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NUCLEAR
Agency Struggles to Get Data on Radiation
Iraq Campaigners Warn of Catastrophe
IRAQ: Rise in cancer cases a legacy of conflict
Iran can't make nuke bomb with Moscow
North Korea suggests peace treaty to settle nuclear dispute
N. Korea, U.S. Tougher at Nuclear Talks - Russia
N Korea accuses US of war plans
Security forum softens statement on nuke crisis
A Flurry of Diplomacy in Asia on Eve of Arms Talks
US, N.Korea May Meet on Sidelines of Nuclear Talks
USA sponsor fossil fuel plant for Zheleznogorsk
Soaring Stocks of Weapons-Usable Plutonium
US Nuclear Strategy Hits Congress
Congressional Investigator Urges Security Hike at Nuclear Sites
N.M. wants role in proposed uranium enrichment
SRS awaits nuke report, word on siting new plant
Nuke 'Em!
Hanford completes demolition of first of three plutonium buildings
States threaten to enter lawsuit
MILITARY
Iraqis to Take British Soldiers to Court
Russian firms urged to leave Iraq
200,000 Employees Awaiting Clearance to Work for Military
China Mulls Linking Taiwan to Mainland
Troops Move Cautiously as Sadr City Remains Tense
U.S. Military Strikes Mosque Held by Iraqi Cleric's Militia
Israeli Helicopter Missile Attack Kills 7
Six Israeli Soldiers Killed By Bomb in Gaza Strip
Cuba retaliates with clampdown on dollar
CHINA INCREASES AID TO SYRIAN MISSILES
Bush hits Syria with economic sanctions
President Imposes Sanctions on Syria
Bush Imposes Sanctions on Syria, Citing Ties to Terrorism
Pakistan's military shows no intention
Torture jail chief shifts blame
The Guinea Pigs
Two More Americans Charged in Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners
An Afghan Gives His Own Account of U.S. Abuse
An Overseer of Intelligence Efforts at the Defense Department
Leadership Failure Is Blamed in Abuse
General Asserts She Was Overruled on Prison Moves
Rumsfeld Aide and a General Clash on Abuse
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Nations Vow Passport Aid
Weapons of mass photography
Almost 10% of Prisoners Are Serving Life Terms
American Beheaded on Web Video
Iraq Videotape Shows the Decapitation of an American
POLITICS
Lessons of a by-the-Book Soldier
Accord Near for 9/11 Panel to Question Qaeda Leaders
9/11 Panel Seeks Access to Detainees
Senator Critical of Focus on Prisoner Abuse
Rumsfeld Should Go? No Way!
ENERGY
Potholes on the hydrogen highway
OTHER
Tank explodes at sewage plant, dumping sludge into Spokane River
Plant-Derived Estrogen Wins FDA Approval
ACTIVISTS
NGOs, journalists have own `responsibilities'
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Agency Struggles to Get Data on Radiation
May 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Weapons-Plants-Workers.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says it is having a hard time getting data on the amount of radiation to which Cold War-era nuclear weapons plant workers may have been exposed.
The agency needs radiation data, along with health and employment records, to process some 15,000 compensation claims from people who have cancer and who worked at Energy Department or private industrial plants involved in weapons production.
Under a 2000 law, NIOSH must determine possible radiation exposure levels for each claim. With the data, the Labor Department then determines the merit of each claim. Workers become eligible for $150,000 each, plus medical benefits, once it's determined their illnesses were job-related. Survivors are eligible for the money in some cases.
Dr. Larry Elliott, who heads the NIOSH effort, said Wednesday he never expected that estimating doses would take so long.
NIOSH has determined levels of radiation exposure for more than 2,000 claims. But it said in a report submitted to Congress last week that worker records are missing from some facilities and unusable at others. Some of the more than 200 private plants that helped make weapons parts are no longer in business, the report said.
``Many of these sites are closed, and there's no incentive for those that are open or still existing to provide information,'' Elliott said.
NIOSH is seeking specific information, such as measurements taken from radiation-monitoring equipment worn by workers, but the Energy Department and vendor facilities don't always release that kind of detailed data, the report said.
Elliott also said workers' survivors often don't know what their relatives did on the job. ``The culture of the Department of Energy was for the worker not to talk about what they did,'' he said.
The report listed sites that are not providing information requested for a substantial number of cases. They include the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Los Alamos Medical Center in New Mexico, the Pantex plant in Texas, the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, the Stanford Linear Accelerator in California and Oak Ridge Hospital in Tennessee.
Energy Department senior policy adviser Bob Carey said his agency is working on improving data collection at its sites, especially at Los Alamos, where many claimants worked. ``We've gone back to these sites and said, 'Provide that in the format that they need,''' Carey said.
The report also listed sites that did a good job providing information needed to begin estimating worker exposure. Those include the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, the Hanford plant in Washington state, the Oak Ridge weapons plant and research lab in Tennessee and the Rocky Flats plant in Colorado.
While NIOSH has to determine radiation doses for most workers to win compensation, some employees are automatically paid if they have certain kinds of cancer and worked at specific sites.
Those include workers from uranium enrichment plants in Piketon, Ohio, Paducah, Ky., and Oak Ridge, as well as workers exposed to radiation during tests on Alaska's Amchitka Island. Many of those workers weren't carefully monitored, or their records were lost.
On the Net:
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health: http://www2a.cdc.gov/ocas/
Energy Department information about facilities covered under the law:
http://www.eh.doe.gov/advocacy/faclist/findfacility.cfm
-------- depleted uranium
Iraq Campaigners Warn of Catastrophe
By Jennifer Sym,
PA News, Scotsman
Wed 12 May 2004
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2915251
Human rights campaigners are to set up a charity to help Iraqi children cope with the "humanitarian catastrophe" resulting from war and occupation.
The group, Child Victims of War, say living conditions in Iraq are now worse than under Saddam Hussein, with the detention of youngsters, abuse of rights and devastating social problems.
And just as Agent Orange wreaked havoc on children in the Vietnam War, they say youngsters are increasingly suffering from leukaemia and other cancers and are being born with deformities.
They believe the illnesses are caused by depleted uranium used in coalition anti-tank weapons in both Gulf wars.
The group say the abnormalities include missing limbs, no eyes and stillbirths.
It has now applied to the Charities Commission for charitable status, and plans to raise funds to open an office in Iraq to monitor abuses, counsel those who have been detained, help train human rights groups and provide medical help to young victims of war.
Group director Jo Baker, visited Iraq last year and again last month. She said at the press launch of the group at the House of Commons today: "I have been to Iraq under Saddam and sanctions - most people know how bad things were - but what has happened this year has plunged Iraq into a plight which is actually far, far worse."
She said most Iraqis were unemployed, living on food rations, malnutrition was worse than before the war, there was little electricity supply, poor telecommunications, and sanitation problems with consequent stomach problems.
For children who do go to school - and a Christian Aid survey showed two-thirds of poor youngsters did not - they are "so malnourished they can't concentrate".
She said: "Every child has some level of psychological trauma. We have discovered not one single batch of medicines have arrived in any hospital since occupation except those getting through carried by NGOs (non-governmental organisations).
"People are very, very frightened; if anyone is released from detention they are always made to swear they won't say what happened to them."
She added: "I am not an apologist for Saddam but I have spoken to people saying they suffered terribly and they are in tears saying 'I wish he was back'.
"If it is worse than sanctions and Saddam then we are really talking about a humanitarian catastrophe."
Fellow director, barrister Dr Abdul Haq Al-Ani, said there was a "notorious concentration camp" in Umm Qasar.
He said the UK was "aiding and abetting" a crime by going to war with the US and he had lodged three judicial review applications against Tony Blair and the Cabinet.
Dr Caroline Lucas MEP, who has visited Iraq, said claiming the war was prompted by humanitarian reasons was a "cruel joke" and DU was leaving a deadly legacy for future generations.
----
IRAQ: Rise in cancer cases a legacy of conflict
12 May 2004
(IRIN)
http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=41005&SelectRegion=Iraq_Crisis&SelectCountry=IRAQ
BAGHDAD - When Zadoun Parek was three years old he used to play at the end of his Baghdad street near a government weapons storage depot, his mother, Amal Emin, told IRIN.
Now Parek, 5, is in hospital with a plastic bag dripping intravenous liquid into his body. His hair has fallen out from the chemotherapy treatment he is getting for leukaemia. He looks up sadly, his body listless, as his mother talks about a chemical factory near the family's house that also might have made him sick.
Parek and other youngsters at the children's leukaemia ward in the elite Medical City hospital may be part of the legacy of former President Saddam Hussein's preoccupation with war and weapons.
"The whole country was a dumping ground for weapons," says Dr Salma Hadad, who sits on the national cancer board based at Medical City. "We have been in wars for the last 24 years."
Parek seems to have fallen ill just from playing outside, Emin said, stroking his head.
Hundreds of other children like him are laying in hospitals across the country or wasting away at home. There are no exact medical statistics about childhood leukaemia or cancer cases because of looting at the Ministry of Health following the US-led war last year. But it appears the number of childhood leukaemia cases seen per year has tripled in the last decade, according to individual records kept by Dr Mazin Faisal al-Jadiry, a paediatric oncologist at Medical City.
Only four medical facilities in Iraq deal with malignant cases, al-Jadiry said, making the case that his statistics are representative of the other three because many families travel to Baghdad for treatment.
In 1994, there were about 140 cases. In the last couple of years, the number has soared to more than 290 per year. Doctors believe the rapid rise in a disease they just call "malignancy" may be caused by the toxic environmental conditions left by the first Gulf war.
"We feel that there is an increase, but we don't know from what," al-Jadiry said. "The number of cases may even be underestimated, because some of the cases are treated in private hospitals.
Others do not come to light due to fear, ignorance and lack of resources, with many failing to report instances of cancer because of the stigma attached, Hadad said.
There has also been a rise in the number other types of cancer, especially around Salman Pak and Tuwaitha, about 30 kilometres south of Baghdad, where thousands of workers and their families may have been exposed to radiation in a clandestine nuclear research programme.
Hundreds of people died last year after families in the area rushed to nuclear research sites, emptied containers filled with radioactive materials and took them home, sometimes storing food and water in them, said Dr Wisam Aziz Abin al-Qateels, an infectious disease specialist at a hospital near Tuwaitha, where the research was done.
Many of the patients didn't visit hospital because they died within a couple of days, al-Qateels said. Others developed skin tumours from touching radioactive materials and then died, he said.
"I think many people died from the radiation, but how will a doctor know the cause of death if people are ignorant or don't tell us?" al-Qateels said. "Some studies say there is no risk from these materials. Others say the opposite, that these materials need immediate laboratory research."
At the time the containers were taken, US troops offered $2 for each container to get them back. No one knows for sure if all of the containers were returned, however.
"It's not easy to get these people to tell the truth, because they are afraid the police will take them to jail for stealing," al-Qateels said. "Even if thousands of people died from this, the doctors don't know why. It's a tragedy."
At the same time, cancer rates have soared in southern Iraq, with many pointing to the use of depleted uranium by coalition forces during the 1991 Gulf war. The toxic heavy metal was used in shells and missiles, leaving much land near battle zones contaminated.
Doctors have also seen increases in problem pregnancies from the region since the Gulf war, with a rapid rise in the last year, said Dr Namat al-Beiruti, a paediatrician at the semi-private Yermuk hospital.
"There's definitely an increase in congenital abnormalities and in abortions. We need to do research to find out why, but we have no time, we have no money," al-Beiruti said. "What's behind this? Is it other environmental pollution? Is it radiation? Is it starvation? We don't know."
-------- iran
Iran can't make nuke bomb with Moscow
May 12, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/breakingnews/view.asp?msgID=5795
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/05/12/iran.shtml
MOSCOW - Russia, which is helping Iran build a nuclear reactor despite U.S. concerns, believes Tehran cannot produce an atom bomb using Moscow's nuclear know-how, a top Russian diplomat was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
First Deputy Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Trubnikov told a Russian newspaper Moscow had done everything to prevent Iran from using Russian technology for military purposes since it started building the Bushehr nuclear plant in the late 1990s.
"God forbid Iran make a nuclear bomb and strike... But... Iran, in its current economic state and due to the current political balance in the country, is incapable of acquiring that terrible object," he told Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper.
"We have done everything we could to prevent Iran from using the peaceful technology we are supplying to Bushehr for military purposes."
The United States, which says Iran is secretly trying to build atomic weapons, has criticised Moscow's nuclear ties with Tehran and urged it to ditch the $800 million project.
Washington believes Iranian scientists could in theory extract weapons-grade plutonium from the reactor and use Russian nuclear know-how to build an atom bomb.
Iran denies the U.S. accusations and says it needs nuclear power to make electricity.
"Since there are still some concerns, we've done a lot to force Iran to actively cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency," Trubnikov said.
Despite Iran's heightened cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei recently warned Tehran the world would not wait forever for it to divulge the full extent and nature of its nuclear programme.
The first generating unit of the 1,000-megawatt Bushehr plant is due to begin operation in 2006.
"We've done all we can to make sure we get Bushehr's spent nuclear fuel back from Iran. Therefore Iran won't have a nuclear bomb," Trubnikov added.
Although Moscow has pledged to complete the plant, its reluctance to jeopardise ties with Washington has slowed construction, analysts and Western diplomats say.
An Iranian nuclear delegation was in Moscow on Wednesday to discuss the project, but little was known about the closed-door talks, diplomats in Moscow said.
-------- korea
North Korea suggests peace treaty to settle nuclear dispute
By Barbara Slavin,
USA TODAY
5/12/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-05-12-nkorea-treaty-usat_x.htm
WASHINGTON - North Korea said Wednesday that the best way to resolve its nuclear standoff with the United States would be to replace a 51-year-old armistice with a peace treaty ending the Korean War, to be signed by North Korea, South Korea and the United States.
The comment, in a rare interview with Han Song Ryol, North Korea's deputy representative to the United Nations, appeared to reflect North Korea's growing frustration with slow-moving six-nation nuclear disarmament talks in Beijing. Labeled by President Bush as part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the North Korean government says a peace treaty would be a deterrent to an attack by the United States.
The Bush administration says it might talk about a peace treaty but only after North Korea agrees to the United States' long-standing demand for "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement" of its nuclear program.
Han said North Korea would show "patience and flexibility" in talks that resumed Wednesday in Beijing, but he doubted they would make progress. He said his country would have to hold onto nuclear weapons unless "all the countries with troops on the Korean peninsula" reach a permanent peace.
Han, the top North Korean official in this country who deals with the United States, spoke by phone from New York in his first interview with an English-language newspaper in nearly two years.
Han disputed comments attributed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani who ran a black market in nuclear components until last year, that Khan saw three nuclear bombs in North Korea in 1999. Han said it would make no technical or strategic sense to put "three nuclear bombs at the same place." The report about Khan appeared in The New York Times on April 13.
North Korea is said to have enough plutonium for eight bombs. Material for six apparently was produced after North Korea expelled foreign inspectors in January 2003. The crisis over its nuclear program began in October 2002, when the Bush administration claims North Korea admitted to U.S. diplomats that it was secretly trying to enrich uranium, in violation of a 1994 agreement. North Korea denies this.
The administration has suggested that North Korea follow the example of Libya, which agreed last year to give up all its weapons of mass destruction programs and opened the country to inspection. Han said North Korea wouldn't do that but would welcome direct talks like those that preceded the Libya breakthrough. "Back-channel, secret or any kind of direct talks in my opinion could produce tremendous, significant results," he said.
Han's comments came as North Korea continued to improve relations with South Korea. The two countries have expanded economic ties and agreed to hold high-level military talks next week. North Korea also appears closer to settling differences with Japan over releasing relatives of Japanese people abducted to teach their language in North Korea in the 1970s. Five were freed last year.
Han denied speculation that North Korea was trying to improve relations with South Korea and Japan in order to isolate the United States. "It is not our strategy to put a wedge between countries but to improve relations with all countries," he said.
---
N. Korea, U.S. Tougher at Nuclear Talks - Russia
Wed May 12, 2004
By Jonathan Ansfield
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5116303
BEIJING - The United States and North Korea have toughened their stands in their dispute over the North's nuclear programs, a Russian negotiator said on Wednesday, while South Korea urged its northern rival to be more flexible.
Envoys to six-party working-level talks on ending the North Korean nuclear crisis met for the first time in the Chinese capital but analysts saw scant chance of a breakthrough with Pyongyang demanding rewards for freezing its atomic programs.
Neither North Korea nor the United States, the two protagonists in the standoff, have shown any willingness to budge from their positions during the inaugural working-level talks that are intended to pave the way for higher-level meetings.
"Their positions are even tougher than they were several days ago," Valery Sukhinin, who is leading the Russian delegation to the talks, told Itar-Tass news agency in Beijing.
Russia could "take part" if some kind of structure providing international guarantees for North Korea's security was formed, he said.
Communist North Korea's state media blamed the United States for stoking nuclear tension and preached solidarity with rival South Korea in typical bombast seen by analysts as an attempt to drive a wedge between Washington and its allies at the table.
The United States, South Korea and Japan had agreed to discuss energy aid in the session, which also brought together North Korea, Russia and China, but only if the North pledged to give up its nuclear programs, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Japanese sources as saying.
The South's official in charge of ties with the North said his country expected "real progress" at the meeting, citing reclusive North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's comment on a visit to China last month that the North would be "patient and flexible."
But Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun, speaking to a group of diplomats in Seoul, added: "North Korea needs to become more flexible."
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons in violation of an international agreement.
North Korea, which denied the disclosure, then pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expelled U.N. inspectors and took a plutonium plant out of mothballs.
The six sides held a morning session and were to meet again in the afternoon, sources said.
The talks are open-ended and expected to last for several days.
"HINGING ON THE NORTH"
A senior Japanese government official, speaking in Tokyo on condition of anonymity, said any progress at the talks would depend on North Korea.
"It hinges on what North Korea has to say," he said. "If North Korea is to press for the peaceful use of its nuclear program, that will complicate the whole issue as it becomes a cloak of invisibility."
North Korea wants compensation to give up its nuclear ambitions, with a deal for a freeze as a first step. The United States wants the North to agree first to complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling.
Some analysts have said the administration of President Bush had no intention of making compromises before the November presidential election and that North Korea, sensing that, would stick to its guns.
On Tuesday, both Washington and Pyongyang restated their deeply entrenched stands. North Korea demanded its "reward for freeze" proposal be taken up while the United States refused to offer the North rewards for meeting international obligations.
On Wednesday, the North pressed its anti-U.S. attack and urged South Korea, defended by 37,000 U.S. troops and still technically at war with the North, to join it.
"A touch-and-go tension in the true sense of the word is persisting in Korea due to the U.S. imperialists' reckless moves to start a war against the DPRK under the pretext of the nuclear issue," said Rodong Sinmun, the North's main daily newspaper.
DPRK stands for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the North's official name.
Rodger Baker, an analyst with U.S.-based intelligence unit Stratfor who tracks North Korea, said Pyongyang appeared far more willing to cut a deal than the United States.
"I don't see the United States making some sort of effort to try to change things," he said. "I think the North Koreans are a little closer to some agreement."
North Korea was unlikely to be ready, however, to scrap its programs.
"They obviously never had and have no intention of completely removing all of their nuclear programs but they're looking to make some sort of accommodation," he said. (Additional reporting by Teruaki Ueno in Tokyo and Oliver Bullough in Moscow)
----
N Korea accuses US of war plans as delicate nuclear talks begin in Beijing
BEIJING (AFP)
May 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040512064638.aabannyv.html
North Korea Wednesday accused the United States of planning war as envoys from six countries opened delicate working-level talks here aimed at defusing a standoff over the Stalinist regime's nuclear program.
Rodong Sinmun, mouthpiece of North Korea's ruling Workers' Party, urged South Korea to join with the North in opposing what it said was a US scheme to unleash military conflict on the peninsula.
"A touch-and-go tension in the true sense of the word is persisting in Korea due to the US imperialists' reckless moves to start a war against (North Korea) under the pretext of the nuclear issue," it said.
"Unavoidable is the confrontation between the Koreans in the north and the south, who are advancing along the road of peace and peaceful reunification, and the US, which is working to block it."
The commentary might lower already modest expectations of any concrete outcome from meetings in Beijing among delegates from the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia.
"I don't think that they, particularly the Americans and the North Koreans, will be able to narrow the gap," said Wu Guoguang, an international relations scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The talks began at 9:00 am (0100 GMT) at the Diaoyutai Guest House in the western part of the Chinese capital and were scheduled to break up into small group discussions in the afternoon.
Although little emerged from the closed-door talks, it appeared that the US and North Korean sides remained far apart on fundamental issues.
According to reports in the Japanese media, Kim Jong-Il, North Korea's reclusive dictator, told Chinese leaders during a recent visit to Beijing that he would not give up the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
North Korea has also made clear that even if it were to abandon its attempt to build nuclear bombs -- a program whose existence has not been definitively proven, it would want some kind of reward.
The US government, meanwhile, has insisted that North Korea give up its nuclear program without the promise of any immediate quid pro quo.
"It's in North Korea's best interest to embrace the opportunities provided by the six-party talks," a US embassy official said.
However, South Korea's Yonhap news agency cited reports that the US and Japanese delegates, meeting Tuesday ahead of the working-level talks, supported a South Korean offer of energy aid to North Korea.
That would be in return for freezing the nuclear program as a first step towards its complete dismantling, according to Yonhap.
"South Korea, the United States and Japan have agreed to avoid a confrontational approach and try to find a solution through in-depth negotiations," South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said in Seoul.
The US delegation, headed by former CIA officer Joseph DeTrani and including representatives from the National Security Council and the Pentagon, met all other teams apart from the North Koreans Tuesday, the US embassy said.
The working-level talks are the first since a second round of high-level six-party meetings ended inconclusively in Beijing in late February.
This week's discussions could help prepare the ground for a third round of high-level six-way negotiations expected to take place in the Chinese capital before the end of June.
Reflecting the low hopes of a speedy outcome, analysts said the mere fact that talks were going on was a mark of progress.
"The six delegations can use the occasion to communicate with each other about what happened in the past several weeks," said Wu. "I don't think they can reach any agreement that they can announce."
----
Security forum softens statement on nuke crisis after North Korea objects
YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia (AFP)
May 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040512125912.dfuhufzq.html
Regional security officials on Wednesday softened a US-proposed draft statement on the North Korean nuclear crisis after the North objected to it, an Indonesian official said.
Officials from the 23-member ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) were meeting to lay the groundwork for a ministerial meeting in Jakarta in early July.
The 23-member forum includes the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations members, other Asia-Pacific states, Russia, the European Union and the United States.
"There was heated debate during the drafting of a statement on (nuclear) non-proliferation," said Indonesian foreign ministry official Makarim Wibisono.
He said the US-proposed draft -- that the goal of complete denuclearisation on the Korean peninsula is irreversible -- was rejected by North Korean delegates as "biased."
Delegates from Indonesia, the US, China and North Korea finally agreed to formulate the statement in a separate meeting from other delegates and came up with softer language, Wibisono said.
The revised language says the problem must be resolved by continuing six-party talks which are aimed at solving the problem peacefully, according to Wibisono.
Wednesday's meeeting also discussed transnational crimes, terrorism and the Middle East. Officials agreed to admit Pakistan to ARF after India dropped its objections.
They will recommend the decision to their ministers when they meet in Jakarta.
A US proposal for regional cooperation to combat sea piracy and terrorism threats in Asia-Pacific waters received no response, another Indonesian official said.
"The US presented their idea... but there was no response. I don't know what they will do with the proposal," said Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa.
The proposal called for sharing information on maritime activities and cooperation to improve the capability of countries to deal with threats such as piracy and terrorism.
Indonesia instead suggested a seminar on maritime security and Malaysia agreed to host it by the end of the year, Natalegawa said, adding that the US had offered to be a co-sponsor.
----
A Flurry of Diplomacy in Asia on Eve of Arms Talks
May 12, 2004
By JAMES BROOKE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/international/asia/y12kore.html
SEOUL, South Korea, May 11 - Tokyo is abuzz with reports that the prime minister of Japan is planning a visit to North Korea. Meanwhile, South Korea and North Korea are organizing a meeting of army generals, the highest level inter-Korean military meeting in decades.
Pieces in Northeast Asia's long frozen security puzzle are starting to shift as envoys from the United States, China, Japan, Russia and the two Koreas converge Wednesday in Beijing for midlevel talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program.
"The North Koreans have been told by the Chinese: 'Cool it, tone down the rhetoric, don't look like a belligerent power to the world', " Selig S. Harrison, an expert on North Korea, said by telephone from his office at the Center for International Policy in Washington.
While North Korea waits to see what happens in the American presidential election, he said, it is taking conciliatory steps toward the United States' two closest allies in the region, Japan and South Korea.
In Tokyo, newspapers reported Tuesday that Japanese diplomats were preparing a visit by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to Pyongyang in late May. According to these reports, Mr. Koizumi will travel to North Korea's capital to take back to Japan the children of five Japanese who had been abducted by North Korea and whom he brought home on an earlier trip, in September 2002.
Mr. Koizumi's popularity soared after that trip, only to sink after the Japanese public realized that the abductees' children had been left behind and that North Korea had kidnapped many more Japanese. With elections in Parliament's upper house set for July, Mr. Koizumi may see a narrow window to raise his popularity with a dramatic move.
Mr. Koizumi has been coy, telling reporters on Monday, "Media reports seem to be saying various things, but there is nothing I can say at this point."
Japanese officials are wary of irritating the Bush administration, which wants a united front of North Korea's neighbors in dealing with the North's nuclear weapons program. Japanese and North Korean negotiators are expected to meet separately during the nuclear talks in Beijing this week.
Hiroyuki Hosoda, Mr. Koizumi's chief cabinet secretary, cautioned Monday that "there are a number of things that need to be worked out before a summit can be held." But he stressed that North Korea had recently shown a new "willingness to advance dialogue."
In legislation aimed at North Korea, the Japanese Parliament recently passed a law allowing economic sanctions against any country threatening Japan's national security. Now it is considering a bill to ban port calls by designated ships. On Tuesday, the North's official Korean Central News Agency urged Japan to think twice about the "disastrous consequences" that would follow sanctions.
North Korea is also trying to drive a wedge between the United States and South Korea, where members of a newly elected liberal majority in the National Assembly take their seats on May 30.
North Korea welcomed South Korean relief aid for the April 22 train explosion in Ryongchon, allowing a convoy of 20 trucks to cross the demilitarized zone on Friday and a ship with steam shovels and steel girders to dock Monday near the site of the blast. And on Friday, the North accepted a South Korean invitation for high-level military talks, a rarity for two countries still technically at war.
"This is a proof that economic exchanges and cooperation will lead to building up trust in military affairs as well," Jeong Se Hyun, South Korea's unification minister, told reporters on Saturday on returning here from Pyongyang.
Next month, the new National Assembly is expected to debate dropping North Korea's classification as an enemy from South Korea's National Security Law.
In a measure of growing inter-Korean economic cooperation, Hyun Jung Eun, the chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Group, arrived Tuesday in Pyongyang to meet officials involved in the group's business projects in the North.
Against this rising tide of inter-Korean peaceful coexistence, conservative newspapers in South Korea published articles last week saying satellite photographs indicate that the North is building new bases to launch missiles with ranges long enough to hit Okinawa or Guam, islands with American bases.
"They have never stopped in their missile development plan; they are continuing it," said Kim Tae Woo, an arms control expert at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, adding that he could not confirm the newspaper reports.
Noting that North Korea has intensified its "smile diplomacy," he warned, "Their appeasement posture is designed to separate Japan and South Korea from the United States."
--------
US, N.Korea May Meet on Sidelines of Nuclear Talks
May 12, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-talks.html
BEIJING (Reuters) - U.S. and North Korean envoys are expected to hold rare face-to-face talks in Beijing on Thursday to try and defuse the crisis over the North's nuclear programs, but analysts see little chance of a breakthrough. Envoys from the two countries are in China for the first working-level meeting of six-party talks on the crisis. Those talks, which include South Korea, Russia, China and Japan, began on Wednesday.
U.S. chief delegate Joseph DeTrani and his North Korean counterpart, Ri Gun, may discuss a U.S. demand that the North completely dismantle its nuclear programs including a suspected uranium enrichment program, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.
The United States and North Korea were ``prepared to meet bilaterally as working-group discussions...enter their second day,'' it said.
The first day of the six-way talks ended with the United States and North Korea toughening their stands, a Russian negotiator said, while South Korea urged its northern rival to be more flexible.
The six-party working-level talks are open-ended and could last several days.
The United States, South Korea and Japan had agreed to discuss energy aid on Wednesday, but only if the North pledged to give up its nuclear programs, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Japanese sources as saying.
Neither North Korea nor the United States, the two protagonists in the standoff, have shown any willingness to budge from their positions during the inaugural talks that are intended to pave the way for higher-level meetings.
North Korea wants compensation to give up its nuclear ambitions, with a deal for a freeze as a first step. The United States wants the North to agree first to complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons in violation of an international agreement.
North Korea, which denied the disclosure, then pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, expelled U.N. inspectors and took a plutonium plant out of mothballs.
In another development, North Korea thanked China for emergency relief following a disastrous train explosion last month that killed more than 160 people, China's official Xinhua news agency said.
China and North Korea fought the United States and South Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War.
-------- russia
USA sponsor fossil fuel plant for Zheleznogorsk
The US Congress should approve $300m for implementation of this project.
2004-05-12
Bellona Foundation (Russia)
http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/nuke_industry/siberia/zheleznogorsk/34061.html
According to the governor of the Krasnoyarsk region Alexander Khloponin, a call for tenders will be launched in September. The plant is needed to substitute the Zheleznogorsk plutonium reactor, which is scheduled for shut-down in 2007 as part of a non-proliferation agreement with the United States, which has already closed all the 14 plutonium reactors of its own. The capacity of the new plant will be 117 MW/h and 660 Gcal of heat per year.
The Zheleznogorsk Institute of Atomic Industry will become the chief designer. The Federal Russian Atomic Agency will be presented by Rosatomstroy company during the construction. The US party will be presented by two companies , including Reyteon. According to the general director of the Rosatomstroy Valery Dudanov, the site of Sosnovoborsk fossil fuel plant was visually inspected. The results appeared to be disappointing. The construction was stopped back in 1992 and since then the site has not even been preserved. "Some buildings have degraded and have to be demolished" said the director to Press-Line. He added this fact would influence the dates and the cost of the new plant. The site will be thouroghly inspected in the nearest times to determine the scale of demolishing works.
-------- treaties
Soaring Stocks of Weapons-Usable Plutonium Demand International Support of Comprehensive Fissile Material Treaty
5/12/2004
U.S. Newswire
Contact: Tom Clements of Greenpeace, 202-319-2411 or 202-415-6158 (cell), tom.clements@wdc.greenpeace.org
http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=119-05122004
WASHINGTON, May 12 -- Global stocks of weapons-usable fissile materials are rising as fast as during the height of the Cold War and must urgently be addressed in a comprehensive treaty, Greenpeace International warned today.
"The solution to curbing proliferation in weapons-usable fissile materials -- plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) -- exists via a Comprehensive Fissile Material Treaty (CFMT)," said Shaun Burnie, research director of Greenpeace International's Nuclear Campaign. The draft treaty was presented today by Greenpeace in a noon briefing at the National Press Club and has been distributed to governments worldwide at the United Nations.
"Despite acknowledging proliferation and terrorist risks, international efforts by the Bush Administration and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) avoid dealing with the emerging fissile material crisis," said Burnie. "In his February 11 non-proliferation policy, President Bush failed to call for an end to further accumulation and use of all nuclear bomb materials, a policy failure which must be corrected."
While most military production of plutonium and HEU has halted, stocks of plutonium in commercial plutonium programs are increasing dramatically. In Japan, France, the UK and Russia, stocks of plutonium will increase by as much as 125 tons by 2015, equal to half the plutonium produced by the nuclear weapon states during the Cold War. While civilian stocks of weapons-usable plutonium have now reached 215 tonnes, rivaling the 250 tonnes in military stocks, some are proposing only a partial fissile treaty to address only some military stocks.
Of major proliferation concern in Northeast Asia is Japan's effort to start up the new $20 billion Rokkasho reprocessing plant, capable of producing 7 tonnes of weapons-usable plutonium yearly. "The world can ill afford the non-proliferation failure which start-up of Rokkasho would represent," said Tom Clements, senior adviser to Greenpeace International.
Greenpeace made available video of vulnerable plutonium transports in France. "We believe transports of plutoium in Europe present one of the easiest targets for those wishing to steal plutonium," said Burnie.
The upcoming G8 summit in Georgia also presents a test of international will to halt commercial use of bomb material, according to Greenpeace. "If the G8 is serious about halting the proliferation of plutonium then it must eliminate funding for a risky plutonium fuel infrastructure in Russia," said Clements. The Greenpeace treaty would place surplus military plutonium under international control, managing it as nuclear waste.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
US Nuclear Strategy Hits Congress
by Thom J. Rose
Washington (UPI)
May 12, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-doctrine-04c.html
The war on terror has largely kept the spotlight off efforts to expand U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities, but elements of the Bush administration's proposed 2005 budget currently before Congress include controversial measures toward that goal.
"Nuclear weapons will remain a critical element in U.S. national security," U.S. National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks said Tuesday at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The Bush administration has operated under that premise, working to expand research on new kinds of nuclear bombs.
"While we will reduce the number of deployed (nuclear) forces, we have to plan against an uncertain future," Brooks said.
The first step of the new plan came with the Nuclear Posture Review submitted to Congress by the Bush Pentagon in December 2001.
The review states: "Terrorists or rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction will likely test America's security commitments to its allies and friends. In response, we will need a range of capabilities to assure friend and foe alike of U.S. resolve. A broader array of capability is needed to dissuade states from undertaking political, military or technical courses of action that would threaten U.S. and allied security."
That broader array of capability was described to include both smaller nuclear weapons that could be deployed with less collateral damage and nuclear bombs capable of penetrating deep into the earth to destroy buried targets.
Last year Congress made research into the smaller bombs possible by repealing a 10-year-old ban on researching the so-called low-yield warheads intended to minimize collateral damage. The legislation authorizing the research stipulated that any move to go beyond research to development would require explicit congressional authorization.
Research programs into both smaller nuclear bombs and deep-penetrating "bunker buster" nuclear weapons were approved by Congress and are under way.
The administration's 2005 budget would step up both programs.
Its bunker-buster provisions have drawn some attention for their ambitious nature -- the National Nuclear Security Administration has requested $27 million for 2005 and just less than $485 million over five years for what it says is a purely research project.
However, a report on the budget request by the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan public policy research arm of Congress, raises questions about the nature of the request.
The report says the request "seems to cast serious doubt on assertions that (the bunker-buster program) is only a study." It goes on to quote an unnamed NNSA manager who said the funding requested after 2005 is just a "placeholder" to reserve money in case the project does move beyond the research phase.
The administration's proposed 2005 budget also contains $9 million to investigate new nuclear weapons concepts, including smaller nuclear bombs.
The budget proposals were discussed in the Senate Armed Services Committee last week and are before the House Armed Services Committee this week. Both are expected to spark considerable debate.
Brooks blamed much of the controversy surrounding the plans on what he said was misinformation.
He said research into new kinds of smaller nuclear weapons does not indicate an effort to lower the threshold for a nuclear attack or make possible pre-emptive nuclear action.
"I've never met anybody who would consider nuclear pre-emption with regard to rogue states," Brooks said.
He characterized the easing of research restrictions as a way of freeing weapons researchers to think more freely about nuclear threats and possibilities. He said of work under the prohibition on researching smaller nuclear weapons, "We were in a situation where all thinking had to be done by two physicists, an engineer and a lawyer."
Brooks added that research into smaller nuclear weapons is purely theoretical and has no physical development component.
Keith Payne, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for forces and policy until June 2003 and played a major role in developing the Bush administration's nuclear policies, stressed the importance of U.S. nuclear might as a deterrent at the Heritage event.
He said having state-of-the-art nuclear weapons and being ready to use them allows the United States to convince its allies they don't need to develop their own nuclear capabilities and keeps U.S. enemies from attempting attacks with any kind of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons.
Indeed, one of the arguments often made for developing nuclear bunker busters is that they could be used to wipe out buried stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.
However, Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said that developing new nuclear weapons would be more likely to spur other countries to greater nuclear proliferation than deter them.
"By trying to carve out new missions for new types of nuclear weapons, we're tempting fate, we're inviting other states to emulate that behavior," Kimball said.
Nuclear weapons are unlikely to upstage the war on terror in the U.S. public consciousness any time soon, but debates brewing in Congress seem likely to increase their profile significantly. Indeed, the current focus on defense might make the arguments that much more contentious.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
Congressional Investigator Urges Security Hike at Nuclear Sites
WASHINGTON, DC,
May 12, 2004 (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-12-091.asp
Actions taken by the Department of Energy (DOE) in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, while important, are not sufficient to ensure that all of DOE's sites are adequately prepared to defend themselves against the higher terrorist threat present in the post September 11, 2001 world, Congressional representatives were warned on Tuesday.
Director of the Government Accounting Office's Natural Resources and Environment Robin Nazzaro testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, saying that the DOE still needs an effective safeguards and security program.
On behalf of the Congressional investigative arm, Nazarro told the subcommittee, "A successful terrorist attack on Department of Energy (DOE) sites containing nuclear weapons or the material used in nuclear weapons could have devastating consequences for the site and its surrounding communities."
His testimony comes five days after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced comprehensive new measures to protect the nation's nuclear materials from terrorist attack that include a new elite force of guards, consolidation of nuclear materials, and safeguards against cyber attack.
In his evaluation of the Energy Department's response to the 9/11 attacks, Nazzaro said the new description of the potential dangers - known as the Design Basis Threat (DBT) - took too long to develop after 9/11.
The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, rendered the then current DBT obsolete, and the Energy Department issued a new version in May 2003.
The Energy Department took almost two years to develop a new DBT in part because of delays in developing an intelligence community assessment of the terrorist threat to nuclear weapons facilities - called the Postulated Threat, Nazzaro said.
DOE's lengthy comment and review process for developing policy, and sharp debates within DOE and other government organizations over the size and capabilities of future terrorist threats and the availability of resources to meet these threats, were other factors in the two year delay, said Nazzaro.
Now that the new Design Basis Threat has been defined, the criteria that DOE has selected for determining when facilities may need to be protected against these forms of sabotage "may not be sufficient," Nazzaro warned.
"For example, for chemical sabotage, the 2003 DBT requires sites to protect to 'industry standards;' however, such standards currently do not exist.
In addition, the threat identified in the new DBT, in most cases, is less than the threat identified in the intelligence community's Postulated Threat, on which the DBT has been traditionally based. The intelligence community's assessment is being downplayed by the Energy Department in framing its response.
Abraham and National Nuclear Security Administration head Linton Brooks have given Fiscal Year 2006 as the date when new security measures will be in place at DOE sites, but Nazarro told the subcommittee the Energy Department will have trouble meeting that deadline.
"DOE has been slow" to issue additional DBT implementation guidance, develop DBT implementation plans, and budgets to support these plans, Nazarro said, and that may affect the ability of its sites to fully meet the threat contained in the new DBT in a timely fashion.
"Consequently, DOE's deadline to meet the requirements of the new DBT by the end of fiscal year 2006 is probably not realistic for some sites," he said.
In response to these concerns, Nazzaro said, the Energy Department has recently agreed to reexamine some of the key aspects and assumptions of the May 2003 DBT.
-------- new mexico
N.M. wants role in proposed uranium enrichment
Associated Press
May 12, 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0512uraniumenrichment-ON.html
SANTA FE, N.M. - Gov. Bill Richardson is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Committee to allow the state to fully participate in all NRC hearings on a license application for a proposed uranium enrichment plant in southeastern New Mexico.
The governor, in a letter to NRC Chairman Nils J. Diaz, said the state in particular "wants to ensure that the depleted uranium byproduct generated by the facility is safely disposed of."
Uranium processing generates a type of waste that cannot be dumped anywhere in the United States. Such waste requires processing to convert it before it can be shipped to a low-level nuclear waste dump, but no U.S. facility can do that.
Louisiana Energy Services, which wants to build the plant near Eunice to make fuel for nuclear reactors, filed papers earlier this month asking federal regulators not to let the state and two public interest groups raise certain types of questions about the facility.
LES officials were preparing a response Wednesday to Richardson's letter.
The company maintains that the state's questions - called contentions in filings before the NRC - raise matters that already have been resolved or don't meet NRC standards. The NRC staff also opposed including contentions raised by Attorney General Patricia Madrid.
New Mexico, through the state Environment Department, has filed a petition with the NRC seeking full legal status in all hearings on the proposed plant. Legal standing would give state officials the right to raise issues important to New Mexico, ask questions and cross-examine witnesses.
The state on Monday responded to the NRC staff report that suggested the state be given the right to intervene but recommended against admitting its contentions about waste.
The state wants to ensure that waste would be moved out of New Mexico on a regular basis to prevent any possible creation of a legacy stockpile over the 30-year life of the plant.
"We want to ensure that the people of New Mexico have a seat at the table during these NRC proceedings," Environment Secretary Ron Curry said Wednesday. "Only through this sort of involvement will we be able to ensure that issues important to New Mexicans are clarified."
-------- south carolina
SRS awaits nuke report, word on siting new plant
5 spots in competition for $4 billion facility to build plutonium pits
Associated Press
Wed, May. 12, 2004
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/states/south_carolina/counties/york/8645273.htm?1c
AIKEN - The Savannah River Site could soon find out if it's in line for a $4 billion plant.
Linton Brooks, the administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, says a highly anticipated report about the nation's nuclear stockpile was being reviewed and will be given to Congress within weeks.
Officials had delayed locating the plutonium trigger production plant until the agency outlined current and future conditions of the country's nuclear arsenal.
"You can't make intelligent decisions if you don't know what the stockpile is," Brooks said.
Brooks, who joined Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham at SRS for an event Friday, declined to discuss the report or which of five potential sites he favored, according to the (Augusta, Ga.) Chronicle.
Other sites in contention for the modern pit facility are:
• The Pantex Plant near Amarillo, Texas.
• The Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, both in New Mexico.
• The Nevada Test Site.
The plant would build plutonium pits used to detonate nuclear weapons.
Brooks' agency at first wanted to have a final environmental impact statement and choose a site by April.
But it was announced in January that any decision would wait until Congress could review the country's nuclear weapons and what the United States might need in the future.
"In my view, it is a complete mistake to reopen the nuclear door, so I am pleased that the administration has recognized -- in light of congressional concern -- that consideration of a modern pit facility is `premature,' at least," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in a statement in January.
Congressional delegates from South Carolina and Georgia have pushed to have the modern pit facility at SRS.
U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett, R-S.C., recently wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urging a decision sooner rather than later.
A spokeswoman for Barrett's office said the congressman had hoped to have the report by now.
Supporters say SRS's extensive experience with plutonium and its vast infrastructure make it the best selection.
"We have said from the beginning, if (Brooks) makes his recommendation to the secretary based on technical and economical matters, that SRS will win," said Mal McKibben, the executive director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness.
"The secretary has to deal with the politics of it."
-------- utah
Nuke 'Em!
Xcel energy spearheads a high-stakes plan to store nuclear waste on a tiny, dirt-poor Indian reservation in the Utah desert
COVER STORY . VOL 25 #1223 .
5/12/04
By Peter Ritter
http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1223/article12097.asp
From the entrance to Treasure Island Casino, Joe Campbell can look out over the field he used to farm. "That's where my back porch was," he says, pointing to a stand of cottonwoods behind the Prairie Island Indian tribe's big, modern community center. Then Campbell points out another of the tiny southern Minnesota reservation's landmarks: the twin pinkish-gray bulbs of Prairie Island's nuclear power plant.
Campbell, who's lived on the reservation since 1970, is a lifelong, irascible opponent of nuclear power in general, and the Prairie Island plant in particular. "They started buying up the land from the farmers around 1958," he says. "At the time they said it was a steam plant. Well, they never said where the steam was going to come from. Most people alive today don't know what happened here."
From the casino, we drive along a road that curves just outside the reservation's boundary, toward a swampy inlet by the shore of the Mississippi. Campbell points out a spot along the bank where hot water coming from the plant causes the river to bubble. Nearby, invisible except for some security cameras mounted on telephone poles, is what we've come to see: the concrete pad where Xcel Energy stores the waste from its nuclear plant. "When the leaves are on the trees you can't even tell it's there," Campbell explains.
The pad is a little larger than a football field, protected by a 20-foot-high earth berm, a double chain-link fence, and a lone security guard carrying a machine gun. Clustered at the pad's center are 17 17-foot-tall white cylinders. The casks themselves have 9.5-inch-thick steel walls designed to withstand floods, fires, and even missile strikes. Jon Kapitz is a waste-storage specialist with Nuclear Management Company, which runs Xcel's Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants (together, the two produce around 20 percent of the state's electricity). According to Kapitz, the radiation coming from the casks is nearly undetectable at the perimeter of the pad. "They're giving off about three-fourths of a kilowatt each. That's around a dozen hair dryers' worth of heat," he says. "You can really only tell the difference in the winter, when you compare it to putting your hands on the cold steel fence."
Which is good, since the casks contain some of the nastiest stuff on the planet. Prairie Island's twin reactors are fueled by zirconium rods, which are in turn filled with pencil-thin uranium pellets. Every 18 to 20 months, spent fuel rods are cycled out of the reactors. They're then moved to a large pool of water inside the reactor complex, where they're left to cool for 10 years. After a decade, bunches of rods, called fuel assemblies, are taken out of the water and sealed inside those giant helium-filled steel casks. At this point, the rods are still radioactive enough to kill anyone standing nearby in a matter of minutes. While their radioactivity continues to dissipate exponentially, they will remain dangerous enough for 10,000 years that they must be kept out of the groundwater supply.
No one, obviously, is eager to welcome these casks as neighbors. Just recall the rancor attending last year's debate over waste storage at Prairie Island. In 1994, when Xcel (then called Northern States Power) first asked the state to allow the casks at its Prairie Island site, the utility promised that it would never return to the Legislature requesting more storage capacity; when, inevitably, Xcel did just that, a firestorm erupted. Prairie Island tribal members complained that the waste would compromise their safety; environmentalists complained that there was no permanent solution to the waste-storage crunch; and Xcel complained that without the extra capacity, Prairie Island would have to shut down well before its government operating license expired in 2013. Only after much political horse-trading did a compromise emerge: In exchange for permission to store 12 more casks at Prairie Island, Xcel had to increase its investment in renewable energy, and compensate the Prairie Island tribe.
Yet, while last year's deal may have bought Prairie Island some time, it did nothing to solve the problem that many consider the nuclear industry's Achilles' heel: What to do with the tons of deadly waste generated every year by the nation's 103 commercial nuclear reactors? Quietly and mostly behind the scenes, Xcel has pursued an expensive, controversial plan B to decamp its--and, indeed, all of America's--nuclear waste to an impoverished stretch of Utah scrubland. To Xcel and its partner energy corporations, it's simply the only way to keep cheap and efficient nuclear plants running; to the environmentalists and politicians opposed to the idea, it's a Chernobyl waiting to happen.
Skull Valley, located some 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, is a forlorn stretch of desert between the low-slung Cedar and Stansbury mountain ranges. In the late 19th century, a young Samuel Clemens happened to pass through the area. His assessment: "One of the most rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our country or any other can exhibit." At the center of this is the reservation of the Skull Valley Goshute band--a tribe of some 120 enrolled members, only two dozen of whom live at Skull Valley. In the Shoshone tongue, Goshute means "people of the dust."
As it turns out, Skull Valley is an apt name for this corner of Utah, since the area has long been a graveyard for the 20th century's worst hobgoblins. At the north end of the valley is a magnesium plant that once had the dubious distinction of being the worst polluter in the U.S. To the west is a burial ground for medical waste, radioactive uranium tailings, industrial pesticides and other toxic garbage. To the east is the Tooele Ordinance Depot, where the U.S. government stores and incinerates its stockpile of chemical weapons. And to the south is Dugway Proving Ground, a military bombing range regularly visited by fighter planes from nearby Hill Air Force Base. In 1968, one of those planes accidentally carpeted the area around Skull Valley with nerve gas, killing more than 6,000 sheep.
Margene Bullcreek, a Skull Valley band member who's lived on the reservation for most of her life, remembers the sheep massacre. "My father had 30 head," she says. "They buried them all here on the reservation, but no study was ever done on the effects of it. One thing that's happened is our traditional habits have disappeared, like we can't have rabbits in our diet anymore like we used to."
Such experiences have helped galvanize Bullcreek's dogged opposition to a potential new neighbor, a storage facility for 44,000 tons of the nation's high-level nuclear waste. "If we say, 'Oh, our land's already contaminated', there goes our little piece of land. Does that mean the government finally succeeded in getting us into the melting pot? Just because there are things here already that doesn't justify surrounding us with more hazardous wastes."
In 1997, Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of nuclear utilities led by Xcel, signed a deal with the Goshute tribe to lease 100 acres of land for the waste dump. When completed, the facility would look very much like the one at Prairie Island. Hundreds of waste-filled casks would sit on a fenced concrete slab. The $3.1 billion facility would, in theory, only be a temporary "parking lot" for the waste until the permanent, federally funded waste depository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain was ready to begin receiving the country's nuclear stockpile. According to the deal, PFS would lease the land from the Goshutes for 20 years, with the possibility of a 20-year extension. In return, the tiny tribe was promised up to 40 well-paying full-time jobs, plus a cash settlement, which, though confidential, has been rumored to be as high as $200 million.
Leon Bear, the band's chairman and the man who negotiated the deal with PFS, says he was only acting in the Goshutes' best interest. "It's hard when you don't have resources," he says. "All we have is the land, a little water, no timber, no oil, no coal. All we're doing is being consistent with the area. They put these biological and chemical agents out here first. If they had built greenhouses, that's what we'd do. If there were fields of alfalfa, that's what we'd grow." Bear, who worked as a security guard for 20 years at a now-closed rocket testing facility on the reservation, is convinced that the PFS site would be safe. In fact, he says, he spent a month as an intern at Prairie Island learning about nuclear-waste storage. And, says Bear, PFS will mean more than just jobs for the impoverished Goshute; the money will also ensure the survival of their culture.
Despite Bear's assurances, though, the PFS deal became a source of discord almost immediately after it was signed. The tribe quickly divided over money and power. According to Bullcreek, band meetings degenerated into shouting matches. In one instance, a fistfight even broke out at tribal headquarters, resulting in a broken arm and hard feelings all around. The PFS windfall, Bullcreek charges, was never divided equally, instead finding its way into the pockets of those who support the project. In August of 2001, another group of dissident tribal members, led by a PFS dissenter named Sammy Blackbear, held an election at which, they claim, Bear was unseated as chairman.
Although Blackbear's faction claimed victory, the recall election was never recognized by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Further complicating the already tangled web of tribal politics is the fact that everyone in Skull Valley is either acquainted or related. Bullcreek, for instance, lives across the street from Bear, who happens to be Blackbear's cousin. "We're all family here," avers Blackbear. "If you sit down and talk to folks, [PFS] is taboo. No one talks about it."
But confusion and anger over PFS isn't limited to the tiny Goshute reservation. According to Jason Groenewold, an activist with the environmental group Heal Utah, the PFS project is only the latest in a string of ecological outrages in the Utah desert. "What we're trying to do is change the pattern. If you're addicted to crack, it doesn't make much sense to start a heroin habit. Are you just going to say, 'Well, I'm already a drug addict'? You're not going to rectify anything by making it worse."
Groenewold says he doesn't blame the Skull Valley band for courting PFS; he does, however, blame Xcel and its partners for courting the tribe. "It's really hard when you have an impoverished community, and then along comes these predatory corporations with these horrible waste products dangling money over you. They're saying, 'We've got the solution to all your problems, just take the money.' The sad thing is, this has already torn the tribe apart. It could lead to the tribe's disappearance. If I was a ratepayer in Minnesota, I'd be a little upset that Xcel is using my money to dump nuclear waste on this impoverished Indian reservation."
Bear finds this view more than a little patronizing: After all, no one made much of a fuss about the sanctity of Goshute tribal land before PFS. "As soon as we started talking about doing the spent fuel storage here, everyone's head popped up: 'Oh, there's Goshutes living out there?'" When the tribe began studying the PFS idea, Bear even went to consult Utah Governor Mike Leavitt. Leavitt's response, says Bear, was that nuclear waste would enter the state "over [his] dead body."
Indeed, Utah has done everything in its power to derail PFS, including passage of a law that would impose an enormous tax on rail shipments of waste destined for Skull Valley. Leavitt went so far as to form an entire government department charged solely with keeping PFS from happening. Dianne Nielson, the head of Utah's Department of Environmental Quality, likewise claims that Xcel is unfairly targeting the Goshute. "What they're doing is bypassing a whole series of federal and state laws designed to regulate high-level nuclear waste. By targeting an Indian reservation, notably one that's quite impoverished, with a minimal level of governance, they're just looking for an easy place to dump their nuclear waste."
Thus far, however, Utah's attempts to stall PFS have largely come to naught. The band's sovereignty ensures that the state of Utah has little power over what the Goshute decide to put on their land. At present, the PFS plan is under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Of 100 safety concerns raised by the state of Utah during NRC hearings, only two now remain points of contention. Firstly, the state has successfully argued that an F-16 from the nearby bombing range could potentially crash into the facility, rupturing the storage casks and creating a catastrophic radiation leak. PFS opponents also argue that the facility should include a "hot cell"--a sealed indoor area where a leaking cask could be contained before it released radiation into the environment. Meanwhile, the Goshute tribe, and particularly its leaders, have landed in hot water with federal law enforcement. Last year, agents from the FBI and the Department of the Interior raided the tribe's Salt Lake City business office, spurring rumors of a corruption investigation. Then, in December, a grand jury indicted Bear for allegedly embezzling $150,000 from the tribe in his capacity as chairman. In a strange twist, Blackbear, two of his fellow PFS dissenters, and their lawyer were also indicted for bank fraud and stealing from the tribe. According to the indictment, Blackbear and his faction, operating as though they were the tribal government--although, again, the Bureau of Indian Affairs had never recognized Bear's recall--had removed money from a collective tribal bank account. Neither case is connected to PFS directly, but the indictments do make mention of the nuclear-waste facility as the root of the tribe's spiraling problems.
Both Blackbear and Bear say the truth will out eventually. "I'm not guilty of anything as far as I know of," says Bear. "I'll go to court." According to Bear, the investigation and indictments are simply political retaliation for his support of the PFS project--and a way for Utah to circumvent Indian sovereignty. "We're a little tribe," he says. "Because we're little, people think they can push us around or manipulate us. You know, there is a congressman or two pushing the buttons here. They think if they can get me out of the way, spent fuel will die. But I just represent the tribe."
Bear's voice has an edge of bitterness when he talks about Utah's righteous rhetoric regarding PFS. As he says, the government has always been content to dump its toxic garbage on Goshute land before, and until now the tribe itself saw little or no benefit. Only a few years ago, the state legislature promised the band $2 million for economic development; the money never arrived. Maybe a nuclear-waste dump is just the shape taken by 200 years' worth of chickens coming home to roost.
In 1967, the federal government built a small nuclear plant near La Crosse, Wisconsin. The La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor was intended to convince the Cold War public of nuclear energy's peacetime uses. Less than five years later, there were 20 commercial nuclear plants in the country. NSP's Monticello and Prairie Island plants came online in 1970 and 1973, respectively. Little thought was given to the problem of nuclear waste at the time--utilities simply assumed whatever spent fuel they generated would eventually be reprocessed. Unfortunately, one of the byproducts of this process was plutonium, the key ingredient in atomic weaponry. When Jimmy Carter signed a bill banning uranium reprocessing, nuclear utilities were left holding a very expensive, very toxic bag. The fuel rods that originally powered the La Crosse reactor are, in fact, still sitting in a pool of water beneath the now-defunct plant.
As nuclear waste piled up on outdoor pads like the one at Prairie Island, federal lawmakers cast about for a permanent solution to the problem. Finally, in 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which guaranteed utilities that the federal government would build a repository to house all of the nation's nuclear waste. The underground complex would, hypothetically, remain sealed for millennia, a vast high-tech tomb for the world's deadliest poisons. Though the complex was to open in 1998, grinding bureaucracy and stout resistance from potential host states kept the project in limbo. NSP even sued the Department of Energy to get the government to honor its promise to collect the waste. Twenty years and more than $6 billion later, the government has made little progress except to select a site--a desert mountain some 90 miles from Las Vegas.
As it searched for a permanent repository, the government also set up a post called the Nuclear Waste Negotiator to locate an interim storage site. The plan was to set up a Monitored Retrieval Storage area--a fancy name for the kind of "parking lot" facility slated for Skull Valley. In 1991, the Nuclear Waste Negotiator sent out letters to local government and Indian tribes offering $100,000 grants just to explore the idea of hosting the MRS site. The government was courting Indian communities: Of 20 responses to the government's query, 16 came from tribes--including both the Prairie Island and Skull Valley bands.
Chip Ward, a Utah librarian and author of Canaries on the Rim, a book about the despoliation of Utah's western desert, says the targeting of Indian tribes was ingenious. Because of tribal sovereignty, the DOE could bypass state governments opposed to the project. "People think: out of sight, out of mind," Ward says. "And these groups are powerless."
Yet political maneuvering ultimately killed the Nuclear Waste Negotiator's efforts, and the position was eliminated. Almost at once, private interests stepped in where the government had left off. The driving force in this renewed search for a temporary storage facility was NSP: Because Minnesota's state legislature had limited the amount of waste that the utility could keep on its Prairie Island campus, the company was facing a dire space crunch. Together with eight other nuclear utilities, NSP formed PFS, a "limited liability" company. In reality, PFS has always been a shell company, with one executive at the decommissioned La Crosse reactor and an extremely active public-relations firm in Salt Lake City. PFS first negotiated with an Apache tribe in New Mexico. When tribal opposition scuttled that deal, the utilities approached the Goshutes.
According to Charlie Bomberger, Xcel's general manager for nuclear asset management, last year's state legislature decision to allow more storage at Prairie Island, while giving the utility some breathing room, didn't negate the need for a national interim storage facility. The compromise, he says, "gave us some options. But we also want to continue to pursue the most reasonable, short-term opportunity to move waste out of Minnesota." While other utilities have been less aggressive in their support of PFS--some have even suggested that they'll abandon the project if the Department of Energy makes sufficient progress at Yucca Mountain--Bomberger says once the facility has been licensed by the NRC, Xcel will be able to start selling space to other companies--turning the intractable problem of nuclear waste into a profit center.
Opponents of nuclear power have a far different view of PFS. To them, the waste-storage problem is the choke point for the entire nuclear industry. Without a solution, nuclear energy must wither. "The question is, Do we want to continue on with this business?" says Lisa Ledwidge, a Minneapolis-based researcher for the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. "Or do we want to look at wind and biomass to replace this nuclear hot potato that we don't know what to do with?"
And some anti-PFS activists believe that once America's nuclear waste is resettled in the Utah desert, it will never leave. Ward points out that, according to the PFS plan, it will take nearly 20 years to transport the country's waste to the Skull Valley site. If nuclear plants continue to operate, they will have by then generated far more than the 44,000 tons PFS is designed to contain. If the Department of Energy ever does complete Yucca Mountain, that repository will only hold 77,000 tons--barely enough capacity for all of the country's commercial nuclear waste now, much less in 20 years.
"Do the math--it's fairly simple," Ward advises. "We already have 40 years of spent fuel. Yucca will take another 10 years to build--and if it's like other government projects I'm familiar with, probably a lot longer than that. Then you're talking about 20 years to move it all. That's twice as much fuel as Yucca is designed for right there. What happens then? The math dictates it'll sit out here forever."
PFS's future remains unsettled. According to Xcel's Bomberger, the discord in Skull Valley and the indictment of Leon Bear won't keep the utility from pursuing its plans. Yet Utah's Nielson says the alleged improprieties could potentially derail the effort. And, in an unforeseen twist of events, Mike Leavitt, the Utah governor who once said that nuclear waste would arrive in the state over his dead body, was recently installed as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Meanwhile, Yucca Mountain remains in bureaucratic and regulatory limbo. The project suffered a setback recently when a federal court allowed a number of lawsuits brought by Nevada to block the facility. Margene Bullcreek might have summed up the situation for all involved. When I asked her about a recent tribal meeting, she sighed: "Very disorderly. What can I say?"
At the same time, though, there are rumblings of renewed interest in nuclear power. The Bush administration has made nuclear energy a centerpiece of its national energy policy. And, indeed, just a few months ago, two different utility consortiums signaled their interest in applying for NRC licenses to operate nuclear reactors. If built, they would become the first new plants to come online in 30 years. And still, waste is piling up in places like Prairie Island.
The day Joe Campbell showed me around the Prairie Island reservation, plant employees were awaiting a barge heading up the Mississippi from New Orleans. Onboard was the enormous $150 million steam generator that would replace a key aging component in one of the reactor's cores. While Bomberger insists that no decision has yet been made about the plant's future, it seemed a pretty clear signal that the Prairie Island tribe won't be bidding farewell to its nuclear neighbor anytime soon. As we were heading back to the casino, Campbell pointed out the house where his daughter, a onetime power plant employee, lives. The twin domes of the nuclear plant were clearly visible behind a line of pine trees. They were, almost literally, in his daughter's backyard.
Campbell looked out the window and said, "It's like driving on a flat tire. When you get a flat, you can either get out and walk, or you can keep driving on it until your car breaks down. That's what they're doing here."
Photos:
COURTESY NUCLEAR MANAGEMENT COMPANY
Just think of them as nuclear Porta-Potties:
Waste storage casks at Xcel's Prairie Island plant may find a new home in the Utah desert
http://citypages.com/imagebank/articles/25_1223/25_1223a12097_m2.jpg
PHOTO BY FRED HAYES
Will the circle be unbroken: For years, Margene Bullcreek has led a losing fight against a proposed nuclear waste dump on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation
http://www.citypages.com/databank/25/1223/article12097.asp
-------- washington
Hanford completes demolition of first of three plutonium buildings
By SHANNON DININNY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Hanford%20Demolition
RICHLAND, Wash. -- Workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation have completed demolition of the first of three buildings where plutonium was concentrated for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal.
The 233-S Plutonium Concentration Facility processed solutions containing plutonium from 1956 to 1964. The building became one of the most contaminated structures at the Hanford site and was a challenge to demolish safely.
Workers spent two years gutting the building, then applied a fixative to all interior surfaces to glue contaminants to the walls. The glue, plus the use of water sprayers, allowed the building to be dismantled in the open air without tents or other covers.
The building's foot-thick concrete walls were then sheared away in sections, with most of the debris being transported to an onsite landfill.
The project has been closely watched by other nuclear sites, such as the Rocky Flats installation in Colorado, that face a similar task: to level a highly contaminated nuclear structure without endangering workers or the public.
"Certainly, there are lessons learned from this that we can apply to the next deconstruction," said Steve Veitenheimer, project manager for the Energy Department, which manages cleanup at the Hanford site. "This was the worst of the plutonium facilities we'll be taking down. That to me makes it even more successful."
Hanford has about 1,400 buildings that need to be deactivated and demolished as part of the effort to clean up the nation's most-contaminated nuclear site. Most of the buildings are industrial, about 400 are considered radioactive and another 200 are labeled as nuclear.
Nick Ceto, program manager for the Environmental Protection Agency's Hanford Project Office, on Wednesday called the demolition an important step in cleanup at the Hanford site.
The work was completed with no recordable injuries despite more than 4,500 worker entries to the site, said Tom Orgill, project director for Fluor Hanford, one of several contractors handling cleanup at Hanford.
"This work is hard, but it can be done safely, both from a radiological and industrial perspective," Orgill said. "It is an example in these turbulent times when DOE, EPA and contractors can work together to reduce the risks to the environment. It's evidence we can do that, and we can and will build on that."
For four decades, the 586-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal, including the atomic bomb that devastated Nagasaki in World War II.
The three-story, 3,500-square-foot building played a critical role in the production of plutonium during the first decades of the Cold War.
Spent fuel rods from Hanford's nine nuclear reactors were dissolved into solution, which was then sent to this building for processing so the plutonium could be concentrated back to a solid metal form.
Cleanup at the Hanford site is expected to cost between $50 billion and $60 billion and be completed by 2035.
----
States threaten to enter lawsuit
By Annette Cary,
Tri-City Herald staff writer
Wednesday, May 12th, 2004
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5061929p-4989692c.html
Washington and Oregon are asking to participate in mediation of a lawsuit brought by the Yakama Nation over restoration of natural resources at the Hanford nuclear reservation.
If not allowed full participation in the mediation, the states are threatening to enter the suit as plaintiffs, according to letters mailed this week to other parties in the suit.
"We take this case very seriously," said Elliott Furst, senior counsel for the Washington attorney general.
Under the federal Superfund law covering hazardous waste sites, governments, including tribes and states, may file suit asking for compensation for damage to natural resources.
Congress' intent was to encourage full cleanup by raising the possibility that entities such as the Department of Energy might have to pay damages if they tried to save money by cutting corners on restoration of Superfund sites.
The Yakama Nation filed suit in 2002 and expanded the suit in 2003 to force DOE and the Department of Defense to plan, pay for and restore natural resources damaged at Hanford.
The first requirement could be taking a comprehensive look at what damages have occurred and what damages might occur if cleanup is not completed to a certain level.
"Those studies have not been done," Furst said.
The Yakamas and other tribes once used what's now the nuclear reservation as a crossroads in their annual hunting, gathering and fishing migrations. Several treaties signed in 1855 guarantee the tribes access to Hanford, including the Columbia River, to continue those activities.
The Yakamas' suit covers several Superfund sites at Hanford, including old missile silos used by the military, the 1100 and 300 Areas at the south end of the nuclear reservation and the 100 Area in north Hanford where reactors lined the Columbia River.
The suit also could cover resources that can be proved to have been damaged by production in those areas, such as fish populations or habitat in the river.
From World War II through the Cold War, plutonium was produced for weapons at Hanford, with millions of gallons of wastes dumped into open trenches. Contaminants seeped into the ground and continue to seep into the river.
Before the suit was filed, the Yakama Nation tried to get DOE and the EPA to tackle restoring natural habitat for animals, insects and fish simultaneously with the site's nuclear cleanup, said Tom Zeilman, an attorney for the Yakamas when the suit was expanded to more Superfund sites at Hanford in 2003.
But the Yakama Nation believed its concerns fell on deaf federal ears.
Earlier this year, the Yakamas and the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to try to settle the case out of court with a mediator and asked for a federal ruling requiring mediation.
The ruling allows other parties and issues not already in the case to be included in the negotiations.
On Monday, Washington and Oregon sent letters to the attorney for the federal government and Ray Givens of Coeur d'Alene, who is representing the Yakamas. They are asking that an agreement be reached in 30 days on their full participation in any mediation.
The Yakamas have agreed to the states' participation, Furst said. No reply has been received from the Justice Department. Other tribes or states also could ask to be included in mediation.
-------- MILITARY
-------- britain
Iraqis to Take British Soldiers to Court
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18913-2004May11.html
LONDON, May 11 -- Lawyers for 12 Iraqi families who say their relatives were killed unlawfully by British troops won the right Tuesday to pursue their cases in Britain's High Court, as Prime Minister Tony Blair's government sought to fend off new allegations of human rights abuses in Iraq.
A High Court judge granted the families a full-court hearing into their claim that the soldiers' actions should be subject to British law and the European Convention on Human Rights. One of the lawyers said he hoped to add another half-dozen claims of wrongful death to the cases.
"The way things are going in Iraq, it seems to me it is in everyone's interest that this point should be decided as soon as possible," Justice Andrew Collins said in granting the hearing, according to media accounts.
Government lawyers did not oppose the families' petition but have said that soldiers should be judged under the rules of war. Virtually all of the cases are under investigation by military police, according to a government spokesman.
An attorney representing one family, Phil Shiner, said at Tuesday's hearing that many of the victims were civilians going about normal life when they were killed. One man had been doing farm work, while another was returning home in his car.
Shiner said that because British troops had assumed occupying powers in southern Iraq after President Saddam Hussein was overthrown last year, they should be held accountable in the same manner they would be in Britain.
The ruling came as government officials responded to a new report by Amnesty International that accused soldiers of killing civilians -- including a child -- without justification. The London-based human rights organization said the British army had failed to fully investigate the killings, and that the investigations it did carry out had been "shrouded in secrecy." The army's response, it concluded, "has undermined, rather than upheld, the rule of law."
The Amnesty report focused on nine cases in southern Iraq, including that of 8-year-old Hanan Saleh Matrud, who was shot dead near her home last Aug. 23. The army said she was killed accidentally by a stray warning shot fired during a stone-throwing incident. But witnesses said there was no unrest at the time.
Blair's official spokesman, who under the government's ground rules cannot be named, told reporters that the Defense Ministry was aware of all the cases raised by Amnesty and that all had been or were being investigated.
But the spokesman pointed out that British troops, who were in charge of peacekeeping in southern Iraq, were operating in difficult circumstances. He noted that last weekend alone, soldiers had faced more than 100 engagements against insurgents loyal to militant Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr.
"We're talking about Dodge City, with no police force in the aftermath of a major war, with about 16 different armed groups going round shooting Iraqis," Col. John Hughes-Wilson, a former British intelligence officer, told BBC Radio. "If you're a soldier on the ground there, it must be absolutely terrifying."
Blair and his cabinet have faced a new wave of criticism following allegations of abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers that echo charges made against U.S. troops, although on a much lesser scale. The government has pledged to investigate every allegation.
-------- business
Russian firms urged to leave Iraq
Wednesday, 12 May, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3706627.stm
Russian workers are thought to be working on $1bn contracts in Iraq Russian businesses are being urged to reconsider the stationing of any personnel in Iraq.
The statement from the lower house of parliament, Duma, came after a Russian power plant worker was killed and two were taken hostage in Iraq on Monday.
The Duma said the US-led coalition had "practically lost control" of Iraq, putting everyone there in danger.
It demanded that the coalition fully investigate Monday's attack and take steps to prevent "similar excesses".
Russia opposed the invasion of Iraq and has no troops there.
However, it negotiated reconstruction contracts worth a reported $1bn and has several hundred civilian contractors there.
'Alive and well'
Gunmen killed one Russian power plant worker and kidnapped the other two as they returned from work at a power station near Baghdad on Monday. Russian news agency Interfax identified the two men held as Alexander Gordiyenko, 27, and Andrei Meshcheryakov, 33. It said Alexei Konorev, 43, was killed.
The identity of the kidnappers, and prospects for the release of the two abducted Russians, remain unclear.
Interfax quoted Alexander Abramov, the general director of energy firm Interenergoservis - the men's employer - as saying they were "alive and well", though their whereabouts remained a mystery.
However, Mr Abramov refused to confirm or deny these comments when asked by another agency, Itar-Tass.
Officials at the Russian embassy in Baghdad are reported to have said there has been no contact with the kidnappers and no demands have been received.
'Scandalous'
In its statement on Wednesday, the Duma called on Russian businesses in Iraq "to consider without delay and in a responsible fashion the issue of whether your specialists should remain" in Iraq.
Personnel should be compulsorily evacuated if warranted by circumstances, the deputies said, according to Itar-Tass.
The statement berates the coalition for using disproportionate force "Similar excesses" could be prevented in future by ending what the Duma called the "disproportionate use of force", ensuring the involvement of Iraqis in resolving the crisis in their nation and ending the "scandalous practice of the inhumane treatment of Iraqi prisoners by the occupying military".
The foreign ministry has already repeatedly urged nationals to leave Iraq.
Last month, Moscow evacuated some 365 citizens of ex-Soviet countries after a spate of kidnappings of foreign nationals.
However, about 300 workers chose to stay behind - the great majority Interenergoservis workers. Among them were eight Russian and Ukrainian workers who had been abducted and then freed.
Reports suggest Interenergoservis is now planning to evacuate many of its remaining workers in Iraq, though it is as yet unclear exactly how many.
'Sorry state'
The Russian firm is involved in reportedly lucrative projects to rebuild at least three key power stations in Iraq.
Its international project director, Yevgeny Loginov, told Reuters the Iraqi energy ministry had urged it not to leave "because the energy sector there is in such a sorry state".
The Iraqi head of power generation, Mohsen Hassan, told Agence France Presse the departure of foreign experts had badly hit the reconstruction of Iraq's power supplies.
He reportedly said there was no chance of meeting a energy supply target for July, when oppressive temperatures mean demand surges.
--------
SECURITY
200,000 Employees Awaiting Clearance to Work for Military
May 12, 2004
By JOEL BRINKLEY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/politics/12back.html
WASHINGTON, May 11 - A government investigation shows that even as the military has grown more reliant on private contractors to serve in highly sensitive positions in Iraq, the Pentagon has a backlog of nearly 200,000 people working for those and other contractors who are still awaiting security clearances.
The report adds that the average time required to grant a security clearance for a contract employee now exceeds a year.
In Congressional testimony last October, Charles S. Abell, principal deputy under secretary of defense for personnel, acknowledged that some contract employees were being sent to Iraq before they had received their security clearances because of "our rush to meet the requirements, the mere numerical requirements."
He added that clearances were granted "as time permitted." The report, made public last week, shows that the average time required to grant a security clearance has increased by more than two months since 2001, as the government has grown more reliant on contract employees.
One reason is that an increasing number of contractors are required to hold ''top secret'' clearances, meaning they will be entrusted with highly sensitive information. Processing those clearances takes much more time than the ''secret'' clearances that most contract employees hold.
Tens of thousands of employees of private companies are working for the military under contract in Iraq. In a letter this week to Representative Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disclosed that 20,000 private employees are working in Iraq in the security field alone. Private contractors, for example, guard L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq.
The number of private contractors in Iraq working in all fields is not known. But only those who might need to work with classified information would require a security clearance. Among them are intelligence analysts, interrogators and some translators.
Many companies hiring employees for those sorts of jobs in Iraq refuse to take on anyone who does not already have clearance; some companies pay a substantial premium to those applicants who hold one.
Still, those clearances must be renewed. A top secret clearance must be renewed every five years, meaning that someone who left a government job up to five years ago would still have a valid clearance. But the former employees have to submit paperwork for a reinvestigation when applying for a sensitive job in Iraq or elsewhere.
The report, by the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, shows that as of March 31, the military had a backlog of 61,000 reinvestigations, and the wait for those was likely to be as long as for the others - more than a year.
Spokesmen for the military intelligence office at the Pentagon, which manages security clearances, declined to respond to requests for comment on the report.
Mr. Rumsfeld, in Congressional testimony on Friday, acknowledged that 37 interrogators were at work at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where the prisoner abuses occurred, and 27 of them worked for CACI, a private company. One of those interrogators, Steven Stefanowicz, was implicated in the abuses.
A classified government report, a copy of which was received by The New York Times, on the abuses indicated that Mr. Stefanowicz did hold a security clearance. But the other contractor implicated, John Israel, a translator who worked with the interrogators, held no clearance of any kind.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the commander in charge of military jails in Iraq, said last week that Mr. Stefanowicz remained at work at the prison but was no longer "actively involved in investigations." Instead, he is assigned to "administrative duties," the general said. He added that he believed that Mr. Israel "is not with us any longer."
Mr. Israel worked for a subcontractor of the Titan Corporation of San Diego. A spokesman for Titan would not name the subcontractor.
-------- china
China Mulls Linking Taiwan to Mainland
By STEPHANIE HOO
Associated Press Writer
May 12, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/sns-ap-china-taiwan,0,4438568.story?coll=ny-worldnews-headlines
BEIJING -- China says it might adopt a law mandating that rival Taiwan unify with the mainland.
"Unification is the common wish of the Chinese people, including Taiwan people," Li Weiyi, a spokesman for China's Taiwan Affairs Office, said Wednesday. "China will seriously consider all suggestions for unification, including by legal means."
If a unification law is proposed "we will seriously consider it and adopt it," Li said at a regular news briefing.
Taiwan had no immediate comment on the possible unification law.
China and Taiwan split in 1949 during a civil war, but the Communist Beijing government claims the self-ruled island as its territory.
Talk of a legal option is a new twist, and it is unclear how China would enforce such a law.
Last month, Chinese lawmakers asserted their authority over Hong Kong, ruling that the former British colony won't have direct elections for its next leader and legislature.
The decision sparked outrage in Hong Kong.
Beijing promised Hong Kong a "high degree of autonomy" when the territory returned to Chinese control in 1997. The Communist government says its rule of Hong Kong, which allows many Western-style freedoms, should be the model for its eventual rule over Taiwan.
Taiwan's democratically elected president, Chen Shui-bian, has rejected that model.
Chen was re-elected in March by a slim margin, and election officials on Monday began recounting the ballots following a challenge by the opposition.
In China's view, "it doesn't matter who is elected as long as he accepts the one-China policy," Li said, referring to China's stance that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it.
"If Chen Shui-bian really wants peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, he must accept the one-China policy and stop his Taiwan independence activities," Li added. "There is no second road."
Officials on Wednesday affirmed China's opposition to Taiwan's effort to gain an observer's seat at the World Health Organization, which is to meet May 17-22 in Geneva.
"We welcome Taiwan to join China's delegation and attend the conference together," Health Ministry official Wang Liji said at the news conference. "But to our regret, Taiwan hasn't responded."
But Taiwan's agency responsible for China policy said Beijing was only inviting Taiwanese delegates in order to undermine the island's bid to join the WHO.
"The Communist Chinese are sacrificing the Taiwanese people's well-being for the sake of their own selfish political interests," the Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.
-------- iraq
Troops Move Cautiously as Sadr City Remains Tense
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18912-2004May11?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 11 -- On a hot, gray and dusty morning, Lt. Col. Gary Volesky's heavily armored patrol rumbled slowly past the remnants of a building his forces had destroyed only two nights before. A crowd of youths was working to rebuild it, cinder block by cinder block.
Volesky ordered his five Bradley Fighting Vehicles, with long guns and missiles mounted on top, to take a left rather than wade into a crowd that began to move excitedly across the roadway and its rudimentary barriers.
"We don't want to create a scene," Volesky told his gunners. "We'll see what the boss says about it."
By boss, he meant Col. Robert Abrams, the commander of U.S. forces in the Sadr City area, who had ordered the destruction of the building, which housed an office of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr.
Sadr City, the Baghdad front in Sadr's rebellion against the presence of U.S.-led occupation forces, was largely quiet Tuesday, two days after fighting there killed 34 insurgents. The masked gunmen who blocked streets, shut down commerce and drove police officers and civil administration workers out of their offices on Sunday had all but withdrawn from Sadr City's smelly, trash-filled alleys.
On Tuesday, the neighborhood presented a confusing panorama, making it unclear who among the impoverished throng was friend or foe. Residents interviewed later generally blamed the violence on Sadr, a 30-year-old militia leader and the son of the assassinated cleric for whom Sadr City is named.
But the Americans were taking no chances.
They moved through the huge slum only in the Bradleys, which are impervious to rocket-propelled grenades, the rebels' heaviest weapon. The more vulnerable Humvees and foot patrols did not take to the streets. American municipal chores in Sadr City that had been delayed for a month -- fixing sewers, clearing trash, providing jobs -- have been postponed indefinitely.
Keeping order in Sadr City is an important objective for the U.S. and allied commanders in Iraq, authorities here say.
The neighborhood contains one-third of Baghdad's 5.5 million people, but violence in Sadr City on Sunday rattled the nerves of the entire capital. And beyond Baghdad, Sadr's revolt has encompassed a half-dozen Shiite cities, complicating efforts to pacify a country troubled by a year-long Sunni Muslim insurgency.
Tuesday's Bradley Fighting Vehicle tour of Sadr City highlighted the lingering concerns of U.S. troops. Besides the violence, a year of futile efforts to improve conditions in Sadr City has fed hostility, said Volesky, the tall and lean battalion commander in charge of combat operations in the neighborhood.
"We've got to transit as fast as we can to improving the quality of life," he said.
From the metallic insides of an M2 Bradley, the outside world is viewed through a television screen. The images are either old-style black and white or greenish from a device that picks up heat emissions. An otherwise invisible figure in a dark doorway appeared as a ghostly haze.
There was a busy market, rows of open storefronts, piles of tires and scrap metal, wandering shoppers and unsupervised children. Sheep, mules and horses walked past on carpets of garbage. Most of the bystanders watched impassively. Some scowled. A few offered friendly thumbs-up. Police stations were once again populated by U.S.-trained officers.
At one point, a group of schoolboys began to gleefully toss stones at the thunderous Bradleys.
"Here's a great place to win some hearts and minds," Volesky said.
Then, suddenly, he ordered: "Watch the alley. I got a lot of people running around. That's not a good sign. . . . We heard there were some issues around Fox," the code name for a broad street they were approaching.
"We made contact just south of Copper," answered a driver, referring to an incident on another street the other day.
The crew noted a burned-out car with a propane tank sticking out of it. "Circle that location, in case we get indications they are planting IEDs," Volesky said.
IED means improvised explosive device -- a roadside bomb. "We hit a lot of IEDs two nights ago," Volesky continued. "One went off right in front of the driver. It wrapped up the turret in wire."
The Bradleys waded into pools of raw sewage. A putrid smell filtered inside. Passengers earned the unforgettable opportunity to breathe in Sadr City.
Volesky offered an explanatory tale of futility.
The occupation authority supplied 70 trash trucks and numerous dumpsters last year to institute garbage collection, he said. Iraqi contractors took the trucks, then illegally charged people for pickups that were supposed to be free. In the meantime, the contractors used them elsewhere in the city for other lucrative chores.
People wouldn't pay the fee, so trash built up and clogged the already inadequate sewer lines, Volesky continued. Other Iraqis who had contracted to suck the debris from the sewer lines also tried to shake down residents. The sewers were oozing black crud onto the streets. Looters seized the dumpsters and used them for scrap metal.
When Sadr City settles down, U.S. commanders hope to launch Operation Iron Broom, in which soldiers will help clean up the mess, Volesky said, explaining: "We got to give them a little love."
The tour ended with a race down a largely empty stretch of road where bombs have often been planted. Volesky reminded a subordinate to get in touch with an Iraqi policeman to erase Sadr portraits that were stenciled on the police station wall.
In the afternoon, a few white-masked youths patrolled near the site of Sadr's leveled office, but elsewhere in the neighborhood the only visible sign of potential problems was the presence of small boys holding gasoline bombs made of soda pop bottles.
Residents were generally unwilling to be interviewed. Those who agreed to speak expressed disgust over the confrontations, which they blamed on Sadr's militia.
"These are a bunch of guys who can't do anything against the Bradleys and tanks. They will only damage us, maybe get us killed. But we are afraid to say that in front of them," said Mahdi Hasan, a shop owner.
"I don't know what these Sadr people want," said Ali Maki, an unemployed army veteran. "And we don't think this cleric has any chance to make a government here or in Iraq. Iraq is not a little mosque on a dirty street. Look at them rebuild the office. Why don't they put the labor into rebuilding the country?"
One man working to repair Sadr's building said he was "doing it for God."
"If the Americans come to destroy it, we will build it again and again," said Saad Lawi, who was applying the finishing touches of whitewash.
--------
U.S. Military Strikes Mosque Held by Iraqi Cleric's Militia
May 12, 2004
By EDWARD WONG and DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/international/middleeast/12CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
ARBALA, Iraq, May 12 - The American military attacked a mosque in this holy city on Tuesday in its largest assault yet against the forces of the young rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, even as the first signs emerged of a peaceful resolution to the five-week-long standoff with him.
The strike on the Mukhaiyam Mosque brought hundreds of American soldiers and their armored vehicles to within a third of a mile of two of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, the ornate shrines of the martyrs Hussein and Abbas. A building behind the mosque was fired on, detonating a huge weapons cache, and soldiers stormed the mosque, chasing insurgents out into a hotel and alley. The American military said that at least 20 insurgents had died in the fighting, Reuters reported today.
By 3:30 a.m., some 30 rebels had taken up positions around the Shrine of Abbas, and they appeared to be lobbing mortars from that area to the Mukhaiyam Mosque. Special Forces soldiers began organizing groups of Iraqi forces to counterattack.
Until now, American forces had kept out of Karbala and nearby Najaf, another holy city, fearing to further inflame Iraqi fury against the occupying forces, now fevered because of widely distributed photographs of American personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners.
But before the attack, Col. Peter Mansoor, commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, said military officers had met with Karbala's leaders and believed they would support the operation because they want his Mahdi Army run out of town. American forces may be banking on the belief that Mr. Sadr is loathed by the country's mainstream Shiite leaders, and that many Muslims disagree with his use of mosques as something like military bases. On Tuesday, several hundred Iraqis marched in Najaf to demand that he and his militia leave.
The mosque attack came as news emerged that Adnan al-Zorfi, the American-appointed governor in Najaf, had offered to delay attempts to capture Mr. Sadr if he agreed to disband his militia, which seized control of the two holy Shiite cities of Najaf and Karbala last month.
The offer, Mr. Zorfi said, was made after extensive consultations with American authorities, suggesting that American leaders are reconsidering their stated goal of "killing or capturing" Mr. Sadr.
In leaflets handed out by his office in Najaf on Tuesday, Mr. Sadr appeared to respond favorably, saying he would end his rebellion if the "occupation forces" agreed to enter talks overseen by the Shiite religious leadership.
"I am ready to end everything if the occupation forces officially ask for negotiations, on the condition that these negotiations are just and transparent and under the stewardship of the Shiite religious authorities," the leaflets said. The leaflets bore Mr. Sadr's signature.
In a rare news conference at Najaf's Imam Ali shrine today, Mr. Sadr said, according to Reuters, "The dissolution of the Mehdi Army depends on the religious authorities. If they issue an edict to disband the Mehdi Army then we will disband it."
He also lashed out at the American occupation authorities, saying: "Their presence in Iraq is not peace and will lead to the spread of terrorism. "Look at what your army has done at the behest of its leaders - torture of all kinds. Are those who came to remove Saddam becoming just the same as Saddam?"
Mr. Sadr, a 31-year-old cleric who commands a large following in Iraq's poor urban neighborhoods, called last month for an uprising to expel the American forces. His men seized government offices in provincial capitals across southern Iraq, but they melted away in most of those places as American troops began to mobilize.
But they have been suffering heavy losses at the hands of the American troops.
Early Monday morning, American forces destroyed Mr. Sadr's headquarters in Baghdad with fire from armored vehicles and possibly helicopters. The military has said it has killed 36 insurgents in the last several days in clashes in Sadr City, a slum of 2.2 million people in northeastern Baghdad. But supporters of Mr. Sadr have begun rebuilding the cleric's headquarters, hauling bricks and concrete blocks to the site.
In the last week, the American forces attacked repeatedly in the area of Karbala, partly in preparation for the mosque attack.
On Monday night, American commanders said they had killed 13 of Mr. Sadr's militiamen in a gun battle in Kufa, which abuts Karbala. They sent a huge convoy on a night assault down the main street of the Mukhaiyam neighborhood a week ago, and have been killing insurgents there with wave after wave of patrols ever since. The Americans also detonated a major weapons cache in an amusement park last Thursday.
Earlier this week, American forces seized the governor's office in Najaf and installed Mr. Zorfi as the new governor.
In an interview on Tuesday, Mr. Zorfi confirmed that he had offered to delay the prosecution against Mr. Sadr, possibly until after the American occupation ends. He said he made the offer after long discussions with the Coalition Provisional Authority, the civilian wing of the American administration in Iraq.
"This is a personal offer made by me, and I have discussed it with the C.P.A. in Baghdad," Mr. Zorfi said. "The offer links the delay of any legal prosecution against Moktada with his clear approval to disband the militias, and hand over its weapons, and letting the local police take over the security of the city."
"I have great hopes that if Moktada approves, the Americans would go along with this deal," he said.
American civilian authorities did not offer any comment. The mosque attack began as soldiers with the First Armored Division and the Polish and Bulgarian armies left Camp Lima, a military base five miles east of Karbala's center and moved in at 11 p.m. into the maze of streets and dusty alleyways around the one-story mosque. Apache attack helicopters and an AC-130H Spectre gunship swooped through the sky, providing air cover.
Members of Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, fired rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47's from rooftops and the windows of dun-colored buildings. A military intelligence analyst estimated there were 50 to 70 militiamen barricaded in the mosque and surrounding buildings. The illuminated twin minarets of the Shrine of Hussein could be seen just a third of a mile to the east.
Tracer rounds arced through the sky as a Bradley fighting vehicle crashed through the rear wall of the mosque compound, then backed up and opened fire with a 25-millimeter canon. An attached storage building burst into flames, and then explosions began erupting. The building had clearly been used to store a huge cache of munitions - the explosions shook the earth for well over two hours.
An Iraqi interpreter working with the Americans broadcast an order of surrender over a loudspeaker. Then Special Forces troops, leading Iraqi commandos, moved through the flame and rubble into the mosque, chasing insurgents into an adjacent hotel and alley.
In three hours of fighting, as many as 20 buildings were raided or destroyed, and pillars of thick smoke curled through the air above rows of palm trees.
Soldiers searching the mosque found large piles of land mines, artillery shells and small white pills, which a Special Forces medic identified as opiates, possibly for use as painkillers.
Their search was interrupted by mortar attack from the mosque near the Shrine of Hussein.
Planning the assault was done in the utmost secrecy and was approved at the highest levels of the military here. Special Forces soldiers here did reconnaissance of the area and brought back photos for the planners. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of American ground forces in Iraq, was scheduled to fly down from Baghdad on Tuesday afternoon to oversee the final planning, but cancelled at the last minute.
"Our purpose in this operation is to defeat the enemy's capability to conduct any operations in Karbala," Lt. Col. Garry R. Bishop said to more than 100 officers during a briefing on the plan of attack.
The assault will ideally result in "the re-establishment of Iraqi security forces in this area as the only legitimate security," he added.
On Tuesday, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the First Armored Division, said the recent success of American military operations had opened a "window" for the political process to succeed, if only briefly.
"We are trying to eliminate his militia from the outside in," General Dempsey said. "We are working from the inside too."
In a moment of remarkable candor, General Dempsey said his forces may have missed an opportunity to eliminate Mr. Sadr last year. Though Mr. Sadr routinely denounced the American occupation, was wanted on criminal charges and was thought to be hoarding guns, American officials, until recently, avoided a confrontation with him. General Dempsey said Tuesday that, in retrospect, that was probably a mistake.
"Why didn't we marginalize him sooner?" the general asked. "Because in the course of the year that I've been here, and in the course of seeking advice from as many possible people as we could - religious leaders, political leaders, tribal leader - as you might expect, we received such a wide variety of advice on how to deal with Moktada al-Sadr that it caused us to be a little bit careful."
"Clearly, in the six months between October and April when he instigated this nationwide attack, he was training troops, gaining resources, stockpiling ammunition," General Dempsey said. "And so when I say we missed the opportunity, we probably gave him six months more than we should have."
Edward Wong reported from Karbala, Iraq, for this article and Dexter Filkins reported from Baghdad.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Helicopter Missile Attack Kills 7
May 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Palestinians.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- An Israeli missile attack on the Rafah refugee camp near the Egyptian border killed seven Palestinians and wounded 14 others early Thursday, residents and Palestinian medical officials said. Hours earlier, an explosion destroyed an Israeli armored vehicle, killing five soldiers, in the second such attack by Palestinian militants in Gaza in two days.
In the helicopter missile attack, the Israeli military said it targeted a group of militants planting bombs and firing at soldiers searching the area of Wednesday's blast, which occurred next to the camp on the Gaza-Egypt border.
Residents said at least four of the Palestinians killed were gunmen.
In all, 11 Israeli soldiers and 23 Palestinians were killed in three days of Gaza fighting Tuesday and Wednesday, and more than 175 Palestinians were wounded in the biggest operation in Gaza in nearly a decade.
The Israeli deaths reignited debate over Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza, despite a veto by his Likud Party and fierce opposition by ultranationalist coalition partners.
The militant Islamic Jihad group, which has close ties to Lebanese guerrillas, claimed responsibility for Wednesday's blast on a patrol road along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Tuesday's blast in the Zeitoun area killed six soldiers and scattered remains of Israeli bodies across a wide radius, and Wednesday's blast killed five soldiers. Palestinian militants displayed some remains in the street and said the remains would not be released until Israel pulled its troops out of Gaza City.
Early Thursday, Israeli forces began pulling out of Gaza City, Israel Radio reported, completing their search for soldiers' remains.
A masked, armed militant saying he spoke for the Islamic Jihad and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades said early Thursday that according to an agreement worked out with the Palestinian Authority and Egypt, the militants gave the soldiers' remains to the authority after the Israeli pullout from Gaza City.
A Palestinian ambulance took the fragments to the Erez crossing to be handed over to the Israelis, Palestinian officials said.
Israeli commentators likened the fighting in Gaza to Israel's guerrilla war in Lebanon, which ended with Israel's withdrawal in 2000.
The violence began early Tuesday with an army raid in the Zeitoun district of Gaza City, where troops were searching for weapons workshops. An armored personnel carrier packed with explosives was torn apart by a roadside bomb.
On Wednesday, another armored personnel carrier, also transporting dozens of pounds of explosives, was blown up near the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza. The Israeli military said the five soldiers were killed when the vehicle was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Simon Schorno, a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross, said the group was acting as an intermediary for the return of the remains.
``Anyone who desecrates (the bodies of) soldiers, we shall catch them, and our settling of accounts with them will be bitter and precise,'' Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told Channel 10 TV.
Israel is known for going to great lengths to recover the bodies of fallen soldiers, both because Jewish law requires the entire body to be buried, where possible, and because the army fears militants will try to use remains as bargaining chips.
Israel has carried out a number of lopsided prisoner deals. In January, it exchanged hundreds of Arab prisoners for the remains of three soldiers and a captured businessman.
In Wednesday's fighting in Gaza City, five Palestinians were killed and more than 60 others, mostly civilians, were wounded. Dozens of armored vehicles patrolled deserted streets, snipers took up positions on rooftops and Apache helicopters hovered overhead, firing occasional bursts of gunfire.
The three-day operation in Gaza City was the largest since September 1996, when Israel sent hundreds of tanks and other vehicles to put down riots that erupted after Israel opened a tunnel near holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. At least 73 people were killed on both sides in those clashes, which lasted more than a week in the West Bank and Gaza.
Saed Abdullah, a 45-year-old father of six who lives near the site of Tuesday's explosion, said he and his children spent hours hiding under beds as bullets shattered windows and destroyed furniture.
Soldiers stormed the house, locking the family into a room for more than five hours, Abdullah said. Then they took him and two other neighbors and used them as ``human shields'' as they searched the neighborhood, he said. Using Palestinians as shields is illegal, according to Israeli Supreme Court rulings.
--------
Six Israeli Soldiers Killed By Bomb in Gaza Strip
7 Palestinians Dead And 120 Are Hurt In Day of Fighting
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A16450-2004May11?language=printer
JERUSALEM, May 11 -- Palestinian guerrillas detonated a bomb under an Israeli armored personnel carrier in the Gaza Strip early Tuesday, killing six soldiers in one of the deadliest attacks on Israeli troops in 18 months, Israeli army officials and Palestinian witnesses said.
The bombing, which occurred at 6:30 a.m., followed a night of running gun battles between dozens of Palestinian militants and Israeli troops, tanks and helicopters. Fighting continued throughout the day, and at least seven Palestinians were killed and 120 injured, according to Jumaa Saqqa, a spokesman for Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
The killing of the six soldiers marked the highest one-day death toll for the Israeli army since November 2002, when nine soldiers and three settlement security officers were killed in an ambush by Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron.
The radical groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad each asserted responsibility for the bombing. Islamic Jihad's statement said the device contained 110 pounds of explosives; an Israeli government official said the military estimated it to have been about 220 pounds.
An Israeli army spokesman said the personnel carrier was carrying explosives, which apparently magnified the intensity of a blast that tore the vehicle into small pieces of scrap metal. For several hours, fighting prevented Israeli soldiers from retrieving the remains of the vehicle's crew, witnesses said.
Palestinians paraded through several Gaza neighborhoods displaying body parts, and Palestinian television crews filmed men identified as members of Islamic Jihad holding aloft the head of an Israeli soldier in an empty rice bag. News services later quoted a militant leader as saying the remains would not be turned over until Israel halted raids into Gaza and opened talks on releasing Palestinian prisoners.
"The way they behaved with the bodies of our soldiers -- and they did it in front of the cameras -- proved to the world what we are saying: that we are dealing with barbarians," Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said in an interview.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to express condolences "for the very difficult situation faced by Israeli forces there today," according to Richard Boucher, a State Department spokesman.
"I think we're all very concerned, shocked by the reports we've seen out of Gaza," Boucher said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel scheduled a meeting of his security cabinet Tuesday night to discuss how to respond, his office said in a statement.
The killings appeared likely to intensify debate about Sharon's proposal to remove 7,500 Jewish settlers and thousands of troops from the Gaza Strip, which is populated by about 1.2 million Palestinians. Members of Sharon's Likud Party rejected the plan in a non-binding referendum nine days ago, but Sharon has vowed to pursue it.
Much of the Israeli opposition to Sharon's proposal comes from occupants of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank and their supporters. Others say that because the plan is not part of a negotiated peace agreement, it would be seen as rewarding Palestinian terrorism and encourage more fighting.
Ephraim Yaar, a pollster and political scientist at Tel Aviv University, said Tuesday's killings "may convince the government, particularly Sharon, to be more decisive about his plan and say that they are going to implement it" by ignoring the referendum and taking the plan directly to Sharon's cabinet or to Israel's parliament. "The effect may be to speed the plan up or make the Israeli government more resolved," Yaar said.
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator with Israel, said Sharon's disengagement plan was partly to blame for Tuesday's bloodshed.
"If you don't have a negotiating process, you have a conflict process and a military escalation process," he said, "and what we are seeing today in Gaza is very dangerous, because it's a major escalation that's going to lead to more of the same."
Erekat said the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, received a letter Tuesday from President Bush urging him to back Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan and reiterating that the United States favored a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and implementation of the peace plan known as the "road map."
The letter also said that "the objective of the peace process was to end the occupation that began in 1967," Erekat said, adding that it stated that the United States would not prejudice final status issues. Bush also asked Qureia to strengthen the Palestinian Authority's security agencies. "It was a good letter," Erekat said.
The fighting in Gaza began shortly after midnight when undercover Israeli soldiers in unmarked cars entered the southern Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun, according to an Israeli army spokesman and Palestinian witnesses. The army spokesman said the move preceded an operation to locate and destroy weapons workshops.
Palestinian residents and security sources said that Palestinian soldiers and militants identified the occupants of the cars as Israelis, at which point the Israeli soldiers called in helicopters and tanks.
The Israeli military said an attack helicopter fired a missile at a group of men who were spotted trying to bury a bomb along the side of a road. Palestinian witnesses said that five missiles were fired at several groups, killing four people and wounding dozens.
Sources in the Palestinian security services and militant groups said the bombing of the armored personnel carrier reflected a new tactic being employed by the guerrillas: attacking Israeli forces and planting bombs while a firefight is underway, then trying to lure the Israelis to the area where the bombs are buried.
Special correspondent Islam Abdulkarim in Gaza City contributed to this report.
-------- latin america
Cuba retaliates with clampdown on dollar
By Andrew Gumbel
12 May 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=520366
Cuba suspended abruptly the sale of all but a handful of essential goods at hard currency stores yesterday in apparent retaliation for tighter restrictions on travel and currency transfers, announced by President Bush last week in an overt effort to prise Fidel Castro from power.
Warning of "days of work and sacrifice" ahead, the Cuban government announced that only food, personal hygiene and cleaning products would be sold in dollar-denominated stores until further notice. It also warned of price increases for petrol and other consumer goods. Shortly before the rules took effect, Cubans jammed into late-night stores on Monday night to buy cooking oil, canned food, pasta, soap and toilet paper.
A government statement blamed the measures squarely on the US, saying that President Bush's new restrictions were a major squeeze on hard currency coming into the country.
"The brutality of the measures adopted by the government of the United States will unfortunately increase the prices in the shops that offer goods in dollars and at gasoline stations," the statement said.
"The brutal and cruel measures, on top of a strict blockade of 45 years ... are directly aimed at strangling our development and reducing to a minimum hard currency resources vital to cover food needs and medical, educational and other essential services that our population needs."
This tough rhetoric was greeted sceptically by many observers, who sawPresident Bush's new restrictions and the Castro government's reaction to them as being more about election-year politics in Florida - home to the greatest concentration of Cuban exiles in the US - than it was about economic realities or the desire for immediate "regime change" on the island.
Based on the 500-page recommendations of a specially convened Cuba commission, President Bush announced last Thursday that the $1,200 that Cuban Americans were allowed to send home each year would be restricted to immediate relatives. Members of the Cuban Communist Party - some 800,000 people - would not be eligible to receive the money.
President Bush also decided that Cuban Americans would be allowed to travel home every three years instead of every year, and limited the amount that relatives could carry into Cuba to $50 a day from $164.
He said these moves were designed specifically to end the "tyranny" of the Castro regime.
What was remarkable about them, however, is that they were far less stringent than originally envisioned. The White House had considered halving or even abolishing the $1,200 currency transfer figure but changed its mind after moderate Cuban exile groups in Florida, who maintain strong ties to family members back home, expressed strong opposition.
The remittances add up to around $800m a year - a crucial lifeline in a country where many essential goods are available only in hard currency stores.
One likely motivation for the new restrictions on the Cuban side was to stir up anti-Bush sentiment in Florida and entice John Kerry, his Democratic challenger, to pledge a more moderate stance - something he has yet to do.
Even in watered-down form, the Bush measures went down badly with the younger generation of Cubans in Florida. Andres Gomez, the head of a moderate exile group called the Antonio Maceo Brigade, told The Miami Herald: "Some 140,000 Cuban exiles visited the island last year; 100,000 of those lived in south Florida. This will mean many of those who can't travel to the island will vote against Bush, and for a candidate who allows travel to Cuba.''
-------- mideast
CHINA INCREASES AID TO SYRIAN MISSILES
Wed, 12 May 2004
[MENL]
http://menewsline.com/stories/2004/may/05_13_1.html
LONDON -- China has increased assistance to Syria's medium-range missile program.
Western diplomatic sources said Beijing has sent several delegations and technicians to accelerate Syria's program for extended-range Scud missiles. The sources said the increased aid was first detected in late 2003 in what they termed a major development.
"The Chinese effort is meant to provide Syria with technical assistance that it has not been able to receive from other countries," a diplomatic source said. "The focus is to extend the Scud from short-range to medium- and even intermediate-range."
The sources said the Chinese assistance appears to be replacing that of North Korea, which was the prime supplier to and developer of Syria's missile programs. Pyongyang supplied and helped develop the Scud C and Scud D programs.
----
Bush hits Syria with economic sanctions
May 12, 2004
By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040511-111734-4326r.htm
President Bush yesterday imposed strict economic sanctions on Syria, stepping up pressure on a dictatorship that is already on the shortlist of states considered prime supporters of terrorists.
The measures ban all U.S. exports to Syria other than materials needed "for specific emergencies" and prohibit any Syrian aircraft from taking off or landing in the United States.
The presidential directive also freezes the assets of Syrian nationals "involved in terrorism, [weapons of mass destruction], the occupation of Lebanon, and terrorist activities in Iraq."
The Commercial Bank of Syria also will be banned from transactions with U.S. banks.
In the directive, Mr. Bush wrote that the sanctions are necessary because of Damascus' support of terrorism, the continuing occupation of Lebanon, Syria's possession of weapons of mass destruction, and its role in exporting fighters to attack U.S. forces in Iraq.
Rep. Eliot L. Engel, New York Democrat and co-author of the Syria Accountability Act, said the sanctions will send "a loud and clear message to the leaders of Syria that we will no longer turn a blind eye to their transgressions."
"Terrorists are entering Iraq through Syria to kill American soldiers, thousands of Syrian troops are still occupying Lebanon, the Syrian arsenal of [weapons of mass destruction] is expanding, and Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups continue to operate in Damascus," Mr. Engel said. "The ball is now in Damascus' court."
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who helped write the bill, said the full implementation of the sanctions that are overwhelmingly approved by Congress "marks a significant, landmark change in U.S. policy toward Syria."
"For decades, the Syrian regime has enjoyed relatively normal relations with the U.S., yet it has repeatedly scoffed at the U.S. requests to cease its support for terrorism," Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen said, accusing Syria of supporting attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq.
"This cannot and will not be tolerated," she said.
The sanctions go beyond measures laid out in the Syrian Accountability Act, which Mr. Bush signed in December, all but eliminating the $300 million in annual trade between the United States and Syria.
The president was required to choose two sanctions from a list of six. Mr. Bush declined to select the harshest sanction, which would have barred all U.S. firms from commerce with Syria.
Among the few items other than emergency medical supplies and food that are permitted to Syria are airplane parts to keep civilian aircraft safe and communications equipment to allow its citizens to have contact with the outside world - and pro-American news.
The White House announced the sanctions yesterday afternoon without additional comment, one of the president's few public acts in the war on terrorism that lacked fanfare.
A Democratic spokesman said yesterday that supporters of the bill in Congress were irked that "it took so long" for Mr. Bush to impose the sanctions.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry agreed, saying Mr. Bush "had previously acknowledged that Syria has failed to adequately police its border with Iraq, may be developing weapons of mass destruction and provides support to terrorist groups."
"Given all these troubling facts, it is unfortunate that President Bush failed to impose sanctions until now," the Massachusetts senator said.
--------
President Imposes Sanctions on Syria
Nation Accused of Backing Terrorism
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19087-2004May11.html
Under pressure from Congress, President Bush slapped sanctions on Syria yesterday for supporting terrorism and interfering with U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq.
The White House said the sanctions include banning U.S. exports to Syria except for food and medicine, prohibiting Syrian aircraft from flying to and from the United States, freezing certain Syrian assets and cutting off relations with a Syrian bank because of money laundering concerns.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has wavered about how tough its policy should be toward Syria. Some administration officials have been deeply suspicious of Damascus, believing its support of terrorism and development of weapons of mass destruction make it a potential candidate for the "axis of evil" that Bush had said consisted of North Korea, Iran and the former government of Iraq. But others have argued that Syria has been helpful in the war on terrorism, specifically in providing intelligence that helped thwart at least one potential attack.
Indeed, the Bush administration had been unenthusiastic about the Syrian Accountability Act, which was approved five months ago by huge margins in the House and the Senate, and had repeatedly delayed implementing it for fear of adding to tensions in the Middle East. But, facing a deadline next month for choosing from a menu of sanctions, the president finally acted.
"Despite many months of diplomatic efforts to convince the Government of Syria to change its behavior, Syria has not taken significant, concrete steps to address the full range of U.S. concerns," Bush said in a message to Congress. He declared a "national emergency" to address the "unusual and extraordinary threat" posed by Syria.
The United States rarely imposes economic sanctions on other countries because they rile the business community, which yesterday expressed dismay at the administration's actions. The Bush administration last levied sanctions almost a year ago, on Burma.
The practical effect of the new sanctions is mostly symbolic. Diplomatic relations will not be cut, no Syrian flights fly to the United States, and Bush said in his message to Congress that he will waive the sanctions for products such as telecommunications equipment and aircraft parts, in addition to the exemptions for food and medicine.
Thomas Crocker, a partner at Alston & Bird and a sanctions specialist, said the permitted products constitute a large portion of the $200 million in exports from the United States to Syria. Bush justified the continued sale of telecommunications equipment -- such as cellular phones -- as an effort "to promote the free flow of information."
Italy, Germany and France are Syria's biggest trading partners, Crocker said.
Syrian exports to the United States totaled nearly $260 million last year, much of it fuel oil and other petroleum products. While exports from Syria are not barred, U.S. companies may find it difficult to continue working there under the sanctions.
In Damascus, Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Naji Otari told reporters that the sanctions are "unjust and unjustified," but he said "these sanctions will not have any effect on Syria." He called on Washington to "reverse its decision and not provoke problems between the two countries."
Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), one of the sponsors of the sanctions law, said the president's action "was a long time coming, but it is better late than never." But, he said, "to me, it's only the beginning," adding that Syria will face even tougher sanctions if its behavior does not change.
In a statement, Bush echoed that sentiment. "The Syrian government must understand that its conduct alone will determine the duration of the sanctions, and the extent to which additional sanctions may be imposed should the Syrian government fail to adopt a more constructive approach to relations with its neighbors, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism," he said.
Bush, who signed an executive order imposing the sanctions, accused Syria of "supporting terrorism, continuing its occupation of Lebanon, pursuing weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, and undermining United States and international efforts with respect to the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq."
Last year, U.S. immigration authorities, with the approval of then-acting Attorney General Larry Thompson, authorized the expedited deportation to Syria of Maher Arar, whom they accused of having links with al Qaeda. Arar said that for the 10 months he was in prison, he was beaten, tortured and kept in a grave before he was freed.
A year ago, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell traveled to Damascus and warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that Congress might force the administration's hand if Syria did not take demonstrative steps to act against terrorism and thwart insurgents crossing the Syrian border to fight U.S. troops in Iraq.
U.S. officials have been disappointed with Assad's response. During Powell's visit, Assad said he would close the Damascus offices of extremist Palestinian groups, but U.S. officials said the groups still plot attacks on Israel from Syria.
--------
Bush Imposes Sanctions on Syria, Citing Ties to Terrorism
May 12, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/politics/12syri.html
WASHINGTON, May 11 - After months of debate within his administration, President Bush imposed economic sanctions against Syria on Tuesday, charging that it has failed to take action against terrorist groups fighting Israel and halt the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.
Mr. Bush issued an executive order banning virtually all American exports, except for food and medicine, and barring flights between Syria and the United States, except during emergencies. The president also told the Treasury Department to freeze the assets of Syrians with known ties to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, the occupation of Lebanon or terrorist activities in Iraq.
In the near term, the action is largely symbolic, since trade with Syria, at about $300 million a year, is insubstantial and Syrian airlines do not fly to the United States. Moreover, the trade ban does not preclude investment, though American firms like ConocoPhillips and Chevron, which currently do business in Syria, will be required to turn to foreign suppliers to service their operations there, a State Department spokesman said.
The punitive steps had been anxiously sought by some members of Congress, which, in 2003, passed the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. The act requires the president to select from a menu of penalties in punishing Syria. In his action on Wednesday, Mr. Bush went beyond the list's requirements.
Representative Eliot L. Engel, a New York Democrat who was a co-author of the legislation, said Syria has been playing an increasingly destructive role in the Middle East and has ignored American appeals to crack down on militant groups like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and to disengage from occupied Lebanon.
"The United States government is sending a loud and clear message to the leaders of Syria that we will no longer turn a blind eye to their transgressions," said Mr. Engel. "The ball is now in Damascus's court."
The United States has long had strained relations with Syria, which Washington designated a state sponsor of terrorism in 1979. Ties improved briefly, in 1990, when Damascus joined the American-led coalition against Saddam Hussein and took part in the Middle East peace conference in Madrid the following year.
Subsequent talks aiming at establishing peace with Israel foundered and ultimately broke down in 2000, months before President Hafez al-Assad died. His son and successor, Bashar al-Assad, is widely seen as constrained by his father's old advisers.
Administration officials were divided over the sanctions, with some voicing concerns that they would further antagonize Arabs alarmed by the American handling of Iraqi prisoners or the administration's support for ceding parts of the West Bank to Israel.
Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the president apparently delayed his announcement until after Arab leaders had set the terms of debate for their next summit talks, this month in Tunisia.
Ammar Arsan, a spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in Washington, said his country was already receiving strong support within the Arab League. He predicted that the measures would have "no impact on our economic situation," given growing trade ties with investors from Europe and elsewhere.
Mr. Arsan also said his government would never compromise its political independence because of economic pressure from Washington.
"The United States needs to review its policy toward the Middle East and recognize that relations between nations are based on mutual respect, and not sanctions or an escalation of tensions in the relationship," he said.
In deciding on sanctions, Mr. Bush went beyond the lawmakers' list to order American financial institutions to cut any ties with the Commercial Bank of Syria, citing money laundering concerns. The president explicitly barred the export of military equipment or dual-use items like chemicals, nuclear technology and propulsion equipment, and he threatened to take other measures if Syria did not "take serious and concrete steps" to change its behavior.
Among other things, Mr. Bush cited the need for Syria to "cooperate fully with the international community in promoting the stabilization and reconstruction of Iraq."
The White House charged that Syria provided military support to Iraq's president, Saddam Hussein, on the eve of the American invasion last year and said that even with Syria's having taken some steps to control its border, the country remains a transit point for foreign fighters infiltrating Iraq. It also accused Syria of failing to transfer $200 million in frozen Iraqi assets to a development fund for Iraq, as required by a United Nations resolution.
Edward P. Djerejian, a former ambassador to Syria who is now a Middle East expert at Rice University, said the president had intentionally left open the possibility of additional sanctions - including targeting the energy sector - as a prod for better compliance. He predicted that Tuesday's announcement would revive a debate in Damascus between the conservative "old guard" and would-be reformers who want to ease confrontation with Washington.
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican who was an original sponsor of the Syria Accountability Act, expressed satisfaction with the president's announcement.
"He went beyond what was asked of him," she said.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan's military shows no intention of letting slip its grip on power
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
May 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040512084929.4nb4vk32.html
Pakistan's deportation of exiled opposition figure Shahbaz Sharif and alleged beatings of his supporters indicates the army's intention to perpetuate its hold on civil society, analysts said Wednesday.
Critics went even further, describing the crackdown as a blatant attack on democracy and proof that the military-backed government would not tolerate opposition of any kind.
Shahbaz, whose brother Nawaz was deposed as prime minister by army chief-turned-president Pervez Musharraf in a bloodless coup in October 1999, flew into Lahore Monday after more than three years in forced exile, only to be deported immediately by the Musharraf government.
More than 1,000 supporters of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) were rounded up by police ahead of Shahbaz' return and scores were allegedly beaten as they tried to march to the airport to welcome him.
Shahbaz' deportation to Jeddah Monday was executed despite a supreme court ruling last month that he was entitled to return and live in Pakistan.
"The deportation of Shahbaz Sharif and the way his party was handled show that the army is willing to pay any price to eliminate any perceived threat to its control," political commentator Mohammad Afzal Niazi told AFP.
"No government in a country where there is rule of law could have deported Shahbaz Sharif after the Supreme Court ruling."
Shahbaz, Nawaz, their parents, wives and children were banished to Saudi Arabia in December 2000 under a deal brokered by the Saudi royal family which helped free Nawaz from jail on tax evasion and treason convictions.
The Musharraf government says the Sharif family agreed to stay away from Pakistan until 2010, but the Sharifs dispute this condition and say there was never any signed agreement.
The former first family head one of Pakistan's largest and most steadfastly anti-Musharraf opposition parties, the PML-N.
Former political science professor Hasan Askari told AFP that although a civilian, Zafarullah Jamali, held the post of prime minister and headed an elected, civilian parliament, "the military is holding the high card and taking key policy decisions."
"The deportation of Shahbaz Sharif was handled primarily by the military and intelligence authorities, with the civilian side in toe," Askari said.
Analysts point to the fact that it is the army that continues to wield real power through the presence of its chief, General Musharraf, in the presidency - despite announcing late April that it would reduce its 550,000-strong force by 50,000 to save several million dollars.
Such a scaling back is no reflection of any downsizing of political power, they stress.
Musharraf is already hinting at backing down from a commitment last December to shed his uniform and become a civilian president by the end of this year.
In an interview with the BBC in April, the president refused to commit to quitting the military by his promised deadline.
"The president is commanding the system which is evident from the fact that with the exception of the cabinet meetings, almost all other high-powered meetings and briefings are presided over by the president," Askari said.
In April, the military won a major coup when the parliament approved a controversial military-civilian body, the National Security Council, which gives it an officially recognised role in politics.
Four defence forces chiefs sit alongside civilian leaders on the 13-seat council, which will help shape policy on key security issues.
"The creation of National Security Council has been a long-standing desire of the generals to rewrite the civil-military equation on their terms," opposition Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) senator Farhatullah Babar told AFP.
Pakistan has been ruled by generals for more than half of its 57 year history.
But under Musharraf, serving and ex-military personnel hold more civilian positions than at any other civilian or military-ruled period.
"The induction of some 1,160 retired and serving military personnel in key civilian positions indicates the military's desire to perpetuate their hold on the civil society," Babar said.
-------- prisoners of war
Torture jail chief shifts blame
By Jeffrey Smith, Josh White
May 12, 2004
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/12/1084289747997.html
Washington - The woman in charge of the Iraqi prison where detainees were abused said she resisted handing control to military intelligence but was overruled by superiors.
Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski said the men at the heart of the command decisions in the prison abuse scandal were the commander of ground forces in Iraq, Lieutenant-General Ricardo Sanchez, and the new US prison chief, Major-General Geoffrey Miller.
Brigadier-General Karpinski's account is in the classified annex to the US Army's investigation of abuse at the Abu Ghraib jail and was described by a Government official to The Washington Post and confirmed by her lawyer.
Brigadier-General Karpinski also said she resisted a decision to permit lethal force as a first step in keeping order at the jail.
Both General Sanchez and General Miller dispute portions of her account of what happened.
Brigadier-General Karpinski told investigators that in September 2003, General Miller told her he wanted to make the Abu Ghraib jail like the US prison camp for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which he was then running.
The Post quoted Brigadier-General Karpinski as saying General Miller wanted to "Gitmo-ise" Abu Ghraib - (critics say his concept involves aggressive interrogation techniques).
But General Miller said through a spokesman that he could not recall using the term "Gitmo-ise".
General Miller was sent to Iraq by Pentagon officials frustrated by the meagre intelligence coming from Iraqi prisoners.
According to Brigadier-General Karpinski, it was General Sanchez who decided in November 2003 to permit guards at Abu Ghraib to use lethal force at the outset of a disturbance.
But General Sanchez disputed Brigadier-General Karpinski's account of their meeting.
Also, according to Brigadier-General Karpinski, she argued with General Miller about surrendering authority to military intelligence, but he insisted she do so. He has denied her version of that meeting.
----
The Guinea Pigs
By Niall O'Dowd,
May 12, 2004
Irish Abroad
http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irishinamerica/editperiscope/theguinea.asp
WHEN John McGuffin wrote his seminal book The Guinea Pigs in 1974 about torture of inmates in Northern Ireland during and after internment it was met with widespread shock and disbelief, especially in Britain where the reputation of the armed forces was at an all-time high.
McGuffin stated in clear, cold prose just exactly what some of the officers and gentlemen of the British Army were up to behind closed doors, interrogating prisoners who had not even been charged and were being held without bail.
The book, and an Amnesty International report on torture of inmates in Northern Ireland, had an appreciable effect on the subsequent events in the North as it became clear that, far from being impartial peacekeepers, elements of the British Army were busy torturing and maiming one side only, the Nationalists. Ironically McGuffin, who was also interned and abused, was a Protestant.
It was hard not to think back to those days last week when both American and British troops in Iraq were once more coming under the spotlight, accused of committing torture and mistreatment of enemy prisoners - again, none of them found guilty of anything.
It did, however, shock the senses to see who was trotted out to speak on behalf on the British side. It was none other than General Sir Michael Jackson, the highest ranking British Army officer.
Surely not the same Michael Jackson who a lifetime ago was allegedly complicit in some of the worst activities of his beloved Parachute Regiment in Northern Ireland, including involvement in the killings of innocent civilians in Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1971? The very same, it appears. Having Michael Jackson vouch for your army is like having Donald Trump complain about over exposure.
There are no limits on how far a man like Jackson will go to cover-up, obfuscate and otherwise try to denigrate such accusations. "Macho Jacko," a nickname he loves, has called the alleged torture acts "shameful." Coming from him that might be meant as a compliment.
The horrific photos on the American side were deeply disturbing. After all, wasn't it precisely to stop such behavior by Saddam Hussein and his ilk that we went to war in the first place? The morality of the war is already being deeply questioned. This can only add fuel to the fires.
There is no question that Iraq is a deeply dangerous place. Suicide bombers prowl, local populations help set up ambushes and there is danger lurking around every street corner.
However, allegations of torture and mistreatment of prisoners will sap morale and turn Americans against the war faster than any other single occurrence.
In Northern Ireland the British Army and Sir Michael never recovered from the proven allegations of torture against defenseless inmates. In Iraq the form of psychological torture, such as posed naked shots with grinning female soldiers, are designed to set the notoriously conservative Arab cultures aflame. There could hardly be a worse development for Americans.
To read much of the mainstream media one could get the impression that Iraq is somewhat like a video game war. In a culture so accustomed to violence, either the real kind or in movies, and the gee whiz technology of video games, "Shock and Awe" in Iraq hardly ever registers here as being about humans killing other humans, sometimes very brutally.
Last week in Fallujah, at least, the reality of killing hundreds of civilians in order to save them hit home, and the U.S. negotiated a middle path which if it works will allow both sides to claim a victory without having dead bodies to prove it.
Such a middle ground could have worked very successfully in Northern Ireland at the beginning of the Troubles. For the British at least there must be a strong lesson there.
--------
Two More Americans Charged in Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners
May 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Prisoner-Abuse.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two more American soldiers have been ordered to stand trial in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal although no date for the courts-martial was set, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt announced Wednesday.
Sgt. Javal Davis, 26, of Maryland and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. ``Chip'' Frederick II of Buckingham, Va., were ordered to undergo a general court-martial, Kimmitt said. He said the trial date and venue had not been set.
Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits, of Hyndman, Pa., goes on trial May 19 before a special court-martial, which cannot levy as severe a sentence as a general court-martial.
Davis has been charged with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, rendering false official statements and assault.
Frederick has been charged with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for negligibly failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, and wrongfully committing an indecent act by watching detainees commit a sexual act.
Both Davis and Frederick are assigned to the 372nd Military Police Company.
An Army report quoted testimony from a witness who said he saw Davis hit prisoners in a pile. According to the same report, he told Army investigators he was ``made to do various things that I would question morally.''
He also told investigators that military intelligence personnel appeared to approve of the abuse. ``We were told they had different rules,'' he told investigators, according to the report.
Before deployment in February 2003, Frederick, 37, was a corrections officer at Buckingham Correctional Center, a state prison in rural Dillwyn, in south-central Virginia. His wife, Martha, also works there.
The Army report quotes testimony from a witness who said he saw Frederick hit prisoners stacked in a pile and hit a prisoner who posed no threat. The witness also reportedly testified he observed Frederick watching two inmates perform a sexual act.
In Frederick's written accounts of conditions at Abu Ghraib that he sent to his family, he said his job was to prepare prisoners for interrogation and that he was told, ``This is how military intelligence wants it done.'' He said military intelligence officers ``encouraged us and told us, 'Great job.'''
Frederick wrote that when he questioned the acting battalion commander about harsh inmate conditions, he was told ``to do as he says.''
--------
An Afghan Gives His Own Account of U.S. Abuse
May 12, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/international/asia/12AFGH.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
KABUL, Afghanistan, Wednesday, May 12 - A former Afghan police colonel gave a graphic account in an interview this week of being subjected to beating, kicking, sleep deprivation, taunts and sexual abuse during about 40 days he spent in American custody in Afghanistan last summer. He also said he had been repeatedly photographed, often while naked.
"I swear to God, those photos shown on television of the prison in Iraq - those things happened to me as well," the former officer, Sayed Nabi Siddiqui, 47, said in the interview on Sunday at his home in the village of Sheikho, on the edge of the eastern town of Gardez.
His account could not be independently verified, but members of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission accompanied a reporter during the interview and said his story matched the one given to them last fall, shortly after his release and long before the abuse at the Abu Ghraib near Baghdad came to light.
The commission, which was set up by the transitional government of President Hamid Karzai in 2002 and receives money from the United States Congress and other foreign donors, has in recent months received 44 complaints against various actions by American forces.
Those include several on the abuse of detainees who have alleged rough and degrading treatment, including being stripped naked and doused with cold water, even before the pictures of prisoner abuse emerged in Iraq. Afghan military and police officials say they have heard similar stories from detainees and their families.
After queries to the Pentagon about Mr. Siddiqui's case, the United States embassy in Kabul issued a statement early Wednesday, saying, "The U.S. military has launched an immediate investigation."
It quoted the American ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, as saying, "To the best of our knowledge this is the first time anyone in the military chain of command or the United States Embassy has heard of this alleged mistreatment."
But a member of the human rights commission said members had mentioned details of Mr. Siddiqui's case, apparently the first complaint of sexual abuse from a detainee in Afghanistan, to American military officials here last year.
Mr. Siddiqui says that he was wrongly detained on July 15 after he reported police corruption and that someone then accused him of being a member of the Taliban.
He showed a Defense Department letter detailing his stay, as detainee BT676, in a jail at the Bagram air base outside Kabul from Aug. 13 to 20, 2003, and his release after it was decided that he posed "no threat to the U.S. Armed Forces or its interest in Afghanistan."
Mr. Siddiqui said he had also been held for 22 days at the American firebase at Gardez, where United States infantry and Special Forces are based, and where he said the worst abuses occurred. He then spent 12 days at the Kandahar air base in southern Afghanistan, and finally about a week in Bagram, he said.
He described being humiliated repeatedly during his detention in all three places.
"They were taunting me and laughing and asking very rude questions, like which animal did I like having sex with, and which animal do you want us to bring in for you to have sex with," he said of his time in Gardez.
"They were mimicking the sounds of a sheep, a cow and a donkey," he said, "and asking which one I would like to have sex with. They kept insisting, and they were kicking me so much that eventually I said a cow."
"And they made insults about our women," he added. He said the American interrogator, through a translator, had taunted him, asking: "Do you know that your wife and daughter are prostitutes now?"
"The Americans were asking this and the translators were translating, and they were all laughing," he said. "And I was in my full police uniform with insignia showing my rank."
More than once, he said, soldiers inserted their fingers into his anus. He said one had touched his penis and asked, "Why is this unhappy?"
"There was a translator there," Mr. Siddiqui went on, "and I said, `Maybe because I am away from home.' "
"Every time, they were laughing and putting their fingers in my anus and throwing different colors of beams of light in my eyes, and they were putting their feet on my neck," he said. He knelt and pressed his head to the floor to show how the soldiers had put their boots on his neck.
Lt. Gen. David Barno, the commander of United States forces in Afghanistan since last October, said in an interview on Tuesday that he had not heard of the allegations but that "I take those accounts very seriously."
"There is some potentially criminal behavior in there," he said.
The main detention center is at the Bagram air base. It is not clear who was in charge of the detainees at the remote bases when Mr. Siddiqui was in custody. The United States infantry and Special Forces have used the Gardez firebase, but General Barno said the officials responsible in Gardez at that time could have been "other than military," a term often used here to refer to the C.I.A.
He also acknowledged that there had been "challenges or problems" in some of the more remote bases in Afghanistan and that since he had taken over command there had been about seven investigations into abuse of detainees.
"One of those had some substance to it," he said, without elaborating. "We continue to assess the facts and take corrective action."
Mr. Siddiqui was not interviewed during his detention by the International Committee of the Red Cross, whose officials visit Bagram every two weeks but do not visit the remote bases.
But Rafiullah Bedar, head of the Gardez office of the human rights commission, and other members of his office said they knew Mr. Siddiqui as a reputable man and believed his story.
Mohammad Farid Hamidi, one of the commission's board members, said in an interview on Tuesday that members of his group had at least two meetings late last year with United States military officials here and raised a number of complaints about treatment of detainees and civilians, including Mr. Siddiqui's case.
He said that middle-level military officials had been at the meeting but that he did not know who they were.
Requests for the United States military to appoint a liaison officer to deal with human rights issues have not been answered, Mr. Hamidi said. The commission has also requested access to Bagram and other bases, he said.
But General Barno ruled that out on Tuesday, saying the Red Cross served as an effective "outside set of eyes" that represented the interests of the detainees.
Former prisoners have complained of harsh interrogation techniques and rough, sometimes humiliating treatment at the hands of their American guards and interrogators since the United States went to war in Afghanistan in October 2001.
But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and during the prelude to the American invasion of Iraq, those complaints did not receive high priority here, even from the Afghan government, which continues to face a violent insurgency in parts of the country.
The complaints peaked around December 2002, when two men died in custody within a week of each other at Bagram. More than a year later, results of an investigation of those deaths by the Army's Criminal Investigation Department have not been disclosed.
Since those deaths, General Barno said that there were "a number of very significant changes made" at Bargram and that there had been no complaints of detainee abuse.
United Nations and other foreign officials in Kabul concur that they have not received fresh reports of severe physical abuse at Bagram. But complaints of general ill treatment of prisoners there and elsewhere in Afghanistan continue to emerge.
Ahmad Shah Mirdad, head of monitoring and the investigation unit of the human rights commission, said 11 of the 44 complaints the group had received were about United States bombing of civilians and 33 complaints were of beatings, detention of innocent people, damage to houses, injuries and disrespect of Afghan cultural and religious customs during raids.
Families have also complained that they still have no news of at least six people in American detention three to four months after their arrest.
Mr. Siddiqui said he was stripped naked and photographed in each of the three places he was held. Sometimes, as in Bagram, it appeared to be part of a detailed identification procedure.
There he was photographed full length, naked, from the front, back and two sides, he said. Something was inserted into his rectum during that procedure, he said, but he does not know what it was or why it was done. "I was feeling very bad," he said.
General Barno said that this may have been to search for hidden items, but that the practice of strip searches and fully naked identification photographs was being reviewed and changed. "We're concerned as well about the cultural impact of doing that," he said.
Mr. Siddiqui said he had also been photographed while blindfolded and clothed and under interrogation. "I could hear the camera," he said. "But I could not see the flash."
On his arrival in Kandahar, he said, three or four detainees were taken to a room at a time and stripped.
"We were lying on our stomachs, and they put chains on our hands and feet and they were kicking us," he said. "And then they took photos of us, although we were naked." At that point he said he was not hooded or blindfolded.
"There was an old man of 70 or 80," he added. "They stripped him naked. He was so ashamed, he said, `It would be better if I kill myself.' I don't know why they stripped us and beat us. Maybe to influence us before the interrogation."
General Barno said that he would not allow such methods to soften up detainees before interrogation, and that photographs would be justified only for identification purposes.
"Some of that is absolutely unacceptable and criminal as well," he said of Mr. Siddiqui's account. "Those things that you describe would not be appropriate techniques."
For the 12 days that he was in Kandahar, Mr. Siddiqui said, the detainees were kept in wire cages, 20 to 30 in a cage, given very little food and water and made to use a bucket for a toilet in front of the other detainees, which he added was also deeply shaming.
American soldiers would throw stones and bottles at the detainees in the cages, he said. "It was like stoning monkeys at the zoo," he said. "They brought buckets of stones and were laughing as they did it."
Mr. Mirdad of the Afghan human rights commission said another man, whose name he did not divulge, had told the commission that he had been detained for six days in the eastern border province of Khost and complained of beating, sleep deprivation and having water poured on him.
Two United States military bases, Camp Salerno and Camp Chapman, are in Khost, where the Taliban insurgency remains strong.
Afghan officials, including Khan Mohammad, the chief Afghan military commander in southern Afghanistan, say they had received similar complaints from former detainees.
His deputy corps commander, Haji Granai, said a group of people from Helmand Province had recently complained about their detention at the Kandahar air base. "They stripped them and they beat them," he said.
"We told the Americans they should not do this, that we are Muslims and this is shameful for us," Mr. Granai said in a telephone interview last week from his base in Kandahar. "For the Americans, they don't care about being made naked, but Afghans do. The officers wrote it down and said they would tell their superiors."
The chief military public affairs officer in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Matthew Beevers, said he was hesitant to respond to such allegations.
"We treat these folks very humanely," he said in an interview. "They get three meals a day, food is appropriate to their cultural dietary requirements, they get exercise, and probably the best medical care in the country, and they are allowed freely to practice their religion."
"They are not stripped naked in Bagram," he added. "They wear clothes."
Haji Abdul Rahman, from the same village as Mr. Siddiqui, was released on Friday from Bagram after nearly five months of detention. He said he had not been mistreated but complained bitterly about the circumstances of his arrest, during a nighttime raid, when he said his home had been damaged and money stolen.
The Americans took his family documents and have not returned them. His complaints are similar to dozens of others in the Gardez area, the human rights commission says.
Hundreds of Afghans suspected of belonging to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other insurgent groups are still being detained in Afghanistan. Last week there were 298 people held at the main detention center in Bagram alone, Colonel Beevers said.
American forces hold detainees and conduct interrogations in eight to 10 other sites around the country, where people are kept for days or even weeks before being released or transferred to Bagram. General Barno said he was refining procedures to shorten the length of time detainees are kept in remote facilities.
People have also been detained for months at a time in the C.I.A. building in the Ariana Hotel in central Kabul, according to a former detainee, and also interrogated at a compound in the city of Kandahar that used to belong to the Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
Red Cross officials say that they cannot discuss the detention center at Bagram, but that they deliver a report to the detention authorities at the end of each visit and follow it up with a written report to the United States military superiors.
Two men died in Bagram in December 2002, and American pathologists classified those deaths as homicides "caused by blunt force injuries to the lower extremities." A third man died while being interrogated in June 2003 at a United States Special Forces firebase in the eastern province of Kunar.
In a letter to the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on May 3, Human Rights Watch asked for the release of the results of the investigation of the Bagram deaths and said it had received reports "that criminal prosecutions have been foregone in lieu of quiet disciplinary action" in the case.
The United States military here refuses to comment on the investigation, saying it is continuing.
-------- spies
THE PENTAGON
An Overseer of Intelligence Efforts at the Defense Department
May 12, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/politics/12cambone.html
WASHINGTON, May 11 - Stephen Cambone may have more influence over intelligence matters at the Pentagon than anyone who has previously tried to oversee that enterprise, so his words carry some weight.
In bureaucratic rank alone, Mr. Cambone stands a full notch higher than any predecessor, as under secretary of defense for intelligence, a post created by Congress only last year. And he is widely understood to be Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's most trusted troubleshooter.
It is no surprise, then, that Mr. Cambone has irritated intelligence agencies and the uniformed military services, where officials have expressed guarded resentment at what they regard as interference. "He doesn't have a lot of friends within that five-sided building," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, which has asked Mr. Cambone to appear at a closed session on Thursday.
On Tuesday, as he jousted before the Senate Armed Services Committee with an Army general over the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, some of those strains were displayed. It was he, Mr. Cambone acknowledged, who gave high-level impetus to an overhaul of interrogation procedures at prisons in Iraq not long before the abuses took place.
But Mr. Cambone took issue with the finding by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba of the Army that the changes - intended to integrate the military police who supervised the prison into the interrogation process overseen by military intelligence officers - were inappropriate.
The exchanges before the committee reflected tensions that have only sharpened since Mr. Cambone moved from another Pentagon job into the intelligence post a year ago, current and former Defense Department officials said. His relations with the uniformed military in particular have been difficult, they said, while top officials at intelligence agencies under Pentagon control have grumbled about his heavy hand.
Still, Ms. Harman called Mr. Cambone's task of integrating eight intelligence fiefs in the Pentagon one that would "inevitably involve breaking some china." And a former Pentagon official said complaints were usually followed by compliance.
"If he asks you to do something, people assume that either the secretary of defense is aware of it, or that if they don't do it, he will become aware of it," said the official, who asked to remain unidentified to avoid jeopardizing his relationship with Pentagon officials.
Twice a week, military officials say, Mr. Cambone convenes a conference call that includes the three-star generals and an admiral who run the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. In theory, each of those chiefs reports to Mr. Rumsfeld and George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence; in practice, officials say, Mr. Cambone has made himself their most active overseer.
Representative Porter J. Goss, the Florida Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, said he believed Mr. Cambone's role had been "more cerebral than muscular."
"The idea that there is something sinister and malevolent about saying we need to do better about interrogation is absurd," Mr. Goss said. "It doesn't mean we need to have abuses; it means doing it better and then moving it down the pipes to the people who need it to fight the war on terrorism."
A spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld, Larry DiRita, described Mr. Cambone as "somebody who thinks through issues in all their dimensions, and in whom the secretary has enormous confidence."
Possessing a doctorate in political science, Mr. Cambone, 52, began his career at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. He is a missile-defense specialist who worked in the Pentagon as director for strategic defense policy in the first Bush administration, and served as staff director under Mr. Rumsfeld on the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, a presidential panel that concluded in 1998 that the intelligence committee had significantly underestimated the threat of possible missile attacks with nuclear or biological payloads.
Under Mr. Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Mr. Cambone first served as principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy under Douglas J. Feith. He then took over the portfolio in charge of transforming the military, one of Mr. Rumsfeld's top priorities, and took on the intelligence post in March 2003.
Current and former Pentagon officials describe Mr. Cambone as a pragmatist whose relationship with Mr. Feith has been cool. But they said that his stewardship of Mr. Rumsfeld's transformation agenda created conflicts with the uniformed services. "There were questions as to whether people were working an agenda or looking at the world objectively," a former senior Pentagon official said.
Mr. Cambone does not have any operational authority over intelligence agencies. But he has had a hand in budget issues and in setting intelligence-gathering priorities for the Pentagon agencies.
"Rumsfeld clearly trusts him to execute his will," the former Pentagon official said of Mr. Cambone, "and I don't think there's a long list of people in that category."
-------- us
Leadership Failure Is Blamed in Abuse
Soldiers' Actions Weren't Ordered, General Says
By Bradley Graham and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19047-2004May11?language=printer
The Army general who investigated the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad said yesterday that he had found no evidence the misconduct was based on orders from high-ranking officers or involved a deliberate policy to stretch legal limits on extracting information from detainees.
Instead, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba attributed the scandal to the willful actions of a small group of soldiers and to "a failure of leadership" and supervision by brigade and lower-level commanders.
Similarly, the Army's top intelligence officer, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, sought to portray the abuse as the deeds of a handful of military police soldiers, with the peripheral involvement of U.S. military intelligence personnel in Iraq.
But several senators challenged the notion that low-ranking soldiers could have devised the particularly humiliating measures on their own, and Taguba reported that military guards probably were influenced by intelligence personnel. He also clashed openly with the Pentagon official responsible for intelligence, Stephen A. Cambone, over the propriety and significance of a decision last November to place Abu Ghraib prison under the command of a military intelligence officer.
Appearing before a Senate panel investigating the prison scandal, Taguba testified that the move made military guards subject to the tactical control of interrogators, thus violating Army doctrine and blurring lines of responsibility. Cambone defended the decision as consistent with military standards and helpful to improving the gathering of intelligence.
Revealing the interrogation methods allowed in Iraq, the Armed Services Committee released a single-page titled "Interrogation Rules of Engagement," listing two categories of measures. The first showed basic techniques approved for all detainees, while the second involved tougher measures that required approval by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Among the items on the second list were stress positions for as long as 45 minutes, sleep deprivation for as long as 72 hours and use of muzzled dogs.
Cambone said the Bush administration's policy has been to apply the Geneva Conventions to the interrogation and other treatment of detainees in Iraq. But several senators expressed doubts about whether some of the listed techniques conform with international limits.
Yesterday's hearing marked the first public appearance by Taguba since results of his investigation, along with photographs documenting abuse, burst into public view over the past two weeks. The disclosures have set off an international furor, undercutting U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq and prompting calls by Democratic lawmakers and some newspapers for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to resign.
Rumsfeld has said he will not step down to appease political critics but will leave if he deems he can no longer be effective. He picked up support yesterday from a Republican senator who had been withholding judgment.
"I think it would be unfair for him to take a fall if this is just a limited activity of a few people or of a prison poorly run," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) said.
Democrats voiced frustration at conflicting accounts from military and civilian officials, but for the most part, senators muted their differences and focused on trying to resolve one of the core questions of the scandal -- namely, whether the abuses were essentially the result of a few errant soldiers and private contractors, or reflected a misguided command structure and interrogation policies that neglected human rights.
Taguba, 53, a Philippine-born two-star general with a reputation as a straight shooter, drew praise from members of both parties for a thorough and objective inquiry into the mistreatment. Asked by Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), the committee chairman, to put "in simple words" how the abuses happened, Taguba said: "Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant."
Pressed by several senators on whether any order had been given to the guards "to soften up" the detainees prior to interrogation, Taguba said he discovered none, nor any "overall military or intelligence policy" to do so. But he said that the military guards who have been charged with committing the abuses were influenced by military intelligence personnel and private contractors responsible for interrogations.
"We did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition," said Taguba, who was deputy commander for military support operations in the Persian Gulf region when he led the investigation.
Taguba's 6,000-page report laid much of the leadership blame on Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, and Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, as well as on several subordinates.
Karpinski has received a letter of admonishment in connection with the abuse. She has not been charged, but seven military police soldiers under her command face courts-martial. Seven other officers and sergeants have been reprimanded. An investigation is underway into the role of military intelligence.
Taguba testified that friction arose between Karpinski and Pappas when Pappas was put in charge of Abu Ghraib last November. Taguba said the move, ordered by Sanchez, violated Army doctrine by making military police subordinate to interrogators.
Cambone defended the decision, saying it was intended to improve prison management and did not mean military police operations came under the control of military intelligence officers.
The dispute drew expressions of frustration from some senators.
"When we were talking about the abuses that are taking place with the military police and you have two entirely different kinds of viewpoints on this issue, how in the world are the military police that are supposed to implement going to be able to get it straight?" asked Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).
A further disagreement arose between Taguba and Cambone over the impact of a visit to Iraq last August by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then commander of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which holds terrorist suspects.
Cambone said he had encouraged the visit to enable Miller to advise on improving interrogation techniques in Iraq and speeding the flow through official channels of information gleaned. One of Miller's recommendations was that military police should facilitate the work of military interrogators.
Taguba said Army rules prohibit involving military police in setting conditions for interrogations. Cambone said Miller did not propose "setting conditions" but rather a more "cooperative attitude" between the guards and interrogators, which he said was appropriate.
Appearing with Cambone and Taguba, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, testified that Miller had given brigade commanders in Iraq a list of the coercive measures used in interrogations at Guantanamo Bay.
But Smith added that Miller had made clear to the commanders that "many" of the measures could not be used in Iraq because of the Geneva Conventions. Miller took over last month as commander of all detention facilities in Iraq.
Despite such testimony, several Democratic senators, including Jack Reed (R.I.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), voiced continued suspicions that a connection exists between Miller's trip and the spate of alleged abuses that occurred shortly afterward, between October and December.
Questioned about what he and other senior Pentagon officials knew of complaints by the International Committee of the Red Cross about prison conditions in Iraq, Cambone said Red Cross reports last fall did not reach the Pentagon but went directly to U.S. commanders in Iraq. He said he knew of concerns last year by L. Paul Bremer, the top U.S. administrator in Iraq, but said those had involved a desire to see faster processing and release of detainees. Bremer did not begin to voice concerns about specific conditions in the prisons until February, when the Red Cross submitted a summary report, Cambone said.
At a second hearing yesterday afternoon, Alexander, the Army's top intelligence officer, repeatedly sought to distance military intelligence from what he described as the reprehensible actions of a few poorly led military police soldiers. But several senators from both parties expressed skepticism.
"There's all kinds of evidence that military intelligence is involved here," Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said.
After the hearings, Warner announced on the Senate floor that an agreement had been reached with the Pentagon to allow senators access to those photographs and computerized video not yet made public. Warner said senators could view the photos today in a secure room in the Capitol. The photos will remain in Pentagon custody, he said.
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General Asserts She Was Overruled on Prison Moves
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19081-2004May11?language=printer
The U.S. general who was in charge of running prisons in Iraq told Army investigators earlier this year that she had resisted decisions by superior officers to hand over control of the prisons to military intelligence officials and to authorize the use of lethal force as a first step in keeping order -- command decisions that have come in for heavy criticism in the Iraq prison abuse scandal.
Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, head of the 800th Military Police Brigade, spoke of her resistance to the decisions in a detailed account of her tenure furnished to Army investigators. It places two of the highest-ranking Army officers now in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, at the heart of decision-making on both matters.
Karpinski has been formally admonished by the Army for her actions in Iraq. She said both men overruled her concerns about the military intelligence takeover and the use of deadly force.
Each man contests portions of her account, which appears in the classified annex to the Army's internal probe into the abuse and torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Her account was described by a U.S. government official to The Washington Post and confirmed by her attorney.
Karpinski's account surfaced on the same day another officer accused by the Army of wrongdoing in the scandal, Lt. Col. Jerry L. Phillabaum, released an official rebuttal stating that Abu Ghraib perpetually lacked key resources and personnel, and that the leadership above him was almost entirely unresponsive to his requests for help.
Phillabaum wrote that military police assigned to the prison were not properly trained in the Geneva Conventions or detention operations, but that training alone would not have prevented the abuses, which he said were committed by a few soldiers.
He also said that in one instance, a female guard under his command took "vigilante justice" -- using physical force against a male prisoner who she believed had assaulted Jessica Lynch, an Army private captured by Iraqi soldiers and later rescued by U.S. troops during the war.
Karpinski said the decision about transferring control of the prison to military intelligence officials was broached at a September 2003 meeting with Miller, who was then in charge of the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, known colloquially as "Gitmo." Miller had come to Iraq at the insistence of top political officials in the Pentagon, who were frustrated by the meager intelligence coming from prisoners. Two weeks ago, he was appointed to reform the U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.
Karpinski, the first female general officer to lead U.S. soldiers in combat, was a beleaguered field commander trying to cope with what she and others have described as constantly shifting assignments, poor living conditions and near-daily mortar attacks on Abu Ghraib.
Karpinski recalled that Miller told her he wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the prison -- a concept that critics have said opened the door to the use of aggressive interrogation techniques suited to loosening the tongues of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo, not Iraqis in a common jail. Miller said through a military spokesman yesterday that he does not recall using the word "Gitmo-ize."
Undersecretary of Defense Stephen A. Cambone said yesterday at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the concept has been misunderstood, and that all the Pentagon had in mind was "a cooperative attitude, team-building, call it what you will, between" intelligence interrogators and military police to produce more and better information.
According to Karpinski's account, the surrender of authority to military intelligence did not go over easily. "This prison is not mine to give you," she said she told Miller. He responded, according to Karpinski's account: "You own the MP's [military police] and you supply them." Karpinski replied that "it belongs to the CPA," or Coalition Provisional Authority.
Then, she told investigators, Miller said to her, "We will do this my way or the hard way," and asked that the room be cleared so the two were alone.
He then said, according to Karpinski's account: "I have permission to take any facility I want from General Sanchez. We are going to get Military Intelligence procedures in place in that facility because the Military Intelligence isn't getting the information from these detainees that they should. . . . We are going to send MP's in here who know how to handle interrogation."
Miller said through a military spokesman that he never made those comments, but he did not provide his own account of the meeting.
Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who conducted the Army's internal probe of the abuses from mid-January to the end of February, said in his report that the shift of responsibility, which was formalized on Nov. 19, 2003, produced "clear friction and a lack of effective communication" between commanders.
As a result, he said, "coordination occurred at the lowest possible levels with little oversight by commanders." Taguba also concluded that having a military intelligence officer in command of military police units in charge of running a prison was "not doctrinally sound due to the different missions and agenda assigned to each of these respective specialties."
With regard to the use of lethal force to keep order at Abu Ghraib, the International Committee of the Red Cross, in a private February 2004 report given to Sanchez, said that military police had repeatedly engaged in "excessive and disproportionate use of force against persons deprived of their liberty, resulting in death or injury."
The ICRC said this was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, making it a war crime.
According to Karpinski's account, it was Sanchez who decided in November 2003 to loosen the military's rules of engagement so that the guards would be freer to use lethal force at the outset of any disturbance. His decision came in a meeting with Karpinski that both officers recall, but Sanchez -- who was asked to comment by The Post -- yesterday gave a different account.
The backdrop for their discussion was a riot at Abu Ghraib on the afternoon of Nov. 24, organized by prisoners distressed at the lack of proper food and clothing, their isolation from any family contact and their indeterminate detentions. In the melee, nine U.S. soldiers were injured, three detainees were killed by military police and nine other detainees were wounded.
"It was raining rocks and boulders," said Sgt. William Savage Jr., 41, who was assigned to a guard tower. "It was unreal," he said in an interview with The Post. "I had never seen anything like that before. It was so out of control that we had to use regular rounds" and not just rubber bullets.
On the same day, a military police officer was inadvertently shot when guards learned that a detainee had a pistol in his cell and an "ad-hoc extraction team" of military police and intelligence officials searched for it, according to Taguba's report. He ruled that inadequate procedures, ineffective rules of engagement, poor training and an unclear relationship between the two types of personnel contributed to the incident.
Karpinski told Taguba that Sanchez expressed disappointment to her that the guard force had not used lethal firepower from the outset to put down the riot. She said yesterday through her lawyer that Sanchez said, "I'm tired of this MP mentality; I want them to shoot first and use nonlethal force later."
Karpinski told Taguba that she had objected, saying that it would violate the rules of engagement for military police, which require using lethal force only after trying other methods and obtaining command approval. She also said it would be dangerous for police to carry weapons with lethal ammunition among inmates, according to her account.
She said Sanchez told her in the presence of a military lawyer that "I don't care about the rules of engagement," and went on say, "If the rules of engagement are a problem, then change them." According to her account, a Sanchez deputy attending the meeting told her: "There isn't any difference if they are throwing rocks or MRE's [Meals Ready to Eat]. They are armed. Use lethal force."
Sanchez, through a spokesman at U.S. military headquarters in Baghdad yesterday, denied saying he did not care about the rules of engagement, and said the point of the conversation was to correct Karpinski's misunderstanding that the rule of "graduated response" required military police to put rubber bullets in their weapons and use those first. Sanchez advised her that the police could put deadly ammunition in their weapons and use it from the outset, the spokesman said.
"They changed their rules of engagement, I believe four times, to use lethal, and then, to nonlethal, [and] to lethal force based on the level of the events," Taguba testified yesterday, referring to the U.S. military command in Iraq. "I believe the last time they changed that rules of engagement . . . was in November of last year. That's contained in one of the annexes that we have."
Col. Marc Warren, a senior legal adviser to Sanchez, said the shift in question "was a clarification to ensure that soldiers knew that when threatened with serious bodily harm or loss of life, that you could immediately use deadly force" instead of following "the general policy that we use graduated force and use deadly force only as a last resort."
In its February report, the Red Cross said 23 detainees had been shot during disturbances or attempted escapes at Abu Ghraib and two other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq between May and November 2003. It said that "non-lethal measures could have been used to obtain the same results and quell the demonstrations or neutralize persons. . . . Since the beginning of the conflict, the ICRC has regularly brought its concerns to the attention" of the U.S. force in Iraq.
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Rumsfeld Aide and a General Clash on Abuse
May 12, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/politics/12ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ASHINGTON, May 11 - The Army general who first investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib prison stood by his inquiry's finding that military police officers should not have been involved in conditioning Iraqi detainees for interrogation, even as a senior Pentagon civilian sitting next to him at a Senate hearing on Tuesday disputed that conclusion.
The officer, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that it had been against the Army's doctrine for another Army general to recommend last summer that military guards "set the conditions" to help Army intelligence officers extract information from prisoners. He also said an order last November from the top American officer in Iraq effectively put the prison guards under the command of the intelligence unit there.
But the civilian official, Stephen A. Cambone, the under secretary of defense for intelligence, contradicted the general. He said that the military police and the military intelligence unit at the prison needed to work closely to gain as much intelligence as possible from Iraqi prisoners to prevent attacks against American soldiers. Mr. Cambone also said that General Taguba misinterpreted the November order, which he said only put the intelligence unit in charge of the prison facility, not of the military police guards.
While General Taguba depicted the abuses at the prison as the acts of a few soldiers under a fragmented and inept command, he also said that "they were probably influenced by others, if not necessarily directed specifically by others." His report called for an inquiry into the culpability of intelligence officers, which is still under way.
The unusual public sparring between a two-star Army general and one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's most trusted aides cast a spotlight on the confusing conditions at the prison last fall when the worst abuses occurred, as well as the sensitive issue of whether the Pentagon's thirst for better intelligence to combat Iraqi insurgents contributed to the climate there.
"How do you expect the M.P.'s to get it straight if we have a difference between the two of you?" said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts.
Later in the day, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the Army's deputy chief of staff, said the issue of who controlled the military police officers accused of abusing the prisoners "has to be ironed out." The key question, he said, is whether the intelligence unit's commander told the M.P.'s "how to do their job."
As senators demanded explanations for the abuses that were caught on photographs and videos taken by Army prison guards, the Bush administration and the Senate leadership reached an agreement that would give senators a chance to view the pictures. But the White House and the Pentagon signaled that they now have serious reservations about publicly releasing the photographs and video clips.
Administration officials said no decision had been made about what to do with the images. Political advisers to Mr. Bush have been pressing for a quick release, saying full disclosure is the best way to contain the damage.
But Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials emphasized their concern that any public release could endanger efforts to prosecute the Americans responsible for the abuse.
"I'd say there are a lot of equities here besides just satisfying the desires of the press that want to have more pictures to print," Mr. Cheney said in an interview with Fox News. "There are serious questions about people's rights, as well as our ability to be able to prosecute. We wouldn't want, as a result of the release of pictures and the mistreatment of that kind of information, to allow guilty parties off the hook, so that they couldn't be prosecuted."
Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director, said that when President Bush went to the Pentagon for a briefing on Monday, Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of American forces in the Middle East, told him he was concerned about maintaining the integrity of the criminal proceedings. Speaking over a video link from his headquarters in the region, General Abizaid said the worst outcome as far as public opinion in the Arab world was concerned would be for the prosecutions to fall apart, Mr. Bartlett said.
The decision about how to handle the pictures has been left largely to the Pentagon, Mr. Bartlett said, adding that the president "trusts their judgment."
Asked whether there was a division of opinion within the administration about how to proceed with the pictures, Mr. Bartlett replied, "There's no daylight between the White House and the Pentagon on that front."
Senate leaders announced Tuesday night that members of the Senate who wish to view the hundreds of photos and videos will be able to do so from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday in a secure room on the fourth floor of the Capitol under Pentagon supervision. No staff members will be allowed.
But leaders of both parties said the material would remain the property of the Pentagon, keeping a decision on what to release a matter for the Bush administration to decide, not Congress.
At an open meeting with Pentagon civilian and military personnel, Mr. Rumsfeld said Tuesday that abuse at Abu Ghraib was "a body blow" to America delivered by "a few who have betrayed our values." He said that acts of violent abuse and sexual humiliation captured in photos and video images at Abu Ghraib "ought not to be allowed to define us - either in the eyes of the world or our own eyes, adding, "We know who we are."
In the Senate hearing's three-hour morning session, General Taguba said he found no evidence of a military policy to soften up detainees for interrogation, but uncovered plenty of examples of guards collaborating with interrogators who were "influencing their action to set the conditions for successful interrogations."
General Taguba and Mr. Cambone agreed that the main culprits so far were a small group of low-level military police officers who suffered from "a lack of discipline; no training whatsoever; and no supervision." Seven soldiers face charges of abuse. He also left open the possibility that members of the Central Intelligence Agency as well as civilian contractors were culpable.
A separate Army inquiry is under way into what role military intelligence officers played in the abuses. In afternoon testimony, senior Army intelligence officers told senators that none of their people were implicated despite conclusions to the contrary in General Taguba's report.
General Alexander, head of military intelligence for the Army, said he believed that the abuses were carried out by "a group of undisciplined military police," adding that he had seen no evidence that military intelligence officers had told them what to do.
Those assertions were greeted with skepticism by even some Republicans on the committee.
Senator Susan M. Collins, Republican of Maine, said she found it difficult to believe that junior military police officers would have chosen on their own to use "sexual humiliation, which is particularly embarrassing to Muslim men," if they had decided on their own to abuse the men.
General Alexander disclosed that two or three more individuals who had witnessed the abuses but had not reported them would be held accountable. The Army's judge advocate general, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Romig, said the Army was now tracking a total of 83 different prisoner abuse cases in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The pattern of abuse seen in the photographs began around Oct. 15, 2003, and lasted through late December or early January, General Taguba said.
Late last fall, the Red Cross forwarded a report containing allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib to the top lawyer at the American military command in Baghdad, Army officials said. On Nov. 6, the report was sent to Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, head of the 800th Military Police Brigade, which operated the American-run prisons in Iraq.
General Karpinski forwarded her response to the Red Cross on Dec. 24, but Army officials said there was no indication that she ever began investigations into any reported abuses by military police or intelligence officials. "I do not know if she in fact started an investigation into those, because they are serious," General Alexander said.
General Taguba said he agreed with the conclusions in the Red Cross report that coercive practices, like holding prisoners naked for long periods, were used in a systematic way as part of the military intelligence process at the prison.
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the committee, called that "not just oversight or negligence or neglect or sloppiness, but purposeful, willful determination to use these techniques as part of an interrogation process," and asked General Taguba, "Would you include that in your definition of failure of leadership?"
"Yes, sir," the general replied. "They were."
Mr. Cambone and other military officials said the interrogation techniques approved for use in Iraq were straight out of the Army manual and followed the Geneva Conventions. In that respect, he said, they differed from harsher techniques, like sleep deprivation and forcing prisoners to disrobe entirely for interrogations, that are authorized for use at the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, the deputy commander of American forces in the Middle East, said that under a policy issued last Oct. 12, the only extraordinary measure authorized for use in Iraq was placing prisoners in solitary confinement for more than 30 days. That step required the approval of the American commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, but General Smith said he was not aware of it ever being used.
General Smith said the use of military working dogs was allowed so long as the animals "will be muzzled and under control of a handler at all times to ensure safety." Photographs published by The New Yorker magazine this week showed two unmuzzled dogs menacing a naked Iraqi prisoner.
Much of the morning session centered on the impact of a visit to Iraq last August and September by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller to improve the flow of intelligence from Abu Ghraib. General Miller, who is now the chief of interrogations and detentions in Iraq, has defended his recommendations to have prison guards prepare detainees for interrogations. He has said those recommendations played no role in the later abuse and humiliation of prisoners.
The hearing's sharpest exchange came when Mr. Cambone objected to a characterization of the visit by Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat.
"Your suggestion that the report on the phrase 'setting the conditions' is tantamount to asking the military police to engage in abusive behavior, I believe, is a misreading of General Miller's intent," Mr. Cambone said.
"Mr. Secretary, what I'm suggesting is anyone in your position should have asked questions," Mr. Reed shot back. "One specifically would be: What does it mean to set the conditions for these troops under the Geneva Convention? Did you ask that question?"
"I didn't have to," Mr. Cambone replied. "We had been through a process in which we understood what those limits were with respect to Iraq, and what those were with respect to Guantanamo."
Richard W. Stevenson, Thom Shanker, Joel Brinkley and Carl Hulse contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- immigration / refugees
Nations Vow Passport Aid
Reuters
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19298-2004May11.html
The G-8 leading industrial nations agreed yesterday to share information about lost and stolen passports and vowed to work together to secure borders, ports and skies to help thwart terrorism.
The meeting to lay the groundwork for the June summit of leaders from the Group of Eight nations came amid continued threats from international militant groups and attacks.
"We will work on increasing international participation in the database regarding lost and stolen blank passports," Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said at a news conference.
-------- justice
Weapons of mass photography
It would be a mistake for the White House to impose more restrictions on the taking of pictures
May 12, 2004
Chicago Tribune E-mail: cptime@aol.com
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0405120121may12,1,3406642.column
WASHINGTON -- If I had my way, every enlisted man and woman in the military would be issued a digital camera.
As we have seen in the Abu Ghraib scandal where American soldiers have been accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, the little gadgets appeared to have helped boost morale by providing the soldiers with snapshots that they could e-mail back home. The cameras also came in handy during the gathering of evidence regarding the abuse.
I like those cameras because certainly the power elites don't.
Take, for example, the contempt that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld showed for the cameras during recent hearings on Capitol Hill. His response to Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) turned into a bit of a rant: "We're functioning in a--with peacetime restraints, with legal requirements in a wartime situation, in the Information Age, where people are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media, to our surprise, when they had not even arrived in the Pentagon."
No, folks, it is apparently not the Bush administration's gross lack of preparation for the management of post-Saddam Hussein Iraq that is the problem, in Rummy's view. It's those pesky soldiers and their weapons of mass photography.
Yet something rings a little hollow about Rumsfeld's complaint. While he complained that the prisoner-abuse photos arrived in the hands of the media before they arrived at the Pentagon, the Pentagon sat on a prisoner-abuse report without telling Congress or President Bush for two months.
In late April, Rumsfeld told Congress how the war was going without mentioning Maj. Gen Antonio Taguba's damning report on the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison--even though the Pentagon had been in possession of the report since February.
Rumsfeld and other Pentagon brass also had been hearing complaints for more than a year from the International Red Cross and other human rights groups of atrocious abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. detention centers.
But these matters apparently didn't register much with the top Pentagon brass until the night after Rumsfeld's April visit to Capitol Hill. That was the night that CBS' "60 Minutes II" broadcast explosive photos of naked Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib being poked, prodded, wired, bagged, paraded around, stacked up and otherwise humiliated by male and female American guards.
When CBS informed the Pentagon of the photos, the reaction of Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quick and immediate: He asked CBS to withhold the photos, claiming it might put U.S. soldiers in harm's way.
Yet, one wonders, if the Big Brass' only concern was for the safety of U.S. soldiers, why did neither Myers nor Rumsfeld bother to tell Congress or President Bush about the photos?
We have come to expect paranoia about pictures from this administration. At the beginning of the Iraq war, the Pentagon strengthened a ban on photographing coffins of dead soldiers returning to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, a policy that then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney imposed in 1991 during the first Iraq war. The reason given is privacy, which strains believability since the photos do not reveal the identities of the soldiers in the coffins.
Interestingly, the Bush-Cheney 2004 presidential campaign exhibited none of that squeamishness about privacy when it included the Sept. 11, 2001, image of a New York City firefighter's coffin in a campaign ad.
Apparently, the issue is not the photos but who has control of them. Fortunately, in this Internet Age, it is not so easy to keep secrets from the American people.
Those with long memories may recall journalist Seymour Hersh's first big scoop, the 1968 massacre of unarmed Vietnamese villagers, including women and children, at My Lai. It didn't get much ink when he reported it in late 1969, until the Cleveland Plain Dealer printed photos that had been taken by ex-Army photographer Ron Haeberle, a Cleveland resident. Pictures do have power.
Rummy's real problem isn't photos. It is democracy. If the American public was less eager to know so much stuff, life would be a lot easier for our military leaders. Unfortunately, life would soon become a lot harder on the rest of us.
That's why I don't expect to get my wish. Instead of issuing cameras, the military, backed by the Bush administration, more than likely will impose more restrictions on the taking of pictures. The first impulse of government is to put a lid on information about itself, even when the public has a right to know.
Sure, democracy can be messy and even confusing sometimes. But it's the best system we've got.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Almost 10% of Prisoners Are Serving Life Terms
May 12, 2004
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/national/12prison.html?hp
Almost 10 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons are serving life sentences, an increase of 83 percent from 1992, according to a report released yesterday by the Sentencing Project, a prison research and advocacy group.
In two states, New York and California, almost 20 percent of inmates are serving life sentences, the report found.
The increase is not the result of a growth in crime, which actually fell 35 percent from 1992 to 2002, the report pointed out. Instead, it is the result of more punitive laws adopted by Congress and state legislatures as part of the movement to get tough on crime, the report said.
The jump in the number of inmates serving life sentences imposes large costs on states, about $1 million for each inmate who serves out his full sentence behind bars, said Marc Mauer, the assistant director of the Sentencing Project and an author of the study. This is a heavy burden on taxpayers at a time when most states are facing record budget deficits and many states are searching for ways to cut prison costs.
The great majority of prisoners serving life sentences, now totaling 127,677, have been convicted of a violent offense, with 68.9 percent convicted of murder, the report found.
But, Mr. Mauer said, "the very broad application of life sentences has blurred the distinction between what is a really serious crime deserving a life sentence and some crimes where there is less culpability." For example, he said, 4 percent of those serving life sentences were convicted of drug crimes and 3.9 percent of property crimes, and a sizable number were battered women who killed their husbands after they themselves had been beaten.
Some of those serving a life sentence for the least serious crimes have been sentenced under California's "three strikes and you're out" law, the report said. The Supreme Court recently upheld the life sentence of Leandro Andrade, whose third strike, or felony conviction, was for the theft of children's videotapes worth $153 that he intended as Christmas gifts for his nieces.
In addition, the report found, there were 23,523 inmates serving a life sentence who were mentally ill and whose acts might have been caused by their illness.
The report includes both offenders sentenced to life without the possibility of parole and those given life sentences with a chance at parole after serving a specified minimum term.
The report also found that the recidivism rate for lifers released from prison was 20 percent. Among all prison inmates, 67 percent are re-arrested within three years.
The report did not suggest why inmates serving life terms have a lower recidivism rate. But criminologists have long noted that criminals start to commit less crime as they get into their 30's or older.
Before the 1970's, most states had systems in which judges had the discretion to impose sentences of indeterminate length. The idea was to give inmates a chance to rehabilitate themselves and earn parole, or early release.
But in the 1980's, and then even more strongly in the 1990's, Congress and state legislatures took away this judicial discretion, enacting laws like mandatory minimum sentences and truth-in-sentencing policies, which required inmates to serve the full length of time to which they were sentenced. Additionally, some states made sentences like 25 years to life into life without parole.
Many governors and state legislatures also sharply limited the authority of parole boards to release inmates early.
The cumulative result of these changes, Mr. Mauer said, is that inmates serving sentences that once would have been 25 years to life are serving a longer portion of their sentence, or all of it, till they die in prison, thus increasing the number of lifers behind bars.
Joshua Marquis, the district attorney of Clatsop County in Oregon, said that longer sentences, including more life sentences, had been a key to reducing the crime rate. "There is a reason crime in Oregon is down 40 percent in the last decade, and that is that the small population that perpetrates the majority of the most violent crimes is locked up for longer periods of time," Mr. Marquis said.
Until the passage of sentencing guidelines in 1989, said Mr. Marquis, who is on the board of the National District Attorneys Association, judges in Oregon could sentence a murderer to prison for life, but he could get out in only eight or nine years. "This caused enormous frustration for law enforcement and the public," he said.
In six states plus the federal system, a life sentence now automatically means life without parole, the report said. They are Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Pennsylvania and South Dakota.
-------- terrorism
American Beheaded on Web Video
Militants Say Killing Was Revenge for U.S. Abuses at Iraqi Prison
By Sewell Chan and Ariana Eunjung Cha
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19048-2004May11?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 11 -- A 26-year-old Pennsylvania businessman missing in Iraq since early April was shown being decapitated by five masked Islamic militants in a fuzzy video posted on the Internet on Tuesday. The militants claimed in the video that the grisly killing was in revenge for the abuses suffered by Iraqis at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
In the video, Nicholas Berg, of West Chester, Pa., outside Philadelphia, was shown sitting on the floor in an orange jumpsuit, with his black-clad captors standing behind him. After reading a statement saying they sought to avenge the suffering of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers, the men decapitated him.
Berg's death is apparently the first act of vengeance for the widely broadcast images of Iraqi detainees being abused and sexually humiliated at Abu Ghraib late last year. The scandal has prompted outrage internationally, and particularly in the Arab world.
The grisly slaying, reminiscent of the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in early 2002, is likely to send new waves of fear among the thousands of foreign contractors and entrepreneurs who have been lured to Iraq by the promise of financial opportunity and a chance to rebuild its war-ravaged infrastructure. Dozens of foreigners have been kidnapped over the past month, but nearly all were released.
U.S. officials said they could not verify the authenticity of the video. The U.S. consular officer in Baghdad, Paul Boyd, told Berg's family in a phone call Monday that he had been decapitated and that his body was found on a highway overpass outside Baghdad over the weekend, Berg's mother said.
The undated video, posted on the Web site of Muntada al-Ansar, an organization with ties to the al Qaeda terrorist network, attributed the crime to Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian accused of organizing attacks against occupation forces in Iraq. Zarqawi has been sought by U.S. authorities since last year in connection with the killing of an American diplomat in Jordan.
A message, "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi slaughtering an American," flashed across the video in Arabic. The video did not make clear whether Zarqawi was one of the masked men or had only ordered the killing.
Berg was in restraints but appeared calm. "My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Suzanne," the man says on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah."
One of the men read a statement in Arabic, saying that they had offered to exchange Berg for several detainees at Abu Ghraib but that U.S. authorities had refused.
"So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls," the man says. "You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins . . . slaughtered in this way."
The men then put a large knife to Berg's neck as he screamed, according to news service descriptions of the end of the video. They shouted "Allahu akbar," or "God is greatest," before decapitating him and holding his head up to the camera.
Suzanne Berg said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon that she had not viewed the video. "I don't know if I want to see it," she said. "It's just so awful."
Nicholas Berg came to Iraq hoping to win a contract to help rebuild communications antennas destroyed during last year's invasion. Several other entrepreneurs have been killed recently, hampering the American-led effort to revive Iraq's sluggish economy and war-battered infrastructure. A Danish businessman was found dead last month, and two Finns were shot to death during a business trip in March.
Gunmen attacked a convoy of American contractors in western Iraq on Tuesday. Wendy Hall, a spokeswoman for Texas-based Halliburton Co., said the convoy was run by a subcontractor working for KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that has a major contract to supply the Army in Iraq. Hall said all the drivers in the convoy had been accounted for.
In another attack on contractors, a Russian energy company worker was killed and two others were abducted Monday when gunmen attacked their car south of Baghdad, the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. An Iraqi working as a bodyguard and translator was injured in the attack.
Iraq's interior minister, Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy, said an attack on a major oil pipeline in southern Iraq on Saturday was carried out by saboteurs with a sophisticated understanding of oil operations. The explosion in the Faw peninsula has caused a major disruption in oil exports, Iraq's principal source of foreign exchange.
"We know it was not just casual terrorists. . . . They knew where to place the explosives," Sumaidy said at a news conference in Baghdad.
Sumaidy said the attack was part of a strategy to block efforts to revive Iraq's economy. "These people are targeting the income of every Iraqi person," he said.
The persistent violence contrasts sharply with U.S. officials' optimistic calls for private companies to invest in Iraq. Over the past year, the Commerce Department has conducted a three-continent campaign to promote investment and reconstruction opportunities.
It was at one of those conferences that Berg was inspired to go to Baghdad, his family said. He dreamed of building radio towers in Iraq that would beam reports from a free press.
According to his family, Berg met businessmen at the conference who asked him to inspect radio towers damaged in the war. Berg hoped to make a bid for his company, Prometheus Methods Tower Service Inc., to provide parts and repair services.
Berg's mother said she had begged him to change his mind about the trip.
But Berg, whose family described him as a bit of a rebel, decided that the potential business was worth the risk. He took a flight from New York to Amman, Jordan, on March 14 and then traveled on to Iraq. He did not have a security guard, translator or driver lined up, his mother said, and he decided to stay at smaller hotels not frequented by foreigners.
His e-mails were optimistic, his mother said, but weeks into his trip he still had not found new business. The only trouble he reported to his parents was that he had been detained in Mosul for several days by Iraqi police who were suspicious because he was traveling alone.
The incident forced him to push back his original departure date of March 30, he wrote his parents.
Berg last called his parents on April 9. He told them that his flight home was from Jordan but that a violent insurgency erupting in western Iraq had made driving there impossible.
Hearing nothing further, Berg's family spent the next few weeks searching frantically for information. They opened his e-mail account and sent notes to his business associates. They requested his cell phone records from Iraq. No one had any leads. The next time they heard any news was when the consul called.
According to a clerk at Baghdad's Al Fanar Hotel, on the east bank of the Tigris River, Berg checked in on March 22, left for Mosul the next day, returned to the hotel on April 6 and checked out on April 10.
Berg said he was going home, the clerk said, and walked down Saddoun Street, a major artery, because the road was closed to vehicular traffic. He left behind in his room a yellowed and folded page from a book by Jon Burmeister, a South African writer of thrillers who died in 2001.
The page carries a short prose poem titled "The War That Wasn't." It describes a man named Jericho, who is awakened by machine-gun fire, "his heart hammering thunderously against the ribcage as though trying to escape."
The poem ends: "What the hell was happening? God knows, he thought. But it seemed clear that the war had arrived -- the war that wasn't coming here . . ."
Cha reported from Washington. Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran and special correspondent Muhanned M. Salim in Baghdad contributed to this report.
--------
Iraq Videotape Shows the Decapitation of an American
May 12, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/international/middleeast/12TAPE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 11 - An Islamist Web site posted a videotape on Tuesday showing the decapitation of an American in Iraq, in what the killers called revenge for the American mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
The Web site said the man who had carried out the beheading was Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant linked to Al Qaeda who the Americans believe was behind some of the deadliest terrorist attacks here.
"Sheik Abu Musab Zarqawi slaughters an American infidel with his hands and promises Bush more," read the title of the video. The Web site is operated by a group named Muntada al-Ansar, and often carries statements by Islamic militants.
The video shows a thin, bearded man, who identified himself as Nicholas Berg of West Chester, Pa., seated before a row of five masked men. Mr. Berg appeared to be wearing an orange jump suit similar to those issued to Iraqis in American-run prisons here.
After the militants read a statement, the tape showed the men pushing Mr. Berg to the floor. As he screamed, one of the men put a knife to Mr. Berg's neck and the men yelled "God is Great!"
The head was held up to the camera.
The State Department confirmed that Mr. Berg's body was found Saturday near an overpass in Baghdad. An American intelligence official said the body was found without a head.
Mr. Berg's family in Pennsylvania said a State Department official had notified them on Monday of their son's death. They said Mr. Berg, 26, had gone to Iraq twice since December as an independent businessman looking for work fixing communication antennas.
"I knew he was decapitated before," Michael Berg, the father, told The Associated Press on Tuesday after the videotape was shown. "That manner is preferable to a long and torturous death. But I didn't want it to become public."
The killing of Mr. Berg, and the particularly gruesome way it was done, recalled the slaying in 2002 of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was kidnapped and beheaded by Muslim militants, an act also shown on videotape.
It is not clear how long Mr. Berg had been in captivity, nor is it clear whether he had found any work in Iraq. The Bergs said that they last heard from their son on April 9, and that he had told them that he was heading home over land through either Turkey, Jordan or Kuwait.
That was the same day that nine Americans, including two soldiers, were kidnapped by insurgents during attacks on their convoys west of Baghdad, on the main highway to the Jordanian border.
The bodies of four have been recovered. One man kidnapped that day, Thomas Hamill, escaped to freedom, while three civilian contractors, all believed to be working for Kellogg Brown & Root, are still missing.
It is not clear whether Mr. Berg was on one of those convoys.
In Washington, an intelligence official said the Central Intelligence Agency was reviewing the video for clues as to who might have killed Mr. Berg, who he said had been looking for work on his own.
"It was the wrong place for someone without a support structure to be," the official said.
Before Mr. Berg was killed, one of the masked men on the videotape said in Arabic: "For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we asked the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib, and they refused."
"So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls," the man said. "You will receive nothing from us but coffin after coffin slaughtered in this way."
The masked man reading the statement mentioned Al Qaeda by name, suggesting that the abuses at Abu Ghraib justified the terrorist group's broader war on the West.
There was no way to determine whether Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant, was indeed one of the men in the video, since all of the men were either hooded or masked.
Mr. Zarqawi has emerged as an increasingly active and deadly terrorist, both in Iraq and elsewhere. In a captured letter released in March that American officials say was written by Mr. Zarqawi, he took responsibility for carrying out some 25 bombings in Iraq.
American officials said the letter had been sent to the leadership of Al Qaeda, presumably Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Afghanistan. In the letter, the writer asked for assistance in trying to start a civil war in Iraq.
Mr. Zarqawi is suspected in the killing of Laurence Foley, an official of the United States Agency for International Development, in Amman, Jordan in October 2002.
American officials have blamed Mr. Zarqawi for the March 2 bombings in Baghdad and Karbala in which at least 181 people died. Though they said they had no hard evidence, the officials said he might also have been behind the coordinated suicide bombings in Basra last month in which at least 74 people, including many schoolchildren, were killed.
Last month, a man identifying himself in an audiotape as Mr. Zarqawi said he had planned an attempt to destroy the secret police headquarters in Jordan, an attempt that was foiled.
Though Mr. Zarqawi reportedly has strong ties to Al Qaeda, American officials say he and Al Qaeda operate separately. He is often cited as an example of how Al Qaeda has transformed itself from a tightly knit organization into a far-flung operation comprising free-lance terrorists, drawing on Mr. bin Laden mostly for inspiration and technique.
In the captured letter, he said his goal was to prevent the establishment of a stable Iraqi-run government and would do so by attacking Shiite Muslims, as a way to provoke sectarian war. The ultimate aim, he said, was to drive American forces from Iraq, a task he conceded had grown exceedingly difficult.
"So, the solution, and only God knows, is that we need to bring the Shia into the battle," the letter read. "It is the only way to prolong the duration of the fight between the infidels and us. If we succeed in dragging them into a sectarian war, this will awaken the sleepy Sunnis who are fearful of destruction and death." He referred to the Sunni minority in Iraq.
In the statement read on the video showing Mr. Berg's death, a masked man tries to inspire his viewers, to chide what he regards as a complacent Muslim clergy and to threaten President Bush with a humiliating defeat.
The masked man says the abuses committed by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison justify the attacks by Al Qaeda.
"Does Al Qaeda need any more excuses?" the man asks. "And how does a free Muslim sleep comfortably watching Islam being slaughtered, and its dignity being drained?"
The Web site showing the video also carries a photograph of a naked Iraqi prisoner at Abu Ghraib cowering before a growling police dog.
"The shameful photos are evil humiliation for Muslim men and women in the Abu Ghraib prison," the masked man says. "Where is the sense of honor, where is the rage? Where is the anger for God's religion? Where is the sense of veneration for Muslims, and where is the sense of vengeance for the honor of Muslim men and women in the Crusaders prisons?"
Then he addressed Mr. Bush.
"Regarding you, Bush, Dog of the West, we are giving you good news which will displease you," he said. "Your worst days are coming, with the help of God. You and your soldiers will regret the day when your feet touched the land of Iraq and showered your bravery on shelters of Muslims."
Mr. Berg's death came amid a surge in the number of foreigners killed and kidnapped here in recent days. On Tuesday, one Russian worker at a power plant was killed, and two were taken hostage, after an ambush south of Baghdad.
Also on Tuesday, a civilian American supply convoy was attacked near the town of Rutba, about 75 miles from the Jordanian border. There were conflicting reports on whether any drivers were missing.
Mr. Berg was in Iraq from Dec. 21 to Feb. 1, then returned in March, according to an interview with his parents published last week in The Philadelphia Inquirer after he was reported missing.
During his second trip, he was arrested by the Iraqi police while riding in a taxi at a checkpoint in the northern city of Mosul, his family said in the article.
The family, who said they were in almost daily contact with their son, did not hear from him until March 31, when F.B.I. agents visited their home and told them that he was in an Iraqi jail. The agents also asked, an agency spokesman said later, what he was doing in Iraq.
On April 5, the family filed a federal suit claiming that Mr. Berg was being held illegally by the United States military in Iraq. On April 6, he was released, his family said, and began making plans to return home.
A senior F.B.I. official said Tuesday that Mr. Berg had indeed been taken into custody by the local Iraqi police as part of a broad sweep of a number of people. The reason for his incarceration was not clear, but the official stressed that "he was never in U.S. custody - he was in local custody."
F.B.I. agents stationed in Iraq interviewed him while he was in Iraqi custody to determine why he was in the country and the circumstances of his arrest, the official said. "He was just there on business, and that was it," the official said.
The F.B.I. also interviewed his family in Philadelphia as part of its investigation into the case, the official said.
The news of Mr. Berg's beheading came as a Senate hearing was under way into the abuses cited on the videotape as a cause of the killing. The two senators from Pennsylvania, Republicans Rick Santorum and Arlen Specter, went on to the Senate floor to condemn the killing.
"If anyone wants to know what we're fighting and why we're fighting this war on terror, this is a good example of it," Mr. Santorum said.
Some said Mr. Berg's killing could shift the political dynamic in the prison abuse scandal and slow the inquiry by offering such a sharp contrast with the offenses at the prison. But members of the panel conducting the inquiry said the beheading, while horrific, should not influence their work.
"The fact that our enemies act in this way does not negate the need for us to investigate the abuses committed by a small number of our troops and military contractors," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Lessons of a by-the-Book Soldier
At Hearing, Taguba Provides Straight Talk During a Time of Elusive Truths
By David Von Drehle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A18916-2004May11?language=printer
His name has been famous for about 10 days, since his report on the abuse of prisoners in Iraq burst into the global spotlight -- but only yesterday did the world get a good look at Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
Forthright, terse, direct, Taguba turned out to be a by-the-book soldier worthy of central casting. The man sent to investigate the warped doings at Abu Ghraib appeared to be the straightest arrow imaginable. He didn't just nod to Army rules and regulations; he seemed to have memorized every page of every manual.
Early in Taguba's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked him: "Why do you believe that there should be a separation between the military police and intelligence officers?"
He answered: "Army regulation 190-8, which is a multiservice regulation, establishes the policy in executive agency for detention operations. And there enumerates in paragraph 1-5 the general policy and the treatment of not just [prisoners of war] but civilian internees, retained personnel and other detainees. . . . We also used the M.P.s' doctrine on detention operations, which is Field Manual 3-19.40. And we further referred to . . . Field Manual 3452."
Over the years, this sort of spit-and-polish soldier has been the butt of a million jokes. He's Lt. Peachfuzz on the comics page, Maj. Frank Burns in the reruns. But senators from both parties ultimately found Taguba refreshing for his ability and willingness to give straight answers in plain language and the fewest possible words.
In their hunt for the facts about what happened at Abu Ghraib and why, the senators have heard many half-answers, nonresponses and promises to get back to them. Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) tried to pin down Stephen Cambone, a senior Pentagon civilian in charge of military intelligence, by asking, "In simple and plain words, how do you think this happened?"
Cambone's answer: "With the caveat, sir, that I don't know the facts, it's, for me, hard to explain."
Warner put the same question to Taguba. "In simple words -- your own soldier's language -- how did this happen?"
Taguba's answer: "Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant. Those are my comments."
"Thank you very much," the senator said.
Taguba, 53, is the son of Sgt. Tomas Taguba, a Filipino who knew a thing or two about the abuse of prisoners, having escaped from Japanese custody during the infamous Bataan Death March during World War II. Tomas was serving in the Philippine Scouts when the islands fell, and after his escape spent three years spying on Japanese troop movements and relaying the information to U.S. forces. When Gen. Douglas MacArthur returned victorious, the senior Taguba joined the U.S. military.
His son was born in 1950 in Sampaloc, a district of Manila. Tony Taguba, as the general is known to friends, has told interviewers that he saw little of his father as a boy, but understood that's the way it is for a soldier's family. The Tagubas -- Tony, his two brothers and five sisters -- were upright, pious and disciplined: a well-ordered platoon.
In 1961, the family moved to Hawaii. Years later, when he became only the second Filipino American general, Taguba told AsianWeek that life in the United States "opened my mind to the capabilities and opportunities in America." For him, the Army opened the door to those possibilities. It gave him an education, first through the ROTC program at Idaho State University and later at military and private colleges across the country. He has multiple master's degrees.
He was trained as a commander of armored forces, but his specialty has been managing large support operations -- he was in charge of programs for Army families at one point, and will soon take up the post of deputy assistant secretary for reserve affairs. But though he has not commanded a combat division, Taguba is known as a workhorse, routinely putting in 90-hour weeks on the job.
His wife and two adult children live in Georgia.
Some civilians imagine the military, with its emphasis on following orders, as home to unquestioning robots, but in his testimony, and his biography, Taguba belied this caricature. He learned years ago that the brass is not always right, when his father retired unhonored and uncelebrated. "It took over 54 years to gain my parents their due recognition," the younger Taguba said in a speech in 2001. Finally, on his 80th birthday, Tomas Taguba received a Bronze Star and Prisoner of War medal.
And so the general did not flinch from contradicting one of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's closest aides -- Cambone, who insisted that a Nov. 19, 2003, order placing Abu Ghraib under the "tactical authority" of military intelligence officers did not mean that those officers had authority over the military police guarding the prisoners.
Taguba's report said the opposite. Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) asked the general point-blank if he still felt that way, given that the senior brass has disagreed.
"Yes, sir," Taguba answered.
His testimony drove home the idea that there are legal orders and illegal orders. There is proper training and lax training, effective leadership and weak leadership, clear chains of command and dangerously confused chains. The problems at Abu Ghraib, in his view, stemmed from poor training, weak leadership, confused command -- all resulting in illegal orders.
Taguba gave a good example of the other sort of order in his opening statement.
"As I assembled the investigation team," he said, "my specific instructions to my teammates were clear: maintain our objectivity and integrity throughout the course of our mission in what I considered to be a very grave, highly sensitive and serious situation; to be mindful of our personal values and the moral values of our nation; and to maintain the Army values in all of our dealings; and to be complete, thorough and fair in the course of the investigation.
"Bottom line," he summed up, "we will follow our conscience and do what is morally right."
Researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
--------
Accord Near for 9/11 Panel to Question Qaeda Leaders
May 12, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/12/politics/12panel.html
WASHINGTON, May 11 - The leaders of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks revealed on Tuesday that they were close to an agreement with the Bush administration that would allow the panel to submit questions to captured Qaeda leaders who are believed to have been involved in planning the attacks.
"We think the result will be that we will have the information we need from these people," Lee H. Hamilton, the vice chairman of the commission, said at a meeting with reporters. "This has been one of the more difficult access questions."
Mr. Hamilton, a former Democratic House member from Indiana, said without elaborating that the process of submitting requests for information from the detained terrorists had begun. "We've got an arrangement where we can seek information," he said.
Commission officials, who face a July deadline for completing the panel's final report, have repeatedly sought access to Qaeda leaders captured since Sept. 11, especially Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and others close to Osama bin Laden who are believed to have been architects of the 2001 attacks.
But the Bush administration has tightly controlled information about the detained Qaeda leaders, especially the details of what they have said under interrogation about the terrorist network's plans for other attacks.
The administration's refusal to make the terrorists available as trial witnesses has threatened to derail the Justice Department's prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in an American court with conspiring in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mr. Hamilton, appearing before reporters along with the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, refused to discuss the method by which the 10-member bipartisan panel would submit questions to the captured terrorists and how their responses would be relayed to the commission. He said some of the exact terms of the procedure were still being worked out.
"We have a procedure in mind - not in mind, in practice - whereby we are able to ask questions of these detainees," he said. "Now keep in mind that one of the tough judgments here is the credibility of that information."
The administration has been especially reluctant to suggest where the captured terrorists are being held, except to acknowledge that it is overseas.
"As you know, one of the most closely held secrets of the government is where these people are," said Mr. Hamilton, the former chairman of both the House international relations and intelligence committees. "I don't know where they are. And Tom and I were told the president does not even know where they are."
At their meeting with reporters, both Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, expressed concern that the recent uproar over American mistreatment of Iraqi prison detainees and the photographs of the abuse could inspire new terrorist attacks.
"It's a hard question to answer," Mr. Kean said. "Obviously it's increased, I assume, the hatred of the United States in parts of the world where we already have serious problems."
Mr. Hamilton said the scandal "is bound to be an effective recruiting tool for terrorist activity."
He said that he hoped "all kinds of steps will be taken to discipline and to make officials accountable, but in many respects, the damage is done with the publication of those pictures, which will be a searing image of the United States across the world for many, many years to come."
Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton have said that they expect to meet the July 27 deadline for completing their final report, which is expected to offer a detailed chronology of intelligence and law enforcement failures before the Sept. 11 attacks.
The commission has scheduled two more sets of public hearings before completing its work. The first, to be held next week in Manhattan, will examine how municipal agencies in New York responded to the attacks on the World Trade Center. The final round of hearings will be held in Washington in June.
Mr. Kean, who is president of Drew University in Madison, N.J., said the panel hoped to begin soon to submit chapters of the report to the White House to allow them to be declassified well before the July deadline. "If we can, we're going to start getting chapters to the White House as they are completed," he said.
"We are very mindful of what happened to the Congressional report," he said, referring to the joint Congressional committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks and was barred for months from making its findings public because of declassification struggles with the White House.
"We don't want that to happen to us,'' Mr. Kean said. "And we are doing everything we can - and we think the White House will, too - to make sure that doesn't happen."
--------
9/11 Panel Seeks Access to Detainees
Commission Wants to Question Al Qaeda Members in U.S. Custody
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18852-2004May11.html
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is trying to gain access to some members of al Qaeda in U.S. custody to pose questions to them, panel officials said yesterday.
Commission Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said during a breakfast meeting with reporters in Washington that the panel is negotiating with the White House for access to some al Qaeda detainees.
"We have had a procedure in mind . . . whereby we are able to ask questions of these detainees, and that is still being processed and worked out," Hamilton said, according to a report by the Christian Science Monitor, which sponsored the breakfast. "We think the result will be that we will have the information we need from these people."
The Sept. 11 panel, which has sporadically feuded with the Bush administration over access to information and witnesses during the past year, already has had access to transcripts and reports about al Qaeda detainees in U.S. custody, officials said. But an ability to directly question them would give the panel a remarkable level of access to detainees held in secrecy and generally off limits to defense attorneys.
Hamilton and other commission officials declined to identify the detainees who are of interest to panel investigators. But among the most prominent operatives in U.S. criminal or military custody are al Qaeda deputy Khalid Sheik Mohammed, alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and alleged Sept. 11 organizer Ramzi Binalshibh.
"We continue to work closely with the 9/11 commission to ensure they have access to the information they need to do their job," White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said, adding that "there are many ways to provide that information." Lisaius declined to discuss the specifics of the detainee request.
-------- propaganda wars
Senator Critical of Focus on Prisoner Abuse
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 12, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18915-2004May11.html
Yesterday's Senate hearing on prison abuse in Iraq had been underway quite a while, and James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) had heard all he could stand.
It was not his colleagues' windy speeches that incensed him, nor photos of U.S. soldiers mistreating Iraqi detainees. Rather, Inhofe said when his turn finally came, he was fed up with all the "do-gooders" making such a fuss.
"As I watch this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners . . . I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," Inhofe told fellow Armed Services Committee members investigating the treatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. "You know, they're not there for traffic violations," he said. In the cells where the primary abuse took place, "they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents."
Several senators cited a Red Cross study concluding that as much as 90 percent of those detained in Iraq "had been arrested by mistake." Inhofe, 69, was unimpressed. "I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying," he said. ". . . I'm also outraged by the press and the politicians and the political agendas that are being served by this."
He blamed the prison abuse on "seven bad guys and gals that didn't do what they should have done. They were misguided. I think maybe even perverted."
Democrats long have decried comments by Inhofe, who once described himself as "an extreme right-wing radical conservative." But at least one Republican colleague -- freshman Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) -- appeared to take issue with the Oklahoman's remarks when his turn came much later in the hearing.
Graham, who did not mention Inhofe by name, said: "I think we're failing the country ourselves up here a bit. I think we're overly politicizing this. . . . I think Republicans and Democrats have a different view of a lot of things, but it seems to me that investigating a prison abuse scandal, when you say you're the good guy, should pull you together, not tear you apart."
-------- us politics
Rumsfeld Should Go? No Way!
by Karen Kwiatkowski
May 12, 2004
LewRockwell.com
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski74.html
From key members of Congress, to the Kerry campaign, to the Army Times, we hear a low growing rumble that Rumsfeld should go. A long-awaited sound, like rain starting after a dry spell.
Rumsfeld is surely responsible for apparently monumental tactical and strategic mistakes over the last three years.
He successfully marginalized real war heroes in and out of the Pentagon, while promoting more flag officer apparatchiks than Cohen ever did.
He created and nurtured an environment where the half-baked revolution theology of neo-Jacobins Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith trumped hard-headed and practical reality, every time. No exceptions. Doing the same thing, over and over, while expecting some new, improved result. The very definition of insanity.
He has spent more tax dollars on less military capability than ever before in our history. $500 billion a year, for several years now. We didn't purchase security, or even improved military capability. Instead, we have a beefed up public propaganda operation run from the E-Ring of the Pentagon and we put recruitment programs on steroids and PCP in the face of a wised-up population. Well, at least defense contractor stocks are solid.
Thanks to Mr. Rumsfeld, we have a steady stream of dead Americans being flown home under cover of media blackout. We also have all of our old enemies at the ready, plus a whole bunch of new ones who would like nothing better than to kill Americans any way they can. These new enemies don't need $500 billion a year to do it, not even close. But their existence sure helps pump up our military budget.
He has overseen the biggest boom in global base construction and completion since after World War II, with a ring of bases in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Djibouti, Georgia. Who needed that?
He seems very happy with an appointed Pentagon cadre unable to distinguish between vivid fantasies of Saddam's degraded programs blossoming in the dark of night, and the very real WMD proliferation profitably pursued in broad daylight by our allies with our enemies. Pakistan? North Korea? Never mind, Messieurs Wolfowitz, Feith, Cambone, Shulsky, Maloof. You're all doing a great job.
He has chosen the administration over the soldier every time. Whether the question is guns or butter for the actual soldier, the answer is no. Adding insult to injury, Rumsfeld has proposed paying the Iraqi torture victims in Abu Ghraib, while failing to advocate for the court ordered reimbursement of American POWs tortured by Saddam's army in 1991. The Saddam Hussein accounts to have been garnished are now President Bush accounts. When it comes to treatment of POWs, it is just one more amazing similarity between the Saddam-izer in Baghdad, and the Colon-izer in Washington. The administration is currently in contempt of court. Rather than comply and reimburse American POWs, it is instead planning to try and overturn the court ruling that awarded this payment.
Rumsfeld has worked diligently to keep Congress in the dark about the money he was spending, and where. Hiding money in SOCOM accounts was apparently standard operating procedure. Only two weeks ago, the hot news was the inconvenient possibility that some $700 million of anti-terrorism defense money in 2002 was illegally spent by a Pentagon getting ready to invade Iraq. Miraculously, this serious accusation - the kind the Congress really likes to get its teeth into - has melted away in the news-rush about nastiness at Abu Ghraib. Funny how that works. Crimes at the very top inexplicably overshadowed by far more titillating crimes by the unwashed military. Hard time for the leadership versus hard time for the E-4. You pick.
So if you think Rumsfeld is in trouble, first set aside your suspicion that President Bush and Vice President Cheney lie all the time. Sometimes they don't.
When Bush says Rumsfeld is "...doing a superb job. [He is] a strong secretary of defense, and our nation owes [him] a debt of gratitude," believe him.
When Cheney says, "Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defense the United States has ever had," believe him, too.
Rumsfeld isn't going anywhere. Not for six more months.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Potholes on the hydrogen highway
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
Environmental News Network
By David Suzuki
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-12/s_23655.asp
It's impossible not to have been sucked into the vortex of hoopla about the future of hydrogen. It pops up everywhere, from car commercials to news reports to magazine spreads.
Most recently, Prime Minister Paul Martin got on the bandwagon when he outlined a revolutionary plan to build a "hydrogen highway" from Whistler, B.C., to Vancouver in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics. The goal of the highway is to enable drivers using hydrogen fuel-cell cars to fill up at a network of hydrogen gas stations between the two cities.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has similar plans for a hydrogen highway in his state by 2010. But is this hydrogen highway hope or just hype?
It's a great idea, to be sure. While conventional gasoline engines have to burn their fuel, releasing heat-trapping gases and smog-forming pollutants in the process, hydrogen fuel cells convert their fuel directly into electrical power, making them virtually pollution free. The only thing that comes out of the tailpipe is heat and water. It's hard to argue against a car like that!
But there is a catch, one that the commercials and news reports often overlook. Hydrogen doesn't come out of a hole in the ground. In fact, it doesn't exist by itself in nature at all; people have to extract it from other materials, such as water, or fossil fuels like natural gas, methanol, or gasoline. That process requires lots of energy, and how people generate that energy is the crux of the issue.
To be pollution-free, hydrogen must be made using renewable energy, such as solar or wind. Otherwise, we will simply shift the pollution source from our vehicle tailpipes to smokestacks at hydrogen-production plants. And that's not exactly a blueprint for a clean, sustainable economy.
Unfortunately, there is currently very little investment in the kind of renewable energy we need to power a clean hydrogen highway. While the fossil fuel industry continues to feast on subsidies and tax incentives, the renewable energy industry is left to fight over the scraps. That needs to change now, while fuel cells are being developed, so we can have a clean source of hydrogen in the future.
Investing in clean, renewable energy also has the more immediate benefit of reducing air pollution and heat-trapping emissions right away. Scientists aren't the only ones worried about climate change anymore. It affects all of us, and the impacts are already being felt around the world.
Canada could position itself as a world leader on this issue by developing a bold plan to shift to a low-polluting, sustainable economy. In fact, we desperately need a plan if we are going to meet our Kyoto Protocol commitments.
Such a plan could start by mandating renewable energy requirements, improving fuel efficiency standards for new cars, and investing in public transit. Citizens stand to benefit immediately from such measures through cleaner air, savings at the pump, and better transportation options. These are benefits we can have today, without relying on the white knight of hydrogen in the future.
So is a hydrogen highway hope or hype? A little of both, actually.
Governments need to encourage investment in promising technologies like hydrogen fuel cells. But that's no excuse for failing to take action today. A sustainable future will not be achieved through technology alone. Itrequires wise policy choices on behalf of governments and informed choices by consumers.
The hydrogen highway is a great idea, but it is highly unlikely that fuel-cell cars will be commercially available by the 2010 Olympics. In the meantime, there are lots of affordable, practical things we can do immediately to reduce air pollution and climate change. We shouldn't have to wait a decade for clean air and better cars. We deserve options now.
Related Link
Take the Nature Challenge and learn more at http://www.davidsuzuki.org.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Tank explodes at sewage plant, dumping sludge into Spokane River
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
By John K. Wiley,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-12/s_23724.asp
SPOKANE, Washington - An explosion that blew a hole in a sewage tank dumped up to 200,000 gallons of sludge and wastewater into the Spokane River and a parking lot, authorities said. One worker was missing and presumed dead and three others were injured.
The four sewage treatment plant workers had gone to check on an unusual pressure buildup in the tank and were either on or near it at the time of the explosion Monday afternoon, said Fire Chief Bobby Williams. The cause of the pressure buildup and explosion was under investigation.
A search of the river and its banks was called off Monday evening, with authorities reluctantly concluding the missing man was most likely in the sewage tank at the Wastewater Treatment Plant northwest of the city.
"Our hope would be that the individual would not be in the tank, but it's looking like that's the most likely probability," Williams said.
The man's name was not released. Crews were draining the tank, a process that could take as long as 40 hours.
One worker suffered breathing problems and was airlifted to a hospital. A second was taken to another hospital for evaluation with minor injuries, and a third had minor injuries but did not require treatment. Officials did not release the men's names.
The explosion blew a "relatively small hole" near the top of the tank, Williams said. That loosened the tank's lid, which then fell into the tank, causing some of the contents to splash out.
As much as 200,000 gallons of sludge and wastewater spilled onto the parking lot, the river bank, and into the river, Williams said.
Health officials issued a warning for people living downstream to avoid drawing drinking water from the river or using it to irrigate crops or for livestock use, for at least three days.
Washington Department of Ecology spokeswoman Jani Gilbert said there are no municipal drinking water withdrawal points downstream from the plant. City employees will be testing the river water for bacterial contamination, she said.
-------- health
Plant-Derived Estrogen Wins FDA Approval
Story by Ransdell Pierson and Jed Seltzer
REUTERS USA:
May 12, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25088/story.htm
NEW YORK - U.S. regulators have approved Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.'s second plant-derived female hormone replacement tablet, an alternative to animal-derived products that have been linked to serious health risks.
Barr spokeswoman Carol Cox said there is no proof the company's new Enjuvia tablets are safer than estrogens made from animal proteins such as Wyeth's Premarin, whose sales have plunged since being linked to stroke and blood clots.
"We can't make a claim for that. Our product gives women another option," Cox said.
Enjuvia was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of moderate to severe symptoms associated with menopause, which typically include hot flashes, vaginal dryness and night sweats.
Many other companies sell over-the-counter plant products that claim to treat menopausal symptoms, including ones containing Wild Mexican yam, black cohosh and soy.
Barr said it believes it is the only company that sells plant-derived estrogen products by prescription. FDA approval requires rigorous scrutiny for safety and effectiveness that is not required of the over-the-counter products.
Barr said the FDA had approved Enjuvia tablets containing synthetic estrogens in strengths of 0.625 and 1.25 milligrams. It said it intends to seek future approval for other dosage strengths.
The company has been selling another plant-derived estrogen product by prescription since 1999, Cenestin, which has annual U.S. sales of $50 million.
Barr said Enjuvia contains an additional estrogen ingredient that is not present in Cenestin but is in Premarin. The FDA's approval of Enjuvia gives Barr more of an equal footing with Wyeth in marketing Enjuvia to physicians.
Barr cautioned that because of safety concerns, estrogen and synthetic estrogen products should only be prescribed at the lowest effective dose for the shortest possible duration.
Sales of Wyeth's Premarin, whose estrogen is derived from the urine of pregnant mares, have plunged in the past two years after a large, long-term federal study linked it to stroke and blood clots.
Shares of Barr were up $1.31, or 3 percent, to $44.45 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
Barr, based in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, suffered a major defeat last week when the FDA rejected its application to sell Plan B, a "morning-after" contraceptive, without a prescription.
The FDA acted against the recommendations of its advisory panel of independent expert doctors, which had strongly supported approval of Plan B. It was one of the rare occasions when the FDA spurned the advice of such an advisory panel.
-------- ACTIVISTS
NGOs, journalists have own `responsibilities'
May 12, 2004
by Toshimaru Ogura, Asahi Shimbun
http://www.asahi.com/english/opinion/TKY200405120131.html
NGOs and journalists must always maintain a tense relationship with their governments to a certain extent.... How far should a government support the activities of an NGO, which does not endorse its policy? This is a yardstick that shows the maturity of politics and democracy of that country.
Although the Japanese hostages in Iraq were set free, the situation gave rise to a problem I cannot overlook as someone who works for a nongovernmental organization (NGO). It is the way government officials and some media organizations are addressing the hostages' ``self-responsibility'' for causing a serious crisis and the growing trend to bash them and their families.
Every time I saw exhausted family members bow to the media and say, ``We are sorry for causing trouble,'' my heart went out to them. I wanted to tell them that they had not caused any trouble and to please raise their heads.
Referring to NGO activities, Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Yukio Takeuchi said, ``We urge workers to acknowledge the principle of self-responsibility and think once again about being responsible for their own safety.''
This argument of ``self-responsibility'' may sound rational and easy to understand. Actually, however, by making the remark, Takeuchi virtually said the government would not be responsible for the safety of people who work for NGOs. The statement amounts to saying the government would not take responsibility even if hostages are killed.
I am engaged in building a network of NGOs in such areas as development assistance, human rights and peace. But the hostage crisis made me realize how cruel a government can be to its own people in the event of war.
The government is using the argument of self-responsibility to give the impression that NGOs are acting ``recklessly.'' It is even acting like a victim who is cleaning up the mess made by the hostages.
Moreover, we need to recognize the fact that the Japanese government is party to the Iraq war. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to make a fair assessment of NGOs acting independently of their government.
Can the Self-Defense Forces or the government look into the damage caused by depleted uranium bombs or provide aid to poor children at this juncture?
I don't think so.
In Fallujah, a large number of children and civilians became victims of indiscriminate bombings by U.S. forces. If there were no journalists there, such facts might have remained hidden.
The Japanese government seems to want to ban people from going to Iraq but such a decision would contribute to turning Iraq into a black box.
Japanese traveling to Iraq may be exposed to the danger of being taken hostage by armed resistance fighters. But people living in Iraq are facing the danger that their lives are threatened by U.S. and coalition forces.
The Japanese government's argument of self-responsibility seems to draw an analogy between the Iraqi situation and mountain climbing in the winter or navigating in rough waters as far as danger is concerned.
It makes it difficult to see who is politically and diplomatically responsible for turning Iraq into a war-torn country.
The mission of NGOs in conflict areas is to provide support for the lives and living of people suffering the ravages of war without siding with any party to war. (Unfortunately, Japan is one.) It is by no means unnatural for people who know how war forces citizens to make immeasurable sacrifices to criticize the Japanese government's policy to support the U.S.-led war.
If we must restrain our behavior or faith just because we are Japanese, no Japanese journalists nor NGOs would be able to act freely.
NGOs and journalists must always maintain a tense relationship with their governments to a certain extent.
The responsibility of governments in relation to NGOs is being debated in industrialized countries across the world. How far should a government support the activities of an NGO, which does not endorse its policy? This is a yardstick that shows the maturity of politics and democracy of that country. What is the case with Japan?
The author is a professor of economics at Toyama University. He contributed this comment to The Asahi Shimbun.(IHT/Asahi: May 12,2004) (05/12)
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