of the new study.
The difference in his team's study, Pelucchi told Reuters Health, is that it broke down men's fiber intake according to the type and source of fiber.
Fiber comes in two main forms, soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber partially dissolves in water, and its food sources include vegetables, fruit, oatmeal and legumes. Insoluble fiber, which passes through the digestive system largely intact, is found in foods like whole grains, seeds and the skin on fruit.
For the study, Pelucchi and his colleagues surveyed 1,745 men between the ages of 46 and 74 about their diet and lifestyle habits. All of the men were surveyed while being treated in Milan-area hospitals between 1991 and 2002; nearly 1,300 had prostate cancer, while the rest were treated for conditions unrelated to cancer. Those with prostate cancer were asked about their eating habits during the two years before being diagnosed.
Pelucchi's team found that men with the highest overall fiber intake had a slightly lower risk of prostate cancer than men with the lowest intake.
When the researchers looked at specific types of fiber, vegetable fiber emerged as most protective. Men who got the most fiber from vegetables were 18 percent less likely than those who ate the least to develop prostate cancer.
Fiber from fruit or grain products, specifically, was not related to a lower prostate cancer risk, but soluble fiber did appear to protect against the disease.
Pelucchi pointed out that because vegetables and fruit were the chief sources of soluble fiber, it's possible that the fiber, per se, did not bestow the benefit. Other nutrients found in produce - or the generally healthy diet and lifestyle of fiber enthusiasts - could be at work, he said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Curbs on freedom for Israeli nuclear arms spy
PETER ENAV, Jerusalem
April 15 2004
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/14042.html
ISRAELI nuclear arms whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu will be barred from leaving the country and face a series of other restrictions when he is released from prison next week, an Israeli official said yesterday.
Vanunu is due to be freed from a prison in southern Israel on April 21 after serving an 18-year sentence for treason and espionage.
Israel's Mossad spy agency captured him in Europe in 1986 after he disclosed details and photos of Israel's top-secret nuclear plant and the country's reputed nuclear weapons arsenal to the Sunday Times newspaper.
The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said authorities had decided to impose a package of restrictions recommended by the Shin Bet security service. Israeli security officials have said Vanunu may still have sensitive information about Israel's nuclear program and fear he might disclose it upon release.
The restrictions will bar Vanunu from leaving Israel, from approaching border terminals and foreign embassies, and communicating with foreigners, including foreign residents of Israel.
The restrictions on foreign contact apply to face-to-face meetings, telephone conversations and standard or electronic mail, the official said.
Vanunu would also be barred from discussing his work at Israel's nuclear plant or the circumstances surrounding his capture.
Vanunu will be allowed to live anywhere he chooses inside Israel, the official said, but would require police permission to travel in the country.
The package of restrictions will be re-evaluated after six months, and might be eased if Vanunu fulfills his obligations.
The official said Interior Minister Avraham Poraz and the head of the army's home command both approved the package of restrictions, based on emergency regulations dating back to 1945.
A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry declined to comment on the issue. The security official said Vanunu had been asked to sign a statement that he would abide by the restrictions, but so far has failed to do so. He was unable to say if a refusal to sign would delay Vanunu's release.
Vanunu, who was a technician at the nuclear plant in the desert town of Dimona, served more than a decade in solitary confinement after being convicted in an Israeli court.
Vanunu, who has converted to Christianity, has said he wanted to leave Israel after his release and move to the United States to live with a Minnesota family which adopted him in the mistaken belief he would be granted American citizenship.
Based partly on photographs that Vanunu provided the British newspaper, it is widely believed Israel has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA recently estimated Israel has 400 nuclear weapons.
Yesterday, human rights and anti-nuclear campaigners, who have fought for the release of Vanunu, criticised the restrictions and said they would push for their removal.
A spokesman for Amnesty international said: "Mordechai Vanunu must be released as planned and there must be no conditions attached to his release. We have asked the UK government to maintain strong pressure on the Israeli authorities to ensure that Mr Vanunu's basic rights are respected."
A spokesman for CND said: "This is a courageous man who has already suffered for the simple act of telling the truth. We would urge that these restrictions are lifted."
----
Three Japanese Hostages in Iraq Freed
By JIM KRANE
Associated Press Writer
Apr 15, 2004
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_KIDNAPPINGS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Three Japanese hostages who had been threatened with death unless Tokyo withdrew its troops from Iraq were released Thursday, a day after militants executed an Italian captive.
The two aid workers and one journalist were released to a group of Islamic clerics that helped end the crisis after about a week in captivity, according to video from Arab broadcaster Al-Jazeera. A Japanese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman in Tokyo said the three were unharmed.
Al-Jazeera showed aid worker Nahoko Takato weeping into her hands. Noriaki Imai, another aid worker, shook hands with one of the organization's members, while photojournalist Soichiro Koriyama was nearby in the Baghdad office. In Tokyo, the freed hostages' families danced, hugged and cried with joy. Imai's father, Takashi, sunk to his knees, leaving the boy's brother to speak to an interviewer: "We just want to thank everyone who made this possible," said Yosuku Imai.
The weeklong crisis tested Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's commitment to the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. He had refused the captors' demands to withdraw a contingent of troops helping with reconstruction.
Two other Japanese civilians - a freelance journalists and a civic group activist - have been reported seized, according to an e-mail received from "Iraqi sources" by the Japan Visual Journalist Association. Japan said Wednesday it was investigating the report.
The joy over the release of the Japanese also was tempered by shock in Italy after captors killed Italian security guard Fabrizio Quattrocchi. He was the first known killing among nearly two dozen foreigners being held in Iraq.
The militants who killed Quattrocchi demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and threatened to kill three Italians, Al-Jazeera reported.
"The barbarian killing ... strengthens Italy's determination to bar hatred's way and work for the real fulfillment of peaceful coexistence in Iraq," Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said in a statement.
The death could further heighten fears among international aid workers, contractors and journalists, some of whom are already restricting their activities or leaving the country. An Associated Press count listed 19 current captives.
American experts, meanwhile, were conducting tests to determine whether four bodies discovered west of Baghdad are the remains of private U.S. contractors missing since an assault on their convoy Friday.
One of the missing - 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 Fallujah. The deadline passed Sunday with no word on his fate.
Al-Jazeera said it had video of Quattrocchi's killing but did not broadcast it because it was too graphic.
The Italian ambassador to Qatar, where the network is based, watched the video and confirmed the man killed was Quattrocchi, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.
Frattini recounted the contents of the tape, apparently described to him by the ambassador.
"This boy, as the assassins were pointing the gun at him, tried to take off his hood and shouted: 'Now I'll show you how an Italian dies,'" Frattini said, adding, "He died as a hero."
Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi has ruled out any troop withdrawal. "They have cut short a life. They have not damaged our values and our commitment to peace," he said.
The captors demanded the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, an apology from Berlusconi for an insult to Islam and Muslims and the release of religious clerics held in Iraq.
Three of the Italian captives were working for a U.S.-based company while a fourth was employed by a Seychelles-based firm, Frattini said.
He stressed that the four Italian hostages were not members of Italian intelligence and that the abductors were "terrorists and killers" who were "out of control" - not members of any organized resistance.
Italy is the third-largest coalition partner in the occupation force. Italy didn't send in combat troops during the war. Its forces are based in the southern city of Nasiriyah, working on reconstruction.
In November, a suicide truck bomb attack in the southern city of Nasiriyah killed 19 Italians - Italy's worst single military loss since World War II.
On Wednesday, a French TV journalist was freed unharmed at a mosque in Baghdad, saying he suffered constant threats to his life during a four-day captivity.
Alexandre Jordanov, who works for Capa Television in Paris, was kidnapped Sunday while videotaping a U.S. military convoy under attack. He was traveling with cameraman Ivan Ceriex, who was released the next day.
Jordanov, 40, said his abductors switched his location eight times, passing him from one armed group to another.
"It was: 'We're going to cut your throat' to 'You're part of the Mossad,'" Jordanov said, referring to the Israeli secret service.
Russia on Thursday sent planes to Iraq to evacuate hundreds of Russian companies' employees in a massive effort that followed the brief kidnapping of eight workers - three Russians and five Ukrainians.
About 800 specialists from Russia and the former Soviet republics are being evacuated.
----
Idaho's nuclear watchdog celebrates 25 years with symposium at BSU
By Jeremy Maxand
The Arbiter
April 15, 2004
http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/15/407e2b0bec877
The Snake River Alliance, 'Idaho's Nuclear Watchdog,' will celebrate its 25th anniversary with a nuclear activism symposium at Boise State University Monday and Tuesday, April 19 and 20.
The symposium's title, "25 Years of Nuclear Activism: Swimming Upstream to Protect Communities Downstream," is a fair description of the Alliance's history.
The Alliance was founded by a handful of people who met on a park bench in Julia Davis Park after they learned that the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory routinely injected hazardous and radioactive waste into the Snake River Aquifer, which now provides drinking water for 270,000 people and maintains one of Idaho's richest agricultural regions.
Through a quarter-century of responsible research, a broad public education and outreach program, and steadfast community advocacy, the Alliance has challenged the U.S. nuclear weapons program here in Idaho and on the national stage. It has a number of impressive victories to its credit. During the height of the Cold War, it helped the people of Idaho stop the construction of three nuclear weapons production facilities at INEEL. It helped block construction of a plutonium incinerator there. Working with allies across the country, the Alliance highlighted secret shipments of irradiated reactor fuel coming to INEEL and helped limit those shipments. It was one of the earliest and remains one of the strongest advocates for cleaning up the substantial nuclear pollution at INEEL that continues to threaten the Snake River Aquifer. Its most significant recent victory was to join with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, and Yakama Nation in Washington State to stop the federal government's plan to abandon high-level waste above crucial water supplies, including the Snake River Aquifer. Six states - Idaho, Washington, Oregon, South Carolina, New York, and New Mexico - support the environmental groups' and Indian nations' position in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Next week's symposium includes a panel discussion involving activists from across the country discussing how to make social change happen. There will also be an overview of Idaho's role in nuclear weapons production and the Alliance's efforts to challenge nuclear weapons programs at INEEL, and a panel of Idahoans will relate their own experiences dealing with INEEL and their concerns about its effects - positive and negative - on their future. The head of a nation-wide coalition of groups that work on nuclear weapons issues will describe the weapons plants across the country and communities' efforts to protect themselves from their pollution. An activist from the Lawrence-Livermore National Lab in California will describe all the new nuclear weapons programs the US government is undertaking, and in light of INEEL's role in nuclear energy research and development, a panel of experts and activists will discuss the future of energy. Dr. Arjun Makhijani, who first came to this country as a student and whose work now includes trying to democratize science and use it to evaluate government policy, will speak on democracy. Monday evening there will be a special showing of Dr. Strangelove.
All programs with the exception of the Monday evening film are free. They have been designed to give BSU students and others a clear-eyed view of the nuclear picture in Idaho, future challenges this country faces, and ways activists can engage their government to make meaningful policy changes.
-Jeremy Maxand is the executive director of the Snake River Alliance
EVENT HIGHLIGHTS
APRIL 19
9:05 a.m. - Beatrice Brailsford, "Idaho's Nuclear History"
10 a.m. - Susan Gordon, "The DOE Complex: Living in the Shadows of Death"
11:15 a.m. - Marylia Kelley, "Arms Race Redux: New Nuclear Weapons vs. Non-proliferation"
1:30 p.m. - Arjun Makhijani and Bill Chisholm, forum on "The Future of Energy"
APRIL 20
9:05 a.m. - Chuck Geska, John Peavey and Andy Guerra, forum on "Living Downstream"
11 a.m. - Arjun Makhijani on "Democracy"
1:30 p.m. - Liz Paul, Geoff Fettus, Susan Gordon, Bob Schaeffer and Beatrice Brailsford, forum on "Tools of the Movement: How You Make a Difference"
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PLEASE POST TO YOUR LISTS; LINK US TO YOUR WEBSITE: http://www.1may04.org/
MAY DAY 2004: We Found The WMD; No More Nuclear Excuses for War! Global Disarmament Starts at Home -- It's Time to Disarm America!!
On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush declared victory from the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Standing under a Mission Accomplished banner, he proclaimed that, "major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." With war hanging in the balance, Bush had told the American public that we cannot wait for the final proof the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. He didnt tell us that the mushroom cloud was more likely to emanate from the U.S. than from Iraq.
On May 1, 2004 we will demand: No More Nuclear Excuses for War! Despite U.S. claims in the run up to the war, UN and U.S. weapons inspectors have found no evidence that Iraq possessed either nuclear weapons or an active nuclear weapons program. But vigilant U.S. citizens have discovered that the U.S. is modernizing its vast nuclear arsenal in support of an aggressive and unilateral pre-emptive war doctrine, in which the U.S. proclaims that its will act against emerging threats before they are fully formed.
JOIN US ON THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF GEORGE W. BUSH'S DECLARATION OF "VICTORY" IN IRAQ
º April 30th Town Hall Meeting: Nuclear Abolition, Proliferation and War - What You Need to Know and What You Can Do. All Souls Church - 80th Street & Lexington Ave., 4:30 - 10:00pm. Supper will be provided.
Speakers include: Dr. Helen Caldicott, Damu Smith from Black Voices for Peace, Cheong Wooksik from the Civil Network for a Peaceful Korea, Motarilavoa Hilda Lini from the Pacific Concerns Resource Center in Fiji, and Zia Mian, researcher, writer and physicist, Princeton University.
º May Day Disarmament Rally and Concert: Saturday, May 1st, 1:00 - 4:00 pm in Bryant Park (behind the NY Public Library) at 5th Ave and 42nd Street.
Speakers include: Leslie Cagan from United for Peace and Justice, Dr. Ronald McCoy, President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Bruce Gagnon from the Global Network Against Nuclear Power & Weapons in Space, Ibrahim Ramey from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Bill Harturg from the World Policy Insitute, Kate Hudson, Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Britain, Heesuk Kim from Young Koreans United, and a Japanese A-bomb survivor. Entertainment will include musical performances by BINARI, a Korean American Traditional Cultural Activist Troup and Tatsumaki, a rock band from Japan.
Sponsors include: Abolition 2000, United for Peace and Justice, and many others.
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FOR MORE INFO: http://www.1may04.org/ (includes complete list of sponsors and endorsers, and downloadable fliers)
To join the Listserve for the UfPJ Nuclear Disarmament / Redefining Security Working Group, send a blank email to: mailto:ufpj-disarm-subscribe@yahoogroups.comufpj-disarm-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Join Us as We Take to the Streets- Nonviolently- United in our Opposition to the Growing Threat of Nuclear War! Now is the time, as governments meet to discuss the Non-Proliferation Treaty, for everyone to do whatever they can to help build the largest turn-out possible for these events. Please send out e-mail alerts, mailings, distribute fliers, and make announcements at events and meetings and in your newsletters. Now is the time to be out on the streets talking to people, telling them about the need for nuclear disarmament, and how we will not idly stand by while the U.S. hypocritically continues to threaten the world with nuclear weapons! Let's rid the world of all nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and work to create genuine security for future generations. See below to TAKE ACTION!
GET INVOLVED! Volunteer!! Send $$!!! Help us make April 30 and May 1 HUGE successes! Please fill in this e-coupon and return it to Yael Petretti at office@pepeace.org
[ ] Please list my organization as a sponsor ($100 donation requested)
[ ] Please list my organization as an endorser ($25 requested, if possible or sign up to volunteer)
Make checks payable to Abolition 2000. Mail to: 215 Lexington Ave. #1001, New York, NY 10016.
Name of organization and website (if any):
Name and e-mail address of contact person:
Mailing address:
Phone(s):
[ ] We will put an announcement about April 30 and May 1 in our newsletter. (Let us know if you need camera ready graphics and text, or make your own from our website.)
[ ] We will phone bank and send e-mail alerts to our members about April 30 and May 1.
[ ] I/We will volunteer to distribute fliers around town. (Let us know if you need copies or make your own from our website: www.1may04.org)
[ ] I/We will distribute leaflets to people on the buses leaving NY early on April 25 for the big womens rights rally in DC and/or at the rally itself.
[ ] I/We can provide [# of] volunteers to help out with food service and cleanup at the April 30 Town Meeting.
[ ] I/We can provide [# of ] volunteers to help out with set up, monitoring, and cleanup at the May 1 rally.
[ ] I/we can volunteer in general. Let us know what you need.
THANK YOU!
BACKGROUND
U.S. national security policies are undermining global nuclear nonproliferation efforts. April 26th to May 7th, 2004, the governments of the world will gather at the United Nations in New York to discuss the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - the cornerstone of the global nuclear disarmament regime - in which the United States and four other nuclear weapons states promised to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. In return, 183 other countries have promised not to acquire nuclear weapons. The US is hypocritically manipulating this treaty as an excuse to bomb or threaten other countries, starting with Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, accusing them of seeking nuclear arms, while ignoring its own disarmament pledge and adding new, more usable nuclear weapons to its massive arsenal.
Nuclear weapons are the only true weapons of mass destruction. A single modern warhead can destroy a city in an instant, killing hundreds of thousands or even millions of people. Today, there are nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons in the world enough to destroy human civilization in a day. The U.S. and Russia together have over 28,000 of these weapons, with the remainder held by China, France, Britain, Israel, India, and Pakistan. The U.S. and Russia have thousands of nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert. Misjudgment, error or sabotage could trigger a catastrophic missile exchange at a moments notice.
The Bush Administrations annual nuclear weapons budget at over $6 billion, not including delivery systems - exceeds the spending level of peak Cold War years by 50%, even when adjusted for inflation. The U.S. nuclear arsenal is being upgraded and expanded, keeping government scientists and engineers busy designing new kinds of warheads and delivery systems. The Livermore and Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratories are working on competing designs for a high-yield nuclear bunker buster. They also are being funded to explore the development of mini-nukes and other advanced weapons concepts, which are being promoted as more usable nuclear weapons. Funding has been allocated to enhance readiness to resume full-scale underground testing at the Nevada Test Site, and to construct a new plutonium pit factory, capable of producing at least 450 pits (hydrogen bomb cores) per year. This would equal the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, after the U.S. and Russia! Prototyping and production of plutonium pits is already underway at the Livermore, CA and Los Alamos, NM labs.
Global Disarmament Starts at Home it is Time to Disarm America!! Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently said: We must abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue weapons of mass destruction yet morally acceptable for others to rely on them for security - and indeed to continue to refine their capacities and postulate plans for their use.
Emma McGregor-Mento
Outreach and Development Coordinator
Abolition 2000
215 Lexington Avenue, Suite 1001
New York, NY 10016
Ph: 212-726-9161 x17
Fax: 212-726-9160
http://www.gracelinks.org
http://www.abolition2000.org
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Nepal Police Detain 1,300 Protesters
By CHIRANJIBI PAUDYAL
Associated Press Writer
Apr 15, 2004
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/N/NEPAL_PROTEST_ARRESTS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- Police detained more than 1,300 pro-democracy protesters, including a former Nepalese prime minister, as they shouted slogans against the king Thursday in a central Katmandu park and on nearby streets.
Supporters of several political parties waved their party flags and chanted, "Restore democracy! Down with the king!" in Ratna Park, as armed police commandeered trucks and used them to haul away protesters.
At least half a dozen protesters and policemen were injured in the protests as police used nightsticks to control the protesters, a police officer said on condition of anonymity.
The officer said 1,300 people were detained. Former Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala was among those arrested.
Human rights and civic groups, students and political parties have been staging protests since 2002 against King Gyanendra, who dismissed Parliament and the elected government and appointed a monarchist Cabinet. The protests have increased in frequency during the past two weeks. Most demonstrators are released within a few hours, though some have been held under the Public Security Act, which allows them to remain in custody for up to three months.
Former Cabinet minister Ram Sharan Mahat addressed the gathering in the park, saying, "The movement will defeat the autocratic and regressive regime and the people will be the winners ultimately."
He and other leaders were surrounded by supporters and were able to escape arrest by going into nearby houses or blending into the crowd.
Without explanation, police detained 72 teachers administering examinations to students at a school near the park. They also detained 20 human rights activists staging a sit-in elsewhere in the city.
"We oppose the regressive king's takeover and support the movement of the political parties' to restore democracy," said Krishna Pahadi, chairman of the Human Rights and Peace Society, just before police arrested him.
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U.S. Vets, Families March For End To War In Iraq
04/15/2004
Associated Press
http://www.ktre.com/Global/story.asp?S=1789309
Washington - Military families and veterans opposed to the war in Iraq are calling on President Bush to re-think the U.S. presence there. They marched to the White House today and laid out carnations in honor of the more than 670 American troops killed since the war began last year. They also scattered rose petals, representing Iraqi lives lost during the conflict.
Sue Niederer's 24-year-old son, Seth, died two months ago while defusing a bomb outside Iraq. She says the U.S. will never win the war and, in her words, "it's time to get out."
And one Iraqi-American marcher says it's insulting to the people of Iraq to say the country will spiral out of control if the U.S. military presence pulls out too soon.
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AN ANGRY MAN TALKS ABOUT NUCLEAR POWER
April 15, 2004
Speech by Ed Asner
Washington, DC
http://nirs.org/EdAsnerspeech41504.htm
On behalf of the Fund for a Nuclear-Free World--a campaign of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and World Information Service on Energy
I come to you tonight as a tired and angry man. Tired only because I had to take a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to be here with you today, and I have to take another one in a few hours to be back in LA tomorrow. But that's an indication of my commitment to NIRS and to the issue that drives NIRS and its counterpart WISE, and I'm very pleased to be here to kick off the Fund for A Nuclear-Free World-a campaign to bring NIRS and WISE and the issue of nuclear power to the national spotlight and to obtain the resources to make that possible.
I'm angry that we have to do that at all.
25 years ago tonight, the nation and the world were still reeling from the aftereffects of the meltdown at Three Mile Island. We didn't know-then-that there actually had been a meltdown, we didn't learn that until later. But we did know that more than 140,000 people had fled their homes, and that deadly radiation that was never supposed to see the light of day had been dispersed into the Pennsylvania countryside.
We should have learned then. We should have understood that a technology that can turn a billion-dollar investment into a billion-dollar loss for ratepayers in just a few hours is a bankrupt technology. We should have learned that a technology that forces people to flee their homes, and whose byproducts kill some of them, is certainly not a safe technology.
And if we didn't learn then, we should have learned seven years later when Chernobyl exploded and spewed radiation across the globe, killing untold thousands of people and creating permanent dead zones across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia.
But instead of closing unsafe atomic reactors, and launching new initiatives to take advantage of the then-emerging promises of solar and wind power, and increasing energy efficiency, the government did everything it could to keep the reactors open and to complete the construction of those reactors that had not yet been built.
The one solace was that there were no new reactor orders. And by the year 2000, there was no new reactor construction anywhere in the western world-it appeared that the countries that had invented nuclear power had finally turned their backs on the technology.
But guess what? They're back. And I'm angry about that.
I'm angry that three nuclear conglomerates have applied for new site permits that would pave the way for new atomic reactor construction in rural Mississippi, Illinois and Virginia. And I'm even angrier that the Department of Energy is using millions of our tax dollars to pay the utilities for those applications, while NIRS has to ask people to donate thousands of dollars to pay for lawyers and expert witnesses just to participate in this licensing process. I'm angry that two consortiums of nuclear power corporations earlier this month announced plans to apply for licenses to actually build new reactors-again, using our money from the DOE-and they won't even say where they want to build them.
I'm angry that a European firm called Urenco wants to build a new uranium enrichment plant in rural and poor eastern New Mexico, especially after local grassroots groups, working with NIRS, already kicked this same company out of Louisiana and Tennessee over environmental racism and lying about their ability to dispose of their nuclear waste. And once again, thousands of dollars are needed for NIRS to participate in this supposedly democratic process.
You may not know that back in 1990, when the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission first tried to change its licensing process to more directly benefit the utilities, NIRS was the group that stood in their way. NIRS took the NRC to federal court, and won. But the nuclear industry got to the judges, and when the NRC appealed the case, the decision was reversed-with one of the judges who voted with NIRS the first time actually writing the decision against NIRS the second time! Afraid of NIRS' planned Supreme Court challenge, the nuclear industry convinced Congress to change the licensing process itself, and they did.
And this is what we're left with. Actually, it's even worse, because the NRC has changed its rules yet again to benefit the utilities. And once again NIRS, this time with its friends at Public Citizen, is back in federal court challenging the new rules.
You wouldn't think that multi-billion dollar nuclear conglomerates would be so afraid of a small group like NIRS and all the grassroots citizens groups NIRS works with. But they are. And that's one reason I'm so proud to be here tonight with these dedicated people.
I'm proud, but I'm angry too....
I'm angry that instead of building a sustainable energy future, with clean, affordable energy for all, the government is encouraging the relicensing of dangerous, aging nuclear reactors. Think of that hole in the Davis-Besse reactor pressure vessel and the thin steel lining that was all that was left to hold back nuclear disaster. It was NIRS that found the document that showed that even under normal operating pressure, that lining could have ruptured. Friends, we came this close to losing Ohio.
And I'm angry that the government and the nuclear industry have no idea of what to do with their radioactive waste, so they want to ship it all across the country-through 100 or more cities and across our central farmland, and then dump it on our Native American friends at Yucca Mountain, Nevada and Skull Valley, Utah. Friends, I have a better idea: let's first quit making the waste! And then let's put scientists to work solving the existing waste problem, not politicians.
And if you're not angry yet, think about this: Vice-President Cheney's Energy Task Force, which met numerous times with nuclear industry officials, and never once with NIRS or any other anti-nuclear group. Why? Because their plan was to figure out a way to revive the nuclear industry and what they came up with-and being fought for in the Congress by Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici-is taxpayer funding of new nuclear reactors! They think: if the market won't pay for new reactors, they'll take the money from you and me.
One idea the task force and Domenici had is hydrogen-powered vehicles. Sounds like a good idea, right? Non-polluting hydrogen instead of gasoline. But with this administration, you have to know there is a catch, and here it is: the Bush administration wants to produce hydrogen from new nuclear reactors. And if you look at their plans, more than 1/2 the money for their supposed hydrogen program goes not for hydrogen research, but construction of a new nuclear reactor in Idaho. But not if NIRS has anything to say about it, and they have been speaking loudly and often, and will continue to do so.
And don't get me started on the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Remember that company I told you about earlier, that wants to build the uranium enrichment plant in New Mexico? Urenco. It's Urenco technology that is powering the nuclear programs of Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea, and was in Libya as well. Why? Because Urenco can't seem to keep its biggest secrets secret. And that leads to instability and war. Urenco blueprints were found in Iraq 12 years ago, and we know what happened there. And the Bush administration wants to reward this company by letting it build yet another uranium enrichment plant in the U.S.? Not if NIRS has anything to say about it, and NIRS and Public Citizen just last week filed their legal challenges to Urenco's application.
The commercial nuclear industry likes to say there is no connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. Then let them explain this: why is the government paying the Tennessee Valley Authority to have its Watts Bar reactor produce tritium to be put directly into nuclear warheads?
And why is the government not treating plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons as the dangerous radioactive waste it is? Instead, it wants to use it as fuel for commercial nuclear reactors across the southeast US and in Russia, a step that would double the consequences of a nuclear accident. It's a program NIRS has been organizing and educating and mobilizing people about for years.
Here's another thing that gets me angry: The deregulation of radioactive waste. That's right, the deregulation of nuclear waste. The government and nuclear industry want to deregulate some of their so-called "low-level" nuclear waste, and just pretend that it's not radioactive, and let it go to municipal landfills and be recycled into bedframes and bicycles and belt buckles-all for the economic benefit of the nuclear power industry. There is one group that has stood in the way of this plan for 18 years now. NIRS. When this plan was first announced back in 1986, it was NIRS that organized a national campaign against it, against the policy called "below regulatory concern" and organized grassroots citizens and local and state officials to pass 15 state laws barring the practice, and hundreds of resolutions from city and county governments and, in 1992, got a federal law overturning the policy. But now, under the Bush administration, the government is trying once again to implement this policy, and again, NIRS is the lead group organizing and educating and mobilizing to defeat it. And, oh yeah, they're in federal court now on this one too-they filed their case just two weeks ago.
As you can tell, there is a lot on NIRS' plate right now-a lot of challenges for a small group, a lot of legal work and organizing and teaching and mobilizing and working with grassroots groups across the US, and internationally too. It's not enough that NIRS is working on all these issues I've raised tonight-they're also working to stop new reactors in Ukraine and Bulgaria and Asia and with their colleagues at WISE working non-stop to create the largest, most active international anti-nuclear network possible. I know there are those of you from other groups here tonight who work with NIRS and help them, as they help you, and I'm not trying to say NIRS is shouldering the burdens of the world alone. Of course not.
But I am saying that the need for NIRS and WISE are greater than ever, and the need for resources to fight the nuclear industry and this government are greater than ever. And that's why we've created the Fund for A Nuclear-Free World, and I'm proud to be the honorary chairman of this Fund and to speak at this kick-off event for the Fund. This Fund has the goal of raising $1.5 million dollars in the next year for NIRS. That sounds like a lot of money, until you realize that the nuclear power industry will spend that much by the end of this month promoting its agenda.
I'm angry about that too...
So I hope you'll join me in helping to publicize this campaign, in helping to publicize the issues NIRS is working on, in contributing yourself to this campaign, and in asking your friends and colleagues to help too. I know this is an election year, and a lot of people are giving to the candidates of their choice, and that's important, but this is a crucial year for the future of nuclear power too. Court cases and interventions don't wait for election cycles, NIRS' participation is required now. The nuclear power industry isn't going to wait to see who wins Congress next time, they're moving ahead now. And we, as concerned citizens of this planet, and NIRS, have to be here to stop them and to lead the way to a clean, secure, sustainable energy future.
Again, I'm proud to be the honorary chairman of this campaign, and proud to be a member of NIRS Core Group along with distinguished people from all across the country, along with many of you here tonight. I hope you're proud too, and I hope you'll all do everything you can to help with this campaign. Let's all get to work, let's get NIRS and WISE the resources they need. Let's work for a nuclear-free world.
Thank you. Enjoy your dinner, and we'll be talking more a little bit later.
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