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NUCLEAR
Living With Chernobyl 18 Years Later
One hundred people mark anniversary of Chernobyl disaster in Kiev
Flowers and sorrow as Ukraine marks Chernobyl disaster anniversary
UN urges continued international help to Chernobyl victims
Lithuania´s nuclear sacrifice
Chinese diplomats rush past lab guards
EU asks Pakistan to explain '98 nuke test
Israeli Nukes and the American Connection
Experts: Reprocess less nuclear fuel
Train blast won't affect nuke talks: Seoul
Powell Sees Nuke Opportunity from N. Korean Visit
Push to guard arms in Russia at risk
The 9/11 Panel Looks the Wrong Way
DOUBTS OVER WHETHER AL QAIDA HAS NUKES
U.S. Said Pressing for Nuclear Pact Compliance
Mourners Mark Chernobyl's 18th Anniversary
Energy Providers Seek Grant as Step to Build Nuclear Plant
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's long-term plans
ENTERGY WAS WARNED ABOUT FUEL INVENTORY
Our Man in Baghdad
Bush, Kerry campaigns trade accusations on defense spending
Democrats to Target Cheney
Campaigns Trade Accusations Over National Security
MILITARY
Belgian banks 'invest billions in arms trade'
Aftermath of "Humanitarian" Intervention in Kosovo:
British Officials Rebuke Policy in Middle East
10 U.S. Contractors in Iraq Penalized
Punished Contractors List
Raytheon Chosen For Key Role In Army High Capacity Comms Program
Aerospace & Defense
Beijing Acts to Limit Democratic Moves in Hong Kong
Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam
U.S. Opts To Delay Fallujah Offensive
Full text of former diplomats' letter to Blair
Inside Falluja, a Cease-Fire in Name Only
2 U.S. Troops Are Killed in Blast at Baghdad Chemical Warehouse
Israelis Back Off Threat to Arafat
NATO Sees No Iraq Role Unless Many Conditions Met
Technical problems delay launch of Russian military satellite
Probe turns to $1.1 billion collected by U.N.
U.N. Report
U.N. Iraq Resolution A Tough Sell
Pentagon's urban war planning
New Bush Ad Criticizes Kerry on Weapons
Rumsfeld's Police Secret
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Court will hear FBI whistleblower case
Back in Argentina, Priest Faces 'Dirty War' Charges
New Museum Revives Painful Memories for Internees
Terror suspects to be held indefinitely
OTHER
Chemical Fix Planned for Lead in DC Drinking Water
Protecting the Parks Along the Border
World Bank Concerns Overshadowed by Terrorism, Iraq
ACTIVISTS
Nuclear whistleblower seeks protection
Peace Is Possible
Women's Rally Draws Vast Crowd
March One Of Largest Mall Events
Hundreds of Thousands March for Abortion Rights
Former U.N. inspector talks 'real' Iraq policy
Christian scholars gather to study dangers of Zionism
Crisis in Nepal Deepens, Protests Mount
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Living With Chernobyl 18 Years Later
KIEV, Ukraine, (ENS)
April 26, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-26-01.asp
On the night of April 25 to 26, 1986, an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl Reactor Four unleashed the greatest industrial disaster in the history of humankind, releasing 1,000 times more radiation than maximum permissible by law. Today Chernobyl survivors plan to participate in a national solidarity demonstration to mark the eighteenth anniversary of the explosion that ruined their lives.
The demonstration is necessary says Yuri Andreev, president of a two year old nonprofit organization the Union Chernobyl of Ukraine, because the newly adopted state budget does not guarantee even elementary survival for Chernobyl victims. Andreev told the Pravda news organization that the Ukrainian government has provided only US$2.50 for ambulatory treatment of one victim of the tragedy.
The Union Chernobyl of Ukraine was formed two years ago in an attempt to help the people who have suffered as a result of the Chernobyl catastrophe.
In the Kirovograd area live 17,700 people who have been damaged by the Chernobyl disaster. The Union Chernobyl of Ukraine says there are 1,127 invalids who are sick due to Chernobyl, and also 5,034 children living in the area who have been harmed by the catastrophe. The organization counts 126 children who have become invalids, and 196 who are now orphans as a result of Chernobyl.
A nonprofit organization, the Union Chernobyl of Ukraine is appealing to all people of good will for charitable help - financial assistance, food, medicine, and clothing. Contact: str. Motokrosnaya 24, 25004, Ukraine, Kirovograd, Tel: +380.522.245286
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that today, 18 years after the Chernobyl accident, survivors in the region still live with wildly varying reports about what impact the accident will have on their families' future health and the environment. At a forum hosted by the UN nuclear agency in March, IAEA Director of Radiation and Waste Safety Abel González, said conflicting information has caused tremendous confusion and suffering.
"People living in the affected villages are very distressed because the information they receive - from one expert after another turning up there - is inconsistent. People living there are afraid for their children," he said.
At the forum's meeting in Vienna, initial reports were presented by expert groups for health led by the World Health Organization and the environment led by the IAEA. It is expected the forum will issue its findings at an international conference to be held in 2005 or 2006.
The forum will also advise on, and help to implement, programs that mitigate the accident's impact. They could include remediation of contaminated land, special health care of the affected population, monitoring long-term human exposure to radiation, environmental aspects of decommissioning the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and the shelter, and addressing environmental issues related to radioactive waste from the accident.
In the early hours of April 26, 1986, Reactor Four began to fail. Seven seconds after the operators activated the 20 second shut down system, there was a power surge. The explosions that followed were so powerful that they blew the 1,000 ton cover off the top of the reactor. Design flaws in the power plant's cooling system are thought to have caused an uncontrollable power surge that led to Chernobyl's destruction.
Declassified messages of the State Security Committee of the Ukrainian SSR say that on that night the plant operators conducted turbogenerator tests for the first time at a running nuclear plant "without official coordination with the design organization" and there were numerous violations of regulations by plant staff.
In addition to the reactor's immediate surroundings - an area with a radius of about 30 kilometers - other regions in northern Ukraine, southeastern Belarus and along the border area between Russia and Belarus were contaminated.
International estimates indicate that between 125,000 and 146,000 square kilometers in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are contaminated with cesium-137 at levels exceeding 1 curie (Ci), an area greater than that of the neighboring countries of Latvia and Lithuania combined.
At the time of the accident, about seven million people lived in the contaminated areas, including three million children. About 350,400 people were resettled or have left these areas. However, about 5.5 million people, including more than a million children, still live in the contaminated zones.
Closed on December 15, 2000, the Chernobyl reactor still threatens the environment. To keep radioactive dust within, a concrete shell was built over the reactor by remote control when radioactivity was high.
Its guaranteed life ends in 2006, and the shell, known as a sarcophagus, has now deteriorated. The walls are showing cracks and the ceiling is sagging.
To convert the shelter into an ecologically safe facility, a new shelter has been designed with a life of 100 years. It will be built near the damaged reactor and then moved in over the first one at an estimated cost of US$758 million.
The job is being financed by the international Chernobyl Ukrytiye [Shelter] fund which will contribute $708 million, and the government of Ukraine, which is committed to spending $50 million. The project is being handled by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
----
One hundred people mark anniversary of Chernobyl disaster in Kiev
(AFP)
Apr 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040426004711.4b7akytv.html
KIEV - Some 100 people attended an overnight religious service in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, commemorating the victims of the worst nuclear accident in history, in Chernobyl in the north of the country, 18 years ago.
Under a thin rain, men and women laid wreaths at the foot of a monument to the firemen who died of radiation poisoning after they were sent to clean up the site of the disaster.
"Each year, there are fewer of us to attend this service," said 40-year-old Tetyana Lazarenko, who, along with her family, was evacuated from the town of Pripyat, where Chernobyl employees used to live next to the nuclear power plant, 36 hours after its fourth reactor exploded in April 1986.
"I lost a town, friends, people who were close to me. We all had health problems because of radiation," she added.
"You cannot forget such a tragedy," said Lazarenko, who now lives in Kiev with her husband and three children.
Another overnight service was held at Slavutich, a town in northern Ukraine housing employees who worked at Chernobyl until it was closed down in December.
A radioactive cloud was spewed high into the atmosphere when Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded, burning for 10 days and spreading radioactive material over three-quarters of Europe.
Officially, 31 people were immediately killed by radiation following the blast on April 26, 1986, but unofficial estimates hold that as many as 25,000 of the workers that were sent to clean up the site have since died.
Tens of thousands were crippled from their exposure to high radiation doses and now say their government allowances are not enough to live on.
Over 130,000 people were evacuated from the disaster area and nearly six million continue to live in contaminated zones, in northern Ukraine, as well as stretches of Belarus and Russia.
Ukraine closed down the fourth and last reactor of the Chernobyl power plant in December 2000.
----
Flowers and sorrow as Ukraine marks Chernobyl disaster anniversary
KIEV (AFP)
Apr 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040426132546.v4e3ddee.html
More than a thousand people throughout Ukraine Monday attended commemoration ceremonies to mark the 18th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world's worst nuclear accident.
In the early hours of April 26, 1986, the core of Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded and for 10 days the station spewed radioactive material equivalent to more than 200 Hiroshima bombs into the air, contaminating a large part of Europe.
In the capital Kiev on Monday a hundred people, many of them former Chernobyl employees or relatives of people who died in the tragedy, laid flowers at a memorial to firefighters dispatched to the accident site and who died soon afterwards.
According to a Soviet estimate at the time, 31 people died as a result of the accident. But since 1986 an estimated 25,000 people from all over the Soviet Union who came to clean up after the accident have lost their lives.
"Every year there are less of us to take part in the ceremonies," said Tetiana Lazarenko, who was evacuated with her family from the town of Pripiat, three kilometers (two miles) from Chernobyl, 36 hours after the accident.
"I've lost a town, friends, relatives. All of us have problems as a result of the radiation. We cannot forget this tragedy," said Lazarenko, who today lives in Kiev with her husband and three children.
Some 2.3 million Ukrainians, including 450,000 children, today suffer from radiation-related illnesses, including many with thyroid cancer, according to the Ukrainian health ministry.
Each year on April 26 an open-air service is held at the Orthodox church in Kiev, where a memorial pays hommage to Chernobyl's victims.
Early Monday President Leonid Kuchma placed flowers at the base of the monument and later in the day about 1,000 people gathered there.
Another religious service was held overnight in the northern town of Slavutich, where many of Chernobyl's employees live.
Mykola Fessik, originally from the Ukrainian city of Poltava, was rushed to Chernobyl to help build the sarcophagus over the damaged reactor. He was 22 at the time.
"I ingested a huge dose of radiation and today I can no longer work. My legs no longer carry me. But I am a nobody and am worth nothing to my government," said Fessik, who receives about 40 dollars a month as a victim of the disaster.
He is one of an estimated 600,000 people who were sent to Chernobyl between 1986 and 1990 to help with the clean-up after the accident. Some 130,000 residents had to be evacuated from around the station in the days following the disaster.
The Chernobyl station was closed in December 2000 in return for international financial aid. But the station, with its sarcophagus covering about 200 tons of radioactive magma, remains a concern.
Kiev is due later this year to begin construction of a giant shell over the sarcophagus, which is due to be completed in 2008 at a cost of more than a billion dollars.
----
UN urges continued international help to Chernobyl victims
MOSCOW (AFP)
Apr 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040426144337.m5hjf1oa.html
The United Nations urged the international community on Monday -- the 18th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident -- to remember people still affected by the Chernobyl disaster.
"The international community must renew its efforts to help the people of the affected regions take control of their lives again," Jan Egeland, the UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement received by AFP in Moscow.
"The aftermath of the Chernobyl accident is simply too much for people in the contaminated areas of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine to cope with alone."
"We simply cannot turn our backs," said Egeland, who is also the UN coordinator of international cooperation on Chernobyl. "We can and must do more to help bring development and hope to the affected people."
In the early morning hours of April 26, 1986, the core of Chernobyl's fourth reactor exploded and for 10 days the station spewed radioactive materials into the air that were equivalent to more than 200 bombs exploded over Hiroshima and contaminated a large part of Europe.
Nearly 8.4 million people in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia were exposed to radiation and 150,000 square kilometers (60,000 square miles) were contaminated and today some six million people continue to live in affected areas, the UN said in its statement.
Some 2.3 million Ukrainians, including 450,000 children, suffer today from radiation-related illnesses, including many with the cancer of the thyroid, according to the Ukrainian health ministry.
-------- balkans
Lithuania´s nuclear sacrifice
by Margreet Strijbosch,
26 April 2004
Radio Netherlands
http://www.rnw.nl/hotspots/html/lit040426.html
The Baltic state of Lithuania has one nuclear facility, the Ignalina power plant, which meets 80 percent of the country's energy needs and is one remnant of the Soviet era which the Lithuanians are not unhappy with. But Ignalina is to be dismantled in 2005 to meet one of the conditions for Lithuania's joining the EU on 1 May this year.
It's a politically necessary move, but where does it leave Lithuania's energy supply?
According to economist Ugnius Trumpa of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute, the plant's enforced closure is the result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in combination with Lithuania's wish to join the EU. That view is shared by most of his fellow Lithuanians.
The man in charge at Ignalina: Viktor Sevaldin Meanwhile, Ignalina's director Viktor Sevaldin is indignant about the decision. He says Chernobyl was devastating for the entire nuclear energy sector, but maintains that so many security and safety checks have been introduced since then that there's no risk of a second such disaster. Furthermore, there are some 11 reactors of the same type in Russia, and they'll stay in operation for at least another 15 years.
The consequences
The plant's closure will not only affect Lithuania's energy production, it will be disastrous for the immediate area. Ignalina is the only large employer in this part of the country, which is mainly populated by Russian speakers. At the moment it provides jobs for some 3,600 people. Around 1,000 of them can count on continued employment at the plant for, as Mr Sevaldin says, it won't be shut down completely until 2013. Even after that there'll be some jobs left in connection with storing the nuclear waste.
In the meantime, Mr Sevaldin has been trying to create new employment opportunities for his staff. While the nuclear physicists will head for Russia and the IT specialists can easily find a job anywhere, something has to be done for the other employees. Mr Sevaldin has helped found five new businesses, operating in fields ranging from transport to demolition, but they are also largely dependent on Ignalina for their contracts.
The average person visiting Ignalina might well find the security measures there a good deal better than at Chernobyl. Armed guards at the entrance check every bag thoroughly, and - unlike Chernobyl - the control room is totally off-limits to visitors. But, in appearance, it is indeed reminiscent of Chernobyl, with the same Soviet-style concrete construction and signs in the Russian language visible all over the place. The personnel are clad in the typical white protective clothing as used in Soviet nuclear plants.
Problematic location
The social problems are exacerbated by the location of the Ignalina plant. It's in a part of Lithuania which is the least integrated with the rest of the country, because the majority of the local population are native speakers of Russian. This also holds true inside the nuclear facility, where the nuclear engineers communicate in Russian. More unemployment in the region will not help the integration process.
Yet the closure of Ignalina does not engender pessimism in everyone. Lithuania's former prime minister, Kazimiera Prunskiene, now a parliamentarian and chairperson of the energy commission, believes there's still a future for nuclear energy in her country. She says that the European Union is contributing the costs of dismantling the plant. However, the costs of its closure are greater than that, because Lithuania will lose the revenue from its exports of nuclear power and also find itself becoming dependent on energy imports. And much of that energy will probably come from Russia.
A future for the nuclear industry? Ms Prunskiene argues that the EU already depends on Russian gas for 30 percent of its needs, and that this is a good reason why Europe should want to help with the construction of a new and modern nuclear plant in Lithuania. That, she maintains, would be a useful development for Lithuania and for the EU, too, if the energy distribution system and connections to the rest of Europe are modernized.
-------- china
Chinese diplomats rush past lab guards
April 26, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040426-011652-7502r.htm
Two Chinese diplomats, away from their Los Angeles consulate improperly, recently sped their vehicle past a Los Alamos National Laboratory guard post near classified facilities in what U.S. officials think was an intelligence mission, The Washington Times has learned.
The diplomats, identified as Hua Yu and Bo Lai, were on an intelligence-gathering mission that is raising new worries of Chinese nuclear spying against the United States, according to U.S. officials familiar with the incident.
According to an incident report, the diplomats sped a white Ford Escort past a guard post at the New Mexico facility at about 2:30 p.m. on Feb. 26.
Security guard Joseph Chavez was at the post at the time and reported that the car "ran his post at a high rate of speed," the report said.
The white Escort, rented in Colorado, was stopped a short distance from the post by three Los Alamos security police on Pajarito Road. The diplomats were questioned, and their car was searched.
Mr. Hua and Mr. Bo identified themselves as Chinese diplomats posted to the consulate in Los Angeles.
"At this point, we briefed the gentleman on the fact that Pajarito Road was closed to the general public, and [they] were escorted out of the area," the report states.
Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, confirmed that the incident took place and said no apparent compromise of security occurred.
Pajarito Road also is the site of two sensitive facilities, Mr. Roark said. One is the Critical Assembly Facility known as Technical Area-18, and the other is the Plutonium Research Facility, known as Technical Area-55.
Both facilities are used for classified nuclear-weapons activities at Los Alamos, part of the Energy Department's nuclear-weapons program.
"They were asked for identification. They were briefly questioned as to what they were up to. Their vehicle was searched, and after that, they were promptly escorted off the road," Mr. Roark said.
He declined to comment on whether the FBI was notified. An FBI spokesman could not be reached for comment.
A State Department official said the Chinese diplomats did not notify the department's Office of Foreign Missions before the visit to Los Alamos, a violation of U.S. rules.
Chinese diplomats are barred from traveling outside a 25-mile radius of their embassy or consulate and must obtain permission from the State Department before any other travel.
Xiao Mei, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, said the two diplomats were visiting New Mexico in preparation for the visit to Santa Fe by a Chinese official.
Miss Xiao said she did not know whether the two men had gone to the Los Alamos laboratory, but they might have been trying to visit a museum at the facility.
"We all know this is a sensitive area," she said. "But the museum is public."
Los Alamos was the scene of a major U.S. nuclear-spying scandal in the late 1990s when Chinese-American nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, who worked at Los Alamos, was accused of supplying nuclear secrets to China.
Mr. Lee denied being a spy but was convicted of mishandling classified information, including top-secret computer tapes that were never found. A CIA damage assessment later concluded that the Chinese had obtained secrets on every U.S. nuclear warhead, including the W-88, a small warhead that U.S. intelligence thinks has been copied for use on China's new short-range and long-range missiles.
U.S. officials said the incident involving the two diplomats was an intelligence-gathering mission, with the men probably testing Los Alamos security to see how guards react. Such information is useful for other intelligence-gathering activities, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The diplomats also might have been trying to recover material left by an agent or planning to meet with an agent, the officials said.
Mr. Roark said the guard post was one of several recently added to the Los Alamos complex as part of post-September 11 security upgrades. It was the second time in the past six months that Chinese diplomats based in Los Angeles ended up in legal trouble.
Late last year, a Chinese official posted to the Los Angeles consulate was charged with speeding as he drove more than 100 mph in San Bernardino County. The incident resulted in a diplomatic protest note being sent to the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
One U.S. official said Washington expelled neither that Chinese official nor the two diplomats in the Los Alamos incident because of concerns that doing so would trigger expulsions of U.S. intelligence personnel in China.
A classified U.S. intelligence report produced in 1998 stated that China was one of the most aggressive intelligence threats against U.S. nuclear facilities.
"China represents an acute intelligence threat" to the Department of Energy, the report said. "It conducts a 'full-court press' consisting of massive numbers of collectors of all kinds, in the United States, in China and elsewhere abroad."
The report noted that Chinese intelligence gathering at the nuclear-weapons laboratories usually involves exploiting "natural scientist-to-scientist relationships."
"Chinese scientists nurture relationships with national laboratory counterparts, issuing invitations for them to travel to laboratories and conferences in China," it said.
U.S. officials said there has been no change in the report on Chinese activities targeting nuclear facilities.
-------- india / pakistan
EU asks Pakistan to explain '98 nuke test
PTI
MONDAY, APRIL 26, 2004
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/638761.cms
ISLAMABAD : The European Union parliament has unanimously passed an amendment seeking to know urgently from Pakistan whether its 1998 nuclear test was a joint programme with North Korea , observing that "totally unaccountable" control of Pakistan Army on its nuclear programme led to proliferation of the sensitive technology.
"(The European Parliament) urgently requests further information from Pakistan regarding the nuclear test from 30th May 1998 in Balochistan which showed traces of plutonium and which is thought by some to have been a joint test for a North Korean nuclear weapon," the amendment, passed by the EU parliament in Brussels , this week said.
It said "(The House) draws attention to serious concerns of the international community about Pakistan's role in the proliferation of nuclear weapons, with the allegations and evidence against Pakistan hardening day by day; while acknowledging that President (Pervez) Musharraf has been right to insist upon a detailed investigation and that he is right when he claims that the (AQ) Khan "incident" happened because of the secretive nature of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme."
The amendment was passed after the Parliament voted in favour of a resolution approving a new trade agreement with Pakistan and another expressing concern over restoration of democracy and human rights there.
The EU Parliament has instructed its President to forward both the resolutions - one pertaining to ratification of the trade pact and other on democracy and human rights situation in Pakistan - and make "urgent request" to Pakistan to seek information on the nuclear tests. As a result of this, EU Presidency and the Commission would take up the issue with the government of Pakistan after the official texts of both the resolutions together with the amendment were conveyed to Pakistan by the President of the European Parliament, EU officials said.
The resolutions were adopted after considerable drama in Brussels as Irish member John Walls Cushnahan advocated restraint in granting more concessions to Pakistan in view of the slow return of democracy, imprisonment of political leaders and "poor" human rights record.
-------- israel
Israeli Nukes and the American Connection
Vanunu and the Terrible Secret
By URI AVNERY
April 26, 2004
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery04262004.html
In the darkness of a cinema, a woman's voice: "Hey! Take your hands off! Not you! YOU!"
This old joke illustrates the American policy regarding nuclear armaments in the Middle East. "Hey, you there, Iraq and Iran and Libya, stop it! Not YOU, Israel!"
The danger of nuclear arms was the main pretext for the invasion of Iraq. Iran is threatened in order to compel it to stop its nuclear efforts. Libya has surrendered and is dismantling its nuclear installations.
So what about Israel?
This week it became clear that the Americans are full partners in the creation of Israel's "nuclear option".
How was this exposed? With the help of Mordecai Vanunu, of course.
Throughout the week, a festival was being celebrated around the prisoner, who was released on Wednesday.
The Security Establishment has not stopped harassing him even after he has sat in prison for 18 years, 11 of them in complete solitary confinement a treatment he himself described on leaving the prison as "cruel and barbaric". After he was "set free", far-reaching restrictions were imposed on him (e.g. he is forbidden to leave the country, is restricted to one town, cannot go near any embassy or consulate, may not talk with foreign citizens). All this under the colonial British emergency regulations that were condemned at the time by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine, as "worse then the Nazi laws".
Not, God forbid, because of any desire for revenge!
The security people declared from every podium that this is not revenge for all the shame Vanunu caused the security services, and is by no means just more persecution, but an essential security requirement. He must not be allowed to leave the country or to speak with foreigners and journalists, because he is in possession of secrets vital to the security of the state.
Everybody understands that he has no more secrets. What can a technician know after 18 years in jail, during which technology has advanced with giant steps?
But gradually it becomes clear what the security establishment is really afraid of. Vanunu is in a position to expose the close partnership with the United States in the development of Israel's nuclear armaments.
This worries Washington so much, that the man responsible in the State Department for "arms control", Under Secretary John Bolton, has come to Israel in person for the occasion. Vanunu, it appears, can cause severe damage to the mighty super-power. The Americans are afraid of sounding like the lady in the dark cinema.
(By the way, this John Bolton is an avid supporter of the group of Zionists neo-cons who play a central role in the Bush theater. He opposes arms control for the United States and its satellites, and was installed in the State Department against the wishes of the Secretary of State himself.)
In the short address Vanunu was able to make to the media immediately on his release, he made a strange remark: that the young woman who served as bait for his kidnapping, some 18 years ago, was not a Mossad agent, as generally assumed, but an agent of the FBI or CIA. Why was it so urgent for him to convey this?
From the first moment, there was something odd about the Vanunu affair.
At the beginning, my first thought was that he was a Mossad agent. Everything pointed in that direction.
How else can one explain a simple technician's success in smuggling a camera into the most secret and best guarded installation in Israel? And in taking photos apparently without hindrance? How else to explain the career of that person who, as a student at Beer-Sheva University, was well-known as belonging to the extreme left and spending his time in the company of Arab fellow-students? How was he allowed to leave the country with hundreds of photos? How was he able to approach a British paper and to turn over to British scientists material that convinced them that Israel had 200 nuclear bombs?
Absurd, isn't it? But it all fits , if one assumes that Vanunu acted from the beginning on a mission for the Mossad. His disclosures in the British newspaper not only caused no damage to the Israeli government, but on the contrary, strengthened the Israeli deterrent without committing the government, which was free to deny everything.
What happened next only reinforced this assumption. While in London, in the middle of his campaign of exposures, knowing that half a dozen intelligence services are tracking his every movement, he starts an affair with a strange women, is seduced into following her to Rome, where he is kidnapped and shipped back to Israel. How naive can you get? Is it credible for a reasonable person to fall into such a primitive trap? It is not. Meaning that the whole affair was nothing but a classic cover story.
But when the affair went on, and details of the year-long daily mistreatment of the man became public, I had to give up this initial theory. I had to face the fact that our security services are even more stupid than I had assumed (which I wouldn't have believed possible) and that all these things actually had happened, and that Mordecai Vanunu was an honest and idealistic, if extremely naive, person.
I have no doubt that his personality was shaped by his background. He is the son of a family with many children, who were quite well-to-do in Morocco but lived in a primitive "transition camp" in Israel, before moving to Be'er-Sheva, where they lived in poverty. In spite of this, he succeeded in getting into university and got a master's degree, quite an achievement, but suffered, so it seems, from the overbearing attitude and prejudices of his Ashkenazi peers. Undoubtedly, that pushed him towards the company of the extreme left, where such prejudices were not prevalent.
The bunch of "security correspondents" and other commentators who are attached to the udders of the security establishment have already spread stories about Vanunu "imagining things", his long stay in solitary confinement causing him to "convince himself of all kinds of fantasies" and to "invent all kinds of fabrications". Meaning: the American connection.
Against this background one can suddenly understand all these severe restrictions, which, at first sight, look absolutely idiotic. The Americans, it seems, are very worried. The Israeli security services have to dance to their tune. The world must be prevented by all available means from hearing, from the lips of a credible witness, that the Americans are full partners in Israel's nuclear arms program, while pretending to be the world's sheriff for the prevention of nuclear proliferation.
"And the lady cried: "Not you! YOU!"
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is one of the writers featured in The Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's hot new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism. He can be reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
-------- japan
Experts: Reprocess less nuclear fuel
The Asahi Shimbun
April 26, 2004
http://www.asahi.com/english/business/TKY200404260110.html
A panel says Japan should store spent fuel for longer to reduce costs.
Japan could save a vast amount of money by permanently storing some of its spent nuclear fuel instead of reprocessing it all, according to a private nuclear energy association.
The findings, presented at a meeting sponsored by Japan Atomic Industrial Forum Inc., are expected to influence debate within the Atomic Energy Commission of Japan, which is scheduled in June to begin a review of its Atomic Energy Long-Term Plan.
The private forum is made up of about 800 companies, research institutes and organizations in the nuclear energy field.
Its primary recommendation for long-term storage or disposal of some spent fuel follows partial deregulation of the electric power industry.
Keiji Kanda, a professor emeritus at Kyoto University who heads the Japan Energy Policy Institute, said reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel should be limited to the amount that can be reprocessed at a facility now under construction in Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture.
``The rest of the spent nuclear fuel should be stored on a long-term basis as a resource for future generations,'' Kanda said.
Under the Atomic Energy Commission's current Atomic Energy Long-Term Plan, spent nuclear fuel that cannot be reprocessed at Rokkasho is to be placed in intermediate storage facilities for reprocessing in the future. A storage period of between 40 to 60 years is being forecast for such intermediate facilities.
However, Kanda said that proposals have been made in France for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel of 100 to 300 years.
Kenji Yamaji, an engineering professor at the University of Tokyo, said: ``Utilizing plutonium would be a disadvantage economically. The course of reprocessing all spent nuclear fuel should be changed. There is a need to consider direct disposal of spent nuclear fuel (by burying without reprocessing) as an alternative for the future.''
The current long-term plan suggests construction of a second reprocessing facility after Rokkasho from about 2010.
A Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) official called that plan uneconomical.
Makoto Satake, deputy head of the Nuclear Power Division at TEPCO, recommended reprocessing 3.2 tons of the 6.6 tons of spent nuclear fuel that is expected to be generated over the next 40 years and storing the remainder.
``At this stage, the most realistic course would be reprocessing half of the spent nuclear fuel and storing the rest,'' Satake said.
-------- korea
Train blast won't affect nuke talks: Seoul
April 26, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040425-112521-9921r.htm
Seoul, Apr. 26 -- South Korea's pointman on North Korea said Monday last week's train blast in the North would not affect six-nation talks to defuse the nuclear crisis.
North Korea is struggling to recover from a devastating train explosion Thursday that left at least 161 dead and some 1,300 others injured. International aid workers said the death toll could rise.
Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun, who handles inter-Korean affairs, dismissed concerns the train explosion may delay the six-way talks aimed at seeking a peaceful resolution to the North's nuclear crisis.
"We were told by China's side that there would no difficulty in holding working level talks in May for a third round of six-way talks," he said on a local radio program.
China has hosted two rounds of six-nation talks, which also included South Koreas, the United States, Russia and Japan. The negotiations ended without a significant breakthrough, but the participants agreed to meet again before June.
--------
Powell Sees Nuke Opportunity from N. Korean Visit
April 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-north-powell.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington sees an opportunity for progress on talks to end North Korea's suspected nuclear arms programs after its leader visited China last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Monday.
He dismissed the idea held by many Korean analysts that the North's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il, was stalling talks to see if November's U.S. election would bring in a new president to negotiate with.
Last week, China reported its communist neighbor said it would be flexible over the nuclear standoff that stretches back to 2002.
U.S. officials are skeptical of the North's rhetoric and Kim has failed to agree to a date for working-level meetings that were agreed on in principle in February. But Powell was upbeat about a possible opening.
``Based on Kim Jong-il's visit with his Chinese counterparts recently in Beijing ... there may be an opportunity for progress or more meetings in the near future,'' Powell told reporters.
``I certainly have got no impression from any of the six-party members especially from the Chinese who have been the lead force on this. Certainly no impression from them that the whole thing is a push-off until after the elections.''
At two rounds of earlier talks hosted by China, the United States made little headway in persuading North Korea to scrap any nuclear arms programs in return for an offer of possible aid and improved ties. The talks included South Korea, Japan and Russia.
The United States is urging North Korea to schedule for May working-level meetings to pave the way for a third formal round of talks due to be held before July.
President Bush has labeled North Korea part of an ``axis of evil'' with Iran and pre-war Iraq. But Powell stressed that Americans in general, and not just one administration, were determined to end North Korea's nuclear ambitions
``They can take their time and wait as long as they wish to but I think they will ultimately discover that the six-party framework is going to stay intact,'' he said.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials say North Korea disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons in violation of an accord.
Despite the nuclear standoff, the United States on Monday offered aid to North Korea to cope with a deadly train explosion.
Any goodwill gesture toward North Korea over last week's explosion could take on diplomatic overtones, though Powell played down the significance for the nuclear talks.
``This offer stands on its own merits ... the United States is offering it in that spirit and that spirit alone,'' Powell said.
-------- russia
Push to guard arms in Russia at risk
By David Filipov and Anna Dolgov,
Globe Staff And Globe Correspondent
April 26, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2004/04/26/push_to_guard_arms_in_russia_at_risk?pg=full
MOSCOW -- In 2002, the United States and other leading industrial nations announced ''a global partnership against the spread of weapons and materials of mass destruction" and with it, an unprecedented $20 billion pledge to help Russia prevent its nuclear, chemical, and biological materials from falling into the hands of terrorists.
Two years later, tons of lethal Russian stockpiles remain as vulnerable as ever, and the global partnership is in danger of collapse, Russian and Western weapons specialists warn.
Only a fraction of the funding pledged by the Group of Eight nations in June 2002 has materialized, the specialists said over the weekend. Much of the money has been held up by legal disputes, bureaucratic hang-ups, Russia's reluctance to allow access to sensitive sites, and public resistance in Russia to cooperation with the United States and the West.
As a result, Russians, many of whom think Western assistance in securing and eliminating weapons of mass destruction is just a pretext for spying, are considering doing without the aid.
''The partnership is on the verge of a breakup," said Vladimir Orlov, a nonproliferation specialist at the Center for Policy Studies in Moscow. ''It is high time for Russia to start thinking about how to get off the habit of dependence on donors."
The trouble is how to pay for the security upgrades that Orlov said are required immediately at some 30 highly vulnerable nuclear sites across Russia. Other facilities containing as much as 600 tons of weapons-grade plutonium and uranium are protected ''by little more than a chain-link fence and a guard," said Laura Holgate of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a US group dedicated to securing the former Soviet nuclear arsenal.
Russia has said it cannot pay for these upgrades alone, despite President Vladimir V. Putin's statement at the G-8 summit in 2002 that terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction are ''the main security threat of the 21st century." The G-8 responded by pledging to contribute $20 billion over 10 years.
But Orlov said that in the first two years only $48 million has been spent in Russia.
''We cannot put off upgrades to physical security," Orlov said a Moscow conference aimed at raising the issue before G-8 leaders meet next month in Sea Island, Ga. ''Terrorists don't think in terms of 10-year programs."
Terrorist networks were seeking out ''facilities with lower levels of security," Orlov said. Two years ago, Chechen rebel fighters were discovered spying on supposedly top-secret nuclear sites.
Moscow and Washington link Chechen separatists to Al Qaeda, and rebel leaders have warned that they might attack a nuclear facility. Two years ago 41 heavily armed Chechens were able to seize a Moscow theater -- a force that could easily overwhelm any of Russia's remote and poorly protected nuclear sites, said Maxim Shingarkin, a former major in the force that guards Russia's strategic arsenal.
Since 1992, Washington has spent more than $7 billion to secure nuclear materials and destroy thousands of missiles in the former USSR. The G-8 partnership was intended to broaden efforts and let leading European nations and Japan accept a share of the burden.
But of the $200 million Japan pledged, it has provided less than $2 million, Orlov said. France, which promised $750 million, has yet to donate any money.
Alain Mathiot of France's Atomic Energy Commission said ''if 2003 was the time of thinking, for us 2004 will be the time of action."
British funding to help build a Siberian chemical weapons destruction facility, which Russia needs to eliminate its 40,000-ton arsenal, cannot begin until disputes that have held back US funding are resolved, said James Harrison of the British Defense Ministry.
A $25 million Canadian project to build an 11-mile railway to carry chemical weapons to the same facility has been on hold for five months over ''a procedural impasse" with Moscow, said Canada's ambassador, Christopher Westdal. Russia's inability to deliver ''extensive information" about project sites is holding up Canada's overall $750 million contribution.
A dispute over whether Russia should protect Washington from liability in the unlikely event of sabotage by a US worker has stalled programs to dispose of 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium for four years.
''Bureaucracy -- not a shortage of resources -- is thwarting attempts to reduce the spread of weapons of mass destruction," Holgate said.
Disputes over access to sites have delayed the installment of half of the security upgrades the United States has pledged to implement at Russian nuclear facilities. As a result, multilayer fencing and intrusion detectors intended for dozens of sites have been lying in warehouses since they were delivered to Russia four years ago.
''It's essential, at the outset of a project, for the host nation to be completely open and tell us about the full scope of the project," said Rear Admiral John Byrd, head of the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency. ''Revealing these details has not always been the case."
Moscow has also been reluctant to open its military sites to US visitors unless Washington permits equal access for the Russians, said Colonel General Yevgeny Maslin, who from 1991 to 1997 commanded Russia's strategic arsenal.
The sides are seeking a compromise under which US contractors would designate a trusted Russian firm to represent it at sensitive sites.
But choosing Russian subcontractors can be tricky. A US-funded project to transport SS-18 ''Satan" intercontinental ballistic missiles to a dismantling facility that was to begin yesterday has been delayed ''because the firm that got the contract is simply incapable of doing this kind of work," said Nikolai Shumkov of the Russian Aviation and Space Agency.
The use of Russian subcontractors has not eliminated suspicions that US aid in Russian disarmament is somehow intended to harm, not help.
''There is public opinion, environmental activists, . . . and especially politicians, who play up these concerns, saying, 'They are shipping who-knows-what from America, something that Americans aren't using at home but are giving to us,' " Shumkov said.
Public protests halted US funding for a program to dispose of rocket fuel, he said. Similar concerns have held up the construction of chemical weapons destruction sites.
''Half the people think this is all a plan to spy on Russian sites," Holgate said.
Security concerns have led Russia to ban donor countries from sharing any information they obtain about Russian military sites.
But this has sometimes led to donor countries weakening one another's projects, Holgate said.
In one recent case, Russia wanted the United States to build a fence around a nuclear facility, but could not guard the barrier around the clock. The United States refused, saying an unguarded fence could provide shelter for possible attackers. Another donor country, unaware of the US concerns, built the fence.
''Now, as a result, you might have a reduction in physical security," Holgate said.
-------- terrorism
The 9/11 Panel Looks the Wrong Way
Probing the past won't do. The gravest threat is nuclear attack.
By Amitai Etzioni,
April 26, 2004
Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-etzioni26apr26,1,491291.story
Amitai Etzioni teaches sociology at George Washington University. His book "From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations" (Palgrave) will be published in May.
Fast-forward three years. A bipartisan commission is conducting hearings in Washington to determine why we were asleep at the wheel when terrorists set off a nuclear device in one of our major cities. The attack killed 300,000. It shook the nation's confidence so profoundly that the Constitution was "temporarily" suspended; all civil liberties were waived to prevent future attacks.
The new commission has established that one of the reasons we failed to prevent this tragedy was the impact of an earlier commission and an earlier set of hearings: the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, a.k.a. the 9/11 commission.
The problem was that the 9/11 investigation spent too much time assigning blame and looking backward. When it came to recommending safeguards for the future, it encouraged the public, federal agencies and the White House to plan for the kinds of attacks we had faced in the past rather than foreseeing dangers to come. It unwittingly contributed to a malaise that military historians have long studied: fighting the last war rather than preparing for the next one.
Could a mere congressional commission really have such a long-reaching effect? Indeed. A similar set of hearings spelled the end of the McCarthy era. Another drove Richard Nixon out of office and led to campaign finance reform. And the Church Commission, which found that the FBI improperly spied on domestic dissenters during the 1960s, strengthened the wall between the FBI and the CIA - the same wall that is now under attack for its role in our 9/11 failures.
Consider the buzz emerging from the 9/11 commission now. In reaction to our intelligence miscues, it's pushing public opinion toward approving something like an American MI5, a domestic spying agency similar to Britain's. By highlighting Bush's inattention to terrorism before Sept. 11, it is no doubt abetting an administration desire to recoup politically by dispatching Osama Bin Laden before the elections. These actions might have merit, but they don't block the gravest of the foreseeable dangers posed by terrorism - nuclear weapons.
In much the same way, our current anti-terrorist strategies also miss the point. Because airplanes were the previous weapon of choice, we've earmarked $5.17 billion in 2005 (out of $5.3 billion budgeted for the Transportation Security Administration) for airports. Now that trains have been attacked in Madrid, we are moving to better protect the rails. But we seem to ignore that Al Qaeda rarely attacks twice in the same way or in the same place.
We're also spending billions trying to eliminate terrorists - in Afghanistan, in the Philippines and Indonesia, in Colombia and in Europe - before they can hit us. This could be effective, but it is also exceedingly difficult. Terrorists are mobile, hidden and often protected by local populations. And there seems to be an unending supply of fresh recruits for every cell we take out.
As for preventing terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear weapons, it's a strategy that by comparison gets little attention and few resources. Approximately $1 billion is set aside for the purpose, just one-fifth of what we're spending to find shoe bombs, box cutters and nail clippers at airports. (Eliminating chemical and biological weapons is also important but less so, because those agents are much more difficult to weaponize and employ than nuclear material.)
Yet the nuclear threat can be met. The number of nuclear devices floating around on the black market is limited. The number of sites where they are poorly protected is small and well known. The list of experts who might illicitly develop nuclear weapons is relatively short.
The 9/11 commission, which is charged not just with investigating the past but preparing us for the future, should fix this strategic imbalance. It should recommend a substantial budget increase for the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which provides for the supervised destruction of nuclear weapons, the removal of "loose" plutonium from global circulation, and alternative training and employment of nuclear weapons scientists.
It should also recommend an increased commitment to the administration's Proliferation Security Initiative, a set of international agreements that allows the United States and its allies to search planes and ships that are suspected of carrying nuclear weapons and material. And finally, it should call for the creation of a special center for coordinating intelligence concerning nuclear attacks so that it will not be lost among the endless streams of other information about terrorists.
----
DOUBTS OVER WHETHER AL QAIDA HAS NUKES
Mon, 26 Apr 2004
[MENL]
http://menewsline.com/stories/2004/april/04_27_3.html
LONDON -- Al Qaida has claimed that it has acquired nuclear weapons.
But Western intelligence sources doubt the veracity of that claim.
Islamic sources said Al Qaida procured tactical nuclear weapons in 1998 from Ukrainian scientists. The sources said the weapons came in suitcases and were delivered by the scientists when they visited the Afghan city of Kandahar.
The sources, who spoke to such Arab media as the London-based Al Hayat and Qatar's A-Jazeera television, said Al Qaida could use the weapons inside the United States or against U.S. targets in other regions. Such an attack, they said, would be launched if Al Qaida was threatened with elimination.
The U.S. intelligence community has long suspected that Al Qaida has obtained components of nuclear or radiological weapons. Evidence of nonconventional weapons were found in Afghanistan in wake of the U.S. invasion in October 2001.
-------- treaties
U.S. Said Pressing for Nuclear Pact Compliance
April 26, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-usa-un.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The international community must be prepared to act against states that violate a key U.N. nuclear weapons treaty if it is to stop nuclear arms proliferation, U.S. officials said on Monday.
A high-level U.S. delegation intends to deliver a tough message on compliance obligations, aimed at Iran and other problem countries it accuses of pursuing nuclear weapons, at a U.N. conference this week to discuss the non-proliferation treaty.
Members states are also expected to discuss President Bush's controversial non-proliferation initiative.
The meeting at U.N. headquarters in New York is to prepare for a major review conference next year to examine progress under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty, a 34-year-old cornerstone pact that aims to halt the spread of nuclear arms.
Undersecretary of State John Bolton, the senior U.S. delegate, is due to address the conference on Tuesday. His team also includes three assistant secretaries of state, a delegation officials said was unusually high-powered for this kind of mid-term review conference.
The NPT, signed by 189 nations, is under severe strain, particularly following recent revelations by Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear program, of a vast nuclear black market.
Iran and North Korea, which pledged not to develop nuclear weapons when they signed the pact, have used the treaty as a cover to pursue nuclear capabilities, according to U.S. and other officials, and Pyongyang has withdrawn from its treaty obligations.
PUSHING HARD ON COMPLIANCE
Under pressure from the U.N. watchdog -- the International Atomic Energy Agency -- Iran has permitted more intensive IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.
But U.S. officials insist Tehran is still deceiving the world and is determined to produce nuclear weapons. Iran denies this and says its nuclear program is only for peaceful uses.
Washington's repeated attempts to persuade the IAEA board of governors to find Iran in noncompliance of its NPT obligations, and send the issue to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions, so far has failed.
The IAEA in March deplored Iran's failure to disclose information on sensitive technology like the advanced P2 centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade uranium but stopped short of reporting Tehran to the Security Council.
The board meets again in June and some European officials have said the session could be decisive.
A U.S. official said ``the United States will be pushing hard at the NPT preparatory conference on compliance.''
``One of our points is that verification (of nuclear activities) doesn't do much good if you're not then prepared to follow it up with actions necessary to respond to noncompliance,'' he said.
One response would be to formally refer a noncompliance case to the U.N. Security Council, as called for by the NPT. Beyond that, ``you want to be able to deny people benefits from their noncompliance,'' the official added.
Under the NPT only five states are allowed to have nuclear weapons -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China -- although India, Pakistan and Israel are understood to also have this capability.
All other states promised not to develop nuclear weapons.
Last September, Bush urged the Security Council to criminalize the transfer of weapons of mass destruction. The proposal generated opposition from Pakistan and other countries but U.S. officials hope to allay some concerns during the New York sessions.
-------- ukraine
Mourners Mark Chernobyl's 18th Anniversary
April 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Chernobyl.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Mourners laid flowers and lit candles in gatherings across the former Soviet Union Monday to mark the 18th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which spread radiation over much of northern Europe.
In all, 7 million people in the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are believed to have suffered physical or psychological injuries from the April 26, 1986, catastrophe, when reactor No. 4 at Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded and caught fire.
An area roughly half the size of Colorado was contaminated by the accident, forcing the resettlement of hundreds of thousands of people and ruining some of Europe's most fertile farmland.
In the capital Kiev, some 80 miles south of the Chernobyl plant, hundreds of Ukrainians on Monday filled the small chapel dedicated to the disaster's victims at 1:23 a.m. local time, the exact time of the explosion.
Later, they laid flowers and lit candles at a small hill where marble plaques inscribed with the names of hundreds of victims are laid.
And nearly 1,000 mourners gathered in the afternoon at Kiev's Chernobyl memorial, a soaring statue of five falling metallic swans. Some placed flowers and photos of deceased relatives at its base.
``Nothing can be compared with a mother's sorrow,'' said Praskoviya Nezhyvova, an elderly retiree clutching a black-framed photograph of her son, Viktor. She said he died of Chernobyl-related stomach cancer in 1990 at age 44.
Volodymyr Diunych, a driver who took members of the hastily recruited and inadequately equipped cleanup crews to the site, recalled watching as residents were evacuated ``in an awful rush'' days after the disaster.
Ukraine shuttered Chernobyl's last working reactor in December 2000.
But Ukrainian experts say that the concrete-and-steel shelter hastily constructed over the damaged reactor following the accident needs urgent repairs. Authorities say the reactor site is safe.
As of early 2004, more than 2.3 million people, including 452,000 children, had been hospitalized in Ukraine with illnesses blamed on the disaster, according to Ukraine's Health Ministry. Ukraine has registered some 4,400 deaths in connection with the accident.
Many of those injured in the explosion or displaced by its fallout complain the government is doing little to help them.
Sergei Shchvetsov, the head of Russia's Chernobyl Union, was quoted as saying by the ITAR-Tass news agency that 40,000 people disabled by the clean up operations after the blast live in Russia and the ``volume of benefits to which (they) are eligible is narrowing every year.''
In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, about 1,000 people held an unauthorized rally to mark the anniversary and protest what they said was the government's weakening of programs to help Chernobyl victims.
``We're beginning to die like flies and the state's not reacting,'' said Georgy Lepin, who said he was part of the cleanup crew.
The government is allowing vegetables from the most-contaminated region of Belarus to be sold in the less-affected areas, alleged Ivan Nikitchenko, a member of the Belarus Academy of Sciences.
The most frequently noted Chernobyl-related diseases include thyroid and blood cancer and cancerous growths. There have also been numerous reports of mental disorders resulting from the disaster.
The United Nations said in a statement that in some areas of Belarus, thyroid cancer among children has increased more than 100-fold since the accident.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Energy Providers Seek Grant as Step to Build Nuclear Plant
April 26, 2004
By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/business/26nuke.html
ASHINGTON, April 25 - Amid growing signs of interest in building nuclear power plants, a consortium of companies plans to ask the federal government on Monday for $400 million to help prepare an application to build a reactor.
Separately, six companies applied on Friday for a smaller grant to study building an advanced reactor on the site of a twin-reactor project abandoned in 1988 as too expensive.
The consortium first announced its interest in building a nuclear power plant on March 31, but it plans to tell the Energy Department on Monday that it has added two big partners, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Duke Power, a unit of Duke Energy. It will also provide a firmer budget for its work.
The group, which has named itself NuStart Energy Development, initially included Exelon Nuclear, a unit of the Exelon Corporation; Entergy Nuclear, a unit of the Entergy Corporation; Constellation Energy; the Southern Company; and EDF International North America, a subsidiary of Électricité de France, which owns shares in reactors in the United States.
The consortium also includes General Electric and the Westinghouse Electric Company, a subsidiary of BNFL, which was formerly British Nuclear Fuels Limited.
The initial announcement by the consortium drew criticism from antinuclear groups, who complained about safety, vulnerability to terrorism and the problem of disposing spent fuel.
According to people involved with the consortium, NuStart will argue that the sum it is seeking is modest relative to what the federal government has paid recently to subsidize other forms of energy research or production.
"The country needs fuel diversity, and it needs energy independence from foreign energy sources," an executive involved in the NuStart group, who asked not to be identified by name in advance of the announcement. "This is an effort to provide the nuclear option," he said.
In the 10 years ended in 2002, Nu- Start will point out, the Energy Department spent $482 million on fossil energy projects, including "clean coal;" $538 million on energy efficiency; and $446 million on solar and other forms of renewable energy. And in 2003, the government gave the wind industry $280 million in the form of a production tax credit.
NuStart is applying for a dollar-for-dollar match, under a program called Nuclear Power 2010, whose goal is to have at least one reactor under construction by that year. It has not picked a site or a design, or even committed to build anything.
Under the same program, on Friday a different group asked for help with a $4 million project to explore building a reactor in northern Alabama at the site of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefont project. The T.V.A. stopped work on a twin-unit nuclear plant at Bellefonte in 1988, after spending $2.5 billion there.
The new group includes T.V.A. and General Electric (which are both members of the NuStart group as well); Bechtel, an architect and engineering company; Toshiba; and USEC, a company that processes uranium for nuclear reactor use.
On March 17, another consortium - made up of Dominion Resources Inc., Hitachi America, Bechtel and an American subsidiary of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. - also asked for financing.
Joseph H. Davis, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said on Friday, "We welcome any and all applications under this program." But he added, "We haven't made a decision on when we're going to make a decision."
In addition, the Energy Department does not have the money in hand to distribute.
But there is some sympathy in Congress. In a statement, Pete V. Domenici, the New Mexico Republican who is the chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, said: "I am absolutely delighted. I think that the market and regulatory forces that have put nuclear back into play will continue in the coming decade, and I think this is the first step in a continuing trend."
-------- california
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's long-term plans
Associated Press
Mon, Apr. 26, 2004
http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/politics/8525767.htm
LIVERMORE, Calif. (AP) - This week concerned citizens will have an opportunity to receive information about Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's long-term plans.
The 10-year old blueprint includes plans to double the lab's plutonium capabilities and information on potential impacts on human and environmental health.
The U.S. Department of Energy takes the public's comments very seriously, said document manager Thomas Grim.
"We consider them and respond to them in a separate volume of the environmental impact statement. That way they're all together in a manner that the decision-makers can consider them ... and make a decision."
Tuesday's public meeting will take place at the Double Tree Club in Livermore. On Wednesday at the Holiday Inn Express in Tracy. There will also be one on Friday in Washington, D.C.
Plans for expanded plutonium enrichment capabilities have drawn sharp criticism from watchdog groups concerned about proliferating nuclear arms and risk to the environment.
Tritium is another concern. Considerably more radioactive than weapons-grade plutonium, the gas escapes so easily incidental releases are almost unavoidable.
Lab officials note that tritium releases declined dramatically in the 1990s and the new environmental estimate of risk is quite low - about one-third of a millirem a year. An American's average exposure to radiation, from airline flights, X-rays and natural sources, is about 300 millirems.
-------- vermont
ENTERGY WAS WARNED ABOUT FUEL INVENTORY
April 26, 2004
By SUSAN SMALLHEER,
Rutland Herald Staff
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/Story/82736.html
Entergy Nuclear was warned last month that it wasn't following its own regulations in taking mandatory inventory of Vermont Yankee's spent fuel pool, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission senior resident inspector said Monday.
David Pelton said that he "wrote up" Entergy Nuclear a month ago and plant personnel agreed to return to the spent fuel pool this month during the plant's regular refueling outage.
"They weren't following their processes, and they told me the outage was coming up and they would take a closer look at those pieces in their spent fuel pool," Pelton said.
Pelton's insistence that Entergy follow through on a visual inspection of the stainless steel pail in the bottom of Yankee's spent fuel pool led to the discovery that two pieces of a highly radioactive fuel rod were missing last week.
He said Entergy's own regulations for doing the spent fuel pool inventory called for a visual confirmation that the pieces were in the pail and inside the special tubes that were welded to the pail.
Pelton said Entergy workers earlier had done a visual inspection of the spent fuel pool, saw the pail and assumed the pieces were still in it. Entergy also counted the 2,789 fuel assemblies of spent fuel, left over from the plant's 32 years of operation.
Pelton, who has worked at Vermont Yankee for the past 18 months, said Entergy workers used a borescope, a small flexible "gizmo" with a camera that could peer inside the tube.
He said Entergy's own regulations for the inventory process called for a visual confirmation that the pieces existed unless they were in a locked and _closed container. The container, which Pelton described as a cylindrical pail about 2 feet tall, was open to the top and thus required the visual confirmation.
Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams said he was unaware of the deviation from Entergy's standards and said he would have a comment today.
The NRC had sent out a directive calling for the detailed inventory by the end of May, Pelton said. He said the directive gave resident inspectors guidance for inspecting how the companies were controlling the material in the spent fuel pools.
Pelton said Entergy was getting ready to do a "massive investigation" to track down what happened to the pieces of a fuel rod, one 7 inches long and the other 17 inches long. Both are the thickness of a pencil.
The missing fuel rod pieces have been called "unacceptable" by Gov. James Douglas, who has stopped short of calling for a full-fledged safety inspection of the plant. However, the Douglas administration has said it is keeping "all options on the table" as it waits to see how Entergy handles the missing fuel crisis.
The missing fuel pieces are either in the bottom of the 40-foot-deep spent fuel pool, or at a low-level radioactive waste facility, either in South Carolina or Washington state, both Entergy and the NRC have said.
But no one has answers yet, according to Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien, on why the missing fuel went undetected for possibly as long as 24 years.
"There always should be accountability, especially in a nuclear power facility. If they didn't follow their own procedures, they should be held accountable for that. They have rules for everything, they don't do anything lightly," O'Brien said.
"This is about public confidence, isn't it? Are we being well protected? We look for things such as people standing up and being accountable," O'Brien said.
Pelton, the NRC inspector, said Entergy has talked to 1980 Yankee employees who remember the fuel pieces being placed in the special container.
The fuel rod broke into pieces because of a faulty covering or cladding. The plant shut down for two weeks in 1979 to replace the faulty fuel, which was releasing high levels of radiation that leaked into the plant.
O'Brien said the state's nuclear engineer, William Sherman, was on site and participating in Entergy's task force meetings. O'Brien said that Entergy was planning on putting one camera into the spent fuel pool today to do some preliminary searches. A more sophisticated rover camera, probably won't be put in the spent fuel pool until Thursday.
The rover camera is being assembled and tested, O'Brien said. He said the camera, once it was in the spent fuel pool, couldn't be retrieved and adjusted since it would be contaminated with radioactivity.
O'Brien said he had been told by Entergy Nuclear site vice president Jay Thayer that the company expects to complete the search of the spent fuel pool by May 1. The plant, which is currently shut down for refueling, maintenance and renovations to support a planned 20 percent power increase, is expected to restart on May 3, O'Brien said.
O'Brien said the fuel pieces could have been shipped out of Vermont after three "clean-ups" of the spent fuel pool, in 1983, 1997 and 2000, when contaminated items - but not spent fuel - were taken out of the pool and shipped for disposal.
"It does present that possibility that somehow the fuel rods were mistaken for low-level waste. We don't know that, but that's an obvious area to look at," he said.
O'Brien said there was also a possibility that the fuel rod pieces were shipped to a General Electric laboratory for testing because of problems with that fuel. O'Brien said his staff had even tracked down the former state nuclear engineer from the 1970s and 1980s, to see if he remembered the faulty fuel problem.
"You can take some comfort that these pieces did not go somewhere and get into the wrong hands, but they may have gone somewhere inadvertently," O'Brien said.
Raymond Shadis, staff advisor of the New England Coalition, said it didn't surprise him to hear that Entergy wasn't following its own procedures.
"They do it all the time," Shadis said, referring to the NRC's annual report on Vermont Yankee that listed about a dozen problem areas or violations of regulations.
"That's par for the course," Shadis said.
O'Brien reiterated his concerns that both Entergy and federal regulators had a joint responsibility in the missing fuel crisis.
"The NRC was in a position not to accept the substandard inventory process. Twenty-five years went by, they had the means of verifying their existence, why wasn't that ever challenged? Is that what we can expect in the future? " O'Brien said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
Raymond Shadis Post Office Box 76 Edgecomb, Maine 04556 207-882-7801
-------- us politics
Our Man in Baghdad
Hardly anybody seems to have noticed that John Negroponte is going to be a diplomatic disaster.
By Matthew Yglesias
American Prospect
04.26.04
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=7652
Last week we learned that John Negroponte would become America's new ambassador to Iraq and will be running U.S. policy in the quasi-sovereign state that will exist from July 1 until elections can be held and a permanent constitution ratified. He speaks no Arabic and he has no experience in the Middle East or the Islamic world. He does have experience, however, dating back to his service as ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to1985, when he was responsible for implementing Ronald Reagan's illegal intervention in the Nicaraguan civil war. This experience also extends to turning a blind eye to serious human-rights abuses by the U.S.-funded Honduran military and lying to Congress about it. As a democracy-promotion strategy, the choice of Negroponte is a bit, shall we say, odd.
The press, meanwhile, doesn't seem to have time for the story. Particularly egregious has been The New York Times, which didn't see fit to cover the Negroponte nomination at all in its print edition. Judging by the quality of reporting contained in the paper's Web article by David Stout, brick-and-mortar readers may be better off. The story reads like a White House press release, noting only that Negroponte's career "includes service in Central America during the cold war proxy struggles there in the 1980s."
The irony is that the Times is not exactly lacking in knowledge of the situation. Bush's decision to nominate Negroponte for the post of United Nations ambassador in 2001 was deeply controversial in the wake of facts regarding Negroponte's conduct in Honduras -- facts that came to light largely thanks to some excellent mid-'90s reporting by The (Baltimore) Sun. Times articles on the subject in the summer of 2001 covered the controversy competently, as Negroponte's nomination continued to be held-up by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democrats, several of whom had personally tangled with the Reagan Central America policy back in the '80s. The paper even penned an August 18, 2001, masthead editorial correctly stating that confirmation should be withheld until such time as Negroponte offered a proper accounting of his conduct.
He never did, putting forth instead the bizarre claim, "To this day, I do not believe death squads were operating in Honduras" -- an assertion contradicted by the CIA's own inquiry and, frankly, common sense. His nomination was saved, to put it bluntly, by Osama bin Laden. After the September 11 attacks, the United States needed a U.N. ambassador, and with the Bush administration dogmatically committed to choosing a scandal-tainted liar, Negroponte's Democratic opponents backed down.
So why did the Times take a fall? This marginally better Washington Post story (a story that ran in the actual newspaper, no less) on the Iraq nomination tells the tale in its one-paragraph dismissal of the controversy:
He was a contentious appointment to the United Nations because of his 1981-85 tour in Honduras at the time the United States was funneling weapons, money and political support to the Honduran-based rebels seeking to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. But Republican and Democratic congressional staffers believe confirmation hearings will not focus on Negroponte's controversial past, but on the controversial future of U.S. policy after June 30.
The reporters, it seems, were ready to unload on Negroponte, but they couldn't find any Democrats to do their talking for them. According to the bizarre ontology of Washington journalism, if neither party wants to talk about something, it must not exist. For the Post to point out accurate, relevant details about the subject of its profile, that would be "bias."
This is a silly way to operate, but it's how the game is played. Which brings us to the question: Where are the Democrats? Back during the primaries, Howard Dean tried to make the case that he alone among the candidate was willing to stand up to George W. Bush. John Kerry said it wasn't so. "I have spent 35 years fighting for the values you and I believe in," he told a New Hampshire primary audience. He even had a good example, demonstrating his fitness to tackle the big foreign-policy fights, which recurred often on the trail. "I stood with so many of you and led the fight to stop Ronald Reagan's illegal, secret, unconstitutional war in Central America," he said. The implication was that he was ready to stand up and fight against Bush's horrible mismanagement the Iraq War. When questions were raised about his thin legislative record, Kerry pointed to his important work on several investigative committees, including, again, one looking into Central America policy.
Well, Ronald Reagan's illegal war in Central America is moving to Baghdad in a few weeks, and John Kerry's playing rope-a-dope. Kerry's Senate colleagues have adopted a policy of largely deferring to the party's presumptive nominee on questions of agenda setting, so nothing will be done unless he acts.
This unfortunate abdication is part of a broader dereliction of duty on the part of Congress as a whole, and the Democrats in particular. Through repeated public statements, several congressional Republicans -- notably Senators John McCain, Chuck Hagel, and Richard Lugar -- have made their displeasure with the president's current policies in Iraq known. One can assume that more have private misgivings. Indeed, Hill Republicans recently organized caucus briefings with Condoleezza Rice from which Democrats were excluded, in part to permit skeptics to raise questions without embarrassing the administration in front of the opposition.
Under the circumstances, it appears that a bipartisan coalition to force the White House to shift directions is a real possibility. An effort to forge such a coalition might fail, of course, but Democrats haven't so much as tried. The political calculation is easy enough to see: With no good options remaining, no one is eager to jump aboard the ship of U.S. foreign policy. Give Bush a free hand and he'll bear sole responsibility for anything that goes wrong.
Still, while the logic is understandable, that doesn't make it forgivable. Politically motivated Democratic acquiescence to Bush's Iraq policy is a big part of what landed us in our current jam. The time is long past for it to stop. John Kerry says he's ready to lead. Why not start now?
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect writing fellow. His column on politics and the media appears every Tuesday.
----
Bush, Kerry campaigns trade accusations on defense spending
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Apr 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040426180849.mp2ai6ej.html
The campaigns of President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival John Kerry accused each other Monday of backing foolhardy cuts in defense spending as security issues clung to center stage of the race for White House.
Bush's Republicans unveiled a new television ad and a "Winning the War on Terror Tour" highlighting Kerry's Senate votes against such weapons systems as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, B-2 Stealth bomber and F/A-18 fighter jet.
The Democrats countered by accusing the White House of "hypocrisy," saying that Vice President Dick Cheney had tried to cut 81 major weapons programs while defense secretary from 1989 to 1993, including many the Republicans are using against Kerry.
The exchange came as both Bush and Kerry campaigned Monday on the theme of jobs, and it highlighted how prominently security concerns were likely to play along with the econonmy in the November 2 election.
Polls show Iraq and the war on terror moving to the top of the agenda for voters. A Washington Post-ABC News survey released last week found that 45 percent of Americans saw one or the other as the top issue in the campaign.
Bush portrays himself as a "war president" battling terrorism after the September 11, 2001 attacks and is seeking to paint Kerry as weak and waffling on defense for all his decorations won in the Vietnam War.
A new Republican television ad unveiled Monday attacked the Massachusetts senator's voting record, saying, "John Kerry has repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror," including body armour for troops in Iraq.
A campaign statement also scored John Kerry for voting against 87 billion dollars for post-war Afghanistan and Iraq, and said he proposed 7.5 billion dollars in intelligence cuts not long after first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.
Cheney was to deliver a speech Monday questioning Kerry's fitness to be commander-in-chief. The campaign's two-week "Winning the War on Terror Tour" was to feature appearances by Republican officials at defense plants producing weapons Kerry has opposed.
The Republicans also kept up their jibes at Kerry over his anti-Vietnam War activities, suggesting he only pretended to fling away his combat decorations with other veterans at a 1971 protest rally, an allegation the Democrat angrily denied.
Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, accused Cheney of "hypocrisy" in attacking Kerry on the weapons issue after seeking massive cuts in arms budgets while defense secretary for Bush's father.
"He (Cheney) tried to cut 81 major weapons programs, many of those weapons we are using today in Iraq. He tried to get rid of 500,000 active duty personnel, 200,000 reservists. He tried to close 70 bases," McAuliffe said.
A statement by the Kerry campaign said the items cut by Cheney included 90 C-17 transport planes and 14 B-52 bombers, two aircraft that turned out to be vital to operations in Iraq.
The Democrats argue that their candidate supported 16 of the 19 defense authorisation budgets put before the Senate since he entered the body, and any "no" votes were aimed at trimming often inflated spending plans.
They again accused the White House of distorting Kerry's record. Campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said Monday: "Not only are these attacks false, Cheney himself tried to cut many of the same weapons systems that the Bush campaign is now attacking John Kerry on."
"Bush and Cheney are the ones who sent our military to Iraq without basic equipment like body armor and with no plan for bringing the troops home," Clanton said in a statement.
----
Democrats to Target Cheney
Attacks on Vice President Aimed at Eroding Confidence in Bush
By Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41998-2004Apr25.html
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and the Democratic Party will open a week-long assault on Vice President Cheney today in hopes that tarring him as promoting secrecy and controversial policies will erode confidence in President Bush.
Cheney is less popular than Bush in polls, and Democratic strategists said they need to further inhibit the vice president's effectiveness as Bush's attack messenger.
Cheney is expected to deliver a major address in Missouri today charging that Kerry's record shows he would be unsuitable to serve as commander in chief in an era that requires an unwavering leader who can recognize gathering threats and is willing to speak out against them, even when that is difficult or unpopular. Aides said Cheney will say the president must set a clear and consistent foreign policy, and support a military strong enough to use decisive power as a last resort.
Kerry's campaign said he will focus first on Cheney's record as defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, charging that Cheney proposed cuts to weapons critical to recent military operations. Bush's campaign replied that Cheney took his stands during the peace-dividend rollback of the military after the Soviet Union collapsed.
On Wednesday, Kerry is to turn to White House efforts to prevent disclosure of records of an energy-policy task force led by Cheney. On Friday, Kerry plans to highlight Cheney's connections to the Halliburton Co., a major U.S. contractor in Iraq.
Bush aides said they considered it a victory to have Kerry campaigning against Cheney instead of Bush and talking about national security.
Bush's campaign today will begin a heavy run of ads charging that Kerry "has repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror." For the first time, the campaign is customizing ads for specific swing states to highlight locally made systems or components Kerry has opposed. The campaign is also staging a two-week "Winning the War on Terror Tour," in which Republican officials and decorated veterans will appear at plants that make weapons Kerry has opposed.
The Republican National Committee is also urging lawmakers to tell constituents about a position paper from Kerry's first Senate campaign, in 1984, in which he called for $45 billion to $53 billion in cuts to President Ronald Reagan's defense budget, saying there is "no excuse for casting even one for unnecessary weapons of destruction." Kerry told the Boston Globe in 1993 that some of those positions were "ill-advised, and I think some of them are stupid in the context of the world we find ourselves in right now and the things that I've learned since then."
Kerry is targeting the vice president during the week that Bush and Cheney are scheduled to appear together for private questioning by the independent panel investigating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Ninety minutes before Cheney's speech in Missouri, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe is to give a speech in Washington accusing Bush's campaign of trying "to smear John Kerry's service to America."
"Why should we believe a word Dick Cheney says about John Kerry?" McAuliffe's remarks state. "For four years, Dick Cheney hasn't been straight with the American people."
Cheney's role as Bush's attack dog highlights one of the many reasons some Democrats are prodding Kerry to choose a running mate quickly: It would give him a prominent surrogate to hammer away at the president. The use of McAuliffe to respond to Cheney is notable because some of Kerry's advisers have said McAuliffe is seen as too partisan and bombastic.
Yesterday, Kerry launched a week-long bus tour of the industrial Midwest to criticize Bush for jobs lost under the president's watch, and to highlight new employment-creating proposals -- from tax breaks for manufacturers to spreading new technologies such as broadband Internet access.
Bush is to speak about such technologies today in Minnesota, where he plans to announce what the White House calls "innovation economy" policies.
Over the next five days, Kerry will roll through Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Michigan, states with two distinguishing characteristics: They have lost manufacturing jobs and are considered pivotal swing states for November.
At the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines yesterday, Kerry stuck to his standard speech, save for a brief poke at the Bush administration for declining to show photos of coffins sent back from Iraq with the bodies of soldiers. "We should not hide that from Americans," Kerry said. "If they are good enough to go fight and die, they are good enough to be received home with full honors."
Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who endorsed Howard Dean during the primaries, made a not-so-subtle vice presidential plug for Tom Vilsack, the state's governor. Vilsack is one of more than half a dozen Democrats under consideration.
Harkin reminded the audience that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in troubled times, turned to an Iowan for his running mate: Henry Agard Wallace in 1940.
VandeHei reported from Des Moines.
--------
Campaigns Trade Accusations Over National Security
April 26, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/politics/campaign/26CND-CHEN.html?hp
WASHINGTON, April 26 - In increasingly personal tones, the rival presidential campaigns attacked each other today on the central question of which candidate has the better credentials to protect the country from outside threats.
In what was billed as a major foreign policy speech, Vice President Dick Cheney sharply questioned Senator John Kerry's ability to ensure the country's security. "The senator from Massachusetts has given us ample grounds to doubt the judgment and the attitude he brings to bear on vital issues of national security," Mr. Cheney said in Fulton, Mo.
Speaking at the site of Churchill's famous "Iron Curtain" speech of 1946, Mr. Cheney questioned whether Mr. Kerry had the consistent resolve to protect the country - a theme to which the Bush campaign plans to devote $10 million in television ads starting this week.
He portrayed Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as a man of "inconsistencies and changing rationales" who, had he been president, would have left Saddam Hussein in power in Iraq.
A few hours earlier, in remarks anticipating Mr. Cheney's speech, the national Democratic Party leader Terry McAuliffe countered that Mr. Cheney, while defense secretary under the first President Bush, had opposed spending on weapons now proving crucial in Iraq.
With Mr. Kerry in West Virginia to begin a tour focusing on jobs and the economy, Mr. McAuliffe stood in as a surrogate in Washington.
He told reporters that Mr. Cheney, as defense secretary in the late 1980's and early 1990's, had "tried to kill" more than 81 weapons programs, pressing for cuts in spending on the F-16 fighter, the Apache helicopter, M-1 tanks and other programs.
"Dick Cheney consistently proposed massive cuts to weapons programs that our troops are using right now in Iraq," Mr. McAuliffe said.
Republican spokesmen, preemptively anticipating Mr. McAuliffe's preemptive remarks, noted that the military cuts under Mr. Cheney were the quite normal result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the focus of United States military spending up to then.
Mr. Kerry's spokesmen have, in fact, used the same argument to explain some of his votes for military savings. In 1991, for example, Mr. Kerry voted with other Democrats to transfer $3.1 billion from military to domestic programs.
Mr. Cheney has kept a decidedly low profile since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the somber, blunt-spoken vice president has emerged in recent weeks to regularly challenge Mr. Kerry's views. The Bush administration has said he will continue to do so during this election year.
National security will be a central issue in the campaign, and recent opinion polls show that President Bush, even after a month of considerable bad news from Iraq, still draws substantial support on security matters.
A new Pew Research Center survey has found that Mr. Bush's ratings improved in April - with 48 percent of Americans approving of his overall performance, up from 43 percent early in the month - while 54 percent say the United States was right to go to war.
Perhaps not inadvertently, Mr. Cheney delivered his speech from the same Westminister College campus where, in 1948, Churchill made his famous "Iron Curtain" address. The Russians, Churchill said, admired nothing "so much as strength, and there is nothing for which they have less respect than for weakness, especially military weakness."
Missouri is also one of the 18 or 19 politically divided states upon which the 2004 elections are expected to turn. Mr. Bush won it narrowly in 2000.
Mr. McAuliffe, who had earlier raised questions about Mr. Bush's National Guard duty during the Vietnam War, criticized Mr. Cheney today for not having served in that war. As a student, Mr. Cheney received deferments from military service.
Mr. Kerry served in Vietnam on a patrol boat, was wounded and awarded several medals, then returned home to become an outspoken opponent of the war. At one point, he has said, he threw some of his ribbons or medals over a White House fence in protest.
Republicans have described that act as offensive, and accused Mr. Kerry of offering inconsistent versions of his protest.
Mr. Kerry lashed back today, saying on ABC-TV: "The Republicans have spent $60 million in the last few weeks trying to attack me. And this comes from a president and a Republican Party that can't even answer whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. I'm not going to stand for it."
The Bush campaign, meantime, plans to air $10 million in television ads beginning this week to portray Mr. Kerry as weak on national security.
President Bush spoke today at an event in Minnesota, but will keep a generally low profile in the first days of the week. He is said to be preparing in part for his closed-door testimony Thursday, along with Mr. Cheney, before the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks.
-------- MILITARY
-------- arms
Belgian banks 'invest billions in arms trade'
[Firms make anti-personnel mines, fragmentation bombs, depleted uranium shells and even nuclear weapons]
Expatica
26 April 2004
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=48&story_id=6949
BRUSSELS - Belgium's five biggest banks have investments worth around EUR 1.2 billion in some of the world's biggest armaments companies, a leading Flemish anti-arms trade group said on Monday.
In a major new report, the group, called Netwerk Vlaanderen, said the banks - named as KBC, ING, Fortis, Dexia and Axa - had between them invested the money in 13 of the world's best-known arms companies.
The firms backed by the Belgian banks make anti-personnel mines, fragmentation bombs, depleted uranium shells and even nuclear weapons, Netwerk Vlaanderen said.
Companies cited include European defence conglomerate EADS, which makes missiles, missile defence systems, fighter planes and battle helicopters; US planemaker Boeing (fighter planes including the B52 bomber) and the world's biggest weapons producer Lockheed Martin (a US firm making nuclear weapons, weapons containing depleted uranium, F-16's and other fighter planes). Netwerk Vlaanderen says it wants Belgian banks to be more clear about where they invest their customers' money, so that people ethically opposed to the arms trade do not inadvertently end up bankrolling the sector.
"We want the banks to lay their cards on the table and disclose to the public which companies they are financing," said the group in a recent statement.
Monday's report is the latest study in an ongoing campaign by Netwerk Vlaanderen called 'My money. Clear conscience?'
-------- balkans
Aftermath of "Humanitarian" Intervention in Kosovo:
Ethnic Cleansing of Roma and Other Minorities Nears Completion
by Carol Bloom, Ann Neel, S'ani Rifati and Sunil K. Sharma
www.dissidentvoice.org
April 26, 2004
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/April2004/VOR0426.htm
The following article is an update to The Current Plight of the Kosovo Roma, a survey on the Romani population based on the field reports of historian Paul Polansky, edited and co-authored by Bloom, Neel, Rifati and Sharma, published by Voice of Roma in 2001.
On June 12th 1999, 78 days of US/NATO bombing of Kosovo ended. Now, five years later, Kosovo is governed by the United Nations Interim Administration (UNMIK). In the months following the end of the bombing, hundreds of International Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), thousands of peace-keepers (45,000-50,000 NATO/US soldiers), more than 5,000 UN police, looked on while a massive ethnic cleansing was committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and extremist Albanians. The ethnic minorities living in Kosovo prior to 1999 included Serbs, Roma, Turks, Gorani (Muslim Slavs), Bosnian Croats, Jews, and others. According to UN figures, 230,000 ethnic minorities were driven out of Kosovo since 1999, and these numbers are low according to Serbian figures of 250,000 or more.
This was actually the second biggest ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia. The first one took place in Krajina, Croatia, where Croatian forces ethnically cleansed the region of up to 350,000 minorities, predominantly Serbs. One of the generals who led this pogrom was Agim Ceku, who was trained in the US and Europe. Not only was this general in charge of the ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo in the summer of 1999, he is currently one of the leading commanders in charge of the Kosovo Police Services (KPS-the UN police force of approximately 5,000 officers)! And many of these KPS officers were actually KLA soldiers during the ethnic cleansing campaign in the summer of 1999. It is also significant to note that very few high level KLA commanders have been indicted or tried before the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
Very little has been reported in the media about the ethnic cleansing that took place in the aftermath of the NATO intervention in Kosovo. In the intervening years, what sparse coverage there has been of Kosovo has mostly heralded it as the model of U.S./NATO allies bringing "democracy" and "civil society" to countries previously steeped in ethnic hatreds and run by evil despots. The fact that Kosovo went from being a multi-ethnic society within a multi-ethnic and relatively economically stable country (the former Yugoslavia) to being a lawless country intolerant of all but the ruling majority, is not acknowledged by the press and even seems to be intentionally hidden from public awareness.
Today, almost five years since the "humanitarian bombing" and the establishment of a UN protectorate, Kosovo is one of the most dangerous places in the world for Roma! Very few Roma, pejoratively referred to as "gypsies," have remained; estimates range from 22,000-25,000. Before the US/NATO intervention in Kosovo there were more than 150,000 Roma in the region.
Over the past 700 years, Roma have settled and have established themselves as a significant minority population in Kosovo. But since international institutions arrived, bringing "democracy, free society, civil society, ethnic harmony, peace and tolerance" to Kosovo, Roma are more abused, persecuted, and ignored than ever. Today, in "free and liberated" Kosovo, Roma often are unable to even obtain a birth certificate in the place where they were born.
Freedom of movement is still one of the biggest concerns for remaining Roma; most are unable to move about freely, go to work, shop for their families, or attend schools. Very few international NGOs want to hire Roma, either because the Albanian staff members are typically uninterested in integrating Roma into "their" society, or because the foreign directors have fears of being targeted by extremist Albanians. Today, many Roma are even unable to travel to the hospital for routine or emergency treatment. For example, the hospital in Mitrovica is an hour's drive from the Serbian enclaves near Pristina, where many displaced Roma are living. Most of the Roma in Kosovo today live either in Serbian enclaves, where they are protected by numbers of minorities, or in Internally Displaced Person's (IDP) camps.
Kosovo Roma living in the UN protectorate today find themselves in a frustrating bureaucratic "log-jam" when they try to obtain legal records, visas, permits, etc. due to the absence of clarity concerning the lines of authority and procedures in a region that is:
a) not governed by the nation to which it officially belongs (Serbia)
b) run by elected and appointed officials of the dominant ethnic majority (Albanians) who are dictating, influencing, and administering policies designed to eliminate multi-ethnicity in Kosovo
c) held in check by UNMIK and UNHCR, whose mandates create obstacles and red-tape for Roma and other minorities trying to normalize/improve their lives, and whose policies do not really offer them anything in the way of protection, safety, freedom of movement, jobs, schooling for their children, etc.
At this point, the vast majority of Kosovo Roma who took refuge in other countries since June of 1999 have not received any form of permanent status as refugees or political asylum seekers from those governments. In fact, most face forced repatriation (deportation) on an ongoing (monthly, bimonthly, quarterly) basis, even though UNHCR/UNMIK repeatedly have stated that Kosovo is not safe for Roma -- recently even refusing entry to Romani deportees. It should be noted that these Western European nations whose governments refuse to grant permanent status to Kosovo Roma are the same countries who participated/supported the NATO bombing campaign of Kosovo, destroying parts of its infrastructure, violating international law by using depleted uranium and cluster bombs, and then handing Kosovo over to the Albanian majority who then ethnically cleansed the Roma. While the international civil presence is mandated to maintain civil law and order, protect and promote human rights and assure the safe and unimpeded return of all refugees and displaced persons to their homes, reports by the UN ombudsperson office, UNHCR, OSCE, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and others state that KFOR and UNMIK have failed to fulfill these obligations. If the Albanians succeed in creating an independent Kosovo, it would seem that, in the end, they are to be rewarded for their massive ethnic cleansing campaign.
Is this a picture of democracy in action? Is this what the US and NATO are touting as a "success story"? Is another Diaspora, with no right to settle and no hope of return, what the Roma of Kosovo can look forward to in the 21st Century?
In March of this year, fighting erupted again in Kosovo, between Albanians and Serbs in the City of Mitrovica. The press reported that two incidents triggered the violence -- a drive-by shooting of a Serbian youth on March 15th, followed by the drowning deaths of three Albanian youths, allegedly chased into a river by dogs belonging to Serbian boys. The larger context of the Albanian fight for Kosovo's secession from Serbia, a struggle that has motivated the fighting since long before the US/NATO intervention in 1999, is rarely mentioned in the press. It seems that the ethnic Albanian rulers of Kosovo, having used UNMIK and the international presence in Kosovo to rebuild this region for their dominance, are now ready to make the final push for independence. The international press has failed to ask these questions or fill in the background when reporting this violence, instead repeating the story of the drowning boys as the cause of the recent violence, sparking ethnic clashes that resulted in over 30 deaths and the burning of more than 300 Serbian, Romani, and other minority homes at the hands of extremist Albanians.
In sum, the Kosovo Roma are still caught in the middle of the ethnic fighting between the Albanians and Serbs, which is now more intense than ever.
- They are denied documents/the safety/ or the means to travel elsewhere or to stay in Kosovo.
- They are unwelcome and unrecognized as legitimate citizens in Kosovo/Serbia, or as refugees in Macedonia, Montenegro, and throughout Western Europe.
- They are threatened with deportation and forced to repatriate, while UNHCR states that they cannot safely return to live in Kosovo.
In a report to the U.N. Security Council on April 13th, 2004, U.N. Peacekeeping Operations Director Jean-Marie Guehenno described Kosovo, five years after the end of civil war, as a simmering cauldron of ethnic suspicions. Mr. Guehenno stated: "The onslaught led by Albanian extremists against Kosovo's Serb, Roma and Ashkali communities was an organized, widespread and targeted campaign."
With the world focused on the widening war in Iraq, and the former Yugoslavia far below media radar screens, the forgotten Roma of Kosovo are fixed dead center in the cross-hairs of the emboldened Albanian majority, poised to consummate their long held dream of an exclusively Albanian Kosovo. The Roma are in even more desperate straits than the already grim situation first reported in this publication.
Carol Bloom and Sani Rifati are respectively CFO and President of Voice of Roma, an advocacy group based in Northern California, whose goal is to provide Roma with a voice in their local communities, as well as nationally and internationally. Ann Kneel, PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley, teaches at Sonoma State University in CA, and is on the VOR Board of Directors. Sunil K. Sharma is the editor of Dissident Voice, and is on the International Advisory Board of VOR. Voice of Roma can be reached at: voiceofroma@comcast.net.
-------- britain
British Officials Rebuke Policy in Middle East
April 26, 2004
By PATRICK E. TYLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/international/europe/26CND-BLAI.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
LONDON, April 26 - In a rebuke to British and American policy in the Middle East, 52 former ambassadors and senior government officials today criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair for his unflinching support for the Bush administration's approach to postwar Iraq and to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The letter, delivered to Mr. Blair's office and released to the news media, asserted that those policies were "doomed to failure." In response, a spokesman for Mr. Blair defended the government's policies.
The diplomats, who include former ambassadors to Israel, Iraq and other Middle East capitals as well as senior British envoys to the United Nations, accused both governments of abandoning important principles of impartiality in the Holy Land, while engaging in poor planning and military overkill against Iraqi resistance forces in the Sunni Muslim areas west of Baghdad and in Shiite Muslim strongholds around Najaf.
"It is not good enough to say that the use of force is a matter for local commanders," the letter said, adding, "Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Falluja, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition."
The diplomats said that the decision by the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations to launch a "road map" to peace between Israelis and Palestinians had "raised hopes that the major powers would at last make a determined and collective effort to resolve a problem which, more than any other, has for decades poisoned relations between the West and the Islamic and Arab worlds."
But instead of pressing ahead, the diplomats said, "Nothing effective has been done either to move the negotiations forward or to curb the violence. Britain and the other sponsors of the road map merely waited on American leadership, but waited in vain."
A spokesman for Mr. Blair defended the government's policies as energetic in the pursuit of peace and stability. He said that the letter would be studied and a reply drafted. The pointed criticism from career diplomats, all Middle East specialists, who served both Labor and Conservative prime ministers, put Mr. Blair's government immediately on the defensive at a crucial moment of post war crisis and diplomacy. In recent weeks, Mr. Blair's influence in Washington has been questioned as intensely as his influence in Europe, where Britain seeking to play a bridging role.
Political sovereignty in Iraq is due to be turned over to an interim government in nine weeks, as Britain and the United States are seeking to bolster their occupation forces to take account of Spain's withdrawal of 1,400 soldiers.
A British ministry of defense spokeswoman appeared to confirm reports that as many as 2,000 more British troops might be dispatched to supplement the 7,500 soldiers in Iraq, saying that "in light of recent events" discussions were under way "with coalition partners" on troop levels required to cope with a wave of instability that in expected to peak with the turnover of power on June 30.
Today's letter came as a surprise, and Mr. Blair's aides were seeking to reiterate his arguments that he believed the road map to peace in the Holy Land might get a boost from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's decision to pull forces and Israeli settlers out of the Gaza Strip.
"The authors of the letter are entitled to their views," said a government spokesman. "The prime minister and President Bush made it clear that they are still committed to a two-state solution in the Middle East" and they "see the Israeli offer as an opportunity to get back into the road map after months of limited progress."
On Iraq, he said, "Removing the regime of Saddam Hussein has removed a threat to international peace and security and gives Iraq an opportunity for democracy."
One long-serving Middle East envoy who did not sign the letter, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who has just returned from a six-month tour in Iraq as Mr. Blair's representative in the occupation authority, complained that his colleagues had failed to "prescribe any alternatives" to the current policies.
"Let's have a bit of persistence in finishing this job," he said in an interview. Nonetheless, Sir Jeremy added that he, too, expressed criticism in Baghdad of some policies because he believed that the "coalition had been careless about killing civilians" and that the initial phase of the military assault on Falluja "was not handled the way it should have been."
Still, he said, there now is a "clear political process" in Iraq, based on negotiation and a more precise use of force. The former diplomats, he said, "should be more balanced" in their assessment.
Among the diplomats who signed the letter were Marrack Goulding, a former undersecretary for political affairs at the United Nations, and Sir Crispin Tickell, the former British ambassador to the United Nations. Francis Cornish, a former ambassador to Israel, signed, as did two former ambassadors to Baghdad, Sir Terence Clark and Hooky Walker.
Oliver Miles, who served as a senior envoy in Yemen and later, in Greece, said in an interview that "there has been a lot of frustration among military, diplomatic and intelligence colleagues about the war in Iraq" and many felt it was time "to address ourselves to the prime minister," an act he said was well within the traditions of British public service.
The diplomats were blunt in their dissatisfaction with Mr. Blair's support for American policies in the Holy Land.
After announcing the road map and the strong international support for it, "the international community has now been confronted with the announcement by Ariel Sharon and President Bush of new policies which are one-sided and which will cost yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood.
"Our dismay at this backward step is heightened by the fact that you yourself seem to have endorsed it, abandoning the principles which for nearly four decades have guided international efforts to restore peace in the Holy Land," the letter said.
"This abandonment of principle comes at a time when rightly or wrongly we are portrayed throughout the Arab and Muslim world as partners in an illegal and brutal occupation in Iraq," it added.
The diplomats said that they shared Mr. Blair's view that Britain has an interest in working closely with the United States in order to exert "real influence as a loyal ally."
But now is the time, they said, to use such influence, and if it is unwelcome in the Bush administration, then "there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure."
-------- business
10 U.S. Contractors in Iraq Penalized
Mon Apr 26, 2004
By MATT KELLEY,
Associated Press Writer
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040426/ap_on_re_us/iraq_punished_contractors_6
WASHINGTON - Ten companies with billions of dollars in U.S. contracts for Iraq reconstruction have paid more than $300 million in penalties since 2000 to resolve allegations of bid rigging, fraud, delivery of faulty military parts and environmental damage.
The United States is paying more than $780 million to one British firm that was convicted of fraud on three federal construction projects and banned from U.S. government work during 2002, according to an Associated Press review of government documents.
A Virginia company convicted of rigging bids for American-funded projects in Egypt also has been awarded Iraq contracts worth hundreds of millions. And a third firm found guilty of environmental violations and bid rigging won U.S. Army approval for a subcontract to clean up an Iraqi harbor.
Seven other companies with Iraq reconstruction contracts have agreed to pay financial penalties without admitting wrongdoing. Together, the 10 companies have paid to resolve 30 alleged violations in the past four years. Six paid penalties more than once. But the companies have been awarded $7 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts.
"We have not made firms pay the price when they screw up," said Peter W. Singer, a former Pentagon official who worked on a task force overseeing military and contract work in the Balkans.
"But it's not the company's fault if it has a dumb client. I'm not blaming the companies, I'm blaming the government," said Singer, now a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
The contracts are legal because the Bush administration repealed regulations put in place by the Clinton administration that would have allowed officials to bar new government work for companies convicted or penalized during the previous three years.
Spokesmen for the companies defended the contracts, saying the penalties often were for violations committed years ago or by subsidiaries unrelated to the ones working in Iraq. Spokeswoman Pamela Blossom said AMEC, the convicted British firm, wrote new company ethics rules after its punishment.
"None of the people involved are with the company any more," said Blossom, whose firm paid $1.2 million in fines for contract fraud on projects in California and Missouri. "We're a much better company now."
Federal regulations require government contractors to have a "satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics." The government can ban unethical companies from getting new contracts through a process called debarment.
Companies often avoid debarment by agreeing to settle misconduct cases and pay penalties without admitting guilt. AMEC was the only one of the 10 punished Iraq contractors ever debarred, and it was banned for just one year.
If a U.S. company is not on the list of banned firms, it can compete for Iraq work, said Army Maj. Gary Tallman, a spokesman for the Iraq contract management office.
"If they pay their fine or do what they have to do to get off a debarment list, they are back in good standing and eligible to compete," Tallman said.
The Clinton administration tightened contracting rules shortly before leaving office in 2001, instructing officials that repeated violations of federal laws would make a company ineligible for new contracts. Officials still would have been able to award contracts to punished companies for overriding reasons such as national security.
The Bush administration suspended the new rules during its first three months in office, and revoked them in December 2001. Business groups had objected to the Clinton changes, arguing it was unfair to deny contracts for reasons unrelated to how well a firm could do the work.
The two largest government contractors in Iraq, Bechtel Corp. and Halliburton Co., have paid several penalties in the past three years.
Halliburton paid $2 million in 2002 to settle charges it inflated costs on a maintenance contract at now-closed Fort Ord in California. Vice President Dick Cheney's former company did not admit wrongdoing.
Halliburton took in $3.6 billion last year from contracts to serve U.S. troops and rebuild the oil industry in Iraq. Halliburton executives say the company is getting about $1 billion a month for Iraq work this year.
Federal authorities also are investigating whether Halliburton broke the law by using a subsidiary to do business in Iran, whether the company overcharged for work done for the Pentagon in the Balkans and whether it was involved in an alleged $180 million bribery scheme in Nigeria. The company admitted in 2003 that it improperly paid $2.4 million to a Nigerian tax official.
Bechtel paid more than $110,000 to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department in 2000 and 2001 to settle alleged safety and environmental violations. Bechtel has prime construction contracts in Iraq worth more than $2 billion.
"We were chosen on ability and cost," Bechtel spokesman Howard Menaker said.
Bechtel also hired three subcontractors in Iraq that have been fined more than $86 million in the past four years, though none had been banned from getting new contracts. Bechtel spokesman Francis Canavan said the company would reject subcontractors that are on the no-contracts list.
Other punished contractors include:
_American International Contractors Inc., which paid $4.7 million in fines in 2000 after pleading guilty to bid rigging on a U.S.-funded water project in Egypt. AICI has part of a $325 million contract to rebuild Iraq's transportation systems, has a share of a $500 million contract for emergency construction needs in the Pentagon's Central Command region, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, and is in a partnership that has a $70 million construction contract at Al-Udeid air base in Qatar, used to support troops in Iraq. An AICI official who spoke to the AP declined to comment or give his name.
_Fluor Corp., which paid $8.5 million to the Defense Department in 2001 to settle charges it improperly billed the government for work benefiting its commercial clients. The company did not admit guilt. Fluor and AMEC created a joint venture that has $1.7 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq's electricity, water, sewer and trash removal infrastructure.
_Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co., which paid a $969,000 fine in 2002 for environmental damage in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Bechtel awarded the company a subcontract to clear the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Great Lakes Dredge & Dock also pleaded guilty to price fixing on Army Corps of Engineers contracts in 1988. A company spokesman did not return messages seeking comment. Bechtel's Canavan said Bechtel told the Corps of Engineers it planned to hire Great Lakes Dredge & Dock when it applied for the contract.
_ Northrop Grumman Corp., whose Vinnell Corp. subsidiary was awarded a $48 million contract to train the new Iraqi Army last year. Northrop Grumman has been penalized $191.7 million in the past four years, including $750,000 paid to the Pentagon in 2000 in a case involving allegations of providing faulty replacement parts for the JSTARS airborne surveillance system. A Northrop Grumman spokesman referred questions to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which said it excludes only companies banned by the federal government.
----
Punished Contractors List
April 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Punished-Contractors-List.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Ten companies with U.S. contracts or subcontracts in Iraq have paid more than $300 million in penalties during the past four years.
They include:
Northrop Grumman Corp., whose Vinnell Corp. subsidiary was awarded a $48 million contract to train the new Iraqi Army last year. Northrop Grumman has been penalized $191.7 million in the past four years, including:
--$60 million last year to settle allegations of improper charges on shipbuilding contracts.
--$20 million last year to settle allegations of selling defective equipment to the Navy.
--$111 million last year paid to the Pentagon and NASA to settle alleged overcharges by its TRW subsidiary.
--$750,000 to the Pentagon in 2000 in a case involving allegations of providing faulty replacement parts for the JSTARS airborne surveillance system.
A Northrop Grumman spokesman referred questions to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which said it excludes only companies banned by the federal government.
Lockheed Martin Corp., awarded a subcontract by Bechtel Corp. to provide airport telecommunications in Iraq. Lockheed Martin has been fined $85.5 million in the past four years, including:
--$37.9 million last year in a case alleging inflated prices on four Air Force contracts.
--$7.1 million last year to settle charges of defrauding the Pentagon and NASA.
--$1.4 million last year to settle allegations of overcharging the Air Force.
--$3.1 million in 2002 to settle allegations of selling defective sensors for the F/A-18 Hornet jet.
--$2.1 million in 2002 to settle alleged fraud on Trident missile programs.
--$1.3 million to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2002 to settle alleged environmental violations.
--$530,000 to the Pentagon in 2002 to settle charges it used employees without the proper qualifications.
--$10.5 million to the Federal Aviation Administration in 2001 to settle allegations of overcharging rent on four buildings.
--$450,000 to the Pentagon in 2000 to settle charges of using government equipment on commercial projects.
--$1 million to the Energy Department in 2000 to settle charges of violating safety requirements.
--$13 million in 2000 to settle charges of transferring technology to China that could have been used for missiles.
--$4.2 million to the Pentagon in 2000 to settle charges of misusing foreign military sales money.
--$3.5 million to the EPA in 2000 for cleanup costs of a Superfund site in Colorado.
A Lockheed Martin spokesman did not return messages seeking comment.
Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co. awarded a subcontract by Bechtel to dredge the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.
A federal court ordered Great Lakes Dredge to pay the government $969,000 in 2002 for environmental damage caused by tugboats in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
A company spokeswoman did not return messages seeking comment.
Panalpina, a Swiss freight-forwarding company that has a Bechtel subcontract in Iraq.
Panalpina paid a $150,000 fine in 2001 for alleged misuse of its U.S. freight forwarding license.
A company spokesman did not return messages seeking comment.
American International Contractors, Inc., which has a $325 million contract to rebuild Iraqi transportation systems in partnership with its parent company, Swiss-based Archirodon LLC, and two other firms, Contrack International Inc. and Orascom Construction Industries of Egypt.
AICI, Archirodon and Syska Hennessy Group, Inc., have a $500 million emergency military construction contract in the Central Command region, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan.
AICI paid $4.7 million in fines after pleading guilty in 2000 to bid rigging on a water project in Egypt funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Company officials declined comment.
Bechtel Corp., awarded $1.03 billion for a prime reconstruction contract last year by USAID, followed by a $1.8 billion prime reconstruction contract from USAID awarded in January. Bechtel's penalties include:
--$30,000 in 2001 to the EPA to settle charges of violating emissions rules.
--$82,000 in 2000 to the Energy Department to settle charges of exposing workers to unsafe levels of radiation.
Computer Sciences Corp., whose DynCorp subsidiary has a $50 million State Department contract to train Iraqi police and a $7.8 million Pentagon contract to make identification cards for all Americans in Iraq.
CSC's penalties include:
--$6.4 million in 2000 to settle charges a subsidiary made false claims involving defaulted student loans.
--$9,000 to the Pentagon 2001 to settle charges of billing the Defense Department for time CSC workers spent taking classes.
A company spokesman said CSC did not admit wrongdoing and the charges did not involve DynCorp, which CSC bought in 2003.
Fluor Corp., which, in partnership with AMEC Ltd., has three contracts worth a total of $1.7 billion to rebuild Iraq's electricity, water, sewer and waste systems.
Fluor's penalties include:
--$100,000 to the Energy Department in 2000 to settle charges of providing defective pipes.
--$8.5 million in 2001 to settle charges of improperly billing the Pentagon for commercial costs.
A company spokesman said Fluor did not admit wrongdoing in paying the penalties.
AMEC Ltd., which, in partnership with Fluor, has three contracts worth a total of $1.7 billion to rebuild Iraq's electricity, water, sewer and waste systems.
AMEC's penalties include:
-- $500,000 fine in 2000 in Missouri after pleading guilty to fraud involving a federal building construction contract.
-- $700,000 fine in 2002 in California after pleading guilty to fraud on two federal building contracts.
-- A ban on receiving federal contracts from February 2002 to February 2003.
A company spokeswoman said AMEC instituted new ethics programs in response to the charges.
Halliburton Co., which received $3.6 billion under contracts to provide meals, laundry, housing and other services to troops in Iraq and to rebuild Iraq's oil industry. It also was awarded a $1.2 billion contract in January to rebuild the oil industry in southern Iraq.
Halliburton paid $2 million in 2002 to settle charges it inflated charges on a maintenance contract at now-closed Fort Ord, Calif.
A company spokeswoman said Halliburton did not admit wrongdoing.
----
Raytheon Chosen For Key Role In Army High Capacity Comms Program
Apr 26, 2004
Spacewar
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-comms-04s.html
Marlborough, Mass - Raytheon Company has been selected by the U.S. Army Space and Terrestrial Communications Directorate for an 18-month study phase of the High Capacity Communications Capability (HC3) program. Final award selection will follow completion of the study phase.
This strategic program is central to the Army's transformational net- centric communications efforts, providing for the implementation of a comprehensive "Command and Control on the Move" capability. The team led by Raytheon will develop and integrate systems critical to the mission of Army and Marine Corps information superiority.
"HC3 is the anchor program for high capacity satellite access for the Army's Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T), and for the Marine Corps' Tactical Data Network (TDN). It is how we transform range extension of the Global Information Grid," said Jerry Powlen, vice president of Raytheon's Integrated Communication Systems.
"We will leverage our success in Army and Marine Corps SMART-T and other MILSATCOM programs to integrate these systems for our Warfighters." The process will include adaptation of software compliant architecture and joint technical architecture policies, as utilized for the Joint Tactical Radio System.
Work will be performed at Raytheon's Network Centric Systems facility in Marlborough, Mass., and with a core industry team across the United States. Network Centric Systems is Raytheon's leader in communication systems integration.
-----
Aerospace & Defense
Monday, April 26, 2004
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40126-2004Apr25.html
Lockheed Martin Corp. - General Dynamics Corp. - United Defense Industries Inc. - Anteon International Corp. - CACI International Inc. - ManTech International Corp. - Orbital Sciences Corp. - SRA Inte
The war in Iraq, terrorist threats -- troubled times can mean better numbers for the region's 14 publicly held aerospace and defense companies. They showed up in force on many of The Post 200's lists: biggest earnings gains (seven of the top 25) and biggest jumps in revenue (four of the top 25). DigitalNet, a Herndon builder of computer systems for the government, went public in October and makes its debut on The Post 200. Analex, an Alexandria software company, also joins the list. Veridian Corp. in Arlington, which provides computer security to the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, left the list; General Dynamics bought it in August.
-------- china
Beijing Acts to Limit Democratic Moves in Hong Kong
April 26, 2004
By KEITH BRADSHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/international/asia/26CND-HONG.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
HONG KONG, April 26 - Beijing today forbade the introduction of fully democratic elections here for the chief executive in 2007 and the legislature in 2008, and imposed further limits on the legislature in an attempt to silence democratic sentiment.
The decision angered democracy advocates, who promised street demonstrations, and drew sharp criticism from the United States and Britain, which said that Beijing was eroding the autonomy of Hong Kong that it had pledged to preserve.
Bill Rammell, Britain's foreign office minister, is calling in China's ambassador to London to complain about the move, saying in a statement that the move was "inconsistent with the `high degree of autonomy' which Hong Kong is guaranteed under the Joint Declaration."
Signed in December 1984, the Chinese-British Joint Declaration cleared the way for Britain to hand over Hong Kong to China in 1997.
The general public here is already scheduled to elect half the legislature's members in the next elections, to be held in September. Many here had expected Beijing to increase this proportion in 2008 as a small, conciliatory gesture to democratic sentiment.
But the Standing Committee of the Communist Party-controlled National People's Congress ordered today that this ratio remain fixed. If more democratically elected seats are added, the committee said, then more seats must also be added for so-called functional constituencies.
These represent specific industries or professions, like banking and accounting, which tend to follow Beijing's wishes closely. Fewer than 100 people are allowed to vote in some of these constituencies, mostly tycoons with big investments on the mainland.
The standing committee also declared today that no changes would be allowed to a provision that Beijing inserted into drafts of the Basic Law, the miniconstitution here, after the Tiananmen Square killings in 1989. The provision says that while bills backed by the Beijing-selected chief executive only need a simple majority to pass the legislature, bills and amendments introduced by members of the legislature must clear a much higher hurdle.
These bills and amendments must win the support of a majority of the democratically elected members plus a majority of the members representing functional constituencies to pass.
Democracy advocates could win a majority of the legislature in the September elections, by taking almost all of the publicly elected seats plus a handful of seats in certain functional constituencies, like the law, that favor greater pluralism. This would produce the first pro-democracy legislative body on the Chinese mainland since the Communists took power in 1949.
Seeking Beijing's help in curbing North Korea's nuclear weapons program, the Bush administration had been cautious until the last few weeks about assailing China's increasingly hard line here. But Jim Keith, the career diplomat who is the United States consul general here, took the forthright step late this afternoon of going to an event organized by mainland officials who flew down here to defend their decision. Mr. Keith questioned the move to the assembled reporters.
"The central government's decision to limit the debate on constitutional development here in Hong Kong by ruling out universal suffrage in 2007 is disappointing," Mr. Keith said. "The Hong Kong people have not yet reached a conclusion on their own. The imposition of the central authority's outcome on a debate that has not yet occurred in Hong Kong is an erosion of the high degree of autonomy that the Basic Law and the Joint Declaration guaranteed to the people of Hong Kong."
Jackie Hung, the financial secretary and chief spokeswoman of the Civil Human Rights Front, a coalition of pro-democracy groups, said that she hoped foreign governments would put steady pressure on China to tolerate more democracy in Hong Kong.
Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's chief executive, defended the latest decision by Beijing, saying it was "conducive to the long-term interests of Hong Kong."
Ma Lik, the chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, the biggest pro-Beijing political party, said in a telephone interview that Beijing's decision made sense to him because, "Stability is more important than radical change."
Beijing officials have repeatedly called for an end to the active discussions of democracy here. Donald Tsang, the chief secretary and Hong Kong's second-ranking official after Mr. Tung, said today that further democracy proposals by the public should be confined to the possibilities offered by Beijing's decision.
But Christine Loh, the chief executive of the Civic Exchange, a nonprofit research group here, said that while Beijing had the ability to ban formal changes here, it would be hard to silence the debate.
"You still have a corner of China where the high-level officials of China have made a decision and it's not going to be obeyed," she said.
The standing committee's decisions about Hong Kong have stirred an active discussion among mainland legal scholars about the limits and nature of central government power, a rare occurrence in mainland China that could also have long-term implications, Ms. Loh said.
In a clear indication of concern about the potential for further demonstrations in a crowded city with almost the same population as Switzerland, Mr. Tung said at a news conference that, "I'd like to urge various sectors of the community to be calm and rational."
Democracy advocates are planning demonstrations on June 4, the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings in Beijing, and on July 1.
The latter is a public holiday to commemorate Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. But the date is now seen mainly as the anniversary of 500,000 people taking to the streets last year to call for universal suffrage and to denounce a government proposal for stringent internal-security laws.
Mr. Tung later withdrew the security legislation, which had been strongly backed by Beijing.
A committee of 800 people mostly loyal to Beijing selects the chief executive here. For the legislature, fewer than 100 people are allowed to vote in some of the functional constituencies, and these voters tend to be business leaders with extensive investments on the mainland who reliably endorse whatever Beijing suggests. Mr. Tsang said that there might be room for broadening the number of people who can vote in some of the functional constituencies.
The number of members of the Legislative Council elected by the general public is rising to 30 out of 60 in the September elections, from 24 out of 60 in the current session of the legislature. Mr. Tsang and Mr. Ma said it was important to see how this worked instead of planning a further increase in 2008.
Business leaders have shown little sign of wavering in their hostility to greater democracy here, warning that it might lead to higher social spending and higher taxes.
The Hang Seng Index of stocks here dropped 2 percent today, but there was little sign of a reaction to political news; the market was led lower by shares in Chinese companies that might suffer if China is unable to contain a small outbreak of SARS in Beijing and Anhui Province that appeared to spread a little further over the weekend.
-------- europe
Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam
April 26, 2004
By PATRICK E. TYLER and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/international/europe/26EURO.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
LUTON, England, April 24 - The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.
In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.
They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.
On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce - provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months - Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.
"All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death - that is what they are looking for."
On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open.
In Hamburg, Dr. Mustafa Yoldas, the director of the Council of Islamic Communities, saw a correlation to the discord in Iraq. "This is a very dangerous situation at the moment," Dr. Yoldas said. "My impression is that Muslims have become more and more angry against the United States."
Hundreds of young Muslim men are answering the call of militant groups affiliated or aligned with Al Qaeda, intelligence and counterterrorism officials in the region say.
Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is that the level of "chatter" - communications among people suspected of terrorism and their supporters - has markedly increased since Mr. bin Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.
"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.
And recruitment is paired with a compelling new strategy to bring the fight to Europe.
Members of Al Qaeda have "proven themselves to be extremely opportunistic, and they have decided to try to split the Western alliance," the official continued. "They are focusing their energies on attacking the big countries" - the United States, Britain and Spain - so as to "scare" the smaller states.
Some Muslim recruits are going to Iraq, counterterrorism officials in Europe say, but more are remaining home, possibly joining cells that could help with terror logistics or begin operations like the one that came to notice when the British police seized 1,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a key bomb ingredient, in late March, and arrested nine Pakistani-Britons, five of whom have been charged with trying to build a terrorist bomb.
Stoking that anger are some of the same fiery Islamic clerics who preached violence and martyrdom before the Sept. 11 attacks.
On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."
Though the British home secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to strip Abu Hamza of his British citizenship and deport him, the legal battle has dragged on for years while Abu Hamza keeps calling down the wrath of God.
Also this week, over Mr. Blunkett's vigorous objection, a 35-year-old Algerian held under emergency laws passed after Sept. 11 was released from Belmarsh Prison. The man, identified only as "G," suffered from severe mental illness, his lawyers told a special immigration appeals panel, which let him out of prison and put him under house arrest.
Mr. Blunkett insisted that that should not be the final judgment on a man already found by one court "to be a threat to life and liberty."
In an interview on the BBC over the weekend, Mr. Blunkett advocated a stronger deportation policy, initially focused on 12 foreign terror suspects held without charge since the Sept. 11 attacks.
Despite tougher antiterrorism laws, the police, prosecutors and intelligence chiefs across Europe say they are struggling to contain the openly seditious speech of Islamic extremists, some of whom, they say, have been inciting young men to suicidal violence since the 1990's.
One chapter in Sheik Omar's lectures these days is "The Psyche of Muslims for Suicide Bombing."
The authorities say that laws to protect religious expression and civil liberties have the result of limiting what they can do to stop hateful speech. In the case of foreigners, they say they are often left to seek deportation, a lengthy and uncertain process subject to legal appeals, when the suspect can keep inciting attacks.
That leaves the authorities to resort to less effective means, such as mouse-trapping Islamic radicals with immigration violations in hopes of making a deportation case stick. "In many countries, the laws are liberal and it's not easy," an official said.
At a mosque in Geneva, an imam recently exhorted his followers to "impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West."
"It was quite virulent," said a senior official with knowledge of the sermon. "The imam was encouraging his followers to take over the godless society."
While such a sermon may be incitement, recruitment takes a more shadowy course, and is hard to detect, a senior antiterrorism official said. "Believers are appealed to in the mosques, but the real conversations take place in restaurants or cafes or private apartments," the official said.
While some clerics, like Abu Qatada - said to be the spiritual counselor of Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 hijacking team - remain in prison in Britain without charge, others like Sheik Omar, leader of a movement called Al Muhajiroun, carry on a robust ideological campaign.
"There is no case against me," Sheik Omar said in an interview. Referring to calls by members of Parliament that he be deported, he added, "but they are Jewish" and "they have been calling for that for years."
Among his ardent followers is Ishtiaq Alamgir, 24, who heads Al Muhajiroun in Luton and calls himself Sayful Islam, the sword of Islam. He says there are about 50 members here but exact numbers are secret.
Most days, he and a handful of his followers run a recruitment stand on Dunstable Road much to the chagrin of the Muslim elders of Luton.
Mainstream Muslims are outraged by the situation, saying the actions of a few are causing their communities to be singled out for surveillance and making the larger population distrustful of them.
Muhammad Sulaiman, a stalwart of the mainstream Central Mosque here, was penniless when he arrived from the Kashmiri frontier of Pakistan in 1956. He raised money to build the Central Mosque here and now leads a campaign to ban Al Muhajiroun radicals from the city's 10 mosques.
"This is show-off business," he says in accented English. "I don't want these kids in my mosque."
Other community leaders look to the government to do something, if only to help prevent the demonization of British Muslims, or "Islamophobia," as some here call it.
"I think these kids are being brainwashed by a few radical clerics," said Akhbar Dad Khan, another elder of the Central Mosque. He wants them prosecuted or deported. "We should be able to control this negativity," he said.
In Slough, Sheik Omar spent much of his time Thursday night regaling his young followers with the erotic delights of paradise - sweet kisses and the pleasures of bathing with scores of women - while he also preached the virtues of death in Islamic struggle as a ticket to paradise.
He spoke of terrorism as the new norm of cultural conflict, "the fashion of the 21st century," practiced as much by Tony Blair as by Al Qaeda.
"We may be caught up in the target as the people of Manhattan were," he told them.
And he warned Western leaders, "You may kill bin Laden, but the phenomenon, you cannot kill it - you cannot destroy it."
"Our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here and then we will live under Islam in dignity," he said.
Patrick E. Tyler reported from Luton, Slough and London and Don Van Natta Jr. from London. Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Germany.
-------- iraq
U.S. Opts To Delay Fallujah Offensive
Marines, Iraqi Forces Planning Joint Patrols
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41996-2004Apr25?language=printer
FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 25 -- U.S. Marines have postponed plans to mount an attack against insurgents holed up here and instead will attempt to regain control of this violence-wracked city without a full-scale offensive, military commanders said Sunday.
Concerned about the repercussions an attack could generate across Iraq and the Arab world, senior U.S. military and civilian officials said they had decided to try to confront a band of hard-core Sunni Muslim insurgents, who have effectively taken over Fallujah, by having Marines conduct patrols in the city alongside Iraqi security forces.
The new strategy, reached in consultation with the White House over the weekend, represents an effort by U.S. officials to avoid a military incursion that could entail urban combat, civilian casualties and a wave of retributive strikes outside Fallujah, further poisoning relations between Iraqis and U.S. occupation forces.
"A military solution is not going to be the solution here unless everything else fails," said Maj. Gen. James N. Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, which is responsible for securing Fallujah and other areas of western Iraq. Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad, said efforts to deal with the insurgency in Fallujah had shifted to "a political track."
The strategy shift is the latest in a series of U.S. policy reversals designed to placate Iraq's Sunnis, a once-powerful minority whose postwar disenfranchisement has fueled attacks on U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces. Last week, the U.S. occupation authority announced it would hire back some senior military officers and teachers who were dismissed by the authority because they had been members of former president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated Baath Party.
U.S. military commanders and civilian leaders have also decided to take a similar approach with militiamen loyal to a radical Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr. Although U.S. soldiers have mobilized outside the holy city of Najaf, where Sadr and many of his militiamen have congregated, Kimmitt said there were "no timelines" for the soldiers to enter the city.
U.S. officials continue to rely on Iraqi interlocutors to persuade Sadr to demobilize his illegal militia, whose members have repeatedly attacked U.S. forces and foreign troops stationed in central Iraq. "We would like to obtain a final agreement in Najaf," Kimmitt said.
Together, the latest approaches to dealing with Fallujah and Najaf represent a new effort by the U.S. military and civilian leadership in Iraq to avoid the sort of violent confrontations that occurred earlier this month, when Marines fought running battles in Fallujah and Sadr's militiamen skirmished with soldiers in Baghdad and across central Iraq.
"This is the way we want to do it," Mattis said. "We didn't come here to fight."
If Marines patrolling the city are fired upon, Mattis said, they would shoot back and reassess the use of joint patrols or whether more aggressive military action was warranted.
"If we do not gain control of Fallujah using joint patrols, then we've got to look at other options," he said.
Some military officials have privately voiced skepticism about the patrols, saying they expect the insurgents to fire upon the Marines. "We need to engage them on our own terms," one officer said.
Marine commanders in and around Fallujah had expected to receive orders over the weekend to mount a comprehensive attack on insurgents in the city, who Marines believe are a combination of foreign fighters, indigenous Islamic extremists and Hussein loyalists. Marine officers estimate there are several hundred insurgents in Fallujah, which is located on the Euphrates River about 35 miles west of Baghdad.
After a mob killed and mutilated four U.S. security contractors there, Marines encircled the dusty city of 200,000 and engaged in intense firefights with insurgents. After three days, however, U.S. commanders declared a cease-fire in an attempt to negotiate a solution.
Although a group of civic leaders had agreed to a peace deal with U.S. military commanders and civilian officials on April 19, the local leaders have failed to fulfill a key element of the agreement -- getting the insurgents to surrender heavy weapons. On Wednesday, police officers delivered a pickup truck filled with rusty and largely inoperative weapons, not the modern equipment military officers had wanted. The lack of compliance with the arms handover prompted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and senior military officials to suggest that offensive action could resume on short notice.
Rumsfeld and the other military officials questioned whether the local leaders who signed the peace agreement had enough influence over the insurgents to compel them to turn over weapons and cease hostilities. If the leaders could not deliver, the military officials said, the Marines would be left with no option but to resort to force again.
But on Saturday, with Marine commanders preparing their attack plans, top American officials helicoptered into a sprawling base outside Fallujah for last-ditch meetings. Participants included the U.S. administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, and the overall commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid. Iraqi political leaders, who have been negotiating with civic leaders in Fallujah, implored the American officials to give the peace deal more time, according to a U.S. official familiar with the discussions. The Iraqis insisted that many in the city who had fought against the Marines earlier in the month had promised to cease attacks but did not want to give up their weapons, the official said.
In response, Bremer and Abizaid decided to try to implement joint patrols to give the local leaders a final chance to demonstrate whether they could control the city, the official said. "If they can keep the bad guys from shooting, that's great," the official said. "If the bad guys start shooting at the Marines, then we're going to have to go in with more force."
The decision not to attack immediately and to attempt the joint patrols was so sensitive that it was made in consultation with the White House, the official said.
In Washington, a senior Bush administration official said the decision to rely for now on patrols rather than an attack was based partly on the concern of President Bush's aides about the fallout an invasion could trigger in the Arab world.
"It's a situation that calls for precision and some measure of patience -- not unlimited patience, however," said the official, who declined to be identified in order to speak more candidly. "You want to be prepared to take strong action on short notice against those who've been identified, and do what's necessary to subdue them. On the other hand, you don't want to misfire prematurely in such a way that you temporarily make the local situation worse and provide images that incite a broader reaction."
Despite pledges of stability from local leaders, Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne, the commander of a Marine battalion in Fallujah, said he would not take any chances: The Marine unit conducting the joint patrol, he said, will have air support and "will be prepared for anything they might run into."
The decision to use joint patrols, with heavy U.S. armor escorting uniformed Iraqi police and civil defense officers, also serves to shift the context of any future confrontation away from the notion of collective punishment for the mutilation of the contractors.
"Whether we use military means or whether we use political means, we're committed to achieving the end, which is to get Iraqi control back in the city," Kimmitt said.
Iraqi security forces interviewed in Fallujah on Sunday were apprehensive about the idea of patrolling with the Marines. "I don't feel safe because the Americans are not safe," said police Capt. Jassim Mohammed Abid. "They're going to get shot at. They can't guarantee safety for themselves, so how can they guarantee safety for me?"
Kimmitt referred to the first joint patrol, which is planned for Tuesday, as both a test and a possible watershed. "That will be the first step into returning the city to a sense of stability that eventually will result in our being able to bring a tremendous amount of funds, civil affairs money and expertise into that city," he said.
On the heels of Bremer's meeting on Saturday, the occupation authority formally announced $70 million in funding for civic improvements in Fallujah and nearby Ramadi: $20 million upfront and $50 million soon.
Meanwhile, in southern Iraq, the country's main oil-exporting terminal will remain closed until at least Monday after it was damaged in a seaborne suicide attack on Saturday, Oil Minister Ibrahim Bahr Uloum told reporters. The Basra terminal normally funnels nearly a million barrels daily to waiting tankers.
A third American service member, identified as a U.S. Coast Guardsman, died from wounds suffered when a patrol craft challenged the explosives-laden dhow, one of three that exploded at the port in a coordinated attack.
In Baghdad, a U.S. soldier was killed and three were wounded when a roadside bomb detonated Sunday morning. Several civilians, including children, were killed when soldiers came under fire from rooftops on both sides of the road when they returned to collect their wrecked Humvee, the military said.
In other attacks Sunday, eight U.S. soldiers were wounded by assorted mortar fire or roadside bombs in Balad, north of Baghdad. Four Iraqi civilians were killed in the northern city of Mosul after mortar shells landed outside a hotel and a hospital.
Vick reported from Baghdad.
----
Full text of former diplomats' letter to Blair
April 26 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1079420615372&p=1012571727102
Dear Prime Minister,
We the undersigned former British ambassadors, high commissioners, governors and senior international officials, including some who have long experience of the Middle East and others whose experience is elsewhere, have watched with deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israel problem and Iraq, in close co-operation with the United States. Following the press conference in Washington at which you and President Bush restated these policies, we feel the time has come to make our anxieties public, in the hope that they will be addressed in Parliament and will lead to a fundamental reassessment.
The decision by the USA, the EU, Russia and the UN to launch a "Road Map" for the settlement of the Israel/Palestine conflict raised hopes that the major powers would at last make a determined and collective effort to resolve a problem which, more than any other, has for decades poisoned relations between the West and the Islamic and Arab worlds. The legal and political principles on which such a settlement would be based were well established: President Clinton had grappled with the problem during his presidency; the ingredients needed for a settlement were well understood and informal agreements on several of them had already been achieved. But the hopes were ill-founded. Nothing effective has been done either to move the negotiations forward or to curb the violence. Britain and the other sponsors of the Road Map merely waited on American leadership, but waited in vain.
Worse was to come. After all those wasted months, the international community has now been confronted with the announcement by Ariel Sharon and President Bush of new policies which are one-sided and illegal and which will cost yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood. Our dismay at this backward step is heightened by the fact that you yourself seem to have endorsed it, abandoning the principles which for nearly four decades have guided international efforts to restore peace in the Holy Land and which have been the basis for such successes as those efforts have produced.
This abandonment of principle comes at a time when rightly or wrongly we are portrayed throughout the Arab and Muslim world as partners in an illegal and brutal occupation in Iraq.
The conduct of the war in Iraq has made it clear that there was no effective plan for the post-Saddam settlement. All those with experience of the area predicted that the occupation of Iraq by the Coalition forces would meet serious and stubborn resistance, as has proved to be the case. To describe the resistance as led by terrorists, fanatics and foreigners is neither convincing nor helpful. Policy must take account of the nature and history of Iraq, the most complex country in the region. However much Iraqis may yearn for a democratic society, the belief that one could now be created by the Coalition is naive. This is the view of virtually all independent specialists on the region, both in Britain and in America. We are glad to note that you and the President have welcomed the proposals outlined by Lakhdar Brahimi. We must be ready to provide what support he requests, and to give authority to the United Nations to work with the Iraqis themselves, including those who are now actively resisting the occupation, to clear up the mess.
The military actions of the Coalition forces must be guided by political objectives and by the requirements of the Iraq theatre itself, not by criteria remote from them. It is not good enough to say that the use of force is a matter for local commanders. Heavy weapons unsuited to the task in hand, inflammatory language, the current confrontations in Najaf and Falluja, all these have built up rather than isolated the opposition. The Iraqis killed by coalition forces probably total between ten and fifteen thousand (it is a disgrace that the Coalition forces themselves appear to have no estimate), and the number killed in the last month in Falluja alone is apparently several hundred including many civilian men, women and children. Phrases such as "We mourn each loss of life. We salute them, and their families for their bravery and their sacrifice," apparently referring only to those who have died on the Coalition side, are not well judged to moderate the passions these killings arouse.
We share your view that the British government has an interest in working as closely as possible with the United States on both these related issues, and in exerting real influence as a loyal ally. We believe that the need for such influence is now a matter of the highest urgency. If that is unacceptable or unwelcome there is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure.
Yours faithfully,
Brian Barder Paul Bergne John Birch David Blatherwick Graham Boyce Julian Bullard Juliet Campbell Bryan Cartledge Terence Clark David Colvin Francis Cornish James Craig Brian Crowe Basil Eastwood Stephen Egerton William Fullerton Dick Fyjis-Walker Marrack Goulding John Graham Andrew Green Vic Henderson Peter Hinchcliffe Brian Hitch Archie Lamb David Logan Christopher Long Ivor Lucas Ian McCluney Maureen MacGlashan Philip McLean Christopher MacRae Oliver Miles Martin Morland Keith Morris Richard Muir Alan Munro Stephen Nash Robin O'Neill Andrew Palmer Bill Quantrill David Ratford Tom Richardson Andrew Stuart David Tatham Crispin Tickell Derek Tonkin Charles Treadwell Hugh Tunnell Jeremy Varcoe Hooky Walker Michael Weir Alan White
----
Inside Falluja, a Cease-Fire in Name Only
April 26, 2004
New York Times
By JOHN KIFNER and JOHN F. BURNS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/international/middleeast/26CND-FALL.html
FALLUJA, Iraq, April 26 - A protracted firefight between marines and insurgents in a residential suburb of this besieged city culminated today with American helicopter gunships and tanks firing at a mosque and toppling the minaret, further dimming hopes for a peaceful end to the three-week siege.
Despite a nominal cease-fire extended by the American authorities on Sunday, the pitched battle lasted several hours, leaving one marine and at least eight insurgents dead by the Americans' count.
The fighting threatened both the truce and a plan to have marines and Iraqi security forces patrol the city together in the coming days. American spokesmen said the patrol plan, advanced by Falluja civic leaders to try to avert an all-out American assault on their city, was still in effect, though some marines on the ground here expressed strong reservations about the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the Iraqi forces.
The American command said the battle erupted in the Jolan section of this Sunni Muslim stronghold 30 miles west of Baghdad when insurgents used the mosque to launch rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire at Marine positions. After two hours, pinned down by incoming fire, the Marines called in helicopters and tanks, which directed "suppressing fire" at the mosque, the command said.
"Unfortunately, the opposition forces took it upon themselves to occupy a mosque," Col. John Coleman, chief of staff of the First Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters. "Instead of serving as a center of religious life, it was employed as a bastion in the attack."
Marine officers look on the resumption of joint patrols with grim foreboding.
With Iraq's prospects of resuming progress toward a peaceful handover of sovereignty on June 30 hanging uneasily in the balance, developments in Falluja were echoed by fresh tensions at Najaf, the holy city 100 miles south of Baghdad that has been the focal point of a separate confrontation.
At nightfall today, Najaf residents said a major battle was under way nearby between American troops and militiamen loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite cleric who has taken refuge with supporters in Najaf and an adjacent city, Kufa, defying American threats to kill or capture him.
Sketchy reports of the battle, on a key highway to the city, suggested that Mr. Sadr's fighters had taken heavy casualties from American ground troops backed by helicopter gunships.
American commanders were also closely monitoring reports from inside Najaf said that growing anger of residents there against Mr. Sadr and his militiamen, who have sown a pattern of lawlessness since launching an uprising in the city earlier this month, had taken a startling new turn with a shadowy group of assassins killing at least five Sadr militiamen in attacks on Sunday and Monday.
Those reports, from residents of the city who reached relatives in Baghdad by telephone, said the killings had been carried out by a group calling itself the Thulfiqar Army, after a two-bladed sword that Shiite tradition says was used by Imam Ali, the martyred son-in-law of the Prophet Mohammed, the patron saint of Shiism. Accounts of the killings said the new group had distributed leaflets in Najaf threatening to assassinate members of Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, unless they left Najaf immediately.
One Najaf resident said some of Mr. Sadr's militiamen were shedding the black clothing that had been their signature during the weeks that they have occupied Najaf and large parts of other cities in central and southern Iraq with majority Shiite populations.
The same resident said that he knew of two killings of Mahdi Army members on Sunday, near a roundabout in Najaf named for the 1920 tribal revolt against British colonial authority in Iraq, and that three more Sadr militiamen had been killed later on Sunday or Monday.
If reports of violence against Mr. Sadr's followers in Najaf suggested that the American occupation authority might finally be seeing the beginnings of Iraqis taking action of their own to curb the firebrand cleric - as the American administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, recently urged in a television address - events in Baghdad today underscored how potent a force Mr. Sadr remains, at least among many volatile young Shiites who have found a release from their impoverishment in the cleric's anti-American rhetoric.
The latest outburst of fury against the American occupation came when American troops raiding a chemical storage warehouse in one of the capital's inner-city neighborhoods were caught in a huge explosion that sent a pillar of white smoke roiling hundreds of feet into the air and tons of masonry cascading down onto a busy street. The American command said two soldiers had been killed and five others had been injured; at least eight Iraqi civilians were hurt, and four American Humvee vehicles were set afire.
American military spokesmen withheld details of what caused the blast. One eyewitness report suggested that the cause was a spark that coincided with the troops' breaking into the warehouse; another possibility was that the Americans, belonging to the Iraq Survey Group, a unit set up to search for stockpiles of forbidden weapons, could have stumbled into a trap. An informant had told the American command that the chemical store's owner and his associates were supplying chemical agents to "terrorists, criminals and insurgents," as a command statement put it.
In any case, the explosion set the scene for yet another of the frenzied demonstrations of anti-American feeling that have occurred when American troops are attacked, with young Iraqi men dancing on top of burning Humvees and shouting "Moktada! Moktada!" for the rebel cleric.
Others rushed up to television crews with American helmets, and placed one on the head of a donkey; still others ran down the street displaying charred remnants of chemical-weapons clothing pulled from the Humvees, some with shoulder patches bearing the survey group's motto, "Find, exploit, eliminate."
In Falluja, the marines on the ground showed little enthusiasm for the tentative extension of the cease-fire, which was cobbled together at the last minute by Mr. Bremer as top political and military leaders contemplated the potentially disastrous public relations impact of a bloody attack on the city.
"This isn't a cease-fire," a Marine officer snorted. "It's a chance for them to regroup."
That view gained credence with today's fighting, which began late this morning in the Jolan section, in the northwest quarter of the city, near a sharp bend in the Euphrates River. Old and poor, the neighborhood is known as a stronghold of the insurgents.
As a Marine platoon tried to move forward to secure a better position in the area, it came under heavy rocket-propelled grenade fire from insurgents based in a mosque, reporters traveling with the unit said.
Tanks were called in and, eventually, air support. A Cobra attack helicopter fired a missile that toppled the mosque's minaret, witnesses said. Two dark pillars of smoke rose in the air.
Not only is the effectiveness of the Iraqi security forces in doubt, in the Marines' eyes, but so is their loyalty. During the previous weeks of fighting, they dropped out of sight, some lying low, others going over to the insurgency.
It is further unclear how many Iraqi security forces will show up for duty, as is the degree of their enthusiasm. And there are worries among the Marines that they may turn on the Americans or lead them into an ambush. The Marine contingency plans for the patrols call for a heavy response if they are fired upon.
In a separate incident during the day, marines exchanged fire with insurgents in the Shuhada district in the south-center of the city, another opposition stronghold. A Marine officer on the scene said the fighting started when a patrol came upon armed men setting up roadblocks.
John Kifner reported from Falluja and John F. Burns reported from Baghdad for this article.
--------
2 U.S. Troops Are Killed in Blast at Baghdad Chemical Warehouse
April 26, 2004
By CHRISTINE HAUSER and KIRK SEMPLE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/international/middleeast/26CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 26 - Two American soldiers were killed today and five were wounded in a large explosion while searching a chemicals warehouse in Baghdad, a military official said. Eight Iraqi civilians were wounded, the official, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said.
At least one member of the Iraq Survey Group, which has conducted a fruitless search thus far for evidence of weapons of mass destruction, appeared to have been among the American troops at the site.
In Falluja, one American soldier was killed and eight were wounded in heavy fighting with insurgents today, a day after the American authorities extended a shaky cease-fire there until at least Tuesday. In the fighting, the troops leveled the minaret of a mosque where, they said, snipers were hiding, according to a CNN reporter at the scene.
Australian and British officials disclosed that they were discussing the possibility of sending additional troops to Iraq to bolster the American-led coalition as it confronted sustained resistance across Iraq. And the Bulgarian government said that its president, Georgi Purvanov, who made a surprise visit to Iraq on Sunday, had come under fire in the town of Karbala but had escaped unhurt and returned safely to Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.
The American patrol inspecting the Baghdad chemical warehouse was responding to "information that it contained suspicious chemicals," General Kimmitt said at a news conference. The owner and his associates are suspected of involvement in producing chemical weapons and supplying chemicals to "terrorists, criminals and insurgents," the general said.
The Iraqi police said there were four Humvees and at least 12 members of the American military involved in the incident.
Sometime after the explosion, Iraqi men wearing shirts soaked with what appeared to be oil or gasoline, their faces and necks blackened with soot and smoke, lingered in the area.
"We do this to the Americans!" shouted one man. "Slit their throats!" He drew a hand across his neck.
Residents flooded the area, grabbing burned scraps of American military uniforms and showing them off like souvenirs. One boy retrieved an identification card with the photograph and name of an official with the Iraq Survey Group.
People set fire to three Humvees and young men danced on top of the smoldering vehicles.
"They are dancing out of joy, out of victory because of all the anger about Falluja," said a bystander who declined to be named.
The force of the blast blew out windows in buildings several hundred feet away. Workers swept up broken ceramics from teahouses and shards of glass from display windows in perfume and electrical shops in the commercial district.
The area is known for its perfume shops, where chemicals are stored to make cosmetics, according to Iraqi businessmen.
"The American forces are always coming and searching this area because they think people are providing the raw chemical materials for explosives," said a chemical engineer, Hamad Taha, 39, who owns a shop that was damaged in the blast.
"We have ethanol, alcohol, acetone for nail polish remover and cosmetics, as well as chemicals for perfume-making," he said. "Instead of breaking down the door of the shop, they should have asked us to explain it all to them."
In Falluja, news services reported that American troops were in two firefights today. General Kimmitt said that one soldier was killed and eight were wounded in a battle with insurgents hiding in a mosque. A quick-reaction force, including aircraft and tanks, pummeled the insurgents and damaged the mosque, General Kimmitt said. A CNN reporter said the structure's minaret had been toppled.
The American military has maintained a cordon around the predominantly Sunni Muslim city for about three weeks in an effort to force a surrender by insurgents sequestered inside. American officials have said that if the rebels do not hand in their heavy weapons by Tuesday, the troops will invade.
The coalition is also locked in a standoff in the southern city of Najaf, where a radical Shiite cleric has led a resistance against foreign troops. A contingent of American soldiers entered the city for the first time since the cleric, Moktada al-Sadr, launched his uprising about three weeks ago. The Americans, about 200 soldiers and military police, said they were replacing Spanish troops at bases about three miles from the city center, The Associated Press reported. Spain, along with Honduras and the Dominican Republic, has announced that it is withdrawing its troops.
Dan Senor, spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator here, said that United States authorities had received information that insurgents were using religious centers as weapons depots.
"Weapons are being stockpiled in schools, mosques and shrines," Mr. Senor said in Baghdad, reading from a written statement by Mr. Bremer. "This explosive situation cannot be tolerated by those who seek a peaceful resolution to this crisis." He added, "The restoration of these holy places to calm places of worship must begin immediately."
Britain said today that it was discussing with the United States and other partners in the American-led coalition the possibility of sending more troops to Iraq, Reuters reported. Britain already has about 7,500 troops on the ground, but with Spain, Honduras and the Dominican Republic withdrawing their soldiers, and the coalition facing the stiffest resistance since the fall of Saddam Hussein, London and Washington are under pressure to consider increasing their troop levels.
"In light of recent events - the security situation and the anticipated withdrawal of the Spanish troops - we are in discussions with coalition partners," a Defense Ministry spokeswoman said, Reuters reported.
Australia may also send a small number of additional troops, Prime Minister John Howard said today after his surprise visit to Iraq over the weekend. It was his first public admission that an increase in troop strength was a possibility.
"Obviously, if we did do more, that would be appreciated, but I had made it very clear all along that we did not have a capacity to have large numbers of additional troops," Mr. Howard said in an Australian Broadcasting Corp radio interview aired today, Reuters reported. Australia has about 850 troops in Iraq and neighboring states.
The Bulgarian Defense Ministry said attack on the convoy carrying President Parvanov occurred as he traveled between two military camps in Karbala, in southern Iraq.
"The president's car was shot up," the ministry's spokeswoman, Rumiana Strugarova, said. "The attack took about five minutes, and we suppose the attackers were Shiite militants. The president returned to Bulgaria in the early hours of the morning."
Mr. Parvanov's visit came a day after a Bulgarian soldier in Iraq was killed in an ambush. Bulgaria has a 450-strong light-infantry battalion stationed in Karbala.
Separately, a statement said to be by a Jordanian militant linked to Al Qaeda, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, took responsibility for a suicide boat attack on an oil terminal in Basra over the weekend, Reuters reported.
The statement carried Mr. Zarqawi's name and was published on the Muntada al-Ansar Islamist Web site.
"O snakes of evil," the statement said, "we will exterminate and debilitate you by land, sea and air until God makes us victorious or until we die."
A member of the United States Coast Guard died of wounds received when a boat he and six colleagues were trying to intercept in the southern port of Basra exploded Saturday night, the United States Navy said on Sunday. Two sailors also died in the explosion, and the rest of the crew was taken to a hospital in Kuwait. The attack boat was one of three skiffs rigged with explosives in what appeared to be a coordinated suicide attack on the port.
Kirk Semple contributed reporting from New York for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
Israelis Back Off Threat to Arafat
No Action to Harm Palestinian Is Imminent, Vice Premier Says
By Josef Federman
Associated Press
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41918-2004Apr25.html
JERUSALEM, April 25 -- Israeli leaders on Sunday backed away from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's latest threats against Yasser Arafat, saying there are no immediate plans to kill the Palestinian leader.
Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and a cabinet minister, Gideon Ezra, said Sharon had no plans to expel or assassinate Arafat. They said the Israeli leader had merely repeated a long-standing Israeli position.
"The prime minister doesn't intend to carry out anything next week or today or tomorrow," Olmert, a Sharon confidant, told Army Radio.
Sharon said in a television interview over the weekend that he was no longer bound by a promise to the United States not to harm Arafat.
The comments, which were criticized in Washington, Europe and the Arab world, raised speculation that Arafat might be in Israel's cross hairs. In recent weeks, Israel has killed Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, another Hamas leader.
After nightfall Sunday, Palestinian gunmen opened fire on a vehicle in the southern West Bank, killing one Israeli and wounding three others, rescue workers said. In another shooting nearby, an Israeli Arab was seriously wounded, rescue workers said.
Sharon accuses Arafat of supporting terrorism. Under U.S. pressure, however, he has refrained from attacking Arafat, instead confining him to a compound in the West Bank town of Ramallah for almost two years.
Arafat greeted 400 Palestinian schoolchildren at his headquarters Sunday. The students chanted anti-Sharon slogans and called for an end to Israel's siege of the Palestinian leader.
Speaking to reporters afterward, Arafat said he was not afraid to die. "Our destiny is to be martyrs in this holy land," Arafat said.
Nonetheless, Palestinian officials said Arafat was taking the threats seriously.
"We see these threats as real, and Arafat himself realizes that," said Hani Hassan, a senior official in Arafat's Fatah movement. Hassan said the group had decided to boost security around Arafat but gave no details.
With Arafat's movements limited, there is little the Palestinians can do to protect him from Israel's air force. The Israeli airstrikes that killed the two Hamas leaders in Gaza added to Palestinian concerns for Arafat.
Last September, Israel's cabinet decided Arafat should be "removed" after a pair of suicide bombings killed 15 Israelis.
Sharon took the threats to a new level in a television interview Friday, saying he had told President Bush that Israel is no longer bound by a pledge not to attack Arafat.
The remarks drew a quick rebuke from the White House, which stressed that Bush remained opposed to attempts to harm Arafat.
Moshe Katsav, Israel's president, hinted that U.S. pressure could cause Sharon to backtrack.
"If the United States asks us not to liquidate Yasser Arafat, I assume that the government will honor that request," Katsav told Israel's Channel Two TV.
In another development, police said Sunday that they had arrested three Palestinians who carried out two shooting attacks in Jerusalem, including the fatal shooting last month of an Arab jogger.
The three were caught as they were preparing another attack, police said.
-------- nato
NATO Sees No Iraq Role Unless Many Conditions Met
Mon Apr 26, 2004
OSLO (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4940308
NATO will only consider a wider role in Iraq if a string of conditions are met including a U.S. handover to a "credible" government in Baghdad, Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Monday.
During a visit to Norway, he said NATO was focused on getting more troops to Afghanistan rather than on helping stabilize Iraq after a planned transfer of power by Washington to a new Iraqi government on June 30.
"Afghanistan...is clearly the first priority," de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference after talks with Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik. "The alliance should do more to get the necessary forces on the ground in Afghanistan."
NATO already has a strong commitment in Afghanistan, with some 6,500 troops in the capital Kabul. It also wants to widen reconstruction in the provinces outside Kabul.
However, asked whether NATO would consider a bigger role in Iraq, de Hoop Scheffer laid out a string of pre-conditions.
"If there is a sovereign, legitimate Iraqi government with full powers after June 30, and that government would direct a request to NATO, and if that request would be made on the basis of a new (U.N.) Security Council resolution, giving a specific mandate to a stabilization force, then I think NATO allies could enter in that discussion," he said.
"But I say sovereign, legitimate and credible Iraqi government and a new U.N. Security Council resolution. Those are the all-important yardsticks," he added. Anti-war allies France and Germany have led opposition to a NATO role in stabilizing Iraq despite U.S. calls for help.
De Hoop Scheffer said troops from 16 NATO nations would be in Iraq after a planned pullout by Spanish forces, although they are not under a NATO mandate. NATO is, however, providing logistical support for a Polish-led division in Iraq.
Norway, which has 250 troops in Afghanistan and backed the U.S.-led war to oust the Taliban after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001, said it would consider a NATO request to lead a reconstruction team in Afghanistan.
"We will participate in such a team but it's too early to say whether Norway would take on the role" of leader, Bondevik said.
Oslo plans to pull its 180 troops out of Iraq in June, in line with long-planned arrangements, despite a plea by Washington last week to stay on. Oslo did not support the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein last year.
-------- space
Technical problems delay launch of Russian military satellite
MOSCOW (AFP)
Apr 26, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040426140600.ro4bv36r.html
The Russian military space service said on Monday that it had indefinitely postponed a new attempt to launch one of its Kosmos military communications satellites from a base in Kazakhstan.
The launch, to be made atop a Ukrainian-built Zenit-2 rocket, had originally been due to take place in late March, and then on Sunday, but both firings were postponed. A new launch time was set for 1042 GMT on Monday from the Baikonur space centre in Kazakstan but that was also cancelled.
Russian officials said the latest delays, like the earlier one in March, were due to technical problems with the Zenit-2, which was the last and most advanced space rocket built by the Soviet Union before it collapsed in the early 1990s.
A spokesman with the military space service said a special committee made up of space and military experts had gathered in Baikonur Monday to make a decision as to the fate of the rocket.
The rocket's first commercial launch in September 1998 failed and led to the destruction of 12 satellites for the Globalstar international consortium.
-------- un
Probe turns to $1.1 billion collected by U.N.
April 26, 2004
By Charles Laurence
LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040425-112012-1363r.htm
NEW YORK - More than $1 billion collected by the United Nations as its commission on Iraq's oil-for-food program has become a new focus for the inquiry into the biggest scandal ever to engulf the organization.
At least $1.1 billion was paid directly into U.N. coffers to cover the cost of administering the $67 billion plan to provide food and medicine to Iraqis.
Various investigations have until now focused on that part of the $67 billion that was diverted by since-ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to build palaces and to bribe foreign governments and prominent overseas supporters.
But Claude Hankes-Drielsma, a management consultant and adviser to the Iraqi Governing Council who testified to the U.S. House Government Reform Committee last week, said that tracking what happened to the fees levied by the United Nations was a "key" to untangling the scandal.
Sources said U.N. officials are being asked to provide detailed accounts of how the organization's slice of Saddam's oil money was used and how much went to companies that were supposed to monitor the food and medicine imported by Iraq.
Although the U.N. Security Council approved the plan to levy a 2.2 percent commission on each oil-for-food transaction, the huge sums this reaped for the United Nations have never been fully accounted for.
A senior U.N. official who is closely involved in uncovering evidence of the scandal said: "The U.N. was not doing this work just for the good of Iraq. Cash from Saddam's government was keeping the U.N. going for a few years.
"No one knows exactly what sums were involved because an audit has never been done. That is why they are wriggling and squirming now in New York."
Mr. Hankes-Drielsma, a close associate of Iraqi Governing Council member Ahmed Chalabi, has played a pivotal role in bringing the scandal to light by challenging the United Nations with paperwork discovered in Baghdad files.
"What the U.N. did with these administration fees is a pointer to corruption on a scale never seen before," Mr. Hankes-Drielsma said. "This program was meant to be helping the Iraqi people, but was used by the U.N. for its own ends. There are so many different facets to this greatest scam in U.N. history."
The new line of inquiry comes after Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, agreed to head the U.N. investigation. He announced last week that he was hiring a team of accountants, money-laundering specialists and lawyers to check thousands of contracts authorized by the United Nations.
The head of the oil-for-food program, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Benon Sevan, is among those whose names have appeared on a list of 270 individuals and companies who were granted vouchers for the purchase of Iraqi oil by Saddam. Mr Sevan has denied accusations of any wrongdoing.
Investigators are also looking into companies that supplied overvalued goods to Iraq under the oil-for-food program and then paid a kickback to Saddam's regime, providing it with highly prized hard currency.
Thousands of tons of food delivered under the U.N. program were later revealed to have been rotten, and much of the medicine - particularly that imported from Russia - was found to be out of date.
Mr. Volcker's inquiry has the Security Council's backing, but has no power to compel witnesses to testify and will depend on cooperation from foreign governments, U.N. staff and former members of Saddam's regime.
----
U.N. Report
April 26, 2004
By Betsy Pisik
Washington Times
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040425-112014-6463r.htm
Scuffling over Sudan
The Human Rights Commission in Geneva ended its six-week session by agreeing to name a rapporteur for Sudan at a later date, but didn't condemn suspected atrocities there amid resistance by Islamic and African members of the group.
U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson voted against the resolution, which he criticized for failing to condemn racial and ethnic cleansing in the western Darfur region.
"We fear a terrible famine to come when tens of thousands may well perish," he added. "The commission so far has failed to meet its responsibility today."
European members of the committee, who initially had sought stronger language, joined in Friday's majority. Australia and Ukraine abstained.
Negroponte to Iraq
U.N. Ambassador John D. Negroponte was nominated by the White House last week to be the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq, a delicate and dangerous job that will be similar to yet different from the endless rounds of meetings, speeches and receptions that make up U.N. diplomacy. He still will wear a suit and tie, of course, but also a Kevlar undershirt.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has not set a date for Mr. Negroponte's confirmation hearings, but diplomats say he will be spending most of his time in Washington preparing for the assignment. That will leave something of a vacuum at Turtle Bay.
Deputy U.N. Ambassador James Cunningham, who has served with an understated flair for four years, has been nominated to be Washington's next ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Austria. It, too, will be a multilateral posting, responsible for U.N. agencies that range from the International Atomic Energy Agency to the U.N. Postal Administration.
It is not clear when Mr. Cunningham will depart for Austria, but the State Department likes to churn its top slots in August, when things are supposed to be quiet.
The Bush administration already has nominated as his successor career State Department officer Anne W. Patterson, who most recently served as the deputy inspector general.
Mrs. Patterson served as ambassador to Colombia from 2000 to 2003 and El Salvador from 1997 to 2000. She also has experience in a variety of political and economic assignments.
All posts will require Senate confirmation hearings, although few expect the contentious hearings and secret blocking motions that plagued the Clinton years.
"Hopefully, it will all be on track," a State Department official said last week. "We don't really want to let the U.N. drift right now." A Senate staffer said last week he was picking up the same vibes in Congress.
The big question now
It is not clear who will replace Ambassador John D. Negroponte, a low-key but steady presence on key issues in New York who also advocated for the United Nations in Washington.
One whispered contender is Richard Williamson, who briefly served as Mr. Negroponte's first political-affairs adviser. A cheerfully combative Chicago lawyer, Mr. Williamson since early March has been seconded to the U.S. Mission in Geneva to head the U.S. delegation to the Human Rights Commission.
Listen closely, and you also will hear the hopeful whispers about Howard Baker, currently U.S. ambassador to Japan. But that also might be wishful thinking, according to some observers who say the 79-year-old former Republican senator might not want to start from scratch on such a complex new posting.
Another prospect is Robert Blackwill, a deputy at the National Security Agency who directs Iraq policy at the White House. A former ambassador to India, Mr. Blackwill also was seen as a front-runner for the Baghdad job.
•E-mail Betsy Pisik at UNear@aol.com.
--------
U.N. Iraq Resolution A Tough Sell
By Robin Wright and Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41962-2004Apr25?language=printer
The Bush administration is preparing a broad U.N. resolution to endorse its plan to transfer power in Iraq, but it may face a tough sell on proposals guaranteeing legal protection for foreign troops and letting Washington make the final judgments on Saddam Hussein's weapons programs, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
The scope of the powers scheduled to be handed over to an Iraqi provisional government on June 30 could also trigger contentious debate, the officials said. Some key U.N. members are already questioning whether the United States will actually retain significant control.
The general goal of a new resolution is to rally international support behind the new provisional government, which is still being negotiated by U.S. and U.N. officials, and ease year-long international friction over the U.S.-led military intervention to oust Hussein.
With serious deliberations on a draft now underway within the administration, U.S. officials are optimistic about rallying enough Security Council support -- unlike the resolution authorizing the use of force last year. "We are working on such a resolution, and I'm confident we'll be able to obtain such a resolution," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told Dutch RTL television Friday.
Yet what some U.S. officials have already dubbed the "mega-resolution" may be in trouble even before a draft is finalized. "This could be the last big diplomatic battle over U.S. Iraq policy," said a senior U.S. official involved in Iraq policy.
Security Council envoys are concerned that the new resolution will convey only partial sovereignty to Iraq, leaving a new government with little legitimacy and ultimate power in the hands of the United States and its military allies. Russia, China, Pakistan and other council members insist that the transfer of power mark a real end to U.S. control and that the United Nations be given wider powers -- more than the world body appears prepared to assume.
"The main thing is to give back the central role to the United Nations," said China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya. "Of course the occupation ends on June 30, but for many people there will still be a continuation of foreign occupation."
Once the shape of the interim government is settled, negotiations will begin on a resolution, U.S. officials say, although they have already identified the main provisions -- and three possible stumbling blocks. The first involves the legal authority of U.S.-led foreign forces to continue operations in Iraq.
Typically, Washington negotiates a "status of forces" agreement with a host government to deploy troops in another country. But Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's top cleric, has said only a directly elected Iraqi government can negotiate treaties. Without such a pact, U.S. soldiers could be vulnerable to legal action from the civil authorities in the event of hostile interactions with civilians or militia forces.
The United States and Britain say foreign forces were given legal cover by a previous U.N. resolution, but their allies are pressing for further U.N. approval to assuage domestic public opinion, officials say. So the United States intends to seek U.N. approval for a multinational force in Iraq, which could be interpreted to permit foreign forces to carry out military operations, according to U.S. officials.
To make the case, U.S. officials say, they will argue that without foreign troops, the current turmoil could escalate.
The second issue is embracing a new Iraqi provisional government and the 18-month transition that will include writing a new constitution and at least two elections. U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has been consulting with U.S. authorities and leading Iraqi figures about forming what amounts to a caretaker government until national elections can be held in January 2005. U.S. officials made clear last week that the transitional government would have limited powers, with no authority to write new laws and no control over U.S. military forces that would continue to operate in Iraq.
This process is further complicated by a controversy over the new interim constitution, which was approved by the appointed Iraqi Governing Council in March but criticized by Sistani because it was not written or approved by elected representatives. Approving the new government could be seen as implicitly endorsing the disputed constitution.
To accommodate both Iraqi and Security Council concerns, the United States is considering "compressing" or scrapping much of the interim constitution, known as the Transitional Administration Law, so that only pivotal provisions on human rights and dates are retained, U.S. officials say.
This would be a major shift because the United States brokered the laws. But with time running out, the administration is now prepared to be flexible, U.S. officials say, to avert confrontations complicating the transition.
The third issue is determining whether U.N. or U.S. teams will write the final report on Iraq's weaponry. The U.S. Iraq Survey Group is investigating what happened to Iraq's deadliest arms, but previous resolutions give the United Nations legal jurisdiction.
To ensure that it has the last word, the United States would like to call for the dismantlement of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, U.S. officials said. The United States instead wants a resolution that effectively lets the Iraq Survey Group draw final conclusions about Hussein's military capabilities.
Washington could face opposition, however. "UNMOVIC should finalize its work, present a report about the final status of their findings and the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction," said Russia's acting U.N. ambassador, Gennady Gatilov. "We should look how in the future we can use the experience and potential of UNMOVIC in future disarmament."
With only 50 working days until the U.S.-led coalition hands over power June 30, the State Department is in the midst of a "strategy jam" to rush a resolution for passage by mid-May that will settle all these issues, said a second U.S. official involved in Iraq policy. There is a growing sense of unease within the administration about the enormity of what has to be achieved in such a short time, administration officials say.
"The aim of all of this is to demonstrate the international community is rallying behind a sovereign Iraq," said a British envoy at the United Nations.
But it may be an uphill battle, U.S. officials concede. "On Iraq, it is never easy in the Security Council. There is broad agreement on what needs to be done, but the devil is in the details. We don't see the same ideological division we have witnessed over the last 16 to 18 months because we have come back full circle to accepting a very expansive U.N. role," said a U.S. diplomat involved in the negotiations on a new resolution.
The administration hopes even foes of the war, particularly France, Russia and Germany, will eventually go along with the resolution, if only for fear of the alternative if it doesn't pass, U.S. officials say.
-------- us
Pentagon's urban war planning
Tomgram
April 26, 2004
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1386
In the escalating crisis that is Iraq, American Marines, after days of battle followed by a tenuous "truce," are deep into but not in control of Fallujah, a resistant city of 300,000 in the "Sunni Triangle," while the Army finds itself poised at the edge of Iraq's Shiite holy cities. Our troops are toeing what the most revered Shiite religious figures have termed a "red line" across which lies the path to "300 Fallujahs."
This is, in fact, the very nightmare that American military leaders desperately wanted to -- and initially did -- avoid as the invasion of Iraq began in March 2003. This is the Iraqi "quagmire" that they most feared in their still Vietnam-saturated strategic thinking. After all, this is Iraq's (urban) "jungle," and from Stalingrad to Hue and Mogadishu, urban warfare against a determined foe, employing the house-to-house equivalent of guerrilla tactics, was known to cancel out many of the advantages of overwhelming firepower and advanced war technology. Fallujah has already demonstrated exactly that.
Mike Davis, our resident expert on cities new and old, points out in his latest piece that, since the early 1990s, facing an ever more global imperial mission into the "arc of instability," the energy heartlands of our planet, the American military has been in preparation mode -- preparation for a grim future fighting in the sprawling slum cities of the Third World. Now, it seems, that future is rushing toward us. Tom
The Pentagon as Global Slumlord By Mike Davis
The young American Marine is exultant. "It's a sniper's dream," he tells a Los Angeles Times reporter on the outskirts of Fallujah. "You can go anywhere and there so many ways to fire at the enemy without him knowing where you are."
"Sometimes a guy will go down, and I'll let him scream a bit to destroy the morale of his buddies. Then I'll use a second shot."
"To take a bad guy out," he explains, "is an incomparable 'adrenaline rush.'" He brags of having "24 confirmed kills" in the initial phase of the brutal U.S. onslaught against the rebel city of 300,000 people.
Faced with intransigent popular resistance that recalls the heroic Vietcong defense of Hue in 1968, the Marines have again unleashed indiscriminate terror. According to independent journalists and local medical workers, they have slaughtered at least two hundred women and children in the first two weeks of fighting.
The battle of Fallujah, together with the conflicts unfolding in Shiia cities and Baghdad slums, are high-stakes tests, not just of U.S. policy in Iraq, but of Washington's ability to dominate what Pentagon planners consider the "key battlespace of the future" -- the Third World city.
The Mogadishu debacle of 1993, when neighborhood militias inflicted 60% casualties on elite Army Rangers, forced U.S. strategists to rethink what is known in Pentagonese as MOUT: "Militarized Operations on Urbanized Terrain." Ultimately, a National Defense Panel review in December 1997 castigated the Army as unprepared for protracted combat in the near impassable, maze-like streets of the poverty-stricken cities of the Third World.
As a result, the four armed services, coordinated by the Joint Staff Urban Working Group, launched crash programs to master street-fighting under realistic third-world conditions. "The future of warfare," the journal of the Army War College declared, "lies in the streets, sewers, high-rise buildings, and sprawl of houses that form the broken cities of the world."
Israeli advisors were quietly brought in to teach Marines, Rangers, and Navy Seals the state-of-the-art tactics -- especially the sophisticated coordination of sniper and demolition teams with heavy armor and overwhelming airpower -- so ruthlessly used by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza and the West Bank.
Artificial cityscapes (complete with "smoke and sound systems") were built to simulate combat conditions in densely populated neighborhoods of cities like Baghdad or Port-au-Prince. The Marine Corps Urban Warfighting Laboratory also staged realistic war games ("Urban Warrior") in Oakland and Chicago, while the Army's Special Operations Command "invaded" Pittsburgh.
Today, many of the Marines inside Fallujah are graduates of these Urban Warrior exercises as well as mock combat at "Yodaville" (the Urban Training Facility in Yuma, Arizona), while some of the Army units encircling Najaf and the Baghdad slum neighborhood of Sadr City are alumni of the new $34 million MOUT simulator at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
This tactical "Israelization" of U.S. combat doctrine has been accompanied by what might be called a "Sharonization" of the Pentagon's worldview. Military theorists are now deeply involved in imagining how the evolving capacity of high-tech warfare can contain, if not destroy, chronic "terrorist" insurgencies rooted in the desperation of growing megaslums.
To help develop a geopolitical framework for urban war-fighting, military planners turned in the 1990s to the RAND Corporation: Dr. Strangelove's old alma mater. RAND, a nonprofit think tank established by the Air Force in 1948, was notorious for war-gaming nuclear Armageddon in the 1950s and for helping plan the Vietnam War in the 1960s. These days RAND does cities -- big time. Its researchers ponder urban crime statistics, inner-city public health, and the privatization of public education. They also run the Army's Arroyo Center which has published a small library of recent studies on the context and mechanics of urban warfare.
One of the most important RAND projects, initiated in the early 1990s, has been a major study of "how demographic changes will affect future conflict." The bottom line, RAND finds, is that the urbanization of world poverty has produced "the urbanization of insurgency" (the title, in fact, of their report).
"Insurgents are following their followers into the cities," RAND warns, "setting up 'liberated zones' in urban shantytowns. Neither U.S. doctrine, nor training, nor equipment is designed for urban counterinsurgency." As a result, the slum has become the weakest link in the American empire.
The RAND researchers reflect on the example of El Salvador where the local military, despite massive U.S. support, was unable to stop FMLN guerrillas from opening an urban front. Indeed, "had the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front rebels effectively operated within the cities earlier in the insurgency, it is questionable how much the United States could have done to help maintain even the stalemate between the government and the insurgents."
More recently, a leading Air Force theorist has made similar points in the Aerospace Power Journal. "Rapid urbanization in developing countries," writes Captain Troy Thomas in the spring 2002 issue, "results in a battlespace environment that is decreasingly knowable since it is increasingly unplanned."
Thomas contrasts modern, "hierarchical" urban cores, whose centralized infrastructures are easily crippled by either air strikes (Belgrade) or terrorist attacks (Manhattan), with the sprawling slum peripheries of the Third World, organized by "informal, decentralized subsystems, "where no blueprints exist, and points of leverage in the system are not readily discernable." Using the "sea of urban squalor" that surrounds Pakistan's Karachi as an example, Thomas portrays the staggering challenge of "asymmetric combat" within "non-nodal, non-hierarchical" urban terrains against "clan-based" militias propelled by "desperation and anger." He cites the sprawling slums of Lagos, Nigeria, and Kinshasa in the Congo as other potential nightmare battlefields.
However Captain Thomas (whose article is provocatively entitled "Slumlords: Aerospace Power in Urban Fights"), like RAND, is brazenly confident that the Pentagon's massive new investments in MOUT technology and training will surmount all the fractal complexities of slum warfare. One of the RAND cookbooks ("Aerospace Operations in Urban Environments") even provides a helpful table to calculate the acceptable threshold of "collateral damage" (aka dead babies) under different operational and political constraints.
The occupation of Iraq has, of course, been portrayed by Bush ideologues as a "laboratory for democracy" in the Middle East. To MOUT geeks, on the other hand, it is a laboratory of a different kind, where Marine snipers and Air Force pilots test out new killing techniques in an emergent world war against the urban poor.
Mike Davis is author, most recently, of the kids' adventure, Land of the Lost Mammoths (Perceval Press, 2003) and co-author of Under the Perfect Sun: the San Diego Tourists Never See (New Press, 2003) among other books.
-------- propaganda wars
New Bush Ad Criticizes Kerry on Weapons
April 26, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-AdWatch-Bush.html
Details of new television ad from President Bush, to begin airing Monday:
TITLE: ``Weapons.''
LENGTH: 30 seconds.
PRODUCER: Maverick Media.
AIRING: Nationally on cable networks and in selected local media markets. Nine other versions of the ad will run in nine states.
SCRIPT: Bush: ``I'm George W. Bush and I approve this message.''
Announcer: ``As our troops defend America in the war on terror, they must have what it takes to win. Yet, John Kerry has repeatedly opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror: Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Patriot Missiles, B-2 Stealth Bombers, F-18 Fighter Jets and more. Kerry even voted against body armor for our troops on the front line of the war on terror. John Kerry's record on national security: Troubling.''
KEY IMAGES: The spot opens with soldiers running along a desert landscape. Their movements slow as the narrator says that Kerry has opposed weapons vital to winning the war on terror. The scene fades into a battlefield vista with a tank rolling into battle, a Patriot missile at launch, and a Stealth bomber and a jet fighter in flight. They disappear one by one after the narrator says Kerry has opposed their funding. The scene pans to the right to show a young GI turning to face the camera as the narrator says Kerry voted against providing body armor for troops. On the sound track, a bell tolls.
ANALYSIS: In its ongoing effort to depict Kerry as weak on defense, Bush's campaign scours the decorated Vietnam veteran's Senate record and, this time, uses it to accuse him of voting against military weapons.
The ad is running nationally on cable networks, and versions also are tailored to specific states and are airing in selected media markets. For example, one version running in Maine emphasizes Kerry votes related to the Navy's Aegis cruisers, which are built in that state. The goal is to appeal to voters dependent on jobs those military weapons provide.
The ads are based on several Kerry votes from the 1980s and 1990s, and don't necessarily reflect his current position.
Kerry's campaign said the Democrat has supported at least $8.5 billion for Bradley Fighting Vehicles, $16.7 billion for the B-2 Stealth Bombers, at least $60 billion for F/A-18 Fighter Jets and F-18 Fighter Jets, and at least $10 billion for Patriot Missiles.
Chad Clanton, a Kerry spokesman, said: ``Not only are these attacks false, (Vice President Dick) Cheney himself tried to cut many of the same weapons systems that the Bush campaign is now attacking John Kerry on.''
The Kerry campaign, however, makes that claim based on decisions Cheney made as secretary of defense more than a decade ago.
The ads also resurrect a Bush claim that Kerry voted against body armor. Kerry did vote against the $87 billion reconstruction program for Iraq and Afghanistan, which included money for body armor. But he did not cast a vote specifically against armor as the ad implies. At the same time as the $87 billion vote, nearly one-fourth of the 130,000 American troops in Iraq -- there on Bush's watch -- were without the newest body armor several months into the war.
Analysis by Liz Sidoti, Associated Press writer.
--------
Rumsfeld's Police Secret
April 26, 2004
by David Corn & Kristin V. Jones
The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040510&s=cornjones
In his April 13 press conference, Bush lamented the poor showing of Iraqi security forces in recent clashes with insurgents. "I was disappointed in the performance of some of the troops," he said. "Some of the units performed brilliantly. Some of them didn't. And we need to find out why. If they're lacking in equipment, we'll get them equipment. If there needs to be more intense training, we'll get more intense training. But eventually, Iraq's security is going to be handled by the Iraqi people themselves."
Eventually? Over the past year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has painted a different picture--of swift and steady progress in building an effective Iraqi security force that could soon take over many security responsibilities. In fact, there hasn't been a single month in the past year that Rumsfeld hasn't pointed to the success of a rapidly developing Iraqi security force as an indicator of the headway the United States has made in Iraq. Let's roll the videotape.
May 20, 2003: "In Baghdad, some 4,500 Iraqi police are now on duty, and reports of looting, curfew violations and gunfire are now decreasing."
June 27, 2003: "The Iraqi police force is being developed. The Iraqi army is being re-recruited."
July 24, 2003: "With each step the Iraqi people take forward, the terrorists' hopes of returning to power grow dimmer.... consider a few examples: The formation of the Iraqi national army has begun. 30,000 Iraqi police have been hired. An Iraqi civil defense corps is being formed."
August 21, 2003 (in a briefing with Gen. John Abizaid, who said, "More than 50,000 Iraqis already under arms...are working in coordination with the coalition. We've got 35,000 people, for example, in the police forces. We've got a border force that's forming. We've got Iraqi defense corps volunteers, over 2,300 of them that have come forward to form battalions to work with our divisions. We've got an awful lot of people that we've hired to defend infrastructure, somewhere close to 17,000."): "This is in three and a half months...the 50,000 or 60,000 Iraqis that have been pulled together."
September 26, 2003: "Within three months we have begun training a new Iraqi Army and within two months a new Iraqi police force was conducting joint patrols with coalition forces.... I know of no comparable experience in history--whether postwar Germany, postwar Japan, Kosovo and Bosnia--I know of no example where things have moved as rapidly."
October 21, 2003: "...the coalition has trained some 85,000 Iraqi forces in just over five months: 55,000 police, 6,500 border guards, 18,700 are serving in the facilities protection service, a 700-man battalion in the new Iraqi Army, and 4,700 in the new Iraqi civil defense corps. And there are an additional 10,000, above the 85,000, that are currently in training for these various Iraqi security forces."
November 6, 2003: "Today there are some 118,000 Iraqi security forces of various types. Iraq, clearly, is now the second-largest contributor of personnel to the coalition forces after the US, and soon the Iraqi will outnumber US forces, and soon thereafter they will outnumber US plus coalition forces in the country."
December 6, 2003: "Something in excess of 140,000 Iraqis...are engaged in providing security in this country in one way or another--whether border patrol, police, site protection, civil defense, or the new Iraqi army. They are volunteering in large numbers.... I have heard nothing but in very strong words of encouragement about the conduct and behavior and courage of the Iraqi security forces."
January 6, 2004: "And Iraqis, now totaling something in excess of 160,000, now make up, by far, the largest component of the total coalition of Iraqi security forces in Iraq."
February 10, 2004: "Now we have somewhere between 150,000 and 210,000 Iraqis now performing one type of security activity or another."
March 15, 2004: "We now have 200,000 Iraqi security forces that are out there providing security in their country, and frankly, being killed themselves.... They're taking over responsibility for their country."
April 8, 2004 (asked why Iraqi security forces have not been seen on the front lines): "Well, they've lost over 250 people killed in action, so the suggestion that they're not out providing security for the country of Iraq would be a misunderstanding of the situation."
All those months Rumsfeld was cooking the books. In late March the Pentagon released a chart summarizing the numbers of Iraqi security force troops. It tells a different story from the one peddled by Rumsfeld. The summary notes that 75,844 Iraqis were on the payroll as police officers, but only 2,865 were fully qualified and on duty. Another 13,286 were deemed "partially qualified" and supposedly on duty, while 3,245 were in training. Three-fourths of those on the police payroll had received no training. Six months earlier Rumsfeld had declared that 55,000 police had been trained. Not even close. (Despite the small size of the new Iraqi police force, it has been a primary target of the insurgents, who recently mounted attacks on police stations in Basra that claimed the lives of dozens of civilians. And Iraqi police elsewhere have been killed in assaults.)
The Pentagon summary also shows that Rumsfeld had been stretching the truth about other security forces. It notes that the new Iraqi Border Police needed 8,835 officers, but this force had not one fully trained officer on duty. It did have 8,601 partially qualified police and 179 in training. The Department of Border Enforcement required 16,892 troops; it had 9,873 partially qualified troops, no fully qualified people and none in training. Of the 40,000 troops needed for the Iraqi Armed Forces, only 3,249 had been fully trained and deployed. A mere 2,400 were in training. The Pentagon summary does note that the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps had 34,683 members who were receiving on-the-job training. (A Civil Defense Corps group in Falluja vanished during recent fighting there.) And it reports that the security service designed to protect government facilities and Iraqi infrastructure had a force of 73,992.
All told, the Pentagon summary maintains, there were 208,821 Iraqis in the various security services. But counting only those fully trained and on duty, the total was 114,789. And 95 percent of that force comprised security guards and civil defense members--not the front-line forces. Add up the active and fully trained Iraqi police, border personnel and military forces, and the number of Iraq security troops is 6,114. Throw in those partially trained, and the total goes up to 37,874. The Iraqi security forces hardly could boast over 200,000 troops "providing security," as Rumsfeld claimed in March.
The Administration's inability to construct an effective security and police apparatus has been one of the main problems in Iraq. After the scheduled June 30 sovereignty hand-off occurs, Iraqi forces are supposed to handle more responsibility. And now--in another sign that Rumsfeld's previous happy-talk was off-track--the US occupation authority in Iraq is recruiting Iraqis for a new elite volunteer unit designed to fight the insurgency. Let's hope any public statements Rumsfeld may make about this unit will be accurate.
But for a year, Rumsfeld and the Administration puffed up the numbers. When Bush addressed the poor performance of the Iraqi security forces by vowing to supply them with better training and equipment, he was going along with Rumsfeld's sleight of hand, suggesting that there are significant ready-to-roll Iraqi security forces that can be improved. These forces, for the most part, barely exist. At this point, they are only slightly more real than the weapons of mass destruction.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Court will hear FBI whistleblower case
Apr. 26, 2004
(UPI)
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040426-063032-5703r.htm
Washington, DC -- A federal court in Washington will decide whether a fired FBI translator can testify in a lawsuit brought by relatives of the Sept. 11 victims.
U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said Monday he would hear classified evidence next month from the government, which is seeking a gag order on the translator, Sibel Edmonds, because her testimony might damage national security.
Edmonds was subpoenaed by lawyers representing several hundred Sept. 11 families, who are suing a wide range of Arab banks and wealthy individuals -- including members of the Saudi royal family -- for allegedly helping or financing al-Qaida.
Edmonds -- who has given evidence to congressional investigators and to the blue-ribbon commission probing the attacks -- says the FBI's translation efforts were badly managed, poorly executed and marked by lax or nonexistent internal security.
She is also suing the FBI for firing her after she brought the matter to the attention of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
-------- human rights
Back in Argentina, Priest Faces 'Dirty War' Charges
April 26, 2004
By LARRY ROHTER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/international/americas/26prie.html
LA PLATA, Argentina - The parishioners in the coastal village in Chile knew their priest simply as the Rev. Christián González. Only his accent gave away that he was an Argentine.
So it came as a shock to them when he traveled back to Argentina last year and had to face charges here for crimes dating to the military dictatorship of the 1970's. Under his real name, Christián von Wernich, he is accused of 19 counts of murder and 33 of abduction and torture.
Father von Wernich, 65, has emerged as a potent symbol of the institutional atrocities of the period, when the junta chased down leftist opponents, sometimes winning the support of the Roman Catholic Church's hierarchy for its goals. He has attracted particular attention because he combines both elements: he was a priest who also worked for the government, as a chaplain for the feared Buenos Aires provincial police.
That trauma of three decades ago is being re-examined now that President Néstor Kirchner has ended a long amnesty that protected people responsible for the abuses. Father von Wernich was indicted in September and is fighting the charges, on both constitutional and religious grounds.
But that has not stopped the case from provoking protest in both Argentina and Chile, which suffered under its own dictatorship, over the past role of the church and whether religious leaders conspired to hide a priest accused of taking part in the abuses of the "Dirty War."
"There were other clergy who supported or blessed the dictatorship and the repressive measures it employed," said Marta Vedio, a lawyer with the Permanent Assembly for Human Rights, the group that has been leading the investigation that led to the priest's indictment here in La Plata. "But for a priest to have participated directly and so intensely in repression and torture, that strikes hard in a society that still regards itself as essentially Roman Catholic."
The Vatican has not directly addressed questions about the church's conduct during the dictatorship. During his visits to Argentina, Pope John Paul II has made only vague statements that could be interpreted as something of an indirect apology for that behavior.
Regarding Father von Wernich, local church officials in Argentina and Chile have been largely silent. The Rev. Jorge Oesterheld, a spokesman for the Argentine Conference of Bishops, said that while the case was painful because it involves "shameful and lamentable acts," the Argentine church "has no jurisdiction over this matter." It is a diocesan matter, he said.
The bishop of the priest's home diocese in Argentina, Msgr. Martín Elizalde, in a public statement issued shortly after Father González was exposed last May, dismissed suggestions of improper behavior in how the diocese handled the priest. The church has no responsibility, he said, "since when he went to Chile, there were no charges pending against him."
Such denials have disillusioned Catholic faithful in both countries, particularly since Father von Wernich's links to the dictatorship had been well established by the time he dropped out of sight in 1996, only to reappear seven years later with a different name in Chile under circumstances that the church authorities refuse to explain.
"The policy of the church has consistently been silence, silence, silence," Hernán Brienza, author of "Cursed Art Thou: The Church and Illegal Repression," said in an interview. "There was obviously an agreement to protect von Wernich from public opinion in Argentina by sending him to Chile, a place where no one knew who he was. But we do not know how or when he became González." Mr. Brienza helped expose the priest's new identity last year, as part of an investigative team formed by two magazines.
For a decade after Argentina's democracy was restored in 1983, Father von Wernich was the target of protest marches that forced the church hierarchy to move him from one parish to another. Former political prisoners testified in chilling detail to official commissions of the priest's treacherous modus operandi in the aid of the military junta.
After they had been subjected to days of intense torture, the prisoners recounted, Father von Wernich would appear offering spiritual consolation. But at the same time he would seek information and urge detainees to "get right with God" by acknowledging their political activities and by identifying comrades still at large.
"Once I heard Christian von Wernich reply to a prisoner who pleaded with him not to die that 'the life of men depends on God and your collaboration,' " a former prisoner, Luis Velasco, testified at a court hearing. "I also heard him defend and justify torture, recognizing that at times he had been present. When he referred to an operation, he would say, 'When we did that operation. . . .' "
The most serious of the accusations against Father von Wernich stem from the execution in 1977 of seven young people, all political prisoners who belonged to left-wing groups. The killings, it is now charged, were part of a police plan to extort money from the prisoners' parents, by suggesting that a bribe would free their children.
Figuring that a priest would naturally inspire trust, agents sent Father von Wernich to collect $1,500 from the parents of each of the prisoners. As proof that they were still alive, he delivered letters written by the detainees. Once the money was collected, the prisoners were taken from a clandestine detention center and killed. One was pregnant.
According to the testimony of Julio Alberto Emmed, a former police officer who admitted his involvement in the incident and said he was coming forward as an act of penance, Father von Wernich himself witnessed at least three of the killings.
Mr. Emmed said the prisoners had been put in a car and told that they were being taken to the airport before being released. Instead, they were beaten unconscious, he said.
"The priest was in the vehicle with me," he recalled in sworn testimony, saying that because one of the prisoners was whipped with a pistol, "various wounds resulted, with an abundant flow of blood over the priest, the driver and the two of us at the prisoner's side."
Near the airport, the car swerved to an empty field, Mr. Emmed testified. Father von Wernich watched as the police officers and a police doctor completed their gruesome task.
"The three subversives were still alive, and their bodies were removed from the car and thrown onto the grass," Mr. Emmed said. "The doctor injected each one twice, straight into the heart with a reddish liquid that was poisonous." When one of the victims showed signs of life, she was shot in the head, he said.
Afterward, those involved, including Father von Wernich, went to a celebratory barbecue "where we also changed our clothes because they were stained with blood," Mr. Emmed said. Seeing that Mr. Emmed was distraught at what they had just done, Father von Wernich sought to console him.
"What you have done was necessary for the good of the fatherland," Mr. Emmed said the priest had told him. "You have no reason to feel badly. You carried out a patriotic act, and God knows that what we are doing is for the benefit of the country."
In Chile, where he served in the seaside resort village of El Quisco, the impact of his case has been nearly as traumatic as in Argentina. During the long dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Cardinal Raúl Silva Enríquez of Santiago played an important role in defending human rights, so the accusations of the church's complicity in harboring Father von Wernich has come as a shock.
"I'm a Christian, and I cannot judge, because we are all sinners," one of his former parishioners, Isabel Beltrán de Avalos, said before a Sunday morning Mass early in Lent at the St. John the Evangelist church in El Quisco situated on the Street of the Tranquil Wolves. Learning of the charges against him "has caused a revulsion within me so great that I stayed away from Mass for nearly a year and have only returned now at Lent," she said.
Father von Wernich was "so charming and so charismatic that it was hard to believe all the things that they were saying about him," Mrs. Avalos added. "I had neighbors and colleagues from work who were taken away and never seen again when the military seized power, and I don't want that to happen ever again. We can't tolerate a thing like that."
From his jail cell, Father von Wernich is fighting the charges against him and has asked judges to free him from what he claims is an "illegal detention."
At a hearing, the priest acknowledged that he had been a regular visitor at the clandestine detention centers of the police, but he refused to provide details of his conversations with prisoners. To do so, he said, would be a breach of his holy orders, because it would "violate the secrecy of the confessional."
-------- prisons / prisoners
New Museum Revives Painful Memories for Internees
Japanese Americans Visit Site of Their Relocation in WWII
By Kimberly Edds
The Washington Post
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41897-2004Apr25?language=printer
INDEPENDENCE, Calif. -- Beneath the snowcapped Inyo Mountains, hundreds of voices proudly recited the Pledge of Allegiance to a country that rounded up thousands of people of Japanese descent and confined them behind barbed-wire fences in the months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
With that, the National Park Service officially lay bare an embarrassing piece of U.S. history for all to see as it opened a $5.1 million interpretative center at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in an attempt to explain what happened here and why.
"There were 10,000 people here. There are 10,000 stories to be told," Manzanar Superintendent Frank Hays said Saturday. But the process of deciding just whose stories should be told and how has stirred up emotions that have been pent up for decades.
Clara Yakushi said she thought she would never see the fences and guard towers of Manzanar again.
But there they were. Housed in the refurbished auditorium built by internees, barbed wire and grainy black-and-white images tell the stories of the internees who were once housed in this tiny patch of desert 220 miles north of Los Angeles. A replica of the camp's eight wooden guard towers dominates the room. The name of every camp resident is listed on a floor-to-ceiling display, a stark testament to U.S. domestic policy during World War II.
Yakushi was 9 years old when she was brought to the camp's orphanage in 1942. Returning to the place of her childhood memories for the first time brought the 71-year-old great-grandmother to tears.
"It's all so unreal. It's all so overwhelming," Yakushi said, choking back tears as she gazed across the desert where she and 100 other orphans once played under the watchful eyes of U.S. soldiers.
Once a year throngs of buses and cars converge here. Camp survivors march to the Manzanar cemetery and pay their respects to those who died at the camp and those who have passed on.
The number of former internees who make the annual pilgrimage has dwindled. Some are too frail for the trek. Others have died. Still others have found it too painful to return.
But those who are here, some with children and grandchildren in tow, say it provides an opportunity to reflect on their experiences at the camp and a way to remain vigilant to protect the constitutional rights of future generations. They also say the museum is a key step in telling what really happened.
Many of these stories have long been kept quiet, shushed by older Japanese Americans who felt ashamed they were forced to live in such conditions.
"There's shame. You're alienated. All of a sudden you're not part of America anymore. It isn't your history. It isn't your country. You're the enemy," former internee Wilbur Sato said.
Decades later, some of those hard feelings linger in tiny desert communities surrounding Manzanar. When museum officials asked Independence-based American Legion Post 265 to provide a color guard for the grand opening, not one member volunteered. Members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars from Lone Pine provided the color guard instead.
The Japanese were put in Manzanar for their own good, some said. Others argued the money could have been better spent elsewhere.
"So much has been said about [Manzanar]. You don't really know what the whole truth is," Legion post commander Carl King said.
Bill H. Michael, curator of the Eastern California Museum in Independence, said those feelings are not representative of the entire community, but some of the war years' hatred and prejudice still exist.
"There are just some people out there who are still fighting the war. They can't make the distinction between the Japanese army and American citizens," Michael said. "This town should be ashamed that in this day and age that's still happening."
Most of the camp's buildings are gone, bulldozed or moved to other locations after Manzanar was shuttered in 1945. Wooden markers identify phantom barracks and office buildings. Eventually two barracks, a mess hall and other camp features will be restored.
After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast as a security measure. Nearly 120,000 Japanese American civilians were rounded up and put into 10 guarded camps between 1942 and 1946. Two-thirds of them were U.S. citizens.
They could take only what they could carry. With dishes and bedding to bring, there was room for little else.
Under the blinding searchlights that swept across the camp nightly, lives began and ended here: 541 babies were born; 143 internees died.
Internees made do with what little they had. Ponds were dug and gardens were planted in front of the barracks of wood and tar paper. A newspaper was started. Three classes graduated from Manzanar High School, in block 7.
Much of the controversy surrounding the camp involves a tug of war over semantics. What should Manzanar be called? The official government Web site calls it a "war relocation center." But a California historical plaque at the camp's entrance refers to the site and the other internment facilities as "concentration camps," a term that evokes images of Nazi death camps.
Others, including a segment of the local veteran population, have railed against the term for years, arguing that the camps existed to house enemies of the United States and that the residents deserved to be there.
"If it was for our own protection, which way should the guards be looking and the guns be pointing?" former internee Eiichi Norihiro, 77, spat out as he balanced on crutches at the camp's cemetery, his right leg a casualty of tuberculosis he contracted when he was incarcerated. "They were pointed at us."
Even within the Japanese American community there is not a consensus. Some prefer to use the term "relocation" or "internment" camp, rather than concentration camp, to describe their experience.
"I guess you call it want you want to call it," said Sue Kunitomi Embrey, a former internee who led the fight to preserve the site. "A lot of people think of it as a concentration camp, but they didn't like to say it. But internment camp is not an accurate term. I call it a concentration camp."
Officials were trying to get the museum off the ground as bitterness surfaced over what should be displayed.
Ross Hopkins, the first Manzanar superintendent, received death threats from residents who thought the site was better off forgotten. He received so many calls at home he got an unlisted number. One veteran told Michael he would see the buildings "burned to the ground" before he would see the site turned into "a Jap museum." Another drove to the camp just to urinate on the sign that commemorates its existence.
In nearby Bishop, detractors circulated a petition against establishing Manzanar as a historic site, arguing the money would be better spent elsewhere. More than 100 people signed the petition.
The Inyo Register, the local paper, received so many letters that it stopped printing them.
Years of focus groups and extensive community outreach by park officials helped to allay many critics' fears. Park officials say they are satisfied with the progress they have made. The museum is here.
A retired Navy man left his impressions scribbled in the pages of a museum memory book:
"Proud to be an American, ashamed of this little piece of American history."
--------
Terror suspects to be held indefinitely
April 26, 2004
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/25/1082831435503.html
Most of the 595 suspected terrorists detained by the US at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be held indefinitely, even though there is not yet enough evidence to charge them, a senior Pentagon official has said.
The statement by Paul Butler, special assistant to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is the first Government acknowledgment that hundreds of detainees will probably be held without facing military tribunals.
Officials have spoken publicly about the prospect of indefinite detentions for some, but had not disclosed most could be held until the war on terror ends.
"What I'm saying is that there is a large percentage right now who are either high threat or high intelligence value, that right now there's no intention to try them . . ." Mr Butler said.
-------- ENERGY AND OTHER
-------- environment
Chemical Fix Planned for Lead in DC Drinking Water
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
April 26, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-26-09.asp#anchor4
A multi-agency team of water treatment experts has scheduled two public meetings to outline plans for implementing its recommended corrosion control measures designed to reduce levels of lead in drinking water in the District of Columbia.
The recommendation focuses on adding the chemical zinc orthophosphate to the finished drinking water before it leaves the district's two water treatment plants - Dalecarlia and McMillan.
Zinc orthophosphate is expected to reduce the corrosiveness of the water supply, and thereby reduce the amount of lead that wears away from inside the pipes in households and other buildings.
The experts do not expect lead levels to drop immediately after treatment begins. The team says it will likely take six months or longer to see measurable reductions in lead levels.
The group of experts from federal, state, and local agencies, known as the Technical Expert Working Group, includes people from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA), the Washington Aqueduct, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority, the DC Department of Health, the Virginia Department of Health and a variety of independent experts and contractors.
Their zinc orthophosphate plan has been presented its recommendation to officials at the EPA's mid-Atlantic Region, who are reviewing it.
The lead problem began in 2000 when the Washington Aqueduct added chloramine - a combination of chlorine and ammonia - to DC water to limit corrosion. The chloramine caused lead to leach from lead service pipes and has resulted in the elevated lead levels in drinking water.
The Washington Aqueduct is run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and supplies the DC Washington Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) with water. Tests by WASA in 2002 revealed elevated lead levels in more than half of test samples.
To date, water has tested unacceptably high for lead in more than 5,000 homes and schools in three districts in the DC metropolitan area - a few have tested as high as 6,000 parts per billion.
During the public meetings, working group representatives will make a formal presentation about the zinc orthophosphate treatment and answer questions.
As a test, the partial distribution of zinc orthophospahate would begin around June 1 in the area known as the 4th High Pressure Zone in Northwest Washington. This area was chosen because it is a manageable size, isolated from the rest of the distribution system, and is a good representation of water mains used throughout the district. Using a limited area at first will allow experts to closely monitor changes before expanding treatment.
Residents in the pilot area may temporarily see rust colored water from their taps during the monitoring period, WASA says. Residents should not drink or cook with rust colored water, and they should run the water to make sure it is clear before they use it for drinking, cooking or doing laundry. The discolored water can stain clothing if it is used for doing laundry.
For six weeks, the distribution system in the pilot area will be monitored for bacteria and discolored water. A special flushing crew will be available to respond to complaints about the rust colored water.
If the treatment is successful, it could be rolled out as early as July 15 to the entire Washington Aqueduct distribution system, which includes Washington, DC and parts of northern Virginia.
Until further notified, consumers should continue to use water filters and follow flushing recommendations and the DC Department of Health's advisory for children and pregnant women who live in homes with lead service lines.
The public information meetings will be held:
• Tuesday, April 27, 6 pm at the Pennsylvania Avenue Baptist Church Harmon Hall, 3000 Pennsylvania Ave., SE
• Thursday, April 29, 6 pm at the Metropolitan United Methodist Church Great Hall, 3401 Nebraska Ave, NW
--------
Protecting the Parks Along the Border
Plans to Stop Smuggling Of Drugs, Immigrants May Trample Lands
By Ryan Slattery
The Washington Post
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41901-2004Apr25?language=printer
TUCSON -- The government's most ambitious plan yet to seal the Arizona-Mexico border is drawing criticism from environmentalists who say granting the U.S. Border Patrol greater access to federally protected lands will only trample the landscape and do nothing to solve immigrant and drug smuggling in the region.
The portion of the plan at the center of the controversy is the Border Patrol's request to use off-road motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles on known smuggling routes and footpaths within designated wilderness corridors. Arizona shares more than 300 miles of border with Mexico, and much of it is federal land that protects fragile ecosystems and provides habitat for endangered species such as the Sonoran pronghorn , a type of antelope.
Thousands of miles of illegal roads already crisscross the Arizona desert, and environmentalists and land managers fear unfettered law enforcement access will spider web across the preserves.
"This is an over-the-top approach," said Daniel Patterson, a desert ecologist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity. "These areas do not recover quickly."
Roger Maier, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman, points out that illegal traffic in these areas is already ruining the parklands. Immigrants and smugglers abandon vehicles, leave behind mounds of trash and crush plant life. He says enforcement will cut down on those destructive behaviors by keeping the illegal element out of these areas.
"Certainly, we recognize the need to do everything possible to maintain the integrity of the park in its natural state, while also having to address the issue of the illegal activity occurring there," Maier said.
The criticism comes despite record numbers of apprehensions and three large drug busts at the Nogales port of entry within the past month that, Border Patrol officials say, proves the efforts are paying off. On April 14, border officers at a cargo facility seized 2,140 pounds of marijuana worth an estimated $2.1 million. In two previous busts in March, officers seized a total of 4,291 pounds of marijuana.
The new measures, called the Arizona Border Control (ABC) Initiative, were announced March 16 by Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security in the Department of Homeland Security, who noted that 40 percent of illegal immigrants entering the United States cross the Arizona border.
At the announcement of the ABC Initiative, Interior Deputy Assistant Secretary Larry Parkinson said, "The best thing you can do for the environment is to have control of the border."
Crackdowns at urban ports in California and Texas have pushed undocumented workers and drug smugglers into the most remote areas of the Arizona desert. Since the beginning of the year, the Border Patrol's Tucson sector has seen a 50 percent increase in the number of illegal immigrants captured over the same period a year ago, a figure some attribute to increased patrols. And a spillover is being felt in New Mexico, with agents at the Lordsburg crossing reporting an 80 percent increase in apprehensions.
Under the ABC Initiative, 260 additional agents are being deployed in the Tucson sector, for a total of about 2,000 agents. Unmanned aerial vehicles will begin operation in June, and electronic ground sensors, remote video cameras and more aircraft are being added. The $10 million initiative has been funded through the end of September.
"This is a full-court press, as far as Homeland Security goes," Maier said. "It's already generating a lot of results. We're getting feedback from Mexico that the word is that it has already tightened up here. Maybe they'll think twice and not even come."
The ABC Initiative came as a surprise to many. Environmentalist charge that the Department of Homeland Security did not do environmental studies that are required when increased activities are being proposed on public lands.
"This came under the cover of darkness," said Jenny Neeley of Defenders of Wildlife.
But Maier said, "The parties were brought in as early as possible."
Stuck in the middle of the debate are federal land managers such as Roger DiRosa, who oversees the 860,000-acre Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, 93 percent of which is designated wilderness, near Ajo, Ariz. DiRosa was hired to protect the natural resources within a refuge that shares 56 miles of the border with Mexico, and his job has become a balancing act with the focus shifted to combating criminal activities. And with only three full-time enforcement officers in the refuge, DiRosa is dependent on Border Control agents. He only wishes the agency would better express its needs for access to remote areas of the refuge.
"Don't give us a blanket approach, be specific," said DiRosa, who said that public land mangers were also surprised by the Border Patrol plans.
DiRosa says Border Patrol officials have since entered into consultations with the refuge staff about its planned activities in Cabeza Prieta and how to minimize any damage. He said he hopes they'll consider using horses where possible instead of motorized vehicles and implement more quickly plans for high-tech monitoring systems that would also reduce the impact on the environment. Refuge and Border Patrol officials are also looking into the possibility of using some of the illegal roads for the agents' motorized vehicles and of locating field sites in less environmentally sensitive areas.
Officials at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument have taken measures into their own hands after the August 2002 murder of Ranger Kris Eggle by Mexican drug traffickers. They have hired more law enforcement officers and are replacing a flimsy barbed-wire fence with a five-foot-high vehicle barrier constructed of railroad ties. The fence, five miles of which is complete, will eventually run the entire 31-mile length of the park's border.
"It's a start, but it's certainly not enough," Bonnie Eggle, Kris's mother, said recently in Las Vegas where she attended a meeting of Secured Borders USA, a Nevada-based group calling for the militarization of the U.S. border.
But DiRosa, whose refuge borders Organ Pipe, worries that without his own fence, he will inherit the Organ Pipe's illegal immigration problems.
"It's going to drive more traffic our way," DiRosa said with a sigh. He added, "The solution [to illegal immigration] is not on the Mexican border. It's in Washington, D.C., and Mexico City."
-------- imf / world bank / wto
World Bank Concerns Overshadowed by Terrorism, Iraq
April 26, 2004
(ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2004/2004-04-26-03.asp
WASHINGTON, DC - Progress towards meeting the UN Millenium Development Goals is uneven, with some developing countries striding forward but others sliding back, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund heard at their 60th anniversary spring meeting over the weekend in Washington.
But the issues most important to the Group, which World Bank President James Wolfensohn defined as "the question of poverty and the question of equity," are being pushed to the background now that the media are "preeminently concerned with issues of terrorism, Iraq, growth, jobs, in domestic countries' elections, and budget deficits," he said.
World Bank President James Wolfensohn explains to the media on Sunday how the world's focus has shifted away from concern about poverty since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2004. (Photo courtesy World Bank) The proportion of people living in extreme poverty - less than $1 a day - in developing countries dropped by almost half between 1981 and 2001, from 40 to 21 percent of global population, according to World Bank figures released Friday. But while rapid economic growth in East and South Asia has pulled over 500 million people out of poverty in those two regions alone, the proportion of poor has grown, or fallen only slightly, in many countries in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
When 189 member states of the United Nations adopted the Millennium Declaration in September 2000, they looked back to 1990 and ahead to 2015 and gave themselves 25 years to produce improvements in peoples' lives.
A primary environmental Millenium goal is to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is Finance Minister, Nigeria, and Chair of the World Bank Development Committee. (Photo courtesy World Bank) Another is to integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources.
The goals outlined in the Declaration form the target for World Bank Group activities, but Wolfensohn said "when you look at education and health and environment and other individual objectives, in most of those, it is fairly clear that the objectives will not be reached."
The Global Monitoring Report issued by the Group on Friday shows that "there has been some progress, that there is a reasonable chance by 2015 that we will achieve the global goal of halving poverty," Wolfensohn said, citing "remarkable progress in China and India."
But the report points out that Africa, which has always been the most difficult area, Wolfensohn said, is falling back even on the poverty goals, despite the fact that 14 or 15 countries are having growth of over four percent.
"There has been a pickup in investment in Africa, but again, if you dig into that," said Wolfensohn, it's in a few countries, and it is significantly in natural resource investments."
The current crisis in Darfur, western Sudan is threatening to become a major humanitarian catastrophe, says the UN's World Food Programme, which has launched an urgent appeal to the international community for US$98 million to feed 1.2 million victims of conflict. (Photo courtesy WFP) Martin Ravallion, manager of the Bank's poverty research program, said, "To increase the security of poor people, national poverty reduction strategies must support their immediate consumption needs and protect their assets by ensuring access to basic services, including health, education and nutrition."
On Thursday, Earth Day, the World Bank called for "speeding up global action to fight diseases caused by outdoor and indoor air pollution, and unsafe water." Tnese conditions are affecting the health and lives of millions of children in poor and middle-income countries, the Bank said.
"Adults and children are dying because of environmental pollution and unsafe water," saai Ian Johnson, World Bank vice president for sustainable development. "This is a global problem that the international community urgently needs to put an end to, because children's lives depend on it."
Every year in developing countries, an estimated three million people die prematurely from water-related diseases, and two million people die from exposure to stove smoke inside their homes.
It is the infants, young children and women from poor rural families who lack access to safe water, sanitation, and modern household fuels that bear the brunt of the largest portion of deaths.
According to the World Bank's Environment Strategy, over one million people die annually from malaria, most in the poorest parts of Africa. Another million people die from urban air pollution, and, of the urban populations, there is reason to believe that it is the poor who suffer the most, the Bank reports.
"Progress is happening, but it is still too slow," said Johnson. "Solutions require coordination across different sectors, including the need for changing behaviors on the ground. Better infrastructure and energy services for households and communities are needed for mitigating the most daunting environmental risks to health."
A recent environmental public opinion survey conducted by Globe-Scan in 20 countries concluded that, "Environmental concerns in poor and middle income countries are clearly linked to personal perceived risks and basic needs, while in wealthy countries people are beginning to put nature issues ahead of their historical pollution concerns."
Demonstrators against the privatization of water march in the parade against World Bank and IMF policies. (Photo courtesy Indymedia.org) On the Washington streets, protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against World Bank policies, a smaller and much less violent protest than in the recent past. Police said about 1,000 demonstrators showed up, but organizers Mobilization for Global Justice (MGJ) put their number at about 3,000.
Shouting chants, banging on pots pans and drums, demonstrators paraded along 15 blocks to show their opposition to structural adjustment loan conditions such as forced privatization of public resources, mass layoffs, cuts in health and education, and high interest rates.
"Opposition to the policies of the IMF and World Bank goes hand in hand with the growing opposition to the antidemocratic, secretive, corporate-dominated international trade agreements," said MGJ organizer Herb Ettel. "From Seattle, to Cancun to Miami, impoverished and working people are organizing to fight for their communities, decent jobs, human rights and the environment."
MJG organizer Robert Weissman said the protest crowd this year is smaller because the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 changed the focus of American politics. Everyday working people, the media and the protesters look to a different set of issues," he said.
The protesters want World Bank meetings opened to the public and the media, and all the debts of impoverished countries to the World Bank and IMF cancelled.
They demand a stop to all World Bank and IMF policies that "hinder people's access to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize. These policies include user fees, privatization, and economic austerity programs in countries that receive World Bank Group loans.
Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, the protesters demand, and all support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of people.
"These institutions function as loan sharks, offering desperately indebted countries loans that just add to their debt burden," said Morrigan Phillips, a staff member of Jubilee USA Network and MGJ. "Most of these debts are illegitimate - loans to dictators or for failed projects. These lending institutions can and should cancel the debt now."
Vegetable seller in the market at Dakar, Senegal. (Photo courtesy FAO) There is some movement towards debt relief at the World Bank Group. The Group supports US$850 million in debt service relief for Senegal. With democratically elected presidents since 1983 and a smooth transition of power after the 2000 presidential election, Senegal is politically stable, and has put a stable economic system in place, the World Bank and IMF said in a statement of support.
The Bank's annual statistical report, World Development Indicators 2004, released Friday, shows a drop in the absolute number of people living on less than $1 a day in all developing countries from 1.5 billion in 1981, to 1.1 billion in 2001, with much of the progress occurring in the 1980s.
Between 1990 and 2001, the global decline in the number of extremely poor people slowed somewhat, falling by about 120 million - from 1.2 billion to 1.1 billion people - while the proportion of poor people dropped from 28 percent to 21 percent of the total population.
"Economic growth in China and India has delivered a dramatic reduction in the number of poor," said François Bourguignon, the Bank's chief economist. "But other regions have not enjoyed sustained growth and, in too many cases, the number of poor has actually increased."
"Although we are likely to reach the first Millennium Development Goal of reducing poverty by half worldwide by 2015, Bourguigon said, "much more aid, much more openness to trade, and more widespread policy reforms are needed to achieve all the Millenium Development Goals in all countries."
In addition to liberalization of trade by both rich and developing countries, increased aid flows, especially to the poorest countries, are needed to eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the Millenium Deelopment Goals, the Bank said in its report.
Net aid flowing to developing and transition countries reached $70 billion in 2002, up from $54 billion in 1997, the report states.
More than a quarter of these flows went to Sub-Saharan Africa, where they represent 32 percent of that region's gross capital formation. But middle-income countries, including China, Serbia and Montenegro, West Bank and Gaza, and Pakistan, received about half of total net aid.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Nuclear whistleblower seeks protection
Jerusalem
April 26, 2004
The Age
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/25/1082831435497.html
Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's nuclear whistleblower, has asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to help ensure his safety after he received death threats on his release from prison last week.
His brother, Meir, warned that extremist "lunatics" were determined to harm Mr Vanunu, who joined the Anglican Communion in the 1980s before he betrayed Israel's nuclear secrets.
Meir Vanunu said he wanted Archbishop Rowan Williams to help safeguard his brother at St George's Cathedral in east Jerusalem, where he is staying.
He also called on Dr Williams to put pressure on the Israeli Government to lift the restrictions imposed on Mr Vanunu, who was released after imprisonment for revealing details of Israel's secret atomic weapons program.
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Peace Is Possible
by Charley Reese
April 26, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=2380
Americans, instead of acting like sheep, ought to start thinking of a peaceful world and how we might attain it. It is possible. The benefits of peace would be enormous.
The conflict currently being used to sustain America's vast empire (more than 700 foreign military bases and intelligence installations) and its attendant military-industrial complex is essentially one we created.
Terrorists the world over did not declare war on us. The overwhelming majority are concerned with local issues in their own countries. Only one organization, al-Qaida, declared war on us. It has probably less than 1,000 members. We don't need 1.2 million men under arms, an ocean-girdling fleet, a $400 billion defense budget and a $40 billion intelligence budget to deal with 1,000 or fewer individuals.
We could even consider what they say their demands are. They want us out of the Arabian Peninsula. That's not a bad idea. We don't need to station military forces on the Arabian Peninsula. Oil has a peculiar characteristic: If you don't sell it, it's more or less worthless. Since the countries in Arabia are neither industrialized nor have much else to sell, we need not worry about who governs them. Anyone who governs them will sell oil, because for the government it's sell oil or revert to poverty.
The notion that America needs military forces to "protect the oil" is a self-serving myth.
The second demand is justice for the Palestinians. That one is easy. All we have to do is join the rest of the world in demanding that Israel obey international law and remove its settlers and its forces from the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. We should have done that a long time ago. Israel has become nothing but a pain in America's rear end.
As for Afghanistan, we should simply get out. We destroyed the Taliban and reinstalled the warlords and their opium business. We should simply say, "Good luck with your elections and farewell." The notion that Afghanistan is going to transform itself into a Western-style democracy is as crazy as the notion that Iraq will do the same thing.
And as for Iraq, we should also wish the Iraqis well on their elections and simply say "Goodbye." The Iraqis are capable of electing a government and recruiting an army, provided we leave them alone. The idea that American forces have to remain in Iraq for years and years is another lie. If our own president were truthful, he would admit that we came to loot rather than liberate.
Now, having withdrawn militarily from these areas doesn't mean we can't help with civilian reconstruction. Most of the destruction in Iraq is of our doing anyway. We should help. But as long as we maintain a military presence, the Iraqi people will know that "transfer of sovereignty" is nothing more than a charade, and they will continue to resist the occupation.
What a revolution it would be if the American government said to the world: "If you need food or medicine or civilian infrastructure, we are ready to help, but we will no longer sell you arms, station military forces in your territory, interfere in your internal affairs or take sides in your quarrels with others. What kind of government you wish to adopt is your business, not ours."
It would be nice for Americans to be admired and welcomed once again as we used to be before this monstrous empire was constructed during the Cold War. Now, the imperial government in Washington, despite the absence of a Soviet Union, wants to maintain the empire and more or less rule the world. That is the path of perpetual conflict and eventual ruin, as it has been for every empire in human history. Dwight Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, and we ignored the warning.
It's not too late, however, to elect men and women with brains enough to know that peace, not war, is the proper goal we should pursue. That can happen if the American people make it happen instead of acting like Romans and getting giddy every time they see the emperor or one of his generals.
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Women's Rally Draws Vast Crowd
Marchers Champion Reproductive Rights, Opposition to Bush
By Cameron W. Barr and Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, April 26, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41997-2004Apr25?language=printer
Hundreds of thousands of people filled the Mall and marched along Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday to show their support for abortion rights, loudly identifying President Bush as the leading enemy of "reproductive freedom."
Organizers of the March for Women's Lives said they had drawn 1.15 million people, which would make it the largest abortion rights gathering in history. "This has been the largest march for reproductive rights, the largest march for women's rights and the largest march of any kind in this country," said Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women.
Police would not issue an official estimate, but some veteran commanders said the crowd was at least the biggest since the 1995 Million Man March, which independent researchers put at 870,000 people. D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey would say only that he thought the march had met and perhaps exceeded its organizers' expectations. Their march permit was for as many as 750,000.
Celebrities, from entertainers to politicians to activists, lent their shine to the event. Actors Cybill Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg attended, as did singers Ani DiFranco and Moby. Feminist icons Patricia Ireland and Gloria Steinem were there, and so were former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Billionaire Ted Turner was there. So was NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.
"If all we do is march today," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) told the crowd, "that will not change the direction this country is headed under this administration."
Several blocks away, on Pennsylvania Avenue, Jay Rhodes of Alexandria held a sign equating abortion with the Holocaust. He shouted sarcastically, "Keep murder legal" when marchers challenged his views. "It's very hostile," said Rhodes, 52, who said he came on his own to join counter-protesters who lined part of the march route. "There's a lot of anger on both sides."
As the marchers thronged 14th Street yesterday afternoon, Guilford College sophomore Parks Marion, 19, recalled his mother dragging him through the same streets during a 1992 abortion-rights rally. Then, he complained about the walk. Yesterday, in the midst of a take-two-steps-and-stop pedestrian crush, he marveled at "just the sheer number" of people. "It's overwhelming and it's wonderful," he said.
Organizers sought to transcend the polarizing issue of abortion, portraying the event as the work of a coalition of groups that want to improve women's access to reproductive education health care worldwide. But the dominant themes of the day were two. Again and again, march participants vowed that abortion was here to stay. And that Bush had to go.
Bush stayed at Camp David in the Maryland mountains until late afternoon, when he returned to the capital. The White House issued a statement that began on a conciliatory note and then turned to administration policies that are popular with conservatives. "The president believes we should work to build a culture of life in America and regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, we can all work together to reduce the number of abortions through promotion of abstinence-education programs, support for parental-notification laws and continued support for banning partial-birth abortion," the statement said.
Earlier, Jeanne Clark, spokesperson for the Feminist Majority, one of the organizations behind the march, said that while President Bill Clinton was in office, women felt that his veto could protect them. Now, she said, growing concern about Bush administration initiatives has prompted women to march anew to show their concerns. The last major abortion rights rally on the Mall took place in April 1992, seven months before Clinton was elected.
In 2001, shortly after taking office, Bush barred the government from funding international organizations that use money from other sources to provide abortions or information about terminating a pregnancy. On April 1, he signed a bill that made it a federal crime to harm or kill a fetus during the commission of another federal crime.
That law defined an "unborn child" as "a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb," alarming abortion rights advocates, who challenged the bill in three federal courts even before Bush signed it.
The Bush administration also has not made it possible to obtain the so-called morning after pill, also known as emergency contraception, without a prescription.
Concerned about what they saw as an erosion of rights, the Feminist Majority joined NARAL Pro-Choice America, the American Civil Liberties Union, Black Women's Health Imperative, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, NOW and Planned Parenthood Federation of America to fight it.
Holding a red fly swatter that said "Stop Bush," Carmen Barroso, a New York-based regional director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, called the day a "mobilization against the war against reproductive rights and reproductive health."
A few feet away, sitting in a folding chair under one of the Mall's shade trees, retired IBM employee Franz Hespenheide of Gaithersburg seemed almost reassured by what he was witnessing. "To see all these people," he said, "just reinforces our belief that this government has to go."
Sandra Kauffman, crouched in the grass next to her three-wheel bike, watched with tears in her eyes as four lawyers approached the stage -- they had argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of abortion rights. "It's been a long fight. It's incredible to see," Kauffman said.
In the last presidential election, Steve Baker, 40, voted for Bush. But Baker said he told his wife, Cindy Maloney, 34, that if he felt women's rights were being compromised in a Bush administration, he would be the first to march with her at an event such as yesterday's. "I really didn't think this was going to happen," he said.
Many people wore or carried signs that displayed their political views. One popular placard featured a portrait of Bush and the phrase "one-term president."
Bob Kunst of Miami had flown in Saturday night to sell 40,000 anti-Bush bumper stickers. On the Mall yesterday, one hand held the stickers and the other a thick wad of cash. "We're doing incredibly well," he said.
The signs in the bus windows at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium's Parking Lot 3 -- one of several staging areas -- read like an atlas of Northeast and Great Lakes states. Big cities and small towns were listed on the placards, including Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Millersville, Lancaster and Durham.
Kay Kennard had marched for civil rights in the '60s and had been to Washington many times chaperoning students on field trips. But yesterday, the retired teacher emerged from a nine-hour bus ride that began in the Cleveland suburb of Beachwood to help teach a lesson to her 15-year-old niece, Brytney Saulters. "We want the right of women to make their own choices," Kennard said.
Buses lined several blocks along 22nd and East Capitol streets, while about 800 filled four parking lots outside the stadium. At 10:30 a.m., people filled the sidewalk for a block and a half waiting to get into the Stadium-Armory Metro station.
Katie Panella, 19, slapped a pink sticker on her right thigh and clutched a "Stop Violence Against Women" poster in front of her Brown University women's rugby jacket as she strode towards the station.
Though a little bleary-eyed from the trip from Providence, R.I., she looked forward to showing the importance of mobilizing voters against Bush's policies. "He's a threat to women's rights," she said. "It's just exciting to have so many young people out marching."
Charlotte Hummel, 47, chairs the Landsdowne, Pa., Democratic Party, and came yesterday to show her 9-year-old daughter, Zoe Farquhar, "a major national event." Hummel said that women have long been at the wrong end of government intrusion into their bodies. "If you control women's bodies, you control their lives."
There were several hundred antiabortion activists lining the route of the march, exchanging shouts with the marchers. Police reported no physical clashes, however.
As the march surged down Pennsylvania Avenue, Bertram Lee, 14, of Northwest pulled a cell phone from his pocket and left a message for his girlfriend, who couldn't attend. "I'm wearing a pink shirt and a yellow sash, and I'm proud of it," he said, his voice filled with emotion. "I just wanted to tell her I love her," he explained after the call. "This is amazing."
About 20 feet back from the front line, a tall, slender man in a linen jacket towered above the women around him, walking with a meditative air. It was NAACP leader Julian Bond. "Crowds have a calming influence on me," he said, craning his neck from side to side. " I've been through a lot of these but never on a pro-choice march. We've supported the pro-choice movement since 1968 but never endorsed something like this."
Dinah Finkelstein, a 16-year-old student, came to the Mall by Metro from her home in Northwest. She said she was "amazed" by the scene, and she looked it, gazing in all directions at the crowds around her. "This is really a defensive measure," she observed, "against everyone out there who doesn't think that we deserve a choice."
While it was clear that the march was organized to oppose any infringement of a woman's constitutional right to an abortion, as enshrined in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, some of the other goals were harder to divine.
The official march posters and banners cited eight words -- choice, justice, access, health, abortion, global, family planning -- offering several objectives.
Many people defined their own agendas. "I want 'Pro-choice, Pro-child,' " Roberta Blumberg, 53, told volunteers handing out signs yesterday morning. She already juggled two yellow and purple "Who decides?" signs attached to hollow cardboard tubes, but she wanted to modify one with a pro-child statement.
"It's important to look past focusing on abortion rights," said Adia Harvey, 27, a Johns Hopkins University instructor who lives in Lanham. "You have to put abortion in the context of women's reproductive freedom," which she defined as full access to contraceptive technology and sex education.
She said organizers had done a better job than in the past of broadening the agenda, but she and some of her co-marchers agreed that the bottom line was defending the right to an abortion. "It seems a pity that it comes down to this," said Tahi Reynolds, who works for an nonprofit education organization in the District.
Organizers announced yesterday afternoon that they had surpassed a million marchers, reaching that conclusion after they said they had passed out more than a million stickers. Alice Cohan, the march director, said 2,500 trained volunteers were given stickers -- reading "count me in" -- that they pasted on people as they got off buses or entered the march area.
Police would not make a formal estimate. Veteran officers who had been on hand for marches and demonstrations in years past said it was the biggest such gathering since the Million Man March in 1995, a gathering whose size was hotly disputed and that led to the discontinuation of crowd estimates by U.S. Park Police. After that march, a team of researchers recounted the crowd from photos and set the number at 870,000, with a margin of error that offered a range for the turnout from 655,000 to 1.1 million.
Officers disagreed about whether the march matched or surpassed the number at the Million Man March, but many veterans of such gatherings put the figure at at least 500,000. Acting Park Police Chief Dwight Pettiford flew above the crowd in his agency's helicopter and said the "entire Mall was covered with people." "I don't know if they achieved their numbers or not, but there were lots and lots of people," Pettiford said.
Metro reported large numbers of riders. Spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said that as of 5 p.m., 320,138 riders had entered the system, more than double last Sunday's ridership but far below weekday average of 670,000, she said. And homebound demonstrators were delayed after a bus became stuck in an underpass near RFK Stadium. By nighttime, the bus was dislodged and traffic was moving.
U.S. Park Police arrested 16 protesters from the Christian Defense Coalition about 3 p.m. for demonstrating without a permit.
Sgt. Scott Fear said the group had permission to demonstrate along Pennsylvania Avenue but moved into an area designated for the March for Women's Lives.
"We gave them three warnings," he said. "They decided that 16 of them were going to stay, so [those] 16 were arrested and charged."
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March One Of Largest Mall Events
Monday, April 26, 2004
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42050-2004Apr25.html
With more than 500,000 participating, yesterday's March for Women's Lives was among the largest demonstrations ever held on the Mall. Organizers said the march drew 1.15 million people.
The turnout appears to have been at least as large as a similar march for abortion rights in 1992, which the National Organization for Women estimated drew 750,000 people. In comparison, a 1989 march for women's rights had 300,000 to 600,000 people.
The March on Washington in 1963, at which Martin Luther King Jr. gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, had an estimated 250,000 people. In 1969, Vietnam Moratorium Day drew about 600,000.
But the art of making crowd estimates is notoriously imprecise and frequently a topic of heated debate.
After the 1995 Million Man March, organizers maintained that at least 1 million men took part. That was more than double what the U.S. Park Police estimated. The organizers threatened to sue. Ultimately, researchers from Boston University, working from photographic images, judged the crowd size at more than 800,000.
There have been numerous other large marches, including a 1997 Promise Keepers gathering that attracted 480,000 to 750,000 people and a 1991 victory celebration after Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf that drew about 800,000.
After the dispute over the size of the crowd at the Million Man March, the Park Police decided in 1997 that the department no longer would make official estimates.
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Hundreds of Thousands March for Abortion Rights
April 26, 2004
By ROBIN TONER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/26/politics/26RALL.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, April 25 - Hundreds of thousands of abortion rights supporters rallied Sunday in the nation's capital, protesting the policies of the Bush administration and its conservative allies and vowing to fight back in the November election.
The huge crowd marched slowly past the White House, chanting and waving signs like "My Body Is Not Public Property!" and "It's Your Choice, Not Theirs!," then filled the Mall, turning it into a sea of women, men and children for the first large-scale abortion rights demonstration here in 12 years.
Organizers asserted that the marchers numbered more than a million, in what they said was a clear demonstration of political clout. There was no official estimate of the crowd size from law enforcement authorities; the United States Park Police stopped providing counts for rallies after bitter disputes over past estimates.
Speaker after speaker declared that President Bush and his allies in Congress were trying to impose an ideological agenda on abortion and family planning programs, both at home and abroad. The advocates warned that the erosion might be stealthy and incremental - regulations and restrictions rather than outright bans - but asserted that the trend was unmistakable.
"We are determined to stop this war on women," said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, a sponsor of the march. Gloria Steinem, one of many feminist icons who turned out Sunday, said, "We are here to take back our country."
The day had a decidedly partisan edge, with many in the crowd carrying signs for Senator John Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee; several members of his family were among the marchers, as was Howard Dean, who had also sought the Democratic nomination; Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader of the House; and Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic Party chairman.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, noted that the last time abortion rights supporters rallied in Washington, the nation elected her husband to the presidency just six months later.
"We didn't have to march for 12 long years because we had a government that respected the rights of women," she said. "The only way we're going to be able to avoid having to march again and again and again is to elect John Kerry president."
Mr. Bush was at Camp David this weekend, but a White House spokesman, Taylor Gross, said: "The president believes we should work to build a culture of life in America. And regardless of where one stands on the issue of abortion, we can all work together to reduce the number of abortions through promotion of abstinence education programs, support for parental notification laws and support for the ban on partial-birth abortions."
Administration officials, in fact, have long maintained that the president's policies are solidly in the mainstream of American public opinion; although he opposes abortion except in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the woman, he has said the country is not ready for an outright ban.
But abortion rights advocates countered Sunday that Mr. Bush's policies put the government where it has no business: between doctor and patient. They are challenging the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, for example, arguing that it is so vague that it could outlaw many types of abortions performed after the first trimester and could keep doctors from performing procedures they believe are in the best interest of the woman's health.
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, another sponsor of the march, said the Bush administration was engaged in a wide-ranging assault on Americans' privacy. "The government does not belong in our bedrooms," he said. "It does not belong in our doctors' offices."
June Walker, president of Hadassah, told the audience, "Everywhere, it seems, we have ideology creeping into women's health policy."
Many abortion rights supporters argued that Mr. Bush's emphasis on programs that promote only abstinence is draining money from family planning programs that rely more on contraception. And they maintained that his restoration of a ban on federal aid to family planning groups that promote or perform abortions abroad is hurting thousands of vulnerable women.
The march came at a difficult time for the abortion rights movement, after months of legislative setbacks. The movement's leaders hoped to use the march to rouse voters who are sympathetic to their cause, to galvanize younger women and to build support among minorities.
In fact, there was a changing-of-the-guard tone to much of Sunday's program. Ms. Steinem, noting that she is now 70, declared proudly that by her estimate, "more than a third of the women in this march are women under 25." Kate Michelman, soon leaving her post as president of Naral Pro-Choice America, one of the sponsors of the march, took the stage with her granddaughter and declared, "It's your generation that must take the lead."
Juleah Swanson, 21, was one of roughly 80 students who arrived on two buses from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Me. Ms. Swanson and several young women from the Bowdoin delegation were carrying a giant uterus made of red clothing and stuffing, bearing the slogan "My Body, My Choice."
"It's a historic moment, and so important in this election year with so much at stake in the courts," said Ms. Swanson, a women's studies major.
There were many families marching together, wearing signs that declared three or four generations for choice. Melissa Bomes of Los Angeles was marching with her mother and her 7-month-old daughter, all of them dressed in the white of the women's suffrage movement. "We feel it's incredibly important to let the government know how important this is to us."
Along the march route, a line of anti-abortion protesters prayed, chanted and held up blown-up photographs of aborted fetuses and signs that said, "Have compassion on the little ones!" and "Women Need Love, Not Abortion."
The abortion rights protesters chanted back, "Pro-life, that's a lie, you don't care if women die," and "Not the church, not the state, women will decide their fate."
Many of the anti-abortion protesters, though, said they simply wanted to make a statement but not confront the marchers. "I'm here because I want women to know before they have an abortion that there is more to it than ending a pregnancy," said Amy Martin, 37, who said she had an abortion at age 16 that led to depression and a slew of regrets.
The religious and political fault lines on the abortion issue were apparent. Several speakers took note of the debate within the Roman Catholic hierarchy over how to respond to Catholic elected officials who support abortion rights, including Mr. Kerry. Mrs. Pelosi took the stage and declared, "I am a mother of five, a grandmother of five and a devout Roman Catholic," as well as a supporter of abortion rights.
Organizers said they were elated by the size of the march, which took more than a year to arrange. But crowd estimates for Washington demonstrations are a source of enduring controversy, particularly since the park police stopped making its own estimates. One of the few hard numbers came from the city's subway, which registered 320,138 riders from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., compared with 133,448 during the same period last week. But many of the marchers did not use the subways.
Like past abortion rights marches, this one included a large group of actors, including Ashley Judd, Kathleen Turner, Whoopi Goldberg and Cybill Shepherd, as well as other celebrities, like Ted Turner. A large delegation came from Capitol Hill, as well as from the seven sponsors.
In addition to Naral, the A.C.L.U. and the Feminist Majority, those sponsors were the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the National Organization for Women, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and the Black Women's Health Imperative.
At times, the march had the air of a vast reunion. Jackie Ballard, a 78-year-old fashion consultant from Orange County, Calif., came with Lyn Jerry, her college roommate from Wellesley. "I got the announcement and thought, `I've got to be there,' " said Ms. Ballard. "I called my roommate and said we had to go."
Stephani Tikalsky, 45, from Minneapolis, brought her daughter Libby, who was turning 12 on Monday. "She may not understand this now, but I'm hoping that it'll register years from now," Ms. Tikalsky said. "I hope when people talk about the March of 2004 she'll remember she was there."
Reporting for this article was contributed by Lynette Clemetson, Julie Bosman, Rhasheema A. Sweeting and Elizabeth Phillips.
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Former U.N. inspector talks 'real' Iraq policy
by Mike Fila, Photo by Lisa Johnson
April 26, 2004
Towson University, MD, 'Towerlight'
http://www.thetowerlight.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/04/26/408c82475974a
Former chief weapons inspector to Iraq Scott Ritter said Wednesday that President Bush created an extremely turbulent situation in Iraq.
"President Bush poses the greatest threat to America that we have seen in modern history," Ritter told an audience in the University Union's Potomac Lounge.
Though his accusations were extreme, Ritter- an unabashedly conservative Republican-argued they are not unfounded.
Ritter, a former intelligence officer for the US Marine Corps who served as the UN's Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998, said the U.S. government "brought us into this war on false pretenses."
Although the Bush administration says it is looking for weapons of mass destruction, Ritter explained, the government has a hidden agenda.
"Our real policy has been regime change," Ritter said. "Our plan was to dethrone Saddam, not to find weapons of mass destruction."
Ritter traced the Bush administration's policy on Iraq back to the administration of his father, and the influence of the United States as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.
After Iraq submitted a declaration of weaponry to the United Nations in 1991, U.N. weapons inspectors went into the country to uncover the unclaimed weapons of mass destruction. Ritter defined WMDs as any chemical, biological or nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles.
"The job of a weapons inspector is to go in, collect a declaration of weaponry and then destroy those weapons," Ritter said.
Ritter and his team stepped into the role of detectives, questioning Iraqi scientists, tracing phone logs, confronting suppliers of production machinery and testing potential leads. By 1996 they could account for 90 to 95 percent of all the weapons in Iraq, and inspectors concluded that Iraq was no longer a threat to the international community.
"We did not find in our investigation that Iraq was trying to hide or create any more weapons of mass destruction," Ritter said.
In 1991 the United Nations also placed economic sanctions on Iraq to encourage the nation to disarm. However, the United States saw economic sanctioning as a way to box Saddam in until he could be removed from power, Ritter explained.
"But with disarmament, the sanction could be lifted," Ritter said. "Without the sanctions we could no longer contain Saddam."
Despite the intense research of inspectors and evidence, Ritter said the U.S. government began to undermine the investigation.
"They began feeding us false documentation to maintain sanctions and investigations in Iraq," he said.
In the following decade the policy did not change, he added.
"Our mission was to dethrone Saddam, and in April 2003 we finally did it," he said.
Before going to Iraq in 2003, the media carried the message of the administration to the public, depicting Iraq as a country in trouble and a risk to the security of the United States, he explained.
"We had been spoon-fed lies by our government and ate it up," Ritter said. "Our president had betrayed the American public."
"Iraq was better off before we came there," Ritter said. "We took their lives and made them worse."
American media also swayed public opinion of Iraqi insurgents, Ritter said. He recalled "Red Dawn," a 1980s movie in which foreign forces invade a small American town, and teenagers there become heroes for fighting back with fierce tactics.
"What do you call the people in Fallujah who say 'We will not let you come into my country?' A terrorist." Ritter said, "But he is really a freedom fighter."
To help stabilize Iraq, America has tried to implement a democratic government system. However, elections have not yet been held in Iraq and the country is operated by officials hand-picked by the United States. America took out one dictator in Saddam, Ritter claimed, only to replace him with coalition administrator L. Paul Bremer.
"This isn't going to work, it's a failure," Ritter said. "It's not worth losing one drop of American blood. It's a losing cause."
Democracy imposed on Iraq solves nothing, he continued. Rather, sovereignty must be restored to Iraq through an interim government monitored by the United Nations. As stability is achieved, the United Nations will give control to a new Iraqi government.
"Passing over sovereignty is different than imposing a democracy," he said.
The current state of limbo is causing discontent among American soldiers, but at this point it is too late to back out of Iraq, Ritter explained.
"Don't be surprised if [the United States] instates a draft in the spring or summer of 2005," Ritter said. "There are just not enough [soldiers in Iraq] to sustain power in that country."
November's elections will determine what happens in the country, Ritter explained.
"We are the ones responsible to determine whether the war that our marines, soldiers and airmen are fighting in is worth the cause," he said. "You fail yourself and your country if you don't vote."
To stop what is going on in Iraq, Ritter explained, America will have to swallow a hard pill of bad news.
"We say that we care about the war," he said, "but we don't even really know what we're fighting for."
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Christian scholars gather to study dangers of Zionism
26/4/04
Ekklesia UK
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_040426zionism.shtml
Over 600 Christian bible scholars, religious leaders and peace activists representing 32 countries, have gathered in Jerusalem's Notre Dame Centre to look at ways of challenging Christian Zionism.
The conference was organised by the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre, an initiative of Palestinian Christians to educate and work alongside Christians of the west. The Arabic name means "the way" and refers to the name given to first-century Christians in Palestine, who were called "the people of The Way."
The entitled "Challenging Christian Zionism: Theology, Politics, and the Palestine-Israel Conflict" addressed Zionism as a worldwide theological and political movement.
Zionism embraces extreme ideological positions based on selected scriptural texts and which, according to conference presenters, form a worldview that is detrimental to a just peace in the Holy Land.
Sabeel Jerusalem director, Rev. Canon Naim Ateek, said Christian Zionism "is a worldview where the Gospel is identified with the ideology of empire, colonialism, and militarism."
Over 20 presentations by international theologians, political scientists and legal experts covered a range of topics.
Catholic theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, and co-author with her husband Herman Ruether of The Wrath of Jonah: The Crisis of Religious Nationalism in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, criticized what she sees in Christian Zionism as the "language of apocalyptic warfare and messianic nationalism".
The Carpenter Professor of Feminist Theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, said she believes Zionism is an "enormously dangerous" theology that should be rejected.
The Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer, an Anglican and Chairman of the International Bible Society in the U.K. who is author of Christian Zionism: Justifying Apartheid in the Name of God, to be released this Autumn, helped to define Christian Zionism. At its simplest, he said, it is a "political form of philo-Semitism" or just "Christian support for Zionism," meaning the political and expansionist aims of the State of Israel, its policies and its military.
Christian Zionists believe the Jewish people have "a divine right to posses the land of Palestine," Sizer stated. He noted that Christian Zionism can be considerably more complex, with some leading agencies committed to both a prophetic plan as well as an evangelistic plan for the Jewish people."
Sizer named groups such as Jews for Jesus, Churches Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ), and the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, which sees Biblical Zionism as cutting edge theology for "the Last Days." Sizer claims that Christian Zionism has become the most powerful and destructive force at work in America today, shaping foreign policy on the Middle East and inciting hatred between Jews and Muslims.
Central to Christian Zionism is a literal reading of the Book of Revelation, popularised by the Left Behind series of fictional apocalyptic thrillers written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins about events following the Second Coming of Christ and the "rapture" in which Christians are taken up to heaven.
Conference presenter Barbara R. Rossing, Associate Professor of New Testament at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, and author of The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation, says the rapture is theologically "all wrong." Rossing explored the bible sources of rapturist theology in her presentation as "modern literalist interpretations based on selective passages of the bible taken out of context."
Other presenters included Donald Wagner, professor of the Middle East studies at North Park University in Chicago; Dr. Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School in Chicago; Gershom Gorenberg, associate editor of The Jerusalem Report and founder of the Israeli religious peace movement, Netivot Shalom; Marc Ellis, Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Texas; Father Peter DuBrul, an American Jesuit teaching Scripture, Philosophy, and Cultural Studies at Bethlehem University, West Bank; and Father Michael Prior, CM, professor of the Bible and Theology at St. Mary's College, University of Surrey, U.K. who is author of Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry.
Palestinians from the West Bank could not participate in the Jerusalem conference because of military closures, so organizers scheduled presentations in Ramallah and Bethlehem to take the conference to them. The Bethlehem trip had to be cancelled, however, as it fell on the day following Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi when access to Bethlehem was deemed too dangerous by conference planners.
Participants' in the conference committed to return to their respective countries to help pursue a political solution to the conflict in the Holy Land based on the enforcement of existing international law and United Nations resolutions. A conference statement is to be distributed by all participants in their respective localities explaining objections to Christian Zionism and calling upon Christians to liberate themselves from ideologies of militarism and occupation and instead to pursue the healing of the world. Discussions have also begun among the Sabeel leadership to form an international institute for the study of Christian Zionism.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Ekklesia
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Crisis in Nepal Deepens, Protests Mount
Apr 26, 2004
By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA
Associated Press writer
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/N/NEPAL_KINGDOM_IN_CRISIS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) -- Nearly every day, angry people fill the streets of Katmandu, demanding a return to democracy in their Himalayan kingdom. Nearly every evening, hundreds of those same people pack the city's jails. Most are freed after a few hours under arrest. And the next day, the cycle begins again.
Nepal, a country famous for its high mountain peaks, has turned into a place known for chaos, where protesters routinely shut down the capital and Maoist rebels control wide swaths of the hinterlands.
On Monday, police in the capital arrested more than 300 protesters rallying against King Gyanendra and demanding the restoration of democracy in the Himalayan kingdom.
About 10,000 people marched in the center of Katmandu chanting slogans denouncing the king for his October 2002 dismissal of Nepal's elected government.
On Friday, the five largest parties backing the protests rejected an appeal for talks from the king, calling it a ploy to make the demonstrations fizzle out. "We have decided that the king is not serious about resolving the issues," said Madhav Kumar Nepal, leader of the United Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Nepal.
The protesters are demanding the king remove the monarchist Cabinet he installed after dismissing Parliament in 2002, and restore a government by the people.
The king's actions were a sharp turnaround for Nepal, where the absolute monarchy came to a peaceful end after similar street protests in 1990.
While it remains unclear whether the protesters can accomplish that again, the king's offer to negotiate shows he may be worried.
In an April 13 message commemorating the Nepalese New Year, King Gyanendra said the "highest priority" should be put on bringing back democracy before the year is over. "Let us make it a year of peace," he said.
Most observers believe it's time for some sort of talks.
"The parties should pressure the king through the talks, even if they continue the street protests," said Kishor Nepal, a political analyst.
Nepal has been in turmoil since King Gyanendra suddenly assumed the crown in June 2001 after his brother King Birendra was gunned down in a bizarre shooting massacre at the royal palace, apparently by Birendra's son, the crown prince who then reportedly took his own life.
The king was widely criticized for taking power, and soon after he was crowned, riots erupted in the streets of the Katmandu and the fighting between Maoist rebels and government troops intensified.
The unrest, which has continued to flare intermittently since the king dissolved Parliament, has grown much larger in recent weeks, with opposition parties bringing in hundreds of additional supporters from villages.
On some days, more than 1,000 demonstrators have been arrested. The protests have also turned violent at times, and hundreds of protesters have been injured in scuffles with police.
The unrest comes as Nepal prepares for an important meeting in Katmandu next month, when donor countries and aid groups - who supply a third of the country's annual budget in grants and loans - will assess the situation.
Donor help has become even more important as frequent strikes, road blockades and disturbances have slowed the economy. Tourism, the biggest source of foreign income, has taken a major blow as hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists have avoided Nepal.
"I have had most of my reservations canceled," said Deepak Shrestha, who runs a hotel in Katmandu's tourist area, known as Thamel. "If this keeps up ... our tourism will die."
Home to eight of the world's 14 highest peaks - including Mt. Everest - Nepal has long been one of the world's premier destinations for trekkers and mountaineers.
This year, though, with the unrest coming right in the middle of the spring trekking season, plenty of people are avoiding Nepal's rugged mountain beauty. Many of the nations that send high-dollar tourists, including the United States, Britain and Australia, warn their citizens to stay away.
"The number of trekkers has certainly declined due to the situation. We have also been forced to limit the treks to a few areas where it is still safe," said Ang Karma, who runs a trekking agency in Katmandu.
Many of the most popular trekking routes have been abandoned in recent years, because of threats from Maoist rebels, who have been fighting since 1996 for a communist state.
While the rebels haven't harmed any foreign tourists, they have taken money and cameras from them.
The rebels have escalated their attacks since pulling out of a seven-month cease-fire in August, after three rounds of peace talks.
The Nepalese government has so far refused to hold talks unless the rebels give up arms and come forward for talks. The rebels now say they will only allow mediation through the United Nations.
The insurgency has claimed more than 9,000 lives.
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