Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Farmer finds radioactive devices in field
Agency struggles to obtain radiation data
Chinese nuclear deal buoys Islamabad
Rise in birth deformities blamed on Allies' deadly weaponry
DR. GINO STRADA
Iran to make nuclear report this week-Russian agency
Iraqi scientists targeted
US, N.Korea may meet on sidelines of nuke talks
Russia says no chance of breakthrough at Korea talks
U.S. Missile Shield Won't Work, Scientist Group Says
Coalition asks NRC to reopen uprate case
States, Nez Perce seek to join Hanford mediation talks
Nuclear waste project's funding in peril
MILITARY
An Afghan Aid Plan That Might Actually Work
Iraq arms caches exceed 8,700; hunt continues
'Bush Link' Hurting Blair on Home Front
New Tankers Not Needed, Report Says
Europeans Battle Domestic Uproar
Foreign minister rings alarm over Iraq
Iraqis 'worse off' in US hands
An important statement on the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners
Iraqi Politicians Press for Wider Role
U.S. Turns Up Pressure on Shiite Cleric's Militia
80% in Iraq Distrust Occupation Authority
Shiite Leaders Report Progress in Talks on Najaf
Israeli Army Leaves Destruction in Gaza
Five Israeli Soldiers Killed In a Second Attack in Gaza
Israeli Soldiers Kill 12 Palestinians in Gaza Fighting
Israel's Failed Assassination Attempt on U.S. Ambassador
Syrian President Rejects U.S. Sanctions
Matter of the carrot and the stick
Secret US jails hold 10,000
Military has altered prisoner rules amid alleged abuse in Afghanistan
Britons tell Bush of 'US abuse'
Italy general backs abuse claims
At Iraqi Prison, Rumsfeld Says
General Took Guantánamo Rules to Iraq for Handling of Prisoners
F.B.I. Agent Pleads Guilty in Deal in Chinese Spy Case
Ex-Handler of Alleged FBI Spy Cuts Deal
Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations
Despite rebuilding, CIA is still short of spies
Stakes are raised over UN vote on Iraq
Germany to lobby for seat on UN Security Council
U.S. Urged To Give Iraq More Control
Line Increasingly Blurred
Army might be calling back recently demobilized GIs
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Iraq Prison Abuse May Hurt Administration in Court
Judge Allows Peek Into Challenge to Antiterrorism Law
Stevens Faults Death Penalty But Says It's Constitutional
ACLU Was Forced to Revise Release on Patriot Act Suit
Civilian Complaint Review Board
CIA 'held al-Qaida suspects under water'
POLITICS
Pentagon Expects to Seek $50 Billion for Iraq and Afghanistan
Rumsfeld Defends Rules for Prison
Lawmakers Are Stunned By New Images of Abuse
Lawmakers View Images From Iraq
Hearing Transcript Shows Rumors of Prison Abuse Before Investigation
The Coming Backlash Against Outrage
The Pro-War Press Breaks With Bush
Kerry Assails Bush on Iraq
ENERGY
Stalled Energy Bill Equals No Growth Wind Industry
OTHER
Adirondack Park Might Get Some Relief From Acid Rain
Inuit "poisoned from afar" due to climate change
Criteria relaxed for liver donors
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Farmer finds radioactive devices in field
Thu, 13 May 2004
CBC Canada
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/05/13/canada/radiation_farm040513
SASKATOON - A farmer in Saskatchewan has found two cases of radioactive material missing for almost five years, easing the fears of officials who had worried it had found its way into the hands of terrorists.
The moisture density probes in the suitcases are highly radioactive. They had been missing since June 1999, when a man stole the pickup truck they were in from the University of Saskatchewan.
The probes contain the type of material security officials fear terrorists could use to make a "dirty bomb," an explosive device such as TNT packed with radioactive material that would scatter over a large area in the blast.
"It is a risk to the public if they get into the wrong hands or are mishandled," said Debbie Frattinger, the university's radiation safety officer. "We were always [thinking] in the back of our mind, 'Where did they end up? Who got in contact with them? Where are they?'"
A man was convicted four years ago for stealing the pickup truck the cases were in. But where the radioactive material went was a mystery until Sunday, when a farmer chanced upon them in a remote corner of his farm 50 kilometres north of Saskatoon.
Noticing the radiation symbols on the orange cases, the farmer called the RCMP and reported finding two batches of plutonium. Then he drove the cases to the police detachment in Saskatoon.
The university has also misplaced other radioactive instruments. Another device was accidentally sold for scrap in 2002 and later wound up in the Saskatoon landfill.
The university says it has improved its procedures and stepped up its inspections to avoid similar incidents.
--------
Agency struggles to obtain radiation data
NIOSH handles workers' claims for weapons work By NANCY ZUCKERBROD
Associated Press
Thursday, May 13, 2004
http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2004/05/13ky/B5-nukes0513-4627.html
WASHINGTON - The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says it is having a hard time obtaining data on how much radiation exposure some Cold War-era nuclear weapons plant workers may have received.
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.
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 at Paducah, Ky., and Piketon, Ohio, among other places. Many of those workers weren't carefully monitored, or their records were lost.
Dr. Larry Elliott, who heads the NIOSH effort, said yesterday that 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 estimate 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.
-------- asia
Chinese nuclear deal buoys Islamabad
By FARHAN BOKHARI
The Japan Times:
May 13, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?eo20040513fb.htm
ISLAMABAD -- China's agreement to supply a second 300-megawatt nuclear power reactor to Pakistan encourages Islamabad's ruling establishment, which is eager to develop the country's nuclear energy potential in a significant way. The deal for the new reactor, to be located at Chashma in central Punjab -- next to the first Chinese reactor of a similar size already built -- follows recent reports of U.S. pressure on China to delay the agreement.
In recent months, Pakistan's nuclear program has been under the global spotlight following revelations that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, sold knowhow and technology to Iran, Libya and, possibly, North Korea. The Pakistani government of Gen. Pervez Musharraf must draw satisfaction from Beijing's apparent decision to ignore some of the pressures brought on it to withhold future nuclear deals with Islamabad.
The next stage in Pakistan's pursuit of nuclear reactors may be preliminary talks with China on a third reactor, expected to be built in Karachi, the southern port city -- alongside the Canadian-supplied Karachi Nuclear Power Project.
Such deals reinforce Pakistan's close ties with China. During the years that Islamabad was denied military hardware by Western suppliers, Beijing remained its closest ally, providing Pakistan with equipment for its defense needs.
Other ambitious projects under way at present with Beijing's cooperation include construction of Gwadar port in Baluchistan, Pakistan's southwestern province, and Sino-Pakistani joint development of the JF-17 Thunder fighter aircraft.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has not failed to notice China's emergence as a major economic power. Indeed, recent travelers from Pakistan to China have been taken aback by the modernization setting in across the once-stereotypical communist state. Thus Pakistan's attempt to keep its relationship with China driven mainly by defense and strategic considerations is bound to compete with Beijing's pursuit of economic and trade relations with other countries. How will Pakistan deal with the risk of its being eventually reduced to just one of China's partners from a fundamentally close relationship up to now?
On the one hand, Pakistan needs to establish many more joint ventures with China in key areas beyond defense while taking fresh stock of the parameters that define security interests. In recent years, reports of a large number of Islamic Pakistani militants venturing into China's northern Xinjiang region to recruit supporters for hardline movements, have not helped bilateral relations.
It was only the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York that forced Pakistan's ruling establishment to order a tough military campaign against hardliners, including those involved directly or indirectly with activism in northern China. Activities aimed at undermining China's internal stability and peace should never be tolerated by any Pakistani regime.
On the other hand, Pakistan must work aggressively toward encouraging its businessmen to venture into China in search of new investment opportunities. One downside of the relations with China has been that Pakistani businessmen have yet to launch large numbers of investments in China, despite the geographic proximity of the two countries.
So far, the largest segment of Pakistani visitors to China comprises small- to medium-size traders eager to import Chinese finished products that are subsequently sold on Pakistan's markets for smuggled goods. Only Pakistani business and industrial ventures in China will move toward establishing a long-term economic partnership in a tangible way.
The agreement on a new nuclear reactor, after months of negotiations, marks an important phase in Sino-Pakistani relations. The deal underscores the extent to which China is ready to defy pressure from the United States. But in a changing world, a few deals related to nuclear power or defense may not be enough to assure strong ties well into the future.
Farhan Bokhari is a freelance journalist who reports from the Pakistani capital.
-------- depleted uranium
Rise in birth deformities blamed on Allies' deadly weaponry
By Nigel Morris
13 May 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=520733
The number of babies born deformed and children suffering leukaemia have soared because of the "deadly legacy" of depleted uranium shells used by British and American forces in Iraq, human rights campaigners claimed yesterday.
Releasing details of health problems and human rights violations suffered by Iraqi children in the past year, they claim the country's youngsters faced a worse existence today than they did under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship.
Depleted uranium was widely used by Allied forces to penetrate Iraqi tank armour in the Gulf Wars of 1991 and again last year.
Opponents claim the dust it releases upon impact is rapidly absorbed into the body, causing an upsurge of serious health problems inherited by Iraqi children during the past 13 years from their parents.
Caroline Lucas, a Green Party Euro-MP who recently visited Basra, said doctors there had told her that the number of children born with severe deformities, such as shortened limbs or eye defects, had increased sevenfold since 1991. In addition they were treating several new cases of leukaemia every week - before 1991 the condition was very rare.
"Women in Basra are afraid to become pregnant because there are so many deformed babies," she said. "We are leaving a deadly legacy for generations to come."
She made the claims at the launch in London of a new charity, Child Victims of War (CVW), to help Iraqi youngsters "innocently suffering malnutrition, disease, disability and psychological trauma".
The amount of depleted uranium used by coalition forces in the two Gulf Wars is not known, but some estimates suggest it was 300 tons in 1991 and five times as much last year.
CVW says the number of Iraqi babies born with serious deformities has risen from 3.04 per thousand in 1991 to 22.19 per thousand in 2001. Babies born with Downs Syndrome have increased nearly fivefold and there had been a rash of cases of previously little-known eye problems.
The Ministry of Defence insists depleted uranium poses a "minimal" risk to civilians. But, in a finding strongly disputed by the MoD, researchers recently discovered radiation levels from destroyed Iraqi tanks to be 2,500 times higher than normal and 20 times higher than normal in the surrounding area.
Joanne Baker, the director of CVW, who has just returned from Iraq, said children had also been maimed by cluster bombs, blamed by Human Rights Watch for "hundreds of preventable civilian deaths".
She said youngsters were also vulnerable both to coalition forces and local militia resisting western forces.
She said malnutrition had worsened since the Anglo-US invasion and unpolluted water was in short supply while standards of hospital care had fallen because of shortages of medical supplies.
Those children who went to school - and a Christian Aid survey showed two-thirds of poor youngsters did not - were "so malnourished they can't concentrate".
Ms Baker claimed: "Every child in Iraq had a degree of psychological trauma.
"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.
Ms Baker 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."
CVW has applied to the Charities Commission for charitable status, and plans to open an office in Iraq to monitor abuses, counsel those who have been detained, train human rights groups and provide medical help to young victims of war.
VICTIM OF DEPLETED URANIUM?
At the age of seven, Fadel, from Basra in southern Iraq, developed a devastating, and extremely rare, liver and kidney complaint which caused her abdomen to swell dramatically. The condition - which has only been seen in Iraq since 1991 - is thought to be caused by abnomally high levels of toxic materials in her body.
She underwent agonising hospital treatment, which involved injections to draw out the huge amounts of water that accumulated. Her cries of pain were so loud they could be heard down the hospital corridor. Fadel's father was serving in the Iraqi army during the first Gulf War when she was conceived. Fadel is believed to have died shortly after this photograph was taken.
----
DR. GINO STRADA
by Ezrha Jean Black
Los Angeles City Beat,
May 13, 2004
http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=904&IssueNum=49
The director of the international medical relief organization Emergency on rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq, and how to be an idealist without illusions
For the Iraqi soldier, foreign insurgent, or civilian caught in the crossfire, getting injured in Iraq is only the beginning of a hellish nightmare. The local hospitals that still exist have only intermittent power, zero supplies, and are losing indigenous doctors who give up and leave the country. Into that situation comes Dr. Gino Strada and Emergency. Once an orthopedic surgeon working on landmine victims in Cambodia with the International Red Cross, Strada founded Emergency in Italy expressly to build surgical facilities for war-devastated regions. Since then, Dr. Strada has built hospitals and patched up survivors in Cambodia, Sierra Leone, Algeria, Palestine, and finally Iraq and Afghanistan. Since the American occupation of Iraq, Strada (with his colleague, Kate Rowlands) established Iraq operations in both Karbala, in the Shia south, and Baghdad - an environment that tests the limits of endurance. Beneath his world-weary-to-the-point-of-exhaustion mien, Strada remains an unabashed pacifist. Yet he seems inoculated against illusion of any kind, seared by decades of relief work and without a second to spare for political rationalization or temporizing of any kind. On a fund-raising and informational tour of the U.S., Strada took a few moments from his unrelenting schedule to chat with CityBeat.
-Ezrha Jean Black
CityBeat: The ongoing crisis in Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq right now, involves security - or the lack of it. How do you operate on a day-to-day basis in places like Kabul, Karbala, or Baghdad?
Gino Strada: Security is proportional to your commitment to the population. When you are well known and established, nobody's going to touch you. But in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we've had the problem of people coming in from other countries to fight U.S. invading troops. Between 1999 and 2000, you had fighters of 22 nationalities fighting with the Taliban in their "holy cause." The invasion has triggered this mechanism now in Iraq. These people don't belong to the community; they have no knowledge of our mission. And they tend to target foreigners because they assume that all non-Arab foreigners are somehow linked to the military invasion. But terror is a risk you can never entirely eliminate.
Are any of the problems that you're seeing complicated by pre-existing and untreated health problems in Iraq?
One of the most terrible tragedies is the lack of drugs to treat leukemia and cancers. After 1991, you had 12 times increased incidence of leukemia and cancer, particularly in children. It's amazing to see that the end result of the U.S. and British policies - those who were imposing the sanctions - was exactly the same as Saddam Hussein's policy, because they were preventing the drugs from coming into the country. When we offered to break the embargo and airlift 30 tons of drugs to treat leukemia, the Iraqi government said no.
Why did they refuse these medications?
In 1991, the U.N. passed a resolution called "oil for food," but it also included medicines. But almost every request by the Iraqi Ministry for Health for various drugs was effectively blocked - and the blockade was always decided by the U.S. and British. If an agency like ours proposed to break the embargo, the Iraqi government refused. Their reasoning was that if we procured these drugs for them, they could no longer claim they were without drugs because the Americans were blocking them. The result was that a lot of the kids could not get drugs - and more than half a million of them died.
How has your operation been impeded by these pre-existing deficits in medical supplies?
During the war, there were no drugs available - I'm talking about antibiotics, painkillers, whatever. From 1995 onwards, all the drugs we got into Iraq were brought in illegally. This did not just apply to drugs, but to other items absolutely indispensable to a surgical operation: X-ray films, external fixators for orthopedics, surgical instruments. Anything that was metal was considered "dual use." Sutures were blocked by the U.N. sanctions committee - vetoed by the British and Americans - because they said sutures were dual use; they could be used for military purposes. So were drugs to treat cardiac insufficiency, angina, anti-fibrillation drugs - drugs millions of patients take every day in the United States and Europe.
Are there differences in the medical problems encountered in different parts of the country or among the different ethnic groups?
In the south, the state of medical care there was absolutely incredible. You had a sort of nuclear warfare being fought, because of the amount of depleted uranium. A number of university professors who came down from Europe to study this phenomenon got cancers and leukemia themselves - because the radioactivity was extremely high.
Will this continue to be a significant problem?
It will continue for decades. You'll see an abnormal incidence of leukemia and cancers in the American soldiers serving in Iraq within four or five years of their return. This will be a big problem among American veterans. Whether we learn the full truth of its extent - who can say?
Emergency's mission statements include the goal of building "a real and concrete culture of peace." Is this a sustainable goal?
I think the problem of sustainability is a false one. The implication is if it can't be sustainable, we're not going to put it in place. For the person who steps on a landmine or takes a shell in his chest, the fact that your health system will be sustainable in 30 years makes no difference. He needs to be looked after today. So you have to institute a system that is efficient, free of charge, and available to whomever is in need without discrimination.
But how do you deal with cases where you operate on and rehabilitate an injured soldier who simply ends up again on the front lines with a weapon in his hands?
I remember one guy admitted to the hospital in Afghanistan who had had a traumatic amputation of a hand and forearm. And while I was doing the triage, this guy says to me in Farsi, "How are you, Dr. Gino?" "You know me?" I ask. "Yeah," he says. "You operated on my leg eight years ago." I had amputated his leg eight years before when he had a bullet injury in his knee; and after we gave him his prosthesis, he went back to fight. You feel frustrated, but to be a surgeon is not to be a judge of what people should do with their lives. Sure it would be great if all the injured soldiers stopped fighting and became peace activists. But that's an ideal world that isn't with us at the moment.
What are the prospects for public health care - both in Emergency's facilities and overall in Iraq - given the present circumstances? It is very difficult without peace. One thing I'm sure of is that as long as there is a military occupation of that country, there will be no peace. It doesn't matter whether it's U.S. troops or some other force. Whoever is there as an occupying force is going to be attacked. I don't know if there's a solution - perhaps a U.N. peacekeeping force. Iraqis - like any population - don't like seeing foreign armed personnel doing what they will throughout the country. Would it be any different in L.A.?
-------- iran
Iran to make nuclear report this week-Russian agency
13 May 2004
http://www.gateway2russia.com/st/art_234974.php
Iran will this week give the U.N. nuclear watchdog answers to "all questions" on its nuclear programme, an Iranian nuclear source was quoted as saying on Thursday. "A report answering all questions asked by the (International Atomic Energy Agency) is ready, and we will hand it over to the IAEA over the next two days," a source in Iran's nuclear delegation visiting Moscow told Russia's Ria-Novosti news agency.
Iran, accused by the United States of seeking to acquire an atom bomb, says its nuclear programme is for peaceful power generation and has pledged to give a full account of its activities ahead of a June IAEA board meeting in Vienna. The source said the document could be dispatched as soon as Thursday with a group of IAEA officials who had been inspecting Iranian nuclear sites and are now due to return to Vienna.
Iranian officials want the IAEA to drop Iran from its agenda altogether after the board meeting, but Washington says Iran is still secretly trying to build atomic weapons. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei warned Tehran a week ago that the world would not wait forever for it to divulge the full extent and nature of its nuclear programme. Russia, which is helping Iran build a nuclear reactor near the city of Bushehr, has also been under fire from Washington - the United States believes Iranian scientists can extract weapons-grade plutonium from the 1,000-megawatt plant and use Russian nuclear know-how to build a nuclear bomb. Both Russia and Iran have staunchly denied that was possible, but Russia's reluctance to jeopardise its ties with Washington has stalled the plant's construction. The Iranian delegation was in Moscow this week to discuss how to take the $800 million project further, but little has come out of their visit so far. "It's a very sensitive period. Extensive talks with the Iranians didn't yield anything," a source in the Russian Atomic Energy Agency told Reuters. [http://gazeta.ru/]
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraqi scientists targeted
Killings prompt calls for US to evacuate weapons researchers
13 May 2004
Nature
JIM GILES
http://www.nature.com/nsu/040510/040510-9.html
Iraqi scientists hold considerable knowledge of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
The assassination of several of Iraq's former weapons scientists has hit US plans to employ them to help rebuild the war-torn country. The killings, together with the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, have led some non-proliferation experts to call for the researchers to be evacuated from the country.
Between five and ten scientists have been killed in the past six months, according to a US Department of State official who runs programmes aimed at keeping former weapons scientists in employment. "The most common explanation is that they've shown an interest in working with the coalition," says the official, who declined to be identified by name and who returned from Iraq earlier this month.
Between them, the Iraqi scientists hold considerable knowledge of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons from programmes that now seem to have been defunct long before the US-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003. But the killings are only the latest setback in plans to redirect their knowledge and skills. Non-proliferation experts who wanted to work with Iraqi scientists were angered when initial responsibility for contacting them was given to military forces. Some scientists hid, fearing that they could be taken prisoner (see Nature 423, 371; 2003).
Such independent experts have since left Iraq because of security concerns, further weakening non-proliferation efforts. And David Albright, a former nuclear-weapons inspector in Iraq, says these problems mean that attempts to keep researchers in Iraq should no longer be a priority for the US government. "They should shift the programme to getting people out," says Albright, who now heads the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. "There are scientists with secret documents who could go to Iran or Syria."
Such a change in policy would come too late for Majid Hussein Ali, a nuclear scientist reported to be at Baghdad University. Ali was not directly involved in weapons research, but he was said to have met with US weapons inspectors. He was killed by an unknown gunman in Baghdad in February.
Despite the death of Ali and other researchers, state-department officials insist that most scientists want to stay in their country. Officials have visited Iraq regularly this year, and say that they were able to win the confidence of Iraqi scientists by distancing themselves from the military activities of the coalition forces.
Job creation
The state department sought to ramp up its activities last November with a US$2-million programme aimed at identifying former weapons researchers and finding them work in Iraq (see Nature 426, 371; 2003). Since then, officials have drawn up a list of 400 scientists, engineers and technicians who had worked on weapons research and related fields. Officials say that about 75 of these people are unaccounted for, but nearly all of the others have been located in Iraq.
The officials add that these researchers would stay in Iraq if meaningful work can be found for them. Most are currently employed in industry and academia, at least in theory. But many universities and other facilities have been closed by the invasion and subsequent insurgencies.
"They are all employed in the sense that they get a pay cheque," says the state-department official. "But some are very unhappy because they have nothing to do." The official is trying to raise $40 million for reconstruction projects over the next three years. "We're talking to coalition partners now," he says.
State-department staff have meanwhile established an International Center for Science and Industry in Baghdad, consisting of office space that they say will be used to house Iraqi researchers who will determine how any reconstruction money will be spent.
Many Iraqi scientists have criticized schemes by outsiders to unite the country's researchers, officials at the state department acknowledge. They say that scientists felt excluded from an attempt by a largely expatriate group of Iraqi researchers to form an Iraqi academy of science (see Nature 426, 484; 2003). By ensuring that local scientists play a prominent role in the new centre, the officials hope that the facility will be accepted as legitimate by Iraqi researchers.
But Albright, who initially backed the state department's programme, is worried about what will happen to the former weapons scientists. He went to Iraq last year and helped US officials to locate many of them. Such trips ended in the autumn, as the security situation worsened. Even then, Albright says, "everyone wanted to get out".
-------- korea
US, N.Korea may meet on sidelines of nuke talks
13th-14th May 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.arabtimesonline.com/arabtimes/breakingnews/view.asp?msgID=5806
BEIJING - U.S. and North Korean envoys are expected to hold rare face-to-face talks in Beijing to try to defuse the crisis over the North's nuclear programmes, 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 programmes including a suspected uranium enrichment programme, Japan's Kyodo news agency said on Thursday.
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 programmes, 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 programme 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.
----
Russia says no chance of breakthrough at Korea talks
13 May 2004
Gateway 2 Russia
http://www.gateway2russia.com/st/art_234868.php
U.S. and North Korean envoys were reported to be planning a face-to-face meeting on Thursday to try to defuse the North's nuclear crisis, but Russia's envoy said there was no chance of a breakthrough at second-tier talks. Envoys are in the Chinese capital for the first working-level meeting of six-party talks on the crisis that also include South Korea, Russia, China and Japan. Veiled in secrecy, the discussions entered their second day on Thursday.
U.S. chief delegate Joseph DeTrani and his North Korean counterpart, Ri Gun, might discuss a U.S. demand that the North completely dismantle its nuclear programmes including a suspected uranium enrichment programme, Japan's Kyodo news agency said. But diplomatic sources and other news reports said the North continued to reject demands to scrap all of its programmes and was sticking to its stiff denial of a uranium enrichment programme.
"We came to discuss compensation for a nuclear freeze. A nuclear development programme involving uranium enrichment does not exist," the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun quoted Ri as saying at talks on Wednesday. Valery Sukhinin, head of the Russian delegation, told the Itar-Tass news agency that no breakthrough could be expected at the working-level session, China's Xinhua news agency said.
Delegates could exchange views on details of some issues but could not revise the stances of their governments, Sukhinin was quoted as saying. "It seems that the meeting would go on for another day, two days or three days, and all depends on the progress of the meeting," he said.
Publicly, neither North Korea nor the United States, the two main protagonists, has shown any willingness to budge from its position during the inaugural talks that are intended to pave the way for higher-level meetings. Pyongyang's state media, in typical form, kept up its anti-U.S. vitriol on Thursday, accusing the "imperialists" of preparing for war.
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.
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 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 programmes, South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Japanese sources as saying.
The North was willing to discuss issues related to the freeze, including extent and duration and inspections to verify it, said Japanese public broadcaster NHK. Kyodo said the North had also broached the possibility of allowing foreign inspectors back into the country as a step towards dismantlement.
The nuclear crisis erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret programme 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.
-------- missile defense
U.S. Missile Shield Won't Work, Scientist Group Says
By REUTERS
May 13, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-missile-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.
A technical analysis found ``no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack,'' the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled ``Technical Realities.''
The Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency rejected the report, whose authors included Philip Coyle, the Defense Department's top weapons tester under former President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2001.
``Even the limited defense we are mounting provides a level of protection against an accidental or unauthorized (intercontinental ballistic missile) launch or a limited attack where we currently have no protection,'' said Richard Lehner, an agency spokesman. ``It would be irresponsible to not make it available for the defense of our nation and our people.''
Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, concurred with the report's findings. The Bush administration should stop buying missile-defense interceptors until they are proven to work through ``combat-realistic'' operational tests, he said in a statement.
The first U.S. deployment involves 10 interceptor missiles to be stored in silos in Alaska and California. The initial goal is to protect all 50 U.S. states against a limited strike from North Korean missiles that could be tipped with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.
'KILL VEHICLES'
Boeing Co. is assembling the shield, which would use the interceptors to launch ``kill vehicles'' meant to pulverize targets in the mid-course of their flight paths, outside the Earth's atmosphere.
Guided by infrared sensors, the vehicles would search the chill of space for the warheads. So far, the interceptors have scored hits five times in eight highly controlled tests.
The report's authors said demonstrating such a ``hit-to-kill'' capability was not the primary, or most difficult, missile-defense challenge.
Even unsophisticated ``countermeasures'' that could be mounted by countries such as North Korea remain an unsolved problem, they said.
For instance, inflatable balloons or other decoys coated with a thin polyester film could be given the same infrared signature as a warhead, the scientists said. The project could also be confused by sealing the warhead in a large balloon so the kill vehicle could not pinpoint its exact location, or tethering several balloons to it.
Overstating the defensive capabilities was irresponsible, said the report by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based group. It cited past Pentagon statements the capability was limited only by the number of interceptors.
``If the president is told that the system could reliably defend against a North Korean ballistic missile attack, he might be willing to accept more risks when making policy and military decisions,'' the report said.
``I actually worry that it's worse than useless, that it's really dangerous,'' George Lewis, a report co-author who is associate director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told reporters at a briefing.
The General Accounting Office, Congress's nonpartisan investigative arm, said last month the system's effectiveness would be ``largely unproven'' when it becomes operational.
The Pentagon estimates it will need $53 billion in the next five years to develop, field and upgrade a multilayered shield also involving systems based at sea, aboard modified Boeing 747 aircraft and in space.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- vermont
Coalition asks NRC to reopen uprate case
By CAROLYN LORIÉ BRATTLEBORO
Reformer Staff,
May 13, 2004
http://www.reformer.com/cda/article/print/0,1674,102%7E8862%7E2145222,00.html
Thursday, May 13, 2004 -- The New England Coalition filed a motion with the state Public Service Board on Tuesday, requesting that the record in the Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee "uprate" case be reopened.
According to the filing, the coalition, an anti-nuclear watchdog group and intervenor in the case, wants the opportunity to challenge information contained in motions filed by Entergy, as well as letters submitted to the board by the Department of Public Service.
The motions and letters were submitted following the board's order of March 15, which issued Entergy a conditional certificate of public good for its proposed 20 percent power increase.
Ray Shadis, technical advisor for the coalition, contends that the material submitted -- namely a motion to amend the order by Entergy and a letter from the Department supporting the company's supplemental ratepayer protection proposal -- contains disputed information but is being offered as fact.
"Entergy attorneys and the state attorney are offering testimony and they're doing so in a setting where it cannot be subject to discovery and cross-examination," said Shadis.
The board closed the record on the case on Jan. 15, which meant that it would not allow the submission of additional testimony.
Documents subsequently filed by the coalition regarding uprate-related problems at other nuclear power plants were rejected by the board, said Shadis, as was an article submitted by the Department of Public Service.
Among the points the coalition is challenging is Entergy's request that only 21 out of 22 cooling tower cells be re-fitted with 200 horsepower fans.
Shadis said that there is some question about the ability of the cooling towers to perform under emergency conditions.
The Department of Public Service voiced its support for Entergy's motion in a letter to the board, something plant officials were quick to point out in response to the coalition's filing.
"Vermont Yankee does not agree that there is a need to reopen the proceedings. The Department of Public Service has signed off on our request as far as the cooling towers go," said Brian Cosgrove, director of public affairs.
Also at issue is a letter from Sarah Hoffman, attorney for the Department of Public Service, claiming that the state wants the plant to leave enough space in the spent fuel pool for full core discharge.
Full core discharge is the removal of all the fuel for the reactor core. This might be necessary if there were a significant problem in the core, requiring it to be accessible for repairs.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not require nuclear power plant to leave enough room in the pool for full core discharge.
According to the department, if Entergy had to shut the plant down unexpectedly, it could not access decommissioning funds, beyond the first 3 percent, until all the fuel was removed from the core. If the spent fuel pool were filled to capacity, the core could not emptied and the funds would remain unavailable.
In Tuesday's motion, however, the coalition claims that NRC regulations on this matter are subject to debate.
The filing reads: "It is far from certain since the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Decommissioning Standard Review Plan uses the terms 'defueled status' and 'permanent cessation of operations' interchangeably."
The commissioner of the Public Service Department, David O'Brien, was not available for comment.
The Public Service Board has not yet responded to Entergy's motion or to a previous motion filed by the New England Coalition.
-------- washington
States, Nez Perce seek to join Hanford mediation talks
By SHANNON DININNY
Thursday, May 13, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Hanford%20Yakamas
RICHLAND, Wash. -- Washington, Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe have asked to participate in mediation talks involving a lawsuit filed by the Yakama Nation over restoration of natural resources along the Columbia River at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation.
The Yakama Nation filed suit in 2002 against the U.S. Department of Energy, seeking restoration of the site's natural resources that may have been damaged from 40 years of plutonium production for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. A court ordered the Yakama Nation and the Justice Department, which represents the federal agency, to mediation talks earlier this year.
In a letter mailed this week to both parties, Washington and Oregon asked to join the mediation talks within the next 30 days or they may file suit.
"As statutory natural resource trustees, Oregon and Washington have a strong interest in issues relating to natural resource damages at Hanford," the letter said.
The Nez Perce Tribe of Idaho also has asked to join the talks.
The Yakama Nation supports the move to expand the talks to include other stakeholders, according to a letter by Raymond Givens, an attorney for the tribe.
"At this juncture it appears that resolution of issues in this litigation would be well served by inclusion of these entities in the mediation," the letter said.
The Yakama Nation has alleged that contamination of the Columbia River with radioactive waste and other hazardous substances has contributed to declining Northwest salmon populations in the last 50 years. The tribe contends the Energy Department has failed to ensure the restoration of damaged natural resources at the 586-square-mile reservation.
The Energy Department on Wednesday announced it would immediately begin conducting preassessment screenings at parts of the site. The screenings involve reviewing documents already in existence about any natural resource damage at Hanford to determine where more information is needed and where impacts to the environment may have occurred.
The Energy Department had previously said those screenings would not begin until 2006.
It is too soon, however, to determine if there were injuries to the environment or whether reparations should be paid, said Beth Bilson, assistant manager for the river corridor for the Energy Department.
"If we go this way and it becomes obvious we're making a mistake, we're not opposed to a change," Bilson told members of the Hanford Natural Resource Trust Council, which is made up of representatives of the Nez Perce, Yakama and Umatilla tribes, the states of Washington and Oregon, and the federal Energy, Interior and Fish and Wildlife departments. "But it's our opinion the vast majority of the ecosystem out there is healthy."
The Yakama Nation filed suit under federal Superfund law provisions, which allow tribes and other governments to sue polluters who discharge hazardous substances that damage natural resources.
For 40 years, Hanford made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons, beginning with the top-secret Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. Today, it is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup costs are expected to total $50 billion to $60 billion, with the work to be finished by 2035.
-------- us nuc waste
Nuclear waste project's funding in peril
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Thursday, May 13, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apus_story.asp?category=1110&slug=Yucca%20Mountain
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-14/s_23898.asp
A June 10, 1992 photo shows the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump, at Mercury, Nev. Scientists working for the state of Nevada held a demonstration Wednesday, May 12. 2004 that they say proves the casks to be used to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain will last as little as 20 years - not the tens of thousands planned by the federal government. (AP Photo)
WASHINGTON -- The Energy Department has been warned by an influential lawmaker that it may get a fraction of the money sought next year for a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada, jeopardizing any chance that site can open by 2010.
Congress has given the project the go-ahead, pending a permit by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But securing the money needed every year so the Yucca Mountain project can stay on schedule has frustrated planners.
The latest potential roadblock came from the House Appropriations subcommittee that is considering a department request for $880 million for the budget year that begins Oct. 1. The project 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas is facing major challenges in getting an NRC license and developing a waste transportation plan.
In a recent letter, Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, the subcommittee chairman, advised Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham that he may get only $131 million, an amount that department officials say essentially would shut down the program.
The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter.
Hobson, a strong supporter of the project, asked Abraham for detailed information on how these limited funds would affect the program and the nuclear industry.
"We're working closely with chairman Hobson to address his concerns ... and advance the ball forward in getting the money we need," department spokesman Joe Davis said.
The proposed repository is where the government wants to bury 77,000 tons of highly radioactive used reactor fuel now kept at commercial power plants, as well as defense waste. The effort has wide support in Congress. In 2002, lawmakers blocked an attempt by Nevada to short-circuit the project.
When it comes to annual funds, Yucca Mountain planners must compete with other programs under the subcommittee's jurisdiction, including popular water projects dear to individual lawmakers.
This year, the Energy Department sought to resolve that problem. It linked about $750 million of the $880 million requested for Yucca Mountain to congressional passage of legislation assuring that money collected through a special nuclear waste fund actually is spent for the project.
The legislation has languished in another committee. So Hobson is faced with a $750 million shortfall that - if it is to be provided for Yucca - will have to come from other programs.
To make matters worse, the Energy Department always has relied on the House to come up with more money for Yucca Mountain. In the Senate, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, an ardent Yucca opponent, is in the leadership, and this chamber has been more stingy in providing funds for the program.
Recently the Senate Armed Services Committee authorized funds for Yucca Mountain at $577 million next fiscal year, a little less than current spending.
In March, Margaret Chu, director of the DOE office that heads the program, emphasized at a congressional hearing that the program is reaching a critical stage where spending below what the department is requesting would make it impossible to meet the 2010 target for opening the facility.
To stay on schedule, she predicted a need to raise spending over the next few years: $880 million in fiscal 2005, $1 billion in 2006 and $1.2 billion the year after that.
The federal nuclear waste fund is collected from a one-tenth of a cent per kilowatt assessment on power produced by a nuclear power plant. Currently the $14 billion already collected helps hold down the deficit.
"It's money ratepayers have paid. We want to use that money and move the project forward," department spokesman Davis said. The bill proposed by the administration would require that Congress free up whatever revenue is collected in a given year and use it on the Yucca project, so the program does not have to complete with other programs.
Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov
Nevada Office of Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
ECONOMIC SCENE
An Afghan Aid Plan That Might Actually Work
May 13, 2004
By JEFF MADRICK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/business/13scene.html
AFTER the disaster of Sept. 11, there was a widespread conviction that the world had changed. One supposed change was a new sensitivity on the part of rich nations to the plight of the world's poor, and a new respect for "nation building," even on the part of the Bush administration.
Even in these trying times, however, promises of more aid to developing nations have proved empty, or at best meager.
Nowhere is this more tragically evident than in Afghanistan, the first theater of combat after Sept. 11.
Here is the dismal record so far. Financial aid to Afghanistan, measured per capita, has been far lower than for any other nation recently during a period of rebuilding after a conflict. According to the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, aid to Afghanistan for 2002 and well into 2003 was only $67 annually for each man, woman and child.
During its recovery from war, Kosovo received more than 10 times that - $814 a year per capita over several years. And Palestine received $219 a year per person in the second half of the 1990's, three times the amount for Afghanistan.
Even Haiti received more aid per capita, some $74, in the three years of its post-conflict reconstruction. Rwanda received $114 a person in annual aid from 1994 to 1996. And those two countries are considered classic examples of neglect, said Barnett Rubin, who, with several colleagues, put together the center's study on Afghanistan.
This latest case of neglect came partly because the United States turned its attention to Iraq. Aid has also been impeded by the lack of physical security in Afghanistan.
But the neglect also sadly reflects the refusal of rich nations to undertake costly, multifaceted solutions to long-term, complex problems.
One consequence of the slow start in Afghanistan is that opium production and drug trafficking have easily become the most important sources of income. The United Nations estimates that a poppy farmer earns more than $2,500 a year, compared with $670 for other farmers. As a result, about a quarter of all Afghan farmland is devoted to poppy cultivation.
In the meantime, security is increasingly difficult to maintain. As Afghanistan prepares for elections later this year, the American government reports that attacks by the Taliban have risen to their highest levels since its collapse more than two years ago. And many attacks are directed against aid workers.
But there is some hope for a change. Encouraged by an ad hoc group of rich donor nations, the American-supported government in Afghanistan produced a remarkable document this year that proposed a broad-based plan for development. It combined the efforts of some 100 experts, and has been widely hailed by development specialists, including those at the World Bank.
The plan is broad and carefully thought out. In particular, it abides by a crucial new tenet of development economics. Afghanistan will "own" the new programs. That is, it devised the proposed programs and will control them rather than have them imposed on it and run by outsiders.
As important, it avoids the error of simply opening the nation to free markets. It understands the need to develop public institutions, adequate transportation and a strong education system, as well as the enhancement of legal institutions.
A New York University economist, Ishaq Nadiri, a native Afghan who contributed to the plan, believes that it is a sensible set of guidelines for the public sector that is geared toward making the nation better able to attract and exploit private investment in the long run.
Over the last 25 years or so of war with the Soviets, internecine strife among warlords, the rise of the Taliban and the recent military incursions to root out Al Qaeda, the nation was devastated. For example, the new report notes that "25 years ago, it took 4 hours to travel from Kabul to Kandahar, now it takes 14."
A main focus of the plan is the development of transportation infrastructure in the landlocked nation, including primary and secondary roads and regional airports. The plan also calls for substantial building of primary schools, among other needed public institutions.
It is easy to forget, said Mr. Nadiri, also an associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, that Afghanistan has significant resources and was once a nation with good prospects. "When I was a young man, Kabul was a lovely city," Mr. Nadiri, 67, said.
Donor nations at first balked at the price tag of the plan. Afghanistan is asking for $28.5 billion over seven years.
But an agreement was reached about a month ago in Berlin by several dozen donor nations, including the United States, to meet a substantial part of the request, at least over the next few years.
The nations pledged $4.5 billion in the first year and a substantial part of the Afghan requests for the second and third years. Moreover, the United States, Mr. Rubin said, informally acknowledged that it must take the lead in donations, a responsibility it had been resisting.
There is not all good news, however. At the Berlin meeting, the donor nations refused to pledge any new troops or sufficient money for military security outside Kabul. The cost of this could come to well over $2 billion a year. And Kabul security itself, led by the coalition forces, is still largely dedicated to rooting out Al Qaeda, not maintaining the stability needed for economic development.
Can true development occur without such security? Both Mr. Rubin and Mr. Nadiri are dubious.
As we are learning in Iraq, military security and economic development in war-ravaged nations are inextricably linked. The responsibility, however expensive, cannot be neglected or wished away.
Jeff Madrick is the editor of Challenge Magazine, and he teaches at Cooper Union and New School University.
E-mail: challenge@mesharpe.com.
-------- arms
Iraq arms caches exceed 8,700; hunt continues
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Bill Gertz
May 13, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040512-113119-9634r.htm
The U.S. military continues to find in Iraq large caches of the weapons that have supported attacks by insurgents on coalition forces, the Pentagon's top general said yesterday.
"We continue to find them. We're up over 8,700 now, and tens are found every week," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Appropriations Committee.
At the same hearing, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld defended the military's use of tough interrogation tactics against terrorist detainees in Iraq.
Mr. Rumsfeld said "any instructions that have been issued or anything that's been authorized by the department" for interrogations was cleared with Pentagon attorneys and "deemed to be consistent with the Geneva Conventions."
Meanwhile yesterday, the military said two more U.S. soldiers have been ordered to stand trial for inmate abuse in Abu Ghraib Prison, including one who has been accused of setting up the widely published photograph of a hooded Iraqi being threatened with electrocution.
Regarding Iraq's weapons depots, Mr. Rumsfeld said that new ammunition dumps are being found "every day" and "the country is filled with them."
The caches in the past provided insurgents with bomb-making materials, including in some instances 1,000-pound bombs, for the improvised explosive devices that are being used to kill and maim U.S. and allied troops. Some caches also have held portable surface-to-air missiles, mortars, grenades and small arms.
Sen. Conrad Burns, Montana Republican, said the roadside bombing attacks mean that "the quicker we neutralize that supply, I think the safer we will be."
Some weapons depots have had dirt bulldozed over their entrances to prevent looting, and other weapons-storage sites are secured with locks and patrolled by armed guards.
Pentagon officials estimate that Iraq has 600,000 to 700,000 tons of armaments stored throughout the country. So far, about 130,000 tons have been destroyed, the officials said.
"We've got 6,000 people including contractors and armed forces personnel on this all the time, trying to do away with these arms caches," Gen. Myers said during yesterday's hearing. "I can't sit here and say that we know of every one, but as we find them, we try to deal with them."
On the prisoner interrogation, Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said U.S. military rules allowing prisoners to be put in stressful physical positions and using sleep management and dietary manipulation violated the Geneva Conventions.
Gen. Myers said the military is not permitted to used stress positions for an excessive amount of time or use any methods that would injure prisoners.
"Every time we have an interrogation, we have an interrogation plan," he said. "Those are appropriate. And that's what we're told by legal authorities and by anybody that believes in humane behavior."
In Baghdad, the military announced court-martial orders against two American soldiers .
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, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy chairman of the military operations. He said the trial date and venue had not been set.
Sgt. 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.
Sgt. 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.
In the charge sheet, Sgt. Frederick was accused of having taken part in forcing a prisoner to stand on a box with wires placed on his hands a scene displayed in one of the photographs that have dominated the world press for two weeks.
•This article was based in part on wire-service reports.
-------- britain
'Bush Link' Hurting Blair on Home Front
Polls Show Serious Damage to Standing, Fueling Speculation About Premier's Future
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22450-2004May12.html
LONDON, May 12 -- Tony Blair's unswerving support for President Bush over Iraq is doing extensive damage to the British prime minister's standing at home and could even lead to his resignation, according to politicians, analysts and polls.
Opposition politicians and critics within his ruling Labor Party are hammering away at the government over allegations that it failed both to properly investigate accusations that British troops have mistreated Iraqi prisoners and civilians and to raise with its U.S. allies accusations about American misconduct.
Blair's cabinet ministers have contradicted one another over how the government dealt with a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross about the abuses. And new polls indicate that the government could sustain big losses in elections for local government and the European Parliament next month as voters punish Blair over Iraq.
All of these problems have helped fuel a new round of speculation about Blair's future, with some colleagues in the House of Commons suggesting that he may feel compelled to step down this summer and turn over the reins to the chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown. Blair's closest political intimates insist that will not happen.
Some politicians have advised Blair to distance himself publicly from President Bush, whose policies have never been popular here and who is now considered anathema to a broad cross-section of the British public. But people who know Blair well say there is no chance the prime minister will do so.
"He's been amazingly loyal" to Bush, Bruce George, chairman of the House of Commons defense select committee, said in an interview. "But the image that the media is creating of somebody who is a lickspittle -- who jumps high upon request -- is incredibly damaging to Blair."
George in many ways epitomizes the views of moderate Laborites who have backed Blair. A confirmed pro-American, George argues that the United States and Britain must hang tough in Iraq despite current problems. Yet he also contends that Blair must find a way to demonstrate that his views are being heeded in Washington.
"I know President Bush has his own problems, but I think it would be wise of the prime minister to be able to exercise a little bit publicly the influence he is having," George said. "And if he's not having much influence, then this would cast doubt on why he and the British are paying such a heavy price."
Blair's staunchest supporters insist that the prime minister has wielded influence over Bush. Labor members of Parliament have contended, for example, that Blair advised Bush not to send troops into the heart of the Iraqi city of Fallujah during the recent fighting there and discussed the need for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to apologize for U.S. mistreatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison.
An opinion poll published Tuesday in the Times of London newspaper showed support for the Labor Party at a 17-year low, with only 19 percent of respondents declaring themselves satisfied with the government. Although the survey also showed that most voters still preferred a Labor government over one led by the opposition Conservatives, 40 percent of Labor supporters surveyed said they would use the June 10 elections "to send a message to the Labor government that they need to do better."
"It's the Bush link that's hurting the most," said Peter Riddell, who analyzed the survey results for the Times and has written a book about British-American relations. "There's real hostility, and there's the sense that Blair is stuck."
Riddell and other analysts say Blair finds himself in a politician's nightmare scenario: tied to an American policy in Iraq that could determine his future but over which he has little or no control. "He's lost his freedom of maneuver and yet he can't show anything for it," Riddell said.
The controversy over the Red Cross report, which came up again in a spirited House of Commons debate Wednesday, illustrates Blair's problem. Allegations of British misconduct made in the report, which was presented to U.S. and British officials in Iraq in February, were relatively mild compared to those made against U.S. forces. Yet Blair and his cabinet ministers have come under criticism because they did not see the report's contents until early this week.
"A devastating Red Cross report is presented to the government in February," Michael Howard, leader of the Conservatives, said in the Commons. "The armed forces minister says he has never seen it, the defense secretary says he wouldn't have expected to see it, the foreign secretary says he should have seen it but didn't, and the prime minister says he knew nothing about it. How can the people of this country have confidence in this prime minister and his government?"
Blair replied that the report had not been passed on to ministers because its three specific allegations of misconduct against British troops had been known and addressed months earlier. But Howard suggested that Blair should have been made aware of the report's much more extensive allegations against U.S. forces because they had added "immeasurably" to the dangers faced by British troops seeking to maintain law and order in southern Iraq. American misconduct, he said, had led to the "greatest crisis in Iraq since the war ended."
Jon Owen Jones, a Labor lawmaker, then raised more sharply the issue of Britain's control over its own forces in Iraq. "To what degree do we retain any independent responsibility to arrange for the timing by which we leave?" he asked Blair.
The prime minister responded that most Iraqis were delighted to be rid of Saddam Hussein, the ousted president, and added: "We will not leave until the job is properly done, and we have made sure the wish of the Iraqis for a sovereign, stable democratic Iraq is delivered."
Blair supporters say the prime minister is aware that Iraq has become a major political problem but is determined to survive the current storm. "His mood is absolutely unwavering on this point," said a colleague who talks frequently to Blair and who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Any suggestion anywhere that it's in his mind to think about stepping down is totally wrong."
-------- business
New Tankers Not Needed, Report Says
Conclusions May Affect Boeing-Air Force Deal
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22737-2004May12.html
A Pentagon advisory panel has concluded that the Air Force's aging fleet of refueling tankers is not in need of immediate modernization, dealing a setback to Boeing Co.'s controversial plan to sell and lease the planes to the military.
"There is no compelling material or financial reason to initiate a replacement program" before studying alternatives and how the military will use the planes in the future, according to a summary, provided to some in Congress yesterday, of the Defense Science Board report. The full report has not been released.
The report is considered a critical indicator of the future of a $23.5 billion Boeing proposal to lease and sell the tankers to the Air Force. Its conclusions suggest that Boeing faces not only a delay in a possible sale but also the likelihood of fresh competition for the contract.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suspended negotiations on the program earlier this year and has said he would rely partly on the report in deciding whether to move forward with the plan.
The suspension came after Boeing admitted that it had improperly recruited a senior Air Force procurement official involved in the negotiations on the contract. The company fired its chief financial officer, Michael M. Sears, and the Air Force-official-turned-executive, Darleen A. Druyun. Chief executive Philip M. Condit resigned shortly afterward. Druyun has since pleaded guilty to conspiracy.
"We look forward to the opportunity to review the actual report," said Boeing spokesman Doug Kennett. "We stand ready to assist the U.S. Air Force with its requirements. We firmly believe that the 767 is the best solution to our nation's urgent tanker needs."
The report challenged the Air Force's contention that it needed the planes quickly because of corrosion on the 40-year-old fleet. But the board found that the Air Force has a "robust" corrosion control program and has reduced maintenance time.
"Consensus view on corrosion was that it is manageable," the report said. At the current rate of use, the airframes are capable of flying until 2040, according to the summary.
Even if the Air Force were to act now, it has several options besides the Boeing lease-and-purchase program, the report summary said. Among those options: installing new engines in some of the existing planes and converting retired commercial aircraft into tankers.
"The report independently confirms that the Air Force and Boeing are crying wolf over the corrosion problems in the fleet to create an emergency that never existed," said Keith Ashdown, vice president of policy for Taxpayers for Common Sense, a longtime critic.
An Air Force spokeswoman said the agency had not seen the report. "The Air Force fully supports Secretary Rumsfeld's approach. We share the same objective -- good stewardship of taxpayer dollars while beginning a tanker recapitalization effort," Maj. Cheryl Law said in a statement.
The Pentagon also has asked for a report from the National Defense University examining the procurement process used to negotiate the contract and for a Pentagon general counsel study of the rules governing senior executives who leave and take jobs at defense contractors. Both were scheduled to be completed this month.
-------- europe
Europeans Battle Domestic Uproar
Iraq Prison Scandal Shakes Governments
By Keith B. Richburg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22406-2004May12.html
PARIS, May 12 -- Italy's defense minister was the target of hours of hostile questions and heckling in Parliament on Wednesday as outrage over the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers continued to shake the governments of European countries that have troops in Iraq.
Opposition members demanded that the official, Antonio Martino, disclose whether the Italian government, which has 2,700 troops in Iraq, knew about the mistreatment of Iraqis detained in U.S.- or British-run facilities before photographs of the abuse were made public. Martino answered no, but his response was interrupted by cries of "Shame!"
The growing scandal and the prospect of more damaging photographs and videotapes threaten to unravel the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, which has already been shaken by continuing violence and Spain's decision to abruptly withdraw its 1,300 soldiers. Pressure has been particularly strong against the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
In Hungary, which has 300 soldiers in Iraq, the scandal has eroded the broad political support behind the mission. The main opposition party, Fidesz, said it was time for Hungary to reconsider its position and has called for talks involving all political parties about the future of the mission.
The leader of Fidesz, Viktor Orban, a former prime minister who until recently supported the Iraq mission, this week called operations there "morally unsustainable." The government has agreed to hold talks with opposition parties about the issue.
The uproar in Hungary is "a direct response to the photographs," said Sebestyen L. Gorka, executive director of the Institute for Transnational Democracy and International Security, a research organization in Budapest. "It's on all the front pages here."
In Denmark, which has 500 soldiers in Iraq, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen faced tough questions from lawmakers last week about whether Iraqis taken prisoner by Danish troops were mistreated after they were handed over to British forces, who run jails in the southern sector around the city of Basra.
"Denmark is responsible for the actions of Danish forces," Rasmussen responded. But in a concession, the government said its troops would make unannounced trips to the British facilities and inspect the treatment of prisoners.
In Poland, a key U.S. ally that commands a multinational sector in central Iraq, the prime minister-designate, Marek Belka, has insisted that "we're not going to bail out" of Iraq. Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq, and Belka formerly worked as an economics adviser to the U.S.-led occupation authority in Baghdad.
Two Polish soldiers were killed last weekend in Iraq -- the country has lost a total of four -- and two Polish journalists died in an ambush, including Waldemar Milewicz, the country's best-known war correspondent.
"These activities in the prisons create huge difficulties for the American and multinational forces," retired Gen. Slawomir Petelicki, former commander of the Polish special forces, said in a telephone interview. But he said that in Poland, "the percentage of people supporting our participation is higher now, about 10 percent higher now, according to the polls. Because they shot and killed our soldiers and our journalists, more people are now supporting our participation."
In Italy, public opinion has been strongly against the war since it began. But Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has stuck with his policy of close cooperation with the Bush administration.
The prison scandal has also upset the Vatican and Catholic public opinion in Italy. The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has been particularly stinging in its criticism.
In the tense and noisy parliamentary session Wednesday, Martino, the defense minister, fended off charges that the government had been aware of the accusations of abuse in Iraqi jails but had not acted or informed Parliament.
Martino said the government had been "in the dark" about the charges of torture and subsequent investigations until the scandal broke. He said the government was "surprised and indignant," and he called the opposition "anti-American and defeatist."
But the Italian chapter of Amnesty International has said that it informed the Italian government about abuses at two prisons, Abu Ghraib and Camp Cropper, according to La Repubblica newspaper. Martino said Amnesty had communicated directly with American authorities, but not with the Italians.
In a television interview Tuesday evening, the widow of one of the 19 Italians killed in an explosion at the Italian military headquarters in Nasiriyah last November said that her husband had seen evidence of violence and abuse against Iraqi prisoners.
Martino said an investigation was underway but added that the jails in question were managed by Iraqis. Italian military officials denied any reports of abuse in the jails under their watch, and the widow, in a subsequent radio interview, softened her earlier statements to clarify that her husband had not actually witnessed torture.
Special correspondent Sarah Delaney in Rome contributed to this report.
----
Foreign minister rings alarm over Iraq
a 'black hole sucking up' the world
By Associated Press,
5/13/2004
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/134/world/Foreign_minister_rings_alarm_o:.shtml
PARIS (AP) Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, in an interview published Thursday, compared Iraq to a ''black hole that is sucking up'' the world and said France would at no time send in troops.
Barnier, who travels to the United Nations Friday for talks on Iraq, expressed alarm about ''the spiral of horror'' that is gaining ground and the loss of human dignity as violence progresses.
In an interview with the daily Le Monde, he made a ''call to reason and conscience.'' He also stressed that Iraqis must be given authentic sovereignty after the transition of power June 30 from American to Iraqi hands.
''We must get out of this black hole that is sucking up the Middle East and, beyond that, the world,'' Barnier was quoted as saying.
''What shocks me is the spiral of horror, the blood, the inhumanity that we see now on all fronts, in Fallujah like in Gaza or through the terrible images of the assassination of this unfortunate American hostage.
''All of this gives the impression of a total loss of bearings,'' he added.
''What is in question on all sides is this fundamental value at the heart of all religions, all civilizations: human dignity.''
Barnier said that it is ''out of the question'' that France send troops to Iraq.
''There will be no French soldiers in Iraq, not now and not later.''
France, which opposed the U.S.-led campaign that toppled Saddam Hussein, has refused to participate in the multinational force responsible for security in Iraq since the official end of the war.
The Security Council is struggling to come up with a resolution to endorse the June 30 transition of power to Iraqi hands.
Paris is pushing for an Iraqi conference, with the support of the United Nations and countries in the region, to help create the caretaker government. The convening of a conference should be contained in any U.N. resolution on the power transfer, though it would probably require persuading the Americans to go along, Barnier said.
Limited sovereignty will be restored to Iraqis on June 30, with a transitional government in power until a general election is held by the end of January 2005. France has insisted on a new leadership that puts genuine power into the hands of Iraqis, not Americans.
''The real question is whether they (the United States) are ready to accept responsibility for the deteriorating situation by accepting authentic Iraqi sovereignty,'' Barnier said. ''The time has come for a bold initiative in order to get out of this Iraqi tragedy.''
The government elected in 2005 should have the power to decide whether the multinational force stays or goes, Barnier said.
The interim government should have a say in security in addition to authority over Iraqi forces and be consulted on actions taken by coalition forces, he added.
-------- iraq
Iraqis 'worse off' in US hands
13/05/2004
Edited by Tricia Shannon
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/Iraq/0,,2-10-1460_1526194,00.html
London - Iraqi children are living in conditions worse than those endured under Saddam Hussein's regime and US sanctions, a children's rights organisation said on Wednesday, warning that they were experiencing a "humanitarian catastrophe".
"Every child has some level of psychological trauma," said Jo Baker, director of the London-based Child Victims of War.
"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."
"If it is worse than sanctions and Saddam, then we are really talking about a humanitarian catastrophe," Baker said.
The organisation voiced worry over children detained by the US-led coalition in Iraq, in light of revelations of torture in the US and British prisons there.
It also warned that the US-led coalition's use of weapons containing depleted uranium was producing horrible birth defects and high cancer rates in Iraq.
Leukemia and other cancers have gone up in Iraq since the war, as have births of children with deformities, especially shrunken limbs and missing eyes, and still births, it said.
"We have discovered not one single batch of medicines has arrived in any hospital since occupation except those getting through carried by NGOs (non-governmental organisations)," Baker added.
----
An important statement on the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in the Occupation jails.
From: "Ibrahim Ebeid" <watan_arabi@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu May 13, 2004 10:05am
Translated by Behnam Keryo, Al-Moharer Board Member
The Arab Baath Socialist Party
One Arab Nation with an Eternal Mission Unity, Liberty, Socialism
The Baath and the leadership of the Resistance and Liberation have chosen not to immediately comment in the medias on the scandals of the mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners and their assassination in the American and British Occupation jails Despite the immense and still non abating noise made mainly by American and British press, which was exploited for the American election considerations, and as an attempt to save the ugly face of "the imperialist democracy" talking about transparency and divulging the news even when it is far too late. Here we like to assert the following facts and realities.
1 -The inhumane and degrading treatment of Iraqi prisoners in the Occupation jails and which were heard of by the whole wide world and some of its examples recently seen, when the occupation invasion forces started to capture the Iraqi armed forces members and other military personnel, has widened and become systematic according to plans and regulations used in every camp and military temporary or permanent imprisonment jail.
2- Based on the premises that the Invasion and the occupation of Iraq were based on lies and fallacious pretexts configured by the non- existent weapons of mass destruction programmes, the different leaderships and Intelligence institutions' fundamental guidelines to deal with the Iraqi prisoners and detainees were oriented to a desperate attempt to snatch any information comforting the invasion and the occupation pretexts and in any way or form which could possibly lead to the objective required. In that early stage the traitors and enemy agents security gangs such as Badr militias and the thugs of the National Congress and the Movement of al Wifaq, played a participative role in the real ongoing effort known to the world later.
3- Later when the detainees were separated according to their employment post or military rank, or whether they were Baathist or not, ways and means of interrogation were established based on:
- The technical and professional connection with the Iraqi military and armament industries.
- The technical and professional connection with the programmes, documents and political archives concerning the political leadership activities, meetings and discussions with a special attention to Comrade Saddam Hussein the Iraq Secretary General of the Party and the President of the Republic.
4- when the armed resistance started as a fundamental effort to defend Iraq through military operations until April 9th 2003, the connection with the Resistance, its leadership and everything respective to its domain, remained the Occupation forces number one objective.
5-Thus, special interrogation means and ways were established and after approving the "uprooting the Baath" bill, these interrogation methods were used with the Baath comrades as to convene this bill's demands and requirements agreed upon earlier by the Occupation and the traitors, agents and thug gangs composing the "puppet Governing Council" where many cases of torture leading to death occurred and which concern especially the Muslim Baathist comrades of Shia branch of the Islamic faith.
6- the above details were confirmed and documented to the Baath and the Liberation and Resistance Leadership based on widespread information from within the imprisonment jails and camps from one hand and on the imprisoned comrades and detainees who fled or gained freedom and who reported to their party leadership.
The national, human and legal responsibility
The American and British occupation's highest political leadership bears full responsibility for what happened or is happening to the Iraqi prisoners and detainees in the imprisonment camps in occupied Iraq. In fact what has happened doesn't constitute isolated cases but systematic used, and approved methods. The war and occupation objectives are not separated from the still ongoing killings, destruction, looting and dismantling of the Iraqi State institutions.
The International Committee of the Red Cross ICRC bear responsibility according to its duties, keeping in mind that the committee was perfectly aware of these practices since the very beginning of the occupation.
The United Nations and its Secretary general, in person, bear the human and legal responsibility, for they have indeed legalized the occupation, and put Iraq security and its people's safety, in the hands of the occupation forces authority.
The Occupation authority in Iraq bears full responsibility for being an active catalyst agent to adopt these interrogation methods in coordination with the different occupying countries civil and military intelligence.
The Puppet Governing Council, with its parties and members bear responsibility, on a national level first and second on human and legal level, as a picked up occupation stooge and as a supporter of and exploiter from the adoption of Baath uprooting bills, the disbanding of the Armed forces and the dismantling of the Iraqi State institutions.
The Occupation, its highest leadership, its forces, and its authorities on the land of occupied Iraq and the parties and members of the Puppet Governing Council are targets of the legitimate resistance and people and the combat with them goes on. They are targeted first because of their cooperation with the occupation and second because whatever the occupation produces or it has produced, including torturing, degrading and killing of Iraqi detainees. As far as the ICRC is concerned, it has lost its credibility in Iraq and among Iraqis and in the world, so is the case of the United Nations Organizations since it imposed an unjust blockade on Iraqis fourteen years ago.
The Political information and publication Bureau The Arab Baath Socialist Party May 4th 2004.
--------
Iraqi Politicians Press for Wider Role
U.S.-Appointed Leaders Seek New National Council With Expanded Powers
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22471-2004May12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 12 -- Politicians on Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council are pushing for significant changes in the interim government being crafted by a U.N. envoy, posing a new complication to the Bush administration's plan to relinquish civilian administrative powers here in 50 days.
With the Iraqi Governing Council set to dissolve on June 30, members said they wanted to form a new national council in order to retain influence in the interim government. The members want a new council to share power with the government outlined by Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. special envoy for Iraq. Brahimi's blueprint envisions a caretaker executive branch consisting of a president, a prime minister and a 25-member cabinet of specialists, according to U.S. and U.N. officials.
Senior U.S. officials responsible for Iraq policy oppose the Governing Council's idea. But council members said they would not abandon the proposal because they said the country's interim constitution gives them the authority to form the transitional government that will replace them. They added that proposals advanced by Brahimi, a veteran diplomat whose role has the endorsement of the Bush administration, are not binding.
"We shall listen to the ideas of Mr. Brahimi, but his ideas are not compulsory for us," said Izzedine Salim, the current holder of the council's rotating presidency. "The Governing Council is the one responsible for forming the government."
In contrast with Brahimi's proposed executive branch, which emphasizes technical expertise over political connections, Governing Council members are calling for another body in the interim government that would be composed of representatives of various political groups. Such a body would give the new government credibility, they insist, and it would provide an essential check on the executive.
"The new government needs political weight," said Adel Abdel-Mehdi, a senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a large Shiite Muslim political party. "The major, important political parties and currents should be there."
Brahimi has said he supports the idea of convening a large national conference in July to select an advisory body that would have limited powers. But Brahimi opposes forming such an entity before June 30 or granting it lawmaking powers, as some in the Governing Council are seeking, a U.N. official involved in the transition said. Brahimi has proposed an interim government of technical experts whose powers would largely be limited to the day-to-day operations of the country and preparing for national elections early next year, the U.N. official said.
"It should be a caretaker government," the official said.
Senior U.S. officials said Wednesday they supported Brahimi's proposal. The officials also said it would be impossible to hold a national conference before the planned June handover.
"That won't happen. It can't be done," a senior official with the U.S. occupation authority said. "It's simply not possible to have a conference in the time frame before the 30th of June."
Governing Council members are still debating the contours of a new entity, but they have said they want a body that would enjoy wide authority, including control over the budget and the right to appoint new cabinet members. "It will be a sort-of safety valve," Abdel-Mehdi said. "Since we will not have an elected government, it will assure people that we have controlled results and we are not going for a dangerous adventure."
The difference of opinion about the formation of a new council threatens to cause a confrontation between the occupation authority and many of its closest political allies in Iraq at a time when both sides deem cooperation crucial to the success of the handover of power. But so far, neither side appears to be budging.
There is little time remaining to resolve the matter. U.S. officials have said they want members of the interim government to be named by June 1, to give them a month to prepare for their new jobs.
It is not yet clear who will determine membership in the new government. Brahimi has said he will not decide and instead will consult with the occupation authority and the Governing Council. U.S. and U.N. officials said it was likely that Brahimi would weigh names in collaboration with members of the Governing Council and two senior representatives of the U.S. government: L. Paul Bremer, the civil administrator of Iraq, and Robert D. Blackwill, a senior official with the National Security Council who is in Iraq to work on the political transition. Officials close to the process said the choice of president and prime minister also will involve consultations with the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.
Brahimi, Bremer and Blackwill have spent the past week meeting with various groups of Iraqis, from tribal sheiks to provincial leaders, in an attempt to identify promising candidates. Members of the Governing Council have been holding similar meetings.
Senior U.S. officials involved in the process said they had not reached any conclusions on who would be nominated. Brahimi also has not made any decisions, his spokesman said.
"It's a process that's evolving minute by minute, hour by hour," said the spokesman, Ahmed Fawzi. "We have more questions than answers at this stage."
U.S. and U.N. officials said they wanted to ensure that the new leaders focused on holding fair elections early next year and not holding onto power. As a result, they are trying to create a balance between politicians and technocrats who would not try to hijack the fragile new political process.
Ceremonial posts, including the presidency and two vice presidencies, likely would be given to established politicians, U.S. officials said. But the prime minister and cabinet that would run the government would be dominated by technocrats, the officials said.
"It'll be a mixture" of politicians and technocrats, a senior Bush administration official said. The senior occupation authority official noted that recent public opinion polls have shown that political parties do not enjoy wide support in Iraq, and therefore party leaders should not dominate the new government.
Senior U.S. officials maintain that many Governing Council members share the views of Brahimi and the occupation authority in opposing the formation of a new council. A senior U.N. official said Brahimi would not be swayed by holdouts on the Governing Council.
"You don't need all the members to say 'aye,' " the U.N. official said. "If there are a few naysayers, you can still pull it off."
Although the effort to form a new national council has been endorsed by a variety of current Governing Council members, including top Kurdish politicians, the leaders of the initiative are Shiites, according to Governing Council members and their aides. Shiite leaders have been suspicious of Brahimi, a Sunni Muslim from Algeria, and have openly questioned whether he would name a disproportionate number of Sunnis to cabinet posts.
While Sunnis have ruled Iraq for centuries, Shiites are now about 60 percent of the population. Shiite leaders have insisted that Shiites receive a majority of positions in the new government, including the prime ministership.
"Without a majority of Shia, Shia will not support this institution," Abdel-Mehdi said.
Shiite members, including Abdel-Mehdi and Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, have been trying to convince the country's most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to support the creation of a new council. To date, however, Sistani has not issued any public statements on the subject. In earlier statements, Sistani has said an interim government should not have legislative powers. "Sistani is interested in an election and seeing that elections are held as soon and openly and conclusively as possible," a senior State Department official said. "So he wants to make sure the interim government doesn't prejudice the outcome of that election. Other than that, he's willing to let Brahimi do his work."
Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Turns Up Pressure on Shiite Cleric's Militia
Troops Reach Centers of 2 Holy Cities After Fighting Day-Long Street Battles
By Scott Wilson and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20417-2004May12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 12 -- U.S. forces, using tanks, armored personnel carriers and attack helicopters, pushed into the centers of two holy cities Wednesday in pursuit of bands of masked guerrillas loyal to a rebellious cleric at the heart of the Shiite insurgency.
In Karbala, U.S.-led forces worked with Iraqi police officers to seize a suspected weapons stockpile of the Mahdi Army, the militia loyal to Moqtada Sadr, a 31-year-old Shiite cleric who has emerged as a chief nemesis of the U.S. occupation. Troops came under rifle and mortar fire before dawn, U.S. officials said, setting off day-long street battles involving tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles and helicopters.
After dark, in the city of Najaf farther south, U.S. forces attacked militia positions not far from the shrine of Ali, one of Shiite Islam's most sacred mosques. Insurgents took refuge in Najaf's vast and sand-covered cemetery, the most coveted burial site for Shiite Muslims. U.S. officials said the fighters hid behind tombs and staged rocket-propelled grenade and mortar attacks from the sanctuary.
The combat marked an escalation in the U.S. drive to put down the Sadr rebellion, which has swept across southern Iraq and parts of the capital that had welcomed the U.S. invasion that ousted President Saddam Hussein last year. The Mahdi Army has employed guerrilla tactics and has used sensitive holy sites as cover from U.S. attacks.
The strategy has complicated the U.S. effort to contain the Shiite insurgency before handing over limited authority to an interim Iraqi government on June 30. U.S. officials claim the insurgency enjoys little popular support apart from the forces loyal to Sadr, which number in the thousands.
During the morning raid in Karbala, 60 miles south of Baghdad, U.S. military officials said troops discovered rocket-propelled grenade launchers, mortar rounds and explosive devices for roadside bombings inside a warehouse complex and in the neighboring Mukhaiyam Mosque.
The site is roughly 500 yards from the shrines of Hussein and Abbas, second only to the Najaf mosque in terms of religious importance to Shiites. Twenty-two insurgents were killed in the day-long fighting and six U.S. soldiers were wounded, U.S. officials said. They said troops were proceeding with caution inside the city's alleyways and narrow streets to avoid damaging the holy sites.
Witnesses said Sadr militants tried to storm the shrines early in the afternoon but were repelled by armed guards inside the mosques and U.S. Army snipers positioned on rooftops nearby.
"They allowed no one inside" the mosques, said Saad Hussein, 26, who works in a grocery store. "There was shooting back and forth between both sides, but they succeeded in keeping them out."
In the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, U.S. troops clashed in the morning with fighters loyal to Sadr who wielded rocket-propelled grenade launchers. U.S. officials said six insurgents were killed in the sprawling slum, which is named for Sadr's father, Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq Sadr, who was assassinated by suspected agents of Hussein's government in 1999.
In central Iraq, a series of hit-and-run attacks targeted U.S. military installations and those cooperating with the U.S. occupation. A mortar attack on a U.S. Army base near Balad killed four Filipino contractors, while in Baqubah, a bomb exploded outside the house of an officer with the U.S.-trained Iraqi police force. The explosion killed three members of his family. In the city of Samarra, also inside the area known as the Sunni Triangle, 20 armed men attacked the police station, drove off the officers inside and bombed the building, witnesses said.
The military on Thursday reported that one U.S. soldier was killed and another was injured on Wednesday when a bomb exploded beside their convoy in Baghdad, the Associated Press reported.
Reaction to the disclosures of torture in Abu Ghraib prison continued to complicate the U.S. effort to calm the country. At a news conference in Najaf, Sadr used the scandal as a rallying cry, calling on the American public to "pay attention to what your army is committing against our detainees."
As part of a step-by-step campaign to apply pressure on Sadr, U.S. commanders have avoided full-scale assaults on Kufa, which abuts Najaf, and especially on Najaf itself, the site of two major Shiite shrines. Instead, the commanders are trying to weaken Sadr's militia and isolate him, while pressing Shiite leaders to resolve the standoff.
"I appeal to the fighters and mujaheddin in Karbala to stand together so that none of our shrines and holy sites are defiled," said Sadr, who compared his fight to the guerrilla resistance in the Vietnam War.
But amid the fighting, there were tentative signs of progress in negotiations aimed at easing the military standoff in the Shiite south. Shiite political leaders said Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's supreme Shiite spiritual leader who is based in Najaf, endorsed an agreement Wednesday that would disarm Sadr's militia and recognize it as a legitimate political party.
The agreement calls for Iraqi police to assume security responsibilities in Najaf and for disarming the Mahdi Army. U.S. forces would withdraw under the agreement, and a special Iraqi court would be established to try those accused of crimes committed since Sadr's arrival. The deal also calls for all "political prisoners" to be released from the U.S.-run detention system, a fresh demand in the wake of the prisoner-abuse scandal.
"We asked Sistani, and he approved of the disarmament of the army and turning it into a political or humanitarian organization," said Abdul Karim Anizzi , the representative of the Shiite Dawa party in Najaf, who attended the meeting.
U.S. officials reacted skeptically to the agreement.
"There are people talking to people around Sadr, but it is not clear whether those people are speaking for him," said a senior U.S. official familiar with the talks. "His room for maneuver is being compressed, but we have no indication that he is prepared for anything other than a forceful solution."
Sadr has been hunkered down in Najaf for more than a month. U.S. forces charge him with the April 2003 murder of the rival moderate cleric, Abdul Majid Khoei, who was stabbed to death on his return from exile in Britain. The agreement that emerged Wednesday does not specifically address Sadr's legal status.
Shiites involved in the negotiations say they expect the United States to delay any action on the arrest of Sadr until after the planned handover. Dan Senor, the chief spokesman for the U.S. occupation authority, said that any viable agreement must require Sadr to "submit to Iraqi justice."
The Najaf agreement resembles one reached this month that ended the U.S. military siege of Fallujah. U.S. Marine officers turned to a group of former Iraqi military officers to defuse an insurrection in the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad. The deal angered many Shiites, who account for 60 percent of the Iraqi population and suffered most under Hussein.
In recent days, U.S. military officials have said that Mahdi Army members could be tapped for a local Najaf security force if an agreement could be reached with Sadr to disarm. Sadr's aides said they were waiting for Sistani's endorsement in writing before moving ahead.
"Dissolving the Mahdi Army is in the hands of the Marjiya," Sadr said, referring to a council of Shiite clerics led by Sistani. "If the Marjiya ask me to do that, I will do it."
In Karbala, a shroud of black smoke hovered above the gold dome of the shrine of Hussein, named for the grandson of the prophet Muhammad martyred near Karbala in 680. Witnesses said fighting between insurgents and U.S. troops, members of the 1st Armored Division, ignited a row of shops.
The roads into Karbala were either blocked by U.S. and Iraqi security forces or lined with troops of the U.S.-trained Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, which checked cars entering the area. Inside the city, U.S. Army snipers and Iraqi police took up positions on the roofs of three- and four-story buildings.
Witnesses said Mahdi Army fighters occupied many nearby buildings and tried to take over hotels at strategic locations around the city. Owners and their armed helpers drove them off. U.S. soldiers would not allow anyone to approach the shrines. Witnesses said several civilians were killed by gunfire near the shrine, including some coming to pray.
"I don't think they will last very long," said Imad Ibrahim, 23, who sells sweets. "No one is giving them food. We're afraid the American Army will stop this operation before finishing them. We've suffered for a week, and we can make it two or three more days."
There was one respite from the violence, although even it was initially mistaken for an attack. The Iraqi national soccer team defeated Saudi Arabia, 3-1, on Wednesday to qualify for the Olympics for the first time. The clatter of celebratory gunfire in Baghdad, sending red tracer bullets arcing into the night sky, initially alarmed many U.S. soldiers more accustomed to shots fired in anger.
Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad and special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Naseer Nouri in Karbala contributed to this report.
--------
80% in Iraq Distrust Occupation Authority
Results of Poll, Taken Before Prison Scandal Came to Light, Worry U.S. Officials
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22403-2004May12.html
Four out of five Iraqis report holding a negative view of the U.S. occupation authority and of coalition forces, according to a new poll conducted for the occupation authority.
In the poll, 80 percent of the Iraqis questioned reported a lack of confidence in the Coalition Provisional Authority, and 82 percent said they disapprove of the U.S. and allied militaries in Iraq.
Although comparative numbers from previous polls are not available, "generally speaking, the trend is downward," said Donald Hamilton, a senior counselor to civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer. The occupation authority has been commissioning such surveys in Iraq since late last year, he said. This one was taken in Baghdad and several other Iraqi cities in late March and early April, shortly before the surge in anti-coalition violence and a few weeks before the detainee-abuse scandal became a major issue for the U.S. authorities in Iraq.
The new polling data, which have not been publicly released, are provoking concern among occupation authority officials and in Washington because they provide additional evidence that the U.S. effort in Iraq is not winning over Iraqi public opinion. The Bush administration and the U.S. military have said that the keys to the United States achieving its goals in Iraq are winning at least mild support from most Iraqis and creating Iraqi forces to provide security.
"How to . . . win the hearts and minds of the people [in Iraq] is one of the things that we really have to work at," Army Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, head of Army intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this week. "I mean, that is the key to solving not only that problem but the rest of the problems in the Middle East."
Hamilton, who said he oversees public opinion issues for Bremer, declined to provide the number of Iraqis surveyed or other methodological details but said in an e-mail that "polls here are generally reliable" and that the new findings were consistent with those of other polls. He referred other questions to occupation authority spokesman Daniel Senor, who did not respond to requests by telephone and e-mail for comment and for historical data.
The new data reflect the fact that "the occupation, and the occupation forces, are getting increasingly unpopular," said Jeffrey White, a former Middle Eastern affairs analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. In recent months, he said, "A lot of people, including me, have been getting very pessimistic."
Reflecting that trend, the proportion of Baghdad residents who reported worries about safety has steadily increased: In the new poll, 70 percent named security as the "most urgent issue" they faced, up from 50 percent in January, 60 percent in February and 65 percent a month later.
Overall, 63 percent of those polled said security was the most urgent issue facing Iraq. In addition to Baghdad, the poll was conducted in the northern city of Mosul and the southern cities of Basra, Nasiriyah and Karbala. Some questions also were asked in the troubled western town of Ramadi.
In the poll, which was taken just before the April uprising of the militia led by radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr, a large proportion of Iraqis from the central and southern parts of the country said they backed him, with 45 percent of those in Baghdad saying they support him, and 67 percent in Basra.
Those numbers are striking because the U.S. military and the occupation authority have declared Sadr a public enemy whom they want to kill or capture. The Army has been maneuvering in central Iraq for weeks, occasionally fighting parts of his militia but avoiding a head-on clash in the holy city of Najaf. Yesterday, U.S. tanks and helicopters fought his militia in Karbala.
There were a few bright spots in the poll. The Iraqi police received a 79 percent positive rating, the best of the seven institutions about which questions were asked. The reformed Iraqi army was not far behind, with a 61 percent positive rating.
Those polled were broadly divided on who should appoint the interim government that is supposed to take over limited power from the occupation authority at the end of June. The largest group, 27 percent, said the Iraqi people should appoint the new leaders, while 23 percent said judges should. Only one-tenth of 1 percent said that the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council should name the government, which is supposed to run Iraq until elections are held next year. None said the occupation authority should.
Indicating a general skepticism of foreign involvement in their political future, 83 percent of those polled said that only Iraqis should be involved in supervising the 2005 elections.
The poll's findings appeared consistent with one taken about the same time in Iraq by USA Today, CNN and Gallup, which found that 57 percent of Iraqis wanted foreign troops to leave immediately.
Some senior Pentagon officials have a different view of the situation. "The truth is, the majority of the Iraqi people want democracy in Iraq to succeed and are positive about what the future holds, thanks in large part to the efforts of our servicemen and women," the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, said at a Senate hearing yesterday.
A poll released yesterday found that U.S. public opinion on Iraq also is shifting. "For the first time, a majority of Americans -- 51 percent -- say the war is not going well," the Pew Research Center reported. That is double the percentage who said that in January. But the poll said 53 percent of Americans favor keeping troops there until a stable Iraqi government is established.
--------
PEACE EFFORTS
Shiite Leaders Report Progress in Talks on Najaf, but Cleric Balks
May 13, 2004
By EDWARD WONG and DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/international/middleeast/13IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all&position=
KARBALA, Iraq, Thursday, May 13 - Shiite leaders reported progress Wednesday toward an agreement that would end a five-week-old standoff with the radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr in the holy city of Najaf, but Mr. Sadr himself vowed to fight on and gun battles continued between American forces and his followers.
In Karbala, Mr. Sadr's militia, known as the Mahdi Army, kept up attacks against American forces Thursday morning after the Americans occupied their stronghold in a fierce battle.
A religious leader offered to negotiate a truce between the two sides in Karbala, but was rebuffed Wednesday afternoon by the local leader of the Mahdi Army, American military officials said.
In Najaf, several Shiite leaders said Wednesday they were close to reaching an agreement that would include the disbanding of Mr. Sadr's militia. Mr. Sadr, while making no mention of an agreement, said at a news conference that he would disband his army if senior clerics in Najaf asked him to. But he also urged his fighters in Karbala to resist American troops and expressed his own willingness to die.
The negotiations were part of the intense maneuvering taking place as American forces, which have been ringing Najaf and Karbala for weeks, have in recent days struck decisively at Mr. Sadr's militia.
In Karbala, American soldiers killed at least 22 insurgents in an 11-hour battle around a mosque that began late Tuesday night. Soldiers killed at least three more in fighting in the same neighborhood on Wednesday, said Col. Peter Mansoor, the commander of the First Brigade of the First Armored Division, who is charged with crushing the insurgency by Mr. Sadr's militia. At least seven Americans were wounded.
The fighting at the Mukhaiyam Mosque and the warrens of the surrounding neighborhood brought hundreds of American soldiers within a quarter mile of two of the most sacred places in Shiite Islam, the golden-domed shrines of Hussein and Abbas. Though the Americans say they are determined to destroy Mr. Sadr's forces, they have been cautious about bringing the war to the holy areas here and in Najaf. Invading the city centers of either place, they fear, could stir the wrath of Shiite Muslims around the world, even those who dislike Mr. Sadr.
Tuesday night, the Americans made a high-risk gamble by trying to breach the Mukhaiyam Mosque, situated just west of the Shrine of Hussein. The attack was one of the largest operations carried out in the past year by the First Armored Division, which until now was responsible for controlling Baghdad. Fighting raged on all sides of the mosque, with soldiers scrambling through rubble-strewn streets and ducking sniper shots and rocket-propelled grenades.
The Americans relied heavily on the devastating cannons and machine guns of their M-1 Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles, which pounded surrounding buildings, setting many on fire.
Colonel Mansoor said that he believed the attack on the mosque had broken the back of the insurgents and that their activities would drop off sharply. But he also observed that the insurgents were "tenacious."
"They kept sniping at us today," he said. "I expect them to come back at us, but perhaps not in the same numbers."
After the main assault force left, the military left a company of tanks in the shattered neighborhood. More than 100 Iraqi policemen were also posted around the mosque, said Colonel Mansoor.
Though fighting did not reach the shrines of Hussein or Abbas, American soldiers were forced to fight insurgents holed up in the Mukhaiyam shrine, a domed building next to a high school and near the Mukhaiyam Mosque. Militiamen had regrouped at the shrine in the middle of the fighting and had begun launching mortars from there at the American-occupied mosque. Special Forces soldiers led teams of Iraqi commandos to the area and drove the insurgents from the shrine during an intense firefight.
The two dozen or so Iraqi commandos who helped the Americans in the battle were part of the Iraqi Counter Terrorist Force, trained in Jordan to combat insurgents. They acted under the supervision of Special Forces, who instructed them on clearing munitions from the Mukhaiyam Mosque and shrine and from the high school. Special Forces soldiers guided much of the battle on the ground, storming the mosque and setting up a base there to direct troops.
The Special Forces soldiers appeared impressed by the weapons caches found in the area. Those included powerful 155-millimeter artillery shells, Italian land mines and sniper rifles. In all, the munitions were the equivalent of more than 100 roadside bombs, one of the most effective killers of American soldiers in Iraq, a military intelligence analyst said. Sappers wired the caches with plastic explosives and detonated them as most of the American troops left the area.
A huge cache in a storage shed at the rear of the mosque compound had been detonated at the start of the battle, resulting in thunderous explosions that continued for more than two hours.
Posters of chubby, black-turbaned Mr. Sadr decorated walls and pillars in various rooms of the mosque. One poster displayed a message from Mr. Sadr calling on his followers to rally against the Americans. A large room had dozens of small wooden couches with soft cushions and was presumably the place where militiamen slept. A metal plate of rice with a half-finished chunk of lamb remained on one couch.
On Wednesday afternoon, a religious leader representing Hussein al-Sadr, a respected uncle of the young Mr. Sadr, came to the American base here to offer to negotiate a truce with Hamza al-Tai, the leader of the Mahdi Army in Karbala, Colonel Mansoor said. The tribal leader, who is from Karbala and is also from the Tai tribe, later spoke with Mr. Tai, who said he would not relent in his fight against the Americans, the colonel said.
In Najaf, meanwhile, Shiite leaders said negotiations were under way on a deal that would include the withdrawal of American forces and the disbanding of Mr. Sadr's militia. But other Shiites described the negotiations as extremely tentative.
Shiite leaders in Baghdad and Najaf said the proposed agreement had received the "blessing" of Muhammad Ridha al-Sistani, the son and representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the country's most powerful Shiite leader.
"If the agreement is achieved, then we will have completely demilitarized the holy city," Hachim Alkam Al-Shibli, the local leader of the National Iraqi Tribal Coalition, said in Najaf.
Shiite leaders said any deal would probably include delaying criminal proceedings against Mr. Sadr, who is wanted by Iraqi authorities for his suspected role in murdering a rival cleric last year.
Despite these reports of progress, Mr. Sadr made no mention of the negotiations in a public appearance on Wednesday, but he sent ambiguous signals about his willingness to give up without a fight.
"We are ready for any escalation, and we expect nothing less from the occupiers," Mr. Sadr said. "If the U.S. chooses to escalate, we will do so; if they want to ease the tension, we will, too."
Mr. Sadr urged his fighters in Karbala to fight on and indicated that he was willing to go down fighting.
"My desire is to die a martyr in this country," he said.
It was unclear whether Mr. Sadr, as some Shiite leaders suggested, was merely talking tough to cover an inevitable retreat. Though he made no mention of an agreement, Shiite leaders said one of his key aides had put his signature to it.
As he has often done in recent weeks, Mr. Sadr offered some words that suggested he was considering a peaceful deal. He appealed to mainline Shiite clerics, the followers of Ayatollah Sistani, for help. He suggested that he would disband his militia, estimated to number several hundred fighters, if the senior council of clerics in Najaf publicly asked him to do so.
But he has made that offer before, and the Shiite clerics, who are said to loathe Mr. Sadr, have never responded. His uprising has left many Shiite leaders disgruntled, saying they believe that he is endangering the chances of the country's majority Shiite community to win power in democratic elections.
One problem yet to be resolved was the disbanding of Mr. Sadr's militia, which American officials say numbers in the hundreds in the two cities. Taking guns away from young men in a country where nearly every household contains at least one AK-47 assault rifle is no simple matter.
Edward Wong reported from Karbala, Iraq, for this article and Dexter Filkins from Baghdad.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Army Leaves Destruction in Gaza
By IBRAHIM BARZAK
Associated Press Writer
May 13, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-palestinians-aftermath,0,7430227.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Israeli troops left behind a wide swath of destruction Thursday through a neighborhood in their biggest offensive here in years, blowing up several multistory buildings, damaging scores of homes, uprooting hundreds of trees and tearing up the main road.
The Israeli military said three of the demolished buildings had served as cover for gunmen attacking soldiers and three more had housed weapons workshops, while Palestinians said much of the destruction was indiscriminate.
"I am calling on the world to condemn these military crimes against our people," said Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
During the two-day operation, troops searched for the remains of six comrades killed in an explosion that ripped apart their armored personnel carrier in the heart of the Zeitoun neighborhood. Soldiers went from house to house to recover the body parts, including a severed head displayed by militants shortly after the attack.
Troops withdrew early Thursday after some of the remains were retrieved, the army said. It said some of the damage to the neighborhood resulted from Palestinian resistance and the impact of the explosion that destroyed the armored vehicle.
"As a result of that explosion, there was a lot of collateral damage over a large area," said military spokeswoman Maj. Sharon Feingold. "Also, two Palestinians tried to attack our forces, and when we shot at them, explosives they were carrying blew up."
More damage was caused when troops blew up workshops manufacturing rockets that are targeted at Israelis, Feingold said.
Residents retrieved belongings from piles of rubble. Children climbed into the crater dug by the explosion of the armored personnel carrier, and a young boy dug up a bloodied, torn helmet of an Israeli soldier. Another displayed what looked like an Israeli military uniform.
In all, the army blew up four multistory buildings and badly damaged a fifth under construction. Nearly 100 residents were left homeless.
Dozens of houses were damaged. Some had facades shorn off by massive bulldozers, while others were hit by missiles that left wrecking-ball-sized holes.
Fatima Doula counted more than 75 bullet holes in the walls of her two-story home. All the windows had been blown out. Doula said she and 13 members of her family had cowered in a bathroom during the 36-hour Israeli operation because heavy Israeli gunfire and shelling made it impossible to venture out.
"Nothing can justify what they did to us," she said.
Most of Zeitoun's damage was concentrated in a half-square-mile area along Salah al Din Street, the main thoroughfare. Army bulldozers dug up water mains and sewage pipes, flooding the area along a one-mile stretch, rendering the street impassable.
Palestinian Housing Minister Abdel Rahman Hamad said it would take at least three days to evaluate the damage. "This is total destruction aimed to make our people kneel down," he said. "It is an act of terrorism."
On either side of Salah al Din Street, scores of shops and dwellings were damaged, and hundreds of olive trees in nearby groves were uprooted.
Salman Haji, 55, the owner of two seven-story buildings in Zeitoun, said the army had blown up one, reducing it to rubble, and damaged the other to the point where it would have to be pulled down. Both were near the scene of the explosion.
----
Five Israeli Soldiers Killed In a Second Attack in Gaza
Another Vehicle Targeted; 7 Palestinians Die in Helicopter Strike
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A24
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20850-2004May12.html
JERUSALEM, May 13 -- For the second time in as many days, Palestinian fighters blew up an Israeli armored personnel carrier in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, demolishing the vehicle and killing at least five Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military said Thursday morning.
Early Thursday morning, an Israeli AH-64 Apache helicopter fired at a group of Palestinians in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, killing seven people and critically injuring two. Israeli military officials said the men were trying to plant a roadside bomb. A Palestinian security official said the men were simply standing in the street.
In the Wednesday attack, Palestinian guerrillas fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a convoy of three Israeli army vehicles at 6 p.m., according to a military spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal. The vehicles had stopped along a cleared corridor between Egypt and the Gaza Strip during a search for cross-border smuggling tunnels.
The grenade struck an armored personnel carrier loaded with explosive materials used to destroy tunnels, and the vehicle blew up, Dallal said. The blast killed an officer and four enlisted men and injured three other soldiers. The radical group Islamic Jihad asserted responsibility for the attack.
The incidents on Tuesday and Wednesday killed a total of 11 Israeli soldiers, making it the deadliest period for the Israeli military since April 9, 2002, when Palestinian gunmen killed 13 Israeli soldiers in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
At least 20 Palestinians have been killed since Tuesday and 172 have been injured, according to Palestinian military and medical officials.
Israeli officials did not immediately offer details about the attack Thursday in Rafah. "There's gunfights going on there, because we're trying to secure the area, and there's helicopter support," Dallal said.
The fighting began Tuesday when Israelis soldiers entered the Gaza City neighborhood of Zeitoun to search for and destroy weapons workshops. Six Israeli soldiers were killed when their vehicle, which also was packed with explosives, drove over a bomb planted by Palestinian guerrillas.
Egyptian intermediaries negotiated with various militant groups who had seized and displayed body parts of the Israelis, and by early Thursday Israel had retrieved the remains and withdrawn from Zeitoun.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel has proposed a withdrawal from Gaza, where 7,500 Jewish settlers protected by thousands of troops live alongside 1.2 million Palestinians. But his plan has been in limbo since it was rejected by his Likud Party in a nonbinding referendum on May 2.
Political and military analysts in Israel said the soldiers' deaths would probably prompt calls for a review of military operations and equipment in Gaza and possibly encourage demands for an evacuation.
"There is a tactical problem people are talking about with thin-skinned armored vehicles full of explosives," said Mark Heller, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. "Politically, it's going to reignite the debate about the withdrawal and disengagement from Gaza and push people to look for different ways to proceed with this idea."
"You can make too much of two bombings in two days -- such things happen in war," said Martin Van Creveld, a military historian at Hebrew University. "But what it does show is that our attempt to hold Gaza is doomed and it always has been doomed, and the sooner we get out of that damn place the better."
In Gaza City on Wednesday, Israeli soldiers swept through the neighborhood of Zeitoun in a search for the remains of the six soldiers killed on Tuesday. Earlier, militants had proudly displayed the soldiers' body parts, including a head, in Gaza neighborhoods, and leaders of the groups had said they hoped to use the remains as bargaining chips to win the release of Palestinian militants being held by Israel.
Palestinian fighters engaged in gun battles with Israeli soldiers in Zeitoun, and Israel launched missile strikes that killed at least three Palestinians and injured about 50, Palestinian hospital officials said.
Before the handover of the remains, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Egyptian diplomats had contacted leaders of three Palestinian militant groups in Gaza and asked for help in recovering the remains, Red Cross and Palestinian officials said. The groups had each claimed to be holding body parts and had separate demands for their return.
Under Jewish law, a maimed body cannot be buried if any parts are missing. Late Wednesday, the families of the six soldiers had agreed to proceed with their funerals Thursday after consulting with the chief rabbi of the army, Brig. Gen. Israel Weiss, who advised them that it would be appropriate to do so.
The remains were returned, through the Egyptians, shortly after that.
Special correspondent Islam Abdulkarim in Gaza City contributed to this report.
--------
Israeli Soldiers Kill 12 Palestinians in Gaza Fighting
May 13, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/international/middleeast/13CND-MIDE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, May 13 - Israelis killed 12 Palestinians today after militants destroyed an Israeli armored vehicle in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, leaving five soldiers dead.
After the attack on the armored vehicle, the second in two days, Israeli helicopters fired at Palestinians in the Rafah refugee camp who the army said were trying to attack troops on a mission to recover the remains of their fallen comrades. Eleven Palestinians were killed, witnesses told Reuters. Israeli troops later shot dead a 19-year-old Palestinian during a push into Rafah, where 10 homes were demolished, witnesses and medical officials told the news agency.
Other Israeli forces in northern Gaza finished scouring a Gaza City neighborhood, Zeitun, for the remains of six soldiers killed in a similar incident on Tuesday.
Palestinian militants, who made off with some remains of the soldiers on Tuesday, celebrated the grisly contest over body parts as humbling an invading force.
Israeli forces withdrew from Zeitun after midnight on Wednesday, the army said. A senior Palestinian official in Gaza said that Egypt had brokered a deal for an Israeli withdrawal in exchange for the return of soldiers' remains on Thursday.
Two militant groups, Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, issued a statement saying they had turned over Israeli body parts to the Egyptian intelligence service.
Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli Army spokesman, denied any bargain for the remains. He said the troops pulled back because the army's chief rabbi had determined they had found sufficient remains of each soldier to permit burial.
The withdrawal came after another day of clashes in Zeitun. Operating from dozens of armored vehicles overseen by helicopter gunships, Israeli troops confined thousands of Palestinians to their homes. Soldiers battled hooded gunmen who stole through twisting streets, trying to plant explosives in the Israelis' path.
Soldiers killed 5 Palestinians and wounded more than 40 in Gaza on Wednesday. Together with the reported deaths from the missile strike on Thursday morning, that brought to at least 20 the number of Palestinians killed there since Israeli forces first entered overnight Monday on what the army called a routine mission to destroy weapons workshops. Eleven Israeli soldiers have died in the violence that has convulsed Gaza since.
Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for destroying the armored vehicle near the Egyptian border.
The army said those soldiers were on another routine mission, this time to demolish a smuggling tunnel dug by militants under the strip that Israel controls along the border. The troops were unloading sacks of explosives from an armored vehicle to be dropped down a hole they drilled into the tunnel when the attack came.
Captain Dallal said a rocket-propelled grenade appeared to have detonated the soldiers' explosives, tearing their armored vehicle apart.
Even before the attack on Wednesday evening, numerous Israeli analysts compared Israel's position in Gaza to its occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended after 18 years with a unilateral withdrawal four years ago. The Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah harassed the army for years in Lebanon.
"Gaza is Lebanon, Lebanon is Gaza," wrote the journalist Ben Caspit in the newspaper Maariv. "The same swamp, the same pool of blood."
Several commentators noted that Israel was in something of a paradoxical position still fighting in Gaza, since even its hawkish prime minister, Ariel Sharon, had declared it had no strategic interest in remaining.
Mr. Sharon is trying to withdraw the 7,500 settlers who live in Gaza and the soldiers who guard them. Polls suggest a large majority of Israelis support that move, but Mr. Sharon's rightist party, Likud, rejected it last week.
One of Israel's premier political journalists, Nahum Barnea of Yediot Ahronot, predicted a new protest movement against remaining in Gaza like those against Israel's presence in Lebanon.
"`If the prime minister wants to pull out,' the demonstrators will say, `and the majority of the people want to pull out, why continue endangering our sons' lives there?"' he wrote. "If the Lebanon experience is any indication, the protest will filter down to the soldiers' ranks, and ultimately sweep the politicians after it."
Advisers to Mr. Sharon said that even if Israel left Gaza, its army would return if it saw the need. For example, Hamas militants fire rockets that Israel says they make in Zeitun not only at Israeli settlements in Gaza, but over Gaza's fenced boundary into Israel.
In an interview on Wednesday in Gaza City, Khader Habib, a leader of Islamic Jihad, cited several conditions for returning the soldiers' body parts, including an Israeli withdrawal from Zeitun and an end to incursions into Gaza.
Asked which of several factions that claim to hold the remains actually have them, he said: "Everyone has some. We have the head."
He blamed Israel for the impasse, saying: "The Israeli soldiers are the ones who came to Zeitun. The world should recognize the importance of Israel stopping its aggression."
But Egyptian officials and Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority, alarmed in part by images of Palestinians celebrating over bloody remains, pressed militants to end the standoff.
Israeli officials said they had an obligation under Jewish law and to the soldiers' families to find the remains. Retrieving the dead, even at high cost, has long been a army policy, one set in part by Mr. Sharon when he was an officer.
Sarah Newman, whose son, Eitan, 21, died in Zeitun when the armored vehicle was destroyed on Tuesday, told Israeli television that she respected the army's determination to find the remains. But she added that while hers was a religious family, "Our religion is not a cruel one that seeks to put lives at risk."
"As far as we are concerned, there is no need to endanger more soldiers," she said, speaking before the Israeli withdrawal. "We view the body as an exterior - packaging, a box for the soul inside it. And sometimes boxes break."
-------- mideast
Israel's Failed Assassination Attempt on U.S. Ambassador Documented
By Andrew I. Killgore,
May 13, 2004
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
http://www.wrmea.com/archives/May_2004/0405013.html
Had Mossad, Israel's secret intelligence organization, succeeded, it would have been the perfect crime-the crime of the century. The plan was breathtaking in concept: to assassinate the American ambassador to Lebanon, in Lebanon, with American weapons, intended for Israeli's defense only. Everything about it would point to Lebanon as the culprit.
But fate intervened, and things went wrong. The tires on Ambassador John Gunther Dean's limousine automatically reinflated when they were shot out in 1979 (see November 2002 Washington Report, p. 15). The light tank shell simply bounced off the car's armor. And, horror of horrors, Lebanese intelligence had retrieved the empty shell casing on which was written, "Made in the United States of America."
Mossad's specialty was dirty tricks, even if (or perhaps because) it was not very good as an intelligence organization. Its modus operandi had always been the same: pull off a dirty trick but make it appear somebody else had done it. An early example was the Lavon Affair, named for Pinhas Lavon, Israel's minister of defense back in 1953. This Mossad operation persuaded some Jewish men in Egypt to burn U.S. Information Service libraries on the assumption that Egyptian President Jamal Abdul Nasser would be blamed. But one of the incendiary devices went off prematurely, and the young spies were caught. Some of them were executed. This provoked a scandal in Israel, and in the ensuing investigation it eventually turned out that Lavon's signature authorizing the operation had been forged at the behest of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. A dirty trick within a dirty trick!
Then came the June 8, 1967 attack on the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans and wounding 171. Perpetrated by the Israeli air force and navy, this was not a Mossad operation, but it was suffused by the same spirit of stealth and trickery. During the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, unmarked Israeli jets raked the all-but-unarmed spy ship Liberty, steaming slowly off Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, with napalm and machine gunfire.
The Liberty was flying a large American flag, and the ship's designation, in English, was clearly visible on a cloudless day. But Israel said it thought it was attacking an Egyptian transport ship. Israel pleaded "a tragic accident" and still pleads that miserable lie today.
Now, thanks to Ambassador John Gunther Dean, the full taste of Mossad's evil will be available at former President Jimmy Carter's Presidential Library in Atlanta, Georgia. A part of the National Archives, the Carter Center will contain 42 files on Dean's service as ambassador to Lebanon. The overwhelming majority of the material is unclassified and thus readily available to researchers, scholars and journalists.
The Dean papers-which include documents, messages, reports and telegrams-constitute hard evidence on the stultifying influence of the Israeli lobby as Dean tried to get answers from the Department of State on the Israeli assassination failure. Nobody was willing to talk with him because the subject was just too "sensitive."
The papers include documentation of efforts by the Palestinians to help the U.S. with the American hostages in Iran. They demonstrate that, unlike today, the United States administration considered the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) "valid interlocutors" in the search for a negotiated settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict. In fact, PLO leader Yasser Arafat and an assistant made a special visit to Iran, where they succeeded in gaining the immediate freedom of several of the American diplomatic hostages. Arafat performed a real favor for the United States for which he never received any thanks-perhaps because, once again, it would have been too "sensitive."
By June 2004 all other papers in Dean's possession will be housed in the National Archives. Among the information they will contain will be the role of certain congressmen with respect to nuclear proliferation. Some of the American legislators struck Dean as motivated more by fear of Pakistan obtaining "the Islamic bomb" than they were by defending U.S. policy of preventing the proliferation of arms.
Andrew I. Killgore, a retired foreign service officer and former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, is publisher of the Washington Report.
--------
Syrian President Rejects U.S. Sanctions
Associated Press Writer
By LAURA MYERS;
May 13, 2004
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/S/SYRIA_US?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- Syrian President Bashar Assad said Thursday the United States had provided no proof to warrant imposing sanctions on his country and added he would not bow to U.S. demands to expel Palestinian militants.
Assad disputed the case that the Bush administration had made to impose the embargo, saying Syria does not have weapons of mass destruction and there is no evidence of foreign fighters crossing the border from Syria to Iraq.
He said Syria had asked Washington for evidence of infiltration from Syria into Iraq.
"We have no response to the request to give us one passport, one name, one evidence of that. So far, we haven't received anything," Assad told a group of American editors.
Assad met the editors at the presidential palace while they were on a fact-finding trip arranged by the Washington-based International Reporting Project.
President Bush imposed the sanctions Tuesday. They ban all U.S. exports to Syria except food and medicine and they forbid direct flights between Syria and the United States. The penalties came as a response to allegations that Syria was supporting terrorism and undermining U.S. efforts in neighboring Iraq. Bush signed the order under a law that Congress passed by an overwhelming vote late last year.
Assad tried to play down the impact of the sanctions.
"In fact, we do not have any reaction," he said when first asked about the embargo. "Not because that does not affect us, but we do not know so far how they will affect us."
Bilateral trade amounts to US$300 million annually. Syrian officials have said the embargo will have little economic effect. The European Union is ignoring the sanctions and sending a high-level trade delegation to Damascus this weekend.
"Syria will continue to live its daily life, but we will continue to be always open" for dialogue, especially on the Middle East and Iraq, the Syrian leader said.
Syria hosts Palestinian militant groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas which are regarded as terrorist organizations by Israel and the United States. Assad's government regards them as legitimate groups fighting Israel's occupation of Palestinian land. Syria is on the State Department's list of terrorist-sponsoring countries.
Assad said Thursday "there are no leaders" of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Syria, only political spokesmen who came to Syria after being expelled by Israel. There was no place for these Palestinians to go to, he added.
"If you ask them to go, where could they go?" Assad said. "They have to go back to their land and Israel could put them in jail ... We don't expel people. They should go back home."
The head of Hamas' political bureau, Khaled Mashaal, the group's highest-ranking official, has lived in Damascus since 1999. The leader of Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, moved to Syria in the 1990s.
The United States has accused Syria of failing to stop guerrillas from crossing its border into Iraq. The Syrian government maintains it is trying to stop fighters from crossing into Iraq, but cannot completely control its long border with its southeastern neighbor.
Assad said it is difficult to control the Syrian-Iraqi border, adding there was a history of Iraq sending saboteurs into Syria in the 1980s when Damascus sided with Iran in the Iran-Iraq war. Even today, he said, arms are smuggled from Iraq to Syria.
"This is dangerous for Syria. This is the natural result of the lack of a state in Iraq," Assad.
Assad, who strongly opposed the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, criticized the U.S. occupation of the country, saying it was destabilizing the region and fueling anti-American feelings.
"Under (former Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein, there used to be a dictatorship. And now there is no democracy. So things haven't changed that much. The problem is much larger than the prisoner problem," Assad said, referring to the pictures of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison, Baghdad.
"I think what we saw in those photos goes beyond my human feeling," Assad said. He said the torture and humiliation of Iraq prisoners ran counter to the U.S. attempt to portray itself as a democracy.
"Is this the democracy of the Abu Ghraib prison? ... I think that these sort of scenes establish a kind of hatred for the United States," Assad said.
-------- pakistan / india
Matter of the carrot and the stick
Brig Gen Shahedul Anam Khan ndc, psc (Retd)
Lebanon Daily Star
May 13, 2004
http://www.thedailystar.net/2004/05/13/d40513020327.htm
The US Secretary of State during his visit to Islamabad last March announced his country's intention to bestow upon Pakistan the status of a major non-NATO ally (MNNA). According to him, the new status is the result of the US desire to cement further the already existing strategic relationship, which will manifest in the two countries' future military-military relations.
Pakistan is the fourth Muslim country and the twelfth in the world that have been offered the US manna, generally offered to those countries that acquiesce with the US in implementing its strategic designs. In this instance Pakistan's participation in the US war against terrorism, in particular its role in support of the US operations in Afghanistan as a part of US "War on Terror" has merited such a status.
It has to be said though that in the space of two decades the Afghan situation has come twice as a bailout for Pakistan. In both instances, once in the 80s and now very recently, the situations in Afghanistan have brought Pakistan, from the sideline, to the position of a frontline state. From what was "peanuts" President Zia came by multibillion dollars of US aid. But for the US operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan would have remained on the margins of relevance to the US policy planners.
Given the fact that post Cold War Pakistan was relegated to the backwaters of US strategic considerations, that it had to cry itself hoarse to have the money it had paid as advance for the purchase of F-16s, that it was slapped with some stringent sanctions as a result of its efforts to join the "nuclear Brahmins," for Pakistan to be vested with such a status by the US is indeed remarkable.
Although the MNNAs do not enjoy the guarantees of mutual defense and security, the status nonetheless carries some important perks and benefits. As an MNNA Pakistan would be eligible for priority delivery of defense articles, stockpiling of military hardware, purchase of depleted uranium for anti-tank rounds, cooperation in defense and research programmes and loan facilities. The designated non-NATO allies also enjoy some advantages in the foreign-assistance process as well as a close working relationship with a country's defense forces.
While General Musharraf flaunts this as a victory of his foreign policy that ensures Pakistan's national interest, his critics argue that the means he has adopted are predicated too much on Pakistan's modulating its activities in response to the tune that Washington plays.
The stick will come by way of various US pressures on Pakistan. Although Pakistan has gained in many ways it has had to face the negative political as well as economic effects of Pak-US cooperation against the US "War on terror." The raison d'ê
tre of US presence in Afghanistan remains unfulfilled in that the Al Quaida leadership is yet to be apprehended. The writ of the US forces does not run more than only a few kilometers around Kabul. Elections are still a far cry and the local warlords continue to call the shots. Therefore, it would not be wrong to presume that Pakistan will come under increasing pressure in the US election year to hound out Osama bin Laden and his followers.
Furthermore, countries holding MNNA status have their troops in either Afghanistan or Iraq. Commentators are of the opinion that Pakistan may come under increased pressure to send troops to either of these countries or be asked to sign a "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA). And of course, the MNNA designation under section 517 of the FAA can be rescinded any time by the US president with a notification to the Congress.
In elevating the status of Pakistan the US has validated the arguments that the attainment of national interest can never be circumscribed by the archaic notions of morality and ethics and that principles must give way to expediency in the formulation of country's foreign and defense policies. This had been amply illustrated by US treatment of Pakistan following the erstwhile Soviet Union's Afghan debacle. There is much truth in the comments that, "their (Pak-US) close friendship has always ended once the US achieved its objectives." Perhaps the present US move is to remove the common perception about the US being a fair weather friend only.
Nonetheless, the increasing pressure on Pakistan is bound to have its internal ramifications. Thus, while the carrot appears tantalizing the stick may be difficult to tolerate.
Brig. Gen. Shahedul Anam Khan is Editor, Defense & Strategic Affairs, The Daily Star.
-------- prisoners of war
Secret US jails hold 10,000
13.05.2004
New Zealand Herald
By ANDREW BUNCOMBE and KIM SENGUPTA
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3566058&thesection=news&thesubsection=world&thesecondsubsection=&reportID=61564
WASHINGTON - Almost 10,000 prisoners from President George W. Bush's so-called war on terror are being held around the world in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison.
Some of these detention centres are so sensitive that even the most senior members of the United States Congress have no idea where they are.
From Iraq to Afghanistan to Cuba, this American gulag is driven by the pressure to obtain "actionable" intelligence from prisoners captured by US forces.
The systematic practice of holding prisoners without access to lawyers or their families, together with a willingness to use "coercive interrogation" techniques, suggests the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib now shocking the world could be widespread.
Iraq has become a holding pen for America's prisoners from 21 countries, according to a report from the international campaign group Human Rights Watch.
The US military is keeping prisoners at 10 centres, most of which were used by Saddam Hussein's regime. The total in January was 8968, and is thought to have increased.
Prisoners are being held from, among other countries, Algeria, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and Yemen.
A report in the Washington Post has revealed that up to 8000 Iraqi prisoners are being held at Abu Ghraib, the jail west of Baghdad also known as the Baghdad Central Correctional Facility or BCCF, and nine other facilities inside Iraq.
It is impossible to know for sure because the Pentagon refuses to provide complete information.
Officials say prisoners range from those accused of petty crimes to detainees believed to be involved in attacks on US forces, though it is increasingly clear that many hundreds are simply Iraqi civilians swept up in raids by US and British soldiers.
Military and diplomatic sources say a number of detainees were taken to Iraq from Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, the US military still holds 300 or more prisoners at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at facilities in Kandahar, Jalalabad and Asadabad.
The CIA, meanwhile, runs an interrogation centre in Kabul that is known by special forces and others simply as "The Pit".
At Guantanamo Bay, more than 600 prisoners remain incarcerated more than two years after they were captured in the aftermath of the US operation against the Taleban.
Last week the US admitted that two guards at the camp had been disciplined for using "excessive force" against prisoners.
Michael Ratner, vice-president of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, which has represented many of the Guantanamo prisoners, said yesterday it was clear that a pattern was emerging.
"To me it means they are breaching international law as well as domestic law. The treatment is obviously illegal," he said.
"It puts what is happening in Iraq into perspective. The idea that just a few soldiers came up with this is inconceivable. It has come from very high up in the Administration."
From interviews with relatives and lawyers for the seven US soldiers facing courts-martial for the Abu Ghraib abuse, there is growing evidence that their actions were encouraged and even ordered by Military Intelligence and privately contracted interrogators to "soften up" the prisoners. Major General Geoffrey Miller, formerly the warden at Guantanamo Bay, took control of Abu Ghraib last year with a plan to turn it into a hub of interrogation.
He placed the military police under the tactical control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.
The lawyers representing Lynddie England, the 21-year-old woman from the 372nd Military Police Company who was caught in photographs sexually humiliating hooded Iraqi prisoners and leading one by a lead, insisted she was following orders.
The pictures were a deliberate part of the humiliation, they said.
"People told Pfc England, 'Hold that leash' ... told her to smile, so they can show the photos to subsequent prisoners," said lawyer Carl McGuire. Another member of her legal team, Rose Mary Zapor, said: "They picked her to get the smallest, youngest, lowest-rank woman they could find and that would increase the humiliation for an Iraqi man."
This claim is supported by two members the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, assigned to Abu Ghraib, who on their arrival immediately realised what was taking place was illegal.
The soldiers said beatings were meted out with the full knowledge of intelligence interrogators, who let military police know which prisoners were co-operating with them and which were not.
A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, the only outside body permitted to visit the prison, also confirmed widespread ill-treatment and abuse that the authorities failed to stop.
It estimated that up to 90 per cent of the prisoners had been "arrested by mistake". - INDEPENDENT
----
Military has altered prisoner rules amid alleged abuse in Afghanistan
May 13, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.team4news.com/Global/story.asp?S=1856883
Kabul, Afghanistan-AP -- The U-S military has cut the amount of time prisoners spend in holding facilities on its bases around Afghanistan. The change in prison procedure comes amid a widening scandal involving alleged abuse of prisoners in Iraq.
The top general in Afghanistan says the military has looked into "challenges and problems" at holding facilities. Lieutenant General David Barno didn't say what the allegations were, or if any of them were confirmed.
The military opened a formal probe into the deaths of two Afghans at the closely guarded jail in Bagram in late 2002, but says it's had trouble gathering evidence.
----
Britons tell Bush of 'US abuse'
Two Britons send President Bush an open letter detailing alleged abuse they suffered while held at Guantanamo
Friday, 14 May, 2004
(BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/americas/3713111.stm
Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, held at the base for more than two years, said they were deliberately humiliated.
Guards used strobe lights, dogs and loud music - particularly from US rapper Eminem - to extract information, they allege.
US military officials at Guantanamo have denied the accusations.
"We have never applied any of those techniques," the Associated Press quoted a spokesman for the US mission at Guantanamo as saying.
'Punishment'
Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal, both from Tipton, West Midlands, said detainees often were forced to go naked as punishment for minor offences, even when female guards were present.
They also said they were forced to squat with their hands chained between their legs for hours during questioning.
"Soldiers told us, 'We can do anything we want'," the men said in the open letter to Mr Bush and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
They said they were driven to falsely confess they were two figures in an August 2000 videotape that also showed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
The men's lawyer, Barbara Olshansky of the American Centre for Constitutional Rights, said: "They have made clear from the outset that, right from the moment of their arrival, they were subjected to these types of interrogation and intimidation methods.
"It appeared to them that this was the routine and the method of extracting information from people there," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
She said her clients had written to President Bush to "make sure it is clear to the world that what happened to them didn't happen in a vacuum and is very much part of the policy of the American military in handling these various situations around the world."
Evidence sought
Ms Olshansky said her organisation is seeking concrete evidence of techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, with a view to "perhaps taking action based on the information that we find".
Her clients had been videotaped and photographed throughout their detention, she said.
Former defence minister Lewis Moonie told Today show that if the men's claims proved true, it "must add strain" to the relationship between the UK and US.
Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal are among five Britons released from Guantanamo whom the British Government freed without charge after determining they were not a security threat.
The latest allegations of abuse at the camp come as the Australian Government says it will investigate claims that one of its citizens was abused while at Guantanamo Bay.
The lawyer for Australian David Hicks said he could not give details of the alleged abuse, but he believed it was authorised by the US military.
Lawyer Stephen Kenny said the alleged mistreatment went beyond the excesses regularly reported at Guantanamo.
----
Italy general backs abuse claims
The commander of Italian troops in Iraq says his superiors knew US-trained Iraqi police abused prisoners
BBC
Thursday, 13 May, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/-/1/hi/world/europe/3711753.stm
Basra-based Maj Gen Francesco Spagnuolo's comments to La Repubblica newspaper contradict his government's line on the allegations.
On Wednesday in parliament, the Italian defence minister denied all knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Iraq.
But the general's account reinforces allegations by a former colonel and the widow of an Italian soldier.
Maj Gen Spagnuolo told the newspaper that complaints were made to the relevant Iraqi authorities about what was taking place at the jail, near the city of Nasiriya. He said his superiors in Rome were also kept informed every day.
"Our contingent did not know anything about the torture and the violence to which the Iraqi prisoners were being subjected in the jails of which the coalition forces were in charge," he said.
"But what went on in the small penitentiary 40km (25 miles) from Nasiriya was well known."
He said details of what was happening was sent to the Iraqi authorities and the information was passed on to Rome "by the usual channels".
The general said Colonel Carmelo Burgio, who spoke to the Italian media earlier this week, had told him that "the Iraqi police officers' conduct was a violation of the most basic standards regarding the detainees' rights".
He said the Italian contingent had even engaged in a firefight with the Iraqi police when they went to release a few detainees who had been subjected to terrible torture.
Storm
Giuseppina Longo, the widow of Italian officer Massimiliano Bruno, who was killed in Iraq in November, told the Italian media that her husband described how inmates at one prison were beaten and treated worse than cockroaches.
However, Italian Defence Minister Antonio Martino told parliament on Wednesday he was surprised by claims that Italian forces in Iraq knew prisoners were being abused.
The publication of photographs apparently showing abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners by US and UK forces has caused a political storm.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, meeting US President George Bush next week, expressed revulsion at maltreatment documented in a leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
But he has said that Italy's 3,000-strong troops will remain in Iraq despite the kidnapping of four Italian civilians, one of whom has been murdered by a group demanding their withdrawal.
--------
At Iraqi Prison, Rumsfeld Says Abuse Will Be Dealt With Openly
May 13, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/international/middleeast/13CND-RUMS.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 13 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, making an unannounced trip to Iraq amid a global furor over mistreatment of detainees, strode into Abu Ghraib prison today and promised that the world will see America openly and freely punish any soldier guilty of abuse.
"In recent months, we've seen abuses here, under our responsibility, and it's been a body blow for all of us," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The people who engaged in abuses will be brought to justice. The world will see how a free system, a democratic system, functions and operates - transparently, with no cover-up."
On a whirlwind visit on a day in which the drab yellow walls of the prison blended into the drab yellow desert and dust-filled sky, Mr. Rumsfeld was driven around Abu Ghraib, passing outside the "hard tier" cell block where the abuses occurred.
Hundreds of detainees rushed toward concertina wire as Mr. Rumsfeld rolled past inside an Israeli-made armored bus. Most detainees stood silently. Some waved clothes and jeered. A few held up hand-lettered signs or shirts in English, although with misspellings and incorrect grammar.
"What are you going to do about scandl?" said one. "Why we are here?" said another. A third read, "Most of us are inocents."
After a 14-hour flight to Kuwait, a 90-minute flight to Baghdad and a 7-minute helicopter ride from the American military headquarters west to Abu Ghraib, Mr. Rumsfeld arrived at the prison where outrage over abuses has stained America's image and brought calls from some in Congress for the defense secretary to resign.
Mr. Rumsfeld spoke with no detainees, but in meetings with American commanders and military police who have replaced those serving during the time of alleged abuses, Mr. Rumsfeld sought to assure Iraqis and the world that they can trust American military justice.
But he also sought to highlight plans under way that military officers hope will likewise give confidence that the abuses will not be repeated.
In a move that is as practical as it is symbolic, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the new deputy commanding general for detention operations, said that all prisoners under coalition control would be moved out of the old Abu Ghraib structures and into new quarters by the end of May. The new "Camp Redemption" will still be within the Abu Ghraib compound, and the former prison blocks will be operated by the new Iraqi government, holding those arrested on criminal charges.
In comments to reporters on the flight to Kuwait, Mr. Rumsfeld indicated that he may not be satisfied with an explanation that the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison was solely the acts of a small band of misguided military police, and that he may be looking higher up the chain of command.
"We care about command systems working," he said.
The prison, for decades the scene of murder and torture under Saddam Hussein, has now become, in photos circulating the globe, a symbol of abuse by American military jailers and a stain on American pride.
Mr. Rumsfeld cautioned that his mission to Iraq should not be viewed as a solo journey that could heal the wounds to America's image from the detainee abuse.
"We're not on an inspection tour," he said. "If anyone thinks I'm there to throw water on the fire, they're wrong."
Even so, Bush administration officials have expressed fears that the signature image of the war is no longer cheering Iraqis toppling Mr. Hussein's statue in Baghdad, but may instead become American soldiers laughing and giving "thumbs up" signs as Iraqi detainees are abused and humiliated.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who has fended off calls from some in Congress for his resignation, made clear he was aware that this trip will likewise be scrutinized throughout Iraq - including by some who might claim jurisdiction to try the American soldiers in their own courts once sovereignty is returned on June 30.
"The United States government is going to take care of the people who end up being convicted of some wrongdoing," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "The justice system of the United States is serious, professional - and it's under way."
And to troops later, he said he had taken steps to insulate himself from the criticism. "I've stopped reading the newspapers," he said to applause and cheers from the troops. "It's a fact: I'm a survivor."
Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, flew with Mr. Rumsfeld to Iraq; that was another sign of the unusual nature of the trip, because the Pentagon's most senior civilian and military leader rarely travel aboard the same aircraft.
Mr. Rumsfeld began his Iraq visit with meetings in Baghdad, then headed to Abu Ghraib. Following his tour of the prison, he spoke to American troops in Baghdad and said the abuses "sullied the reputation of our country."
"I was stunned," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "It was a body blow. And with six or seven investigations under way and a country that has values and a military justice system that has values, we know that those involved, whoever they are, will be brought to justice."
The meeting with the troops took on the appearance of a pep rally, with Mr. Rumsfeld and General Myers commending the soldiers' work and trying to raise the morale of the soldiers, who whooped and applauded. The officials also fielded questions in a freewheeling question-and-answer session.
"You folks are young," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "I'm not. But you're going to look back on this conflict, on these debates, on these difficulties - and it's going to be a tough road ahead, and we know that. But one day you're going to look back and you're going to be proud of your service and you're going to say it was worth it."
"I have never lost confidence in the folks who wear this uniform," General Myers added. "I'm confident because you bring the essential goodness of America to the Armed Forces."
In earlier comments to reporters, Mr. Rumsfeld noted that some of the images on the three discs that are central to the Abu Ghraib investigation are pictures solely of American soldiers, and have nothing to do with detainee abuse. The rights to privacy of those troops must be protected, he said.
But rather than continue to suffer through a slow release of selected photographs broadcast by television or printed in newspapers and magazines, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy to release them all to the public and get it behind us."
But he said a number of Bush administration legal advisers throughout the executive branch were not recommending such an action.
Mr. Rumsfeld bristled at complaints that the Pentagon was engaging in a cover-up by not more rapidly bringing the provocative details of the abuse accusations to the attention of the president, Congress or the public.
Such a charge, Mr. Rumsfeld said, is "unfair, inaccurate and wrong."
"And if I find any evidence that it's true," he added, "I'll stop it."
He then took a shot at the Arab news media, which he said has filled newspapers and news broadcasts with anti-American propaganda about the mission in Iraq.
"We have been lied about, however, day after day, week after week, month after month for the last 12 months in the Arab press, in Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya," he said.
For the first leg of his voyage, conducted under tight secrecy and heavy security, Mr. Rumsfeld flew nonstop to Kuwait aboard one of the four "Doomsday" airplanes designed to allow the president, the defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to communicate from aloft in case of nuclear war.
The modified Boeing 747, called the E-4B National Airborne Operations Center, twice hooked up to tankers in the 14-hour flight, and crew members said the aircraft was chosen because of its ability to fly long distances without landing for fuel.
The surprise visit here was only the latest act in a drama that began in a prison west of Baghdad and is now playing out in the executive ring of the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and inside the White House.
Mr. Rumsfeld testified in back-to-back hearings before the Senate and House on Friday, and then on Monday played host to President Bush at the Pentagon, where Mr. Bush gave his defense secretary a full-throated endorsement. Before flying from Andrews Air Force Base on Wednesday, Mr. Rumsfeld was again grilled on Capitol Hill.
Also traveling with Mr. Rumsfeld was Vice Adm. Albert Church, the Navy inspector general, who spent May 6 and 7 at the military's detention camp at Guantánamo, Cuba.
Admiral Church said his inquiry "documented eight minor infractions" that he said ranged from humiliations to mild physical contact.
The eight cases included striking one detainee while handcuffed, improper use of pepper spray and giving one detainee a demeaning haircut. Disciplinary action, which included letters of admonishment and reductions in rank, occurred rapidly after reports of the eight incidents, which occurred within the last 18 months to two years, reached commanders.
"Disciplinary action was taken quickly," Admiral Church said.
He said that the detention center at Guantánamo should continue to review a set of questions and complaints from inspectors from the International Committee of the Red Cross, but he gave no details.
Kirk Semple contributed reporting from New York for this article.
--------
PRISON POLICIES
General Took Guantánamo Rules to Iraq for Handling of Prisoners
May 13, 2004
By TIM GOLDEN and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13MILL.html?pagewanted=all&position=
When Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller arrived in Iraq last August with a team of military police and intelligence specialists, the group was confronted by chaos.
In one prison yard, a detainee was being held in a scorching hot shipping container as punishment, one team member recalled. An important communications antenna stood broken and unrepaired. Prisoners walked around barefoot, with sores on their feet and signs of untreated illness. Garbage was everywhere.
Perhaps most important, with the insurgency raging in Iraq, there was no effective system at the prisons for wringing intelligence from the prisoners, officials said.
"They had no rules for interrogations," a military officer who traveled to Iraq with General Miller said. "People were escaping and getting shot. We tried to offer them some very basic recommendations."
According to information from a classified interview with the senior military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib prison, General Miller's recommendations prompted a shift in the interrogation and detention procedures there. Military intelligence officers were given greater authority in the prison, and military police guards were asked to help gather information about the detainees.
Whether those changes contributed to the abuse of prisoners that grew horrifically more serious last fall is now at the center of the widening prison scandal.
General Miller's recommendations were based in large part on his command of the detention camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he won praise from the Pentagon for improving the flow of intelligence from terrorist suspects and prisoners of the Afghanistan war.
In Iraq, General Miller's team gave officers at the prisons copies of the procedures that had been developed at Guantánamo to interrogate and punish the prisoners, according to the officer who traveled with him. Computer specialists and intelligence analysts explained the systems they had used in Cuba to process information and report it back to the United States.
General Miller also recommended streamlining the command structure at the prisons, much as was done when military intelligence and military police units were merged when he took command of Joint Task Force Guantánamo in November 2002.
But to at least a few of the officers who met General Miller in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib crisis was partly rooted in what they described as his determination to apply his Guantánamo experience in Iraq. Senators raised similar concerns on Tuesday at the Armed Services Committee.
General Miller and some of his former aides have dismissed the notion that his visit to Iraq helped unleash the abuses. They argue that if his prescriptions had any link to the problems there, it was because they were misinterpreted by ineffective commanders in a chaotic environment.
"When you don't have rules and you let lower-level people decide things on an arbitrary and capricious basis, you're going to have problems," the officer who accompanied General Miller said. "Our reference to techniques was to say, `You need a policy.' "
A Democratic Senate aide who reviewed General Miller's report on the Iraqi prisons said he had sought to revamp the intelligence apparatus in Iraq primarily to improve the collection and transmission of broader, strategic information about the insurgency that was particularly important to senior military officials.
To those officials, the work at Guantánamo by General Miller, a former paratrooper from Menard, Tex., made him an obvious candidate for Iraq.
By the time he took over in Cuba, most of the detainees there had been in custody for nearly a year. Still, General Miller was credited by Pentagon officials with using interrogations there to produce a valuable historical account of the workings and financing of terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, among other subjects, officials said.
His hard-charging attitude has also raised questions that go beyond interrogation methods. He was the official most responsible for pressing a case last year against a Muslim chaplain at the base, Capt. James J. Yee, that was initially billed as a major episode of espionage. In March, the military announced that it would drop all charges.
At the Senate hearing on Tuesday, the deputy commander of American forces in the Middle East, Lt. Gen. Lance Smith, said General Miller, now the chief of interrogations and detentions in Iraq, had made it clear to the officers he briefed on his 10-day visit to Iraq that some of the procedures developed in Cuba could not be applied there.
But despite the vast differences between the settings, two officials who worked with General Miller in Cuba suggested that he offered very similar solutions to some problems he found in Iraq.
Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, in his report on Iraqi prison abuses, said General Miller's recommendation of a guard force that "sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees" violated Army doctrine; the report hinted that it might also have contributed to the abuses.
The Taguba report also highlighted General Miller's recommendation that commanders in Iraq form and train a prison guard force "subordinate to the Joint Interrogation Debriefing Center (J.I.D.C.) Commander" that "sets the conditions for the successful interrogation and exploitation of internees/detainees."
The former director of that interrogation center, Lt. Col. Steve Jordan, was implicated in the abuses by General Taguba and is under investigation in a separate military inquiry.
At Guantánamo the role of guards in intelligence gathering was largely limited to observing the detainees' behavior and trying to detect their leaders, according to interrogators who worked there.
A fundamental difference between Iraq and Guantánamo was the Bush administration's determination that the Geneva Conventions did not govern the treatment of the detainees in Cuba. However, military officers who served in Cuba said the controls on coercive interrogation methods appeared to have been stronger at Guantánamo than they were in Iraq.
Because the administration had designated the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees at Guantánamo as "enemy combatants" - to whom it would accord humane treatment but not other rights granted by the Conventions - military officers in Cuba soon grew concerned that they were operating without clear rules.
According to several officers who served at Guantánamo, the methods, begun in early 2002, included depriving detainees of sleep; leaving them in cold, air-conditioned rooms; placing them in "stress positions"; and forcing them to stand or crouch for long periods, sometimes with their arms extended, until exhausted.
Even before General Miller's arrival at Guantánamo, the military lawyer who had taken over as the staff judge advocate there, Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, sought formal clarification of what were acceptable interrogation methods, Pentagon officials said. That request prompted a broad legal review of interrogation techniques by a working group of Pentagon lawyers.
When the review was completed in February 2003, it included a spreadsheet with 24 approved techniques, officials who viewed it said. For each method, the matrix indicated whether it posed problems under various United States and international laws, and at what level of the military bureaucracy it needed to be approved. The following month, a brief document spelling out specific guidelines for approved interrogation techniques was sent to Guantánamo.
General Miller and another officer on his team said they urged commanders in Iraq to draft their own guidelines. A chart of approved techniques, entitled the "Interrogation Rules of Engagement," was drawn up for American forces in Iraq on Oct. 12, 2003, barely a month after General Miller's visit.
"The recommendations that the team and I made was about how you could improve the interrogation process and the development and collection of intelligence," General Miller told reporters last Saturday. "Those recommendations that were made were based on the system that provided humane detention and excellent interrogation."
Three officials familiar with the methods approved for Guantánamo said they appeared to be more restrictive than those promulgated for Iraq. At Guantánamo, methods like extended isolation and putting detainees into "stress positions" require approval from senior Pentagon officials; in Iraq, they need only that of the task force commander.
Tim Golden reported from New York for this article and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
-------- spies
F.B.I. Agent Pleads Guilty in Deal in Chinese Spy Case
May 13, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13spy.html
WASHINGTON, May 12 - A former senior F.B.I. agent in Los Angeles who had an affair for two decades with a woman suspected of being a Chinese double agent pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of falsely concealing their affair from the bureau.
The agent, James J. Smith, will probably avoid prison time as a result of the deal, which came a week before prosecutors faced a hearing that could have resulted in having to share classified material with his defense team, officials said. Federal prosecutors agreed to drop three other charges, including two counts of gross negligence in his handling of national security documents.
Mr. Smith, 60, who worked Chinese counterintelligence for the F.B.I., admitted in court that he had an affair for nearly 20 years with a Chinese-American businesswoman, Katrina Leung, whom he had recruited as an informant, then lied to his superiors to conceal the affair. Officials say they suspect that Ms. Leung used her position as an F.B.I. informant to gather sensitive national security material for the Chinese.
Ms. Leung is facing five criminal counts that could result in significant prison time, and her defense lawyers said in a statement Wednesday after the plea that "the F.B.I. has tried to protect its own and shift blame to Katrina, an outsider, a Chinese-American, and a woman."
Several current and former law enforcement officials said they were also troubled by the appearance that Mr. Smith, known to his friends and colleagues as "J.J.," may have received lenient treatment as a way of avoiding further embarrassment for the bureau in a case that threatened to expose national security secrets.
"This is a way of silencing J.J. because if you put him on trial, he will allege that everyone up the chain of command knew what he was doing," said a former senior law enforcement official who was involved in the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.
But both federal prosecutors and Mr. Smith's lawyer disputed the notion that the former agent had received preferential treatment.
Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the United States attorney's office in Los Angeles, called such claims "spurious" and said: "We litigate cases based on the facts and the particular circumstances. This plea agreement is the result of extensive negotiations and is considered by both sides to be in the interests of justice."
Brian Sun, Mr. Smith's lawyer, said his client was happy with the results as well.
"We think this agreement confirms that he did not engage in any conduct that put national security at risk," Mr. Sun said. "Smith just wants to put this behind him."
When Mr. Smith and Ms. Leung were arrested in April 2003, the case represented a potentially major national security breach for the F.B.I. While intelligence officials are still assessing the damage, they have said they were concerned that Ms. Leung may have passed on crucial information to the Chinese about important nuclear, espionage and personnel matters.
However, the indictment brought against Ms. Leung stopped short of charging her with actual espionage by passing secrets to the Chinese. Rather, she was charged with the unauthorized copying and possession of national defense materials.
Officials said that during her affair with Mr. Smith - who was her "handler" at the F.B.I. as an informant - she would surreptitiously take secret documents from his briefcase during his many visits to her home.
Mr. Smith first recruited Ms. Leung to help provide Chinese intelligence in 1982. A political fund-raiser who is prominent in the Chinese-American community in Southern California, she was paid $1.7 million over the next two decades to provide intelligence. The information she provided was considered so valuable that it went to top policy makers at the White House, including several presidents, officials said.
As part of his plea agreement, Mr. Smith admitted that he began having an affair with Ms. Leung in 1983, the year after he recruited her, and that their sexual relationship continued for nearly 20 years.
When he was interviewed in 2000 by an F.B.I. security team, Mr. Smith denied having engaged in any conduct that could compromise his ability to handle classified material. In the plea agreement, he admitted that "these statements were materially false" because his affair with Ms. Leung had a bearing on his classified clearance and "could be used to influence, pressure, coerce or compromise him."
Mr. Smith also agreed to cooperate fully in the continuing investigation. The timing of the agreement appeared to be linked to a hearing scheduled for next week in which Mr. Smith's lawyers were seeking access to classified material in preparing their defense.
In reaching the deal, Mr. Smith is likely to avoid the prospect of prison time and will keep his government pension, lawyers said. Had he been convicted of all four of the original counts he would probably have faced at least two or three years in federal prison as well as the loss of his pension, lawyers said.
Under the plea agreement, federal sentencing guidelines now call for a possible sentence of zero to six months, but if he cooperates in the investigation, he is virtually assured of avoiding prison, lawyers agreed.
"It would be remarkable if he didn't get probation," said a lawyer involved in the case who spoke on condition of anonymity. Sentencing is set for next January before Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Federal District Court in Los Angeles.
-------
Ex-Handler of Alleged FBI Spy Cuts Deal
He Pleads Guilty to Lying About Affair in Case Involving Chinese Intelligence
By Susan Schmidt and Kimberly Edds
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22529-2004May12.html
A former FBI counterintelligence supervisor pleaded guilty yesterday to lying about a long-running sexual affair he had with a prized bureau informant now accused of spying for China. In a plea agreement that could keep him out of jail, James J. Smith appeared before a federal judge in Los Angeles and admitted that he had concealed his affair with Katrina Leung during a routine FBI background review in 2000.
Smith, 60, agreed to cooperate with the government's ongoing investigation into Leung's suspected 20-year penetration of FBI counterintelligence efforts, which could include testifying against her if she is tried next year. In exchange, charges involving mail fraud and mishandling of classified documents against Smith will be dropped.
By agreeing to the unusually light sentence, officials said, the government hopes to build a stronger case against Leung, speed its damage assessment and avoid having to air more national security information during a trial.
Leung's suspected spying has been a blow to the FBI's troubled national security division, which previously failed to detect that counterintelligence agent Robert P. Hanssen sold secrets to the Russians for 20 years. Hanssen was arrested in 2001 and is serving a life sentence.
The Leung case also has forced the U.S. intelligence community to rethink much of what it thought it knew about Chinese intentions.
Leung, a Chinese American recruited by Smith in 1982, quickly became one of the intelligence community's most valued Chinese assets, one with contacts in the top ranks of the Chinese government. Code named "Parlor Maid," she brought the FBI information about Chinese military and intelligence capabilities, political intentions, and efforts to influence U.S. electoral politics that was circulated to presidents and foreign leaders. All of it is now suspect.
A special FBI inspection team also has been trying to assess what influence she may have had on Chinese espionage cases, including two high-profile probes involving Smith that foundered badly: the nuclear secrets investigations of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee and TRW Inc. contractor Peter H. Lee. Wen Ho Lee, who spent nine months in jail, pleaded guilty to a single felony after the government's case crumbled. Peter Lee confessed in 1997 to transferring classified material to China but served no jail time.
Leung, who was paid $1.7 million by her FBI handlers, had an off-and-on sexual relationship with another former FBI counterintelligence agent during some of the years that she was involved with Smith. William Cleveland Jr., formerly an agent in San Francisco and then security chief at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has cooperated with investigators and was not charged in the case.
Smith, accompanied by his wife and grown son, said little in the courtroom beyond his admission of guilt. His attorney, Brian Sun, said afterward that Smith is barred under the terms of his agreement with prosecutors from talking to the media until Leung's case is resolved.
"He's acknowledged he had a relationship he probably shouldn't have had on duty because he was having a relationship with an asset," Sun said. But, he asserted that "this plea confirms he did not engage in any conduct that jeopardized national security."
Four remaining counts of the indictment against Smith will be dismissed when he is sentenced in January if the government is satisfied with his cooperation. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, but U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said she did not "anticipate this punishment will be imposed in this case." Smith, who retired at 57, also will be allowed to keep his FBI pension.
In addition to not telling the bureau of his affair with Leung, Smith also was accused of withholding his discovery in 1991 that the Chinese government knew that the FBI had her on its payroll as an informant.
Counterintelligence agents in San Francisco discovered that Leung had had unauthorized conversations with a Chinese intelligence official. Smith, her handler, was notified and a meeting was held at FBI headquarters. In charging Smith, the government said he did not reveal then or later that he was sexually involved with Leung.
When Smith confronted Leung about the conversations with the Chinese official, according to court papers, Leung told him she had passed "secret unauthorized communications" to the Chinese, something he did not then tell the bureau.
Smith was accused of taking classified documents to Leung's home, where she gained access to them and copied them. They included a document related to the espionage investigation of Peter Lee, whose plea agreement with authorities, which involved no jail time, was later questioned by members of Congress.
In a written statement yesterday, Leung's attorneys, Janet Levine and John Vandevelde, said: "Although we may have to fight to the end because the FBI has tried to protect its own and shift blame for their mistakes to Katrina, an outsider, a Chinese American and a woman, we are confident that this case is much ado about nothing and Katrina Leung will be vindicated."
Leung is charged with copying national security documents and unauthorized possession of those documents. Her attorneys have said they plan to take advantage of limitations imposed on the government by national security concerns.
"We expect the government will have to make hard decisions about whether to publicly disclose 20 years worth of spying secrets in order to pursue an ill-advised prosecution," the defense team said in a statement last year.
Edds reported from Los Angeles.
--------
Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations
May 13, 2004
By JAMES RISEN, DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13DETA.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 12 - The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.
At least one agency employee has been disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun during questioning, they said.
In the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a high-level detainee who is believed to have helped plan the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, C.I.A. interrogators used graduated levels of force, including a technique known as "water boarding," in which a prisoner is strapped down, forcibly pushed under water and made to believe he might drown.
These techniques were authorized by a set of secret rules for the interrogation of high-level Qaeda prisoners, none known to be housed in Iraq, that were endorsed by the Justice Department and the C.I.A. The rules were among the first adopted by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks for handling detainees and may have helped establish a new understanding throughout the government that officials would have greater freedom to deal harshly with detainees.
Defenders of the operation said the methods stopped short of torture, did not violate American anti-torture statutes, and were necessary to fight a war against a nebulous enemy whose strength and intentions could only be gleaned by extracting information from often uncooperative detainees. Interrogators were trying to find out whether there might be another attack planned against the United States.
The methods employed by the C.I.A. are so severe that senior officials of the Federal Bureau of Investigation have directed its agents to stay out of many of the interviews of the high-level detainees, counterterrorism officials said. The F.B.I. officials have advised the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III, that the interrogation techniques, which would be prohibited in criminal cases, could compromise their agents in future criminal cases, the counterterrorism officials said.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, President Bush signed a series of directives authorizing the C.I.A. to conduct a covert war against Osama bin Laden's Qaeda network. The directives empowered the C.I.A. to kill or capture Qaeda leaders, but it is not clear whether the White House approved the specific rules for the interrogations.
The White House and the C.I.A. declined to comment on the matter.
The C.I.A. detention program for Qaeda leaders is the most secretive component of an extensive regime of detention and interrogation put into place by the United States government after the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Afghanistan that includes the detention facilities run by the military in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
There is now concern at the agency that the Congressional and criminal inquiries into abuses at Pentagon-run prisons and other detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan may lead to examinations of the C.I.A's handling of the Qaeda detainees. That, in turn, could expose agency officers and operations to the same kind of public exposure as the military now faces because of the Iraq prison abuses.
So far, the agency has refused to grant any independent observer or human rights group access to the high-level detainees, who have been held in strict secrecy. Their whereabouts are such closely guarded secrets that one official said he had been told that Mr. Bush had informed the C.I.A. that he did not want to know where they were.
The authorized tactics are primarily those methods used in the training of American Special Operations soldiers to prepare them for the possibility of being captured and taken prisoners of war. The tactics simulate torture, but officials say they are supposed to stop short of serious injury.
Counterrorism officials say detainees have also been sent to third countries, where they are convinced that they might be executed, or tricked into believing they were being sent to such places. Some have been hooded, roughed up, soaked with water and deprived of food, light and medications.
Many authorities contend that torture and coercive treatment is as likely to provide information that is unreliable as information that is helpful.
Concerns are mounting among C.I.A. officers about the potential consequences of their actions. "Some people involved in this have been concerned for quite a while that eventually there would be a new president, or the mood in the country would change, and they would be held accountable," one intelligence source said. "Now that's happening faster than anybody expected."
The C.I.A.'s inspector general has begun an investigation into the deaths of three lower-level detainees held by the C.I.A in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Justice Department is also examining the deaths.
The secret detention system houses a group of 12 to 20 prisoners, government officials said, some under direct American control, others ostensibly under the supervision of foreign governments.
The C.I.A. high-level interrogation program seemed to show early results with the capture of Abu Zubaida in April 2002. Mr. Zubaida was a close associate of Mr. bin Laden's and had run Al Qaeda's recruiting, in which young men were brought from other countries to training camps in Afghanistan.
Under such intensive questioning, Mr. Zubaida provided useful information identifying Jose Padilla, a low-level Qaeda convert who was arrested in May 2002 in connection with an effort to build a dirty bomb. Mr. Zubaida also helped identify Mr. Mohammed as a crucial figure in the 9/11 plot, counterterrorism officials said.
A few other detainees have been identified by the Bush administration, like Ramzi bin al-Shibh, another 9/11 plotter and Walid Ba'Attash, who helped plan the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998 and the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole in October 2000.
Some of the prisoners have never been identified by the government. Some may have only peripheral ties to Al Qaeda. One Middle Eastern man, who had been identified by intelligence officials as a money launderer for Mr. bin Laden, was captured in the United Arab Emirates. He traveled there when some of the emirates' banks froze his accounts. When the U.A.E. government alerted the the C.I.A. that he was in the country, the man was arrested and subsequently disappeared into the secret detention program.
In the interrogation of Mr. Mohammed, C.I.A. officials became convinced that he was not being fully cooperative about his knowledge of the whereabouts of Mr. bin Laden. Mr. Mohammed was carrying a letter written by Mr. bin Laden to a family member when he was captured in Pakistan early in 2003. The C.I.A. officials then authorized even harsher techniques, according to officials familiar with the interrogation.
The C.I.A. has been operating its Qaeda detention system under a series of secret legal opinions by the agency's and Justice Department lawyers. Those rules have provided a legal basis for the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including the water-boarding tactic used against Mr. Mohammed.
One set of legal memorandums, the officials said, advises government officials that if they are contemplating procedures that may put them in violation of American statutes that prohibit torture, degrading treatment or the Geneva Conventions, they will not be responsible if it can be argued that the detainees are formally in the custody of another country.
The Geneva Conventions prohibit "violence to life and person, in particular . . . cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."
Regarding American anti-torture laws, one administration figure involved in discussions about the memorandums said: "The criminal statutes only apply to American officials. The question is how involved are the American officials."
The official said the legal opinions say restrictions on procedures would not apply if the detainee could be deemed to be in the custody of a different country, even though American officials were getting the benefit of the interrogation. "It would be the responsibility of the other country," the official said. "It depends on the level of involvement."
Like the more numerous detainees at Guantánamo Bay, the high-level Qaeda prisoners have also been defined as unlawful combatants, not as prisoners of war. Those prisoners have no standing in American civilian or military courts.
The Bush administration began the program when intelligence agencies realized that a few detainees captured in Afghanistan had such a high intelligence value that they should be separated from the lower-level figures who had been sent to a military installation at Guantánamo Bay, which officials felt was not suitable.
There was little long-term planning. The agency initially had few interrogators and no facilities to house the top detainees. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the agency began to search for remote sites in friendly countries around the world where Qaeda operatives could be kept quietly and securely.
"There was a debate after 9/11 about how to make people disappear," a former intelligence official said.
The result was a series of secret agreements allowing the C.I.A. to use sites overseas without outside scrutiny.
So far, the Bush administration has not said what it intends to do over the long term with any of the high-level detainees, leaving them subject to being imprisoned indefinitely without any access to lawyers, courts or any form of due process.
Some officials have suggested that some of the high-level detainees may be tried in military tribunals or officially turned over to other countries, but counterterrorism officials have complained about the Bush administration's failure to have an "endgame" for these detainees. One official said they could also be imprisoned indefinitely at a new long-term prison being built at Guantánamo.
--------
Despite rebuilding, CIA is still short of spies
Douglas Jehl NYT
Thursday, May 13, 2004
International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/519637.html
WASHINGTON Even now, 30 months after the Sept. 11 attacks, America's clandestine intelligence service numbers fewer than 1,100 case officers posted overseas, fewer than the number of FBI agents assigned to the New York City field office alone, according to government officials.
Since George Tenet took charge of the CIA seven years ago, rebuilding the service has been his top priority. This year alone, more newly minted case officers will graduate from a yearlong course at Camp Peary, in Virginia, than in any year since the Vietnam War. They are the products of aggressive and targeted new recruiting efforts aimed in particular at attracting more Arabic-language speakers and others capable of operating in the Middle East and South Asia.
But it will be another five years, Tenet and others have warned, before the rebuilding is complete and the United States has in place the network it needs adequately to confront a global threat posed by terrorist groups and hostile foreign governments. In an interview, James Pavitt, who as the CIA's deputy director for operations oversees the clandestine service, said he still needed 30 percent to 35 percent more people than those now in its ranks.
"I need hundreds and hundreds, thousands," Pavitt said. At a time when the United States is fighting a war on terrorism and a war in Iraq, he said, "we are running hard to get the resources we need."
On Capitol Hill and among former intelligence officers, most experts agree that the clandestine service needs improvement, but there is some debate about whether the agency is addressing the right problems.
"The question is, should you require better before you get bigger?" said a senior congressional official, describing a question that he said had been prompted by inquiries now underway into intelligence failures involving Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks. The size and scope of the clandestine service, whose case officers overseas recruit and supervise spies and work with foreign intelligence services, but rarely try to infiltrate foreign targets themselves, has always been among the government's most closely guarded secrets. But as the dimensions of the intelligence failures on Iraq and Sept. 11 have begun to come to light in recent months, so too has a new picture of American spying operations stretched thin through the 1990s and only now recovering.
In numbers, Pavitt said, the clandestine service hit a low point in 1999, when its ranks had been trimmed by 20 percent from the highs of the Cold War. And in morale and sense of mission, other experts say, the clandestine service suffered through the 1990s because it was slow to shift its sights from Cold War targets and in some ways became more risk averse.
"I cannot tell you the amount of information we didn't get, the operations we didn't undertake, the number of good sources we didn't recruit," Representative Porter Goss, a Republican from Florida and former CIA case officer, who is chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of the 1990s. "We did hurt ourselves." From the CIA's failure to anticipate India's nuclear test in 1998 to the mistaken reports about Iraq's illicit weapons capabilities, the weakness of the CIA's human intelligence operations has been manifest in repeated embarrassments. At critical junctures, intelligence officials have acknowledged in recent testimony and interviews, the CIA proved unable to recruit agents who could provide reliable information about Saddam Hussein's government and the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, and had to rely extensively for information on foreign intelligence services whose information has often proved unreliable. A year before the United States invaded Iraq, a top intelligence target for more than a decade, the CIA could claim just four human sources of intelligence within the Iraqi government, senior intelligence officials now acknowledge.
"If we had been able to successfully penetrate Al Qaeda, imagine what that would have meant," said Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel. "If we had been able to penetrate Saddam Hussein's government, imagine what that would have meant." In his own recent public remarks, Tenet has blended defiance with candor. "To be sure, we had difficulty penetrating the Iraqi regime with human sources, but a blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the world is simply wrong," Tenet said in February, when he called attention to the role played by human intelligence in the capture of leading Al Qaeda figures.
Still, in testimony before the independent commission on the Sept. 11 attacks, Tenet was scathing about the clandestine service he inherited when he took charge of the agency in 1997. "The infrastructure to recruit, train and sustain officers for our clandestine services - the nation's human intelligence capability - was in disarray," he said.
In interviews, current and former intelligence officials along with senior Republican and Democratic lawmakers bluntly acknowledged weaknesses of human intelligence operations stemming from the Clinton administration.
They said the problems had been a product in part of inadequate manpower after a six-year stretch of congressional budget cutting during the early and mid-1990s in which some CIA stations and bases overseas were closed and the number of clandestine service officers was slashed.
But they also cited a culture of risk aversion that was intensified by a directive issued in 1995 by Tenet's predecessor, John Deutch, after a scandal over CIA activities in Guatemala. The directive was widely interpreted by CIA officers as a warning against consorting with unsavory individuals.
They also pointed to a lack of nimbleness within what remains a highly bureaucratic organization, whose clandestine officers remain primarily white males posted in foreign embassies overseas. In the large majority of cases these officers pose as diplomats or other government officials under what is known as official cover, an arrangement that some critics see as too transparent.
"Ideally, within 10 years, 50 percent of case officers should be under nonofficial cover," said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer, who referred to a more elaborate arrangement in which the officers assume identities as bankers, consultants or members of other occupations. Gerecht, who served in the Middle East, has criticized the current embassy-centered CIA structure for its lack of success in recruiting spies capable of penetrating terrorist targets.
Even now, intelligence officials acknowledge, the agency's success in hiring case officers fluent in key foreign languages and comfortable in foreign cultures has been limited by a system that generally requires any new clandestine service officer to be no more than 35 and to meet strict security and personal behavior standards. The intelligence officials also said the effect of the aggressive new hiring had not been felt immediately because of the time it takes to teach new hires what it takes to became a clandestine officer.
Because even the CIA's overall budget and staffing levels remain classified, CIA officials declined in interviews to say how much the agency or the clandestine service had grown.
Still, public statements by Tenet and others in recent weeks, along with comments made by Pavitt in the interview, have described a major turnabout since 1995, when only 25 new case officers emerged from that year's two graduating classes. In each of the last two years, the graduating class has exceeded 300 people, say former intelligence officials. The CIA will not confirm that number.
But in an interview, officials in charge of recruiting at the agency, including Bob Rebello, the agency's chief human resources officer,said that the number of new hires into the clandestine service was still increasing, at a rate this year and last year of at least 20 percent over the previous year.
The directorate of operations, with an overall staff estimated at about 5,000, is only one of the CIA's three main branches. The others are the directorate of science and technology, and the directorate of intelligence, which is in charge of analysis.
The role played by case officers is regarded by intelligence professionals as particularly critical, in that their mission aims to obtain from human sources the kind of information that no spy satellite or listening device could provide.
Today, Pavitt said, 50 percent of the funding in the directorate of operations and 30 percent of personnel within the clandestine service are focused on terrorism. "Every station in the clandestine service has counterterrorism as its top priority," Pavitt said in his April 14 testimony.
In the interview, Pavitt said it would be wrong to regard the agency as risk-averse. But he also described as "unnecessary" the directive that was issued by Deutch, and rescinded under Tenet in 2002, after being relaxed immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. Pavitt said the CIA was only now "turning around" what he called a mistaken perception among some officers that they were prohibited from dealing with criminals and other unsavory individuals. "I'm not going to succeed against terrorism unless I recruit terrorists," Pavitt said. "I'm not going to succeed in terms of the tough issues in this business unless I'm right in the middle of it."
-------- un
Stakes are raised over UN vote on Iraq
By Mark Turner at the United Nations,
Andrew Jack in Moscow and,
James Harding in Washington
May 13 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1083180470912
France and Russia have raised the stakes on a new United Nations resolution on Iraq, warning that they will only support a proposal that gives Iraqis genuine control over their political future.
With just seven weeks to go before the US's target date for the handover of power to Iraqis, Washington is eager to secure a new UN resolution that somehow straddles international demands for genuine Iraqi sovereignty and the US insistence on control of security operations.
Jean-Marc de la Sablìere, France's ambassador to the UN, insisted that the transfer of sovereignty should be "real and visible". He told the Financial Times: "We are not in a mood to support a resolution we do not consider a good one. We think the credibility of the UN should be taken into account."
Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Russia's first deputy foreign minister, said this week that Moscow could back only a resolution that took "into account the interests of Iraq 100 per cent" and that it should create "an Iraqi government by the Iraqis themselves".
The US stance was reiterated by Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, who said: "We believe strongly in the unity of command."
She said she was sure "we will work out something which recognises the sovereignty of Iraq" but she was clear that the White House expected Iraqi forces to be part of the US-led coalition subordinate to American commanders.
The warnings from France and Russia - two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - came as council members met to discuss the relationship between Iraq's caretaker government and the US.
The UN is aware that the way it manages the handover of power in Iraq will be critical to rebuilding its international authority following divisions in the run-up to last year's US-led invasion.
One of the most vexed issues is the future status of the Iraqi military. The US is determined to head a unified command of international and local forces but many countries believe Iraqis should have control over their own army.
France believes arrangements for the US-led multinational force should be revisited after the election of a new government at the end of January.
Russia is floating the possibility of a two-step process. The first would be for the Security Council to endorse a government chosen by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN special envoy, assuming it has wide support.
The council would then invite that government to submit ideas for a more detailed resolution. The idea has won some backing but there are concerns that time is running short. One diplomat warned against a "Merry Widow" scenario, in which the last act is still being written as the first act is performed.
Russia is also calling for an international conference before June 30 to inject greater transparency into the process.
----
Germany to lobby for seat on UN Security Council
By Hugh Williamson in Berlin and
Mark Turner at the United Nations in New York
May 13 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1083180469440&p=1012571727166
Germany will launch a con-certed campaign this year for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, officials in Berlin said yesterday.
The campaign, likely to be set in motion soon after the US presidential elections in November, might be co-ordinated with other countries also seeking a permanent Security Council seat, officials in Germany and in the UN said. Germany had held talks on the issue with Japan, India and Brazil, German officials added.
In March Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, called explicitly for the first time for Berlin - the UN's third-largest funder - to be given a permanent seat, abandoning the country's traditional approach of lobbying for a seat only behind the scenes.
A senior German official confirmed that Germany's attempt would be timed to coincide with consultations on a report on UN reform. The report is being prepared by a UN "Blue Ribbon" panel of diplomatic veterans at the request of Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, and will be presented to Mr Annan on December 1.
Decisions were expected on changes to the Security Council, and on UN reform more generally, at the UN General Assembly in September 2005, other German officials said. There have also been calls within the UN for a high-level summit at that time on reform issues.
Intense diplomatic contacts were already under way ahead of Germany's formal bid, German officials said. Berlin is confident of obtaining the two-thirds majority in the General Assembly necessary to change the UN charter to increase the number of permanent seats.
All five existing permanent members would also have to vote in favour, and German officials are confident of support from France, China, Britain and Russia.
The US government had not indicated any opposition to Germany's attempt, German officials said yesterday. The chancellor said in March that he was "sure... that our friends in America will support us".
Besides Germany, several countries have emerged as leading contenders for a permanent seat, including Japan, Brazil and India. But few expect the debate to be easy. For years discussions have stalled amid objections from a group led by Egypt, Pakistan and Italy but incl-uding Mexico and Canada.
One Indian official said yesterday that the idea of a "joint" push with Germany was "too strong" but that contenders were "exchanging views and trying to work together".
A Japanese official said that "the discussion has been revitalised", both within the General Assembly, and "a lot of seminars and retreats". In spite of positive comments from Berlin, it remains unclear where the US stands.
----
U.S. Urged To Give Iraq More Control
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22424-2004May12.html
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 -- France and Russia are proposing that the Bush administration grant a new Iraqi caretaker government greater control over the country's security forces after June 30 when the U.S.-led coalition transfers limited political authority to that government, senior Security Council diplomats said.
The initiatives by France and Russia, the council's chief opponents to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, clash with Washington's plans to place Iraqi and foreign armed forces in the country under the command of U.S. generals after June 30. It comes as U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi works to identify candidates for an interim government that can assume responsibilities on that date.
French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier is scheduled to travel to New York and Washington this week to press U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and senior Bush administration officials to sponsor U.N. resolutions saying that Iraq's transitional leaders will have the option of refusing U.S. military commanders if they order Iraqi forces to engage in combat operations. The French plan would also require that Iraq's new leaders exercise control over the country's oil wealth and its more than 200,000 police.
The French proposals come as the 15-nation council works through the details of a U.S. and British resolution that will define the powers of Iraq's interim government and U.S. military authorities. John D. Negroponte, the recently confirmed U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month that "Iraqi security forces will come under a command of the multinational force," because they are "simply not sufficiently numerous or equipped to take on that responsibility for themselves."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday that the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq has the authority under U.N. Resolution 1511 to remain in Iraq throughout the political transition. But they voiced hope that a new U.N. resolution would broaden international support for stabilizing the country.
"We want it, the coalition in there wants it and . . . when we get it, we have a crack at getting some additional countries beyond the 33 countries that are currently there" participating in the coalition, Rumsfeld said.
The United States and Britain convened a meeting in New York on Wednesday to discuss the basic elements of a new Security Council resolution that would establish such a force and endorse an interim Iraqi government.
France, Germany and other antiwar members of the council have made it clear they will not send troops to Iraq to help restore stability or to protect U.N. officials overseeing the political transition. But they have indicated they would consider participating in the country's reconstruction and providing training to Iraqi police.
Russia, meanwhile, has asked the United States to consider delaying a decision to adopt a resolution authorizing a new multinational force until after Iraq's new interim leaders are selected. The transitional leaders would then participate in the discussions with the Security Council on a more ambitious resolution -- one that would define its new powers and establish a one-year mandate for a multinational force, which would be subject to renewal by the council.
-------- us
Line Increasingly Blurred Between Soldiers and Civilian Contractors
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22547-2004May12?language=printer
While on missions in Iraq last year, 35-year-old Todd Drobnick was attacked by small-arms fire, grenades and makeshift bombs. Yet he continued to go out day after day, until he died in a vehicle crash on his way from one U.S. military base to another. For his loyalty and dedication, he was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
Thousands of Americans in Iraq have received such honors, but Drobnick's case was unusual: He wasn't a soldier. He was a private contractor working with a translation company.
"He died in the service of his country and the gratitude of his comrades is deep and lasting," U.S. Army Col. Gary L. Parrish, assistant chief of staff of intelligence, wrote in a letter to Drobnick's family after his death.
Several other contractors have received battlefield commendations in Iraq, too, but the military says it was a mistake. Only active-duty soldiers are eligible for the awards and those received by civilians are being rescinded.
"This is not to say that what the contractors did wasn't valorous or wasn't important, but legally we aren't supposed to give them these awards," said Shari Lawrence, an Army spokeswoman.
The confusion demonstrates that in many situations soldiers and civilian contractors have become virtually indistinguishable -- and interchangeable -- in postwar Iraq.
The occupation could not function without contractors. Construction giants such as Bechtel Inc., Fluor Corp., Parsons Corp. and Perini Corp., are rebuilding the country's infrastructure. Blackwater Security Consulting and Erinys, staffed with former Special Forces fighters, provide security details for occupation personnel. General Dynamics Corp. and Halliburton Inc. subsidiary KBR supply the military with support personnel who handle such diverse duties as repairing tanks and cooking.
The estimated tens of thousand of contractors in Iraq -- who according to the Brookings Institute amount to more than 10 percent of U.S. personnel there -- have become a flashpoint for the troubles of the U.S.-led occupation.
First, there were accusations that lucrative contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq had been given to allies of the Bush administration. Then, after four security contactors were killed last month while escorting a U.S. military convoy, there were concerns about the lack of rules and regulations governing the private armies. Now, with allegations that contractors may have allowed or instructed soldiers to abuse detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, there are questions about their accountability in a place where laws are still being written.
"What we're seeing is the extreme result for this passion for outsourcing which ignores the fact that there are some things only government should do," said Danielle Brian, executive director of Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group.
Private contractors have long served alongside soldiers in wars, but their duties used to be relatively mundane: cooking, supporting technology systems, transporting supplies. There has been a significant shift in recent years, however, in the duties the Pentagon has entrusted to contractors. Companies are now taking more responsibility for some of the military's most sensitive jobs -- providing technical trainers, security protection details, linguistics experts, and "intelligence services," a catchall term that includes everything involved in the gathering and analysis of data.
Fairfax's SRA International Inc., for example, provides scientists to help investigate biological and chemical weapons that Saddam Hussein's regime might have developed. Arlington's CACI International Inc. has a one-year contract to provide prison interrogators. San Diego's Titan Corp. -- Drobnick's employer -- supplies interpreters who are inseparable from soldiers who go out into Iraqi communities in their Humvees.
Pentagon officials have said using contractors saves money, allows the military to tap the private sector for skills it lacks and forces it to concentrate on its core mission of protecting the country. But the independence with which contractors operate is heightening concerns that the line between the military and its contractors has become too blurry and whether the military become too dependent on contractors it can't properly control.
Of particular concern to Congress has been where -- or if -- contractors fall in the military chain of command.
In a report summarizing an Army investigation into what happened at Abu Ghraib, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba concluded that a contractor for CACI International may have allowed or instructed soldiers to abuse prisoners. One translator for Titan Corp. was admonished for providing false statements to investigators and another was named as a suspect and witness. The military employs 27 CACI interrogators and hundreds of Titan translators in Iraq, according to congressional testimony by Lt. Gen. Lance L. Smith, deputy command of Central Command.
Four contract interrogators, six contract screeners -- who decide the level of "intelligence value" detainees might have -- and numerous contract translators were stationed at Abu Ghraib.
Contractors typically have no formal authority to manage military personnel and many consider themselves partners or advisers. In practice, however, soldiers say contractors may exert tremendous influence on the rank and file because of their technical expertise and because they are often brought in to work with high-level military officials. Their presence, some argue, has complicated what used to be a clear chain of command. Military contracts lay out the limits of contractors' duties and responsibilities in clear terms, officials say, but in the field their roles often change depending on their backgrounds and their relationships with soldiers.
During his four-month tour as a CACI interrogator at the Abu Ghraib prison, Torin S. Nelson said, he was mostly on his own. Besides his schedule, there was little oversight of how he did his job questioning Iraqi detainees and he often found himself advising less-experienced military colleagues.
"Civilian interrogators were often free to conduct operations as they best saw fit," Nelson, who is named as a witness in the Army investigation, said in an e-mail response to questions. (Nelson was mistakenly identified as a Titan employee in the report, he said.)
That contradicts testimony this week from Stephen A. Cambone, the Pentagon official responsible for intelligence, that contract interrogators worked "under the supervision of military personnel."
Yet, Cambone also noted, "there may have been circumstances under which this regulation was not followed." He said the issue is under investigation.
Rep. Janice D. Schakowsky (D-Ill.) last week asked President Bush to suspend the prison contracts until investigations are complete. She said she worries that contractors have divided loyalties. "Are they taking orders from their CEOs and shareholders and then telling our soldiers what to do?"
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said: "I'd like to know who was in charge . . . what agencies or private contractors were in charge of interrogations. Did they have authority over the guards? And what were their instructions to the guards?"
Contractors are not subject to military codes of conduct and not held to the same rules as government workers, including the Geneva Convention that protects human rights, defense analysts say. The Coalition Provisional Authority exempted contractors working for the occupation from Iraqi law; instead they are to follow the laws of their own countries and could be charged and tried at home for violations. Cambone testified that contractors are "subject to suspension from their contracts by the government for cause. Criminal sanctions may be pursued by federal authorities.
CACI chief executive J.P. "Jack" London has declined to discuss his employees' work at the prison but said the company is very selective in hiring interrogators, sending only 3 percent of the 1,600 applications to the military for approval. Most of the applicants had military training in interrogation and all of them had security clearances, London said.
In Iraq, the contract interrogators worked in three-person teams with a translator and an analyst. They answered to CACI managers, London said, and did not participate in the military chain of command.
The bureaucracy of the contracting process also complicates how contractor operations are run because it's unclear who the client is. For example, the request for contract interrogation support originally came from Command Joint Task Force 7, the military group that oversees coalition forces in Iraq. It was then sent to the Interior Department and processed at a federal business center at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The Defense Department will pay for CACI's interrogation services.
Contract translators also are being investigated for their roles in abuses at Abu Ghraib and other facilities -- including one in which a detainee being questioned by the CIA died. The military is almost entirely dependent on contractors, and specifically on Titan, for Arabic interpreters.
Titan, which has a contract worth up to $657 million, employs 4,200 people worldwide who work with the military. The majority are assigned to Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar and Afghanistan, according to the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command.
More than a few of the interpreters are doctors, artists, grocery baggers, recent college graduates and others with no background in translating, according to interpreters and military officers in Iraq. Titan spokesman Wil Williams said interpreters hired in the United States and Iraq must pass oral and written exams demonstrating their fluency in Arabic and English, Williams said. The translators also go through a one-week program at Fort Benning, Ga., on how to work with the military, how to protect themselves and even on the Geneva Convention, he said. The Pentagon conducts a counterintelligence check on Iraqi translators to ensure that they are not former members of the Baath Party or should not be hired for other reasons.
"Titan does not send any linguist into Iraq that is not fully qualified in the language or dialectic the military is searching for," Williams said. "Just because an applicant may be a doctor or a businessman or have some other vocation doesn't mean he is or she isn't qualified to speak fluent English and Arabic and support the military."
The Army intelligence command said in a written response that Titan translators are hired only to do "verbatim" translation. In Iraq, however, many military officials depend on them for advice about the culture and it's not unusual for them to sit in on high-level strategy meetings at the battalion or brigade level, or even to help plan convoy routes and raids, according to interpreters and military officers in Iraq.
The push to expand the role of private companies in the armed forces began in earnest in 1999, the height of the dot-com boom, when it seemed that private industry's fast-paced innovation could move the military to the next level of warfare. Until then, defense contractors played mostly supporting roles. They worked as systems integrators, stitching together the various antiquated computer systems, and providing technical assistance. They also did menial labor at bases.
Retired Maj. Gen. Edward B. Atkeson, who was deputy chief of staff of intelligence for the Army's European operations, was part of a group of two- and three-star generals invited in 1999 to participate in a panel to discuss the future of military contracting. He said many agreed that it made sense to hire civilian contractors to take over training operations such as teaching soldiers how to drive certain vehicles and the writing of manuals. It also seemed equally clear that the power to order someone to pull the trigger and bomb a target should stay with the military.
But, Atkeson said, there was debate and disagreement about nearly every task in between. "I'm not sure there's a line," he said. "It's at the edge of a cloud and we've been fading into it and we're still trying to determine how far we want to go."
Civilian contracting accelerated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, when it became clear that the government lacked the language skills it needed to penetrate terrorist networks, according to congressional testimony. The result has been that in the sea of camouflage that represents the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq, it's often impossible to tell the soldiers from private contractors and to determine who is in charge.
Military police ride shotgun for KBR drivers who deliver supplies to bases. Armed guards from Blackwater shoot from rooftops to protect bases from attackers and also guard L. Paul Bremer, the occupation's civil administrator. Army officers work alongside contractors to rebuild schools and set up local councils.
At first glance, the only sign that differentiates contractors from soldiers is that instead of their last name emblazoned on the left breast pocket of the uniforms they wear, it says "US CONTRACTOR" or "DOD CIVILIAN."
Of course, private industry employees can earn salaries in the $100,000s and take paid leaves every six weeks and have hotel-like accommodations. Soldiers earn much less, work a year or longer without a break and must rest in sleeping bags in common areas that accommodate dozens.
But the work, soldiers and contractors both say, is often interchangeable.
As director of the Baghdad Police Academy, Mel Goudie, an official with the Coalition Provisional Authority that rules Iraq, supervised a training team that included military police and contractors. In Iraq's reconstruction, Goudie said soon after he took his job last fall, "the military role and the civilian-contractor role are exactly the same."
Staff writer Ellen McCarthy and researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report.
----
Army might be calling back recently demobilized GIs
By Dawn House dawn@sltrib.com
The Salt Lake Tribune
THURSDAY May 13, 2004
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/May/05132004/utah/166102.asp
In a rare move, the U.S. Army is asking to escalate call-ups of recently released soldiers to bolster the ranks of Army Reserve units needing replacement troops for Iraq and Afghanistan.
The soldiers, called Individual Ready Reserve, have served in active-duty or Reserve units, typically for three- or four-year stints. But because their contractual obligation to the Army is for eight years, the soldiers are eligible for mobilization during that time span and until their entire commitment is fulfilled.
Maj. Steven Harmon, from the Army Reserve headquarters in Atlanta, said the Army called upon Individual Ready Reserve to serve during the 1991 Gulf War and after the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. He did not have a number, but he said the Army is asking for more former soldiers.
"The Individual Ready Reserve is a trained and ready pool of resources the Army can utilize in a time of need," he said. "We need to tap into that pool to support various contingency operations in the global war on terrorism."
The Army has 120,700 such soldiers eligible for mobilization.
The total number of Individual Ready Reserve from all branches of service currently pressed into service is 1,200; those who have completed a second stint since 2001 number 5,000.
Lt. Col. Bob Stone, a Pentagon spokesman, said that if the Army or any branch of service wants to tap into the Ready Reserve pool for replacements, the authorization must come from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
"It is my understanding that nothing has been decided," said Stone.
The potential call-ups come as U.S. troops serving in Iraq have seen their orders extended twice because of an escalation in fighting. In the fall, the Pentagon doubled the time GIs were to serve in the war zone from six months to a year. And last month, during large troop rotations, the Pentagon ordered 20,000 GIs to remain in the region to bolster the U.S. fighting force.
Earlier this month, Rumsfeld approved deployment of 10,000 service members to replace elements of the 1st Armored Division and 2nd Light Cavalry Regiment, which had been ordered to remain in Iraq after serving there a year. Additional replacement units have not yet been identified.
The overall U.S. troop strength in Iraq is about 138,000, according to the Pentagon. Plans had called for the U.S. troops to be reduced to 110,000 by May.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Iraq Prison Abuse May Hurt Administration in Court
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22408-2004May12.html
U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners has undercut the Bush administration's legal rationale for key components of its anti-terrorism policies, with some officials privately worrying that the scandal may hurt the administration's chances of winning three test cases before the Supreme Court, lawyers close to the Bush legal team said.
At the court, the administration has maintained that military and intelligence officials engaged in the fight against terrorism should generally not be accountable to the judiciary for their conduct of military operations in wartime.
But the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison illustrate the potential for abuse when the executive branch exercises unchecked authority over its prisoners, said the lawyers, who described their conversations with administration colleagues on the condition of anonymity.
"Of course it hurts us like hell," said one private lawyer who has advised administration officials on terrorism-related legal issues. "I spoke to several people at Justice in the last several days . . . and they said it is clearly going to impact the justices."
A former Bush administration official described his senior-level administration contacts as "pretty depressed" over their prospects at the Supreme Court.
The court does not formally take into account facts outside the record before it. None of the three cases deals directly with Iraq, and at oral argument some justices expressed skepticism that constitutional rights would apply on the overseas battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan. Still, lawyers familiar with the cases say the justices cannot help but be affected by a scandal that has disturbed the nation.
"It depends on how Abu Ghraib is perceived" at the court, said David B. Rivkin Jr., a former Justice Department official who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of former State Department and military lawyers who back the administration. "If it's seen as individual abuses, and the system is working -- the military moved quite swiftly to investigate, punished those responsible -- that should reassure the justices. . . . If it is perceived as indicative of a deep, systemic flaw, of the fact that the executive cannot be trusted, then it clearly would not be helpful."
The first of the three pending terrorism-related cases involves a demand for access to U.S. courts by foreign terrorism suspects being held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Detainees say they have a right to challenge their confinement before a judge, but the Bush administration says Guantanamo is outside the federal courts' jurisdiction.
The Bush administration considered the Guantanamo matter winnable. But the Abu Ghraib revelations were particularly damaging to its position, lawyers said, because the pictures of abuse cast doubt on extensive Justice Department assurances to the court that military law and procedures are sufficient to protect detainees.
The brief by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson said that "the Department of Defense has made clear that it is treating detainees at Guantanamo humanely and providing them with many privileges similar to those accorded to prisoners of war."
The Guantanamo issue was argued before the court on April 20. According to normal procedure at the court, the justices would have voted on it at a closed-door conference on April 23, before CBS broadcast pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Two other cases involving the rights of terrorism detainees -- this time U.S. citizens -- were argued on April 28.
Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S.-born Saudi caught in Afghanistan while allegedly fighting for the Taliban, and Jose Padilla, arrested in Chicago as a suspected al Qaeda operative, have been declared "enemy combatants" by President Bush and held nearly incommunicado in a South Carolina naval brig.
Their attorneys say this violates the men's constitutional rights. The administration counters that Congress has empowered the commander in chief to wage war against the people responsible for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the identification and confinement of enemy combatants has long been the sole purview of the executive.
The Abu Ghraib revelations also clashed with remarks Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement made to the court during oral argument in the Padilla case.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg posed a scenario for Clement's response: "Suppose the executive says mild torture, we think, will help get this information," she said. "It's not a soldier who does something against the code of military justice, but it's an executive command. Some systems do that to get information."
"Well, our executive doesn't," Clement, the administration's second-ranking Supreme Court advocate, replied. "Where the government is on a war footing . . . you have to trust the executive to make the kind of quintessential military judgments that are involved in things like that."
That night, the first pictures emerged. If the justices held to court routine, they voted on the Hamdi and Padilla cases two days later.
--------
Judge Allows Peek Into Challenge to Antiterrorism Law
May 13, 2004
By JULIA PRESTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13suit.html
In a ruling Wednesday, a federal judge in Manhattan widened the public's glimpse into a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging some terms of the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, after the government sought to keep virtually every detail of the case under a court seal, or secrecy order.
The A.C.L.U. is contesting a provision of the law that allows the Federal Bureau of Investigation to require telephone, Internet and other communications companies to provide basic information about their customers, including addresses and call records. The F.B.I. sends a subpoena, known as a national security letter, which includes an order barring the company from informing the customer of the investigation or discussing it with anyone.
The F.B.I. can acquire data on customers even if they are not suspected of terrorist activity.
In a switch that A.C.L.U. lawyers described as an awkward change from their usual practice and philosophy, they filed the suit April 6 under seal, concluding that otherwise they would be in violation of the law the case was devised to contest. The group then quickly asked the judge to lift the seal from the whole case.
The suit is brought by the civil liberties group and another plaintiff described only as a recipient of an antiterrorism letter. The A.C.L.U. said it was barred from providing any other information about the other plaintiff.
"It isn't even clear that a recipient can speak to a lawyer," said Ann Beeson, the associate legal director at the A.C.L.U. who is handling the case.
Justice Department officials have argued that the national security letters are vital in the search for terror suspects, providing information that can help trace their movements and identify where their phone calls and e-mail messages are going. The subpoenas do not allow the government to listen to phone conversations or read e-mail messages.
In his decision, Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan declined to unseal the case, but set some guidelines for the two sides to agree on editing the case documents so that "nonsensitive information" could be released. Material in the documents that relates directly to terrorism investigations will be blacked out. Judge Marrero made it clear that his ruling had no bearing on how he might rule later on the larger issues in the case.
In recent days, President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have vigorously defended the antiterrorism law, which was enacted in October 2001.
Almost nothing is known about the F.B.I.'s use of the subpoenas. The bureau has not said how many letters it sent or what the results were.
The A.C.L.U. argues that the F.B.I. letters are unconstitutional because they violate the due process rights of the businesses and people who receive them, and because the order prohibiting discussion of the investigation violates free expression rights. The group contends that the government should be required to seek approval from a judge before issuing a letter and recipients should have a way to question the order.
One flashpoint came after the A.C.L.U. put out a press release on April 28 describing the case in general terms and including details of the schedule set by the judge for hearing the case. The group was ordered by the government to remove the schedule information from the release on its Web site.
Meredith B. Kotler, an assistant United States attorney, told the judge that even though the scheduling information was not sensitive, it should not be published because the entire case had been officially sealed.
After the judge issued an order releasing some documents on May 7, the A.C.L.U. restored the paragraph to its press release saying that the judge would probably hear the case at the end of the summer.
-------- death penalty
Stevens Faults Death Penalty But Says It's Constitutional
Associated Press
Thursday, May 13, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22395-2004May12.html
CHICAGO, May 12 -- Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens says that he believes the death penalty is constitutional but that the country would be better off without it.
Stevens, 84, said he would feel much better if more states would "really consider whether they think the benefits outweigh the very serious potential injustice, because in these cases the emotions are very, very high on both sides and . . . there is the special potential for error."
Stevens's comments appear to be the most pronounced statement a Supreme Court justice has made against the death penalty in years. He has raised objections to the death penalty before, but mostly in written opinions.
"I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment," Stevens told hundreds of lawyers and judges Monday night at the 7th Circuit Bar Association dinner.
He also called the death penalty "an unfortunate part of our judicial system." Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who also attended the dinner, declined to comment on the matter.
The high court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972 but reinstated it in 1976. Stevens, the court's oldest member, joined in 1975.
In recent years, he has gone on record with misgivings about executing juvenile offenders and foreigners who were never told they could meet with consular officials to prepare their defense.
In a series of cases this year, Stevens, Breyer, and Justices David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have sought to delay executions of convicted killers who claimed it was unconstitutionally cruel to use chemicals to carry out capital punishment.
-------- homeland security
ACLU Was Forced to Revise Release on Patriot Act Suit
Justice Dept. Cited Secrecy Rules
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A27
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22404-2004May12.html
When a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the American Civil Liberties Union could finally reveal the existence of a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act, the group issued a news release.
But the next day, according to new documents released yesterday, the ACLU was forced to remove two paragraphs from the release posted on its Web site, after the Justice Department complained that the group had violated court secrecy rules.
One paragraph described the type of information that FBI agents could request under the law, while another merely listed the briefing schedule in the case, according to court documents and the original news release.
The dispute set off a furious round of court filings in a case that serves as both a challenge to, and an illustration of, the far-reaching power of the Patriot Act. Approved by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law gives the government greater latitude and secrecy in counterterrorism investigations and includes a provision allowing the FBI to secretly demand customer records from Internet providers and other businesses without a court order.
The ACLU first filed its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of such demands, known as national security letters, on April 6, but the secrecy rules of the Patriot Act required the challenge to be filed under seal. A ruling April 28 allowed the release of a heavily censored version of the complaint, but the ACLU is still forbidden from revealing many details of the case, including the identity of another plaintiff who has joined in the lawsuit. The law forbids targets of national security letters to disclose that they have received one.
ACLU lawyer Ann Beeson said the court order also means that she "cannot confirm or deny" whether the ACLU is representing the second plaintiff. The group is the only counsel listed in court documents.
The dispute over the ACLU's April 28 news release centered on two paragraphs. The first laid out the court's schedule for receiving legal briefs and noted the name of the New York-based judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero.
The second paragraph read: "The provision under challenge allows an FBI agent to write a letter demanding the disclosure of the name, screen names, addresses, e-mail header information, and other sensitive information held by 'electronic communication service providers.' "
Justice lawyers said that both paragraphs violated a secrecy order and that the ACLU should be required to seek an exemption to publicize the information, court records show. Justice spokesman Charles Miller declined to comment yesterday.
"It simply never occurred to us that this information would be covered by the sealing order, because it's completely non-sensitive, generic information," Beeson said.
The dispute was partly resolved yesterday. Marrero ruled that the briefing schedule could be publicized, along with edited versions of other court filings. But the paragraph describing the information that can be sought remains absent.
-------- police
Civilian Complaint Review Board Cites Improper Police Strip Searches
May 13, 2004
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/nyregion/13search.html
The independent city agency that investigates accusations of police abuse said yesterday that it had found evidence suggesting that officers may frequently be conducting inappropriate strip searches. It also said that officers and their supervisors are often unaware of Police Department procedures governing such searches.
The agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, based its concerns on dozens of complaints of improper strip searches filed since 2002, and reviewed in detail more than a dozen, mostly by narcotics officers, that it had found to be improper. The board detailed 10 substantiated complaints from four boroughs as part of a recommendation that the department increase training on when strip searches may be conducted.
All but one of the cases detailed in the recommendation involved people who had been arrested for petty crimes, including making too much noise, disorderly conduct and drug possession. In most instances, they told board investigators that they had been ordered to strip to their underwear or strip completely. Some said they had been ordered to squat or bend over. And in all of the cases, the officers or supervisors who ordered or performed the searches told the review board investigators that they believed the searches had been appropriate, and in most cases routine. The board did not release the names of the complainants because such files are confidential under law.
The agency said it was concerned because even though the overall number of accusations of improper strip searches is relatively small - 65 last year and 32 so far this year - in most cases, officers and often supervisors told board investigators that others in their commands routinely conducted the kind of searches that the board found violate the police Patrol Guide, a compendium of department procedures. Sixteen of 85 strip-search complaints, made between Jan. 1, 2002, and April 1, 2004, have been substantiated.
The board said it undertook the study because it determined in January that strip search complaints were substantiated roughly twice as often as other complaints it investigates. They include the use of excessive force and offensive language, discourtesy and other types of abuse of authority. The training recommendation, announced at yesterday's board meeting by the chairman, Hector Gonzalez, was contained in a letter from the executive director, Florence L. Finkle, to Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. It included a summary of the 10 cases that the board detailed. Disciplinary action was taken in one of the 10 cases, even though three others are more than a year old.
The department's chief spokesman, Deputy Commissioner Paul J. Browne, acknowledged that the review highlighted training shortfalls, "including familiarity with the Patrol Guide and the ability to properly articulate the reasons for a search." The department is developing a new training video, he said, "that reinforces instruction on when such searches are permissible and when they are not." He said the officers in the cases reviewed were not abusive and did not intentionally violate department procedures.
The board's review was not the first time that the department's strip-search practices have come under scrutiny. A federal lawsuit filed in 2001 contends that officers in Brooklyn central booking routinely violated people's rights by strip-searching people arrested on misdemeanor charges and lesser offenses in front of crowds of prisoners. The lawsuit depicts a parade of ordinary New Yorkers caught up in morass of degradation after being arrested for petty crimes. Late last year, a judge ruled that the lawsuit could continue not only on behalf of the people who filed it, but also on behalf of all others with similar complaints.
The review board's training recommendation does not find fault with the manner in which the searches were conducted, but with the fact that they were conducted at all. The Patrol Guide, following state and federal law, requires that to conduct a strip search, an officer must have reasonable suspicion that the person under arrest is concealing weapons, contraband or evidence that might not be discovered by frisking him, or through the more thorough search that is routinely conducted when an arrested person is brought into a police building.
The recommendation said the officers' failure to follow Patrol Guide procedures might result in the violation of constitutional rights, the suppression of evidence in criminal cases and civil liability.
"They didn't hide what they did when they were interviewed at the C.C.R.B.," said one board official involved in the inquiry. "They believed that what they were doing was consistent with department policies, and their own statements and actions reflected a profound misunderstanding of the department's policies."
The searches involved officers assigned to narcotics units in northern and southern Queens, northern Brooklyn, East Harlem and the Bronx, the 13th Precinct in Manhattan and a housing gang unit in the Bronx.
Ms. Finkle, the board's executive director, said the training recommendation underscored her agency's ability to uncover and collect information on department practices during its investigations into complaints of police abuse - even cases that are not substantiated - and synthesize them into valuable policy guidance for the department. "These types of recommendations," she said, "can have a lasting impact on police policies."
But several civil liberties lawyers who have handled strip-search cases said the review board's findings were evidence of a much more widespread problem. Richard J. Cardinale, one of the lawyers who brought the 2001 lawsuit, said abusive searches were common in narcotics commands, where groups of suspects are often processed together. "They just line them up in a cell and say, 'Get naked and squat,' " he said.
Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said his group's investigation into complaints of strip searches suggest that the cases cited by the review board represent "examples of a much larger problem."
-------- torture
CIA 'held al-Qaida suspects under water'
13/05/2004
islam online
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=104077108&p=yx4x778y4
The CIA has used harsh interrogation techniques against high-level al-Qaida figures, including forcibly submerging them under water until they fear they will drown, it was reported today.
The secret methods of extracting information from al-Qaida leaders and top operatives were endorsed by the US Justice Department and the CIA after September 11, the New York Times reported.
According to the report, FBI officials have been ordered to stay out of al-Qaida interrogations because of concerns over the methods used.
One CIA agent has been disciplined for threatening a detainee with a gun during an interrogation, former and current counter-terrorism officials told the newspaper.
The harsh methods were used against alleged September 11 plotter Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
The officials said he was strapped to a board and pushed under water until he feared he would drown. The technique is called "water boarding".
The new rules for dealing with detainees were passed by the Bush administration in the aftermath of September 11.
Shortly after the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, President Bush authorised the CIA to conduct a secret war on al-Qaida, giving agents permission to kill senior members.
The spy agency also began to search for remote sites in friendly countries where detention facilities could be established.
"There was a debate after 9/11 about how to make people disappear," a former intelligence official said.
Counter-terrorism officials believe the rules set a new standard and culture in the intelligence world, with agents believing they had more autonomy over how to conduct interrogations.
But FBI agents have been told to stay out of many of the "interviews" because their presence there could compromise them in future criminal cases. The interrogation techniques would not be permitted in criminal investigations.
Al-Qaida suspects are held at various locations around the world, including at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Independent observers have been denied access to high-level detainees.
The whereabouts of some detainees are so secretive that one official told the New York Times that even President Bush had said he did not want to know where the captives were.
According to the newspaper, detainees have been sent to other countries where they believe they will be executed. In some cases the captives were simply tricked into believing that they had been taken to such countries.
Some CIA officers have feared that a change in the post-September 11 attitude in the US could eventually lead to them being held to account for the harsh methods used against detainees.
"Some people involved in this have been concerned for quite a while that eventually there would be a new President, or the mood in the country would change, and they would be held accountable," one intelligence source said.
"Now that's happening faster than anybody expected."
Methods of interrogation have come under close scrutiny in the wake of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, although there is no suggestion that such techniques have been used in Iraq.
While the approved methods will worry human rights groups, some government and intelligence officials believe that they have been instrumental in preventing another attack similar to September 11.
They cite the capture of senior al-Qaida figure Abu Zubaida in April 2002 and Jose Padilla, detained the following month in connection with an effort to build a dirty bomb.
However, there are concerns about the level and limitations of the approved interrogation techniques.
The CIA's inspector general has begun an investigation into the deaths of three lower-level detainees held by the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Justice Department is also examining the deaths.
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Pentagon Expects to Seek $50 Billion for Iraq and Afghanistan
May 13, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/international/middleeast/13CND-MILI.html
WASHINGTON, May 13 - The United States military expects to spend at least $50 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan next year, a top Pentagon official said at a Senate hearing in which the Republican chairman made a concerted effort to keep questioning focused on spending and off the prison abuse scandal.
The official, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, acknowledged that a surge of violence and other problems in Iraq had led to rising costs, with no certainty yet when they would fall.
In addition to a request formally submitted Wednesday for an additional $25 billion for the two wars, Mr. Wolfowitz said that a supplemental request early next year would "surely be much larger than $25 billion."
Troop levels beyond the current 138,000 and more intensive operations might be required, he told the Senate Armed Services Committee, while adding that if things went well, fewer might be needed.
Many legislators have said they expect the ultimate budget request to be billions more. And leading Democrats on the panel bridled at the latest request, which they said seemed crafted to grant the Pentagon maximum liberty on how money is spent.
The administration, said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, seemed to want "what amounts to a blank check for the supplemental costs."
"Congress should write a check - in fact, we've been pressing to write a check - but not a blank check," said Mr. Levin, the ranking Democrat on the panel.
And when the committee chairman, Senator John W. Warner of Virginia, asked fellow members to limit their questioning to "what's specifically before the committee this morning" - the second time in two days that a Republican committee chairman had done so - Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts politely rebelled.
"I must express some reservation about that," Mr. Kennedy said. "We've had a limited amount of time to try and deal with something which is of enormous importance" - the prison abuse scandal.
Congress ultimately is expected to provide the money the Pentagon seeks, but not without adding conditions on how the money is spent. Several legislators have criticized the administration for using money allocated for Afghanistan to help prepare for war in Iraq.
Mr. Wolfowitz insisted today that the Pentagon would fully account for its spending.
"We're not looking for a blank check," he said. "We are looking for the kind of flexibility that will make sure that when a need arises, we can allocate funds to where that need exists."
-------- investigations
Rumsfeld Defends Rules for Prison
Senators Question Interrogation Guidelines
By Dana Priest and Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22472-2004May12?language=printer
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday defended U.S. military interrogation guidelines in Iraq against mounting complaints that the authorized techniques violate international rules and may endanger Americans taken prisoner.
Appearing before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, Rumsfeld said all authorized methods had been confirmed by Pentagon lawyers as complying with the Geneva Conventions on treatment of detainees. Rumsfeld's contention was backed by Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who noted at the hearing that a published version of the approved list -- which includes a number of threatening, disruptive or stressful actions -- also includes an order that U.S. soldiers treat detainees humanely.
But senators challenged the compliance claim and accused Rumsfeld and other administration officials of confusing matters by professing that the Geneva Conventions need not be applied in all cases -- notably, not when captured members of the Taliban and al Qaeda are involved.
Experts in military law and human rights also argued that some of the authorized U.S. methods run counter to international prohibitions against coercive or cruel treatment.
Even within the military, some lawyers have expressed unease with the interrogation rules. Last year, several military lawyers appealed to a senior representative of the New York State Bar Association to try to persuade the Pentagon to revise its practices.
Scott Horton, then head of the bar association's committee on international law, confirmed yesterday that he received unsolicited visits in May and October by a total of eight military legal officers.
"They were quite blunt," Horton recalled. "They were extremely concerned about how the political appointees were dealing with interrogation issues. They said this was a disaster waiting to happen and that they felt shut out" of the rules-drafting process. Horton would not identify the participants, saying they did not want their names publicized.
"They did it out of a sense of desperation and frustration. It's a fairly strong commentary on how they felt," said retired Rear Adm. John Hutson, who served as the Navy's staff judge advocate from 1997 to 2000 and is now dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire.
Fueling the rising dispute this week was the release Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee of a list of once-secret interrogation techniques used by the U.S. military in Iraq. The list emerged in connection with hearings into abuses by U.S. military guards at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
The list showed two categories of measures -- those approved for all detainees and those requiring special authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq. Among the items in the second category are "sensory deprivation," "stress positions," "dietary manipulation," forced changes in sleep patterns, isolated confinement and use of dogs.
Holding up the list, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said some procedures requiring special approval "go far beyond the Geneva Conventions."
Rumsfeld shot back that "any instructions that have been issued or anything that's been authorized by the department was checked by the lawyers" in the Pentagon and deemed to be consistent with the Geneva code.
The conventions state that "no physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties."
"Most of the things on the list that require approval from the commanding general seem to be coercive to the extent they aren't just lifestyle changes," said Miles Fischer, who heads the New York bar association's committee on military affairs and justice. "Any stress position is coercive."
Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, said the U.S. interrogation rules for Iraq "look like someone tried carefully to avoid torture but forgot about the parallel rule against cruel and inhumane treatment." He called those U.S. techniques that require special approval "blatantly illegal."
Hutson said the Pentagon was trying to draw lines within the gray area between torture and benign treatment. "I fundamentally disagree with where they drew the lines," he said.
One of the concerns of the military lawyers who approached the New York bar association last year was the elimination of the requirement that judge advocates general -- or JAGs -- be present during tough interrogations of detainees or watch from behind two-way mirrors.
At a hearing Tuesday of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) asked the Army's judge advocate general, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Romig, about this complaint, which was first reported in the Washington Times.
"Sir, I'm not aware of the use of the two-way mirror as a regular standard method of monitoring interrogations," Romig answered. "The fact that there are so many interrogations going on at different locations, we wouldn't have enough JAG officers to sit through all of these."
During yesterday's hearing, Rumsfeld complained that the administration's policy on the Geneva Conventions has frequently been misreported. U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said, are under orders to observe the conventions.
By contrast, he said, President Bush decided two years ago that Taliban and al Qaeda fighters do not warrant protection under the conventions because they belong to terrorist groups, not nations, and do not abide by the norms of regular militaries. Nonetheless, U.S. policy has been to accord those detainees treatment "consistent with" the Geneva Conventions, Rumsfeld said.
But both Durbin and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) criticized this attempt to differentiate. Feinstein said the United States has a "moral imperative" to apply the conventions in all cases. Durbin said the administration's statements have generated confusion and could encourage the mistreatment of U.S. soldiers taken captive. He noted that one U.S. soldier is currently missing in Iraq.
"Wouldn't it be good for us, at this moment in time, to clearly and unequivocally state that we will follow the Geneva Conventions with civilian and military detainees?" Durbin asked.
Rumsfeld responded that applying the conventions to terrorist groups would weaken the international standards, not strengthen them.
Rumsfeld also faced a grilling about the overall course of U.S. policy in Iraq. Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), who has been an administration ally on the issue, said he is "very worried" about how prepared Iraqis are to assume responsibility after the planned transfer of limited authority on June 30.
"We have cities we are abandoning to a bunch of thugs and yet at the same time we're saying we're going to form a new government and turn over power to them. I believe that you have to be better prepared for this transition than I have heard," Domenici said.
Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) asked how long before "we can see the end of the tunnel" and U.S. troops can withdraw from Iraq.
Myers responded that this fall or winter, "after the Iraqis are in charge," U.S. officials will be able to make a judgment about "the way forward."
In a closing comment, Rumsfeld said he has been reading a book about the Civil War and noted that dire, despairing reports about high casualties and other problems from that era echo those from Iraq today.
"The carnage was horrendous, and it was worth it," he said of the Civil War. "And I look at Iraq, and all I can say is I hope it comes out well. And I believe it will, and we're going to keep at it."
Staff writer Bradley Graham contributed to this report.
--------
Lawmakers Are Stunned By New Images of Abuse
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22464-2004May12.html
Scores of lawmakers yesterday viewed unreleased photos and videos of Iraqi detainees being sexually humiliated and physically threatened. The images, which included Iraqi corpses, U.S. troops having sex with each other, and previously undisclosed videos of at least one inmate ramming his head into a wall, convinced some legislators that the number of Americans who violated military protocol is larger than previously thought.
The private screenings arranged by the Pentagon -- one for senators, one for House members -- surely ranked among Congress's more bizarre scenes. House members silently crammed into a standing-room-only committee room as hundreds of images, some described as pornographic, flashed on a screen for a few seconds each. Lawmakers emerging from that session, and from a less-crowded Senate room, seemed almost at a loss for words.
"What we saw is appalling," said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). "I saw cruel, sadistic torture," said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.). Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) told Reuters: "There were some awful scenes. It felt like you were descending into one of the rings of hell, and sadly it was our own creation."
Several lawmakers said the images differed more in quantity than in essence from photos beamed worldwide in recent days, and they questioned whether yesterday's revelations would substantially change the debate over U.S. treatment of Iraqi detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere. "It is consistent with the photos that you've seen in the press to date," Frist said. He said the images should not be released by the Pentagon, but other lawmakers said they should, on the assumption they will leak out.
Although it often was difficult to determine what was happening in the photos and videos, some legislators said the pictures suggest that abuses were committed by more than the half-dozen low-ranking military personnel directly implicated thus far. "It's not just seven reservists" shown forcing detainees into sexually humiliating poses or threatening them with snarling dogs, said Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert (R-N.Y.). "I think it goes beyond that."
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) had a similar reaction. He said one photo, which showed "troops that are in a hallway [in Abu Ghraib], where you've seen the clump of people tied together on the floor, we counted seven or eight troops. . . . Now, you can't tell me that all of this was going on with seven or eight Army privates. And so the question is: How far up the chain of command did these orders [go]?"
Nelson said his assertion was not a certainty but "a conclusion."
"This time I saw the photo more elongated and saw several other troops' legs and boots before the photo cut off," he said. "Where you have that many people participating with the obvious activity of prisoners clumped up and tied up on the floor naked, then obviously other people, is my conclusion, are going to know about that kind of activity."
Asked of reports that a video showed an inmate being sodomized with a broomstick, Nelson said, "You could not say that there was actually the act of sodomy, but it appears that that may be the preparation for it." Nelson and other lawmakers said they saw no evidence of rape or any sexual activity between an American and an Iraqi, although several people reported images of troops having sex with each other.
"It certainly was so far unbecoming of what we expect from American soldiers," Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said.
Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) said there were images of male Iraqi detainees masturbating, apparently at the orders of U.S. guards. Another video, he said, showed inmates "butting their heads into a wall, very hard. It's hard to tell what's going on." A House member "shouted out, 'What is this all about?' " but Price said Pentagon officials showing the videos had no answer.
Harman speculated that the man was "probably trying to knock himself unconscious and avoid having to live through the experience."
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) disagreed, saying U.S. troops almost certainly forced the detainee to bang his head against the wall, because they were there to videotape it. Miller called the photos and videos "very disturbing. And it's very clear why the Iraqi people and others would be so insulted and upset by their treatment."
--------
CONGRESS
Lawmakers View Images From Iraq
May 13, 2004
By CARL HULSE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13IMAG.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 12 - Lawmakers who viewed hundreds of images of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners said Wednesday that the photographs were even more graphic than they had expected, and included pictures of forced sexual acts between male detainees, a soldier posing with the body of a dead prisoner, and consensual sex between American soldiers.
All afternoon, a parade of solemn Senate and House members filed into secure rooms in the Capitol and in the House Rayburn Office Building to view about 1,800 images, many of them duplicates, along with some video clips. The lawmakers emerged shaken and aghast, even though they had already seen some of the images in news photographs.
"What we saw is appalling," the Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, told reporters.
Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said, "It's a sad day when Congress is called to see these photos."
Uniformed military officials presided over the viewings, flashing the images onto a large screen for about two seconds at a time, lawmakers said. But the officials declined to answer questions or provide a narrative to explain the pictures. Lawmakers were instead given a document reminding them that the images were collected as part of a military investigation and were considered "active evidence."
Some of the pictures were dark and grainy, and the lawmakers said they were sometimes confused about what they were seeing. Among the most shocking images, several said, was a video of a male detainee repeatedly banging into a cell door, until he collapsed. Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said it appeared that the man had a rope lashed around his waist and that someone was pulling him toward the door.
"It just deepens the conclusion that this was a cellblock that had gone wild," Mr. Lieberman said.
Representative Trent Franks, Republican of Arizona and a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was particularly offended by a photograph in which "a prisoner was sodomizing himself," with a banana. "My conclusion is that that was probably coerced somehow," Mr. Franks said. Lawmakers said they could not tell where the pictures were taken, but the images of mistreatment appeared to be confined to the Abu Ghraib prison. "It was of the same prison and the same people we had before," said Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas. "It did not suggest anything broader or deeper."
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, appearing at a Senate Appropriations hearing, defended the interrogation techniques used in Iraq.
"Any instructions that have been issued or anything that's been authorized by the department was checked by the lawyers in your shop, in the department, in the office of the secretary of defense, and deemed to be consistent with the Geneva Conventions," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
But Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, countered, "I don't believe what you have issued is consistent with the Geneva Convention."
Mr. Rumsfeld said that half a dozen military investigations were completed or under way into the abuses. "With respect to what took place at Abu Ghraib, we will get to the bottom of it," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
The explicit nature of the photographs left the lawmakers deeply conflicted over whether the images should be made public. Some who previously favored a public release said they had changed their minds and were swayed by remarks from military personnel that to do so would violate the prisoners' right to privacy and protection from humiliation under international law.
"When I walked into the room my view was they ought to be made public; I always lean toward full disclosure," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. "But when the military explained to us that to release them would violate their privacy and the Geneva accord, I agreed with their assessment."
Others, both Democrat and Republican, said the images renewed their determination that the abuse had to be fully investigated, and some said the pictures made them doubt that the mistreatment was limited to a handful of low-level soldiers.
"Some of it is clearly individuals acting in a rogue manner," said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. "Some of it has an elaborate nature to it that makes me very suspicious of whether or not others were directing or encouraging."
Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, agreed, saying, "It is impossible that this could have been carried out without the knowledge of higher-ups."
But on a day when the story of the beheading of Nicholas Berg, an American civilian in Baghdad was also in the news, other lawmakers said the public should not lose sight of the brutality of terrorists. "The way he was beheaded once again makes graphically clear that the other side knows no mercy," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who called the pictures she viewed disgusting.
In the Senate, the pictures were available for three hours, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., in a tightly controlled room on the fourth floor of the Capitol, where the public elevators go only to the third floor. Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican and chairman of the Armed Services Committee who worked with the Pentagon to arrange the viewing in Congress, took to the Senate floor earlier in the afternoon to urge his colleagues to see the photographs.
But he said they should be careful in describing them, particularly in light of the murder of Mr. Berg in an incident that Islamic militants have said was a response to the prison abuse. Lawmakers, Mr. Warner said, must "not incite in any way anger against our forces or others working in the cause of freedom."
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said he had not seen the pictures and saw no need to. Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, said he felt the same way.
"I've already seen enough," Mr. Lott said. "Why would I want to go see a bunch of perverted pictures?"
Still unanswered is the question of why the photographs were taken. "I got the idea they were sort of taken in the nature of souvenirs," Mr. Cornyn said, "because they were all taken from personal cameras. They did not appear to be organized."
The images included a picture of an American military woman posing with a dead body, and many sexually explicit photographs, said Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Republican of Colorado. He said the photographs also showed dogs snarling at cowering prisoners; other lawmakers said some prisoners appeared to have dog bite wounds and abrasions.
"It is totally vulgar behavior," said Mr. Campbell, who served in a police unit in the Air Force. "It just really bothered me that it could be our military people doing that."
Army Shows Intelligence Training
FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz., May 12 - Military officials here at the Army Intelligence Center, where field interrogators are trained, insisted Wednesday that they never condoned the use of force during questioning.
"We don't deal in any of that stuff," said Maj. Gen. James A. Marks, the commander here, who spent three months in Iraq in 2003 as chief intelligence officer. He opened the base to reporters to try to show what he said was the professionalism of the center's training methods.
"What you saw in those pictures is anathema to me," General Marks said. "I can't fathom someone doing that. It's against everything the Army stands for."
His immediate concern, he said, was to dispel the notion that military intelligence officers had ordered the military police at Abu Ghraib to "soften up" Iraqi prisoners.
"If we don't shape this, we're going to be at the end of the whip," he said, referring to the growing impression of an abusive free-for-all that was dominated by the need for "actionable intelligence."
"We don't soften up prisoners," he said. "It's not a technique we use."
Last year, 257 soldiers graduated from the human intelligence collector program.
--------
ABU GHRAIB
Hearing Transcript Shows Rumors of Prison Abuse Before Investigation
May 13, 2004
By KATE ZERNIKE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/13/politics/13DEFE.html
WASHINGTON, May 12 - A transcript of a hearing into the scandal at Abu Ghraib shows that there were rumors and suspicions of abuse among personnel before the formal investigation started in January.
In one instance, the transcript shows, an incident of abuse was reported - but apparently to a staff sergeant now charged with abuse.
The case manager in charge of the investigation testified that the seven soldiers now charged would wait until officers went home at night to abuse the prisoners and detainees.
A member of their battalion, Sgt. First Class Shannon Snider, had yelled at them after seeing one of the soldiers now charged, Sgt. Javal S. Davis, step on a detainee, the case manager, Special Agent Tyler Pieron of the criminal investigation command, said.
"It became clear to me that they knew Sergeant First Class Snider would not tolerate these acts," he testified at the proceeding, an Article 32 hearing that is the military equivalent of a grand jury session.
Another witness, a systems analyst with an intelligence unit who was stationed at the prison starting in September 2003, said that two soldiers had been relieved of their duties guarding prisoners in November or December of that year - one because he was too aggressive, and another because she had made a detainee strip and walk to his cell naked in front of other prisoners.
Yet there was no reminder from commanders that this behavior would not be tolerated, according to the witness, Sgt. Samuel J. Provance III. Sergeant Provance said he overheard conversations describing what military police units did to prisoners - "using them as practice dummies and knocking them out," according to his testimony.
Another witness testified that at least two of the people in the graphic photographs at the center of the abuse scandal were members of a military intelligence unit assigned to interrogate prisoners.
Special Agent Pieron testified that at least some of the detainees who were abused were not being prepared for interrogatation. They had rioted, he said, and the abuse was done in retaliation for rioting.
The hearing was conducted May 1 to consider whether to court-martial one of the soldiers, Specialist Megan M. Ambuhl.
Special Agent Pieron said that one individual reported abuse to his noncommissioned officer-in-charge, who reported it to Staff Sgt. Ivan L. Frederick III, not realizing that he was, in fact, "the perpetrator in this incident," Special Agent Pieron said.
He said he believed that the officer did not report the incident to anyone else, so the report went nowhere.
"I think several people suspected abuse but did not report it," Special Agent Pieron said, according to the transcript.
The systems analyst, Sergeant Provance, testified that a woman he described as an "older female soldier" from the Nevada National Guard told him of abuse, and said she had documented it but been reprimanded by her chain of command for doing so. Sergeant Provance said she told him that "she was afraid of her chain of command" and sent the documentation to her relatives. Another specialist in the reserves told him of a military police soldier who "pretended to be a dog" because the detainees were so fearful of the animals.
"I knew that some of the stuff was authorized and did not need to be reported," he said.
"I talked to one woman about it only being a matter of time before the abuse got out and the investigation initiated," he testified. "I spoke to at least everyone that I knew about how the place was poorly run."
"The response I got," he added, "was that it was a lot worse under Sadaam."
-------- propaganda wars
The Coming Backlash Against Outrage
Antiwar.com
May 13, 2004
by Norman Solomon
http://www.antiwar.com/solomon/?articleid=2561
Looking at visual images from U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, news watchers now find themselves in the midst of a jolting experience that roughly resembles a process described by Donald Rumsfeld: "It is the photographs that gives one the vivid realization of what actually took place. Words don't do it. ... You see the photographs, and you get a sense of it, and you cannot help but be outraged."
Yet, unlike most of us, the defense secretary has a vested interest in claiming that the grotesque real-life images have nothing to do with U.S. policies. In Iraq, Rumsfeld has reaffirmed, "I am convinced that we are doing exactly what ought to be done." Under the circumstances, it would be astonishing if he said anything different. But hopefully most Americans are more willing to consider implications of the fact that the U.S. government has been operating chambers of horrors that run directly counter to America's self-image as a righteous military force.
In the weeks ahead, we'll be encouraged to turn away from information surfacing about imprisonment and interrogation techniques that have held sway under U.S. authority in Iraq. Atrocities will be discounted, excuses made, messengers blamed.
Keynotes of preemptive denial have already been sounded. "In view of Mr. Rumsfeld's significant contribution to our security, this incident will be but a footnote," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote in a Wall Street Journal piece that appeared the same day as the Pentagon chief's congressional testimony. Gingrich added that "we should angrily reject anyone who would smear the 200,000-plus courageous decent men and women who have risked - and are risking daily - their lives for a free Iraq, and for a safe America."
Four days later, on May 11, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Republican Senator James Inhofe was on the counterattack: "As I watch this outrage - this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners - I have to say ... I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. ... I'm also outraged by the press and the politicians and the political agendas that are being served by this. ... 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."
But pseudo-patriotic smokescreens should not be allowed to impede our vision, or prevent us from challenging the policies that sent those troops to Iraq and keep them there. While pressure builds on Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush, it will also heighten for media outlets. Major American news organizations will increasingly come under attack as the next rounds of visual documentation emerge from U.S. prison facilities in Iraq. Messengers will be charged with relishing the awful graphic evidence. When the bad news gets bad enough, appreciable political energy will go into fueling an anti-media backlash.
The temptation will be to turn our heads or to blame the media outlets that put the horrifying pictures on our breakfast tables and on the TV news. But George Orwell had it right when he commented: "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." And liberty also means the right to show people what they would rather not see.
Many critics of the Bush administration have already lapsed into portraying the issue as primarily a horrendous public-relations failure. At the Capitol, even while she lectured the secretary of defense, Senator Susan Collins of Maine described her greatest concern this way:
"Worst of all, our nation - a nation that, to a degree unprecedented in human history, has sacrificed its blood and treasure to secure liberty and human rights around the world - now must try to convince the world that the horrific images on their TV screens and front pages are not the real America, that what they see is not who we are."
Many politicians and pundits are saying the worst aspect of this crisis is that it presents a colossal PR problem for the United States. That kind of verbiage tells us a lot. Such an extreme self-focus represents the promotion of national megalomania over genuine decency.
At the same time, for now, we're witnessing an overall upsurge of some healthy introspection in American news media. But if we succumb to defining the biggest problem as the fact that we look bad, the solution may appear to involve dimming the lights or closing our eyes.
--------
The Pro-War Press Breaks With Bush
washingtonpost.com
By Jefferson Morley
Thursday, May 13, 2004; 7:42 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A23235-2004May13?language=printer
In the ranks of journalism, they were the coalition of the willing: the newspapers that supported President Bush's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003.
These news outlets made the case for overthrowing Saddam Hussein, often in the face of strong anti-war feelings in their countries. Their editorials lent credibility and moral support to the White House's claims that the U.S.-led war had international backing.
Today, they are having second thoughts.
"Rumsfeld will have to go," declares an editorial in the Australian, the national daily founded in 1964 by an aspiring young businessman named Rupert Murdoch.
"The case for invading Iraq last April remains watertight," the editors asserted Wednesday. "Saddam Hussein was a destabilising force in the region and the world; he had form for using WMD against his enemies, internal and external; and he had flouted a string of Security Council declarations, demanding full UN inspection of his facilities, stretching back a decade."
With the failure of coalition forces to locate WMD in Iraq, they continue, "the fact we were bringing democracy, freedom and human rights where torture had reigned unchallenged, became the key to convincing the Iraqi people, Muslim nations across the world and critics of the war in the West, that the coalition cause was just." But they argue that the images of physical and sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib dealt a "grievous body blow" to a just cause, and that Rumsfeld is responsible.
Rumfeld's departure, they conclude, "would unambiguously show the people of Iraq that the US does not cut and run when confronted by its own failings and that rank does not exempt men and women from the rules. For ordinary Iraqis this would define an extraordinary distinction from Saddam's dictatorship. Rather than a sign of weakness it would make clear the overwhelming strength of the law that governs all Americans."
The editors of the Scotsman, a conservative daily in Edinburgh, said "the question is whether or not maintaining the morale of the soldiery in Iraq is a purpose best served by the survival of a defence secretary who is widely perceived to have lost the confidence of the country and the world."
While praising Rumsfeld as an "astute tactician" who "understands the scale of the challenge facing America" after Sept. 11, the editors also fault him for the "short-sighted lack of planning for life in Iraq after Saddam."
"The immoral treatment of prisoners has now come to symbolize those failures of judgment," they say.
Their recommendation: Rumsfeld should resign.
"Democracy means accountability," they conclude. "For the United States to recapture a sense of decency, he should do the decent thing."
In the reliably conservative Daily Telegraph, columnist Jenny McCartney said she was confused by Rumsfeld's statement that he would "resign in a minute" if he felt he could not be an effective leader.
"On that basis, he should be gone already: he has already proved an ineffective leader, and will be much less effective in the wake of this miserable scandal. For what has leaked out of Abu Ghraib, along with the stomach-churning whiff of chaos and sadism, is the fundamental incompetence in the running of the US military from the top down. "
Not all war supporters think Rumsfeld is the issue.
Amir Taheri, an Iranian journalist based in England and a supporter of the war, writes in the Gulf News that the fate of any individual is less important than the fate of Iraq.
"Rumsfeld could always be booted out. George W Bush could always be voted out of office. But the unique opportunity to stabilise and rebuild Iraq as a democratic state must not be wasted. Let us have all the Abu Ghraib trials we need."
If Iraq is allowed "to slide into chaos or fall under a new despot," Taheri concludes, "the world will witness horrors compared to which Abu Ghraib would look like a garden party."
The editors of the resolutely pro-war Jerusalem Post are not conceding anything.
"No upstanding democracy can tolerate such behavior, and we are confident that America won't. Still, such abuses should, if anything, remind us what has been achieved in Iraq and how important it is that that success be consolidated rather than discarded for lack of patience or perspective."
Westerners should not "condemn ourselves and the world to much greater injustices by simply throwing in the towel in this war to defend our freedom and beliefs," they conclude.
But at least one war supporter is abandoning the cause altogether.
Toronto Sun columnist John Derringer writes that he thought "like so many millions of others did, that the American forces would be in and out of there before you could say Grenada."
"I truly believed that Saddam would be toppled and a new government set up within a year, with minimal American casualties."
Now, he says the war "is no longer about freedom or terror. It's about one man's political agenda, and dead American soldiers are obviously not about to get in his way. I thought it was about more than that. I was wrong."
-------- us politics
Kerry Assails Bush on Iraq
Senator Says War Is 'Mismanaged'
By Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 13, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22443-2004May12?language=printer
ORLANDO, May 12 -- Sen. John F. Kerry, breaking momentarily from his cautious approach to turmoil in Iraq, blasted President Bush on Wednesday for running an "extraordinarily mismanaged and ineptly prosecuted war" and strongly suggested Bush is partly to blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
"They dismiss the Geneva Conventions, starting in Afghanistan and Guantanamo, so that the status of prisoners both legal and moral becomes ambiguous at best," the senator from Massachusetts told radio host Don Imus.
In his most expansive comments on U.S. mistreatment of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, the presumptive Democratic nominee said this amounts to "major failures in command."
Asked if Kerry is assessing partial blame to Bush in the prison scandal, Rand Beers, a Kerry foreign policy adviser, said in an interview, "Undoubtedly, that kind of ambiguity, yes, is a failure of leadership."
Kerry proposed two immediate changes: Oust Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and delay court-martial hearings for Americans charged with mistreating the prisoners.
"I think it's sort of a panicked move to try to display to the Arab world and others that we are going to, you know, do things immediately," Kerry said of impending hearings. "But I think you have to think of morale of the military and the chain of command."
Kerry said dismissing Rumsfeld during wartime would not hinder efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he offered up a few candidates to replace the defense secretary: GOP Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and John W. Warner (Va.) and Democratic Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), a staunch war critic.
"If America has reached a point where only one person has the ability in our great democracy to manage the Pentagon and to continue or to put in place a better policy even, we're in deeper trouble than you think," Kerry said. "I don't accept that. I just don't accept that. I think that's an excuse. The fact is that we need a change in policy."
Kerry's latest comments come as the Democratic candidate wrestles with how aggressively to criticize the president at a sensitive moment when much of the world is watching the U.S. reaction to the prison scandal. Since pictures of the abused prisoners were plastered on television screens worldwide, Kerry has carefully avoided talking about the issue, for the most part. The candidate has held only one news conference in the past 31/2 weeks, in part to limit questions about Iraq. On Tuesday, he brushed aside several questions about the prisoners.
After learning that an American in Iraq was decapitated by men claiming al Qaeda affiliation, Kerry avoided any mention of Bush in his statements about the killing and struck a bipartisan, patriotic tone.
"I think it will harden the resolve of a lot of Americans to make certain terrorists won't get away with it, even as we move to address obvious problems that have existed in Iraq," he told reporters late Tuesday.
Some Democrats worry that Kerry is not saying enough about Iraq, which allows Bush and his allies to set the agenda and the tone of the debate. In Washington, Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said the senator would continue to speak out on Iraq but would not be pressured into doing so, given how rapidly the story is unfolding.
"We're watching this, we're trying to find out as much about this as possible," she said, "but we're not going to rush into commenting on a national crisis."
The Bush campaign has repeatedly accused the senator of "politicizing" Iraq. Bush-Cheney chairman Marc Racicot told reporters Wednesday that Kerry is relentlessly "playing politics" and exploiting tragedy for political gain.
Racicot, for instance, told reporters that Kerry suggested that 150,000 or so U.S. troops are "somehow universally responsible" for the misdeeds of a small number of American soldiers and contractors. Racicot made several variations of this charge. But Kerry never said this, or anything like it.
As evidence, Racicot pointed to the following quote Kerry made at a fundraiser on Tuesday: "What has happened is not just something that a few a privates or corporals or sergeants engaged in. This is something that comes out of an attitude about the rights of prisoners of war, it's an attitude that comes out of America's overall arrogance in its policy that is alienating countries all around the world."
What Racicot did not mention was that Kerry preceded this remark by saying, "I know that what happened over there is not the behavior of 99.9 percent of our troops."
Kerry has spent the week talking about health care, but as he has focused on domestic issues other Democrats have rushed in to help shape the Iraq debate -- and often taking it in a direction different from Kerry's. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a top Kerry supporter who opposed the war, criticized the administration so harshly this week that Kerry distanced himself from the remarks.
"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?' " Kennedy said. "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."
Kerry told Imus: "He's my friend and I respect him, but I don't agree with the framing of that."
As Kerry continued his campaign swing, his advisers were making the case that Bush's $70 million ad campaign had failed to knock Kerry out of the race and that, compared with Al Gore four years ago, the Massachusetts senator is in solid shape to compete with Bush in the fall.
Armed with a series of slides showing current and past polling data nationally and in battleground states, Kerry's top advisers told editors and reporters at The Washington Post that the Bush campaign had mistakenly assumed a huge financial advantage at the beginning of March would allow it to dictate the terms of the race and shape perceptions of Kerry. Instead, they said, Kerry and Bush continue to run roughly even in national polls.
Cahill said the campaign decided at the end of the primaries, when Bush had $110 million in the bank and Kerry had barely $2 million, to spend March and April fundraising, and that the payoff was $43 million raised in March and an estimated $25 million or more in April. "We decided to step back and try to level the playing field financially," she said.
Staff writer Dan Balz in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Stalled Energy Bill Equals No Growth Wind Industry
May 13, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-13-091.asp
After a boom year in 2003, the American wind power industry has stalled this year because its production tax credit has been stalled in Congress.
On Tuesday, the Senate passed legislation containing a three-year extension of the credit, to December 31, 2006, but it comes too late to help the wind industry this year, according to a report issued Wednesday by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
Last year the industry installed a near-record 1,687 megawatts (MW) of new capacity, enough to power about 500,000 homes, bringing about $2 billion of new investment to rural areas of the country. the association said. But this year is a different story.
The AWEA now projects that new 2004 installations will be less than 500 MW. The association warned that the number of new installations planned is dropping daily and will continue to drop until Congress extends the production tax credit.
But the measure passed by the Senate as part of a corporate tax package must still be approved by the House of Representatives and a Senate-House conference committee before it is ready to go to President George W. Bush to be signed into law.
Since wind power plant developers require at least six months of lead time to arrange for the purchase of equipment, to obtain permits, and to arrange for the financing and construction, the longer a production tax credit extension is delayed, the less likely a project can be completed before year's end.
"Congress must act quickly to extend the production tax credit so thousands of people in the wind industry can get back to work," said AWEA Legislative Director Jaime Steve.
The damage to the industry affects companies all along the supply chain - fiberglass manufacturers that make wind turbine blades; makers of other components such as towers, generators, and gearboxes; and trucking companies that haul turbines and other equipment to new wind farm sites.
"There are many wind projects throughout the country ready to move forward that will create jobs, spur significant rural economic development, and produce clean, emission-free electricity for consumers," said Steve.
If the wind industry were to consistently grow at a rate of 18% per year, AWEA said, six percent of the nation's electricity could be generated by wind power by the year 2020, resulting in over $100 billion of investment in rural America.
Over the last five years, U.S. wind capacity has expanded at an annual average rate of 28%, showing that the supply chain can ramp up quickly to meet the nation's power needs. But without a production tax credit the U.S. will likely see very few new installations this year.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Adirondack Park Might Get Some Relief From Acid Rain
May 13, 2004
ALBANY, New York, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-13-095.asp
The day that Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian Houseal has been waiting 10 years to see has arrived. Some electric power plants in upstate New York are installing pollution controls because it costs more to avoid cleanup of air emissions by purchasing pollution credits than it does to actually reduce the emissions.
"The price of a pollution allowance has doubled from just one year ago and has reached an all-time high," said Houseal. "It now costs more to avoid cleanup than it does to install a pollution control device on many of the power plants causing acid rain in the Adirondack Park."
On May 7, the price of a federal sulfur dioxide pollution allowance reached $326. In January, the price was $228.50. One year ago, the price was $168, or about half of today's price. When the program began in 1995, the price of an allowance was $56.
For the first time since the federal acid rain program with its sulfur dioxide trading system began in 1995, market forces are starting to work in favor of the environment.
Two recent developments in federal pollution controls have rebalanced the economics, Houseal said. "First, the final phase of the acid rain cuts required under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 is limiting the total number of available allowances.
Second, the proposed Interstate Air Quality Rule is expected to be approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency later this year," he said. "That would mean another 70 percent cut in sulfur dioxide pollution and a corresponding drop in the number of available allowances."
New York's six million acre Adirondack Park is experiencing the worst acid rain damage in the United States.
Acid rain occurs when the gases sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen, and other chemicals to form acidic compounds. Sunlight increases the rate of most of these reactions. The result is a mild solution of sulfuric acid and nitric acid.
In the United States, about two-thirds of all SO2 and one-quarter of all NOx comes from electric power generation that relies on burning fossil fuels like coal, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The Adirondack Council has been pressing federal officials for a solution to the acid rain problem since the late 1970s. As a result of decades of acid rain, more than 500 of the Adirondack Park's 2,800 lakes and ponds are too acidic to support their native life.
Thousands of acres of high elevation red spruce and fir forests have been wiped out. In addition, mercury contamination has been documented in more than 20 Adirondack lakes, making the fish unfit to eat.
"The basic idea behind pollution allowance trading is to use the laws of supply and demand to reward those who clean up their emissions faster and deeper than the law requires," Houseal said.
Companies can find their own methods for reducing pollution, but they must turn in one allowance each year for each ton of sulfur dioxide they emit. The slow ones buy leftover allowances from the faster ones, until they can catch up to federal standards. But the price keeps rising.
"Over time, the EPA decreases the number of allowances it issues until the reduction goals are met. As a result, the price continues to climb. After awhile, the cost of avoiding cleanup gets too high," Houseal explained. "Then, it makes more financial sense for the company to install pollution control equipment.
In most states, the Public Service Commission or Public Utility Control Board will force power company officials to choose the least costly option.
On January 13, 2004 securities brokerage house Merrill Lynch released a study that concluded, "We believe that allowances prices over $300/ton makes scrubbing a very attractive alternative and will be keeping a close eye on prices ... We believe that any price over $300 makes construction of a scrubber economic."
"We have seen announcement after announcement in the past couple of months from power companies whose emissions affect the Adirondacks," Houseal said. "Each one touts the health benefits and environmental benefits of their decisions to clean up emissions. But for most of them, it was a simple question of dollars and sense."
For instance, American Electric Power and Buckeye Power announced April 26 that they are investing in new environmental controls at the jointly owned Cardinal Power Plant in Brilliant, Ohio, about 500 miles southwest of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York.
The flue gas desulfurization scrubbers reduce sulfur dioxide emissions, a contributor to acid rain, by up to 98 percent. Early estimates are that the scrubbers will cost about $200 million per unit, said American Electric Power and Buckeye Power.
"This is a real turning point for the Adirondack Park in terms of acid rain," Houseal concluded. "If the Interstate Air Quality Rule is finalized and goes into effect in early next year, we can expect an end to acid rain damage in the Adirondacks by 2010. Then, the long, complex process of recovery can begin. Stopping the damage is the first step."
----
Inuit "poisoned from afar" due to climate change
Thursday, May 13, 2004
By Amran Abocar,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-13/s_23841.asp
TORONTO - The Inuit living in the Arctic region are being "poisoned from afar" as climate change takes its toll on the area and threatens their existence, the head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference said Wednesday.
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chairwoman of the group that represents about 155,000 Inuit in the Arctic regions of Canada, Russia, Greenland, and the United States, said Inuit were paying dearly for the actions of people elsewhere.
"The Inuit have now become the net recipients of toxins coming from afar, and we carry heavy body burdens in our blood core and the nursing milk of our mothers," Watt-Cloutier told an environmental conference. "Not of our doing, we are being poisoned from afar."
Inuit say that rising temperatures are undermining traditional lifestyles based around hunting for animals like seal, whale, walrus, and polar bear.
"For us, the environment is our supermarket," Watt-Cloutier said. "We are out there every single day, and every day we can't help but wonder what surprises lie as a result of the things that are happening."
More thawing permafrost - the normally perpetually frozen layer of earth - heavier snowfalls, and seas with longer ice-free seasons are some visible effects of climate change in the area, she said.
In addition, the region now hosts new species such as barnyard owls, and hunters are drowning by falling through thinning ice. U.N. studies say the Arctic Ocean may be largely ice-free in summer by 2100.
An assessment to be delivered to foreign ministers of the eight-member Arctic Council - Canada, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Iceland, Norway, Russia, and the United States - next November points to a bleak future for the Arctic region.
Watt-Cloutier said the report predicts the depletion of summer sea ice will push some marine mammals, including polar bears and walrus, into extinction by the middle or end of this century.
"So you can well imagine if the polar bear is extinct in 50, 60, 70 years, where we will be as Inuit," she said. "This assessment projects the end of the Inuit as a hunting culture."
Because they are small in numbers, Watt-Cloutier said the Inuit need to partner with other regions threatened by global warming, such as the low-lying Pacific Island nations, to put themselves on the political map.
The Inuit group is also petitioning the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States, for a declaration that the destruction of their way of life because of human-caused climate change is a violation of their rights.
Meantime, Watt-Cloutier said, the rest of the world should pay closer attention to the experience of the Inuit in the Arctic. U.N. climate models say that global warming is felt first in polar regions.
"Metaphorically speaking, the Inuit are the mercury in the barometer; we are the early-warning system," Watt-Cloutier said. "Because we are on the land every single day, we witness the most minute of changes, so the world has a vested interest in keeping the Inuit on the land."
-------- health
Criteria relaxed for liver donors
May 13, 2004
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040512-113130-6740r.htm
The chronic shortage of livers available for transplant has prompted growing numbers of hospitals to accept donor livers they once would have refused.
At issue are organs from so-called "extended-criteria" donors, which offer transplant surgeons wider organ selection. These livers are not perfect matches for transplant recipients or may be from donors who were older and sicker than was once allowed. They also are intended for patients with the most severe cases of liver failure who cannot wait long for replacement livers.
"None of the major [liver transplant] centers in the United States would be able to serve patients [without organs from extended-criteria donors]. We couldn't function," Dr. Goran Klintmalm , chairman of the Baylor Regional Transplant Institute in Dallas, said yesterday.
Clinicians say it is not known whether transplantation of less-than-perfect livers affects long-term function of the organs or survival of the patients who receive them, but most data do not indicate they do.
"Because of the lack of organs, more centers are transplanting livers that were previously considered unacceptable," Dr. Ronald W. Busuttil, head of liver transplantation at the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center, wrote in a report published last year in the journal Liver Transplantation.
But health officials are scrutinizing such donations more closely after a hospital in Rochester, N.Y., was fined $20,000 last month for 10 violations in its adult liver transplant program.
Some violations against Strong Memorial Hospital, imposed by the New York Health Department, involved transplants in which patients had received livers from extended-criteria donors. In one case, a patient received a liver that did not match his blood type and died after successive transplantations. In another, a patient survived but needed a second liver transplant.
In both cases, state officials said Strong Memorial failed to provide proof that the transplant recipients were so ill as to require livers from extended-criteria donors or that they were fully informed of the risks. Hospital officials said the patients could not have waited for other organs.
Liver transplantation figures provided by the Richmond-based United Network of Organ Sharing (UNOS) demonstrate why some transplant surgeons are being less restrictive about the donor livers they accept.
"The current U.S. waiting list for liver transplants totals 17,400 [patients]. In 2003, 5,671 liver transplants were performed. Of those, 5,351 livers came from deceased donors and 320 from living donors," said UNOS spokesman Joel Newman. Living donors can give part of their liver to a patient in need.
In 2002, use of expanded-criteria donors helped the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) reverse a 12-year decline in the number of liver transplants performed at local hospitals, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Outcomes in terms of survival of patients and transplanted livers were among the best ever for UPMC, the newspaper said.
There is no clear definition for what constitutes an expanded-criteria liver donor, although UNOS has such guidelines for expanded-criteria kidney donors to help those who could die without a quick transplant.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.