Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
USEC Inc. Reports Results for First Quarter 2004
Hil takes brass on and G.I.s win
India accepts Pakistan's dates for talks on nuclear confidence building
Two Iranian nuclear experts arrested for spying: report
Chirac urges Iran to fully cooperate with UN nuclear watchdog
Iran Denies Nuclear Espionage Arrests
Nuclear - Armed Iran Would Be 'Intolerable' - Bush
Israel continues nuclear weapons production
Israel Frees Nuclear Whistleblower
Israeli Who Revealed Nuclear Secrets Is Freed
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Defiant as He Leaves Jail
'N Korea's Kim insists on US compensation before nuclear freeze'
China warns North Korean dictator
North Korea's enigmatic leader makes 'secret visit'
China: N. Korea Agrees to Push Nuke Talks
Missile Defense System on Schedule
Japan mum on reported US request
The Real Nuclear Danger
Governor explains WIPP stance
Governor pledges 'better coverage' of southeast N.M.
Hear good news
Cancer on agenda Thursday
Fuel Rod Pieces Missing at Vt. Nuke Plant
Hanford medical contractor files to block contract takover
President Owes America Answers on Iraq
War May Require More Money Soon
House Argues Over Replacement Plans
Bush Draws Terrorism Law Into Campaign
MILITARY
Eleven African countries sign protocol
Britain to buy 64 Tomahawk missiles in US
US, Asians to take part in military exercise
Blair Steady in Support 'I'm There to the Very End,'
Blair to Submit EU Charter to a Referendum
Ex-Pentagon Official Admits Job Deal
Jo wilding diaries - april 21 - refugees
Shelling Kills 22 Prisoners In Iraq 90 Others Are Injured;
One of the Rush-Hour Blasts Hit a School Bus Full of Children
U.S. Generals Fault Ban on Hussein's Party
Cleric's Militia Upends Shiite Power Balance
General: Much of Iraq's Forces Have Quit
Tribunal arranged to try Saddam
Sharon Vows to Continue Strikes
Israeli Soldiers Kill 5 Palestinians in Gaza
U.S. Goals for Middle East Falter
U.S.-Saudi Relations Show Signs of Stress
U.S. sees Syria 'facilitating' insurgents
Powerful explosions rock Saudi capital
Solana nixes notion of greater short-term NATO
NATO plans ministerial talks with Ukraine
Russia allegedly kills Chechen leaders
NASA, Russia Head Toward Showdown in space
In the Real Reality TV, the C.I.A.'s Chief Is the Survivor
U.N. Team to Offer U.S. Relief in Securing Haiti
Pentagon Drafts Iraq Troop Plan to Meet Violence
Air Force Touts Iraq Post - Combat Flights
Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment
Wolfowitz Denies Woodward Report
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
High Court Hears Detention Cases
Supreme Court Hears the Case of Guantánamo
Va. Homeland Security Chief to Resign
U.S. Apologizes to British Writer Denied Entry
ENERGY
Schwarzenegger seeks to boost hydrogen-fueled cars
Spain's Abengoa to build new US ethanol plant
OTHER
Committee Proposes Trust Fund to Aid Oceans
ACTIVISTS
Israel struggles with Vanunu's release
Analysis: Making a big man of a little one
Israeli Whistleblower Vanunu Leaves Prison
Vanunu: Israel doesn't need nukes
Vanunu's opponents turn violent as nuclear whistleblower is freed
Vanunu attends communion at Jerusalem cathedral
Israel's defiant nuclear whistleblower walks free
Vanunu's main statements on his release from Israeli prison
"You Cannot Break the Human Spirit"
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- business
USEC Inc. Reports Results for First Quarter 2004
Annual Earnings Guidance of $6 to $8 Million Reiterated
April 21, 2004
(BUSINESS WIRE)
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040421006018&newsLang=en
BETHESDA, Md.--USEC Inc. (NYSE:USU) today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2004, of a net loss of $11.2 million or $.13 per share compared to net income of $2.1 million or $.03 per share in the same quarter last year.
The results are in line with annual guidance given by the Company in February that approximately half of the year's revenue would be recognized in the fourth quarter. As the Company had anticipated, revenue for the first quarter was down significantly due to lower volumes and prices as customers took orders under low-priced contracts signed during the late 1990s and shifted volume and higher-priced deliveries to later in the year.
"We reaffirm our earnings guidance for 2004 of $6 to $8 million, after our investment in the American Centrifuge. First quarter results are consistent with that guidance because we expect about half of our sales for the year to be in the fourth quarter. We project fourth quarter earnings will be at a level to meet our annual net income guidance," said William H. Timbers, president and chief executive officer. "Our sales are tied to the refueling cycle of our customers' nuclear reactors, which are planned well in advance. Therefore, we have good visibility into revenue later this year."
Revenue and Cost of Sales
Revenue for the first quarter was $180.0 million, compared to $327.1 million for the same quarter a year ago. The volume of the Separative Work Unit (SWU) component of low-enriched uranium sold declined 48 percent quarter over quarter, and the average price billed to customers declined 7 percent. A larger percentage of sales in the first quarter were made under contracts with low SWU prices signed in the late 1990s when SWU prices were severely depressed. For the full year, USEC expects the average price billed to customers to decline only 1 percent compared to 2003, the smallest average price reduction in recent years, with an improvement in the average price billed to customers in the second half of the year. Uranium sales, which are often tied to SWU sales to utility customers, were also down 43 percent for the quarter but are expected to be about the same as 2003 for the full year.
USEC's customers generally place orders under their long-term contracts tied to reactor refuelings that occur on a 12- to 24-month cycle. Therefore, quarterly comparisons of USEC's financials are not necessarily indicative of the Company's longer-term results.
The decrease in SWU sales volume resulted in a corresponding decrease of $124.3 million or 49 percent in the cost of sales for SWU and uranium during the first quarter compared with the same period last year. In the current period, the unit cost of sales improved by 4 percent compared to the first quarter of 2003. This reflects the impact of lower production and purchase costs in previous periods.
As a result of higher labor and employee benefit costs for the quarter, unit production costs added to cost of inventory were 7 percent higher compared with the corresponding period in 2003 when labor costs were lower due to a strike by union employees at the Paducah plant. The Company's purchase costs per SWU increased 2 percent under a market-based formula with Tenex, the Russian government's executive agent, which reflects the impact of higher SWU prices since 2001. Under the average inventory cost method coupled with USEC's inventory position, an increase or decrease in costs will have an effect on cost of sales in future periods.
The gross profit margin for the quarter was 8.7 percent compared to 10.7 percent in the same period last year. Because government contract work generally has low margins, these margins had the effect of reducing USEC's gross margin by 1.3 percent. The Company expects to have a gross profit margin of approximately 11 percent for the full year.
Selling, general and administrative expenses increased $1.6 million in the quarter due primarily to increased compensation and benefit costs, higher insurance, and higher local taxes and fees. USEC is taking steps to reduce SG&A expenses in 2004 below last year's level.
American Centrifuge Progress Continues
USEC is on-track in its American Centrifuge demonstration project. Expenses during the quarter were $9.4 million, about the same as the first quarter last year. USEC continues to make progress toward demonstrating the state-of-the-art uranium enrichment technology and received an operating license for the American Centrifuge Demonstration Facility during the first quarter from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. USEC expects the American Centrifuge to be the most efficient enrichment technology available when deployed later this decade. Spending on demonstration activities had the effect of reducing after-tax income by $5.8 million during the quarter.
Cash Flow
At March 31, 2004, USEC's cash balance was $146.1 million. As planned, cash flow from operating activities for the quarter was negative $91.8 million, compared to negative $20.1 million in the same period a year ago. The difference in cash flow from operating activities between the two quarters was primarily due to a fully accrued payment of $33.2 million to Ohio Valley Electric Corporation to resolve issues related to the termination of a power contract in 2003, higher income taxes, the timing of payments to Russia for purchases made late in the previous quarter, and the net loss. The Company has no short-term debt, and debt to total capitalization is 37 percent. Outlook
USEC reiterates its annual guidance that it expects revenue for 2004 to be approximately $1.4 billion with about half coming in the fourth quarter due to timing of customer orders. USEC expects to invest $70 million in the American Centrifuge. Of this amount, $50 million related to demonstration activities will be expensed, which has the effect of reducing USEC's net income by about $30 million. Approximately $20 million related to the commercial centrifuge plant is expected to be capitalized in 2004. Given this substantial spending on the American Centrifuge, USEC continues to expect net income in 2004 to be in a range of $6 to $8 million, or 7 to 10 cents per share.
USEC also reiterates its annual guidance that operating cash flow in 2004 will be in a range of negative $110 to $130 million and that capital expenditures will be in a range of $30 to $35 million, including expenditures related to the American Centrifuge. The Company anticipates ending the year with a cash balance in a range of $40 to $60 million and that net cash flow from operating activities will return to positive levels in 2005.
Other Business Matters
-- A customer in Japan restarted 12 nuclear reactors that were shut down for special inspections in early 2003 and continues to seek permission to restart the remaining five reactors. USEC supplies low-enriched uranium for seven of the restarted reactors and three of the five reactors that remain shutdown. The shutdowns and the delay in restarting the remaining reactors postpone the utility's requirements for reloading fuel. These temporary shutdowns have and will continue to impact 2004 revenue, and will to a lesser extent affect revenue in 2005.
-- At March 31, 2004, USEC has processed and cleaned 4,039 metric tons of out-of-specification uranium contaminated with technetium (Tc99), or 42 percent of the total. The remaining amount of uranium inventory to be replaced or remediated is 5,511 metric tons. Under the DOE-USEC Agreement, DOE is obligated to replace or remediate the contaminated uranium.
-- A six-year labor agreement was ratified in March with employees in Piketon, Ohio represented by the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers (PACE) Local Union 5-689. The agreement, reached two months ahead of the expiration of the previous contract, covers approximately 560 USEC employees.
Financial Reports at http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040421006018&newsLang=en
-------- depleted uranium
Hil takes brass on and G.I.s win
By RICHARD SISK in Washington and MAKI BECKER in New York
NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
April 21, 2004
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/185906p-160988c.html
Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Richard Myers vowed to upgrade uranium tests for Iraq G.I.s. The U.S. military's top general pledged yesterday to shake up the system to improve the screening and tracking of troops who may have been exposed to uranium dust in the Iraq war.
"We've got to do a first-class job for our troops," said Gen. Richard Myers.
Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made his pledge when pressed on the issue by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) at a congressional hearing.
"You're certainly right," the general told Clinton, who demanded that the military upgrade its methods of "medical tracking and surveillance" to clear up the backlog in testing returning troops.
"We need to monitor to make sure we don't overlook things," Myers said.
The shortcomings in the system were exposed in a series of exclusive reports in the Daily News after nine soldiers with the 442nd Military Police Company of the New York Army National Guard came forward saying they were suffering from unexplained illnesses since their tour in Iraq last year.
An independent test conducted at The News' request found that four of the men tested positive for depleted uranium, which because of its heaviness is used to make shells and coat armored vehicles.
A study by the Army in 1990 linked depleted uranium to "chemical toxicity causing kidney damage."
The soldiers were heartened to hear that the military's top brass were finally taking their complaints seriously.
"I think it's great," said Sgt. Agustin Matos, who has tested positive for depleted uranium. "It's great she [Clinton] is getting us attention."
But Sgt. Juan Vega said, "I'll believe it when I see it."
Myers seemed taken aback when Clinton told him of the backlog of hundreds of troops on medical hold at Fort Dix, N.J., awaiting testing from possible contamination.
"I don't believe I've seen those reports," said Myers, promising to investigate the backlog.
"Our troops deserve better," Clinton lectured Myers.
At Clinton's urging, Myers said he also would look into methods of testing used in Japan and Germany that might pick up traces of depleted uranium that were being missed in the U.S. military's tests.
-------- india / pakistan
India accepts Pakistan's dates for talks on nuclear confidence building
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421120206.4ry8a423.html
India has agreed to Pakistan's proposal to hold talks on nuclear confidence-building measures on May 25 and 26, an Indian foreign ministry statement said Wednesday.
The Pakistani proposals for the dates of the talks, which had been agreed when the leaders of India and Pakistan met in Islamabad in January, was made earlier this month through the Indian high commission in the Pakistani capital.
"We have today conveyed our acceptance of these dates," the Indian foreign ministry in the statement said.
The proposed talks are part of efforts by the arch-rivals to mend ties and resume dialogue which has been stalled since July 2001.
India and Pakistan decided to resume talks after a ground breaking meeting between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf on January 6 in Islamabad on the sidelines of a regional summit.
Following Vajpayee's meeting with Musharraf, senior officials of both sides met in mid-February for talks, which they said would continue in June.
The often-hostile neighbours' possession of nuclear arsenals has made South Asia one of the world's most feared potential nuclear flashpoints.
Many observers believed the subcontinent was on the verge of a nuclear conflict when the two sides came close to their fourth war two years ago over the disputed territory of Kashmir.
Pakistan went public as a nuclear power when it conducted a series of test nuclear explosions in May 1998, weeks after similar tests by India.
Neither side is signatory to non-proliferation treaties.
India had also agreed to hold talks on prevention of drug trafficking and smuggling on June 15-16, the Indian statement said.
-------- iran
Two Iranian nuclear experts arrested for spying: report
TEHRAN (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421112225.x3h7mprc.html
Two Iranian nuclear experts have been arrested by the Islamic republic's intelligence service on suspicion of passing nuclear secrets to foreign governments, a hardline newspaper reported Wednesday.
According to the Ya Lessarat weekly paper, the journal of the extremist Ansar Hezbollah group, the arrests followed an intelligence probe into leaks of information from Iran's nuclear programme.
The paper said the two people detained were currently being questioned. They were not identified, and the report gave no further details.
No official comment from Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation was immediately available.
The country is suspected by the United States and Israel of using its drive to generate atomic energy as a cover for the top secret development of nuclear weapons. Tehran strongly denies the allegations.
Iran has been criticised by the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), for failing to reveal a full account of its nuclear activities including its research into second generation P2 centrifuges that are capable of enriching uranium to weapons grade.
But last December, Iran bowed to international pressure by signing up to an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), allowing a tougher IAEA probe.
----
Chirac urges Iran to fully cooperate with UN nuclear watchdog
PARIS (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421192504.3rsr8iwj.html
French President Jacques Chirac on Wednesday urged Iran to cooperate "in a constructive way" with European countries and the UN's nuclear watchdog, during talks here with the visiting Iranian foreign minister.
Chirac "expressed France's wish that the dialogue begun between the three European countries (Germany, France and Britain) and Iran continues in a constructive way," the president's spokeswoman Catherine Colonna said.
Chirac also stressed the importance "of continuing the implementation of commitments taken at the IAEA", the International Atomic Energy Agency.
He mentioned among others those on transparency and inspections, she said.
"He underlined that Iran's response will determine the assessment to be done by the IAEA's board of governors in mid-June," Colonna added.
Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharazi, said that "Iran was doing everything it could to cooperate with the IAEA and that it was due to transmit its report to the IAEA in mid-May," she said.
Iran last year was severely reprimanded by the IAEA for failing to reveal a full account of its nuclear activities including its research into second generation P2 centrifuges that are capable of enriching uranium to weapons grade.
But last December, Iran bowed to international pressure by signing up to an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), allowing a tougher IAEA probe.
--------
Iran Denies Nuclear Espionage Arrests
April 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iran-nuclear-spying.html
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's intelligence minister denied Wednesday a newspaper report that two atomic experts had been arrested for passing nuclear secrets to foreigners.
The hard-line Ya-Lesarat weekly said Wednesday that Iran's security agents had arrested two atomic experts for transferring classified information. It did not say who received the data.
``I strongly deny it. Nobody has been arrested for transferring classified information,'' Intelligence Minister Ali Yunesi told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting.
Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to generating electricity while Washington accuses it of pursuing a covert program to build atomic arms.
International concern about Iran's nuclear program intensified in 2002 when an exiled opposition group said Iran was hiding a massive underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy-water production plant at Arak.
Hoping to allay concerns about its nuclear program, Iran has signed up to snap U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities and suspended the assembly of uranium enrichment components.
Enriched uranium can be used to make fuel for power plants or to make bomb-grade material.
--------
Nuclear - Armed Iran Would Be 'Intolerable' - Bush
April 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-iran-usa-bush.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A nuclear-armed Iran would pose an intolerable threat to peace in the Middle East and a mortal danger to Israel, President Bush said on Wednesday, adding that any such threat would be ``dealt with'' by the United States and its allies.
In strongly worded remarks before an audience of newspaper editors and publishers, the Republican president pressed the secretive leadership of the Islamic republic to heed U.S. and European demands not to pursue a nuclear weapons program.
``It would be intolerable to peace and stability in the Middle East if they get a nuclear weapon, particularly since their stated objective is the destruction of Israel,'' Bush said in answer to a question about international cooperation against militant attacks.
``The development of a nuclear weapon in Iran is intolerable. And a program is intolerable. Otherwise they will be dealt with, starting through the United Nations.''
The United States accuses Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, but Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are confined to generating electricity. Washington hard-liners have been pressing for U.N. sanctions against the Islamic state.
The president's remarks come at a time of turmoil for U.S. policy in the Middle East, including Iran's neighbor Iraq, which the United States invaded last year after a stormy U.N. Security Council debate over whether the Arab nation possessed weapons of mass destruction.
No such weapons have been found and deteriorating conditions marked by a heightened insurgency have been followed by troop withdrawal announcements from Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic.
Poland, a key U.S. ally in Iraq, has also placed its position under review, while Thailand has said it will withdraw medical and engineering troops if they are attacked. But the White House points to continued support from nations like Britain, Japan, Italy and Portugal as evidence the coalition remains strong.
Meanwhile, Washington is facing a backlash from the Arab world over Bush's decision to endorse Israeli plans to retain Jewish settlements on West Bank land captured during the 1967 Middle East war.
On Wednesday, Bush rejected international criticism and said world leaders should be grateful for what he described as the ``chance to begin the construction of a peaceful Palestinian state.''
-------- israel
Israel continues nuclear weapons production
4/21/2004
(AP)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-04-21-israel-nukes_x.htm
VIENNA, Austria - Israel continues to produce atomic weapons and already has hundreds of nuclear warheads, researchers said as the country released a man imprisoned for 18 years for leaking nuclear secrets.
Because Israel is not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency has no power to look into its nuclear program.
The U.N. agency, however, is seeking contacts with Israel, and Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei repeatedly has called for talks on eliminating weapons of mass destruction from the Middle East.
Israeli authorities on Wednesday freed Mordechai Vanunu, jailed for leaking details and pictures of Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program.
Israel neither confirms nor denies it has nuclear weapons, and refuses to discuss such allegations.
Israel continues to make nuclear weapons, said Friedrich Steinhaeusler, a former IAEA nuclear safety expert who now is a physics professor at the University of Salzburg.
The best estimates put the size of the Israeli arsenal at 150 nuclear weapons, Steinhaeusler said. With air, sea and land-based launching systems, "they have the Middle East under control," he said.
But Avner Cohen, an expert on Israel and nuclear weapons at the Center for International and Security Studies in Maryland, said "there is a lot of uncertainty" about the number of weapons held by Israel.
"There are all kind of estimates, from the upper teens on the lower side to over 300 on the higher side," he said.
John Simpson, director of the Mountbatten Center of International Studies at Britain's University of Southampton, estimated the number of atomic weapons held by Israel at no more than 200.
He said his estimate was based on the presumed output of plutonium by a reactor in Dimona, and on the number of tunnels in cliffs from which the weapons could be deployed.
"What the Israelis might well have is the capability to test very rapidly," Simpson said. The country could quickly increase production after beginning testing, he said.
The lack of debate within Israel about the nuclear arsenal has created uncertainty, Simpson added.
"It is not clear that these issues have been thought through," he said. "If there was a crisis, actions could be taken almost at the spur of the moment, without a clear analysis of the consequences."
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky declined to comment on Israel, saying his agency has no jurisdiction there.
But ElBaradei, in a lecture this month, condemned "this imbalance in the region (with) Israel sitting on nuclear weapons and everybody else trying to stick to the Nonproliferation Treaty."
However, he said Israel was unlikely to readily change its stance.
"Nuclear deterrence or nuclear weapons (are) deeply ingrained in the Israeli psychology," he said. "They think ... that as long as many people, individuals (and) groups continue to talk about the destruction of Israel, they just simply cannot afford to give up the nuclear option in the absence of a comprehensive peace accepted by the people of the region."
--------
Israel Frees Nuclear Whistleblower
April 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Vanunu.html
ASHKELON, Israel (AP) -- A defiant Mordechai Vanunu walked out of prison on Wednesday after serving 18 years for spilling Israel's nuclear secrets, saying he was proud of his actions and complaining he was treated cruelly by his jailers.
Vanunu, dressed in a checkered shirt and black tie, flashed victory signs and waved to hundreds of cheering supporters as he walked into the sun-splashed courtyard of Shikma Prison in the coastal town of Ashkelon. Dozens of counter-demonstrators booed and shouted epithets.
In the courtyard, Vanunu, 50, held an impromptu news conference, his brother Meir by his side. Vanunu said he was given ``very cruel and barbaric treatment'' by Israel's security services.
``To all those who are calling me traitor, I am saying I am proud, I am proud and happy to do what I did,'' Vanunu said in accented and at times broken English. He refused to answer questions in Hebrew because of restrictions Israel has imposed, including a ban on speaking to foreigners.
Vanunu, who converted to Christianity in the 1980s, said he was mistreated because of his religion. He also said there is no need for a Jewish state and demanded that Israel open its nuclear reactor in Dimona to international inspection.
``I said, Israel don't need nuclear arms, especially now that all the Middle East is free from nuclear weapons,'' he said.
He left the prison in a gray Mazda van as police dispersed a large crowd. His first stop was St. George, an Anglican church in Jerusalem's Old City. More than a dozen cars and motorcycles followed Vanunu's vehicle to Jerusalem, and a helicopter flew low overhead.
Israeli authorities have imposed a series of travel restrictions and other constraints on Vanunu, saying he still possesses state secrets. But Vanunu said he has no more secrets to reveal. ``I am now ready to start my life,'' he said.
Upon his arrival in Jerusalem, he was mobbed by reporters as the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-Assal, escorted him into the church. Other clergy members embraced Vanunu, and a tearful Peter Hounam, the journalist who wrote the 1986 article that led to Vanunu's imprisonment, hugged him.
In 1986, Vanunu leaked details and pictures of Israel's alleged nuclear weapons program to The Sunday Times of London. Based on his account, experts said at the time that Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
The revelations undercut Israel's long-standing policy of neither confirming nor denying its nuclear capability. He was abducted by Israeli secret agents before the article was printed and subsequently convicted of treason in a closed trial.
Vanunu said Israel's Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet security services tried to rob him of his sanity by keeping him in solitary confinement for nearly 12 years. ``I said to the Shabak (Shin Bet), the Mossad, you didn't succeed to break me, you didn't succeed to make me crazy.''
Asked if he was a hero, he said ``all those who are standing behind me, supporting me ... all are heroes.''
``I am a symbol of the will of freedom,'' he said. ``You cannot break the human spirit.''
Hundreds of supporters and opponents squared off in shouting matches outside the prison ahead of his release. Supporters chanted ``Mordechai is free,'' while counter-demonstrators held signs calling him a traitor and shouted curses. ``He won't get out of here alive,'' opponents screamed as Vanunu's adopted parents, Minnesota couple Nick and Mary Eoloff, arrived at the prison. Vanunu said he hopes to settle in the United States and study history.
While the crowds were vocal, there was no violence.
Anti-nuclear weapons activists from around the world had gathered at Shikma in recent days. Among his supporters, was British actress Susannah York and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland.
But Vanunu is widely detested in Israel.
``He's hell-bent to do as much harm as he can,'' Justice Minister Tommy Lapid told The Associated Press. ``We will keep an eye on him, we will watch him ... We want to know where he is and we want to know whom he may or may not divulge state secrets.''
Vanunu will not be allowed to travel abroad for at least a year, speak with foreigners or approach Israeli ports or borders. He also is barred from discussing his work at Israel's nuclear reactor. Vanunu was given a map of Israel marking the areas off-limits to him, the Defense Ministry said.
Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi said security services have confiscated several tapes and notebooks with Vanunu's writings. In Hebrew and English, Vanunu wrote a detailed account of places, processes and areas of the nuclear reactor, she said, adding that he has an ``excellent memory.''
``It was a lot more than a personal diary. To us this showed an intention and ability to make future use of it,'' Niedak-Ashkenazi said.
Vanunu said the papers were personal and had been written in 1991.
Vanunu's family and Yoav Loeff, of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which is representing the nuclear spy, have said they are concerned about his safety.
But Lapid said no precautions or special security measures are planned. ``He's surrounded by at least 100 radicals who are worshipping him so I'm sure they'll take care of his safety,'' he said.
Vanunu will live in a luxury apartment complex in Jaffa, an old seaport and today part of Tel Aviv. Jaffa has both Arab and Jewish residents. Vanunu, who was raised as an Orthodox Jew, converted to Christianity in the mid-1980s.
The Andromeda Hill complex has 170 apartments, and tenants include both wealthy foreigners and local residents. It was unclear who is paying for Vanunu's apartment.
Richard Caseby, managing editor of the Sunday Times, said the newspaper was giving Vanunu ``some assistance,'' but declined to elaborate. He said Vanunu was not paid for the original story.
--------
Israeli Who Revealed Nuclear Secrets Is Freed
April 21, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/international/middleeast/21CND-NUCL.html
ASHKELON, Israel, April 21 - After 18 years behind bars for revealing Israeli nuclear secrets, a defiant Mordechai Vanunu headed out of prison today a partly free man, flashing the victory sign and declaring he was proud of what he had done.
Mr. Vanunu, 49, is returning to a society where he appears to be as widely reviled today as in 1986, when he was kidnapped by Israel's intelligence service in Rome after granting a detailed interview on Israel's clandestine nuclear program to The Sunday Times of London.
The former nuclear technician faces a list of restrictions that bar him from leaving the country for a year or speaking with foreigners. He must tell authorities in advance before traveling inside Israel.
Yet he held an impromptu press conference in the Shikma Prison courtyard before reaching the street, where dozens of supporters, mostly American and British, cheered him as a hero of the anti-nuclear movement, while several hundred Israeli detractors denounced him as a spy and a traitor.
"To all those calling me a traitor, I'm proud and happy to do what I did," said Mr. Vanunu, dressed in a white, checkered shirt and a dark tie.
Israel's justice minister, Yosef Lapid, said Mr. Vanunu will be closely monitored because the government believes he could divulge additional nuclear information.
"This is the treatment he deserved even if the radical left turns him into a hero," Mr. Lapid told Israeli Army Radio. "He betrayed Israel."
But Mr. Vanunu said he had divulged all his secrets in the interview with The Sunday Times, where he provided photos and described his nine years at Israel's nuclear complex in the southern town of Dimona, in the Negev Desert.
"My secret is dead," he said in fractured English, refusing to speak Hebrew. "My case is dead. Everything was published." Mr. Vanunu, who converted to Christianity and said he wanted to move to the United States, get married and study history, added: "I am not harming Israel. I'm not interested in Israel."
His religiously devout parents have disowned him, while a Minnesota couple, Nick and Mary Eoloff, adopted him in a failed bid to win American citizenship for Mr. Vanunu.
Before Mr. Vanunu spoke out, it was widely assumed that Israel had nuclear arms. But to this day, Israel refuses to confirm or deny possessing such weapons under its policy of "nuclear ambiguity."
Based on Mr. Vanunu's information, nuclear experts estimated Israel possessed between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. More recent estimates are in a similar range.
Israel has never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has adamantly rejected international inspections. Israel argues that it needs a plausible deterrent threat in a region where its says several countries, including Iraq, Libya and Iran, have tried, or are still trying to develop nuclear arms.
But critics say that Israel, with the tacit backing of the United States, has been allowed to develop a large nuclear arsenal in secret, while the Americans have insisted that other Middle East countries be prevented from building weapons of mass destruction.
Mr. Vanunu said Israel did not "need the nuclear arms, especially now when all the Middle East is free from nuclear weapons."
"My message today to all the world is open Dimona reactor for inspection," he said.
He also complained of "very cruel and barbaric treatment" in prison, where he spent more than 11 years in solitary confinement.
As he reached the front of the prison, Mr. Vanunu stuck one arm through the blue-and-white gate and gave the victory sign. He initially wanted to walk out, but the police would not permit it with the mostly hostile crowd chanting such slogans as "Death to traitors."
Instead, he staged the news conference just inside the front gate. The Israeli authorities made no attempt to stop him, but after nearly a half-hour, his brother Meir Vanunu guided him into a car.
Supporters threw roses on the vehicle, which was surrounded by police as it inched through the crowd.
"I felt enormous elation," said Susannah York, the British actress who was among the foreign supporters who came for the release.
But angry Israelis began pounding on the car with their fists and screaming at him until the police escort was able to clear a path. Some of Mr. Vanunu's less extreme critics simply held up blackened roses as a symbol of their opposition.
Among those jostling with the police outside the prison was Peter Hounam, the journalist who wrote Mr. Vanunu's story in The Sunday Times.
"I just want to see him and say, `Hello,' " Mr. Hounam said. "He's a decent guy and he doesn't deserve all this."
Mr. Hounam was unable to reach Mr. Vanunu at the prison. But Mr. Vanunu was immediately taken to pray at St. George's, an Anglican church in Jerusalem. There, the two men exchanged hugs.
Mr. Vanunu's supporters say he will be living in an upscale apartment complex in Tel Aviv, but have expressed concerns for his safety.
Mr. Vanunu was born in Morocco, and his family came to Israel when he was 9. He fought in the 1973 Mideast War and started working at the Dimona reactor in 1976. After several years, he became involved in left-wing student politics at Ben-Gurion University.
Upon leaving the nuclear plant in 1985, he traveled to Asia. In Australia, he met with a freelance journalist, and eventually The Sunday Times got wind of the story, and spent weeks interviewing him before publishing his account on Oct. 5, 1986.
Even before the story appeared, Mr. Vanunu had been lured from London to Rome by a female agent from Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. He was seized and drugged, and flown to Israel where he was convicted in 1988 in a secret trial.
--------
Israeli Nuke Whistleblower Defiant as He Leaves Jail
April 21, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-israel-vanunu.html
ASHKELON, Israel (Reuters) - Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu emerged defiant after 18 years in prison Wednesday, saying he was proud of revealing secrets that exposed the Jewish state as an atomic power.
Vanunu flashed victory signs and waved as he walked through the gates of Ashkelon's Shikma Prison, where supporters cheered him as a ``peace hero'' and counter-demonstrators booed him with chants of ``Shut up, atomic spy.''
``I am proud and happy to do what I did,'' the gray-haired, former nuclear technician said standing before a bank of television cameras flanked by two of his brothers.
Vanunu's 1986 revelations to a British newspaper about the top-secret Dimona reactor led security analysts to conclude Israel had amassed an arsenal of 100 to 200 nuclear warheads, one of the world's largest stockpiles.
Vanunu, 49, complained bitterly of ``cruel and barbaric treatment'' at the hands of Israel's security services but insisted he had no more state secrets to divulge after serving his full term on a conviction for treason and espionage.
Fearing he could leak more classified information, Israel put him under close surveillance and slapped restrictions on his movements, including a one-year ban on travel abroad. Violations of these conditions could land him back in jail.
Vanunu, a Moroccan-born immigrant, refused to answer questions in Hebrew during an impromptu news conference broadcast live on state television, saying he was protesting against Israel's limits on his contacts with foreigners.
Supporters fear for his safety in Israel, where most people despise him as a traitor and see the country's undeclared nuclear capability as protection against hostile neighbors and an insurance policy against a repeat of the Nazi Holocaust.
``Israel doesn't need nuclear arms, especially now that all the Middle East is free of nuclear arms,'' Vanunu said. ``My message...to all the world is open the Dimona reactor for inspections.''
In his first stop, Vanunu, a Christian convert, prayed at the Anglican Saint George's Cathedral in Jerusalem and met there with an American couple who adopted him. Most of his own family has disowned him.
PARTING VEIL OF SECRECY
Vanunu leaked pictures and details of the Dimona reactor, deep in the Negev desert, to Britain's Sunday Times in 1986.
His disclosures parted the veil on Israel's long-standing policy of ``strategic ambiguity,'' never admitting or denying it possessed atomic weapons.
A former intelligence chief said Israel took Vanunu's leaks so seriously it considered killing him. Instead, the Mossad spy agency mounted a classic ``honey trap,'' sending a blonde agent to lure him from London to Rome, where he was abducted and bundled home.
He was convicted in a closed-door trial and sentenced to 18 years in prison, much of it spent in solitary confinement.
Vanunu said security agents tried to rob him of his sanity during his long imprisonment. ``I said to (them)...You didn't succeed to break me,'' he said.
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid denied Vanunu had been mistreated, saying other countries like the United States had a history of executing spies. ``This is the treatment he deserved even if the radical left turns him into a hero,'' he told Army Radio. ``He betrayed Israel.''
Vanunu said he eventually wanted to move to the United States, get married and start a new life. He has many admirers overseas, where peace activists have regularly nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
For now, media reports say he will live in a high-security, luxury apartment complex in the Jaffa section of Tel Aviv. Residents told reporters he was not welcome there.
Among the restrictions Vanunu faces is a ban on approaching ports and borders. His phone will be tapped and his Internet correspondence monitored, security sources said.
British actress Susannah York, among the anti-nuclear campaigners who came to Israel to celebrate Vanunu's release, said: ``It's a gross violation of human rights.''
-------- korea
'N Korea's Kim insists on US compensation before nuclear freeze'
Wednesday April 21, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/apr2004-daily/21-04-2004/world/w1.htm
BEIJING: North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il stressed on Tuesday that Washington must offer compensation before any freeze in its nuclear facilities during a second day of talks with China's leaders, reports said. While Kim's movements are shrouded in secrecy, diplomats cited by South Korean media said he met military chief Jiang Zemin and Premier Wen Jiabao.
The reclusive leader arrived in Beijing by train on Monday on an unannounced visit accompanied by a 30- to 40-strong entourage, and headed straight into talks with President Hu Jintao. Reports said Kim told Hu he was ready to give up his country's nuclear programs if the United States changed its "hostile attitude". In meetings Tuesday, he reiterated that while he wanted a peaceful end to the standoff, Washington must first compensate the Stalinist state before any climb down on its nuclear facilities, Yonhap news agency said.
On Monday, Hu reportedly briefed Kim on Washington's position - the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling of North Korea's nuclear programs before any aid is offered - following his meeting last week in China with US Vice President Dick Cheney. He also "indirectly" advised Kim to soften his hardline stance toward the United States, the Munwha Ilbo newspaper said.
Cheney upped the stakes by saying time was running out to resolve the standoff, presenting China with new intelligence that North Korea has nuclear bombs. During his meeting with Kim, Wen was expected to offer food and energy assistance and ways of linking Pyongyang's economic development program with those being pushed by China's northeastern provinces bordering North Korea. Yonhap said Kim had shown keen interest in China's economic growth during his visit and discussed ways of strengthening economic ties with Wen.
He will reportedly visit the cities of Shenyang or Dalian on his way back to North Korea to witness for himself the way they are being transformed into hubs of economic development. With its economic reforms failing, North Korea is desperate for aid from China, one of its only allies, as well as ideas on how to imitate its neighbour's vibrant growth. "North Korea is presently under an enormous amount of economic difficulty," Dong-bok Lee, a former South Korean politician who was a pioneer in improving North-South Korean relations, told AFP. "There has been much talk about its reform measures but they resulted in total failure.
"Its economy is worse than it was two years ago and this is crucial to the survival of the regime. It is also entering a sensitive era because of the changing nature of the nuclear crisis." Finding a solution to the nuclear issue is widely seen as the key to unlocking outside aid to help the economy and ensure the regime's existence. Fuel shipments were cut by the US, Japan, South Korea and the European Union in late 2002 after US envoy James Kelly said Pyongyang had admitted it was trying to build nuclear weapons. "China will respond to North Korea's demands. They don't want to push the government over the edge, they recognise this could result in an explosion, literally," said Paul Harris, a north Asian expert at Hong Kong's Lingnan University.
China and North Korea have refused to publicly announce Kim's presence in Beijing, despite Washington confirming he was in the Chinese capital.
On earlier Kim visits to China, Beijing refrained from announcing the trip until it was over, apparently out of security considerations for Kim. China has been hosting six-nation talks to resolve the nuclear standoff, which also bring together the two Koreas, the United States, Russia and Japan.
----
China warns North Korean dictator
By Richard Spencer in Beijing
21/04/2004
UK Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$TKA15GXZRMZPTQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2004/04/21/wkor21.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/04/21/ixworld.html
China bluntly told the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il yesterday that he must end his dangerous and eccentric policies. The paramount leaders of China gave Kim a series of lectures during his visit to Beijing which, in line with his reclusive habits, remains an official secret. China's three most powerful men told him to compromise in talks on the fate of his covert nuclear weapons arsenal and to embrace capitalism or face deeper isolation.
According to leaks, they also told him to take a realistic view of US foreign policy, and to follow China and South Korea in pursuing capitalism.
Kim is likely to be taken on a guided tour of Beijing's high-tech business zone before being put back on his official train to Pyongyang.
Kim arrived on the unannounced visit on Monday, his first trip abroad for three years. China has been North Korea's main ally, but now looks upon its impoverished neighbour with some embarrassment.
----
North Korea's enigmatic leader makes 'secret visit'
North Korea's Kim Jong II arrived in Beijing Monday with a nuclear bargaining chip in his pocket.
By Robert Marquand
The Christian Science Monitor
April 21, 2004
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0421/p07s01-woap.html
BEIJING - On Day 2 of Kim Jong Il's not-so-secret state visit to China, officials here were tying themselves in semantic knots, trying to avoid actually acknowledging that one of Asia's most enigmatic and brutal leaders had arrived Monday.
Mr. Kim has actively sought a meeting in Beijing to help stabilize a recently shaky position with old ally China. Until this week, the North Korean strongman had not met his large neighbor's new generation of leaders. Kim arrives at a time of mixed promise and peril for his isolated, police-state regime, and he comes to meet President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao with his nuclear bargaining chip in his pocket.
China is expected to send the unpredictable Kim a clear message opposing any effort to take North Korea's nuclear program further by actually testing a nuclear device. A test might "prove" that the North does have a viable nuclear option, experts say, but this would be regarded as highly destabilizing in Asia.
"China's influence on Kim is bound to act as a moderating influence, and the US should applaud that," says David Steinberg, dean of Asian affairs at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Washington.
Kim rarely travels outside his highly controlled regime, where he is worshiped like a god but where as many as a million North Koreans live in gulag-like prison camps. Kim may be traveling in part to demonstrate strength inside Pyongyang, experts say. But certainly he needs funds, food, and energy for his impoverished state, and better relations with Beijing. China once rescued Kim's father, Kim Il Sung, from defeat in the Korean War - but the communist revolution here has given way to the kind of economic boom, disregard of ideology, and opening to the world that could unravel a highly controlled regime like that of the North, experts suggest.
Kim arrives for his first visit since 2001 only days after Vice President Richard Cheney was here urging China to continue pressuring North Korea to dismantle its "dangerous" nuclear program. Mr. Cheney brought new evidence from Pakistani nuclear physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who said he'd visited a North Korean mountain hideaway where he was shown three nuclear devices.
Until recently, Chinese authorities temporized over how serious the North's nuclear program is. But open threats by Kim's diplomats during the Beijing-hosted six-party talks last summer, and new intelligence, are not being ignored, sources say.
At the same time, political developments in South Korea may improve Kim's position on the peninsula. Last week the young, liberal, Uri Party in the south won the parliamentary elections. Uri includes a strong group of the so-called 386ers - opponents of the right-wing regime in Seoul who were in their 30s when the term was coined, came of political age in the 1980's and were born in the 1960s. They tend to be supportive of generous overtures to the Kim regime, including efforts to get the world community to commit to loans and investment in the North. Pyongyang state media has made favorable comments about the Uri victory; the younger generation in South Korea are regarded as less pro-American than their elders, a state of affairs that is appreciated in Pyongyang.
Kim is expected to be in Beijing until April 22. Along with Hu Jintao, he will meet premier Wen; former president Jiang Zemin, who still holds the reins of China's People's Liberation Army; and Standing Committee power brokers Wu Bangguo and Zeng Qinghong.
The current nuclear dynamics on the Korean peninsula were triggered in October 2002 following an admission to US envoy James Kelley in Pyongyang that the North had a uranium nuclear program as well as a plutonium program. Over the following months, a nuclear crisis developed as the North kicked out UN nuclear inspectors and moved hundreds of spent plutonium fuel rods used in the processing of weapons-grade material. (Currently, US scientists and intelligence officials do not have a clear idea of the state of play of the North's atomic program.)
Last spring, China dramatically shifted its approach toward the Koreas. Beijing began, with US urging, to host multilateral talks on the future of the Korean peninsula - talks that it now desires to institutionalize as a permanent "mechanism," as Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan told reporters Tuesday.
Kim is thought to be waiting until the November US elections to develop a strategy for dealing with nemesis America. Beijing officials are reportedly urging him to take the next set of six-party talks, planned for July, seriously - including much needed North Korean participation in a set of working groups that China is attempting to inaugurate.
Pyongyang appeared to agree to the working groups in the last set of meetings here in February.
--------
China: N. Korea Agrees to Push Nuke Talks
April 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-NKorea.html
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea's leader told Chinese officials he is committed to ending a nuclear dispute through dialogue, China said Wednesday, in what observers saw as a sign of progress in resolving the standoff.
After top-level meetings in Beijing, China and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il agreed to continue six-nation talks on defusing the crisis, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The report, issued after the secretive Kim left the Chinese capital on Wednesday, was China's first public confirmation of his three-day visit.
Kim's trip followed Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to Beijing last week. During that trip, he urged Chinese leaders to press North Korea to reach a settlement.
Washington insists on a ``complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling'' of North Korea's nuclear facilities. North Korea says it would only give up its program in exchange for aid for its decrepit economy and a written promise from the United States that it won't attack.
Kim's trip to longtime ally China this week was his first since the nuclear dispute flared in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea admitted running a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of international agreements.
Meeting with President Hu Jintao, Kim said North Korea ``sticks to the final nuclear-weapon-free goal and its basic position on seeking a peaceful solution through dialogue has not changed,'' Xinhua reported.
The last round of six-nation talks -- involving China, the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia -- ended in February in Beijing without a settlement.
Kim also met former President Jiang Zemin, who remains head of the powerful commission that runs China's military. In addition, he met Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, Vice President Zeng Qinghong and Wu Bangguo, the No. 2 leader of China's Communist Party.
Chinese media had been silent about Kim's trip, though it was widely reported in South Korean media. Following his departure, Chinese state television showed footage of him hugging each of the leaders. He was shown dressed either in a Mao-style buttoned tunic or in his favored tan zip-up jacket with matching pants -- while the Chinese leaders all wore Western-style suits and ties.
China says those involved in the six-party talks want to meet again by July. Xinhua said Wednesday that North Korea ``will continue to take a patient and flexible manner and actively participate in the six-party talks process, and make its own contributions to the progress of the talks.''
The South Korean Foreign Ministry issued a one-sentence statement saying it hoped the meetings in China would lead to a peaceful end to the nuclear dispute.
China is North Korea's last major ally, and the two countries' ruling communist parties boast of close ties. But while China's experiments with capitalism have transformed it into an economic dynamo, North Korea suffers chronic food shortages and depends on its larger neighbor for aid.
North Korea's worsening economy makes it more likely Kim will pay heed to China's calls for him to soften his position, observers say.
``He's losing Chinese political and economic support more and more every day,'' said Park Joon-young, a political science professor at Ewha Women's University in Seoul. ``Everybody is expecting something good out of this (meeting), because Kim Jong Il made a new move and came out of his den.''
In the end, it is North Korea that suffers the most if the standoff continues, analysts say.
``They know they have to cut a deal,'' said Ron Huisken, a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at Australian National University in Canberra. ``They just have to get the best deal that they can.''
-------- missile defense
Missile Defense System on Schedule
By JEFFREY McMURRAY
Wednesday April 21, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4005315,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States is on track to activate a limited ballistic missile defense system by the end of the year, giving the country the capability to take on such threats, the program's director said Wednesday.
Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee that he expects to meet President Bush's goal of having 20 interceptors in place by the end of 2005, including a few that would be operational this year.
``It's still a major challenge for us over the next six months to do this, but right now what I see is we will have up to eight by this calendar year and 12 the following year available for alert capabilities,'' Kadish said.
He said the system would provide a ``capability to defeat near-term threats of greatest concern.''
The initial system of interceptors would be placed in Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., reflecting the perceived threat of North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Kadish acknowledged the system will not guarantee a total defense against enemy missiles.
``If 100 percent sure is the standard, we're not going to meet it,'' he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a critic of the $10 billion-a-year program, asked whether Kadish could guarantee 50 percent success rate. Kadish declined to answer publicly but said he would brief her in private.
Feinstein and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., suggested the most imminent threats come from terrorists using unconventional means. Dorgan said that a missile warhead was the least likely nuclear threat.
``Perhaps the most likely threat is from a suitcase nuclear weapon in a rusty car on the dock in New York City,'' Dorgan said.
Kadish said it's impossible to predict what method terrorists will use.
``It is a very difficult job to know what's likely and what's unlikely, what our adversaries are going to do to defeat us,'' Kadish said. ``We make those judgments, but we've got to do it with the idea there's risk involved.''
Republican members of the panel defended the program's cost and timetable.
``You can't rush technology, but you can certainly advance technology by putting research and testing money into it,'' said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.
On the Net:
Missile Defense Agency: http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/
--------
Japan mum on reported US request to allow radar as part of missile defense
TOKYO (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421043007.kzz5a1ku.html
The Japanese government was tightlipped Wednesday about a report that Washington has asked Tokyo to permit it to set up a radar system here that can detect enemy missiles.
"We have nothing to say about the report," said a Defense Agency spokesman.
The influential liberal daily, Asahi Shimbun, said the United States has asked Japan for permission to place a Ground Based Radar (GBR) in Japan, which can be used to detect intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that may be aimed at the United States.
The radar could also be used to guide interceptor missiles to destroy incoming enemy missiles, the Asahi said, without citing its sources.
The Defense Agency would ask the United States for details about the radar and would assess its compatibility with Japanese radar systems, the Asahi said.
The requested placement of such a radar might not be covered by the Japan-US security pact, under which Japan provides military facilities to US forces to defend Japan and to stabilise the Far East region, but not to defend the US mainland, the Asahi said.
Washington was making similar requests to Britain and Denmark, the Asahi added.
The report came as Japan plans to deploy an anti-missile system consisting of the seaborne Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) and the land-based Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) before March 2008.
SM-3s intercept ballistic missiles when they reach their highest point outside of the atmosphere and then PAC-3 missiles are used to take out the missiles that have escaped SM-3 attacks.
Japan has rushed to build up a missile defense system since North Korea fired a suspected Taepodong missile over the Japanese mainland and into the Pacific in 1998, unnerving the region and the world.
-------- terrorism
OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Real Nuclear Danger
April 21, 2004
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/opinion/21KRIS.html
In the summer of 2001, there was a spike in Al Qaeda "chatter" and mounting evidence that a terror strike was imminent. But without precise details, it was difficult to get the attention of top policy makers or the public - until it was too late.
Now something similar is happening in North Korea.
North Korea is potentially more dangerous than the mess in Iraq. It probably has at least 1 to 3 nuclear weapons already, it is producing both plutonium and uranium, and it is on track to have close to 10 nuclear weapons by the end of this year.
Yet because President Bush's policy has failed in North Korea, Washington is determinedly looking the other way. When we next focus on North Korea, after the election, it could be a nuclear Wal-Mart.
North Korea not only has genuine nuclear weapons programs, but it is also the model of a rogue state: it gets its U.S. currency by printing it. That's right; it counterfeits excellent American $100 bills.
The latest disclosure, via David "Scoop" Sanger of The Times, is that the father of Pakistan's bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, claims that North Korea showed him three nuclear weapons in 1999. The Bush administration, after publicizing anything to do with Iraqi W.M.D., tried to keep that North Korean revelation secret.
Dr. Khan's report has not been confirmed. But this much is sure: The Bush administration has invaded a country on far less evidence.
Worse, North Korea is reprocessing enough plutonium to make an additional half-dozen weapons. It has also restarted one nuclear reactor and will soon replace the fuel rods there, producing enough plutonium for another weapon. All of that activity began during the Bush administration. North Korea is also continuing a uranium enrichment program that it covertly began in the Clinton years.
To his credit, Vice President Dick Cheney forthrightly raised concerns about North Korea's nuclear program during his trip to Beijing last week. But the administration still has no effective plan to deal with the crisis.
Soft-liners in the administration would like to negotiate a "grand bargain" with North Korea in which Kim Jong Il would accept C.V.I.D. - that's the latest hot term, standing for "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement." In exchange, the U.S. would present security assurances, and Asian countries would offer bribes of investment, energy and aid. Such a negotiated deal is the only hope, but to hard-liners, it sounds suspiciously Clintonian.
Meanwhile, the administration is playing a delaying game with six-party talks in China, and starting working-level talks in the next month through Joseph DeTrani, a former C.I.A. officer and China hand. The DeTrani channel will be an important step forward, but it's difficult to imagine a deal that both the Bush and Kim administrations could agree on - and in the meantime, North Korea keeps churning out nukes.
"The administration is just trying to kick this can down the road," said Jonathan Pollack of the Naval War College. "In a funny way, I think both we and the North Koreans are waiting for November."
Resolving this crisis is in the interests of virtually everybody on the planet, with two exceptions: President Bush and Mr. Kim. They may have nothing else in common, except that their fathers also ran their countries, but they do share an interest in delay.
Mr. Bush has his hands full with Iraq and doesn't want attention paid to the North Korean nuclear threat, which is substantially worsening on his watch. Mr. Kim figures that he may as well wait to see whether John Kerry is elected, and he'd also like to finish reprocessing the plutonium and enriching the uranium.
While the administration has steadily become more reasonable on North Korea, it still hasn't fully accepted the unpalatable truth: the only possible route out of this crisis is a grand bargain. Mr. Bush, who listened way too much to Mr. Cheney on the topic of Iraq, should reflect on something Mr. Cheney said on his China trip about negotiations over North Korea's nuclear programs: "Time is not necessarily on our side."
After my reports from Africa about ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region of Sudan, many readers have asked what they can do. I've put some possibilities on my blog, www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds, in Posting No. 344.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new mexico
Governor explains WIPP stance
By Victoria Parker-Stevens
Current-Argus staff writer
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.currentargus.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=313&num=6086
CARLSBAD - Less than a week after reports that the state might close the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Gov. Bill Richardson was greeted with a standing ovation at a town hall meeting in Carlsbad Wednesday.
A standing-room only crowd of about 180 people packed the Pecos River Village Conference Center for one of the governor's stops on a recreational-vehicle tour of cities.
Those who came represented a wide spectrum of agencies, businesses and interests.
With ready applause and laughter, they spent most of an hour asking questions about everything from school funding to senior meals.
Last week's stir over WIPP was a major topic, with Environment Secretary Ron Curry traveling to Carlsbad to join the governor.
Curry had reportedly told the Albuquerque Journal's editorial board that shipments could stop if the federal Energy Department continued to try to reclassify some "high level" waste to a lower level to ship to WIPP.
After the story ran, Richardson said he had instructed Curry "not to improperly delay or obstruct" WIPP operations, including DOE permit requests the state had previously said were on hold.
"The press has to have something to write about," said Mayor Bob Forrest Wednesday, as he introduced the governor.
"The guy that opened WIPP (as U.S. energy secretary) isn't going to close WIPP," he said, to audience applause.
Forrest said he appreciates the governor's reversal of the decision made by Curry or the press, and "hopefully, that's behind us."
He jokingly mentioned another attempt to get support for siting a DOE plutonium pit facility in Carlsbad, which the governor has not backed. But the rest of the mayor's remarks were a litany of praise for things from Richardson's international profile to legislative capital outlay money.
"One of these days we might just see him in the White House," Forrest said, and to a standing ovation, "I'm glad he's governor of the state of New Mexico."
"How can you get mad at Bob Forrest?" Richardson asked the audience.
Richardson's staffers said he'd probably have a hard time in Carlsbad, and "that's why I've got Ron Curry here," he said, with a laugh.
"He's a great secretary of the environment. He got a little ahead of himself on this one," Richardson said. "WIPP is an outstanding national and international facility, besides being an economic engine for Carlsbad."
He said officials can sometimes get over-enthusiastic and "not precise," and the press can misinterpret. David Giuliani/Current-Argus: State Environment Secretary Ron Curry speaks before Gov. Bill Richardson's town hall on Wednesday at the Pecos River Village Conference Center.
"I say don't blame the press - take the heat," he said.
Last week, neither the governor nor Curry's offices blamed the Journal.
"I used to fight with NMED, too. I have full confidence in Ron to do the same," Richardson said of his days as energy secretary, noting issues were always resolved.
The state will continue to "lean on" the DOE, just like citizens should hold government officials accountable, he said.
And there will always be clashes, he said, because the state needs to make sure everything is done carefully and safely.
Richardson said political problems around the country with high-level waste were causing the Energy Department to try to reclassify waste so it would have a permanent disposal site.
The amount of waste at issue is just one-half of 1 percent of what is expected at WIPP, but high-level waste is "not the agreement," Richardson said. Federal law prohibits disposal of waste classified as "high level" at WIPP.
"I think this is an issue that will be resolved," he said, adding WIPP isn't going to close. "We're not playing those games.
"I know when DOE speaks, they have a lot of clout here," he said, noting his administration has to protect the whole state.
Richardson also spoke in support of the Environmental Evaluation Group, which has said it will close its doors by the end of the year if it doesn't receive additional DOE funding.
"They do a job that is essential," Richardson said of the WIPP oversight group, adding the DOE shouldn't "threaten to close it down" because of budget problems.
Curry later said the state would also like to see the Energy Department fund an oversight bureau that used to operate with about five state employees at the WIPP site.
The DOE has an "agreement in principle" with the state to run the bureau, he said. Similar bureaus are at both national labs in New Mexico.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, Bill Weston, who works for a WIPP contractor, told the governor he is concerned that WIPP may still grind to a halt if his message doesn't make it through the ranks.
He said he heard Tuesday from an Environment Department staff member that a backlog of 10 audit reports and many WIPP permit requests would be handled when "he gets direction."
"I watch things," Richardson said, assuring Weston that the gears are in motion.
Richardson asked Curry to talk further about the issue.
At one point, Curry joked that he was apt to take the governor's advice "as I almost always do," and he described his shock when he saw the Albuquerque Journal headline on his doorstep.
In comments after the meeting, Curry said he had requested time with the newspaper's editorial board to discuss the state's opposition to reclassification. Instead of an editorial, the newspaper ran a story.
Words like "threat" or "vow" were never used, he said.
Curry said he was "painting scenarios" of what could happen, as the state was not moving forward with site audits, which involve reviews of waste analyses around the country.
He said in a similar fashion, he had announced earlier this month that a DOE remote-handled waste permit request was on hold until the DOE dropped its reclassification plans.
Curry lauded the governor's "positive intervention" in the situation and said it had led to an "exchange of language" between the state and the DOE in the last 24 hours.
He said it had been difficult for the state to get a consistent answer from the Energy Department on various issues.
"We had to take almost extreme measures to get their attention - to keep their attention," he said.
Curry later described an incident in which he said he got one answer from the DOE in Washington, D.C., and another on the plane ride home.
The Energy Department "underestimated Richardson," he said. "They caused us to do things and take strategies we normally wouldn't have done."
The mayor told the governor that local officials also had problems with the Energy Department, citing a recent budget cut they had been led to believe wasn't going to happen.
To laughter, Forrest admitted government makes lots of promises, similar to the way a man gets a woman into bed.
----
Governor pledges 'better coverage' of southeast N.M.
Apr 21, 2004
Current-Argus
http://www.currentargus.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=313&num=6084
CARLSBAD - Gov. Bill Richardson dealt with issues presented by at least 10 local residents at a town hall meeting Wednesday at the Pecos River Village Conference Center.
A standing-room-only crowd of about 180 people packed the room, giving ready applause to the governor, who promised items ranging from a film commission seat to more attention.
Local businessman Jay Jenkins thanked the governor for visiting Carlsbad more often.
Richardson said he took staff members along on his recreational-vehicle trips around the state to help him address any problems constituents might have.
"We do everything but divorces," he said, with a laugh.
He also holds regular office hours in Las Cruces, he said, but "we're going to try to find a way to make sure southeast New Mexico gets better coverage from my office."
Jenkins mentioned U.S. Highway 62-180 improvements to the Texas state line, as did Mayor Bob Forrest, who said four-laning the road is part of the governor's plans.
Richardson said the project has been moved from No. 15 to No. 4 on Gov. Richardson's Investment Partnership list, after an earlier meeting with local officials. Needed federal matching dollars are in a bill that's stuck in the Senate, he said.
Richardson also said he'd look into senior meal program funding needs at the Southeastern New Mexico Community Action Corp., as Jenkins requested.
In the middle of the meeting, the governor appointed Mark Buckholz, with the Carlsbad Multimedia Academy, to the state Film Commission, after Buckholz said he hadn't received any responses to recent inquiries.
He said the governor had promised a seat to Carlsbad and, without one, he was afraid the area wouldn't see part of $10 million the state recently designated for initiatives.
Richardson recalled signs Carlsbad had brought to Santa Fe, and Guy Lutman, city civic center director, brought one to the front of the room.
"You're appointed," Richardson said to Buckholz.
Linda Preciado - who helped organize the town hall as chair of the county Democratic Party - also spoke to the governor in her role as a school system employee. She said the Carlsbad district had to use savings to balance its budget for next year.
Superintendent Charlotte Neill said state funding was insufficient to avoid cutting personnel and opportunities for children.
Richardson said he would watch the issue closely as the budget is drafted for next year.
Gosia Allison-Kosior had flowers and a hug for the governor. She said not everyone in Carlsbad was in favor of things like a proposed plutonium pit production facility.
"You are a powerful person who keeps close eyes on what the DOE does," she said, adding appreciation for his environmental concerns for Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico, where oil drilling is proposed.
She said in her native Europe, nature had been devastated and she didn't want to see that happen in the United States.
Also getting close to the governor was local businessman Pete Panagopoulos, who ran up to shake his hand and tell him not smoking was keeping the governor young. Panagopoulos is an ardent anti-smoking activist.
Richardson promised local attorney Joe Gant he would have Children, Youth and Families Department Secretary Mary-Dale Bolson look into the department's avoidance of District Court Judge James Shuler.
He said she could do so on a planned visit to the Carlsbad Battered Families Shelter, which received more than $500,000 in legislative capital outlay money this year.
Burdening one judge with all of the children's court cases is unfair to children and everyone in the system, Gant said.
Richardson also said he'd ask the federal government to add the Artesia veteran's clinic to a list of facilities to consider, after a local veteran said he'd heard rumors it was closing.
Ron Everlove asked the governor why he didn't support a bill that would have benefited those with severe brain injuries. Everlove is involved with a local support group.
Richardson said Everlove should have contacted his office, not just legislators.
"You didn't talk to me," he said. "There's also a governor that's pretty strong."
Richardson said he had concerns about Medicaid costs and when he wanted to cap funds in the bill, a lobbyist had threatened to sue. He said he had directed his cabinet to look at a plan for next year's session.
Richardson recalled recent area flood damage and said when the city requested capital outlay money from the Legislature for reconstruction, "I want to be there for you apart from the immediate distribution (of money)."
The governor has also been involved in paving the way for federal and block grant funds for the area, he said.
Another recent disaster - an oil rig blowout - had an area oil field worker asking Richardson what could be done about rigs in residential areas. The mayor said the issue is being considered on both the city and county level.
Richardson said a moratorium the mayor had instituted on drilling permits was a "gutsy move."
-------- pennsylvania
Hear good news
By Mary Ann Thomas Contributing writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Pittsburgh Valley News Dispatch
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/valleynewsdispatch/news/s_190469.html
PARKS: The Army Corps of Engineers has found no new contamination at a nuclear waste dump along Route 66, owned by the Atlantic Richfield Co. and BWX Technologies.
After preliminary testing -- including samples from 10 trenches for radioactive waste -- the Army Corps found the expected levels of uranium and plutonium.
For more than two decades, the site has been studied by its owners and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
"There were no surprises," said Dilip Kothari, Army Corps of Engineers project manager for the Parks site, during a Tuesday night meeting at the Parks Township Volunteer Fire Department.
The Corps will continue to test the site, particularly surface and ground water throughout the year. The agency will begin work on a clean-up plan in June.
The actual cleanup is expected to last from August 2006 to October 2008.
The site, formally known as the Shallow Land Disposal Area, features 10 buried trenches cut into the hillside above what once was the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp.'s plutonium-processing plant in the Kiskimere section of the township.
NUMEC produced nuclear fuel for submarines and other nuclear products in Apollo and Parks during the Cold War.
Much, if not all of the radiological and chemical contamination occurred during the 1960s.
The Army Corps tests confirmed that the site is not harmful to the public as it sits today.
Air readings, monitored since last August, show levels below federal standards. Plutonium and Americium-241, a daughter product of plutonium, were detected in trench 10 and up the hill from the other trenches.
But the contamination diminished as the samples were taken deeper into the ground, according to Bill Duggan, a consultant with USR Corp., of Buffalo, N.Y., which was contracted to conduct testing by the Army Corps.
To better understand what contamination lies within the trenches, the Corps took 42 samples from the trenches, analyzing 13 samples of contaminated debris.
hey found uranium-24 at levels up to 20 times the allowable dose for the public buried in the trenches.
"All the results are consistent with expectations," said Duggan.
But residents are waiting for the Corps to test the groundwater, especially the water in a catacomb of abandoned coal mines beneath the trenches.
Some environmental officials have long worried that contamination is reaching the mines and, from there, could reach the Kiski River or groundwater.
Residents expressed concern about the timeliness of the cleanup as well as security issues and testing off site.
"I'm not going to be here long and I want to see this valley cleaned up," said Philomena Newhouse, 79, of Parks. Newhouse and Patty Ameno, a long-time environmental activist, requested additional testing at other sites around the Parks area for possible contamination.
Also, Ameno and other residents want security monitoring at the site.
"Anybody can have unfettered access to that site," said Ameno, "whether it's a foreign foe or domestic foe. And given the nature of our security these days, every ounce of prevention have to be applied."
The Army Corps plans to continue to address and answer questions from the public, said Dick Dowling, public affairs officer for the Corps. Ameno plans to meet with the Corps and public officials to further discuss the site's testing and cleanup.
"We want to get through this process," said Raymond Scrocco, chief engineer for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Pittsburgh District, "so the community can move on with its life."
----
Cancer on agenda Thursday
Pittsburgh Centre Daily
April 21, 2004
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/opinion/8482495.htm
The cancer epidemic we are experiencing in America today is very real and it is rare for one not to have a relative or friend touched by this tragedy.
In October 2002, the National Cancer Institute reported that contrary to earlier reports, breast cancer, lung cancer in women, melanoma, prostate cancer and colorectal cancer in both genders are rising.
Then, in January 2003 the European Committee on Radiation Risk, a group of independent scientists from many countries, including the United States, who had worked together for five years, released their report.
They concluded that from 1945 to 1989, there were 61.1 million cancer deaths, 1.6 million infant deaths and 1.9 million fetal deaths from internalized radioactivity from weapons tests fallout, operating nuclear reactors and military use of depleted uranium in missile cladding.
Nuclear reactors routinely release radioactive gases and liquids, some gases are radioactive particles and carry the same cancer-causing pollution as bomb testing fallout carried.
These reach our water and food chain by rainfall and snow and become part of our daily diet. This becomes internalized and sits in the body in our bone marrow, bone, tissue and glands, irradiating the body. This can result in illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.
This major cause of cancer must be removed in order to stop epidemic numbers of cancer and other illnesses.
The reactors must be shut down.
People Against Nuclear Pollution and Cancer, a recently organized group, will hold a public meeting at 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church activity center in Philipsburg.
Dr. Ernest J. Sternglass, professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh, and Dr. Judith H. Johnsrud, Sierra Club chairwoman, national subcommittee on nuclear issues, will address the cancer epidemic and the use of recycled radioactive wastes in household products.
The American Cancer Society has been invited to send a representative.
Virginia Southard Philipsburg
-------- vermont
Fuel Rod Pieces Missing at Vt. Nuke Plant
April 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Fuel-Missing.html
MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- Two pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod are missing from a Vermont nuclear plant, and engineers planned to search onsite for the nuclear material, officials said Wednesday.
The fuel rod was removed in 1979 from the Vermont Yankee reactor, which is currently shut down for refueling and maintenance. Remote-control cameras will be used to search a spent fuel pool on the property, officials said.
``We do not think there is a threat to the public at this point. The great probability is this material is still somewhere in the pool,'' said Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan.
But Sheehan said it was possible the spent fuel was mixed in with a shipment of low-level nuclear waste and ended up at a repository in South Carolina, or a facility in Washington state. He said it was also possible it was taken to a nuclear testing facility run by General Electric, which designed the plant.
The material would be fatal to anyone who came in contact with it without being properly shielded, Sheehan said. Spent nuclear fuel also could be used by terrorists to construct so-called dirty bombs that would spread deadly radiation with conventional explosives.
The NRC is helping plant officials in the search. The rod was part of the fuel assembly used to power the reactor. One of the missing pieces is about the size of a pencil. The other piece is about the thickness of a pencil and 17 inches long.
``It would be very difficult to remove this material from the site without somebody knowing about it,'' Sheehan said. ``It would set off radiation monitors.''
Sheehan cited the heightened awareness of the need to control nuclear material that followed the Sept. 11 terror attacks. ``We don't want this falling into the wrong hands,'' he said. ``This is something we would never take lightly.''
Gov. James Douglas, after speaking Wednesday afternoon with the head of the NRC, said he was ``very concerned'' about the missing fuel at the plant, run by Entergy Nuclear.
``This situation is intolerable,'' he said in a statement.
In 2002 a Connecticut nuclear plant was fined $288,000 after a similar loss. That fuel was never accounted for.
Vermont Yankee is located in the southeastern town of Vernon, on the border with Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The state's Public Safety Department and Homeland Security Unit also were notified of the missing fuel.
-------- washington
Hanford medical contractor files to block contract takover
04/21/2004
Associated Press
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D823EEQ81.html
The company that provides medical care to Hanford workers has asked a judge to block the winning bidder for the contract from taking over occupational health services at the nuclear site.
The Hanford Environmental Health Foundation has had the contract to provide occupational health services at the Hanford site for 38 years. In January, the Department of Energy announced that AdvanceMed of Reston, Va., had won the contract, which is valued at up to $96 million over 10 years.
HEHF protested the contract award but was notified earlier this month it had lost the appeal.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the company filed a motion in Benton County District Court asking a judge to intervene, arguing that for-profit corporations not controlled by licensed medical professionals are prohibited from employing doctors and providing medical services in Washington state.
The contract calls for diagnosing and treating work-related illnesses among about 11,000 workers at Hanford, where plutonium was produced for nuclear weapons during World War II and the Cold War.
Proposals for the contract have not been made public.
The Energy Department scored HEHF's proposal higher on the provision of services than AdvanceMed, but the latter had lower costs, HEHF chief executive Lee Ashjian said in court documents.
"Based on my experience with the Hanford work force, any significant cost saving would have to come from either decreases in staffing or decreases in services provided to the site workers," Ashjian said in court papers.
The Energy Department has told HEHF to start the transition of services to AdvanceMed.
AdvanceMed is a wholly owned subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp., which says it is among the top 10 defense contractors and the third-largest information technology provider to government in the nation.
HEHF has argued that AdvanceMed's for-profit status conflicts with providing occupational health care at the site.
The nonprofit HEHF was formed to provide occupational health care at Hanford and does almost no other business.
Computer Sciences Corp. declined to comment Tuesday evening, citing the pending litigation.
The Energy Department has been investigating HEHF after allegations that Hanford cleanup contractors have pressured the medical contractor to record injuries or illnesses as not being work-related. HEHF has denied the accusations.
Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com
-------- us politics
President Owes America Answers on Iraq
by Senator Robert C. Byrd
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0421-16.htm
Senator Byrd, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, delivered the following remarks regarding the continued lack of security and stability in Iraq. Mr. Byrd also addressed the claim made in a book by Mr. Robert Woodward that the President and his Administration shifted funds without Congressional approval from the war in Afghanistan to prepare for war in Iraq.
It is the poet T.S. Eliot who reminds us, as if we needed to be reminded, that "April is the cruelest month." How prescient his words ring this April, as we reflect upon the deepening crisis and the steadily mounting death toll in Iraq. This April, this month in which millions of Americans marked the holiest season of the Judeo-Christian calendar, has been an unholy nightmare for American military forces and American policy in Iraq.
April 2004, 11 months after the President proclaimed the end of major combat operations in Iraq, has proved to be the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq since the onset of the war more than a year ago. Major combat operations may have ended, as the President asserted nearly one year ago, but major combat casualties have not. The "Mission Accomplished" banner under which he spoke so confidently on a May 1st, 2003, has come back to haunt us and to taunt us many times over.
In the weeks and months leading up to the war, Americans were assured by the President and his cadre of top advisers . most particularly Vice President Dick Cheney . that we would be greeted as liberators in Iraq, our path to victory strewn with cheers and flowers. Those flowers, it now appears, are less like rose petals tossed at the feet of liberators and more like Eliot's mournful April lilacs . "Lilacs out of the deadland, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain."
April has indeed become the cruelest month. Memory and desire cannot supplant reality in Iraq. More than one hundred American military personnel have been killed in Iraq so far this month, the highest number of deaths in a single month since the beginning of the war. In all, more than 700 American military members have died in Iraq since the beginning of combat. Today, more than one year after the fall of Baghdad, America's military forces are being greeted in too many quarters of Iraq, not with flowers but with gunfire; not with cheers but with jeers, not as liberators but as oppressors.
In the harsh glare of hindsight, it is now clear that the President's preconceived notions of the war and the aftermath of the war in Iraq were profoundly flawed. Even the President's Secretary of Defense . one of the supreme architects of the Iraqi offensive . has been forced to admit that the battle has not gone according to plan, that the level of casualties, continuing so long after the fall of Baghdad, was neither anticipated nor planned for before the invasion.
And yet President Bush refuses to admit any flaws in his grand strategy to invade Iraq and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein without giving adequate consideration to the potential perils awaiting America in the seething streets and towns of post-war Iraq. Despite the fact that debate over the war in Iraq rages worldwide, despite the fact that the American occupation is reeling from unexpected opposition from the very people it was intended to liberate, still the President is hard pressed under questioning to come up with any mistakes he might have made in dealing with Iraq.
In his press conference last week, President Bush acknowledged "tough weeks" in Iraq, but he clung to his oft-repeated assertion that Iraq is mostly stable, and shrugged off the violence of recent weeks as the work of a small faction of fanatical "thugs" and terrorists bent on imposing their will over the popular will of Iraq.
In this assessment, I hope and pray that the President is right. For the sake of America's military families, who have had to bear the burden of the increased violence in Iraq, I hope that the President is right. I hope that Iraq achieves stability and security soon. For while Iraq and the world may indeed be better off with Saddam Hussein behind bars, alas I do not believe that an Iraq in turmoil is either a boon to the Middle East or an asset to the security of the United States.
Instead of reflecting candidly on the current challenges in Iraq, President Bush would prefer to focus on his grandiose vision for reforming the Middle East. In this he speaks in ideological, almost messianic, cadences as he paints a picture of Iraq as a central front not just in the war on terror but also in a battle of Biblical proportions pitting "good" against "evil."
President Bush is a man of absolutes. Either we stay the course in Iraq, or we cut and run. Either we fight terrorists on the streets of Iraq, or we fight them on the streets of New York or Washington. Either we support the President's policies absolutely, or we give aid and comfort to the enemy.
No, no, a thousand times no. Either-or propositions like those invoked by the President to describe the war in Iraq are nothing more than politically inspired slogans, like last year's ill-advised "Mission Accomplished" banner, designed to whip up emotions while masking the complexity of national security considerations.
Fighting in the streets of Iraq has not prevented terrorists from striking in Saudi Arabia or Bali or Madrid, and there is no guarantee that it will prevent them from striking again in the United States. Just this week, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge disclosed the formation of a federal task force to respond to heightened threats that al Qaeda will strike again in the United States sometime before the November elections. Significant events, including the dedication of the World War II memorial in Washington and the political conventions in New York and Boston, are among those viewed as prime targets for a new al Qaeda offensive.
This is the sobering reality. Osama bin Laden remains at large, and his minions appear to be multiplying, not diminishing. If anything, the war in Iraq has served as a rallying cry for anti-American and anti-democratic extremists in the Middle East and beyond. Sadly, given the distraction from the war on terror that the war in Iraq has proved itself to be, the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, when and if it comes, is likely to be an anti-climactic footnote to a widening and ever more deadly surge in international terrorism.
Despite the often invoked and patently misleading conclusion drawn by the Bush Administration, "cutting and running" is not the only alternative to staying the course in Iraq, especially when that course is fraught with disaster. Altering a flawed and dangerous course of action, seeking meaningful support from the international community, is another alternative, one that this President is loath to acknowledge but evidently more than willing to embrace in the face of the calamity that has befallen his own roadmap for Iraq.
For months, I and others have implored the President to return to the United Nations and to seek a greater role for the U.N. in the occupation, administration, and reconstruction of Iraq. Long before the war, we begged the President to seek the support of the U.N. Security Council before invading Iraq. Our pleas fell on deaf ears. This Administration was confident it could go it alone, with only a threadbare coalition of the willing to paper over its unilateral action.
How hollow that confidence now rings. In the face of disaster, in the face of mounting doubts among members of the coalition, the President has now been forced to seek shelter under the wings of the United Nations. The Iraqis have rejected every plan for transition of power put forward by the President's Coalition Provisional Authority. Our only hope left is that they will embrace a plan put forward by the United Nations, the very body that the United States spurned when the President chose to invade Iraq without the support of the U.N. Security Council. Irony scarcely begins to describe the current state of affairs.
The fact is, while espousing hard-line rhetoric and iron-clad resolve, this Administration has ducked and bobbed and weaved at every opportunity. In the Administration's ever-shifting explanation for the war in Iraq, the face of our enemy has ricocheted over the past 12 months from Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard to disgruntled Baathist dead-enders to foreign terrorists taking advantage of the unrest in Iraq to pursue their agenda of jihad to today's vague assortment of thugs and fanatics opposed to democracy for Iraq.
We hear the refrain: Stay the course. Stay the course. Exactly what course is it we are supposed to be staying in Iraq? The President failed to explain that to the American people at his press conference. How did we get from protecting the United States from the threat of weapons of mass destruction to the vague notion of fighting extremists opposed to democracy in Iraq? The President failed to explain that fact as well. Where were those extremists before the invasion? Why is it that they are emerging in force only now, a full year after the fall of Baghdad. Could it be that this Administration has created America's own worst nightmare because of its colossal arrogance, clumsy mistakes, and painful misjudgments on virtually every aspect of the war in Iraq?
These are not the questions of an unpatriotic or reckless opposition. These are not questions intended to demoralize America or hearten our enemies. Rather, these are the questions that a free and open society . the kind of democratic society we envision for Iraq . is expected to pose of its leaders. And these are the kind of questions that a democratic nation's leader is beholden to answer. Dogmatic admonitions and grandiose allusions will not suffice. In a democratic society, the people demand and deserve the simple and unvarnished truth.
So do the people's representatives in government. Congress also demands and deserves the simple and unvarnished truth from the Executive Branch. As a co-equal branch of government, as the body in which the Constitution vests the power of the purse, Congress requires the truth from the President. This is what makes the recent allegations in Bob Woodward's new book regarding the redirection of appropriated funds into clandestine preparations for the war on Iraq so disturbing. If the President, as alleged in this book, made the decision to wage war against Iraq and secretly spent appropriated funds to prepare for that war without prior consultation with Congress, then the letter of the law, the intent of the law, and the Constitutional power of the purse, have been subverted. This would be not only a very grave breach of trust on the part of the Administration, but also a very grave abuse of power.
I hope with all my heart that Iraq will emerge from the current chaos to become a free and democratic nation. I hope with all my heart that the sacrifices that America's military forces have endured in Iraq will be validated by reality, and not justified merely on the basis of wishful thinking. The path forward is not yet clear, but this I do know. President Bush led America into a preemptive war that was neither dictated by circumstances nor driven by events. He led America into a war of choice that might well have been avoided with patience and prudence. Would that we could read that "April is the cruelest month" without reflecting on the cruel and terrible toll that the war on Iraq has taken on America's men and women in uniform in Iraq during this sorrowful month of April.
It is said in the Bible that of those to whom much is given, much is required. Much is required of this Administration and this President with regard to Iraq. The American people expect answers, they expect a judicious strategy, and they expect a well thought-out military and diplomatic campaign. On all fronts, the American people have been let down. A President who wages war, and manages the aftermath of war, by the seat of his pants is not what the American people either expect or deserve, and that is what I fear they are seeing in Iraq.
The President, having blundered into this war in Iraq, does not have much time left to get the stabilization of Iraq right. We have spent our blood and treasure in Iraq, and it is now time . past time . to aggressively explore ways in which the burden on Americans can be mitigated. It is time to abandon the go-it-alone attitude established by this President. It is time . long past time . for the President to admit to mistakes made, to forsake his divisive either-or rhetoric, and to seek a way out of the deepening morass of Iraq with the full partnership of the United Nations, the region, and the international community.
President Bush needs to drop all pretensions that the war in Iraq and the battle for stability are going according to plan. Only by accepting the fact that a bold new direction is needed to untangle the mess in Iraq can this President extricate the United States from what is fast becoming a quagmire. It is time for the President to set aside his pride and to convene an international summit on the future of Iraq, composed of representatives of the Iraqi people, their Arab neighbors, NATO, and the United Nations. Then and only then will the Iraqi people be in a position to chart their own future with the help of the international community. Then and only then will the United States be able to relinquish ownership of the tiger it now holds by the tail.
America must alter its course in Iraq to deal with the volatile vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime. America must be prepared to fight terrorism wherever it rears its ugly head, and not be lulled into the false belief that attacking terrorists overseas will stop them from attacking America on its homefront. And above all, Americans must never be cowed into believing that questions are somehow "unpatriotic" or that presidents, even war-time presidents, are ever above answering them.
--------
War May Require More Money Soon
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28903-2004Apr20?language=printer
Intense combat in Iraq is chewing up military hardware and consuming money at an unexpectedly rapid rate -- depleting military coffers, straining defense contractors and putting pressure on Bush administration officials to seek a major boost in war funding long before they had hoped.
Since Congress approved an $87 billion defense request last year, the administration has steadfastly maintained that military forces in Iraq will be sufficiently funded until early next year. President Bush's budget request for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 included no money for Iraqi operations, and his budget director, Joshua B. Bolten, said no request would come until January at the earliest.
But military officials, defense contractors and members of Congress say that worsening U.S. fortunes in Iraq have dramatically changed the equation and more money will be needed soon. This comes as lawmakers, returning from their spring break, voice unease about the mounting violence and what they say is the lack of a clearly enunciated strategy for victory.
The military already has identified unmet funding needs, including initiatives aimed at providing equipment and weapons for troops in Iraq. The Army has publicly identified nearly $6 billion in funding requests that did not make Bush's $402 billion defense budget for 2005, including $132 million for bolt-on vehicle armor; $879 million for combat helmets, silk-weight underwear, boots and other clothing; $21.5 million for M249 squad automatic weapons; and $27 million for ammunition magazines, night sights and ammo packs. Also unfunded: $956 million for repairing desert-damaged equipment and $102 million to replace equipment lost in combat.
The Marine Corps' unfunded budget requests include $40 million for body armor, lightweight helmets and other equipment for "Marines engaged in the global war on terrorism," Marine Corps documents state. The Marines are also seeking 1,800 squad automatic weapons and 5,400 M4 carbine rifles.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, charged that the president is playing political games by postponing further funding requests until after the election, to try to avoid reopening debate on the war's cost and future.
Weldon described the administration's current defense budget request as "outrageous" and "immoral" and said that at least $10 billion is needed for Iraqi operations over the next five months.
"There needs to be a supplemental, whether it's a presidential election year or not," he said. "The support of our troops has to be the number one priority of this country. . . . Somebody's got to get serious about this."
Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Tex.), who returned from Iraq on March 23, said senior Army officers and contractors told him "serious problems" will surface this summer if Congress does not approve more spending by June. Without the additional funding, food concession contracts will have to be renegotiated and operations and training bases in the United States will have to be cannibalized to finance operations in Iraq.
"If one American soldier in Iraq loses his life because Congress and the administration were afraid of the political consequences of another supplemental appropriations bill, shame on everyone who should be a part of that process," Edwards said.
Some lawmakers said that if the administration stands firm against supplemental military spending this year, Congress may act on its own this summer to increase spending. But without Bush's lead, lawmakers say, it will be difficult.
Pressed on the funding issue yesterday at a Senate hearing, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz conceded that higher-than-expected troop levels are draining some military accounts, but he said other accounts remain in surplus and can be tapped.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was more equivocal: "We know that we have additional costs that we have to find funding sources for," he said. "We thought before that the services were identifying shortfalls that we could bridge. . . . I think we just have to assure ourselves that's still true."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a briefing that the Pentagon has a plan to boost troop levels beyond the 135,000 already in Iraq if commanders so request.
The strains are beginning to show. Last month, all four military services began spending money halfway through the fiscal year that they were not supposed to touch until July, a senior GOP Armed Services Committee aide said. The military has asked Congress eight times in the past few months for permission to shift $619 million to urgent combat needs from less-pressing programs, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) said.
Scrambling to fill its needs, the Pentagon last week diverted 120 armored Humvees purchased by the Israel Defense Forces to Iraq. Yesterday, the Army announced a $110 million contract for still more armored Humvees.
But even that will not be enough, said Robert F. Mecredy, president of the defense group at Armor Holdings. As the two-front uprising in Iraq began taking its toll last month, the company's O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt Armoring Co. subsidiary cranked up its Ohio defense plant, turning out 214 heavily armored Humvees in March, revving up for 220 this month, even building its own bulletproof-glass operation to augment faltering suppliers.
But by September, Mecredy said, O'Gara's funding from the Army will be running out. Mecredy arrived in Washington yesterday for a week of intensive congressional lobbying. To keep Humvee production at the Army's requested rate, he said, Armor Holdings will need $354 million more by Oct. 1, the beginning of fiscal 2005.
The top officers of Army Materiel Command began a major resupply review at Fort McCoy, Wis., yesterday to determine how to maintain operations in Iraq under increasingly strained circumstances, said Gary Motsek, the command's deputy director for support operations. The Army has worked through a serious supply problem with body armor, he said. And by next month, the command believes, a lingering short-supply problem with the tanklike treads of Bradley Fighting Vehicles will have been resolved.
But that is putting a further strain on the budget. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. is now churning out 50,000 steel "shoes" for Bradley treads a month, and will be up to 70,000 by June, Motsek said.
Other problems are being worked through. The backlog of rear rotor blades for Chinook transport helicopters has become serious, he said, with 24 Chinooks now grounded in Iraq. Pre-positioned military stockpiles in Kuwait are critically short.
"An alternative source of funding has to be identified," Motsek said. "We're going to have to be innovative, no doubt about it."
Bush administration officials have not wavered in their contention that money is actually plentiful. Dov S. Zakheim, who left his post as Pentagon comptroller last week, told reporters earlier this month that there may be a temporary spike in spending in the coming months but that costs would then steadily decline. By borrowing from military personnel, operations and maintenance accounts for the final half of 2005, the Pentagon may be able to bridge the gap, said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. But budget chicanery of that magnitude would be unprecedented, he added.
"Whether they can do that if the requirement is $50 [billion] or $60 billion remains to be seen," Spratt said. "It's no way to run a budget."
--------
House Argues Over Replacement Plans
Some Decry Delays On Continuity Issue
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28912-2004Apr20.html
There is discontinuity in the continuity-of-government movement.
What began as a unified effort to ensure that the Congress can carry on if disaster strikes has turned into an argument over whether lawmakers are moving swiftly and smartly enough to deal with the problem.
Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) yesterday accused House GOP leaders of dragging their feet in finding a legislative answer to the question of how the House would continue to function if large numbers of its members were killed or incapacitated in a terrorist attack or other devastating event.
Baird and Rep. James R. Langevin (D-R.I.) announced a discharge petition drive to force the full House to consider a range of possible solutions, including one by Baird that would allow governors to appoint temporary replacements for killed or injured lawmakers.
"We must not repeat the errors of September 11," Baird said. "We must not fail to recognize the urgency of our situation."
The two must gather signatures from 218 House members to succeed. As of yesterday afternoon, only Baird had signed, with Langevin planning to add his name, said Matthew Beck, Baird's spokesman.
Republicans say they have taken the problem seriously and suggest that Baird is unhappy because his own measure lacks support.
"This should be a nonpartisan issue," said John Feehery, a spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "Mr. Baird has consistently wanted to play politics with this."
At issue is how the country could quickly replace deceased House members whose seats constitutionally must be filled through time-consuming special elections. Another question is what to do about gravely injured senators, who can be replaced by gubernatorial appointment if they are killed but not if they are incapacitated.
The concern is that the loss of many lawmakers could leave the House or Senate without a quorum and unable to conduct important business such as authorizing military force and approving spending. If only a few lawmakers survived, the legitimacy of their actions could be questioned.
The House is scheduled Thursday to consider a bill by Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that would require special elections within 45 days if there are at least 100 vacancies in the House.
Unlike Baird's legislation, it would not require a constitutional amendment. And it "maintains the essential character of the House as the founding fathers intended" by ensuring that all members are elected, said Jeff Lundgren, the committee spokesman.
Langevin said 45 days "is too much time for the Congress to remain inactive." And while the bill has the virtue of requiring elections, it does not provide for primaries or leave enough time for voting by military personnel living abroad, he said.
Baird said the judiciary panel passed the bill on a party-line vote after Democrats complained that Sensenbrenner refused to allow a full debate. Such divisions contrast with the bipartisan spirit of initial efforts to address the continuity of government problem after the terrorist attacks.
In 2002, Reps. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) and Martin Frost (D-Tex.) convened a bipartisan group to examine the issue. That fall, an outside bipartisan panel , including former speakers Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), began a study as a joint project of the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution. In June 2003, the panel recommended that Congress pass a constitutional amendment directing lawmakers to ensure that the legislative branch could survive a catastrophic terrorist attack.
So far there has been little action except passage of a nonbinding House resolution urging states to speed up special elections for open House seats, said Norman J. Ornstein, an AEI congressional scholar who served as a counselor to the commission.
The Senate, spurred by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), has held hearings on a proposed constitutional amendment but "nothing has happened on the floor," Ornstein said. He and Thomas E. Mann, another commission adviser, backed the petition drive yesterday but endorsed no particular bill.
"It is time that this body, this House of Representatives, this Congress, assume its institutional responsibility," Mann said.
--------
Bush Draws Terrorism Law Into Campaign
April 21, 2004
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/politics/campaign/21BUSH.html
BUFFALO, April 20 - The banner behind President Bush proclaimed, "Protecting the Homeland." At his side were five law enforcement officials, including the United States attorney who prosecuted six terrorism suspects here last year. And for nearly an hour on Tuesday, Mr. Bush and the White House-picked group sharing a stage with him hailed the antiterrorism law enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11 acts, declaring that it was vital to protecting the nation.
"Those who criticize the Patriot Act must listen to those folks on the front line of defending America," Mr. Bush said with a glance at the police chief from the nearby town of Amherst, sitting crisply in his uniform two stools away. "The Patriot Act defends our liberty, is what it does, under the Constitution of the United States."
This was the third time in just four days that Mr. Bush had publicly invoked the USA Patriot Act. And it reflected what aides said would be systematic references to it in his speeches and television advertisements through Election Day, as this signature statute of his administration becomes a crucial part of his campaign strategy.
Never mind that the chief provisions of the law, which broadens federal investigative powers like the ability to wiretap terrorism suspects, do not expire until the end of 2005. Further, the provision stressed most by Mr. Bush on Tuesday - removal of firewalls like the one that barred intelligence agents from sharing information with criminal investigators - is supported not only by Republicans but by Democrats as well, including the president's probable election opponent, Senator John Kerry. There are even reservations within Mr. Bush's own party about some provisions, which, conservatives maintain, invite government abuse.
Yet with this evocatively titled law, Mr. Bush's aides argue, they have found a way to advance two of their chief lines of attack against Mr. Kerry: that Mr. Bush would be tougher than he in facing down terrorism and that the senator, who voted for the law and later came to criticize some of its provisions, is a "flip-flopper," as Republicans regularly describe him.
"It's a two-fer: he's wrong on the issue, and he's flip-flopped," said Matthew Dowd, a senior Bush election adviser.
"He's been pretty consistent that he's opposed it - since he voted for it," Mr. Dowd said. "Since he started running for president, he's consistently been against what he voted for."
In the process of this attack, Bush aides say, they will be seeking to drive a wedge between Mr. Kerry and those Democrats who are the law's most fervent opponents. In Iowa last December, facing a Democratic electorate pleased by his criticism, Mr. Kerry called for "replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time." Still, he has played down the issue since he effectively captured his party's nomination in early March.
Not coincidentally, Mr. Bush has wrapped himself in the Patriot Act at the very time that his own credentials as a terrorism-fighter have been under challenge in testimony before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. In his remarks here, the president referred specifically to a Patriot Act revision he seeks that would address a central criticism from the hearings: that government agencies are still not sharing information on terrorism threats.
Mr. Kerry's advisers accused Mr. Bush on Tuesday of distorting the senator's position on the law, saying he supported 95 percent of its provisions and had called for strengthening it in ways like toughening the ban on money laundering.
But Mr. Kerry has also urged repeal of provisions giving investigators, with judicial approval, a broader use of unannounced searches - a power that, critics note, could allow them to examine suspects' library records.
Mr. Kerry's spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, declined to say whether the senator would vote for an extension of an unchanged Patriot Act, or sign such an extension if he became president.
"He wants to improve the bill," Ms. Cutter said, adding, "We look forward to extending what works and improving it as well."
Using the law as a weapon against Mr. Kerry might prove fruitful for Republicans. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll published Tuesday found that voters, by 2 to 1, thought that Mr. Bush would do a better job fighting terrorism. A Washington Post/ABC News poll also published Tuesday showed that 4 in 10 respondents believed that Mr. Kerry "takes a position and sticks with it," compared with 8 in 10 who said the same of Mr. Bush.
The president's visit here to a state expected to be a Democratic stronghold this fall left little doubt about the power the White House sees in the issue. Buffalo is where Michael A. Battle, the United States attorney for the Western District of New York, who was on stage with Mr. Bush, prosecuted the so-called Lackawanna Six terrorist cell. Mr. Battle told the audience of invited guests that the Patriot Act had been crucial to his efforts to break the case.
Mr. Kerry, by contrast, has a bigger challenge handling the issue as he moves from appealing to a Democratic primary electorate to a general electorate. That has stirred some concern among Democrats, particularly as Mr. Bush turns a powerful focus on the matter.
"You get into nuance, and it's risky," said David Axelrod, a consultant who worked for the Democratic presidential campaign of Senator John Edwards of North Carolina. "The other side can pander. Terrorism is largely what is keeping Bush afloat now."
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Eleven African countries sign protocol to fight against small arms
NAIROBI (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421130201.evlahafb.html
Ministers and officials from eleven African countries on Wednesday signed a protocol aimed at reducing the vast numbers of small arms in circulation in their regions.
The countries from the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa regions and Seychelles signed the Nairobi Protocol for the Prevention, Control and Reduction of Small Arms and Light Weapons in the Kenyan capital and a ministerial declaration on the same issue.
"Now we are on a very important assignment for the sake of humanity and peace in our region," Kenyan Foreign Minister Kalonzo Musyoka said after the signing ceremony.
"It is a very powerful signal to the world that our region is determined to eliminate small arms and light weapons," Musyoka said.
In a communique released at the end of a two-day conference, the ministers and officials "noted with concern the continued problem of proliferation of small arms and light weapon in the region."
Once ratified, the protocol will oblige signatories -- Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, the Seychelles, Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania -- to take concrete action, including passing legislation, to back up earlier abstract pledges.
Even in countries without armed conflict, such as Kenya, small arms in the hands of criminals pose a serious threat to security.
Among other measures, the protocol calls on all signatory states to pass laws specifically outlawing the illicit manufacture, trafficking, possession of small arms as well as the falsification of their markings.
In 2001, the United Nations adopted a Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, which gave leeway for countries to explore ways to combat the problem.
--------
Britain to buy 64 Tomahawk missiles in US
LONDON (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421165032.fselxvao.html
Britain will buy 64 US-made Tomahawk missiles for use on Royal Navy submarines for a total 70 million pounds (105 million euros / 125 million dollars), the Ministry of Defence said Wednesday.
Under Secretary of State and Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Bach said the cruise missiles would be fitted with non-nuclear warheads.
Some British submarines already boast first-generation Tomahawks.
The new TLAM/Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles can be fired from the seven Trafalgar class nuclear attack submarines (SNA) which are already in service, said Bach.
They will also be fitted onto future Astute class SNAs once they are operational.
The Tomahawks are made by the Massachusetts-based Raytheon company, a world leader in developing defence technologies.
British submarines have fired Tomahawk missiles during conflicts in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.
-------- asia
US, Asians to take part in military exercise
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421201632.31khwqc9.html
Forces from the United States, Thailand, Singapore, Mongolia and the Philippines will take part in a military exercise in Thailand May 13-27, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
The "Cobra Gold 04" exercise, one of the largest in the Asia-Pacific region, will involve land, sea and air forces, it said.
The aim is to improve those countries' ability to operate together in a UN-sponsored peace enforcement operation as well as in humanitarian and disaster relief operations, it said.
-------- britain
Blair Steady in Support 'I'm There to the Very End,' Prime Minister Told Bush
By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28710-2004Apr20?language=printer
This is the fourth of five articles adapted from "Plan of Attack," a book by Bob Woodward that is a behind-the-scenes account of how and why President Bush decided to go to war against Iraq.
On Sunday, March 9, 2003 -- 10 days before launching war with Iraq -- President Bush was increasingly worried about the political peril of his chief ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"Do you think he could lose his government?" Bush asked Condoleezza Rice, his national security adviser.
"Yes," she replied.
"Would the British really do that?"
"Remember Churchill," she said, noting that he had lost his government after winning World War II. Though Blair's Labor Party had more than a 2 to 1 majority in Parliament, the defection of 150 or more Laborites would leave the opposition Conservatives with the temptation or opportunity to join the Labor defectors to bring down Blair's government in a vote of no confidence.
The president was very worried. He called Blair for one of their regular conversations. They explored the possibilities, which other countries on the U.N. Security Council they could get to support or at least acquiesce in a war. His last choice, said Bush, would be "to have your government go down. We don't want that to happen under any circumstances. I really mean that."
If it would help, Bush said, he would let Blair drop out of the coalition and they would find some other way for Britain and its 41,000 military personnel in the region around Iraq to participate.
"I said I'm with you. I mean it," Blair replied.
Bush said they could think of another role for the British forces -- "a second wave, peacekeepers or something. I would rather go alone than have your government fall."
"I understand that," Blair responded, "and that's good of you to say. I said, I'm with you."
Bush said he really meant that it would be all right for Blair to opt out. "You can bank on that."
"I know you do," Blair said, "and I appreciate that. I absolutely believe in this, too. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's good of you to say that," the prime minister repeated in his very British way. "But I'm there to the very end."
It was an extraordinary offer, confirmed by Bush in an interview in December. Had Blair accepted, the United States would have been virtually alone in launching the war -- with only a few thousand troops from countries such as Australia and Poland.
Blair Pushes U.N. Route
On the morning of Sept. 7, 2002, Blair left London on a transatlantic flight to see Bush at Camp David. The president had invited him to come for dinner and a three-hour talk on Iraq. Blair would be on the ground for about six hours -- an unusually short stay.
In Blair's conversations with Bush, it was increasingly clear to the prime minister how committed Bush was to action. But as Blair's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had signaled to his counterpart, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a meeting the month before, the message from the British in essence was: If you are really thinking about war and you want us to be a player, we cannot be unless you go to the United Nations. Powell also favored a U.N. resolution, and he knew this would add to the pressure on Bush, who absolutely had to have Blair on board.
Blair's style was to have ongoing debates with himself and his small circle of advisers, testing, searching, "weighing things up," as one of his advisers said. On Iraq, Blair had traveled several roads. "Look, if Bush hadn't been exercised after 9/11 about these issues," he told his advisers several times, "I would have been worrying about them, and I raised them with him before 9/11." The issues were terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and Iraq. For years, Blair had warned about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
Of the three countries Bush cited as constituting the "axis of evil," Blair was most worried about North Korea, and he believed Iran was close to developing dangerous WMD stockpiles. Iraq was at the bottom of the list for the prime minister, one adviser said, suggesting Blair was not at this point as driven about Hussein as Bush.
"Iraq is an American question," that adviser added. "It's not a British question. And it couldn't be anybody else's because no one else had the capability." Britain was not setting the military agenda, needless to say. It was out of the question that Britain would ever go it alone. "We couldn't have invaded Iraq."
Blair was keenly aware that in Britain the question was: Does Blair believe in the United Nations? It was critical domestically for the prime minister to show his own Labor Party, a pacifist party at heart, opposed to war in principle, that he had gone the U.N. route. Public opinion in Britain favored trying to make international institutions work before resorting to force. Going through the United Nations would be a large and much-needed plus.
After taking questions from reporters, the two leaders, with Vice President Cheney in attendance, sat down for a private talk. There was no specific war planning. The issue was political strategy.
Blair said he had to be able to show that he had tried the United Nations and sought a new resolution requiring the readmission of weapons inspectors inside Iraq. "He's there to make the case for a resolution," Bush recalled in an interview in December. He told Blair he had decided to go to the United Nations, and it seemed he would seek a new resolution.
Blair was relieved.
Bush looked Blair in the eye. "Saddam Hussein is a threat. And we must work together to deal with this threat, and the world will be better off without him." Bush recalled that he was "probing" and "pushing" the prime minister. He said it might require -- would probably entail -- war. Blair might have to send British troops.
"I'm with you," the prime minister replied, looking Bush back in the eye, pledging flat out to commit British military force if necessary, the critical promise Bush had been seeking.
"We want you to be part of this," he told the prime minister. Blair's resolve had made a real impression, the president later recalled.
After the meeting, Bush walked into the conference room where Alastair Campbell, the prime minister's communications director, and several other Blair aides were waiting.
"Your man has got cojones," the president said, using a colloquial Spanish term for courage.
The president recalled, "And of course these Brits don't know what cojones are." He said he would call the Camp David session with Blair "the cojones meeting."
As a practical matter, by agreeing to the urging of Blair and Powell to go to the United Nations to seek a new resolution, Bush had improved his position immeasurably. It meant that no matter what happened, as long as Blair kept his word, he would not have to go it alone.
An Absolute Political Necessity
Two months later, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1441 unanimously, 15 to 0, requiring new weapons inspections and declaring that if Hussein continued to violate his disarmament obligations, he would face "serious consequences."
The U.N. inspectors went into Iraq, but Bush became frustrated and angry at their lack of progress. In early January 2003, the president secretly decided on war, but he continued to pursue a diplomatic solution publicly.
On Jan. 31, 2003, Bush was scheduled to meet again with Blair at Camp David, but a mix of rain and ice kept them at the White House. Blair told Bush that he needed to get a second U.N. resolution. He had promised that to his party at home, and he was confident that together he and Bush could rally the United Nations and the international community.
Bush was set against a second resolution. So were Cheney and Powell -- a rare case in which they agreed. The first resolution had taken seven weeks, and this one would be much harder. But Blair had the winning argument. It was necessary for him politically. It was no more complicated than that, an absolute political necessity. Blair said he needed the favor. Please.
That was language Bush understood. "If that's what you need, we will go flat out to try and help you get it," he told Blair. He also didn't want to go alone, and without Britain he would be close to going alone.
"Blair's got to deal with his own Parliament, his own people, but he has to deal with the French-British relationship as well, and its context within Europe," Bush said later. "And so he's got a very difficult assignment. Much more difficult, by the way, than the American president in some ways. This was the period where slowly but surely the French became the issue inside Britain."
Bush called it "the famous second-resolution meeting" and said Blair "absolutely" asked for help. The new resolution, which would declare that Hussein had "failed to" comply, was introduced in late February, but the efforts to get other Security Council members to sign on floundered.
Pleading for Votes
On March 12, three days after he had declined Bush's offer for Britain to not use its troops in combat, Blair called Bush for an update on where things stood in the Security Council.
"If we don't have the votes," Bush said, "pull it down. We're through." He had had it with the resolutions.
"Would you try one more time?" Blair asked, referring to the key votes of Mexican President Vicente Fox and Chilean President Ricardo Lagos.
"Of course," Bush said. "I'd be glad to do that."
Bush called Fox. "Vicente, I'm insisting there be a vote tomorrow in the U.N. Can we count on your vote?"
"Exactly what's the language like in the resolution?" Fox asked.
"Vicente, we've debated this issue long enough. The security of the United States is on the line. I want your vote."
Fox said he would get back to Bush. Later, during dinner, Rice called Bush to say she had received a phone call saying that Luis Ernesto Derbez, Mexico's foreign minister, was now in charge of the Mexican policy because Fox had to go into the hospital for back surgery.
"Interesting," Bush said. He called Lagos -- a distinguished leader in Bush's view, so he was polite. No threats.
"Can we count on your vote?" Bush asked the 65-year-old Socialist leader.
"Are you sure it's time to bring up the vote?"
"It's time to bring up the vote, Ricardo. We've had this debate too long."
"But we're making progress," Lagos replied.
"That's only because we've got a couple of hundred thousand troops. If those troops weren't there, there'd be even less progress diplomatically. And Saddam Hussein could care less. Any progress you think is being made is illusionary." Bush then stated his predicament clearly. "And I'm not going to leave our troops there. They're either going to go in, and remove him, or they're coming home, Ricardo."
This was a sobering thought. For both practical and political reasons, bringing the troops home without solving the Hussein problem was unthinkable for Bush. It was similar to the position his father had found himself in during January 1991 with 500,000 military men and women in the Middle East. "We have to have a war," President George H.W. Bush had told his advisers several weeks before launching the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Once again a President Bush, this time with more than 200,000 troops in the Middle East, had put himself into the position where he had to have a war.
Bush asked Lagos, "Ricardo, what's your vote?"
No, the Chilean president replied.
"Thank you very much," Bush said.
Bush called Blair and described his talks with Fox and Lagos. "You have to consider these two conversations," Bush said. "This is not positive news. It's over."
An End to Diplomatic Planning
The next day Bush told his advisers he wanted to have a summit with Blair to show solidarity. In part it was to fill the void. War was certain, but the diplomatic circus hadn't ended. What could he do? He did not want to just sit around. But Blair's people were concerned about the prime minister leaving the country for even eight hours because of the Margaret Thatcher precedent: In 1990, she went abroad to a conference and was ousted as party leader when she returned. Blair didn't want Bush to give a speech or issue an ultimatum. He, Blair, had to pick the right moment to call for a parliamentary vote. It was Thursday, and any speech from Bush had to wait until at least Monday.
Whatever would serve the British, Bush decided. And on Friday there was another concession to Blair -- an announcement in the Rose Garden of a "road map" for peace in the Middle East that Blair thought should not be delayed until after the Iraq issue was resolved.
The White House proposed a meeting on Bermuda. But that was too far for Blair and too close to the United States. Another White House proposal was for Bush to go to London. Blair's aides balked -- the American president in London at that time would have been a provocation for massive protests. They finally settled on the Azores, a group of Portuguese islands in the North Atlantic closer to London than to Washington.
The summit's purpose, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said, was "to review this diplomacy as it's brought to its conclusion." It began on Sunday, March 16, and included Bush, Blair, Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar and Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barraso -- all supporters of a war.
In a closed-door session, Bush told the others that he was going to give a speech giving an ultimatum to Hussein to get out of Iraq with his sons within 48 hours. "That's what I'm going to do, okay?" Bush said. He wasn't consulting. He was informing. "So everybody knows," he added.
They turned to the possibility that France, Russia or some other Security Council member would introduce a counter-resolution to delay "serious consequences" and force a vote. That could be a real problem. All they could do, they agreed, was get on the phone and head off the undecideds, get their commitment to oppose a counter-resolution and vote no if necessary.
Blair stiffened. "If another country tried to introduce a new resolution for the sole purpose of delaying us," the prime minister said, "we'd have to regard that as a hostile act diplomatically."
This brought them back to the French, the guiding force of delay. "I'd be glad to veto something of theirs," Bush said. "Really glad!"
The diplomatic planning was over. "You know," Bush said, "we're going to, we have to keep planning for a future postwar Iraq, and we all agree on the five basic principles. Territorial integrity has to remain. We need immediate, we need to be ready with humanitarian aid to get it in there immediately to head off any food or displaced-persons crisis."
The United Nations would continue its oil-for-food program, Bush said. "We have to build an international consensus for Iraq, a new Iraq, at peace with its neighbors, and we'll go back to the U.N. for another resolution after the war. The U.N. can help with many issues but should not run the country."
He made it clear that the coalition would be in charge.
When the meeting broke up, Rice saw chief White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, who had come with Bush on the 4,600-mile round trip to the Azores so they could work on the ultimatum speech. "Do you have a copy of the speech?" Rice asked, and she handed it to Blair.
Gerson was a little bug-eyed. It was about as closely held a document as there might be. At the same time, Gerson realized that it could have a tremendous impact not only on American politics but also on the course of British politics because of the impending vote of confidence in Parliament. Gerson noticed that Campbell, Blair's communications and strategy adviser, was reading the copy and jotting notes.
The British wanted the speech to be more conditional, with the phrase or concept "if war comes" liberally sprinkled throughout. Though it implied war, it should not be a war speech. A kernel of hope for a peaceful solution had to remain.
Blair had to get home to tend to the politics of war and rebellion in his party. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. noted that Blair had been filled with both resolve and angst. It wasn't confident resolve. Rice thought it was very much touch-and-go about Blair's future. As she stood watching the British depart, she said, "Gee, I hope this isn't the last time we see them."
On Air Force One, Bush and Rice agreed it was now just a matter of managing the politics of the United Nations and not pulling the plug before Blair had his vote in Parliament. Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett, the former and current communications directors, joined them, and they went over the speech draft line by line. The British suggestions were acceptable, and Gerson went back on one of the plane's computers and carefully put in the changes.
After Gerson was finished, he joined the president and all the others who were about 10 minutes into the Mel Gibson movie "Conspiracy Theory." Bush loudly summarized the plot, and during the rest of the movie he made fun of it as fairly predictable.
Blair's Day of Reckoning
In a 15-minute call the next day, Monday, March 17, Bush and Blair, back in their respective capitals, coordinated efforts to make sure there was no counter-resolution. They agreed that the Russians would have to be talked to at various levels.
Blair said his prospects looked better, but it was still tough for him right now. "I think I can win," Blair said. "I'm concerned about the margin of victory. I don't want to depend on Tory votes. I want to win my own party strong. I know I'm not going to win them all, but I don't want the Tories to be able to say without us, you would have lost, and I'm working hard on the Labor Party to make sure I get a very clear solid majority of the Labor votes."
Tuesday, March 18, was Blair's day of reckoning. Even some of his leading critics called his one-hour speech in Parliament that day one of his most effective and passionate.
"In this dilemma, no choice is perfect, no cause ideal," Blair said. "But on this decision hangs the fate of many things."
At 1:30 p.m., Bush called Blair to say, "Tremendous speech."
"I know now I've got the votes to win the resolution," Blair said, "because the whip counters have been up all night working away. And the only question is the margin, but I'm confident."
They talked about the need to give Russia, France and Germany a way back into the fold.
Bush had never paid such close attention to a debate or vote in a foreign legislature as the one going on that day in the British Parliament. "What's the vote count?" he had asked a number of times during the day.
Finally, at 5:15 p.m. -- 10:15 p.m. London time -- Parliament voted. Blair won by 396 to 217. Though he had lost a full third of his own party's vote, the Tories -- and Britain -- had voted for war.
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
--------
Blair to Submit EU Charter to a Referendum
Policy Reversal Comes With Risk That Plan Will Be Defeated;
No Date Set for Vote
Associated Press
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28720-2004Apr20.html
LONDON, April 20 -- Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that he would submit a European Union constitution to a referendum, a significant policy reversal that launches a battle to define Britain's relationship with Europe.
"Let the issue be put. Let the battle be joined," Blair said at a raucous House of Commons session, as he announced Britain's first national referendum since 1975.
Blair set no date for the vote, but signaled it would not be held for at least a year, after national elections. The treaty must first be agreed to by EU leaders and debated in Parliament.
The proposed constitution, currently under negotiation in Brussels, aims to streamline decision-making in the European body, which is set to expand from 15 to 25 members on May 1. European negotiators are debating the role of a proposed EU president and foreign minister, and the shape of closer defense cooperation.
For months, Blair dismissed calls for a referendum and continues to say the treaty would not fundamentally alter Britain's relationship with the EU.
But his decision to submit the constitution to a popular vote is a high-risk strategy. Opinion polls suggest the outcome will be close; if the measure fails, it could delay or defeat the constitution, which requires ratification by all EU states.
The issue of European integration has bedeviled Britain for decades, brought down Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and caused divisions within all the main parties.
"It is time to resolve once and for all whether this country, Britain, wants to be at the center and heart of European decision-making or not -- time to decide whether our destiny lies as a leading partner and ally of Europe, or on its margins," Blair said.
Denmark, Ireland and Luxembourg have announced plans to hold referendums on the constitution. Several other countries, including the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Spain and Portugal, appear likely to do so.
Blair's about-face, the most significant since he came to power in 1997, follows months of pressure by newspapers and the opposition Conservative Party, which have claimed the treaty would undermine Britain's sovereignty over criminal justice, tax and foreign policy.
Conservative leader Michael Howard welcomed Tuesday's announcement, saying Blair had "at long last seen sense on this issue." He said the treaty, which EU leaders hope to sign in June, would mean "greater centralization, more regulation and less flexibility. It is the exact opposite of what Europe really needs."
-------- business
Ex-Pentagon Official Admits Job Deal
Civilian Got Boeing Offer While Overseeing Air-Tanker Contract
By Renae Merle and Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29053-2004Apr20?language=printer
A former senior Air Force official pleaded guilty yesterday to conspiracy, admitting that she negotiated an executive job at Boeing Co. with her daughter's help while still overseeing a controversial $23 billion deal between the company and the Pentagon.
Darleen A. Druyun, 56, is the highest-ranking Pentagon official to be implicated in a corruption case since the 1980s. After pleading guilty in federal court in Alexandria, she was released on a $25,000 personal-recognizance bond and faces up to five years in prison when sentenced in August. Her voice breaking, she stood before U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III and said she "would like to apologize for my actions, apologize to my family and to my nation."
Druyun, a civilian, was the chief Air Force negotiator in its plan to lease up to 100 refueling planes. She was at the grade of a lieutenant general when she retired and became vice president in charge of Boeing's missile defense systems in January 2003, after negotiations initiated by her daughter, a Boeing employee.
Druyun was fired last November with Boeing's chief financial officer, Michael M. Sears, who is under investigation in the broad federal probe of corruption and conflict of interest involving the aerospace giant. Federal officials emphasized yesterday that the investigation is continuing, and court documents make clear that other Boeing executives were aware of the circumstances of Druyun's hiring.
A Boeing senior executive, who secretly met with Druyun and offered her a job weeks before she recused herself from overseeing the tanker deal, was not named in court documents, but Druyun named Sears when asked by the judge with whom she was negotiating her potential employment at Boeing. Sears has not been charged and has denied any wrongdoing. His attorney declined comment yesterday.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said the incident should be an example to others. "This department is not going to tolerate people who don't abide by the rules and don't adhere to the ethics requirements and to the laws," he said.
Druyun's plea is expected to give a boost to critics who want an end to the "revolving door" in which Pentagon officials retire and take lucrative positions with defense contractors. The Pentagon general counsel's office is looking into whether the rules governing such movement are stringent enough and are being followed.
Druyun told Ellis that she began employment discussions with Boeing in September 2002 but did not recuse herself from making decisions involving the company until November of that year. In the interim, Druyun was the Air Force's chief negotiator on the tanker deal, which is currently suspended.
A Pentagon inspector general's audit, after Druyun and Sears were dismissed, found significant problems in the procurement process on the tanker deal. The deal, which has also triggered a Congressional probe, is expected to remain in limbo until several other investigations are concluded next month.
Druyun's job discussions were started by her daughter, Heather McKee, whom Boeing hired as a college recruiter two years earlier after Druyun called a senior Boeing executive for help finding McKee a job.
McKee sent the executive a series of encrypted e-mails negotiating her mother's potential employment and acknowledging that the tanker deal would make the discussions difficult. "It is the tanker lease that prevents her from talking to you right away," McKee said in a September 2002 e-mail.
But McKee went on to outline Druyun's requirements for a "COO-like" position that must "be challenging, tough, lots of responsibility. . . . Bottom line she wants to be able to make an impact in the company."
Druyun was already being wooed by Lockheed Martin Corp., the Bethesda-based defense contractor, but is "very interested in talking to us," the e-mail said. "She also mentioned that Boeing has her most admired quality: honest values."
In October, the senior executive took a private jet to Orlando and held a 30-minute meeting with Druyun in a private conference room at an airport. At the meeting, the executive offered Druyun a job as vice president and deputy general manager of Boeing's missile defense systems -- several weeks before she recused herself from making decisions impacting the company. Druyun's Boeing salary -- $250,000 plus a $50,000 signing bonus -- nearly doubled the top Pentagon pay for her position.
When the meeting ended, court documents said, the executive told Druyun: "This meeting really didn't take place."
The following day, the senior executive sent an e-mail with the subject line "Employment" to other Boeing executives detailing Druyun's offer and referring to the Orlando discussion as a "non-meeting."
Druyun and the senior executive conspired to cover up their discussions in the summer of 2003, according to court documents. At the time, some in Congress were questioning Druyun's role in negotiating the Boeing tanker deal and her subsequent job at the company. The criticism prompted Boeing to hire outside investigators to review Druyun's hiring.
When Druyun told the senior executive that outside investigators had uncovered e-mails contradicting their assertion that employment discussions began after Druyun recused herself from Boeing matters, the executive told her to "hang tough," according to court documents. The executive said he would explain that the e-mails reflected "pre-planning," the documents said.
Druyun did not acknowledge the truth to Boeing investigators until November 2003. Sears and Druyun were fired later that month.
"Secretly negotiating employment with a government contractor, at the same time you are overseeing negotiation of a multibillion-dollar lease from the same contractor, strikes at the heart of the integrity of the acquisition process," U.S. Attorney Paul J. McNulty said yesterday.
Federal officials have described Druyun's cooperation as a major step in the investigation. The case was investigated by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. "If you don't have integrity in the system, then what is the American public to believe?" asked Joseph A. McMillan, special agent in charge of the mid-Atlantic field office of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service.
Boeing tried to separate itself from the actions of Druyun and Sears yesterday but acknowledged the negative impact the controversy has caused. "We do not have a 767 Tanker contract with the U.S. government today in large part because of Druyun's and Sears' actions," Harry Stonecipher, president and chief executive, said in a letter to employees. "I can think of no more obvious example to underscore the fact that everybody at Boeing -- especially those who lead -- is responsible for upholding our standards of ethical business conduct."
As to whether other Boeing executives were aware of the employment discussions with Druyun, Boeing spokesman Doug Kennett said, "We're aware of the facts, and there are no facts that would support allegations of wrongdoing by other Boeing executives."
Druyun, who tearfully hugged family members as she left the courtroom, declined to comment after the hearing, as did her attorney, John Dowd. McKee, whom prosecutors agreed not to prosecute as part of Druyun's plea, avoided a question from a reporter.
The case remains a matter of "continuing investigative concern," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the chief congressional critic of the tanker deal. The court records "plainly indicate that the conspiracy to defraud the taxpayer and compromise the interests of the warfighter runs farther and deeper than originally suspected," McCain said. The Pentagon's inspector general is also reviewing Boeing contracts Druyun oversaw in her final months at the Air Force. The IG has already found in a contract Druyun helped negotiate that the cost of the contract to modernize 18 NATO Airborne Warning and Control System planes grew from $551.3 million to $1.3 billion but didn't include an independent cost estimate.
-------- iraq
Jo wilding diaries - april 21 - refugees
April 21st
Refugees
http://www.wildfirejo.org.uk/feature/display/116/index.php
"This is my honeymoon," Heba said, in the crowded corridor of bomb shelter number 24 in the Al-Ameriya district of Baghdad. Married just under a month, she fled Falluja with her extended family. "There were bombs all the time. We couldn't sleep. Even if you fell asleep, nightmares woke you up. We just gathered the whole family in one room and waited.
"It is better here than in Falluja. We hear bombs but they are far away and not so many. But there is no water in here: we have to go outside for water for drinking, cooking and washing ourselves and our clothes and we buy ice. There is no fridge, no fans, no air conditioning, no generator and only one stove for us all. We have to go to the garden for a toilet and that's a problem at night. Everyone has diarrhoea from the ice that we bought.
"Now I am a bride but I couldn't bring any of my clothes." As if there would be any privacy anyway, the 88 members of 18 families piled on mattresses in the long narrow passage from the door to the kitchen at the end, from where a stream of tea and sweet sesame biscuits is flowing, part of the commemoration of Heba's uncle.
He died 7 days ago, the day after they arrived in Baghdad. Heba's dad Rabiia said his brother died of sadness. Because all the family's identity documents were in Falluja, they were unable to get the body from the hospital. Rabiia met some friends, doctors who worked in the hospital, and they were able to help him get the body back after a day.
He sent two of his sons back to Falluja with their families yesterday and they phoned him at seven in the evening to tell him not to try to come back. Things are worse than before. They are trying to get back out of Falluja but all the roads are closed. His nephew tried to get back into Falluja today with his family but likewise found all the roads closed. "Now everyone in Falluja is in prison."
Their story is the same as thousands of others. Faris Mohammed, secretary general of the Iraqi Red Crescent, believes that about 65% of the 300,000 population of Falluja have left their homes in the recent fighting. Of these 200,000 displaced people, most are staying with extended family in Baghdad or elsewhere or have been given shelter by strangers with space to spare. About 200 families are homeless.
"We left because of the bombs.," Rabiia explained. "The kids were frightened, crying all night. We left on April 9th. Lots of our relatives had cars but there were problems getting fuel. We got all eighteen families together and then waited at the checkpoint. The Americans made us wait hours in the sun to exhaust us. The children were crying with hunger. Then the Americans changed the route we had to take and made us travel by a long side road.
We all arrived at different times - some slept in the cars at the checkpoint and arrived in Baghdad the next morning. They would only let through one young man as the driver with each car and only if there was no old man. Some of the families here couldn't get their young men through so they had to come by the river. There was no fuel, no water, no generators, no hospitals there, so families couldn't live."
His youngest son Mustafa is eleven and wakes up crying every night, saying there's going to be a bomb. Miluuk says it's not just their son: all the kids are having nightmares. Her brother-in-law's child as started sleep walking, asking to go back to his house. Two of Miluuk's daughters, Zainab and Maha, have decided to quit school. Maha has developed a blood pressure problem and a stomach microbe that was caused by the bad water.
A nurse called Hadil from Falluja visited them and gave them a list of medicines they need, a couple of injections for one of the women who's pregnant, some medication for stomach ulcers. He runs a pharmacy but has already donated all the medicines he had. Rabiia asked the Red Crescent for help but as yet they've had nothing. He built a toilet with his own money but there's not much left.
Miluuk's sister Sabriya teaches disabled people in the Shuala area. She never got married because of all the wars. "Wars eat your youth. When I was in college we made a census, boys and girls. There were about half girls and half boys but now there are maybe ten times as many girls.
"I can't explain to you. I feel hopeless. I don't know what the future will bring. I thought life would change, things would settle down, this war would be the last for Iraq. They said they came to give peace and human rights but now we're figuring out that that's not true. They don't understand Iraq so they make problems that lead to conflict. They said they would rebuild but they're destroying. Clean water and electricity would be enough."
The story is the same wherever you go. The women feel depressed, the children are distressed, people are trying to get back into Falluja and finding the roads closed; those still inside Falluja are trying to get out and finding the same obstacle.
Two men, two women and eight kids sat in one of the white tents of the new Iraqi Red Crescent camp set up for families fleeing Falluja. Forty families have registered but these two are the only residents so far because there's no sanitation. Unicef promised to provide it, according to Qasim Lefteh, the manager of the camp, but have so far failed to show up and sort it out. Meanwhile they've got permission to use the toilets in the school next door to the football fields they're living on.
Fifty eight members of the extended family left after aerial bombing killed several of their neighbours. "Two of my relatives died and I buried them by my own hands," Adil explained. "There is no way to the hospital so even if they are not killed, injured people are treated at home and there are no medicines so they die.
"Even if the ambulances tried to come, the Americans tried to shoot them. I saw the Americans shoot at a man and e stayed there from morning till night and no one could help him. the Americans shot at the ambulance. I could see them. They were on the tops of the buildings.
"Many times it happened. Whenever we saw ambulances the Americans shot at them. They even took over a minaret. They shot a family of women and children going to the market and killed them. A family of 25 people were killed when the Americans bombed their house. We saw a fighter plane firing rockets at their house."
Their house was in the Shahid district which was heavily bombed. The government hospital is in the same district and was not destroyed, as some reports indicated, but closed down by the American troops. There was a lot of bombing when they left and the aid which had come into the town couldn't be distributed. As they drove out they could see rockets being fired.
The kids were listless. Thirteen year old Sara kept giving me shy smiles and when the grown ups had gone, she came and sat with me, asked why. "Why did the Americans destroy our homes? This is not their country. Why did they invade our town? They made us homeless, to wander from house to house asking for help. Bombing went on all day and night and people sent cars from Bagdad to get the people who needed to leave." Her brother Hadil is only four but has already learned to hate Americans after he was playing with a toy gun in the street and the troops raided and searched their home. Sara was full of fury.
It took a while to score a smile out of any of the little ones. When the others went off to look at some of the aid that had been given, I started clowning them, blowing bubbles and making balloon animals. Hadil and Hamoudie sat wide eyed for a couple of minutes, edging closer, and Mustafa, little and in green. Hamoudie popped one first, his face transforming as the soap splattered on his face. The adults faces relaxed into smiles too when they came back and saw the kids dancing in the middle of clouds of shiny bubbles.
"If they open the roads we will go back," said Eman, Sara's mum. "Life here is miserable. The Red Crescent are nice to us but there is no work, even for the men."
The Red Crescent has been supplying food and medicine to Falluja since April 9th but decided to set up a camp for the hundreds of people fleeing. "We chose a site in Namiya district, about 7km south of Falluja but when we arrived to start setting up, the area was already a battle zone. We withdrew another 10km to a site 17km south of Falluja but then the battle spread to there too. When we returned we found some of the tents already burnt," Faris Mohammed explained.
"We tried to choose sites that were near the road but the problem is that sometimes in these situations the insurgents shoot at troops as they pass and the troops shoot back at the insurgents, so we decided to set the camp up in Baghdad instead, away from the borders of Falluja."
But he was adamant that the claims made about Red Crescent ambulances being used to move weapons and insurgents are false. None of our ambulances has gone missing and we have not been using them to move weapons. During the conflict we were the only Iraqi organisation with permission to go in and out of Falluja. There were no problems from either side until Wednesday, when we had supplies coming in from Dubai. We sent them straight to Falluja but the Americans sent them back saying each vehicle had to have specific permission 24 hours in advance."
When I got home Raed said the colour had come back to my cheeks for the first time since the Falluja trips. "I think you have been playing with children," he said. It's true. It did make a difference. The violence starts to pervade everything: Karlu and the other kids on our street were playing Hostages as we left in the morning, Ahmed holding one hand over Karlu's eyes and making sawing motions at his throat with the other hand.
And the news says there's more fighting in Falluja.
--------
Shelling Kills 22 Prisoners In Iraq 90 Others Are Injured;
Attack Motive Unclear
By Thomas E. Ricks and Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28981-2004Apr20?language=printer
BAGHDAD, April 20 -- Insurgents launched a mortar attack on the former Abu Ghraib prison outside the capital on Tuesday, killing 22 Iraqi prisoners and injuring more than 90 others. The U.S. military said those killed in the 18-shell barrage were either former members of Saddam Hussein's government or people involved in attacks on American forces.
Abu Ghraib, located about 20 miles west of Baghdad, has been converted into a U.S. detention center, with an estimated 5,000 detainees. While there was speculation that insurgents sought to provoke an uprising at the prison, the attackers possibly believed that large numbers of U.S. troops were housed in the sprawling facility, which is surrounded by high concrete walls. The area around the prison has recently been the scene of fierce fighting between U.S.-led forces and insurgents.
[Blasts early Wednesday at three police stations in the southern city of Basra killed at least 40 people, including schoolchildren, news services reported, citing witnesses and a hospital official.
[At one of the stations, four vehicles were seen destroyed, including two school buses. At least one of the buses appeared to have been full of passengers, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.]
Halliburton Co., a huge contractor in the reconstruction of Iraq, said on Tuesday that three of four bodies found earlier this month near the site of an attack on a fuel convoy, close to Abu Ghraib, were its employees. Halliburton and its subcontractors have lost 33 employees in the region since the start of the war, the Houston-based firm said.
Marines who had been stationed in the zone that includes the prison and other sections southwest of the capital have been replaced with Army troops, a senior U.S. Army official in Iraq said on Tuesday. U.S. commanders said that would free Marines to help pacify the embattled city of Fallujah.
The military said that Marines on patrol inspected the area from which the mortars were fired on the prison, but that the insurgents had fled. The complex is a frequent target of assaults by insurgents. In August, six prisoners were killed in a mortar attack on Abu Ghraib, once known as Hussein's most notorious prison.
In another development, seven judges and four prosecutors were named on Tuesday to try Hussein and senior officials of his government, said Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella organization for formerly exiled political groups. The appointments were made by the judicial committee of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council. No date has yet been set to try Hussein.
The cutback in the Marines' operating area reflects the persistent instability in Fallujah, a city about 35 miles west of Baghdad where Sunni Muslim fighters have mounted an unexpectedly fierce resistance to Marines who entered the city to apprehend those responsible for the killing of four American security contractors whose bodies were mutilated. The tactical realignment was an indication of how thin the U.S. military has been stretched by the unexpected rise in insurgent attacks in recent weeks.
Marines will remain in Fallujah, but responsibility for the zone southwest of Baghdad has been taken over by several thousand soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 1st Armored Division. That brigade was in Kuwait and on its way home when told recently to return to Iraq for an additional 120 days of duty. The sector includes a highway that is a major supply route for American troops.
The shift is part of a broader realignment of the 130,000 U.S. forces in Iraq aimed at responding to new security threats and the withdrawal of troops from other nations.
Marines were manning checkpoints in Fallujah on Tuesday, where Iraqi security officers and civilians who fled the city during intense fighting earlier this month lined up to return to their homes. On Monday, local leaders and U.S. officials agreed on a series of steps to reduce tensions in the city, including the return of residents, the resumption of police patrols and the handover of heavy weapons.
In Washington, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested that the United States would not accept an indefinite cease-fire in Fallujah and allow "thugs and assassins and former Saddam henchmen . . . to carve out portions of that city and to oppose peace and freedom."
Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate committee that the area was "very, very hot" and said that military force will likely be needed to deal with the problem.
[Marines in Fallujah came under attack by about 35 insurgents early Wednesday, setting off a heavy battle, news services reported.]
In the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb on Tuesday, the 100th American combat death in April, which has been the deadliest month since the war began in March 2003.
The senior U.S. Army official, meanwhile, also said that he wants to rely more on Special Forces to train Iraqi army and civil defense forces. That change comes after U.S. officials expressed disappointment with the performance of many Iraqi forces during the recent upsurge in violence. Several units melted away during that time, and have only partially regrouped. Most notably, a battalion of the new Iraqi army refused to move to Fallujah to set up checkpoints and perform other security duties to help the Marines there. It was the first time the Iraqi army had been asked to support a major U.S. combat operation.
Some Special Forces officers had been sharply critical of the approach to training. In the past, a Special Forces team began the work with Iraqi army recruits, who then were turned over to regular Army officers and finally to a team led by a Marine officer. The refusal of the Iraqi battalion to move to Fallujah came just a few days after that third transfer. Special Forces officers argue that the key in successful training is cultivating relationships with foreign forces, especially those under stress and with divided loyalties.
The reduction in the Marines' coverage area and the new emphasis on training by Special Forces are part of a series of adjustments being made by U.S. commanders in reaction to the fighting that erupted earlier this month and has shaken the U.S.-led forces.
In another change, the Army official disclosed that a series of steps had been taken to bolster the security of supply convoys. More soldiers are riding in civilian cargo trucks, more armored Humvees are accompanying the convoys, and security procedures have been tightened so that nearby Army units are more attuned to protecting convoys while they are nearby, he said.
Additional changes to the U.S. military posture here are still being studied, the official said. U.S. commanders have not yet decided how to deal with the withdrawal of nearly 2,000 Spanish and Honduran forces from central Iraq, he said. But one of the options being considered is keeping U.S. troops in south-central Iraq for the long term, which would represent a major expansion of the territory U.S. forces are responsible for here.
In another blow to the U.S.-led occupation, the Dominican Republic said late on Tuesday that President Hipolito Mejia had decided to bring the country's 300 soldiers home as soon as possible, the Reuters news agency reported. Spain has been leading the Dominican troops in Iraq and others from Spanish-speaking countries.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said Tuesday that he would order the withdrawal of about 450 soldiers from Iraq if violence continued to escalate, but he said a pullout was not imminent.
The military confirmed that U.S. forces on Monday killed two employees of al-Iraqiya, a television station funded and operated by the U.S. occupation authority, after they failed to heed warning shots as their vehicle approached a base in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
A three-person crew was filming police and civil defense checkpoints in violation of photography restrictions in such areas, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. Although the troops fired warning shots into a nearby river as the crew filmed, the crew then got into a car and drove toward the base, ignoring subsequent warning shots, Kimmitt said. Troops then fired directly at the vehicle, killing two occupants and wounding a third, who was also an al-Iraqiya employee. An Iraqi police officer in the car was unhurt, Kimmitt said.
The U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, had ordered "a thorough and robust investigation to determine exactly what happened," his spokesman, Daniel Senor, told angry Iraqi journalists at a news conference. With their deaths, the number of Iraqi and foreign journalists and employees of news organizations killed in Iraq in the past year -- by U.S. troops or Iraqi gunmen, or in bombings -- rose to 26, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Halliburton identified the employees killed in the most recent attack near Abu Ghraib as Stephen Hulett, 48, of Manistee, Mich.; Jack Montague, 52, of Pittsburg, Ill.; and Jeffery Parker, 45, of Lake Charles, La. One driver in the convoy, Thomas Hamill of Macon, Miss., was taken hostage.
The fourth body has not been identified, Halliburton said. Two soldiers were also reported missing after the same attack. Last Friday, insurgents released a video showing one of the two, Pfc. Keith M. "Matt" Maupin, 20, of Batavia, Ohio, surrounded by masked gunmen.
Correspondent Alan Sipress in Jakarta, Indonesia, and staff writers Fred Barbash and Josh White in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
One of the Rush-Hour Blasts Hit a School Bus Full of Children
April 21, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/international/middleeast/21CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 21 - Three car bombs exploded in front of Iraqi police stations in the southern city of Basra this morning, killing 68 people and wounding 98, the governor of Basra said. The deaths included 23 schoolchildren and 9 police officers.
The governor, Waei Abdul Latif, said he believed the attacks were the work of an alliance between Al Qaeda and extremists in Iraq. He said that the attacks had been simultaneous.
"The attacks have the hallmark of Al Qaeda," he told reporters in Basra, adding that he expected more violence as the June 30 date for the return of sovereignty to Iraqis nears.
In Falluja, United States marines were locked in heavy fighting, using helicopters and tanks, even as insurgents began to hand over weapons today as part of a deal that American officials and civic leaders hoped would lead to an end to the violent confrontation there. But skeptical American troops who inspected the weapons said the armaments were mostly old and did not reflect a true intention to fully disarm.
The Iraqi interior minister, Samir Sumaitey, condemned the Basra killings at a news conference in Baghdad.
"The terrorists want to lead Iraq down the path of darkness and chaos," he said. "The Iraqi government condemns this and is determined to find these people and bring them to justice and bring an end to this cancer that is invading the body of Iraq.
"Every child that has been lost represents the future of Iraq."
A fourth explosion today hit a police station in the nearby town of Zubeir, according to a witness in one of Basra's main hospitals, who was speaking to medics as they brought in people wounded in the blast.
One of the explosions in Basra today hit a school bus during the morning rush hour, according to Iraqi witnesses. Traffic was heavy around the police stations, situated in the center of the city.
Bodies of schoolchildren were burning inside the bus, witnesses said. Iraqis helped pick up bodies as ambulances rushed to the scene. Burned corpses were brought to the city's hospitals.
Hisham Halawa, a spokesman for British forces in Basra, said on the Arab satellite television channel Al Jazeera that British forces were unable to reach at least two of the police stations. Al Jazeera, quoting its reporter in the city, said angry Iraqis had pelted the British forces with rocks.
Iraqi police stations have frequently been struck by attackers who see them as allied with American-led occupation forces.
Officer Halawa said that some Iraqi forces were among the wounded, but that most of the victims were civilians.
Al Jazeera broadcast pictures of a charred corpse being loaded onto a pickup truck and of the smoldering skeleton of the school bus. Iraqi women shrieked and wailed at the scene.
The weapons handover in Falluja took place at a mosque there. An Iraqi policeman, Mohammad Khalaf, said that mujahadeen fighters pulled up to the building throughout the day and unloaded a hodgepodge of weapons from their car. The weapons were loaded into a small Mitsubishi pickup truck, and the truck was driven through an American checkpoint to a camp on the edge of the city.
"These guys listen to the clerics," Lieutenant Khalaf said.
At the American checkpoint, Iraqi police and civil defense units arranged the weapons in the sand to be counted. There were homemade rockets, surface-to-air missile launchers, machine guns, mortars and a roadside bomb made out of a car's shock absorber. Many of the weapons were damaged or rusty.
American marines on the scene muttered about the haul.
"This is one of these tests to see how stupid we are," one said, as the Iraqis unloaded the truck.
"This is an insult," said another.
"It's not serviceable stuff," said a third. "It's junk. It's rusty. This is not frontline stuff."
Capt. Paul Cushman sounded a more charitable tone as he surveyed the weapons, the first haul of what the Americans hope will be many more. "We have quite an eclectic collection of ordnance," he said. "They are trying, but they have got a long way to go."
The handover of heavy weapons is a cornerstone of an agreement between American officials and Fallujan civic leaders to try to end the the most serious fighting of the American-led military occupation. American troops have surrounded the town, but American authorities said they would not resume their offensive if the guerrillas turned in their weapons.
More hauls were expected on Thursday.
"This is probably not even a drop in the ocean in Falluja," Captain Cushman said. "But it is a start. Whether it is an honest step to peace, I do not know."
Meanwhile, inside the city of Falluja, the Iraqi police said clashes had erupted between American forces and Iraqi insurgents, killing six civilians. An American soldier at a checkpoint on the edge of the city said, "So much for the cease-fire."
The attacks in Basra came a day after insurgents fired 12 mortar rounds into the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, striking a camp in the sprawling interior where many of the 7,600 Iraqi political detainees are being held by the Americans. United States military officials said that 22 prisoners had been killed and 92 had been wounded.
The attack was part of a pattern of insurgent attacks on the prison, west of Baghdad. The attack sent American officials scurrying for explanations. One theory was that insurgents were seeking to create chaos to help other detainees escape. Another possibility was that the attackers were seeking to undermine Iraqis' already shaky confidence in the occupation authority's ability to maintain control.
That confidence has plunged after a month of turmoil, first in fighting at the Sunni stronghold of Falluja, in Baghdad, then in the uprising led by a militant Shiite cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, across a swath of central and southern Iraq. Many Iraqis, and even some American officials, have wondered at the worst moments whether the troops here would lose control.
American officials acknowledge that the situation remains volatile, dependent in large part on what happens in Falluja, 35 miles west of Baghdad, and in Kufa and Najaf, adjacent cities along the Euphrates where Mr. Sadr has made his stand.
In Falluja, events on Tuesday pointed to an American effort to begin putting into effect a deal reached on Monday between civic leaders, senior American officials and Marine commanders. As a first step toward a permanent cease-fire, 50 families who had fled were allowed to return.
Today, American military officials outside Falluja said that they had allowed a lot of families to return to the city but called a halt because of the fighting. Ambulances were seen going into the city, as was an aid convoy.
An Iraqi family consisting of a mother, three children and the mother's grandfather pulled up to the checkpoint in a pickup truck after having spent 12 days outside the town in an area called Zuba, where the family had taken refuge. The grandfather, Fadil Shamri, said, "We heard about a cease-fire and we are trying to get back home, but our house is in the Shuhada district." American soldiers said the fighting had taken place in Shuhada.
Iraqi civil defense officials were in a camp at the edge of the city getting ready to deploy inside, which is one of the points agreed upon in a deal intended to end the fighting. "By the end of today, 400 to 500 will get passes to go in," said Capt. Steve Poast, a Marine official at the camp.
Hopes that Falluja could become a model of "a city that understands what democracy is," as Dan Senor, a spokesman for the American-led administration said at a briefing, remained slim.
The American goal, defined in the Monday agreement, is complete disarmament by Iraqi insurgents and foreign fighters in Falluja.
--------
U.S. Generals Fault Ban on Hussein's Party
April 21, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/international/middleeast/21GENE.html
TIKRIT, Iraq, April 20 - Two American generals warned Tuesday that the occupation authority's policy of barring former Baath Party members, including senior Iraqi Army officers, from government jobs was self-defeating and breeding resentment against the American-led efforts in the country.
The generals stopped short of criticizing the policy. But their remarks reflect a growing anger and frustration among many senior United States commanders that the policy is excluding many of the skilled Iraqi professionals needed to help the country's political and economic reconstruction, especially in the restive Sunni heartland, even as American officials seek to broker a transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqis after June 30.
"There are a number of Sunnis who are very good, courageous and determined people, who, if given a chance, would be part of the solution in Iraq," said one of the generals, Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste, commander of the First Infantry Division, at his headquarters here in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces overlooking the Tigris River. "They would be schoolteachers. They would be engineers."
General Batiste also said there were a "huge number" of former Iraqi military officers who have been "completely marginalized" by the decision last year by L. Paul Bremer III, Iraq's civilian administrator, to disband the Iraqi Army. "These are proud officers with enormous energy and capability," General Batiste said. "If we harness their capability, it'd be a good thing."
In Mosul, where 60 percent of the city's 1.8 million residents are Sunni, the other general, Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham said, "I'd like to see a policy that deals with individual cases rather than have a blanket policy."
General Ham, who commands nearly 20,000 American and Iraqi forces in the north, said the "de-Baathification" policy has caused many Sunnis to feel "disenfranchised" from the emerging Iraqi government. "That creates a somewhat destabilizing effect," he said.
Of Iraq's 25 million people, about 2.5 million belonged to the Baath Party during Mr. Hussein's rule. After the fall of his government, Mr. Bremer and the Iraqi Governing Council decreed that the top three levels of the party membership could not be on the government payroll. More than 120,000 people lost their jobs.
Some were loyalists of Mr. Hussein's, but many others were doctors, nurses, university professors, and other professionals who argued that they had joined the Baath Party only to feed their families or advance their careers, not out of loyalty to Mr. Hussein. General Batiste said 70 Baathists on the faculty of a college here in Tikrit remained unemployed. "We need to draw up a list of those Baathists who must be held accountable for their crimes, but let the rest of the Baathists have a future in the new Iraq," said a senior American military officer in Iraq.
Administration officials said Mr. Bremer tried to ease some of the restrictions on former Baathists some months ago, but met with a furious response by the Governing Council members, especially Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile with a history of close Pentagon ties, who has taken a lead in the process.
At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said, "Most experts agree that the de-Baathification program went beyond what was needed to assure that the Baathist leadership was not maintained." He also noted that the United Nations envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, had said last week, "It is difficult to understand that thousands upon thousands of professionals who are sorely needed have been dismissed within the de-Baathification process."
Former Baathists can petition the council to be allowed government work, but General Batiste said that the process was long and cumbersome. The American military is taking some steps with former senior Iraqi military officers. Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American officer in the Middle East, has ordered that 500 experienced former Iraqi officers be recruited and placed in American units in Iraq, down to the platoon level, to gain experience to take back to their Iraqi units. They are to be closely vetted before taking up their posts.
General Batiste said he was also studying the possibility of enlisting retired two-star and three-star Iraqi generals to assist with military units, or to assume new political jobs, like sitting on a city council. He said he wants to recall retired Iraqi police academy trainers to help instruct the new police forces.
The problem for American commanders in the Sunni heartland is not just with re-employing former Baathists. American officials are battling a general sense of hopelessness that leads many young Iraqi men to take up arms against United States troops, out of anger or for hire.
--------
FACTIONS
Cleric's Militia Upends Shiite Power Balance
April 21, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/international/middleeast/21SHII.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 20 - The meeting signaled a change in the balance of Shiite political power in this inflamed country and a triumph, at least for now, of the Kalashnikov over the Koran.
It took place in the besieged holy city of Najaf last week, when seven robed men of the Shiite religious establishment sat in a circle on the floor of the office of Moktada al-Sadr, the young militant cleric they revile. Three of them were representatives of the grand ayatollahs collectively known as the marjaiah.
Seeking to prevent a pitched battle with 2,500 American soldiers surrounding the city - where Mr. Sadr had cannily barricaded himself while leading his Shiite militia, the Mahdi Army, in an anti-American uprising - the venerable spiritual leaders found themselves in a position of having to plead with him to open talks with the Americans.
"The marjaiah came to Moktada to negotiate," an aide to Mr. Sadr, Hazem al-Araji, said in a self-satisfied tone during an interview at his mosque in Baghdad. "Moktada did not go to the marjaiah."
That upsetting of the Shiite hierarchy, accomplished through the barrel of a gun, has potentially grim consequences for the American ability to control Iraq, particularly if Mr. Sadr remains at large after the standoff. But even if he is somehow silenced, he has shown that in this volatile atmosphere, the voice of Shiite radicalism can trump that of moderation.
Mr. Sadr, 31, has long been a thorn in the side of the American occupiers and of the mainstream Shiite leaders. But two weeks ago he ignited an inferno by tapping into the rising well of popular antipathy to the Americans.
Seizing his moment when the Sunni city of Falluja was raging, he mounted a coordinated assault on the Americans in Baghdad and cities across the south, creating a nightmare scenario for the Americans: a guerrilla war on two fronts.
The Falluja crisis has quieted down in recent days, and the occupation forces have bottled up Mr. Sadr in Najaf. But he remains a problem that the Shiite clerics have to deal with, a senior American military officer said recently.
"It's a Shiite problem," he said. "They have one of their own, a Shiite imam, very young, very mercurial, very incendiary, who has decided to attempt an overthrow of the traditional Shiite framework."
But by choosing to make his stand in Najaf, one of the holiest cities in Shiite Islam, Mr. Sadr has cast the war in the south as a struggle between the infidels and all Shiites.
Perhaps most boldly, he has challenged the authority and methods of more senior religious leaders, especially Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most respected cleric in Iraq.
The occupation authorities have regarded Ayatollah Sistani's moderate voice as crucial to helping them maintain control over Iraq, whose population is at least 60 percent Shiite.
Yet while he and the other grand ayatollahs of Najaf have decades of scholarship and peerless knowledge of Islamic law, they have nothing to counter the might of Mr. Sadr's private army. As a result they have had to refrain from openly denouncing Mr. Sadr, for fear of the Iraqi street turning against them and of a violent split in the Shiite ranks.
All this puts Mr. Sadr in a position to amass more power, "if he can avoid being arrested or killed," said Juan R. Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and an expert on Shiite Islam.
"The full extent of his organization and its support for him is now indisputably apparent," Professor Cole said, "whereas before a lot of people in the Shiite establishment dismissed him as a snot-nosed kid with a small bunch of hooligans around him."
Not only has Mr. Sadr's grab for populist power upset the clerical hierarchy, but it has also sidelined the Shiite political party that seemed to be wielding the most influence in the country, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
That party, led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a member of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, returned from exile in Iran after the ouster of Saddam Hussein and was carefully positioning itself for a leadership role in a sovereign state.
Mr. Hakim, a close associate of Ayatollah Sistani and a frequent critic of Mr. Sadr, has remained silent throughout the crisis. The Hakim and Sadr families have long feuded.
Mr. Hakim's party is also the only Shiite group besides Mr. Sadr's known to have a significant militia. It is called the Badr Organization and is estimated to have 10,000 men.
In recent conversations and news conferences, Mr. Sadr has appeared deferential to the authority of the marjaiah. In a sermon on Friday in his mosque in Kufa, Mr. Sadr said that he had "liberated the holy city" of Najaf and that he was ready "to hand it over," presumably to one of the senior clerics.
But the grand ayatollahs appear to be cowed by Mr. Sadr. Given the young cleric's association with violence, the marjaiah avoid publicly denouncing him, even though there is evident ill will.
"It's hard to talk wisely when there are people with weapons around," said Imam Jalaladeen al-Sagheir, a deputy of Mr. Hakim.
But the senior clerics are trying to quietly sway opinion against Mr. Sadr. An anonymous group calling itself "Najaf's intellectuals" wrote and distributed a flier in Najaf last week describing how a mob of Mr. Sadr's followers hacked a rival cleric to death last April. An Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for Mr. Sadr.
The inexperienced Mr. Sadr is the unlikely inheritor of the pulpit of his revered father, an ayatollah who was murdered with his two eldest sons under orders of Mr. Hussein in 1999. The explosion within the Shiite ranks is a carry-over of the rift that widened between Mr. Sadr's father, Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr, and Ayatollah Sistani in the 1990's.
The two men were engaged in a struggle to inherit the role of grand marja, or most senior cleric. Ayatollah Sadr, the most strident cleric to criticize Mr. Hussein, declared himself the champion of a "vocal" branch of the Hawza, the Shiite seminary in Najaf, and denigrated Ayatollah Sistani for belonging to a "silent" branch.
Ayatollah Sadr's teachings deviated from those of mainstream Shiite Islam. For example, standard practice states that worshipers do not follow the controversial rulings of a jurist after his death.
But Sadr supporters insisted that everyone remain dedicated to the ayatollah's edicts even after he was killed, according to Professor Cole. Consequently Moktada al-Sadr inherited unusually devoted followers - and a schism with the surviving ayatollahs.
"It's your responsibility to keep Najaf safe, so don't cause any bloodshed," the Hawza said in a written plea to the Mahdi Army on Saturday. "If you reject our advice and decide to fight, then go outside the city, where there are no people and no buildings. Don't make innocents suffer the outcome of your wrongful decision."
--------
General: Much of Iraq's Forces Have Quit
Wed Apr 21, 2004
By CONNIE CASS,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&e=4&u=/ap/20040421/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ap_iraq_terror
WASHINGTON - About one in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces "actually worked against" U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation, the commander of the 1st Armored Division said Wednesday.
In an interview beamed by satellite from Baghdad to news executives attending The Associated Press annual meeting, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey said the campaign in Iraq was at a critical point.
"We have to get this latest increase in violence under control," Dempsey said. "We have to take a look at the Iraqi security forces and learn why they walked."
The militia violence aggravated underlying troubles in Iraq's new military and police forces - the unfulfilled desire for "some Iraqi hierarchy in which to place their trust and confidence" and a reluctance by Iraqis to take up arms against their countrymen, Dempsey said.
"It's very difficult at times to convince them that Iraqis are killing fellow Iraqis and fellow Muslims, because it's something they shouldn't have to accept," he said. "Over time I think they will probably have to accept it."
The failure of Iraqi security forces to perform is significant because it could hurt the United States' overall exit strategy from Iraq, which is dependent on moving U.S. troops out of the cities and handing authority to Iraqis. Officials have said the U.S. military would delay its withdrawal from parts of Iraq until Iraqi forces were ready to take control.
In one example of the problems, on April 5, a newly created Iraqi army battalion of several hundred soldiers refused to join U.S. Marines in their offensive against insurgents in the city of Fallujah.
Dempsey maintained in the interview that popular support for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is still "very solid."
But he acknowledged "a form of descending consent" for the U.S. military presence occurring among Iraqis as time passes.
"There is a point where it doesn't matter how well we're doing, it won't be accepted that we have a large military presence here," he said. "We're all working very diligently trying to figure out where that point is."
Dempsey was asked about the remarks of two other U.S. commanders who questioned the wisdom of banning former Baath Party members from government jobs when their skills are needed in the reconstruction effort.
"History is going to have to decide whether that was right or not," he said.
Dempsey recalled receiving a warning from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah that the coalition forces would find it tough to bring order to Iraq after dissolving the country's only two powerful institutions - the army and the Baath Party.
"So part of me says our jobs may have been easier had we just found a way to keep some of the Baath Party in place," Dempsey said, echoing comments by Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste and Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham published in The New York Times on Wednesday.
But Dempsey added: "On the other hand, the entire part of the population that was disenfranchised during these 35 years, largely the Shiite population, absolutely has no trust in any former member of the Baath Party. So we found ourselves exactly in the middle of this."
On the security forces, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said he is sending Maj. Gen. David Petraeus back to Iraq to oversee the training and equipping of all Iraqi security forces, including those who had been the responsibility of the State Department or the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Dempsey said efforts are under way to ensure Iraqi security forces that there will be Iraqi authorities in place to back them up after U.S. troops leave.
During the recent militia attacks, "about 50 percent of the security forces that we've built over the past year stood tall and stood firm," he said.
"About 40 percent walked off the job because they were intimidated. And about 10 percent actually worked against us," said Dempsey, describing that group as infiltrators.
Dempsey commands the Army division in charge of Baghdad. He has been in Iraq for more than a year, focusing on intelligence gathering and combatting terrorism as he works to help Iraqi security forces take over those tasks.
--------
Tribunal arranged to try Saddam
April 21, 2004
By Louis Meixler
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040420-114749-9508r.htm
BAGHDAD - Iraqi leaders have set up a tribunal of judges and prosecutors to try ousted dictator Saddam Hussein and other members of his Ba'athist regime, a spokesman announced yesterday.
The announcement came as insurgents fired a barrage of mortar rounds at Baghdad's largest prison, killing 22 inmates and wounding more than 90. Saddam's whereabouts are secret, but some of his top aides are thought to be at the prison.
A U.S. general said the attack might have been an attempt to spark an uprising against the American guards.
Also yesterday, a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in the northern city of Mosul, the 100th Americancombat death in April, the deadliest month since the U.S.-led invasion began in March 2003.
Salem Chalabi, a U.S.-educated lawyer and nephew of the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), was appointed general director of the tribunal, which has a 2004-05 budget of $75 million, INC spokesman Entefadh Qanbar said.
The court and prosecutors will determine charges against Saddam and his former officials, Mr. Qanbar said. More judges will be hired for the tribunal.
The judges and prosecutors will undergo training in international law, war crimes and crimes against humanity, Mr. Qanbar said.
No date has been set for the trial of Saddam, who was captured by U.S. troops in December and since has been held by U.S. troops at an undisclosed location in or near Baghdad.
Most high-profile prisoners have been jailed at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison, where 25 of those wounded in yesterday's mortar attack were seriously injured, said Col. Jill Morgenthaler, a U.S. military spokeswoman.
"This isn't the first time that we have seen this kind of attack. We don't know if they are trying to inspire an uprising or a prison break," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt.
In August, six security prisoners were killed in a mortar attack on the lockup, which was once Saddam's most-notorious prison.
All of the casualties yesterday were security detainees, meaning that they were suspected of involvement in the anti-U.S. insurgency or of being part of Saddam's ousted regime. The prison houses about 5,000 security prisoners.
Iraqi security forces, meanwhile, began moving back into the besieged city of Fallujah under an agreement between U.S. officials and local leaders aimed at ending hostilities. The accord calls on insurgents to hand in their weapons and allows civilians to return.
U.S. officials have warned that if insurgents do not surrender their weapons, Marines are prepared to storm the city.
"If the peaceful track does not play itself out ... major hostilities will resume on short notice," U.S. spokesman Dan Senor said.
Announcements on U.S. military-run radio in the city called on residents to turn in machine guns, grenade launchers, missiles and other heavy weapons to Iraqi security forces or at the mayor's office.
Mr. Senor would not comment on whether any guerrillas had turned in weapons, but cautioned that "time is running out."
Fallujah was largely peaceful yesterday, and Iraqi families lined up at a U.S. checkpoint hoping to return home.
The U.S. military agreed Monday to let 50 families a day back into the city, but the lines at the checkpoint were so long yesterday that about 150 people had to be turned away, said Capt. Ed Sullivan.
Gen. Kimmitt acknowledged that U.S. soldiers fatally shot two Iraqis working for the U.S.-funded Al Iraqiya television station a day earlier, but said the two had been filming a military checkpoint in the central city of Samarra and had failed to stop despite repeated warning shots.
Cameraman Jassem Kamel, who was wounded, said the U.S. soldiers opened fire after the group finished filming police and security posts and were driving to film the city's spiral minaret.
"We were not filming. We were just driving in a normal car," Mr. Kamel said.
The deaths raise to 26 the number of journalists and employees for news organizations killed in Iraq in the past year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Mr. Chalabi's was selected to head the court that will try Saddam by a committee of the Iraqi Governing Council under a law passed earlier by the council and approved by top U.S. Administrator L. Paul Bremer.
Since Saddam's regime fell, about 300,000 bodies were found buried in mass graves, victims of his regime's persecution of political enemies, Kurds, Shi'ite Muslims and other groups, U.S. officials say.
Saddam's military also used chemical weapons against troops and civilians during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and during a Kurdish uprising.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon Vows to Continue Strikes
Israeli Says List of Targeted Palestinians 'Is Not Short'
Reuters
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28718-2004Apr20.html
JERUSALEM, April 20 -- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Tuesday that Israel would continue killing Palestinian militants, following the assassinations of two top Hamas leaders in the past month.
"We will not let up on them. We got rid of murderer number one and murderer number two and it isn't over, and the list is not short," Sharon said in a speech at the port city of Ashdod.
Sharon said Israel had U.S. approval for its strikes against Palestinian militants and its plans to strengthen West Bank settlements.
He said the understandings reached with President Bush "permit Israel to take care of its security, and as part of it, to take harsh action against the terror groups."
Sharon added, "The understandings also ensure our national interests, to strengthen the large settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], and leaving them in Israeli hands as part of a permanent solution."
Palestinian leaders have vowed revenge for the missile strike Saturday that killed Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the top Hamas leader in Gaza, and the March 22 killing in a similar strike of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the group, known formally as the Islamic Resistance Movement.
During a memorial service for Rantisi, Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader, dismissed Sharon's latest threat. "These threats will not frighten us," he said. "We are sending clear messages to Sharon: You will be defeated and removed from this land through resistance."
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians fired rockets and mortar rounds at Jewish settlements and an Israeli town, the army said.
In a separate incident around Beit Lahya in northern Gaza, Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians and injured at least 25 others during confrontations with stone-throwers, medics said. The Israeli military said the troops fired at a Palestinian who climbed onto an armored vehicle and at others who shot at them and detonated explosives.
Five soldiers were lightly wounded in the confrontations. Nine other Israelis have been wounded in mortar and rocket attacks on Gaza settlements since Sunday, the military said.
--------
Israeli Soldiers Kill 5 Palestinians in Gaza
April 21, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/international/middleeast/21CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, April 21 - Israeli soldiers killed at least five Palestinians today as the Israeli Army sent tanks into the town of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip in the second successive day of heavy fighting there, Palestinian witnesses and hospital officials said.
The attacks came a day after Israeli soldiers killed five Palestinians in daylong clashes in the same area.
Israel says it is trying to halt repeated Palestinian rocket fire coming from the area. Palestinian militants had begun stepping up rocket attacks on Sunday, a day after an Israeli helicopter strike killed Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, the Gaza leader of Hamas. Less than a month earlier, Israel killed his predecessor, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, in the same fashion.
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said on Tuesday that the "targeted killings" would continue.
"We got rid of murderer No. 1 and murderer No. 2 and the list is not short," he said in a speech in Ashdod, the Reuters news agency reported.
The killings today came after Israeli troops and tanks moved into Beit Lahia and surrounded a housing project, The Associated Press reported. Militants have launched homemade missiles from the area at nearby Jewish settlements.
As bulldozers demolished a building, gunmen exchanged fire with troops, witnesses told The A.P. The Israeli Army said its forces had come under heavy fire by anti-tank missiles and grenades, but no Israeli casualties were reported.
The fighting prevented some 4,000 residents from leaving their homes and prevented about 3,000 students from going to school, residents told The A.P. Some of the teenagers joined in the fighting, throwing rocks at Israeli troops, the witnesses said.
The clashes today mirrored fighting on Tuesday, when tanks and an armored bulldozer entered the Beit Lahia area and Palestinian youths pelted the vehicles with stones and firebombs. In Tuesday's clashes, Palestinians fired automatic rifles and tossed grenades, and the soldiers shot at armed Palestinians, the military said. In addition to the five deaths, about 30 Palestinians and 5 Israeli soldiers were wounded in the fighting, which involved hundreds of Palestinians in the dunes around the Palestinian town of Beit Lahia, the two sides said.
Three of the five Palestinians killed on Tuesday were teenagers, and they included armed fighters, according to Palestinian witnesses and Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Motasem Nasser, 17, was shot to death after he climbed on an Israeli armored vehicle, the Palestinians said.
Palestinians have been barred from entering Israel since Sheik Yassin was killed March 22. Palestinian attackers have not been able to reach Israeli cities in more than a month, though the Israeli security forces say they have thwarted numerous attempts.
Palestinian militants in Gaza, however, are able to fire homemade rockets at Jewish settlements inside Gaza and at communities just beyond Gaza's perimeter fence. Palestinians have launched 15 rockets since Sunday, and most of the fire has come from the Beit Lahia area, about a mile inside the Gaza border.
The Jewish settlement of Nisanit, on Gaza's northern frontier, has been the main target, but the militants have fired the rockets at settlements throughout Gaza. Over all, three buildings have been damaged and several Israelis have suffered minor wounds, the Israeli military said.
The head of Israel's military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, said Hamas was in disarray after the deaths of the two leaders. The general spoke at a closed parliamentary hearing, but Israeli Army Radio quoted him as saying that Hamas was in a "state of shock." Hamas was trying to obtain more financing from Iran and the Hezbollah faction in Lebanon, but Israel was working to prevent that, the general said, according to the radio.
Khaled Mashaal, the overall leader of Hamas, who is based in Syria, said the group would strike soon.
"Don't worry, the retaliation will come," he said Monday in a speech at a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus, Agence France-Presse reported.
-------- mideast
U.S. Goals for Middle East Falter
Peace Plan, Arab Reforms Prove Elusive
By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28873-2004Apr20?language=printer
A year ago, the Bush administration had a grand strategy for the Middle East, betting real progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and removal of Iraq's Saddam Hussein would allow the United States to launch a bold initiative for democratic reform across the region.
Today, Washington faces growing Arab backlash for endorsing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plan for Gaza and the West Bank, symbolized by the abrupt cancellation by Jordan's King Abdullah of a meeting with President Bush today. The U.S.-led coalition in Iraq is still searching for a formula to create a government to assume sovereignty on June 30, with other countries also reviewing their troop commitments. And prospects for the democracy initiative to get support from an Arab League summit are rapidly dimming, with fears that Arab resolutions may instead criticize Washington, U.S. officials say.
In all three areas, Washington is looking for direction, bailouts or leadership from others -- the United Nations, Iraqis, Israelis, Arabs and Europeans -- to generate movement that U.S. officials have been unable to achieve since the hopes were unleashed last spring.
"Our interests in the Middle East are more vital, more complex and larger than ever before, but our political capital has never been lower," said Walter Russell Mead, a Council on Foreign Relations fellow just back from the region.
Bitterness in the 22-nation Arab bloc has deepened particularly over the past month, Arab leaders warn, with Iraq deteriorating and Sharon's visit followed by Israel's "targeted killing" of Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi.
"After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it," said President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, a stalwart U.S. ally, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde published yesterday. "There exists today a hatred never equaled in the region."
"What's more -- they see Sharon act as he wants, without the Americans saying anything," Mubarak added.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell insisted yesterday that U.S. commitments on Iraq, a Palestinian state and democracy in the Middle East are unwavering -- and will eventually produce results.
"People will see over time that the United States is committed to the welfare, benefit and the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the Arab nations, and especially the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the Palestinian people," Powell told reporters in an appearance with Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher.
"I hope, as people understand that and see progress in all of these areas, the difficulties we're having with Arab opinion toward the United States will change," Powell added.
In a bid to shore up allied support on Iraq, Powell said yesterday that he had talked to the foreign ministers or leaders of almost every country in the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq within the previous 24 hours. "I'm getting solid support for our efforts, commitments to remain and finish the job that they came to do," he told reporters after a meeting with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana.
At the same time, the Bush administration is relying on the United Nations to complete a new plan to create a provisional Iraqi government next month, after two of its own proposals were rejected by Iraqis. Washington hopes U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will return to Baghdad around May 1 to begin a final round of negotiations that will result in the appointment of a new president, prime minister and two vice presidents by mid-May, U.S. officials say.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage is today wrapping up a tour of Gulf states to win support for the U.N. plan and seek Arab help to win over Iraq's Sunni Muslims, the main political holdouts and security challenge.
On the Israeli-Palestinian front, U.S. officials appeared to be rolling back from Bush's agreement last week that Israel could keep some West Bank settlements and that Palestinian refugees from 1948 should not expect to return to Israel.
Powell told reporters yesterday that Bush's position on the Middle East peace process "is unchanged," and that he "is committed to the proposition that all final settlement issues have to be resolved between the two parties."
But the reality, foreign policy experts and diplomats say, is that the administration has largely subcontracted its Arab-Palestinian policy to Sharon to break the deadlock on the "road map" for peace launched at two major summits attended by Bush in June.
"A year ago, you had the Sharm el-Sheik and Aqaba summits and a new Palestinian prime minister, and frankly a lot of hope existed at the time," said Nabil Fahmi, Egypt's ambassador to the United States. "But in terms of the peace process, we've moved backwards."
On the Greater Middle East Democracy Initiative, the Bush administration still plans on rolling out an ambitious plan for political and economic liberalization at three summits with European and NATO allies in June -- and making the Arab world part of the dialogue, U.S. officials say. "We are anxious to work with the Arab nations on their ideas for reform within the region," Powell told reporters after his meeting with Muasher.
But the United States is counting on approval from European allies to get that initiative off the ground because suspicion of U.S. motives is so deep among Arabs. They recently postponed the annual Arab League summit in part because of a split over two resolutions -- one endorsing regional reform and the other renewing a peace overture to Israel.
The summit is tentatively rescheduled for late May, which U.S. officials admit may be too late -- and dangerous in light of recent events.
"The big question is what will come out of it. We are hoping they will focus on issues important to us in a positive way, but there are also a lot of negatives that could come out of it," said a State Department official involved in Middle East policy.
On all three key planks of U.S. policy, momentum that was sparked by bold U.S. initiatives is now running against the United States, said Geoffrey Kemp, a Reagan administration National Security Council staffer and now a Nixon Center fellow.
"Whether you're talking about the situation in Iraq or the unilateral agreement with Sharon or the wildly mishandled democracy initiative, it's very hard to pick up a head of steam once you lose credibility in your overall stated goals," he said.
To regroup, Kemp added, the administration will need to "go back to the drawing board" on the tactics of stabilizing Iraq, promoting the logic of democracy in the region and promoting peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
--------
U.S.-Saudi Relations Show Signs of Stress
Reformers Labeled 'Agents of America'
By David B. Ottaway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28719-2004Apr20?language=printer
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the U.S. consul general here, waited outside a restaurant for evening prayers to end so she could enter. Suddenly, a Saudi religious policeman barred her way, pointing out that she was not wearing an abaya, the black cloak required of Saudi women in public.
She was a U.S. diplomat, she told him. He spit in his hand and rubbed it on the sole of his shoe. "This is what I think of your diplomatic status," he said, Abercrombie-Winstanley recounted in a recent interview.
Abercrombie-Winstanley, 46, an ebullient career diplomat, was undeterred. She began meeting with Saudi reformers who were impressed by stories of last year's encounter, which gave her a taste of the realities they face.
Last month, it was the Saudi government that tried to block Abercrombie-Winstanley's path, warning the reformers in Jiddah to stop meeting with her and other U.S. diplomats. On March 22, the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, delivered blunt words at a meeting of about a dozen reform leaders, according to two Saudi reformers who were there.
Disparaging the reformers as "agents of America," Nayef said: "The government is not weak and the United States will not protect you," according to one of them, who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name because he feared arrest.
Nayef's warning was one of the latest signs of friction between the two countries. The relationship has grown more tense since the Bush administration began in late 2002 to push for political, social and economic change in Saudi Arabia.
In a statement last month, Nayef confirmed that about a dozen reformers had been arrested on the eve of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's visit on March 19 in part because of their contacts with "foreigners," though he did not specifically mention Abercrombie-Winstanley or the United States. The Saudis also justified the arrests by citing the reformers' calls for a constitutional monarchy and an independent human rights commission.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the identification of 15 of the 19 hijackers as Saudis, testimony at congressional hearings has portrayed the kingdom as a center of terrorist financing and an extremist strain of Islam.
Tough new visa restrictions have also ended easy access for the thousands of Saudis who enter the United States every year. No new major U.S. military weapons deals have been announced. A plan for U.S. companies to play a major role in developing the country's energy sector has collapsed. The two governments are at odds over oil prices, Israel and the Palestinians, and Iraq, whose instability is a major concern here.
Officially, Saudi and U.S. spokesmen insist that all is well with the relationship. Both sides point to their increasingly close cooperation in the struggle against Islamic terrorists -- the CIA and FBI now provide raw intelligence to Saudi security authorities.
"The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States is not based on personalities. It's based on interests," said Adel Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler. "I don't think it's ever been as strong as it is now."
Powell, at a news conference in Riyadh last month after his meeting with the crown prince, also repeatedly described ties as "quite strong."
Yet in a rare discordant note, Powell and his counterpart, Prince Saud Faisal, publicly aired U.S.-Saudi differences over the arrests of the reformers.
"We have concerns when people who are trying to express their views and do it in an open way, and a democratic way, are unable to do so," Powell said.
Saud retorted: "These people sought dissension when the whole country was looking for unity and a clear vision, especially at a time when it is facing a terrorist threat. This is not the time to seek dissension."
A more ominous development was the failure of U.S. firms to win Saudi contracts in early March, the first time in 30 years that foreign companies were allowed back into the kingdom to explore for new gas deposits. Saudi Aramco, the largest state oil company in the world, signed deals with Russian, Chinese and European firms.
The Saudis initially intended to give Exxon Mobil Corp., the U.S. oil giant, the leading role in the deal, viewing the move as part of a larger strategy to revitalize the entire U.S.-Saudi relationship. But nearly five years of negotiations unraveled in June for reasons still being hotly debated -- the post-Sept. 11 chill, U.S. policy in the Middle East and squabbles over profit margins.
"I think this carries political implications as well as commercial implications for the United States," said Robert Ebel, energy program chairman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington.
These implications have become clear as U.S. gasoline prices have increased. Saudi Arabia was blamed for the higher costs, and the topic quickly became an issue in the U.S. presidential campaign.
No issue currently rankles the Saudi royal family more than the Bush administration's talk of promoting political reform. President Bush's latest plan, the Greater Middle East Initiative, is scheduled to be formally unveiled in June at the summit of the Group of Eight leading industrial powers in Sea Island, Ga.
"For 30 years, the U.S. worked to buttress the status quo in Saudi Arabia," Saleh Mani, a political scientist at King Saud University in Riyadh, said at a conference at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in late January. "Now it wants regime change. It's not the status quo policy it used to be."
During a visit to neighboring Yemen in late March, Prince Saud, the foreign minister, said that U.S. "ideas and proposals" amounted to "flagrant accusations against the Arab countries and people."
"These initiatives look good from outside, but they are malicious in essence . . . as if we are waiting to receive direction from abroad to look into issues concerning our citizens."
U.S. administrations have for decades worried that the Saudi royal family would not institute reforms fast enough to stay in power and fend off Islamic extremists and Arab radicals. The former U.S. ambassador to the kingdom, Robert Jordan, who left Riyadh last fall, expressed the concern that has haunted every U.S. administration since the 1960s. "They are making progress," he said in a telephone interview last month. "The question is: What is the pace going to be?"
Last October, the Saudi government announced plans to elect half of the seats on municipal councils. Since then, it has allowed the creation of a human rights commission and an association of journalists. And it is making changes in its religiously oriented school curriculum.
But it has not announced a date for the voting, and it has rebuffed reformers' demands to elect one-third of the 120-member consultative Shura Council. The Saudi defense minister, Prince Sultan, recently said that the royal family wanted to "select people who are efficient, educated and cultured" for the council, and not "people without proper qualifications."
Nayef made similar comments to the reformers last month. "The country is not ready for elections because the people will either elect tribal leaders or those who can neither read nor write," according to the account of one participant.
The restaurant encounter involving Abercrombie-Winstanley never appeared in the government-controlled press but quickly became the talk of Jiddah. She might never have met Mohamed Saeed Tayeb were it not for the religious keepers of Saudi public morality, known as mutaween.
Tayeb, an Arab nationalist, has been agitating for political reforms for years, which has frequently landed him in jail.
Despite his well-known anti-Americanism, Tayeb was so appalled when he heard about the consul general's misadventure at the restaurant in Riyadh in February 2003 that he apologized to her for the mutawa's behavior.
In December, Tayeb invited Abercrombie-Winstanley to his regular Tuesday night political salon, where as many as 70 Saudi intellectuals, academics, writers and businessmen of a reformist bent gathered to quiz her.
"There are lots of questions from Saudis" about U.S. support for reform, Abercrombie-Winstanley said. "Can we be trusted? What is it we want to do? I always with great sincerity say: 'It isn't for us to say what we want to do. . . . While we intend to be as supportive as possible, we can't just tell you how to do it. It's got to be appropriate for Saudi Arabia.' "
The king's son, Abdelaziz bin Fahd, showed up half an hour after she had left to defend the kingdom's record on reform. Abercrombie-Winstanley later heard that he said it was "inappropriate" for an American diplomat to attend Tayeb's political meetings.
On March 16, three days before Powell's visit, Tayeb was arrested and held for two weeks.
-------- mideast
U.S. sees Syria 'facilitating' insurgents
April 21, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040420-115628-7182r.htm
Syria is "facilitating" the movement of foreign fighters into Iraq and helping supply them with arms, according to U.S. military officials with access to intelligence reports.
The sources said the reporting has not been clear on whether hard-line Syrian President Bashar Assad is involved directly in ordering the aid. But they say he has much to lose if Iraq becomes a pro-U.S. democratic country.
Foreign fighters from Syria have become a major stumbling block to stabilizing Iraq and turning over sovereignty by June 30.
The bloody fighting in Fallujah, for example, is inspired, in part, by well-armed foreign jihadists who crossed the Syrian border and have committed some of the most gruesome attacks against Americans and their allies.
Officials said Syrian help includes facilitating their border crossing, arming them and allowing them to return for fresh supplies.
Asked how conclusive U.S. intelligence is on Syrian aid, one official said, "No doubt about it."
It is not clear, however, whether Damascus is actively organizing the influx. Osama bin Laden, leader of al Qaeda, has urged his followers to travel to Iraq to kill Westerners.
Publicly, the Bush administration has stopped short of accusing Mr. Assad's socialist Ba'ath Party regime of facilitating the terrorists' migration. But it has accused Syria of inaction in stopping the flow of foreigners along its 600-mile border with Iraq.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last week sent a strong message to Mr. Assad through the U.S. ambassador in Damascus.
"It urged Syria to work closely with the rest of the international community to promote a stable Iraq," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "It also made clear to Syria that it needs to control the transit of its border by terrorists and people supporting the insurgents in Iraq.
"It is a message that we have delivered to Syria in the past. What prompted it now, I think, is that it's an ongoing problem. It's something that we feel needs to be reiterated until it's taken care of, and it's not taken care of yet."
Mr. Powell said last week, "Our message to President Assad is that it is in our mutual interest to deal with this problem. It is not in Syria's interest to be seen as a base from which infiltrators can come across - come across to kill innocent Iraqis or to kill coalition troops."
Mr. Powell faces a decision soon on whether the administration will slap economic sanctions on Syria. Congress gave the White House that power last fall in legislation that condemns Syria's support for terror organizations and its occupation of Lebanon.
For nearly 25 years, the United States has labeled Syria a state sponsor of terrorism. Syria gives help to the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, a Shi'ite terror group set up and sustained by Iran, which also is accused of sending agents into southern Iraq to help radical cleric Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr.
Officials said Syrian agents are aiding the Iraqi insurgency because it is not in Damascus' interest to have a pro-U.S. country on its border. Mr. Assad fears that a free Iraq could spur a wave of democracy in his country, jeopardizing his rigid socialist rule, officials say.
Mr. Assad also realizes that Washington is limited in how it can react. The U.S. military is overcommitted globally. It would be politically difficult for President Bush to launch military strikes, thus opening up yet another front in the war on terrorism.
"The Syrians know America can bark a lot, but what else can we do?" said one military source.
The 1st Marine Expeditionary Force last month took over control of western Iraq from the 82nd Airborne Division. The Marines promptly committed more troops to the border area and have engaged in a series of deadly firefights in the border town of al Qaim and at other points.
The United States has also sent military personnel into Syria on reconnaissance missions.
"To stop the source, the Marines did put a very intense effort, and it still continues up there," said Maj. Gen. John Sattler, chief of operations for U.S. Central Command. "We had an extreme amount of success on the front side, meaning that we did find, fix and ultimately finish a number of cells that were out there, that were facilitating this type movement."
The State Department's yearly report on global terrorism states, "Syrian and Iranian support for Hezbollah activities in the south [Lebanon], as well as training and assistance to Palestinian rejectionist groups in Lebanon, help permit terrorist elements to flourish."
-------
Powerful explosions rock Saudi capital
April 21, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040421-075549-9506r.htm
Riyadh, Apr. 21 -- Nine people, including a senior police officer, were killed and 125 injured Wednesday in two car bomb explosions that ripped through Riyadh, reports said.
The blasts cut through the old general security headquarters and set it afire. The blast occurred near Saudi TV in the neighborhood of al-Nasiriyah, security sources said.
The dead senior police officer was identified as Col. Abdel Rahman Abdullah al-Saleh.
The majority of the casualties were Saudi security men. Three children were among the wounded.
An interior ministry source told UPI a car stopped by guards at the entrance of the headquarters detonated.
The bodies of the dead, one of which is believed to belong to the suicide bomber, were charred beyond recognition.
Witnesses said the blast produced black smoke that billowed over the neighborhood in central Riyadh.
Police and security forces immediately cordoned off the area as ambulances rushed to the scene.
-------- nato
Solana nixes notion of greater short-term NATO role in Iraq
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421202237.wvarseak.html
The European Union's top diplomat, Javier Solana, on Wednesday ruled out a greater role for NATO in Iraq in the near term, stressing the alliance's existing commitments elsewhere, and said he could not see which countries might be able to provide troops.
"I don't see the capability and the need for Iraq," Solana said in a meeting with journalists.
NATO already has a major involvement in Afghanistan, Europeans have responsibilities in Africa and the number of countries that could offer troops for Iraq "is very limited," Solana said.
Solana said that monitoring of Iraqi security forces, and their relations with the US-led coalition after the June 30 handover of sovereignty, was "an open question for me."
He said the answer should await the introduction of a draft UN resolution expected late next month to address the political, economic and security aspects of the transfer of sovereignty.
The security aspect is expected to stipulate how Iraqi and US forces are to be coordinated, and it is probable, said Solana, that the Iraqi authorities will ask the Americans to contribute to the Iraqi security force.
Earlier Wednesday, Iraqi interior Minister Samir al-Sumaydai said the Iraqi police would need coalition help in the early days after June 30, but stressed he would retain responsibility for giving "orders to the security forces."
Solana acknowledged that, with the situation on the ground worsening, troops deployed in Iraq "have to protect themselves. It's why the political aspect is so important."
Since late last year the United States has been pushing for a greater NATO role in Iraq where coalition forces increasingly have been targeted by attacks this month. Washington would like the alliance involved in patrolling Iraq's borders.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization so far has had only a small logistical support operation in Iraq, to back Polish-led multinational coalition forces.
Solana recently indicated a new UN resolution on Iraq would facilitate EU commitments.
Aides say there could be moves in police training and on the economic front.
NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has said that he sees "a great deal of support" for the alliance to deploy in Iraq -- but only at the request of the UN and a sovereign Iraqi government.
--------
NATO plans ministerial talks with Ukraine
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421165950.7ecj1tm1.html
NATO will hold informal ministerial-level talks with Ukraine in June, an official said Wednesday, stressing the importance of ties with Kiev.
"It's more or less confirmed. This is what we're planning for," said the official, commenting on reports that an informal meeting of NATO defence ministers with Ukraine is planned for June 6-7 in Warsaw.
The plans are firming up after NATO chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer visited Kiev this week and complimented Ukraine for being an "important contributor" to UN peacekeeping forces stationed in Kosovo.
"Ukraine has a very substantial body of people under arms, so it's an important political, financial and military issue," said the NATO official, noting Kiev's troop contributions in both the Balkans and Iraq.
Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that one day hopes to join NATO as it inches away from neighboring Russia, has hailed the recent expansion of the transatlantic alliance as a "key element" for European security.
NATO this month took in seven former communist countries, but Ukraine remains shut out.
Kiev has repeatedly voiced intentions to join the Brussels-based alliance, although it would require a massive overhaul of its ageing Soviet-era military in order to qualify, one which the country has been unable to afford.
NATO regularly holds talks with Ukraine on the margins of other ministerial meetings. The Warsaw talks will be the third such meeting after talks in Berlin two years ago and then Washington last year.
The alliance official said the meeting will officially be at "high level," but NATO hopes that many member states will send their defence ministers.
-------- russia / chechnya
Russia allegedly kills Chechen leaders
April 21, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040420-02745-8981r.htm
Moscow, Apr. 21 -- Russia has been accused of killing and capturing several Chechen leaders in recent weeks.
Last Friday, Abdul Aziz Gamdi, known as Abu Walid, a Saudi activist for the Chechens who had been blamed for the Feb. 6 subway bombing in Moscow, was killed in Chechnya when a bomb exploded as he was praying, the Washington Post said, citing a Chechen Web site.
In February, after the subway bombing that killed 40 people, Russian intelligence agents allegedly organized the killing former Chechen president Zeklimkhan Yandarbiyev in Qatar. The killers were arrested and are facing trial.
"Two weeks after Yandarbiyev's death, Russian troops killed Ruslan Gelayev, a well-known rebel general in a battle near Chechnya and later displayed his body on television," the paper said.
The two highest ranking Chechen rebel leaders, Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev, remain at large, the Post said.
-------- space
NASA, Russia Head Toward Showdown in space
The Soyuz is currently the only available transport to the 50 billion dollar space station languishing in orbit at taxpayer's expense.
by Irene Mona Klotz
Cape Canaveral (UPI)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/iss-04q.html
NASA once again is about to find itself in the unenviable position of playing mouse to the big Russian space cat called Soyuz.
Soyuz has been a good friend to the United States in its time of need, steadily keeping crews and supplies moving to and from the International Space Station while NASA searches for firmer footing from which to fly its space shuttles following the February 2003 Columbia disaster.
It is not that NASA has been ungrateful for the rides to space, and the Russians, presumably, have been understanding about a U.S. ban on the outright purchase of Soyuz and other space transportation services due to weapons proliferation concerns. Like a good partner, Russia has kept its Soyuz and Progress rockets flying to the outpost in fulfillment of station's contractual agreements.
The problem is NASA is not Russia's only space pal. The other customers for space transportation services also come to the bargaining table with checkbooks.
Dutch researcher Andre Kuipers, representing the European Space Agency, is the latest beneficiary of Russian space commerce, having reached the orbital outpost Wednesday morning for a week-long stay. Aspiring space tourist Greg Olsen of New York, is in training for a flight next April.
"The flight is confirmed," Rob Volmer, who represents Olsen's space travel agency Space Adventures, told United Press International.
Russia evidently wants to fly Olsen with another paying ESA astronaut.
"We are in negotiation with our Russian friends on two more flights: one in April next year, probably with an Italian ESA astronaut, and one in October 2005," ESA spokesman Dieter Isakeit wrote in response to an e-mail query from UPI.
That would leave one seat open for a Russian pilot on the April Soyuz transport -- and no room for a NASA on the three-person ship. Instead, the Russians propose to leave the next station crew, scheduled to launch in October, in orbit for a year and use the April ride home to return the visiting crew. Fresh Soyuz capsules are flown to the station every six months to serve as emergency escape vessels for the onboard crew. Returning crews -- or, in this case, tourists -- fly home aboard the Soyuz capsule that has reached its six-month design lifetime.
NASA opted to call Russia's hand. Michael Kostelnik, the agency's deputy associate administrator for spaceflight, sent a letter to Rosaviakosmos, the Russian space agency, explaining NASA was not yet ready to keep the October-bound Expedition 10 crew in space for a year. The agency said there is not adequate equipment aboard for crews to use to counteract the negative medical effects of extended stays in weightlessness.
"We're not saying 'no,'" spokesman Allard Beutel told UPI. "We're saying 'not yet.'"
NASA tried that rationale three years ago when Russia wanted to fly tourist Dennis Tito to the outpost. In a bitter and losing argument, NASA said the station was not yet ready to receive visitors. Russia flew Tito anyway, leaving NASA only a face-saving move shortly before liftoff -- granting Tito access to the U.S. segments after Russia agreed to develop and abide by future guidelines for spaceflight participants.
Though Russia theoretically remains bound by that agreement, the threat of NASA nixing paying tourist and ESA visits to the station doesn't seem to have much steam. With its shuttle fleet grounded for at least another year, NASA must choose its battles wisely. Furthermore, on the issue of extending station mission duration, NASA may not have a choice.
As the new station crew and the visiting ESA astronaut settled aboard the space station early Wednesday, Yuri Semenov, head of Russia's powerful space conglomerate Energia, told reporters in Moscow the next mission of station crew should be extended to one year.
"We have a very strong position that the next crew needs to be flying for a longer duration flight onboard the station," Semenov said through a translator. "We just heard (NASA is) not ready. We think that we are ready, hardware-wise, and so that's our position. Based on that position, we are going to prepare our vehicles and our hardware."
Even if NASA is able to keep the shuttle on scheduled for a March 2005 return to flight, its first two post-Columbia missions will not include station crew rotations, Beutel said.
Also complicating the issue is the 2006 completion of Russia's contractual obligations to supply launch services and emergency escape ships to the station. With its own escape ships still in the planning phase, NASA is dependent on Russia to continue supplying Soyuz vehicles for the foreseeable future. It also must find a way to do so without outright purchases, which have been banned by Congress under the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000.
Last, NASA's contention that astronauts are not yet ready for year-long stays in space pales in face of Russian facts: Four cosmonauts already have spent a year or more in orbit, apparently without long-lasting ill-effects.
It appears the wobbly legs on which NASA needs to focus are not those of its returning astronauts, but the foundations -- and the stark realities -- of its space partnerships.
-------- spies
WASHINGTON MEMO In the Real Reality TV, the C.I.A.'s Chief Is the Survivor
April 21, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/politics/21TENE.html
WASHINGTON, April 20 - As director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet has spent much of the last six weeks being sharply questioned on Capitol Hill and before the Sept. 11 commission about failures on his watch.
Not only did the Central Intelligence Agency miss opportunities to detect the Sept. 11 plot, Mr. Tenet has now acknowledged, but it also badly overstated the case for Iraq's possession of illicit weapons - a "slam dunk," Mr. Tenet is reported to have assured President Bush.
And yet, Mr. Tenet is emerging as something of a case study of a political survivor in the capital, where few officials within the administration or in Congress predict that he is in any danger of losing his job - at least anytime soon. Mr. Tenet, the only senior official from the Clinton administration to be held over by President Bush, has proven his resiliency, and his success at restoring morale in the C.I.A. has won him many admirers within the administration and on Capitol Hill.
In an election year, it is widely seen as unlikely that Mr. Bush would jettison any senior member of his team until a possible second term. Most important, perhaps, Mr. Tenet retains the support of top Democrats, including senior members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, who argue that he has done a good job at addressing the agency's many problems.
"I think he should acknowledge mistakes on his watch," Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a telephone interview. "But if you're asking whether the bloody head needs to be on the carpet, I don't know what that would accomplish."
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said, "George Tenet has done a lot better job than people are giving him credit for, and a lot of the problems came from both below and above him."
Even so, people close to Mr. Tenet say he has not found it easy to weather the storm.
Mr. Tenet is the second-longest-serving intelligence chief in the country's history, with a tenure that will reach seven years in July, rivaling only Allen W. Dulles for longevity. And yet in three public sessions since early March, two of them before the Sept. 11 commission, and in at least as many closed sessions on Capitol Hill, he has found himself interrogated about failures that some critics portray as egregious.
Mr. Dulles, who was named to the post by President Dwight Eisenhower, resigned in November 1961, under President John F. Kennedy, after being implicated in the C.I.A.'s failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs seven months earlier. While there has been no sign that Mr. Tenet might be similarly dispatched, he does have many critics.
Among those who have called on Mr. Tenet to step down are Senators Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, and Bob Graham, Democrat of Florida, who until last year were chairman and vice chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.
A spokesman for Senator Graham, Paul Anderson, said on Tuesday that the senator still believed that Mr. Tenet should be replaced, and that he had complained that Mr. Bush had yet to hold anyone accountable for intelligence failures either on Iraq or the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Both the Senate intelligence committee and the independent commission on the Sept. 11 attacks are expected to issue reports highly critical of the agency's performance.
Last week, Bush administration officials signaled that the White House might try to pre-empt the commission's report this summer by recommending an overhaul that might restructure the intelligence community, perhaps by proposing the creation of a director of national intelligence with more power than Mr. Tenet now has. Such a change would require legislation, however, and is regarded as unlikely to win Congressional approval in what is shaping up as an abbreviated legislative session because of the election year.
Mr. Tenet, who left Washington this week for a long-planned vacation, has made little secret that he is looking forward to leaving his job, probably in November.
"The smart money is on his not being on the job on Jan. 21," an intelligence official said.
Mr. Tenet's declaration, in a December 2002 meeting with Mr. Bush, that evidence about Iraq's illicit weapons added up to a "slam dunk" is reported in "Plan of Attack," the new book by Bob Woodward, and it has not been contradicted by intelligence officials.
In Mr. Woodward's account, Mr. Tenet made the statement as a rejoinder to Mr. Bush, who had criticized as inadequate a C.I.A. briefing that was intended as a dress rehearsal for a more public presentation by the administration of the case for going to war against Iraq. Mr. Bush was quoted in the book as expressing disbelief at the thinness of the evidence in the C.I.A. briefing.
An intelligence official said Mr. Tenet had not been defending the presentation, but had simply been reflecting the conclusions reached two months earlier in a National Intelligence Estimate that said Iraq possessed both chemical and biological weapons. No such weapons have been found in Iraq since the American invasion last March. Mr. Tenet has acknowledged that the agency's assessment may have been mistaken, although he has also said that any final judgment would be premature because the search continues.
In a post-Sept. 11 era in which the C.I.A.'s attention has been fixed on the war on terrorism, Mr. Tenet likes to say that a regular 5 p.m. strategy session on that issue that he convenes five days a week may be the most important meeting held in Washington each day. He begins his day most mornings at the White House, sitting in on Mr. Bush's daily intelligence briefing.
Anthony Lake, President Bill Clinton's national security adviser, and at one point his choice to become intelligence chief, said in a telephone interview that he was concerned about the extent to which the attention being focused on intelligence failures on Sept. 11 and Iraq was interfering with more urgent work.
"This is the first war in our history in which the Congress and the nation have been convulsed with looking backward instead of looking forward," Mr. Lake said.
-------- un
U.N. Team to Offer U.S. Relief in Securing Haiti
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28875-2004Apr20.html
UNITED NATIONS, April 20 -- U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called Tuesday for establishment of a force of 6,700 U.N. troops to relieve a U.S.-led multinational mission that has maintained security in Haiti since the Feb. 29 departure of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Annan said in a 33-page report to the U.N. Security Council that the U.S.-led force of 3,600 troops would transfer authority to the United Nations by June 1. The arrangement sets the stage for the United Nations' second attempt at nation-building in the troubled island country in more than a decade.
A senior Bush administration official said that some of the troops serving in the current multinational force, which includes French, Chilean and Canadian soldiers, would "stay on in some capacity" under U.N. command. He said that "no decision had been made" to keep U.S. troops in the country. Still, he added, "we expect no slippage in the timing of the handoff."
The new U.N. mission would have a broad mandate, providing security for humanitarian aid givers and restoring stability as Haiti prepares for national elections by the end of 2005. It would also oversee the disarmament of gangs and help establish a national police force of 10,000 officers.
The report represented Annan's sharpest criticism of Aristide to date, charging that he failed to advance the cause of democracy during his tenure and contributed to lawlessness and a flourishing drug trade.
Aristide formed a destructive alliance with armed groups known as chimères to maintain his grip on power, Annan said. In return, "these armed groups received financial assistance and were given a free hand to intimidate political opponents . . . and to engage in organized crime, including narcotics trade," Annan said.
Annan indicated that Aristide, who was overthrown in a 1991 military coup, had committed a fatal mistake by disbanding the army in 1995 after his return to power. He said that Aristide had failed to take steps to integrate the soldiers into civilian life or to preserve their military pensions, planting "the seeds for future civil unrest."
Haiti continues to be plagued by violence under a transitional government. Many armed insurgents who fought to depose Aristide have "turned to banditry and other criminal activities," Annan said. "The absence of the rule of law has reinforced a climate of impunity and other crimes, such as kidnapping, robberies and rape, are on the rise."
The U.N. chief's indictment of Aristide's rule appeared to undermine lingering hopes by Haiti's neighbors to restore Aristide to power. The Caribbean Community, known as Caricom, has criticized the U.S. role in Aristide's departure, and appealed for a U.N. investigation into the matter.
Roger F. Noriega, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, met with representatives of Caribbean countries who are posted at the United Nations.
A senior administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity said the Caribbean ambassadors never mentioned the fate of Aristide at Tuesday's luncheon meeting. But he said that the United States would be willing to share information on the U.S. role in aiding Aristide's flight to Central African Republic.
-------- us
CONTINGENCIES
Pentagon Drafts Iraq Troop Plan to Meet Violence
April 21, 2004
By THOM SHANKER and DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/politics/21MILI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 20 - The Pentagon has drawn up plans to send fresh troops quickly to Iraq in case it decides it must keep 135,000 or more American soldiers deployed beyond July, senior officials said Tuesday.
The Pentagon's contingency plans for summer, fall and beyond were driven partly by the lack of new foreign troops and the unexpected difficulties of training Iraqi forces. President Bush and his political aides had hoped to be drawing down American forces before the November elections, which now seems far less likely.
While American commanders in Iraq have not asked for more troops, the Pentagon's detailed planning, disclosed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior military and civilian aides, is the strongest indication that the recent decision to delay for 90 days the return of 20,000 troops at a time of intense fighting might not be the temporary measure officials had described.
Their revised assessment came as new violence flared in Iraq, even as American forces opened up the battered Sunni insurgent stronghold of Falluja so residents could return on the first day of a truce. Iraqi guerrillas attacked the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad with mortars and rockets, killing at least 21 Iraqis and wounding many more.
The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday that the Pentagon might need to ask Congress for more money to pay for the recent increase in combat operations, and for the additional troops kept in Iraq. That, too, could heighten debate over the war.
Until recently, the White House and the Pentagon said American forces would be reduced this summer when peacekeepers from a broad alliance of foreign powers combined with large numbers of newly trained Iraqi security forces took up their posts in Iraq.
But on Tuesday, General Myers estimated that it might take until the end of the year to have "the majority of these forces properly equipped and trained and in the field."
Already, Spain and Honduras have announced that they are removing their troops from Iraq earlier than scheduled. Also, the Dominican Republic will withdraw its 302 soldiers, its defense secretary, Lt. Gen. José Miguel Soto Jiménez, said Tuesday, according to Agence France-Presse.
[Thailand's Senate voted to maintain the kingdom's 451 troops in Iraq, Agence France-Presse reported. Karoon Sai-Ngam, the senator who sponsored the motion to remove the troops, said Wednesday that it failed by a vote of 68 to 50 during a closed-door session late Tuesday.]
The administration is pressing to keep others in the 30-plus nations in the alliance from following suit.
Both Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, have been calling members of the alliance to check the level of their resolve, administration officials said Tuesday.
"I have talked to many coalition leaders over the last 48 hours," Mr. Powell said Tuesday. "And we, of course, are disappointed that Spain and Honduras felt it necessary to withdraw their troops, but that's their sovereign decision. But all of the others I have spoken to have expressed steadfast support, and I will be talking to more ministers."
Still, as one senior administration officials acknowledged, "it tells you where we are today - a year into this - that they have to call to keep this glued together."
While American commanders expect the loss of the foreign forces to have little effect on allied combat power in Iraq, it erodes President Bush's repeated argument that the alliance is broad and that it will grow as June 30 nears.
Asked at a Pentagon news briefing whether the Pentagon was already considering the deployment of additional troops to Iraq, Mr. Rumsfeld replied: "Are we considering it? No. But have we prepared? You bet."
Mr. Rumsfeld said the Pentagon had identified fresh American forces to eventually replace the 20,000 troops whose tours in Iraq were extended until July to counter insurgencies in Sunni areas west of Baghdad and Shiite areas to the south. He also said plans were being drafted should Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander for the Middle East, require even more troops beyond the 135,000 there now.
"We have made arrangements that in the event General Abizaid feels that that higher number of 135,000 instead of 115,000 troops in country are needed, we've made arrangements to have them replaced, the 20,000 replaced by other forces," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
"And so we are aware of two things," he said. "One is in the event he decides he wants to stay at 135,000 after the 90 days in country expires, we have thought through how those people would be replaced. And in the event he were to require still additional forces, we have thought through that as well."
But the administration faces some internal dissent. Richard Perle, a former head of the Defense Policy Board and one of the strongest advocates of the invasion of Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday that he opposed sending more American troops. "The problem is not that we have too few troops, but that the Iraqis have too few well-trained, highly motivated troops and security forces," he said.
From the Democratic side, Samuel R. Berger, the national security adviser under President Clinton and now a key adviser to John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, told the committee that "more troops and more money is not a strategy."
"Steadfastness is an imperative, but it is not a strategy," he said. "Americans need to hear a plan to stem the insurgency, disarm the militia, hasten reconstruction, and most important, enable Iraqis themselves to forge consensus on the future of their country."
With a majority of the Army's active-duty combat brigades already overseas, Pentagon planners have limited forces to draw upon. The Third Infantry Division, which spearheaded the attack on Baghdad, is now retraining, although it has not been at home for the full year promised. Marine Corps expeditionary units could be sent, and larger Marine forces already identified to enter Iraq this year could be rushed. Any option would also require additional Guard and Reserve forces.
"We have done a scrub of forces that could be available, essentially immediately - in the next few weeks to the next couple of months - in case we need more forces," General Myers said. He said a list of those forces had been given to Mr. Rumsfeld. In answer to a question, he said the Third Infantry had not been formally alerted that it was to return early.
Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, told the Senate panel that while a new United Nations resolution might inspire more nations to contribute troops to Iraq, that was not as important as a decrease in violence. "They may say, `It's the lack of this, or the lack of that,' or, `This U.N. resolution or that,' " Mr. Wolfowitz said. "The fact is this is not peacekeeping. It's still combat. And until it becomes peacekeeping, a lot of countries are probably going to still stay on the sidelines."
General Myers also officially announced changes in the military command structure for Iraq as sovereignty is passed to a government in Baghdad. The current structure, called Combined Joint Task Force-7, will be replaced by Multinational Forces-Iraq, similar to what the United States has over American and allied forces in South Korea.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez will remain as overall commander of allied forces in Iraq, focusing on strategic and political issues, as day-to-day tactical operations are put under the command of Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, General Myers said.
--------
Air Force Touts Iraq Post - Combat Flights
April 21, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Air-War.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. warplanes are running about 150 flights a day inside Iraq to conduct combat operations, provide air support to ground troops and gather intelligence to help crush pockets of resistance by extremists, a top Air Force general says.
Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the vice chief of staff for the Air Force, cited the nontraditional, post-combat flights as one example of how the military has adapted its tactics in the Iraq and Afghan wars to create a flexibility that will be key for future conflicts.
For instance, the Pentagon has experimented with unmanned airplanes armed with conventional weapons previously reserved for piloted aircraft, such as traditional bombs or air-to-air missiles capable of shooting down enemy planes, he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
On Wednesday, U.S. Central Air Forces announced from its forward headquarters in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar that a Predator MQ-1 unmanned aircraft killed or wounded an unspecified number of Iraqi insurgents near Balad air base north of Baghdad on April 11. That came one day after insurgents killed one U.S. Air Force member and injured two others in an attack on the base.
The Predator used a Hellfire missile to hit a group of insurgents who were firing mortars at the base, the announcement said. It said a Predator also ``struck multiple insurgents'' on April 12, but provided no other details besides saying F-16 fighters provided close air support.
With little public attention, Air Force planes also have been used in anti-terror operations from the Horn of Africa to Yemen since the Sept. 11 attacks, the four-star general said Tuesday.
``It is not like classic conduct of warfare,'' Moseley said. ``It's a lot like a sharpshooter sitting on a piece of high ground ... and picking off people or a group of people singularly.''
Moseley said groundwork for the new military tactics began to take shape during the mid-1990s combat in the Balkans and came to fruition as the Pentagon mapped plans to topple the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
He said the key to success is vastly improved coordination and communications between Marines, Army soldiers and special forces on the ground and the Navy and Air Force's warplanes, which can be called in for precise strikes within seconds if a valuable target -- such as fleeing terrorists or enemy commanders -- is identified.
Many times, he said, special operations soldiers on the ground ``acted as sensors for us'' to detect high-value targets in remote Afghan and Iraqi areas and called in precision strikes.
``A perfect example is our airmen with the special ops on horseback with a laptop and satellite connectivity to the CAOC (Command Air and Operations Center) so that you close in in real time at the speed of the light,'' he said.
Last week alone, Air Force planes flew more than 750 sorties as Iraqi rebels stepped up resistance during a month in which they have killed more than 100 soldiers and threw in doubt the planned transition of power from the United States to Iraqis this June.
Moseley said that during recent intense fighting between Marines and Iraqi rebels in Fallujah, Air Force F-16s and F-15s and Navy F-14 fighters interchangeably delivered strikes.
``Who would have thought three or four years ago that we would be at this level of jointness, where the battlefield airman is hooked with the land element on the ground and no one even knows the difference between whether it is Navy, Marine or Air Force airplanes that are delivering the effect,'' he said.
However, Moseley said, the evolving strategy was not without growing pains, citing Operation Anaconda in March 2002, when U.S. forces lost several soldiers and a helicopter during attacks on al-Qaida hideouts in the Shah-i-Kot mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
``We learned some interesting lessons there about orchestration and inclusion in planning that reinforce the notion that it is always better to be inclusive in your planning, and it is always better to have a full joint multidimensional plan,'' he said. Moseley also said:
--Two-thousand-pound precision-guided bombs used in Iraq proved accurate enough to hit targets within the range of their 12-foot length.
--The Air Force has tested dropping 80 smaller 500-pound guided bombs in a single pass, with each bomb hitting within 4 feet of its intended target.
--At least 75 percent of current Air Force personnel are now combat-experienced, the highest level since World War II.
Moseley predicted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) -- which before 2001 were used only for intelligence gathering -- will play an increasing role in warfare, allowing military commanders to put flights up for periods of time beyond human endurance and to conduct surveillance with the ability to fire missiles.
CIA and military officials have confirmed they have used an armed Predator to fire air-to-ground missiles and kill al-Qaida figures.
Moseley said the Air Force retrofitted one of its Predators to fire an air-to-air missile that could be used against enemy aircraft, and that it fired once at an Iraqi aircraft shortly before the war last year, startling the enemy pilot.
Moseley said the Pentagon is also retrofitting and testing the next generation of an unmanned aircraft known as the X-45 UCAV to carry small, conventional bombs. He cautioned, however, that unmanned aircraft probably won't save the Pentagon from having to send humans into dangerous combat.
-------- propaganda wars
Pentagon Deleted Rumsfeld Comment
Remark to Saudi About War's Certainty Is Not in Internet Transcript of Interview
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28729-2004Apr20.html
The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq.
At issue was a passage in Woodward's "Plan of Attack," an account published this week of Bush's decision making about the war, quoting Rumsfeld as telling Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, in January 2003 that he could "take that to the bank" that the invasion would happen.
The comment came in a key moment in the run-up to the war, when Rumsfeld and other officials were briefing Bandar on a military plan to attack and invade Iraq, and pointing to a top-secret map that showed how the war plan would unfold. The book reports that the meeting with Bandar was held on Jan. 11, 2003, in Vice President Cheney's West Wing office. Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also attended.
Pentagon officials omitted the discussion of the meeting from a transcript of the Woodward interview that they posted on the Defense Department's Web site Monday. Rumsfeld told reporters at a briefing yesterday that he may have used the phrase "take that to the bank" but that no final decision had been made to go to war.
"To my knowledge, a decision had not been taken by the president to go to war at that meeting," Rumsfeld said. "There was certainly nothing I said that should have suggested that, and any suggestion to the contrary would not be accurate."
Woodward supplied his own transcript showing that Rumsfeld told him on Oct. 23, 2003: "I remember meeting with the vice president and I think Dick Myers and I met with a foreign dignitary at one point and looked him in the eye and said you can count on this. In other words, at some point we had had enough of a signal from the president that we were able to look a foreign dignitary in the eye and say you can take that to the bank this is going to happen."
The transcript made it clear that the foreign dignitary Woodward was discussing was Bandar, although Rumsfeld would not say that. "We're going to have to clean some of this up in the transcript," Rumsfeld said in the omitted passage. "We'll give you a -- I mean you just said Bandar and I didn't agree with that so we're going to have to -- I don't want to say who it is but you are going to have to go through that and find a way to clean up my language too."
All told, the Pentagon transcript omits a series of eight questions and answers, some of them just a few words each. Yesterday Rumsfeld described the deleted passages as "some banter."
Larry DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman, said the deletion was an honest disagreement and defense officials were reviewing the passage to determine whether to restore it to the published version.
"I had discussions with the author about passages that would be excluded from the transcript by mutual agreement, and this passage was one of those sections," he said. "It was excluded specifically because the secretary was not in a position to validate or confirm the details that the author was raising."
Woodward said: "As the transcript shows, it was not off the record. I was surprised that it was deleted because it obviously dealt with a critical issue and was important corroborating information for the book. I asked DiRita to restore it on the Pentagon Web site."
Rumsfeld's comments came on a day when fallout from the book's many disclosures continued to dominate conversations throughout Washington. Rumsfeld, who gave Woodward two lengthy interviews after Bush asked his Cabinet to cooperate, was a rare dissenter in an administration that has embraced the book despite the mixed portrayal it offers of Bush's campaign to unseat Saddam Hussein.
Stephanie Cutter, communications director for Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, said the book "raises serious doubts about the president's planning for war with Iraq, and what his war cabinet knew or didn't know."
But Bush's closest aides, who typically resist efforts to pull back the Oval Office curtains, are actively promoting sales of the book.
"We're urging people to buy the book," White House communications director Dan Bartlett said. "What this book does is show a president who was asking the right questions and showing prudence as well as resolve during very difficult times. This book undermines a lot of the critics' charges."
An official involved in the negotiations said the administration cooperated so completely that Bush asked Cheney to grant Woodward an interview, which Cheney did, although he is not named as a source. Woodward writes in the book that information came from "more than 75 key people directly involved in the events," most of whom spoke on the condition that they not be identified.
The Pentagon posted transcripts of both Woodward interviews with Rumsfeld, and they show that Rumsfeld was more recalcitrant than other administration figures. He complained about Woodward's questions in a past meeting, saying that "almost everything you asked me was premised with an assertion that was either incomplete or wrong." Woodward is quoted as gently reminding Rumsfeld that the president "wants me to do this."
At Rumsfeld's briefing yesterday, he said that he remembered the session in Cheney's office with Bandar but that it was not unlike others "we had with any number of neighboring countries as the buildup towards the -- to support the diplomacy, the flow of forces was taking place.
"We had the obligation to try to do it in the most cost-effective and responsible way, and the way that would best fit General [Tommy R.] Franks's plans, in the event that he did in fact ultimately have to go to war," Rumsfeld said, referring to the former head of the U.S. Central Command. "That meant we had to talk to the countries in the region and work out things at ports or airfields and that type of thing."
After being handed a note later in the briefing, Rumsfeld returned to the transcript and said that it might omit "some discussion about a totally unrelated topic, and some items that were agreed between us . . . that were off the record."
"But I can say of certain knowledge that nothing was taken out that would naysay what I just indicated in my response to the question," Rumsfeld said.
"No 18-minute gap?" a reporter asked, referring to the notorious deletion from a Watergate tape.
Amid laughter, Rumsfeld said: "You can take that to the bank."
Mark Malseed contributed to this report.
--------
Wolfowitz Denies Woodward Report
By Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28864-2004Apr20.html
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz yesterday denied a report in a new book that the Pentagon in 2002 secretly diverted $700 million to a covert military construction program in Kuwait linked to a future war with Iraq without adequately informing Congress.
Wolfowitz, responding to questions by members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took strong issue with an account of the Pentagon spending contained in "Plan of Attack," by Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward.
The book describes a $700 million plan, approved by President Bush, to use money that Congress had approved for the war in Afghanistan and the general war on terrorism to finance airfields and pipelines in Kuwait, setting the stage for a "giant invasion." Congress, Woodward wrote, "had no real knowledge or involvement."
In testimony yesterday, Wolfowitz said that the U.S. Central Command had prepared a $750 million contingency plan for Iraq by July 2002. He said that the Pentagon had earmarked $241 million of the total before Congress voted for an Iraq war resolution in October 2002. But the money, he said, went only "to strengthen our capabilities in the region," and "no funding was made available for those things that had Iraq as the exclusive purpose."
The administration, Wolfowitz said, had tried "scrupulously" to live up to reporting requirements to Congress.
Nevertheless, the Woodward account has spurred concerns about the nearly unprecedented flexibility Congress gave the Pentagon over counterterrorism funds.
Yesterday, Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), a Democrat who has strongly backed the goals of the Iraq war and is a strong supporter of the Defense Department, indicated that he was disturbed by the report. "They had all kinds of flexibility, but in this case as far as I can tell, there was no consultation," he said.
Rep. David R. Obey (D-Wis.) said this week that "the administration owes Congress a full, detailed and immediate accounting."
But Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said late yesterday that the Wolfowitz testimony and Pentagon briefings had assuaged his concerns. "At this point I think the matter has been fully responded to," he said.
Warner said he had no plans to do anything further. He said committee records indicate the panel received briefings on the use of defense funds in 2003 on Feb. 13, Feb. 23 and April 4.
However, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said there would be hearings into possible fund diversions and "the mechanics of moving money around."
Wolfowitz told the committee that an initial $178 million of the $750 million requested by Central Command was used "to support Central Command's global efforts" in the war on terrorism. That money was moved from other defense funds that Congress provided the Pentagon in a $40 billion supplemental appropriation enacted three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to "respond to the terrorist attacks on the United States" and to "deal with other consequences of the attacks."
Of that sum, $10 billion was provided with few strings attached. Congress required only that the Pentagon submit quarterly reports notifying lawmakers how the money was used.
But in a statement yesterday, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), who chaired the Appropriations Committee for 18 months in 2002 and 2003, said: "There is nothing contained in the Administration's quarterly reports indicating that projects were being funded to prepare for war with Iraq."
Wolfowitz said an additional $63 million was taken from a second supplemental appropriation enacted in the summer of 2002, and was used for "operational requirements not directly tied to Iraq."
Several lawmakers said yesterday that it was difficult to separate Iraq war preparations from vast military investments that the United States was making in countries such as Kuwait and Qatar in connection with the global counterterrorism campaign, the war in Afghanistan and the vacating of a major U.S. base in Saudi Arabia.
"You were fighting a war in Afghanistan so it all got mixed together," said Murtha, who visited Qatar and Kuwait in the summer of 2002.
Nonetheless, Democratic officials contended that the administration's reporting to Congress on the use of tens of billions of dollars in military funds was often vague.
For example, a quarterly report to Congress detailing Pentagon expenditures from Sept. 18, 2001, to June 30, 2002, contained line items such as "increased situational awareness," $5.1 billion; "enhanced force protection," $1.5 billion; and "increased worldwide posture," $4.8 billion.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
High Court Hears Detention Cases
Policy on Terror Suspects Challenged
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26813-2004Apr20?language=printer
The Bush administration's top lawyer encountered stiff resistance at the Supreme Court yesterday, as he urged the justices to side with President Bush in the first test of the executive branch's power to identify and imprison enemies in the war on terrorism.
Facing the court in oral arguments over the detention of al Qaeda and Taliban suspects held at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba, Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson dramatically reminded the court that "the United States is at war," that more than 10,000 troops are in Afghanistan, and that the country faces an "extraordinary threat."
But several justices asked questions that implied they doubted Olson's assertion that Bush, as commander in chief, may hold the suspects for interrogation at the base in Cuba as long as he deems necessary, without judicial oversight.
"It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the executive would be free to do whatever they want -- whatever they want without a check," Justice Stephen G. Breyer said.
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy, moderate conservatives whose votes often decide close cases, questioned the administration's reading of the 1950 precedent on which it based its case.
Yesterday's hearing focused on two consolidated cases: Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334, and al Odah v. Rumsfeld, No. 03-343, which were brought by family members of 16 British, Australian and Kuwaiti citizens currently or formerly held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. The detainees were not charged with crimes or permitted direct contact with lawyers, and attorneys for their families call the prison a U.S.-created "lawless enclave."
Guantanamo houses about 600 detainees from more than two dozen countries and has turned into a major international issue. Human rights groups and foreign governments have taken the Bush administration to task for refusing to grant detainees legal process or declare them prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
The administration has said that the naval base is still formally a part of Cuba, and thus outside U.S. court jurisdiction. The Geneva Conventions do not apply to members of an irregular force, the administration says -- but it has promised that the detainees' treatment will be consistent with the accord.
In response to diplomatic pressure and military determinations that some detainees are no longer dangerous, the Bush administration has released 146 in the past two years, including the two British citizens involved in this case, though 12 of those released are in custody in their home countries. The administration has named six detainees for trial before a military tribunal.
But although the court's eventual ruling could have broad impact on the U.S. image abroad, the issue before the court is relatively narrow. The question is whether the Guantanamo detainees have a right to ask a federal court to order the president to give them a hearing -- not whether the courts must do so.
Even if the Supreme Court sides with them in this case, the detainees would face a long bout of litigation before winning release or major changes in their confinement.
Acknowledging the strong public interest in the case, the court, which bars live radio and television coverage, permitted the release of an audio recording of the one-hour argument after it concluded.
What the court's worldwide audience heard was an intense discussion, with justices often interrupting one another to get in their questions. Inside the courtroom, the justices could be seen leaning forward, listening intently to the lawyers' answers.
The Bush administration won the case in the lower courts, so it was already something of a setback for the administration that the Supreme Court required it to defend its policies again.
If Olson sought to set the tone by invoking the continuing threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Justice John Paul Stevens seemed equally determined to thwart him.
As soon as Olson mentioned the war, Stevens -- a decorated veteran of the Pacific Theater in World War II -- interjected, asking whether Olson would make the same arguments if the war were over. When Olson conceded that he would, Stevens countered: "So the existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue."
Olson then moved on to his main contention: that the Guantanamo prison is outside the jurisdiction of the federal courts.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1950 that foreign prisoners held outside the United States in connection with a war are not covered by a federal law that entitles prisoners to challenge illegal detention by suing for a writ of habeas corpus, he noted. And, he added, since the 1903 lease that granted the United States "complete jurisdiction and control" at Guantanamo kept "ultimate sovereignty" for Cuba, the prison there is outside the United States.
But several justices questioned Olson's reading of the 1950 precedent, known as Johnson v. Eisentrager. They implied that the case was limited to its different facts: The prisoners then were tried and convicted of war crimes, whereas today's Guantanamo detainees have not been.
O'Connor noted that the court in 1950 had said "they have had a trial under the military tribunal and they have no rights that could be granted at the end of the day, and no mention of the habeas statute."
Later, Kennedy implied that Olson had contradicted his own argument when he said that U.S. citizens held at Guantanamo might have a right to sue for habeas corpus but noncitizens would not.
"If the citizen can say that he is a prisoner held under the authority of the United States in Guantanamo, why couldn't a noncitizen say the same thing?" Kennedy asked.
Olson replied that the court had appeared to recognize "more protection for citizens" in Johnson v. Eisentrager.
But Kennedy also pressed retired federal judge John J. Gibbons, who was arguing for the detainees, to define the limits in his argument, asking whether he would be willing to give court access even to combatants at the time of their capture on the battlefield. Gibbons struggled to answer, ultimately conceding that "habeas corpus . . . has never run to the battlefield."
For most of the rest of the hearing, the court seemed divided along its usual left-right lines. The four more liberal justices -- Breyer, Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- asked questions that suggested strong doubts about the Bush administration's claims, and two of the most conservative justices, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, seemed more supportive. Justice Clarence Thomas, as is his custom, remained silent.
A decision in the cases is expected by July.
--------
Supreme Court Hears the Case of Guantánamo
April 21, 2004
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/politics/21SCOT.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 20 - The Supreme Court appeared distinctly unreceptive Tuesday to the Bush administration's argument that the federal courthouse doors must remain closed to the foreign detainees at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
In the first of three cases this month on the right to judicial review of those deemed enemy combatants, most justices seemed to regard the World War II-era precedent that is the cornerstone of the administration's strategy as ambiguous, irrelevant or even counter to the administration's position.
Even Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson's opening declaration, "The United States is at war," appeared to rankle rather than persuade the skeptical justices.
"Supposing the war had ended," Justice John Paul Stevens asked Mr. Olson. "Could you continue to detain these people in Guantánamo, and would there then be jurisdiction?"
Mr. Olson replied, "We believe that there would not be jurisdiction."
Justice Stevens then asked, "So the existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue, is it not?"
True, Mr. Olson acknowledged, the government's position did not depend on the continued military conflict in Afghanistan. "But it's even more forceful and compelling" in that context, he said.
In addition to Justice Stevens, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter, Stephen G. Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor also appeared unpersuaded by the administration's arguments.
At issue was whether the Guantánamo detainees, some 600 men of varying nationalities seized in Afghanistan and Pakistan during operations against the Taliban, can have access to federal court to contest their detention through petitions for habeas corpus, the ancient writ by which prisoners in the English-speaking world have for centuries been able to challenge the legality of their confinement.
The federal appeals court here ruled last year that the federal courts lack jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus petitions from the detainees at Guantánamo. The two cases the Supreme Court combined for the argument on Tuesday were brought on behalf of 16 detainees, who all maintain that they were innocent noncombatants, some mistakenly picked up by bounty hunters, when they were seized.
While hearing the case on behalf of noncitizens, the justices and most others in the crowded courtroom - some of whom had waited in line since 11 p.m. Monday - also no doubt had in mind the next round in the court's review of the administration's pursuit of its war on terrorism.
Two cases to be argued next Wednesday test the rights of United States citizens, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, held for two years in military custody on suspicion of collaborating with Al Qaeda but never officially charged or given the opportunity to contest the basis for being designated enemy combatants.
Arriving at the court two and a half years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the three cases present the Supreme Court with a long-anticipated opportunity to examine not only the balance between civil liberties and national security, but between the executive branch and the judiciary as well. Framed as questions of federal court jurisdiction, the cases bring central questions of judicial authority to a court that has been notably jealous of its own prerogatives.
John J. Gibbons, a retired federal judge who argued on behalf of the detainees, emphasized that strand of his argument in his opening words. "What's at stake in this case is the authority of the federal courts to uphold the rule of law," he said.
His argument was not particularly eloquent, but the fact that he was making it lent an air of authority to the detainees' cause. Mr. Gibbons, 79, was named to the federal appeals court in Philadelphia by President Richard M. Nixon. He served as chief judge before retiring in 1990 to join a major law firm in Newark.
As a young Navy officer, Mr. Gibbons spent a year at Guantánamo Bay. One major issue in the case, Rasul v. Bush, No. 03-334, is how to characterize the United States role in that Cuban outpost, which it has occupied since 1903 under a perpetual lease that gives it "complete jurisdiction and control" while preserving Cuba's "ultimate sovereignty."
While the correct interpretation was the subject of vigorous debate on Tuesday, the Supreme Court precedent at the core of the legal argument, a decision from 1950 called Johnson v. Eisentrager, indicated that noncitizen enemy combatants held outside the United States have no right to habeas corpus. So it was important for the detainees to try to show that Guantánamo Bay should be considered functionally, if not formally, part of the United States.
"Guantánamo Navy Base, as I can attest from a year of personal experience, is under complete United States control and has been for a century," Mr. Gibbons said.
Justice Ginsburg said with a smile: "We don't need your personal experience. That's what it says in the treaty. It says `complete jurisdiction, complete jurisdiction and control.' "
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist objected: "It also says Cuba retains sovereignty."
Mr. Gibbons replied: "Cuban law has never had any application inside that base. A stamp with Fidel Castro's picture on it wouldn't get a letter off the base."
He added: "It's so totally artificial to say that because of this provision in the lease, the executive branch can create a `no law' zone where it is not accountable to any judiciary anywhere."
The Johnson v. Eisentrager precedent also figured heavily in the argument made by Mr. Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks. He contended that the case, which rejected habeas corpus petitions from 21 German civilians who had been caught spying for Japan in wartime China, established a rule barring the federal courts from even considering petitions from enemy aliens being held overseas.
The Guantánamo detainees' lawyers, however, argue that the decision indicates the court did exercise jurisdiction and then rejected the petitions on their merits, at least in part because the Germans had already been tried and found guilty by a military commission. If that interpretation is accepted, then there is no binding Supreme Court precedent that bars jurisdiction in the Guantánamo case for petitioners who have been neither charged nor tried.
Justice O'Connor, whose vote is likely to be crucial, appeared to accept that view. "What it seemed to do was to reach the merits and say at the end of the day, these people have no rights," Justice O'Connor said of the Eisentrager ruling. "They've had a trial under the military tribunal and they have no rights that could be granted," she added.
A Supreme Court decision finding jurisdiction to hear the Guantánamo detainees' habeas corpus petitions would raise - but almost certainly leave to the lower courts to answer - the further question of whether those petitions should be granted.
Justice Breyer suggested that the court could adopt a "protective but practical" standard for evaluating the merits of the petitions.
As he told Mr. Olson, Justice Breyer said: "If we go with you, it has the virtue of clarity. There is a clear rule. Not a citizen, outside the United States, we don't get your foot in the door. But against you is that same fact. It seems rather contrary to an idea of a Constitution with three branches that the executive would be free to do whatever they want, whatever they want without a check."
Justice Breyer continued: "We have the possibility of really helping you with what you're really worried about, which is undue court interference, by shaping the substantive right to deal with all those problems of the military that led you to begin your talk by reminding us of those problems. So if that's the choice, why not say, `Sure, you get your foot in the door, prisoners in Guantánamo,' and we'll use the substantive rights to work out something that's protective but practical?"
Mr. Olson barely had a chance to respond before Justice Antonin Scalia began to make his argument for him. Addressing Mr. Olson, but clearly aiming his rebuttal at Justice Breyer, Justice Scalia said: "We can't call witnesses and see what the real problems are, can we, in creating this new substantive rule that we're going to let the courts create."
He continued: "We have only lawyers before us, we have no witnesses, we have no cross-examination, we have no investigative staff. And we should be the ones, Justice Breyer suggests, to draw up this reticulated system to preserve our military from intervention by the courts?"
The exchange provided one of the few dramatic moments of the argument, indicating that however the court resolves this case, the decision is not likely to be unanimous.
-------- homeland security
Va. Homeland Security Chief to Resign
Deputy Will Take Over Office of Commonwealth Preparedness
By Chris L. Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27308-2004Apr20.html
RICHMOND, April 20 -- John H. Hager said Tuesday that he will resign at the end of the month as Virginia's first director of homeland security.
Hager, a former lieutenant governor who lost a bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2001 to Mark L. Earley, has served as director of the Office of Commonwealth Preparedness for nearly 30 months. He will be succeeded by his deputy, George W. Foresman.
The office is responsible for coordinating antiterror security measures for Virginia's ports, railways and airports, while ensuring that local and state law enforcement agencies are aware of any potential threats. Hager also has served on several local security commissions and worked with officials in Washington and Maryland to design a security network across the national capital region, state officials said.
Hager said his resignation will be effective April 30. He would not say what his immediate plans are. His planned departure was first reported in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on Tuesday.
He said in an interview that during his tenure he focused on ensuring that state and local public safety officials are able to effectively respond to a terrorist attack and on preventing such incidents.
"Virginia is definitely stronger than it was," he said. He added that several of his initiatives, including a statewide alert system that should be unveiled in 2005, are still in the works.
"While we can never be completely safe, across the board we are much better off than we were two years ago," Hager said.
Hager's position was created by Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) and state lawmakers during the 2002 General Assembly session in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Warner praised Hager on the governor's monthly WTOP radio show Tuesday for doing "an excellent job" and said he has "served our administration very, very well."
Hager "has shown a long-standing commitment to the citizens of Virginia, and my administration was fortunate to have him serve," Warner said later in a statement. "During a time of great uncertainty . . . John brought continuity, steady leadership and solid business skills to Virginia's homeland security efforts."
Hager, a retired tobacco company executive, served as lieutenant governor from 1998 to 2002. Appointing Hager was part of Warner's centrist strategy of reaching beyond Democrats in building his team of advisers. He named another Republican, former senator Jane H. Woods, to be his health secretary.
During his tenure, Hager has been responsible for coordinating initiatives across state government. He served as chairman of the Secure Virginia Panel and worked closely with the General Assembly, federal lawmakers and the Bush administration.
Several officials who have worked with Hager, 67, said he was most effective in working with different branches of state and federal government.
"He's really helped the entire region work as a team whether it's with Maryland, Virginia or the Department of Homeland Security," said Tom Lockwood, Maryland's deputy director of homeland security.
"The tendency in homeland security is to focus on responding," said Margret Nedelkoff Kellems, the District's deputy mayor for public safety and justice. "But John focused on where we needed to invest to prevent attacks and make sure this never happens again."
Foresman, 42, former deputy coordinator at the state Department of Emergency Management, was vice chairman of a national commission created by Congress that evaluated the nation's antiterrorism efforts and readiness. He said there will be little change in the department's approach under his leadership, as he and Hager worked in tandem.
Foresman said the state needs to protect civil liberties as it ensures security.
"Part of the challenge over the coming years will be to make sure that any security measures we choose are truly American," he said.
The department has raised $380 million in federal and state funding for local and state first responders, health care providers and state agencies across the commonwealth, Foresman said.
"George has been at the forefront of not only our local and state efforts, but a wide range of national initiatives," Warner said. "I have great confidence that George will carry on the work of this office uninterrupted and with great respect from our partners in the region."
Staff writer Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.
------- immigration / refugees
U.S. Apologizes to British Writer Denied Entry
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Blaine Harden
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29210-2004Apr20.html
SEATTLE, April 20 -- The Department of Homeland Security has apologized to Ian McEwan, the British writer, for delaying his entry into Seattle last month.
McEwan was kept out of the country for 36 hours and his passport was stamped "Refused Admittance" after U.S. customs inspectors in Vancouver, British Columbia, determined that he did not have a proper visa to travel here and to two other cities to deliver paid lectures.
The letter of apology, received last week by McEwan's immigration lawyer in Portland, Ore., said that the customs officials have "concluded that your refusal was processed in error."
"Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience and delay the refusal process caused you," wrote William S. Heffelfinger III, deputy assistant commissioner for field operations in the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection.
McEwan attempted to come into the country under a visa waiver normally granted to British citizens but aroused suspicion when he said he would be paid $15,000 for his three lectures. Before he was allowed into Seattle, he needed the help of the State Department and two members of Congress.
The letter of apology said border inspectors failed to follow immigration rules, which allow foreigners to accept lecture honorariums and set no dollar limits.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- alternative energy
Schwarzenegger seeks to boost hydrogen-fueled cars
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
By Adam Tanner,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-04-21/s_23017.asp
DAVIS, California - California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order Tuesday aimed at making California the leader in introducing environmentally friendly hydrogen-fueled cars in the years to come.
Well known for his gas-guzzling Hummers, the former action film star drove a Toyota Motor Corp. hydrogen-powered sports utility vehicle to refuel at a special station at the University of California at Davis. He then signed an order to encourage the fuel cells that produce power through a chemical reaction with only water vapor as a byproduct.
"I will sign an executive order creating a public-private partnership creating hydrogen highways all over the state of California by the year 2010," he said. "Hundreds of hydrogen fueling stations will be built. And these stations will be used by thousands of hydrogen-powered cars and trucks and buses. This starts a new era for clean California transportation."
Although industry experts say it will be at least a decade or longer before hydrogen cars could become common, backers said Schwarzenegger was helping to prod their gradual introduction.
"This is very important; we need signals from government," said Daniel Sperling, director of the university's Institute of Transportation Studies. "This is a transition process and it will be a slow transition process."
California already has 22 hydrogen refueling stations; Schwarzenegger hopes there will soon be enough such stations across the state to encourage motorists to drive them.
"If you space them roughly every 20 miles, just to make sure a consumer can find the fuel easily, that pencils out to roughly 200 stations," said California Environmental Protection Agency secretary Terry Tamminen.
That stations "will send the signal to carmakers that there is going to be a fueling infrastructure ... that they can begin to send vehicles to the showrooms with confidence to break that chicken-and-the-egg situation."
Hydrogen stations cost about $500,000 and would be funded by private and federal funds, not state money, he said.
President Bush has sought a 43 percent increase in federal spending to develop fuel cell cars and related service stations. Last year, he launched a five-year, $1.2 billion research initiative with the aim of reducing dependence on foreign oil and putting fuel cell cars on the road by 2020.
Automobile and energy companies have already invested billions of dollars in hydrogen-powered cars. On Tuesday, officials showed off about a dozen such vehicles, which looked like regular cars except for their internal machinery.
One Sacramento company, Anuvu, is already selling fuel cell cars for about $100,000 each and expects about a dozen orders this year, company president Rex Hodge said.
--------
Spain's Abengoa to build new US ethanol plant
REUTERS SPAIN:
April 21, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24800/newsDate/21-Apr-2004/story.htm
MADRID - Spanish engineering and environmental services group Abengoa (ABG.MC: Quote, Profile, Research) said yesterday it had taken a majority stake in an ethanol plant under construction in the United States.
The deal with Nordic Biofuels, which started the project, will make Abengoa the second largest producer of the alternative fuel in the United States, the firm said in a statement.
The plant, in the state of Nebraska, will have capacity to produce 322 million litres of ethanol a year, boosting Abengoa's annual U.S. production to over 750 million litres.
An Abengoa spokesman declined comment on the size or cost of the firm's stake and could not say when the plant was scheduled for completion.
Nordic Biofuels had dealt with the initial development of the project, including choosing a site, obtaining relevant permits and design of the plant, Abengoa's statement said.
Ethanol is an alcohol-based alternative fuel that can be produced from plants like sugar cane and corn. It is commonly used to increase octane and improve the emissions quality of gasoline, possibly reducing dependence on crude oil.
-------- environment
Committee Proposes Trust Fund to Aid Oceans
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28711-2004Apr20?language=printer
Hoping to mitigate growing damage to oceans from overuse and pollution, a presidentially appointed commission called yesterday for the creation of an ocean policy trust fund to funnel billions in oil and gas revenue toward state and federal environmental programs, ocean education, science and exploration.
If adopted, the trust fund proposal, one element of a 500-page report that represents the most comprehensive federal assessment of oceans in 35 years, could signal a major shift in policies. The commission, a mix of academics, business executives and naval officers President Bush selected in July 2001, issued a sharp rallying cry on behalf of the nation's marine resources, which it said contribute nearly $800 billion a year to the nation's economy.
"We believe the oceans are in trouble," said retired Adm. James D. Watkins, the commission's chairman. "We believe the nation needs a new strategy to handle these problems that have arisen."
The trust fund, modeled after the Highway Trust Fund, would funnel about $4 billion in federal oil and gas royalties from offshore drilling toward ocean-related programs, while an additional $1 billion would be devoted to such activities as land and water conservation and historic preservation.
Watkins said the panel was wary of creating unfunded mandates for states and would wait to hear back from governors before issuing its final report.
The authors also called for a change in mind-set to what it called "an ecosystem-based approach" to ocean management. "An ecosystem's survival may well be linked to the survival of all species that inhabit it," the commission wrote.
It also urged policymakers seeking to preserve dwindling fish stocks to look beyond a species-by-species effort "to a multispecies approach and, ultimately, to an ecosystem-based approach."
It did not call for a new federal agency, but the commission did recommended that the president establish a national ocean council and a presidential council of advisers on ocean policy within the Executive Office.
"A Department of Natural Resources is probably politically impossible today," Watkins said at a news conference.
The report also urged new restraints on fisheries management councils, regional bodies that govern how much catch fishing boats are allowed to take. It called on the councils to rely on their Scientific and Statistical Committees for guidance in setting policy and would bar anyone who is involved in catching or processing fish from serving on those committees. It said the councils should "determine allowable biological catch based on the best scientific information available to them" and then should seek input from the general public as well as commercial and recreational fishermen.
The huge report also tackled other threats to oceans, such as non-point source pollution and invasive species.
Sarah Chasis, who directs water and coastal programs at the National Resources Defense Council, said that section of the report is "very significant and helpful to ensure our fisheries are put on a more sustainable basis than the current system."
Other groups seized on the report as an opportunity to promote ocean awareness: The American Zoo and Aquarium Association, for example, said it would begin an education campaign on June 8 in member institutions nationwide. "The overall message is the oceans are important to all of us," said Bruce Carr, the association's director of conservation and education.
The cost of implementing the panel's recommendations is estimated at $1.3 billion the first year, rising to $2.4 billion the second year and to $3.2 billion annually after that.
The report comes on the heels of a Pew Commission study last year that made many similar recommendations. Ocean Conservancy President Roger Rufe, who served on that panel, said yesterday he hopes the report will encourage federal lawmakers to act.
"This is something that requires the president to do something," he said. "There are obviously tremendous political challenges. . . . This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity."
Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans said he and others in the administration will evaluate the report once the governors have a chance to weigh in. "The release of this report presents a historic opportunity to develop a coordinated 21st century vision on how to better understand and manage the oceans and coasts as stewards for the American people," he said.
But some oceans experts warned there would be resistance to the commission's recommendations.
"There are huge vested interests in the status quo," said Jane Lubchenco, a marine biology professor at Oregon State University who served on the Pew Commission. "If we want abundant wildlife and a viable fishing community, we need to be doing things differently."
Several environmentalists said the report is headed in the right direction but does not go far enough.
"Some of the recommendations just aren't bold enough," said Ted Morton, federal policy director for Oceana, an advocacy group. "We think we need stronger guidance and commitment to making ecosystem management work."
Former Clinton chief of staff Leon E. Panetta, who served on the Pew Commission, said the public would support radical change if it learned what was at stake.
"We've tended to take our oceans for granted," he said. "We've got to bring home the damage that's being done to this resource."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Israel struggles with Vanunu's release
April 21, 2004
By Joshua Mitnick
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040420-100531-3556r.htm
ASHKELON, Israel - Mordechai Vanunu was to walk out of Shikma prison today after an 18-year sentence for exposing Israel's nuclear weapons program, but hardly as a free man.
The former technician at Israel's Dimona nuclear plant who divulged top secret details and pictures of the reactor to the London Sunday Times in 1986, is barred from traveling abroad for at least a year and may not speak with foreign citizens without approval from the Israeli government.
While considered a hero by the dozens of international peace activists who gathered yesterday in Ashkelon to greet him - including Irish Nobel Peace Prize-winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire - the 49-year-old whistleblower is still considered a threat by Israeli security officials.
"Vanunu possesses state secrets, several of which he has yet to reveal and which have yet to be published," said a statement released by Israel's interior ministry.
"It is clear that there is a tangible danger with a high degree of probability that Vanunu wishes to divulge state secrets, secrets that have yet to be divulged and which have not been previously published."
Critics of the limitations say that they are liable to boomerang by keeping Vanunu and Israel's controversial nuclear weapons program in the international spotlight.
Vanunu, whose revelations in a front-page expose partially dispersed the fog surrounding the only nuclear power in the Middle East, was snatched in Italy soon afterward by agents of Israel's Mossad intelligence service.
Months later, he was convicted of treason by a three-judge panel in a closed trial in Israel. The first 11 years of his sentence were spent in solitary confinement - conditions decried by international human rights groups.
Now that his sentence is over, the limitations on Vanunu's movements are being challenged by Israel's civil liberties watchdog, which says they are without precedent and will probably be appealed to the Supreme Court.
"These restrictions are extremely difficult to follow. Almost every movement of his is problematic," said Yoav Loeff, a spokesman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. "We claim that it's like moving him from a small jail to a bigger jail."
Vanunu must notify security authorities before traveling outside the greater Tel Aviv metropolitan area. He is also forbidden to engage in chat sessions over the Internet, enter foreign embassies, or come within 550 yards of a border crossing or airport.
Some restrictions were dropped at the last minute, such as a ban on surfing the Internet or greeting foreigners.
Many officials wanted to go further, recommending that Vanunu continue to be held under administrative detention regulations normally used to hold Palestinians for periods of months without a trial.
"In order to sell our image we are taking unnecessary risks," said Yuval Shteinitz, chairman of the foreign affairs and defense committee of the parliament. "There are many issues that can cause a lot of damage after 20 or 30 years. He's already betrayed this country once."
Across the street from the prison gates, supporters stood yesterday wearing black gags and carrying signs saying, "Democracy, Human Rights and Mordechai Vanunu."
But most Israelis see Vanunu as a traitor. One motorist who passed in front of the demonstrators yesterday spat out the window and yelled curses with Vanunu's name.
The Shin Bet security agency, perhaps hoping to reinforce that image, on Sunday released an interview in which Vanunu described Judaism as a "backward religion" and expressed support for a binational Israeli-Palestinian state.
----
Analysis: Making a big man of a little one
By MATTHEW GUTMAN
Apr. 21, 2004
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1082438195786
When Mordechai Vanunu steps out of prison this morning, he will be one of the most reviled and closely monitored figures in the country's history.
Vanunu's revelations to The Sunday Times of London in 1986 cracked wide open a secret Israel had zealously concealed for over 20 years: the ins and outs of its nuclear facility in Dimona. And after 18 years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement, the security establishment is to scrutinize Vanunu's every movement, gesture, and word.
But there won't be much to scrutinize, say former Dimona nuclear scientists and proliferation experts. In retrospect, they say, Vanunu's jaw-dropping revelations, though alarming, caused the state relatively little harm.
"In classic deterrent theory," said Yiftah Shapir, a nuclear proliferation expert at the Jaffee Institute for Strategic Studies, "the other side must know you have the guns, even if you don't have the guts." In that sense, Vanunu might have boosted Israel's deterrent effect by unveiling what seemed like a whopping nuclear arsenal, which the Sunday Times experts estimated at over 200 warheads.
While Vanunu took his ideological fervor for non-proliferation farther than most, as early as 1981, Shai Feldman, Shapir's colleague at the Jaffee Center, argued that Israel must "show its nuclear prowess." That was five years before Vanunu's ill-fated jaunt to London.
The impact of Israel's alleged nuclear arsenal on its neighbors was perhaps articulated none better than in an aside then Egyptian president Anwar Sadat made to then prime minister Menachem Begin in 1977. The Egyptian had told his counterpart that Israel's emerging nuclear power had convinced Cairo that it could never crush the Jewish state and that peace was its only option.
Also, with the advent of satellite imagery and the proliferation of information over the Internet, there is little that Vanunu leaked that would have stayed in the closet for long, says Shapir.
And regardless of Vanunu's vow in a recent interview to continue his crusade against Israel's nuclear program, there are few beans he can add to those spilled in 1986, said Dr. Uzi Even, a former nuclear scientist at Dimona.
"Besides, most of the technology he is familiar with is 50 years old and has been circulating for years," he said.
"So what?" asked MK Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "Vanunu is not one to decide for the state its strategic assets or policy. He is a traitor, pure and simple."
Worse yet, said Steinitz, the security establishment is convinced that additional secrets lurk in his memory bank, "ones that we believe could be handed over to enemy elements. And, mind you, even 59-year-old technology was enough to reduce Hiroshima to ashes."
The Sunday Times might not be interested in technical jargon, or detailed specifics, but others would gladly pay for them, he added. Vanunu left Shin Bet interlocutors bristling in anger recently when they taped him rambling about his denial of Israel's right to exist, and his belief that "Judaism and Islam are retarded religions, only Christianity has advanced."
As the jewel in the crown of Israel-hating groups, Vanunu's politics and associations have left the defense establishment instinctively flinching, said Shapir.
Israel might have granted him more freedom "had his political views not been so rabidly anti-Semitic," said Steinitz.
Yet other geopolitical factors might also be at play. Vanunu can raise the specter of a nuclear Israel just as Libya disarms and Iran is being pressured to do so. "So then what is the point of making so much of a little man like Vanunu?" asked Even.
Vanunu's release also highlights the crushing failure of the Defense Ministry's internal security apparatus. It was Israel, Vanunu himself says, that allowed such a man access to top secrets, allowed him to smuggle them out, and then fired him, losing track of a diplomatic time-bomb, observed Shapir.
The Shin Bet's failure to stop Vanunu before his famed leak gives him no right to breach his agreement that state secrets are not his personal property to disseminate to the highest bidder. Furthermore, Vanunu's severe punishment serves as a deterrent for future or current loonies, who might harbor similar ideas of dumping state secrets on the international market, said Steinitz.
Yet, all of this might soon be irrelevant, said Even. The Dimona reactor, the subject of decades of intrigue that topped off dozens of books, is already obsolete. "Look at the US, which decommissioned its plutonium-producing plants," he said. "The plants are gone, but the weapons remain."
A state does not need to produce plutonium to have nuclear weapons. "A cache of plutonium has a half life of 24,000 years. It is doubtful that it will be needed that long," he added.
"Dimona [which produced enough plutonium for dozens of weapons, according to The Sunday Times] is 40 years old. Most factories close after that amount of time." Materials fatigue, resulting in accidents.
Why not reap diplomatic acclaim for decommissioning the reactor, while storing the element that really counts, the plutonium? he asked.
----
Israeli Whistleblower Vanunu Leaves Prison
Wednesday April 21, 2004
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4004777,00.html
ASHKELON, Israel (AP) - Mordechai Vanunu walked out of prison on Wednesday, 18 years after exposing Israel's nuclear secrets, and immediately defied Israeli restrictions by speaking with international media to demand the Jewish state open its reactor to international inspection.
The 50-year-old Vanunu flashed victory signs and briefly climbed on the gate of Shikma Prison to wave to dozens of cheering anti-nuclear activists. In his first hours of freedom, the Christian convert sought refuge in a Jerusalem church where he was embraced by clergy and received communion.
Vanunu was a low-level technician at Israel's nuclear reactor in Dimona before he gave descriptions and photos of the plant to The Sunday Times of London in 1986. Using his information, experts said Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
A Mossad agent lured Vanunu to Rome, where he was seized, brought to Israel and put on trial for treason.
His revelations and imprisonment made him a hero to international peace activists, and dozens of supporters, including British actress Susannah York and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire of Northern Ireland, greeted him upon his release.
Israelis view Vanunu as a traitor, and groups of angry protesters gathered at the prison in the coastal town of Ashkelon to curse at him.
``To all those who are calling me traitor, I am saying I am proud, I am proud and happy to do what I did,'' Vanunu said in heavily accented English. He refused to speak Hebrew to protest restrictions imposed on him by Israel, including a ban on speaking to foreigners.
During his impromptu news conference in the sunny prison courtyard, Vanunu implored Israel to end its nuclear program.
``Israel don't need nuclear weapons, especially now that all the Middle East is free from nuclear weapons,'' he said. ``My message today to all the world is open the Dimona reactor for inspection.''
Because Israel is not party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the International Atomic Energy Agency has no power to look into its nuclear program. The U.N. agency, however, is seeking dialogue with Israel, and Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei has called for talks on establishing a weapons of mass destruction ``free zone'' in the Middle East.
Vanunu, who was held in solitary confinement for nearly 12 years, accused Israel of mistreating him because he converted from Judaism to Christianity in the 1980s. He accused the Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet security services of ``cruel, barbaric treatment'' and of trying to drive him insane.
``You didn't succeed to break me, you didn't succeed to make me crazy,'' he said. ``I am a symbol of the will of freedom, that you cannot break the human spirit.''
Vanunu said he hoped to move to the United States and study and teach history. However, the Israeli restrictions prevent him from traveling abroad for at least a year.
Followed by journalists in cars, motorcycles and a helicopter, Vanunu traveled from the prison to St. George, an Anglican church in Jerusalem about 45 miles away, where he was greeted by a tearful Peter Hounam, the journalist who wrote the original Sunday Times article.
Riah Abu El-Assal, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, escorted Vanunu into the church to pray and receive communion alongside clergy from England, the United States and Australia.
``He is an Anglican Christian and expressed his desire to offer thanks to God for his release from prison as his first act as a free man,'' El-Assal said.
``The Eucharist was offered in thanksgiving for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and in prayers for Mordechai Vanunu, his family and friends, in the hopes that he can live a normal life from now on.''
Throughout the day, supporters entered the church to pay their respects. By evening, a busload of people arrived for a celebration in Vanunu's honor.
``The whole day is a celebration. We want to touch him, to hug him and thank him,'' said Rami Heilbronn, a London psychologist who worked for 15 years to free Vanunu.
El-Assal said Vanunu would spend the night at the Jerusalem church. Vanunu is to live in a luxury apartment complex in the old seaport of Jaffa, today part of Tel Aviv.
It was unclear who was paying for the apartment, though Sunday Times Managing Editor Richard Caseby said the newspaper was giving Vanunu ``some assistance.''
Vanunu's family and lawyers have said they are concerned about his safety, but Justice Minister Tommy Lapid told The Associated Press no special security measures were planned.
``He's surrounded by at least 100 radicals who are worshipping him, so I'm sure they'll take care of his safety,'' Lapid said.
Israeli officials said Vanunu still possesses state secrets.
``He's hell-bent to do as much harm as he can,'' Lapid said. ``We will keep an eye on him, we will watch him ... We want to know where he is and we want to know to whom he may or may not divulge state secrets.''
Defense Ministry spokeswoman Rachel Niedak-Ashkenazi said security services confiscated several of Vanunu's tapes and notebooks in prison.
Vanunu wrote a detailed account of places, processes and areas of the nuclear reactor, she said, adding that he has an ``excellent memory.''
``To us, this showed an intention and ability to make future use of it,'' she said.
Vanunu said the papers, written in 1991, were personal and he had no more secrets to reveal.
``All the secrets were published,'' he said. ``I am now ready to start my life.''
----
Vanunu: Israel doesn't need nukes
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN
Apr. 21, 2004
Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1082438196182
A defiant Mordechai Vanunu walked to freedom Wednesday after 18 years in jail, calling on Israel to give up its nuclear weapons and insisting he had no more secrets to tell.
But as he verbally bashed the state and particularly the security services, Vanunu was careful to say he no longer presented a threat to Israel. This is a charge the defense establishment flatly contests.
His first act was to theatrically climb the blue gate of the Shikma Prison in Ashkelon which has been his home since October 1986. Wearing a checkered white shirt and a tie, he waved to the crowd and flashed the "V" sign. Hundreds of supporters replied with cheers of "hero" and tossed flowers, while seething protesters showered him with spittle and called him "traitor."
Gray-haired and balding, but spry, Vanunu sated his appetite for free speech, making a beeline for reporters for an impromptu press conference, flanked by his two brothers Asher and Meir.
Vanunu said he had been kept silent for 18 years, and would make up for lost time. "If Israel won't let me speak to foreigners I won't speak in Hebrew," he said.
"For all those calling me a traitor I am proud. I am proud and happy to do what I did and very glad I succeeded to do what I did," he said. "I am now ready to start my new life. I don't have any secrets," he said in heavily accented English.
All the secrets were revealed 18 years ago in the Sunday Times article, Vanunu said. "All the talk about more secrets is bullshit and blah blah. My case is dead." In spite of his brothers' entreaties to cease speaking, Vanunu said: "I will continue to speak against all kinds of nuclear weapons. I come to end the silence."
Vanunu said that Israel does not need nuclear arms, especially in light of recent developments in the Middle East - referring to the fall of Saddam Hussein and Libya's decision to scrap its WMD program. "My message to the world: Open the Dimona nuclear reactor for inspection." Vanunu called on the UN to send inspectors to Dimona and reveal Israel's atomic secrets.
"I hope to soon leave Israel," Vanunu said, despite the restrictions he is under. "I want to go to the United States to marry a wife and teach history. I am now going to the church to speak to my friends and to thank God. And later I will start my life." Vanunu converted to Christianity after he was fired from Dimona in 1985. He claimed that he was badly treated because he was not Jewish. "If I were Jewish this would never happen," he said.
"I didn't say there was no need for a Jewish state," he said, refuting claims he did. "I said Mordechai Vanunu doesn't need a Jewish state."
"If you make a distinction between Israelis and foreigners you make yourself an apartheid state," Vanunu told reporters, as his brother Meir continually tried to stop him from speaking, saying "Enough. Enough."
"I have undergone cruel and barbaric treatment by the Mossad and Shabak (Shin Bet). In this prison you have a section 7 operated by Shabak-Mossad," Vanunu said.
"Last month they tried to destroy me," he said. "They put me in isolation, took all my stuff, and the guards here all cooperated with the Shabak-Mossad. They found some papers I wrote in 1991 but I don't have any more secrets," he repeated.
Reacting to Vanunu's claim of ill treatment in prison, Shikma Prison commander Yossi Mikdash, who was once under Vanunu's command during military service 28 years ago, categorically rejected any claims of "barbarity." "We enforced security regulations and prevented him from speaking to other prisoners as was ordered. When he did, I put him on trial and punished him as I saw fit. Of course we searched his belongings, I would be surprised if he said we left him alone for 18 years." Vanunu described his kidnapping, saying that a woman (Cindy) took him to her apartment, and as soon as they entered, two men, one Israeli and one Frenchman, attacked and drugged him. He was then taken to a small boat, then to a yacht upon which he was chained.
His captors, he said, did not speak Hebrew to him, but told him they were "there for Israel." Vanunu said he was taken to Caeserea beach by a commando unit, and from there to prison.
Vanunu's release was held up Wednesday morning when he refused to give his new address following the publication of the location in Jaffa where he was to live in.
Vanunu's lawyer, Oded Feller of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, claimed that it was security officials who leaked the location of an apartment in Jaffa were Vanunu planned to reside following his release. He eventually cited the Anglican Church in Jerusalem as his address. Prior to his release, security officials confiscated some documents found in his cell, which contain detailed descriptions of manufacturing processes Vanunu learned during his tenure at the Dimona nuclear plant, as well as diagrams and floor plans of certain areas.
Exercise books also contain courtroom protocols, including some that were held behind closed doors.
Justice Minister Yosef Lapid, in an interview with CNN Wednesday morning, called Vanunu "a born traitor", who does everything the radical left only dreams about, When asked about the human rights limitations placed upon Vanunu, Lapid replied, "Everything we have done is in accordance with British law that we inherited from the mandate." Based on concepts created by the world's foremost democracy, the Justice Minister said, "Every country has a right to impose limitations on someone who endangers its existence." When asked if it was not about time Israel "came clean" about its nuclear arsenal, Lapid promised that Israel would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. "We are the only country in the world threatened with total annihilation, and we have the right to take steps against such a threat," he said.
When he finally drove off in his brother's car Police could not restrain the crowd. Some charged the convoy banging on the roof as paparazzi zoomed behind.
"It's like Elvis the great has come to Ashkelon," said Avi Osulin, watching it all from the sidewalk.
----
Vanunu's opponents turn violent as nuclear whistleblower is freed from jail
SHIKMA PRISON, Israel (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421121726.vz6uvm0g.html
Jublilant cries of "hero" were mingled with hate-filled threats of violence here Wednesday as Mordechai Vanunu walked to freedom after 18 years in prison for lifting the lid on Israel's nuclear programme.
Leaping up on the bars of the prison gates, the 49-year-old nuclear whistleblower flashed the victory sign at the emotional crowds, drawing a rousing cheer from his supporters and a hail of foul-mouthed curses from his enemies.
Addressing assembled journalists just inside the prison compound, Vanunu said he was proud of having exposed details of Israel's atomic arsenal to the outside world.
But once through the gates, Vanunu was quickly hustled into a waiting car, frustrating many who had hoped for a brief glimpse of the man whose fate they had championed for so long.
"Vanunu has won, Vanunu is free!" chorused his supporters, throwing flowers at the car and waving posters bearing his picture.
As the white car pulled away, a furious tumult of onlookers broke through the police barriers and gave chase, many screaming murderous threats of revenge.
"You dirty bastard, you will die, traitor!" yelled one man in his 30s, voicing a threat made by many waiting outside the prison.
Shortly before making his getaway, Vanunu admitted he was "proud and happy" to have blown the whistle on Israel's nuclear programme.
"I am proud and happy that I did what I did," he told reporters at the prison compound in southern Israel.
Speaking in English, he described his treatment in prison as "cruel and barbaric" but insisted he had "no more secrets" to tell.
Vanunu, who worked as a technician at the Dimona nuclear facility in southern Israel, was sentenced to 18 years in prison in 1986 after giving details about Israel's secret weapons programme to Britain's Sunday Times.
Shortly after Vanunu's departure, the scenes of jubiliation soon turned ugly as a group of his more volatile oppenents began lobbing stones and eggs at those celebrating his long-awaited release, forcing scores of police to come running to the scene.
Until then, the police had largely turned a blind eye to the violent ranting of Vanunu's opponents, allowing them to get much closer to the prison gates than the well-wishers.
With many Israelis denouncing him as a "traitor" and a "spy", many of Vanunu's international supporters fear that the more extreme elements will try to harm, or even kill him.
"I feel really joyful that he's out, but the future is very worrying," said 38-year-old Ben Inman, a caretaker from London. "I just hope he is allowed to leave Israel and live in peace where he wants."
Shortly before his release, friends and well-wishers released a flock of doves into the air and handed out flowers, largely ignoring the verbal racket kicked up by anti-Vanunu protestors, who bombarded them with racist slurs. "You're not Jewish, you have no right to be here," shouted an elderly Israeli, carrying a placard saying "Death to Vanunu".
Although many of the 100 or so internationals had travelled half-way across the globe to be present at Vanunu's release, it was not clear whether they would get a chance to meet with him, given the restrictions imposed on him.
Israeli officials confirmed Tuesday that Vanunu would be subjected to an unprecedented set of stringent security restrictions which would bar him from leaving the country, from approaching any port or airport or making contact with foreigners without prior authorisation.
Nick and Mary Eoloff, a couple from Minnesota who adopted Vanunu in 1997 after he was disowned by his real parents, said Tuesday that the prospect of his release was tinged with regret, as it was still not clear whether they would be able to meet their "son".
"We were all hoping that he would walk out and we could all go home together but because they have imposed these cruel, cruel restrictions, we don't know whether we can see him or not," Mary Eoloff told AFP.
----
Vanunu attends communion at Jerusalem cathedral in first act as free man
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421130652.suplxtnn.html
Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu took communion Wednesday in east Jerusalem's Anglican cathedral in his first act as a free man after being released from 18 years in prison.
After leaving Israel's southern Shikma prison on Wednesday morning, Vanunu drove straight to St George's Anglican cathedral in occupied east Jerusalem to attend a special service presided over by the Right Reverend Riah Abu al-Assal, the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem.
"As chief pastor of the Anglican community in the holy land I greeted Mordechai Vanunu this morning at 11:00 am as he was released from Ashkelon prison," al-Assal told reporters outside the church.
The Moroccan-born Vanunu, now 49, is widely reviled as a "traitor" in Israel for revealing secrets about Israel's nuclear agenda to a British paper in 1986, but also because of his conversion to Christianity.
"He is an Anglican Christian and expressed his desire to offer thanks to God for his release from prison as his first act as a free man," the bishop added.
Responding to a request from the newly-released prisoner, al-Assal conducted a holy communion service which was attended by local believers along with bishops and clergy from Britain, the United States and Australia.
The bishop said prayers would be said "for Mr Vanunu and his family and friends in the hope that he can live a normal life from now on".
Vanunu's devoutly religious Jewish parents disowned him after his conversion, but he was adopted by an American couple in 1997.
----
Israel's defiant nuclear whistleblower walks free, denies more to reveal
SHIKMA PRISON, Israel (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421163914.hxgleqxb.html
Mordechai Vanunu walked free after 18 years in prison Wednesday, insisting he was proud at having blown the whistle on Israel's nuclear programme but denying he had more secrets to spill.
"To all of those who are calling me a traitor, I am proud and happy that I did what I did," a defiant Vanunu told reporters as he left southern Israel's Shikma prison as a free man shortly after 11:00 am (0800 GMT).
The one-time technician at the Dimona nuclear plant in southern Israel was abducted by secret service agents in Italy, smuggled back to Israel and then jailed in 1986 after leaking details of the plant to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper.
Vanunu said his treatment had been "cruel and barbaric" but insisted he did "not have any more secrets" to reveal.
Hundreds of foreign supporters of Vanunu gathered outside the prison to give him a hero's welcome although he is still widely perceived as a traitor by the Israeli public.
The supporters released doves into the air ahead of his release and then showered his car with petals as he was driven away from the prison gates.
Opponents however carried banners with slogans such as: "Death to the spy, Death to Vanunu."
Vanunu, 49, will now be subject to a series of sweeping restrictions, including a ban on travelling abroad or associating with foreigners without prior approval from the Israeli authorities.
However he said in an impromptu press conference outside the prison that he wanted to travel to both the United States and Britain.
Vanunu, who has become a cause celebre for the anti-nuclear movement, said Israel should rid itself of nuclear weapons and open up the nuclear plant to inspection by the UN atomic watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
"The whole Middle East is free of nuclear weapons. Israel does not need nuclear weapons," he said.
"Open Dimona for inspection. Call (IAEA director general) Mohammed el-Baradei to inspect it."
Israeli authorities have justified the restrictions on Vanunu by warning he still has more secrets to reveal.
The Jewish state has never formally acknowledged that it possesses nuclear weapons but international experts widely believe it has produced around 200 nuclear warheads.
After his release, Vanunu was then driven to east Jerusalem where he attended a special prayer service at the Anglican church's St George Cathedral.
Vanunu's devoutly religious Jewish parents have disowned him after his conversion to Christianity.
He did not speak to reporters but the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem, the Right Reverend Riah Abu El-Assal, said prayers would be said "for Mr Vanunu, his family and friends in the hope that he can live a normal life from now on."
"He is an Anglican Christian and expressed his desire to offer thanks to God for his release from prison as his first act as a free man," the bishop added.
Ahead of his release, the director of Shikma prison said confidential information about Dimona had been found in Vanunu's cell.
"The security services have searched his cell and examined his notebooks and letters that he wants to retrieve once he is freed. Anything which reveals confidential information has been seized," said Yossi Migdad.
Migdad said Vanunu appeared to be "very bitter", adding he did not believe that the whistleblower would "respect the restrictions which have been imposed" on him after his release.
Justice Minister Tommy Lapid justified the restrictions by saying Vanunu had "promised to do as much harm to Israel as he can."
"He is a born traitor who ... has betrayed Israel, atomic secrets, does everything that the radical left dreams about," Lapid told CNN.
Vanunu's brother Meir said he was "extremely worried for his safety".
"We have seen and heard all sorts of comments from the common people on the street that there is a threat to his life and the common people allow themselves to incite for this kind of action to possibly assassinate him."
The Sunday Times expressed delight at Vanunu's release but condemned restrictions.
"We are delighted that Mordechai Vanunu has been released after serving 18 years in jail," managing editor Richard Caseby told AFP.
"However, we are appalled that the Israeli government continues to impose such severe restrictions on his freedom of movement and freedom of speech."
----
Vanunu's main statements on his release from Israeli prison
SHIKMA PRISON, Israel (AFP)
Apr 21, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040421113713.nb5yabx1.html
Mordechai Vanunu was freed Wednesday after 18 years behind bars for exposing Israel's atomic programme. Here are some of the key quotes from a press conference he gave outside Shikma prison.
- Overall reaction
"To all of those who are calling me a traitor, I am proud and happy that I did what I did," he said as hundreds of supporters gathered outside the prison.
"You cannot destroy the human spirit," he added.
- Nuclear arms race
Vanunu said Israel has no need for weapons and called for the UN's Internatinal Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect the Dimona plant where he worked as a technician.
"The whole Middle East is free of nuclear weapons. Israel does not need nuclear weapons especially now that the Middle East is free from nuclear weapons. Iraq, Libya, Egypt, all the Middle East is free of nuclear weapons," he said.
"My message today to all the world is open Dimona for inspection. Call (IAEA director general) Mohammed ElBaradei to inspect it," he added.
-- On his treatment
Vanunu, 49, said he underwent "cruel and barbaric treatment by the Mossad-Shabak," or Israel's external and internal intelligence agencies while in prison.
"The guards here take their orders from Shabak and Mossad."
-- Religion
"If I was Jewish I wouldn't have had all this suffering here. I suffered here only because I was a Christian," said Vanunu who converted from Judaism to Christianity and was subsequently disowned by his devoutly Jewish parents.
- More revelations
The Israeli government has justified sweeping restrictions it has imposed on Vanunu, including a ban on overseas travel and associating with unauthorised foreigners, by saying he has more secrets to reveal about Dimona.
"I don't have any secret, it's bullshit," he said.
"My secret is dead, my case is dead. Everything was published, there are no more secrets."
--------
"You Cannot Break the Human Spirit":
Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu Released After 18 Years
Wednesday, April 21st, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/04/21/1538214
On the morning that Mordechai Vanunu is released from prison after serving 18 years for revealing to the world that Israel had a nuclear arsenal, we go to Ashkelon to speak with his adoptive parents and a coordinator of the US Campaign to Free Mordecai Vanunu. [includes rush transcript] Nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu was released from prison this morning in Israel after serving 18 years for revealing to the world that the country had a nuclear arsenal. For more than 11 of those 18 years, Vanunu was kept in solitary confinement.
He walked out of the Shikma prison in the coastal town of Ashkelon flashing a peace sign and waved to cheering supporters. At an impromptu press conference, Vanunu said he was proud of what he did and described what he called "very cruel and barbaric treatment" at the hands of Israeli intelligence and the military. Vanunu said Israel's Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet security services tried to rob him of his sanity by keeping him in solitary confinement for nearly 12 years. He said his message to these forces was "You didn't succeed to break me, you didn't succeed to make me crazy." He said his case was proof that "you cannot break the human spirit."
Now that he has been released from prison, Vanunu faces what his supporters call draconian restrictions placed on him by the Israeli government. The restrictions derive from emergency rules inherited by Israel from the 1940s British mandate over Palestine. Among them:
Vanunu will have to register to live in an Israeli city of his choice, he will have to give notice to the authorities if he wishes to travel to another city, he will not be allowed to leave Israel for 6 months, a rule that could be extended indefinitely. Vanunu is forbidden to contact foreigners either by phone or in person and he will not be allowed to go within 100 meters of any embassy, visit any port of entry, come within 300 meters of any international boundary and he may not be allowed to worship in a church of his choice.
Here is some of what Vanunu said today right after he walked out of Shikma prison.
- Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's nuclear whistleblower speaking to the press just minutes after he was released from his 18-year prison sentence.
Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician at Dimona, Israel's secret nuclear installation from 1976 to 1985. He worked there at a time when Israel was insisting it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. What Vanunu discovered is that Israel was secretly developing an extensive nuclear program, hiding its existence from the Israeli people and parliament, and the world.
The Dimona facility where Vanunu worked harbored an underground plutonium separation plant operated in strictest secrecy. As the years went by Vanunu grew increasingly troubled as he realized his work was part of Israel's nuclear bomb program. In 1985, before leaving Dimona, he took extensive photographs inside the factory.
Traveling through Asia with the film in his backpack, Vanunu made his way to Sydney, Australia, where he converted to Christianity and joined an Anglican church social justice community where he shared the story of his nuclear background. The London Sunday Times, learned of his story and sent a reporter to Sydney. The newspaper then flew Vanunu to England, where his photos and facts were further checked by British scientists familiar with nuclear weapons. Vanunu's story, published October 5, 1986, gave the world its first authoritative confirmation that Israel had become a major nuclear weapons power, with material for as many as 200 nuclear warheads of advanced design. But days before the story was published, on September 30, 1986, Vanunu was lured to Rome by a female Mossad agent, where he was kidnapped, drugged and put on an Israeli cargo vessel. In Israel, he was charged with treason and espionage. His trial was conducted in total secrecy and he was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
- Mary Eoloff, Mordechai Vanunu's adoptive parent
- Felice Cohen-Joppa, coordinator of the US Campaign to Free Mordecai Vanunu.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: Here is some of what Mordechai Vanunu said today right after he walked out of prison.
MORDECHAI VANUNU: I am Mordechai Vanunu, the man behind the publicized article from October 5, 1986. The article was about Israel's nuclear weapons. I was kidnapped in Rome, Italy, by Israeli spies the. I was brought to Israel, arrived at the prison on October 7. I was here -- I am here in this prison from October 7, 1986 to today. I was in cruel barbaric conditions kept by the Israeli spies. This prison is guided and controlled by the shin bet. I'm proud and happy that I did what I did. I'm proud and happy that I did what I did. All of this blah blah blah about secrets is not the case. My case is the article that was published. There is no more secrets. The secrets are published in the hands of all of the world. All of the world, 187 city had the secrets. The secrets are revealed. I'm able now to start my life.
AMY GOODMAN: Mordechai Vanunu, holding his news conference as he walked out of prison today after 18 years. He worked as a nuclear technician at Damona, Israel's secret nuclear installation from 1976 to 1985. Mordechai Vanunu worked there at a time when Israel was insisting that it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. What Vanunu discovered was that Israel was developing an extensive nuclear program, hiding its existence from the Israeli people, the parliament and the world. The Damona facility where Vanunu worked had an underground plutonium separation plant operating in strictest secrecy. He grew troubled as he realized his work was part of Israel's nuclear bomb program. In 1985, before leaving Dmona, he took extensive photographs inside the factory. Traveling through Asia with the film in his backpack, Vanunu made his way to Sydney, Australia, where he converted to Christianity, joined an Anglican church and social justice community where he shared the story of his nuclear background. The London "Sunday Times" learned of his story and sent a report to Sydney. The newspaper flew him to England where his photos and facts were checked by British scientists familiar with nuclear weapons. Vanunu's story published on October 5, 1986, gave the world its first authoritative confirmation that Israel had become a nuclear -- major nuclear weapons power with material for as many as 200 nuclear warheads of advanced design. The days before the story was published on September 30, 1986, Vanunu was lured to Rome by a female mow sad agent where he was kidnapped, drugged and put on an Israeli cargo vessel. In Israel, he was charged with treason and espionage. His trial was conducted in total secrecy and he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. As he walked out of the prison, he was met by his adoptive parents, Nick and Mary Eloff. Mary joins us on the phone from Israel. Welcome to Democracy Now!.
MARY EOLOFF: We're thrilled to listen to your program.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, can you tell us -- can you describe the scene when Mordechai Vanunu walked out of prison, your adoptive son?
MARY EOLOFF: The scene was that at once joyous and at once hideous, because there were many, many, many Jewish hecklers there that were screaming and taunting and saying vicious, vicious things to him. They were next to the prison gate, and we, with all of the supporters of Mordechai were behind the fence. We had to stay behind the fence. We were -- a man was blowing a trumpet and people were saying, peace, Shaalom and I love you, Mordechai. There was a lot of good, good noise coming across, but right in front of the police were the hecklers.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you describe who the supporters were, who the supporters are?
MARY EOLOFF: Yes, there were supporters from at least ten countries, Japan Germany, England, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Holland, the United States of course, were there in great numbers. They did a wonderful job of bringing people to the prison. People came from Jerusalem and Nazareth in buses. It was just a glorious, glorious thing.
AMY GOODMAN: And where is Mordechai Vanunu right now?
MARY EOLOFF: He's in Jerusalem. The bishop has given him sanctuary.
AMY GOODMAN: Who is he?
MARY EOLOFF: He's the Anglican bishop of Jerusalem. His brother really felt that he was not secure. Israel leaked the address of the place where he was going to live. It was in the front page of the newspapers yesterday. You can imagine that, that they -- that the atmosphere in this country that they would reveal the address of the place where he was going to live? We felt he couldn't possibly go there, so, he asked Bishop Ryan and the bishop agreed to give him sanctuary.
AMY GOODMAN: Mary Eoloff, how did you come to be Mordechai Vanunu's adoptive mother?
MARY EOLOFF: It was the leader of the U.S. Campaign to free Mordechai and he had written an article in the Progressive magazine in Madison, Wisconsin. I read the story and I thought, it couldn't be, it had to be the dark ages. There was a 6 by 9 windowless cell and there was a plastic barrier. I discovered that he was a hero, that he had revealed that Israel had been -- had a nuclear reactor at Damona. At the end of the article, Sam said, you could write to him. We began a correspondence in 1995. Then out of frustration, because the political process wasn't working, all of the thousands of petitions that went to President Clinton were never answered, Nick and I felt, we'll adopt him and bring him to the United States, even if he has to be in prison, that's a way to get him out of Israel.
AMY GOODMAN: Then what happened?
MARY EOLOFF: Well, what happened was that we went to parole hearing after parole hearing in which they said he still had secrets. Mordechai was only a technician. He wasn't a scientist. Everything that he could reveal, the secrets that he had were the forms that they -- they couldn't let him go. They wanted to break him.
AMY GOODMAN: We're also joined on the telephone by a coordinator of the U.S. Campaign to free Mordechai Vanunu. You, too, were in Eschkelon?
FELICE COHEN-JOPPA:That's right. I was there today and actually was near the gate when Mordechai was released, and was able to see him when he did allow a huge number of press people in for this conference and watched Mordechai give his press conference. Then he was allowed to come up to the edge of the gate. He flashed peace signs to the crowd on the outside. When he got in his car later on with his brothers and his nephew and drove out, he pressed his palm against the glass, which is of course, how in 1986 he let the world know that he was kidnapped from Rome by writing a message on his palm on the way to court in the back of a police van. It was really very moving.
AMY GOODMAN: That is the most famous picture of Mordechai Vanunu putting up his hand at the back of the police van. Can you tell us what it said at the time?
FELICE COHEN-JOPPA:It gave the information that said Kidnapped and it gave the flight number from Rome -- from London to Rome, which when he was lured by Cindy, this mossad agent and they flew together to Rome, no one knew for a month what happened to him. His family thought perhaps he had been killed because they knew he was taking this risk. That was the first inkling, really, that we had that he had in fact been in custody in Israel for that month.
AMY GOODMAN: I'd like to ask you both to stay on the line for one minute as we take our break. We're talking to Felease Collin-Joppa, talking about the U.S. Campaign to free Mordechai Vanunu, and Mary Eloff, the adoptive mother of Mordechai Vanunu who has been just released from prison after 18 years. This is Democracy Now!, and Democracynow.org. We'll be back in a minute.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! And Democracynow.org, The War and Peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. We broadcast over more than 220 radio and television stations around the United States, as well as radio stations across Australia and Canada, broadcasting video and audio streaming at Democracynow.org. We are traveling around the country in an "Exception to the Rulers" book and media tour, celebrating independent media. Tonight we will be in Los Angeles at the Emmanuel Presbyterian church at 3300 Wilshire Boulevard looking forward to seeing listeners of KPFK, celebrating the second Pacifica station. As we continue now on Mordechai Vanunu for just a minute and then we'll talk about the latest in Iraq. Mary Eloff, adoptive mother of Mordechai Vanunu released today after 18 years in prison. What are his plans?
MARY EOLOFF: He would like to lead a quiet life. We saw him Monday morning and he said, "I'd like to get married and just be part of society as an average person, able to walk down the street." Monday, he was really in the depths. He said my heart is broken. He thought that freedom would mean that he would walk out and be free like the rest of us walking around here. I pray from this restriction for him is shortened. The attorneys are working on that as wells at Supreme Court. I would ask his supporters around the world to continue to send him energy and prayers and thought. I'm convinced that it has given him strength. I would personally like to thank all of us with him today.
AMY GOODMAN: Felice Cohen-Joppa, the restrictions now are --
FELICE COHEN-JOPPA: We hear, some of them are being lifted, such as we believe that now he will be able to meet with foreigners, so the international delegation will be able to meet with him. Amy, it's really important for us to realize that Israel by imposing the restrictions are building a special prison just for this one man it's an outrage and injustice that's not befitting for a democratic nation and we need to continue to do what Mordechai, you know, began, and gave so many years of his life for and that's continue to struggle for the abolition of nuclear weapons not only in the Middle East, but of course, the United States has more nuclear weapons than any other country. We need to abolish nuclear weapons around the world. For those of who you are in New York or watching -- or in Washington, D.C., listening in Boston, there are vigils all over the world, including in U.S. Cities in New York. If you go to www.vanunu.com, you can find out more information there.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you, Felice Cohen-Joppa as well as Mary Eloff, on today, the day that Mordechai Vanunu, the Damona technician has been released from prison after 18 years for spilling the secrets of Israel's nuclear weapons program.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.