Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
U.S. Announces It Intends to Move Tons of Uranium From Baghdad
Iran submits report on nuclear programme to UN agency
Pakistani leaders congratulate new Indian PM
Singh won't tolerate sectarian riots
Iran Gives U.N. Second 'Full' Nuclear Dossier
Tehran Gives U.N. Watchdog Nuclear Report
Iran submits report on nuclear program to UN agency
Iran Gives U.N. Second 'Full' Nuclear Dossier
U.S. plans to remove low-grade uranium from Iraqi repository
U.N. Envoy: N. Korea Continues Nuke Push
North Korea Provided Libyan Uranium
NEVADA FOCUS: Stewards of U.S. nuclear stockpile plan new test
Vote on nuclear sludge looms
MILITARY
5 Afghans Die and 4 U.S. Soldiers Are Wounded in Clashes
Cash-for-gun carrot dangled before warriors in Nigerian state
US military pays 1.3 million dollars for weapons in Sadr City
Building a Democracy
Car Bomb Kills 4, Injures Iraqi Minister
Sudden Quiet in Karbala Is Puzzling to U.S. Forces
Kurds Want a Top Post in Iraq
Destruction Stuns Residents of Gaza
Gaza Paradox: Israeli Army Moves In So It Can Pull Out
New Sharon still the old Sharon: the Gaza debacle
Arab Meeting Expected to Produce Mostly Criticism of U.S.
Commonwealth Ends Suspension of Pakistan
Pakistan Army Lodges Protest
Double Standards?
Punishment and Amusement
Soldiers and Detainees Tell Stories Behind the Pictures
Punches and Kicks 'Knocked the Detainee Unconscious'
The Electrocution Threat 'Just Playing With Him'
The Naked Pyramid 'I Was Laughing at Some of the Stuff'
The Dogs 'They Let the Dogs Corner Him'
The Leash 'I Simply Stood With The Strap in My Hand'
Chalabi Aides Suspected of Spying for Iran
Dogs and Other Harsh Tactics Linked to Military Intelligence
U.N. Approves Peacekeeping Force for Burundi
Timor accused tears up military deal
Gadhafi, Arab leaders, for U.N. in Iraq
Number of Army Probes of Detainee Deaths Rises to 33
Iraq War Veteran Found Guilty of Desertion
Soldier Who Refused to Return Is Found Guilty of Desertion
US says no evidence that forces struck wedding party in Iraq
Only a Few Spoke Up on Abuse as Many Soldiers Stayed Silent
Marines admit abuse at second prison
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
U.S. Preparing for Influx of Compensation Claims by Abused Iraqis
Contractor Investigated By Justice
Police redeploy to raise profile in neighborhoods
Outsourcing Torture and the Problems of 'Quality Control'
POLITICS
Reporters Subpoenaed in CIA Leak
Journalists subpoenaed in CIA leak case
Man Sought by 9/11 Panel Emerges to Tell of Chaos
US extends custody deaths probe
'We're on the Brink of Success,' General Says of Iraq Situation
Sonny melts down
Bush to define Iraq strategy in major speeches
OTHER
Russia Backs Kyoto to Get on Path to Join WTO
Monsanto Beats Farmer in Patent Fight
Males Not Needed; Mouse Born from Unfertilized Egg
ACTIVISTS
'Fahrenheit 9/11' Wins Top Award at Cannes
Eighteen detained in Turkish demo against NATO warships
Peace activists march on Kissufim crossing
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
NUCLEAR MATERIALS
U.S. Announces It Intends to Move Tons of Uranium From Baghdad
May 22, 2004
By JAMES GLANZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/politics/22NUKE.html
VIENNA, May 21 - The United States has informed an international agency that oversees nuclear materials that it intends to move hundreds of tons of uranium from a sealed repository south of Baghdad to a more secure place outside Iraq, Western diplomats close to the agency say.
But the organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has taken the position that the uranium is Iraqi property and that the agency cannot give permission to remove it, a diplomat said. The diplomat said that the United States was unlikely to be deterred by that position and that American officials had contacted the agency on the matter this year, before the Iraq insurgency flared last month.
"I think that if the stuff had not gone up in intensity," the diplomat said, "they would already have moved on this."
An official with the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad confirmed that moving the uranium was under consideration.
"The story I've heard is that no decision has been made as yet," the official said. "That was some months ago. When it was discussed, the view was that it was just too expensive to ship. I doubt that anything has changed."
The official added that keeping the material in storage, even amid the instability in Iraq, could be safer than trying to move it. Nuclear experts outside the government said that if the material was moved, it would probably be airlifted and placed in a repository in the United States.
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Energy Department, Anson Franklin, declined to comment directly on any possible operation involving the Iraqi uranium.
"We do not discuss potential future or ongoing operations," Mr. Franklin said.
The repository, at Tuwaitha, a centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program until it was largely shut down after the first Persian Gulf war in 1991, holds more than 500 tons of uranium, none of it enriched enough to be used directly in a nuclear weapon.
The repository was an object of widespread looting by villagers after the American-led invasion last year. The villagers were for the most part apparently interested in using the barrels that hold the uranium for activities like cooking and storing water. They simply dumped out the uranium sludge and took the barrels. Although most of the barrels and all but a small amount of the uranium were recovered, the episode was an embarrassment to the United States and left traces of radioactive contamination throughout the village.
Nuclear experts had mixed reactions to the possibility of moving the uranium. The president of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright, said officials had long privately discussed plans to take the uranium out of Iraq.
"I would say it's a wise thing to do," Mr. Albright said. "The idea of theft isn't crazy."
But Tom Clements, a senior adviser with the Greenpeace International nuclear campaign, said he believed that continuing problems with radioactive contamination in the village should be dealt with before any uranium was moved.
"We don't think that the United States has properly followed up on the radioactive contamination," Mr. Clements said.
Besides, he said, referring to occupation troops at Tuwaitha, "I would be concerned that they would be pulling some of the protective force off the site in order to deal with the problems in the rest of the country."
"I wonder if that's the motivation for moving it," Mr. Clements said.
Of the uranium, 500 tons is naturally occurring ore or yellowcake, a slightly processed concentrate that cannot be directly used in a bomb. Some 1.8 tons is classified as low-enriched uranium, a more potent form but still not sufficient for a weapon.
Still, said Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the low-enriched version could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions.
"A country like Iran," Mr. Cochran said, "could convert that into weapons-grade material with a lot fewer centrifuges than would be required with natural uranium."
The centrifuges are used to purify the material.
Because uranium takes billions of years to decay, it emits fairly small amounts of radiation. But it can still create health problems, and some villagers have complained of nausea and unexplained rashes.
Whatever its actual health risks, the uranium could sow terror over wide areas if dispersed by a conventional explosive. Such a "dirty bomb" remains a prime concern for counterterrorism experts in the United States and abroad.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited Tuwaitha in June after the looting reports. The team determined that at least 20 pounds of the uranium was unaccounted for, but decided that it had probably not fallen into the wrong hands.
"A few grams of natural uranium compounds could have remained in each of the approximately 200 emptied containers when upended by the looters," the agency wrote in its inspection report.
A second diplomatic official expressed puzzlement as to why the United States was considering moving the material, after the material has been presumably secured and resealed. Except for the incident immediately after the invasion, the official said, "this stuff has been there, secure, quiet, not a problem to anyone, since 1991."
Tuwaitha also contains dozens of other radioactive materials that cannot be used to make nuclear weaponry but that emit much stronger and more dangerous radiation than uranium. The officials said it was unclear whether the United States planned to move that material, too.
Because of the intense radiation, the potential dangers of transporting that material are higher, said Daniel Hersch, former director of the Stevenson Program on Nuclear Policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear policy organization in California.
"There, you have more problems," Mr. Hersch said. "But again, the situation in Iraq is so unstable that that material might benefit from transport to more secure locations."
-------- depleted uranium
Iran submits report on nuclear programme to UN agency
22 May 2004
AFP
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/86321/1/.html
VIENNA : Iran has submitted a more than 1,000-page report on its contested nuclear programme to the UN atomic agency, which is investigating US charges that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, Iranian ambassador Pirooz Hosseini told AFP.
He said the report was submitted late Friday to the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in comments confirmed by the IAEA.
The report follows one by Iran last October that failed to live up to Iranian promises to fully disclose its nuclear activities.
The United States claims Iran is hiding a programme to build the bomb and has called for the IAEA to refer it to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
But diplomats said the new declaration had come too late for the IAEA to be able to evaluate it fully before a meeting of the agency's 35-nation board of governors in mid-June.
The IAEA will not be able to make a final finding on Iran due to delays by Tehran in allowing international inspections and disclosing its nuclear activities, diplomats said.
"This is ironic since the Iranians are the ones who want the file on them to be closed," said a diplomat close to the IAEA and who asked not to be named.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the Iranians had filed their report under an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that mandates tougher inspections.
"This declaration should provide information about Iran's nuclear and nuclear-related activities and will facilitate the IAEA's assessment of the correctness and completeness of information already provided by Iran on its past and present nuclear activities," Gwozdecky said.
Hosseini said that even though the Iranian parliament has not yet ratified the protocol which Iran signed on December 18, Iran had "decided to apply it voluntarily as a confidence-building measure" and was filing the report that is required within six months under the protocol.
He said the declaration gave "information related to our 10-year research and development program with regard to the nuclear fuel cycle and related technologies."
Iran claims it is embarked on a project solely to develop nuclear energy for peaceful electricity production and that it seeks to enrich uranium as fuel for reactors.
Hosseini did not provide details of whether Iran had answered such key IAEA questions as the extent of technology it may have developed with sophisticated P2 centrifuges that can be used to enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels.
He said the report had provided information on "the capacity of uranium mines" in Iran, and, regarding nuclear installations, given "a description of each building and places in sites that have been declared to the agency" as well as "information related to past activities."
Hosseini said Iran had also supplied "the names of hospitals and universities" using depleted uranium, a by-product from uranium enrichment.
IAEA inspectors see a pattern of radiation contamination in Iran which could indicate attempts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade level, diplomats close to the agency have told AFP.
IAEA inspectors have reported two such concentrations -- at a Kalaye Electric Company workshop in Tehran and at the Natanz pilot fuel enrichment plant 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of the Iranian capital.
Diplomats have confirmed to AFP that other sites have been found.
But they have not provided details, and one diplomat downplayed the possibility that the IAEA has found a "smoking gun" to prove Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Iran claims the contamination from particles of enriched uranium is from equipment they imported through an international black market.
IAEA inspectors are completing months of investigations in order to prepare a report for a meeting of the agency board that begins in Vienna on June 14.
During a visit by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei to Tehran in April, Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi had said Tehran expected the IAEA probe to be completed in June.
But an earlier delay to a crucial round of inspections in March "threw us out of sequence," an official close to the IAEA said.
Iran delayed inspections after the IAEA board in March condemned the country for failing to report key activities, particularly its acquiring of blueprints for the sophisticated centrifuges.
-------- india / pakistan
Pakistani leaders congratulate new Indian PM
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
May 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040522171234.fziif2of.html
Pakistan congratulated India's new Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his swearing-in Saturday and welcomed his commitment to pursuing peace between the nuclear giants.
"Please accept my heartiest congratulations on your assuming the office of the prime minister of India," President Pervez Musharraf said in a message made public by the foreign ministry.
"We in Pakistan welcome your government's resolve to improve relations between our two countries.
"I wish to assure you of our sincere commitment to a just and peaceful solutions of all outstanding issues including Jammu and Kashmir."
Singh, 71, was sworn in earlier as India's first non-Hindu prime minister, nine days after the Congress party's surprise defeat of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of outgoing premier Atal Behari Vajpayee.
The Sikh economist, born in Gah in present-day Pakistan's Chakwal district in 1932, when it was still part of India, will head a left-leaning coalition.
Singh's statements Thursday committing to forging peace with India's traditional rival have been widely welcomed in Pakistan.
His Pakistani counterpart, Zafarullah Jamali, said Islamabad was confident that under Singh's leadership bilateral relations "will continue to develop and the process of composite dialogue for the resolution of all outstanding issues including Jammu and Kashmir will be productive."
"I look forward to working with you towards the realisation of the common goal of assuring peace and progress for the people of South Asia," Jamali said in his message.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars since the subcontinent was partitioned on independence in 1947, and came close to a fourth conflict in
Singh's successor Vajpayee initiated peace moves 13 months ago. The South Asian neighbours resumed formal dialogue in February after a two-and-a-half-year suspension.
--------
Singh won't tolerate sectarian riots
New York Times
By Amy Waldman
May 22, 2004
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/21/1085120115446.html
India's new Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, has vowed that his Government will never allow a repetition of the riots in Gujarat State in 2002 in which at least 1000 Muslims died.
Nor, said Dr Singh, a Sikh who will be the first Prime Minister from a minority religious group, would anti-Sikh riots like those in 1984 be repeated.
"These things should never happen again," he said in his first news conference as Prime Minister.
The Gujarat riots were some of the worst sectarian violence in the history of independent India, which is mostly Hindu but where about 12 per cent of the population is Muslim and about 2 per cent Sikh.
After 59 Hindu activists were burned to death in a train that a Muslim mob had surrounded, vengeful Hindus rioted for weeks, killing, raping and driving Muslims from their homes.
The State Government, which the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, controlled, did not stop the attacks.
The central government, also led then by the party, took no action against Narendra Modi, the state's chief minister; did nothing to ensure that Muslims received relief; and looked away - until the Supreme Court intervened - as the state failed to punish Hindu rioters.
The departing prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, has implied that the riots were an understandable reaction to the train burning.
Dr Singh's comments set his administration apart from the departing one.
While senior BJP figures, such as the then deputy prime minister, L. K. Advani, had called the riots an "aberration", Dr Singh framed it differently.
"It is very unfortunate that communal riots take place from time to time in our country," he said, an implicit acknowledgment that they had also occurred under governments led by his party, the Indian National Congress.
"We as a nation must have a firm determination that these things should never happen."
-------- iran
Iran Gives U.N. Second 'Full' Nuclear Dossier
By REUTERS
May 22, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran.html?pagewanted=print&position=
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday it gave the U.N. nuclear watchdog what it described as a full declaration of its atomic program, which Washington says is a front for building an atom bomb.
Iran, which insists its atomic program is dedicated to the peaceful generation of electricity, gave the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a similar ``full'' declaration in October 2003.
However, the October declaration omitted details about potentially weapons-related research, including designs and components for advanced ``P2'' centrifuges capable of producing bomb-grade uranium.
``Yesterday, we submitted the declaration prior to the due date of June 18,'' Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told Reuters.
Asked if this declaration was full and truthful, Hosseini said: ``Yes.''
But one Western diplomat, who declined to be named, said IAEA inspections should continue until the declaration can be verified.
``I think the fact that they already submitted a declaration that was supposedly full and complete but clearly wasn't...means that intensive inspections should continue for at least the foreseeable future,'' the diplomat told Reuters.
The diplomat is convinced Iran is still hiding things from the United Nations.
``Iran has a covert parallel nuclear program that is military in nature'' and aimed at producing atomic weapons, the diplomat said.
IAEA officials could not be reached for comment. Diplomats said it was unlikely the agency would be able to verify the dossier before the June meeting of the IAEA governing board.
The latest declaration was required under the IAEA's so-called Additional Protocol, which Iran signed on December 18, 2003.
Although Iran's parliament has not yet ratified the protocol, Hosseini said Tehran had ``decided to voluntarily apply the protocol'' and submit the declaration within six months from the signing date.
The Additional Protocol gives the IAEA the right to conduct more intrusive, short-notice inspections and requires Tehran to give the IAEA much more information than under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Hosseini said the declaration contained no surprises, such as nuclear sites that the IAEA was not aware of. But he said it gave ``more details about sites already declared to the IAEA.''
It also covers past and present activities and sites connected to the enrichment of uranium and all other aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, he said.
----
Tehran Gives U.N. Watchdog Nuclear Report
May 22, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Nuclear-Agency-Iran.html
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran has delivered an initial report on its nuclear program to the U.N. atomic watchdog, a key step ahead of an agency meeting next month to assess suspicions that it is covertly trying to make weapons, the agency said Saturday.
The Tehran regime handed over the dossier on Friday to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the documents ``should provide broader information about Iran's nuclear activities,'' IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said.
The Vienna-based agency will work to assess the ``correctness and completeness'' of the declaration, and IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei will deliver a report to the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors when it meets on June 14, Gwozdecky said.
Iran was obligated to provide the declaration under a so-called additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which allows international inspectors to conduct intrusive unannounced checks of its nuclear facilities.
ElBaradei has said his inspectors are getting the access they want in Iran but need additional information.
The United States has long maintained that Iran -- part of President Bush's ``axis of evil'' along with Iraq and North Korea -- is not telling the truth when it says its nuclear programs are geared only toward generating energy. Washington insists that Iran's real goal is to make arms.
The U.S. House of Representatives this month accused Iran of ``continuing deceptions and falsehoods'' involving development of nuclear weapons, alleging in a resolution that ``it is abundantly clear that Iran remains committed to a nuclear weapons program.''
Last month, U.S. officials said Iran may be running a covert military nuclear program parallel to the peaceful one it has opened to international scrutiny in efforts to dispel suspicions it has weapons ambitions.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said new intelligence on Iran's nuclear activities was strengthening suspicions of two programs -- one that IAEA inspectors have access to and another, run by the military and geared toward making nuclear weapons.
Iran has dismissed the allegations as ``baseless'' and has insisted it has offered the complete story on its nuclear program.
Iran said it suspended uranium enrichment last year under international pressure but continued manufacture of uranium-enriching centrifuge components. In April, it said it had also stopped building centrifuges.
Iran's nuclear aims first came under international scrutiny after the IAEA discovered a covert centrifuge facility in the central city of Natanz.
Since the initial discovery of the centrifuges, traces of weapons-grade, highly enriched uranium; new, more advanced centrifuge prototypes; and suspicious covert experiments that can also have military applications have increased suspicions.
Last year, IAEA inspectors found radioactive particles that had been enriched to weapons-grade level -- higher than what Iran requires for fuel for a nuclear reactor. Iran said the particles came from imported equipment.
Although the U.N. agency has no proof that Iran has enriched uranium to weapons levels or has attempted to build a bomb, it suspects the Iranians have the expertise to do so, ElBaradei said earlier this month.
On the Net:
IAEA, www.iaea.org
----
Iran submits report on nuclear program to UN agency
VIENNA (AFP)
May 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040522165030.wqzm92ua.html
Iran has submitted a more than 1,000-page report on its contested nuclear program to the UN atomic agency, which is investigating US charges that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, Iranian ambassador Pirooz Hosseini told AFP Saturday.
He said the report was submitted late Friday to the Vienna headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in comments confirmed by the IAEA.
The report follows one by Iran last October that failed to live up to Iranian promises to fully disclose its nuclear activities.
The United States claims Iran is hiding a program to build the bomb and has called for the IAEA to refer it to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
But diplomats said the new declaration had come too late for the IAEA to be able to evaluate it fully before a meeting of the agency's 35-nation board of governors in mid-June.
The IAEA will not be able to make a final finding on Iran at this June 14 meeting due to delays by Tehran in allowing international inspections and disclosing its nuclear activities, diplomats said.
"This is ironic since the Iranians are the ones who want the file on them to be closed," said a diplomat close to the IAEA and who asked not to be named.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the Iranians had filed their report under an additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treatythat mandates tougher inspections.
"This declaration should broader provide information about Iran's nuclear and nuclear-related activities and will facilitate the IAEA's assessment of the correctness and completeness of information already provided by Iran on its past and present nuclear activities," Gwozdecky said.
Hosseini said that even though the Iranian parliament has not yet ratified the protocol which Iran signed on December 18, Iran had "decided to apply it voluntarily as a confidence-building measure" and was filing the report that is required within six months under the protocol.
He said the declaration gave "information related to our 10-year research and development program with regard to the nuclear fuel cycle and related technologies."
Hosseini said an Iranian technical delegation might visit Vienna in the coming week to talk with IAEA officials.
Iran claims it is embarked on a project solely to develop nuclear energy for peaceful electricity production and that it seeks to enrich uranium as fuel for reactors.
Hosseini did not provide details of whether Iran had answered such key IAEA questions as the extent of technology it may have developed with sophisticated P2 centrifuges that can be used to enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels.
He said the report had provided information on "the capacity of uranium mines" in Iran, and, regarding nuclear installations, given "a description of each building and places in sites that have been declared to the agency" as well as "information related to past activities."
IAEA inspectors see a pattern of radiation contamination in Iran which could indicate attempts to enrich uranium to bomb-grade level, diplomats close to the agency have told AFP.
IAEA inspectors have reported two such concentrations -- at a Kalaye Electric Company workshop in Tehran and at the Natanz pilot fuel enrichment plant 250 kilometres (150 miles) south of the Iranian capital.
Diplomats have confirmed to AFP that other sites have been found.
But they have not provided details, and one diplomat downplayed the possibility that the IAEA has found a "smoking gun" to prove Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Iran claims the contamination from particles of enriched uranium is from equipment it imported through an international black market.
IAEA inspectors are completing months of investigations in order to prepare a report for the June board meeting.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi has said Tehran expected the IAEA probe to be completed by June.
But an earlier delay to a crucial round of inspections in March "threw us out of sequence," an official close to the IAEA said.
Iran delayed inspections after the IAEA board in March condemned the country for failing to report key activities, particularly its acquiring of blueprints for the sophisticated centrifuges.
----
Iran Gives U.N. Second 'Full' Nuclear Dossier
May 22, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran said on Saturday it gave the U.N. nuclear watchdog what it described as a full declaration of its atomic program, which Washington says is a front for building an atom bomb.
Iran, which insists its atomic program is dedicated to the peaceful generation of electricity, gave the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a similar ``full'' declaration in October 2003.
However, the October declaration omitted details about potentially weapons-related research, including designs and components for advanced ``P2'' centrifuges capable of producing bomb-grade uranium.
``Yesterday, we submitted the declaration prior to the due date of June 18,'' Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in Vienna, Pirooz Hosseini, told Reuters.
Asked if this declaration was full and truthful, Hosseini said: ``Yes.''
But one Western diplomat, who declined to be named, said IAEA inspections should continue until the declaration can be verified.
``I think the fact that they already submitted a declaration that was supposedly full and complete but clearly wasn't...means that intensive inspections should continue for at least the foreseeable future,'' the diplomat told Reuters.
The diplomat is convinced Iran is still hiding things from the United Nations.
``Iran has a covert parallel nuclear program that is military in nature'' and aimed at producing atomic weapons, the diplomat said.
IAEA officials could not be reached for comment. Diplomats said it was unlikely the agency would be able to verify the dossier before the June meeting of the IAEA governing board.
The latest declaration was required under the IAEA's so-called Additional Protocol, which Iran signed on December 18, 2003.
Although Iran's parliament has not yet ratified the protocol, Hosseini said Tehran had ``decided to voluntarily apply the protocol'' and submit the declaration within six months from the signing date.
The Additional Protocol gives the IAEA the right to conduct more intrusive, short-notice inspections and requires Tehran to give the IAEA much more information than under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Hosseini said the declaration contained no surprises, such as nuclear sites that the IAEA was not aware of. But he said it gave ``more details about sites already declared to the IAEA.''
It also covers past and present activities and sites connected to the enrichment of uranium and all other aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, he said.
-------- iraq / inspections
U.S. plans to remove low-grade uranium from Iraqi repository
Sat, May. 22, 2004
By James Glanz
NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/8731165.htm?ERIGHTS=8025492170038154277contracostatimes::et@nucnews.net&KRD_RM=3llmnsrlllrjkkjjjjjjjjkook|Ellen|Y
VIENNA - The United States has informed an international agency that oversees nuclear materials that it intends to move hundreds of tons of uranium from a sealed repository south of Baghdad to a more secure location outside Iraq, Western diplomats close to the agency say.
But the organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, has taken the position that the uranium is Iraqi property and the agency "cannot give them permission to remove it," a diplomat said. The diplomat said that the United States was highly unlikely to be deterred by that position and that American officials had contacted the agency on the matter this year, before the Iraq insurgency flared last month.
"I think that if the stuff had not gone up in intensity," the diplomat said, "they would already have moved on this."
An official with the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad confirmed that moving the uranium was under consideration.
"The story I've heard is that no decision has been made as yet," the official said. "That was some months ago. When it was discussed, the view was that it was just too expensive to ship. I doubt that anything has changed."
The official added that keeping the material in storage, even amid the instability in Iraq, could be safer than trying to move it. Nuclear experts outside the government said if the material was moved, it would probably be airlifted and placed in a repository in the United States.
A spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration at the Energy Department, Anson Franklin, declined to comment directly on any possible operation involving the Iraqi uranium.
"We do not discuss potential future or ongoing operations," Franklin said.
The repository, at Tuwaitha, a centerpiece of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program until it was largely shut down after the Persian Gulf War in 1991, holds more than 500 tons of uranium, none of it enriched enough to be used directly in a nuclear weapon.
The repository was a target of widespread looting by villagers after the American-led invasion last year. The villagers were for the most part apparently interested in using the barrels that hold the uranium for activities like cooking and storing water. They simply dumped out the uranium sludge and took the barrels. Although most of the barrels and all but a small amount of the uranium were recovered, the episode was an embarrassment to the United States and left traces of radioactive contamination throughout the village.
Nuclear experts had mixed reactions to the possibility of moving the uranium. The president of the Institute for Science and International Security, David Albright, said officials had long privately discussed plans to take the uranium out of Iraq.
"I would say it's a wise thing to do," Albright said. "The idea of theft isn't crazy."
(BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
But Tom Clements, a senior adviser with the Greenpeace International nuclear campaign, said he believed that continuing problems with radioactive contamination in the village should be dealt with before any uranium is moved away from the site.
"We don't think that the United States has properly followed up on the radioactive contamination," Clements said.
Besides, Clements said, referring to occupation troops at Tuwaitha, "I would be concerned that they would be pulling some of the protective force off the site in order to deal with the problems in the rest of the country."
"I wonder if that's the motivation for moving it," he said.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Of the uranium, 500 tons is naturally occurring ore or yellowcake, a slightly processed concentrate that cannot be directly used in a bomb. Some 1.8 tons is classified as low-enriched uranium, a more potent form but still not sufficient for a weapon.
Still, said Thomas B. Cochran, director of the nuclear program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, the low-enriched version could be useful to a nation with nuclear ambitions.
"A country like Iran," Cochran said, "could convert that into weapons-grade material with a lot fewer centrifuges than would be required with natural uranium." The centrifuges are used to purify the material.
Because uranium takes billions of years to decay, it emits fairly small amounts of radiation. But it can still create health problems, and some villagers have complained of nausea and unexplained rashes.
Whatever its actual health risks, the uranium could sow terror over wide areas if dispersed by a conventional explosive. Such a "dirty bomb" remains a prime concern for counterterrorism experts in the United States and abroad.
(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency visited Tuwaitha in June after the looting reports. The team determined that at least 20 pounds of the uranium was unaccounted for, but decided that it had probably not fallen into the wrong hands.
"A few grams of natural uranium compounds could have remained in each of the approximately 200 emptied containers when upended by the looters," the agency wrote in its inspection report.
A second diplomatic official expressed puzzlement as to why the United States was considering moving the material, after the material has been presumably secured and resealed. Except for the incident immediately after the invasion, the official said, "this stuff has been there, secure, quiet, not a problem to anyone, since 1991."
Tuwaitha also contains dozens of other radioactive materials that cannot be used to make nuclear weaponry but that emit much stronger and more dangerous radiation than uranium. The officials said it was unclear whether the United States planned to move that material, too.
Because of the intense radiation, the potential dangers of transporting that material are higher, said Daniel Hersch, former director of the Stevenson Program on Nuclear Policy at the University of California at Santa Cruz who is president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear policy organization in California.
"There, you have more problems," Hersch said. "But again, the situation in Iraq is so unstable that that material might benefit from transport to more secure locations."
-------- korea
U.N. Envoy: N. Korea Continues Nuke Push
May 22, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-NKorea-UN-Nuclear.html
BEIJING (AP) -- North Korea is vowing to push ahead with nuclear weapons development until it gets a reliable guarantee that the United States won't attack, said a U.N. envoy who returned Saturday from the North.
North Korean leaders are expressing doubt that Washington wants to see progress in six-nation talks on its nuclear ambitions, said Maurice Strong, who visited Pyongyang on behalf of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
``They look at their nuclear weapons as the best guarantee they have against a threat that they perceive from the United States,'' Strong told reporters at the Beijing airport. ``They are going to continue, they say, to develop that capability until there is a security guarantee that they can rely on.''
Washington has rejected North Korea's demand for a bilateral nonaggression treaty. The communist government says it could consider a security guarantee from the six nations taking part in nuclear talks organized by China. The other participants are South Korea, Russia and Japan.
Also Saturday, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il told visiting Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in Pyongyang that improving bilateral relations depended on an ``ally of Japan'' -- apparently alluding to the United States.
``Kim Jong Il stressed that progress in improving the bilateral relations would largely depend on what an attitude and stand the ally of Japan will take,'' the North's official KCNA news agency reported following the summit in North Korea's capital.
The report did not name the ally, but Washington has been pressing the North to commit the dismantlement all its nuclear weapons programs before winning any economic aid.
On Friday, a South Korean newspaper quoted a North Korean diplomat as calling for a peace treaty with Washington and Seoul to replace the Korean War armistice as part of a nuclear settlement.
Strong was in North Korea to discuss the nuclear talks and a possible rescue package for its decrepit economy once the 19-month-old standoff is settled.
``They express real doubt as to whether the United States wants progress or not,'' he said. ``They say that if the U.S. really wants progress, then progress will be made.''
Strong said he met with the head of the North's legislature, military commanders and the foreign minister, but didn't see its paramount leader, Kim Jong Il.
Two rounds of high-level nuclear talks have produced no major progress toward ending the dispute that erupted in late 2002 after the United States said the North admitted operating a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 commitment.
Another high-level meeting, hosted by China, is due to take place in June.
A low-level technical meeting in Beijing ended last week with the North denouncing what it said was a U.S. refusal to discuss giving aid in exchange for freezing work on its nuclear program.
North Korean officials said they were ready to freeze the nuclear program and dismantle it ``in return for a freezing of some of ... what they call `hostile policy measures' that have been instigated by the U.S.,'' Strong said.
Strong didn't give details, so it wasn't clear whether the comments represented any difference from earlier North Korean proposals already rejected by Washington.
--------
North Korea Provided Libyan Uranium
May 22, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-korea-libya-report.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - North Korea secretly provided Libya with nearly two tons of uranium in early 2001, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing unnamed U.S. officials and European diplomats.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said there was 1.7 metric tons of uranium hexafluoride, a standard raw material for enrichment through feeding centrifuges, but experts told the newspaper the uranium was far short of the potency needed to make a nuclear weapon.
A large quantity of uranium hexafluoride was turned over to the United States by the Libyans earlier this year as part of leader Muammar Gaddafi's agreement to give up his nuclear program. At the time, the United States identified Pakistan as the likely source.
However, the IAEA told The Times it found evidence that the uranium came from North Korea. The agency based its conclusion on interviews of members of the secret nuclear supplier network set up by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former head of Pakistan's main nuclear laboratory.
American officials say the discovery of the North Korean connection is an intelligence success that resulted indirectly from Libya's decision to dismantle its nuclear program, and the ensuing drive to break up Khan's network, according to the newspaper's web site.
The uranium shipped to Libya could not be used as nuclear fuel unless it was enriched in centrifuges, which the Libyans were constructing as part of a $100 million program to purchase equipment from the Khan network, The Times reported.
The paper said the classified evidence had touched off a race among the world's intelligence services to explore whether North Korea has made similar clandestine sales to other nations or perhaps even to terror groups seeking atomic weapons.
Iran has bought centrifuges from the Khan network, investigators believe, but it has denied it is seeking a nuclear weapon.
Bush administration officials warned last year that North Korea could make good on its threats to provide nuclear materials or weapons. However, until recently U.S. officials said they had no evidence that the country was dealing in anything beyond missiles and missile technology.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
NEVADA FOCUS: Stewards of U.S. nuclear stockpile plan new test
By KEN RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 22, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2004/may/22/052210459.html
NEVADA TEST SITE, Nev. (AP) - At ground zero for the nation's nuclear testing, the stewards of the atomic stockpile stopped creating mushroom clouds and craters more than a decade ago.
Now they devise complex underground experiments like the upcoming "Armando" test using radar, laser and X-ray imaging to explore the finer points of how plutonium performs in an explosion.
Scientists call the experiments "subcritical" because they don't set off full-scale thermonuclear blasts like those that rocked the Nevada desert northwest of Las Vegas from 1951 to 1992.
"When you had the nuclear test, what was the proof? It exploded," said James Danneskiold, a spokesman for Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, where plutonium triggers for bombs are produced.
"Now, you have to ask the necessary questions to show that the weapon still functions as it was designed," Danneskiold said, "that it's safe, reliable, and will work when needed."
The Nevada Test Site encompasses 1,375 square miles, nearly the size of Rhode Island. The site is surrounded on three sides by the 4,562-square-mile Nellis Air Force Base bombing range. Combined, the federal reservation is larger than the state of Connecticut.
A short distance from the underground test laboratory is the Frenchman Flat dry lake bed, where the first of 1,021 Nevada nuclear weapons tests was conducted. After 14 atmospheric and five underground tests, Frenchman Flat remains strewn with structures built in the 1950s to measure the effects of primitive nuclear blasts.
Steel reinforcement bars from a crumbled concrete dome curl like hair blown back. Rusting pens mark where pigs dressed in Army uniforms were subjected to shock, heat and radiation waves. Warped wooden benches sit on a knoll where VIPs watched detonations from only nine miles away.
Before boarding a steel cage elevator for the 75-second descent down a mine shaft to the lab, Ghazar Papazian, Los Alamos project director at the test site, characterized the safety zones of the laboratory as a "nested bottle concept."
"The idea is, if the first cork leaks, the second can contain it. If the second leaks, the third can contain it," he said, pointing to escape routes on a three-dimensional mock-up of one mile of underground tunnels.
Underground, a horizontal vault 300 feet deep is filled with concrete where the 20 kiloton Ledoux underground nuclear test was conducted in September 1990. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War II measured 16 kilotons.
Other sealed vaults entomb most of the 20 previous subcritical experiments, and quarter-inch steel doors can be closed to seal tunnel sections like compartments in a submarine. Rubber-soled shoes squeak on painted gray cement floors.
As experiments by Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories have become more refined, electrical and communications lines and trigger wiring bundles along the hallways have grown fat.
Detonation chambers have become smaller, and Papazian said project engineers now aim to reuse space and materials.
"Armando" is the third experiment in a series. Its predecessors, "Mario" and "Rocco" in August and September 2002, were conducted in six-foot diameter wells drilled 35 feet deep beneath the tunnel floor of one finger of the complex.
The upcoming detonation 963 feet underground will involve high explosives inside a steel sphere that would fit in the back of a pickup truck. The tunnels will be cleared of workers, while diagnostic equipment shielded in tractor-trailer sized containers collect data.
"Armando" is designed to answer questions about how plutonium ages and whether weapons triggers produced by milling or casting processes perform the same, Papazian said.
Production of weapons-grade plutonium was suspended in 1989 at a mill in Rocky Flats, near Denver. A cast process at Los Alamos is expected to resume producing 10 plutonium pits a year by 2007, Danneskiold said.
Papazian estimated annual costs of the Nevada Test Site laboratory at $18 million to $20 million per year. Experiments can cost up to $40 million each, compared with full-fledged underground nuclear tests of $90 million a piece, he said. Papazian said he did not know what "Armando" would cost.
Test site officials call the program "stockpile stewardship" - essential to the U.S. policy of nuclear deterrence. The test site is the only place in the nation where the government has environmental permits to subject plutonium to explosives.
Critics, from those who picket for disarmament outside the test site to those who lobby in Washington for a nuclear test ban, call the subcritical testing program unnecessary.
"They're still doing bomb testing," complained Peggy Maze Johnson, director of Citizen Alert, a Nevada anti-nuclear advocacy group that organizes annual Mother's Day anti-nuclear protests at the gate at Mercury, 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Christopher Paine, an analyst with the Washington-based National Resources Defense Council, called the program a colossal waste of money.
"You have to look at what this is really about," Paine said from his home in Charlottesville, Va. "It's about building a new nuclear arsenal."
The number of U.S. warheads is classified. The National Resources Defense Council, which has monitored nuclear issues since 1970, estimates the U.S. has about 10,400 warheads - about half the nuclear weapons in the world.
Darwin Morgan, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency that oversees the site, said nuclear tests are strictly defined by international treaty.
"We do experiments," he said. "There's no sustained nuclear reaction."
However it is defined, the work has taken on new emphasis with the Bush administration seeking to cut the lead time needed to resume full-scale underground nuclear testing from three years to 18 months. Congress last year agreed to shorten the time to two years.
The U.S. has observed a nuclear testing moratorium since 1992, but has not ratified the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
Papazian, who was part of a team on the nuclear test "Icecap" when it was suspended in 1992, noted that equipment in place at the underground testing complex could be used for full-scale nuclear testing.
"We're having to test if things designed for 20 to 30 years can last for 40 to 60 years," he said.
On the Net:
National Nuclear Security Administration: http://www.nnsa.doe.gov
National Resources Defense Council: http://www.nrdc.org
Nevada Test Site: http://www.nv.doe.gov/nts
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- south carolina
Vote on nuclear sludge looms
By CHARLES SEABROOK
Cox News Service,
May 22, 2004
http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/content/shared/news/stories/0519_srs.html;COXnetJSessionID=AvBKLrTgtvSMRS367i6R3HppiuD7ujRzVqgF7rv2lej4DMf83pSB!1666191942?urac=n&urvf=10852600420970.4418821763457642
ATLANTA -- A Senate vote could come as early as today on a bill that would leave millions of gallons of highly radioactive sludge in underground tanks in South Carolina.
The waste -- leftover from decades of making nuclear bombs -- is stored in aging tanks at the sprawling Savannah River Site in South Carolina, just across the border from Georgia near Augusta.
The legislation, introduced by U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), is an effort to overturn a federal judge's ruling last year that the Energy Department would violate federal law if it reclassified the material as low-level waste.
Such a designation would mean the agency would not have to ship the material to a special high-level waste repository slated for Nevada.
The Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month agreed to put Graham's proposal in a defense authorization bill.
That bill is being debated this week, and a vote on Graham's provision could come today or Thursday, Senate aides said.
Graham said his measure would save the government some $16 billion and speed the cleanup of SRS by 23 years.
Environmentalists and some politicians, however, fear that radioactive waste left in the tanks will leak and contaminate groundwater in Georgia and South Carolina.
Last week, U.S. Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.), in a letter to leaders of the Armed Services Committee, called Graham's proposal "troubling."
"Senator Hollings feels this is some of the most dangerous waste in the world, and he wants to make sure it's disposed of properly," his spokeswoman Ilene Zeldin said.
In Georgia, U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Republican, supports the bill, according to a spokesman. U.S. Sen. Zell Miller, a Democrat who has criticized SRS's operation in the past, has not made up his mind yet about the legislation, his office said.
Georgia Environmental Protection Division officials, who have expressed considerable concern in past years about pollution from SRS, had no comment this week on Graham's bill.
The aging underground tanks at SRS hold about 37 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste.
Most is immobilized by mixing it with molten glass that quickly hardens in glass logs.
The glass logs, temporarily stored at SRS, are scheduled to be shipped to a final repository in Nevada when it opens.
Even after the liquid waste is removed, however, a highly radioactive sludge clings to the bottom and sides of the tanks.
In seeking the authority to reclassify the high-level radioactive waste last year, the Energy Department claimed the residual sludge is too expensive to remove from the tanks.
Instead, it said the material can be diluted, covered with grout and left in place as less radioactive "low-level" waste.
But in a lawsuit filed last year by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a federal judge in Idaho ruled that the department would violate the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which requires the Energy Department to dispose of high-level waste in a deep, geologic respository.
Charles Seabrook writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
5 Afghans Die and 4 U.S. Soldiers Are Wounded in Clashes
May 22, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/international/asia/22KABU.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, May 21 - Two Afghan policemen and a three other Afghans died in clashes in Afghanistan on Friday that left four American soldiers wounded. In a separate incident, Pakistani officials protested what they said was the second incursion by American forces into Pakistani territory in a month.
Over the last year, more than 300 people have been killed in rising violence ahead of national elections, scheduled for September.
The largest clash occurred in southeastern Afghanistan in the village of Tani in Khost Province, roughly five miles from the Pakistani border, according to American and Afghan officials.
United States military officials said American soldiers were fired upon as they carried out raids in the area. American forces fired back, killing three fighters. They also detained 23 people.
But Abdul Gyaz Wardak, chief of the local governor's office, said Afghans had fired on American forces by mistake. He said two men in Tani shot at an American patrol at 3 a.m., thinking rival Afghans were approaching to attack them.
"Two men who were shooting at Americans were killed," he said, adding that the wife of one of the Afghans was killed when she stepped out of a house. Mr. Wardak said that an American helicopter took part in the firefight but that it was shots from American ground forces that killed the three Afghans.
American military officials offered a different account, saying that all three people were fighters who were killed by aircraft fire. "Precision air support was used," they said in a statement, "and all rounds were on target."
In a clash on Wednesday, suspected Taliban fighters killed two Afghan policemen in Farah Province in western Afghanistan, The Associated Press reported Friday. The local governor said gunmen ambushed the police as they returned home after escorting United Nations staff members to the city of Herat.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, military officials filed a "strong protest" on Friday over what they said was the second incursion by American military forces into Pakistan in a month, state-run media reported.
Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a Pakistani military spokesman, said American forces crossed into Pakistan on Thursday after they thought they had been fired on from the area. He said the village, which he did not name, was exactly on the Afghan border.
American forces searched several houses, including three in Pakistan, he said, and returned to Afghanistan.
-------- africa
Cash-for-gun carrot dangled before warriors in Nigerian strife-torn state
(AFP)
May 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040522155642.5bc46wyh.html
JOS, Nigeria -- The administration in Nigeria's troubled Plateau State has offered hefty cash rewards in exchange for surrendered weapons to secure peace following a Christian militia attack in which over 200 Muslims died.
An official statement late Friday here urged all individuals and groups in possession of firearms to surrender them at designated centres in exchange for cash rewards running up to 200,000 naira (1,500 dollars, 1,250 euros).
It also promised cash rewards to any person or group with useful information on arms caches, while the source of the information would be protected against police action or prosecution.
The statement, signed by secretary to Plateau State government John Gobak, set June 7 as the closing date for the surrender of illegal arms.
It said that the newly-appointed state administrator, Chris Ali, was gravely concerned about the proliferation of firearms in private hands.
"All citizens should be aware of the danger illegal and prohibited firearms pose to peaceful coexistence," the text said.
Some 55,000 people, mostly Muslims, fled their homes in the central state to seek shelter in neighbouring states to escape inter-ethnic violence, officials told AFP.
A simmering three-year-old dispute between Tarok Christians and Hausa-Fulani Muslims for control of southern Plateau's farmland exploded on May 2 when Tarok militiamen slaughtered more than 200 Muslims in the town of Yelwa.
Following a long pattern of attack and counterattack, Muslim fighters responded with bloody raids on Christian villages.
The Gamai Unity and Development Organisation (GUDO), a union that represents five towns and villages in the state where Muslims launched a reprisal attack Tuesday, has said that more than 70 people were killed in the raid.
The attack left 74 people dead while more than 200 houses were burnt in Bakin Ciyawa, Sabon Gida, Jirim, Gidan Sabo and Saminaka, said GUDO Saturday in a statement, a copy of which was given to AFP.
There is as yet no independent confirmation of the GUDO death toll.
The police confirmed Thursday that at least five people were killed in the Hausa-Fulani militia attack on these mainly Christian settlements.
The attack took place just as Nigeria's President Olusegun Obasanjo suspended Plateau's governor and imposed a state of emergency.
Obasanjo has branded the latest violence a threat to the "security and unity of the nation" and re-appointed Ali, a former Plateau State military governor, to restore order.
Meanwhile, the new administrator and the state police commisssioner, Innocent Ilozuike, left Jos, the state capital, for neighbouring Bauchi, where 35,000 people who fled Yelwa and other trouble spots are taking refuge, officials said.
The team will also visit, Nasarawa State, where thousands of other displaced people are camped, as well as Yelwa, Shendam, Wase and other parts of Plateau State, they added.
The delegation was expected back in Jos later Saturday.
-------- arms
US military pays 1.3 million dollars for weapons in Sadr City
BAGHDAD (AFP)
May 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040522155406.e32trwef.html
The US military has paid out 1.3 million dollars to residents of Baghdad's restive Shiite Muslim district of Sadr City for turning in thousands of weapons and ammunition rounds, a top general said Saturday.
Nearly 4,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles and machine-guns, some 9,000 mortars and rockets, 2,460 grenades rocket-propelled grenade launchers and artillery rounds were turned in during the arms amnesty which ended Friday, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said.
Kimmitt added that a deal to halt combat patrols by the US-led coalition in the district for five days had collapsed due to continued attacks in the teeming slum, a stronghold of radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, who is waging an uprising.
The agreement was brokered three days ago with tribal leaders, Kimmitt added.
-------- asia
Building a Democracy
Georgian President Learns Governing Is Harder Than Staging a Revolution
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46542-2004May21?language=printer
BOBOKVATI, Georgia -- Out of the hazy Black Sea emerged the president of Georgia as armed guards watched from a rocky beach. Mikheil Saakashvili slipped on a white terry-cloth robe and strolled to the columned veranda of a villa, where he poured a glass of Georgian red wine. "Aslan's wine," he grinned.
Thirty-six hours earlier, the villa had been off limits, the private retreat of warlord Aslan Abashidze. But now Saakashvili, a Washington-trained lawyer, had taken possession of it and was celebrating his second peaceful revolution in six months, this time the removal of the feudal-style ruler of a renegade region his family had run for centuries.
At age 36, Europe's youngest president now faces the more daunting task of channeling the power of discontent in the streets of this ruined former Soviet republic into a sustainable democracy in a part of the world where that has yet to take root.
Saakashvili's Georgia is becoming a case study in the American export of democracy. A winner of one of the Edmund Muskie fellowships, which are awarded to outstanding citizens of the former Soviet states, Saakashvili studied law at Columbia University and human rights at George Washington University. He is part of a generation of foreigners groomed by the United States in hopes they would go back and refashion their homelands with a Western playbook.
Several days spent with him and his team over the last month, including hours of interviews with Saakashvili in his office, over a sushi dinner with his wife and here in Ajaria, open a window into the making of a president. Brash and impulsive, he loves the theater of it all, jumping onto a bulldozer to knock down road barriers to Ajaria or taking his cabinet for a walk to shake hands in the street.
But he has already alienated a few close friends who feel he has gone too far in accumulating power. "The government that came from a democratic revolution is taking a step back from democracy," said Koba Davitashvili, who quit as head of Saakashvili's party and turned down a cabinet post in protest of constitutional changes that the president pushed through to bolster his authority. "I was so angry at him."
Saakashvili acknowledges that he may be "pushy" at times and perhaps overreached in engineering the constitutional changes so fast. It is, he said, a learning process. "It's much more complex than just a fight between evil and good," he mused over Abashidze's wine earlier this month. "It's hard to distinguish what is the right thing sometimes. It's all the time striking the right balance. That's what governing is all about."
Yet for all that, Saakashvili has built the former Soviet Union's first generation of leaders outside the historically Western-oriented Baltic republics, a team whose members look like him -- in their thirties, Western-educated, untainted by the old system.
They may have little background in running a country, he said, but "absence of experience is an asset in itself. Because what kind of experience was it? Experience at being corrupt. Experience at being part of the old system that didn't work." A Dysfunctional Country
"Nothing works," groused Natalie Kancheli. "It takes 45 minutes just to print a piece of paper."
Kancheli was sitting in her new office, just weeks into the job as Saakashvili's chief of staff. When she arrived, she found 10 ancient telephones on her desk and no computer. The phones didn't actually connect her with anyone she wanted to talk to, so she stuck to her cell phone. With no computer network and few copiers, she discovered that important memos had to be walked from office to office.
The street revolt that brought her boss to office now seems easy by comparison. As leader of the opposition in this country of 5 million people in the Caucasus Mountains, Saakashvili mobilized tens of thousands of disgruntled Georgians into the streets last November to protest what they viewed as a stolen parliamentary election. After Saakashvili burst into Parliament with a long-stemmed rose, the tired and aging president, Eduard Shevardnadze, finally called it quits. Saakashvili was elected to succeed him two months later with 96 percent of the vote.
The country he inherited was dysfunctional at best. Electricity is sporadic, pensions and salaries often unpaid, bribery epidemic. So many buildings remain shattered by civil wars of the 1990s that foreign diplomats on road trips pass the time counting LAOs, or Large Abandoned Objects.
The presidential office wasn't much better when Saakashvili arrived. He discovered that his predecessor kept cats around to chase the rats. Moving into a suite furnished with old wooden chairs and tables, Saakashvili ordered it all removed. "It was so Soviet," he said. In its place, he brought in beige leather couches, glass coffee tables, a polished black oak desk and conference table and a large flat-screen television. Ambassador Recruited
His team has a similarly contemporary and international feel. He met Kancheli, 31, at a forum at Davos, Switzerland, in January and persuaded her to quit her job at a London art foundation to come back to Georgia after 16 years abroad. Defense Minister Gela Bezhuashvili, 37, who studied at GWU with Saakashvili, broke off studies at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government when his friend asked him to join the cabinet in February. Three other Muskie fellows hold top cabinet posts.
At 52, Foreign Minister Salome Zourabichvili is the oldest member of the cabinet, but she, too, is untainted by the old system. She was not even a Georgian citizen until recently. The Paris-born granddaughter of Georgians who fled the Bolsheviks, Zourabichvili was the French ambassador here until Saakashvili recruited her and got her dual citizenship.
She was eager for the chance to join Saakashvili's experiment. "I personally think it's a kind of last chance for Georgia," she said.
One day the president summoned an old friend, Koba Davitashvili, to his office. Davitashvili was among the democracy activists who rallied behind what became known as the Rose Revolution. But Davitashvili was steaming that day over Saakashvili's plan to amend the constitution to grant himself the right to dismiss Parliament in certain circumstances.
Davitashvili recalls opening the talk by assailing the president's plan. Saakashvili erupted. "He started shouting," Davitashvili said. "He said, 'I didn't call you for that; I called you to offer the post of defense minister.' " Davitashvili turned it down. "How could he imagine the defense minister to be in opposition to the government?"
In his zeal for national reconstruction, Saakashvili has been accused of moving too far too fast. His government rounded up figures from the corrupt former government, including Shevardnadze's son-in-law, generating some public discomfort over the televised images of masked gunmen bursting into offices.
He sent police officers to break into a church where a popular priest blamed for attacks on Jehovah's Witnesses had barricaded himself. He launched a military operation against guerrillas holed up in the forests for a decade, then cut a deal to win their surrender.
"He's very passionate and very eager to have quick results. He's in a hurry," said David Gamkrelidze, leader of the New Rights party, the only opposition to make it into Parliament in March elections. But "this young government rules the country . . . by their subjective views and not by laws."
A raid on an Ajaria company accused of cigarette smuggling looked to some like punishment of the firm's television station. "If we mean a person who considers himself to be the law," said Luba Eliashvili, news director at Iberia television, which opposed last fall's overthrow of the government, "then I would call him a dictator."
Still, Georgia retains lively, pluralistic news media. Saakashvili allies call some of the early moves merely the mistakes of learning on the job. "We all of us were not prepared to run the country," said Parliament Speaker Nino Burdzhanadze. While uncomfortable with the constitutional changes, she said she plans to stick by Saakashvili for now. "I personally will try to keep unity as long as possible, but, of course, I won't keep unity at the expense of principle," she said.
Both critics and supporters agree Saakashvili has produced results. He improved tax collection and used the proceeds to start paying pensions and salaries on time for the first time in years. He bumped up pensions and dramatically increased pay for traffic police, customs officials, tax inspectors and other key jobs in hopes of mitigating pressure to extract bribes.
And for all his theatrical flair, Saakashvili has shown a pragmatic streak. Shevardnadze's son-in-law, Georgi Dzhokhtaberidze, a cellular telephone businessman accused of corruption, was arrested at the airport as he tried to leave the country, but authorities freed him last month in exchange for paying $15 million to the government treasury.
"I would rather have him outside prison without money," Saakashvili said, "than inside prison with money." Getting Rid of a Rival
The end of Saakashvili's most irksome domestic rival came not with gunfire but with a phone call to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Aslan Abashidze, whose family had ruled the Ajaria region for so long that town squares feature statues of his grandfather, had blown up bridges connecting his region with the rest of the country, sparking mass street demonstrations. Saakashvili seized the moment to rid himself of the local autocrat.
"I called Putin, and I thanked him for keeping neutrality and asked if eventually he would take him," Saakashvili recalled.
Putin agreed and hung up.
Ten minutes later, according to Saakashvili, Putin called back.
"You have to promise me that you won't ask for him back," he recalled Putin saying.
"Fine," Saakashvili said he answered. "I can promise that."
Putin's national security adviser was in the Ajarian capital of Batumi at the time and huddled with Abashidze as demonstrations continued. With Putin's agreement, Abashidze was shuffled aboard a plane for Moscow in the middle of the night and Saakashvili flew into Batumi as a conquering hero. Crowds of people fed up with Abashidze's rule greeted the president with jubilation.
Saakashvili had orchestrated Abashidze's ouster with a blend of bluster and cunning. Instead of sending in troops, Saakashvili sent the foot soldiers of his previous revolution. His people smuggled street activists in and out of Ajaria through mountain passes or in cargo train cars to teach the locals how to stage protests.
He also secretly recruited Abashidze's own palace guard to defect, winning by his count 200 of 600 men. "You can't even imagine how many of us refused" to defend Abashidze, said Irakli Surmanidze, 30, a police officer. "Except for the closest people around Abashidze, everybody else wouldn't fight for him."
For weeks, even some Saakashvili friends fretted that he might provoke civil war. "The way he handled the early days of the crisis was not very impressive," said Jan Bonde Nielsen, chairman of Batumi's oil terminal company. But then, he said, Saakashvili seemed to mature and figured out the right moment to act to bring it to a peaceful end. "He really smelled the situation."
The day after Abashidze's departure, Saakashvili invited Georgian reporters to the Black Sea villa. In the hours before they arrived, he emerged on the balcony repeatedly to issue instructions about how to stage the pending news conference. Summon a navy boat to be in the background, he told the defense minister. Set up a Georgian flag next to his chair, he told an aide.
He was pleased with the image afterward. Punching numbers on his mobile phone, he called someone to see how it came off. "Did you see the ship behind me on TV?" he asked. "How was it on TV?"
By the next day, though, Saakashvili seemed to realize that permanent upheaval wouldn't rebuild his economy. That afternoon, he toured the Batumi oil terminal with Bonde Nielsen as guide and pledged new stability.
"Revolution is nice," he told Bonde Nielsen. "Once, or maybe twice, in a life is enough. Now boredom should start."
-------- iraq
Car Bomb Kills 4, Injures Iraqi Minister
Associated Press
CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
May 22, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
O'Malley says a car bomb has killed at least five people outside the home of a senior Iraqi security official in Baghdad. (Audio)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- A suicide car bomber killed four people and slightly wounded a deputy interior minister on Saturday in the second such attack on a senior Iraqi official in Baghdad this week - both claimed by the same al-Qaida-linked group.
A statement by the group posted on the Internet said the bomber Saturday came from Syria, bolstering long-standing U.S. claims that foreign fighters are involved in insurgent attacks in Iraq.
Fighting flared anew in the Shiite holy city of Najaf and nearby Kufa between American soldiers and the Shiite militia of Muqtada al-Sadr, with bursts of heavy mortar and machine gun fire heard about midnight. A live report on Al-Jazeera television from its correspondent in Najaf was punctuated by strong explosions near a downtown hotel.
Saturday's suicide blast outside the home of Abdul-Jabbar Youssef al-Sheikhli, the deputy interior minister in charge of security, hurled two cars onto the front lawn of his house. Police fired warning shots to disperse distraught bystanders who scuffled with them after the attack.
Al-Sheikhli was injured in the forehead and right arm, said Hassan Hadi, a Health Ministry official.
Bodyguards fired on the bomber's car as it approached, said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Iraq. Three bodyguards and a woman were killed as well as the bomber, he said. Earlier, Iraqi authorities said four police died.
Al-Sheikhli belongs to the Shiite Muslim Dawa party, which lost a prominent member in another fatal car bombing on Monday. The president of the Iraqi Governing Council, Dawa member Izzadine Saleem, was killed along with at least six other people near the headquarters of the U.S.-run coalition in the capital.
The Monotheism and Jihad Group, which claimed responsibility for Saleem's death, said it carried out the attack Saturday as a warning to the United States and its allies.
"They will not be safe from the hand of God's retaliation, then the mujahedeen's, and that they should be ready," said the statement, posted on an Islamic Web site.
It said "martyr" Ahmed el-Shami Aby Abdel Rahman, from Qamishli, Syria, "drove a car bomb to take (al-Sheikhli) to hell."
The group's leader is believed to be Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian wanted by the United States for organizing al-Qaida operations in Iraq and suspected of beheading American civilian Nicholas Berg.
In Najaf, south of Baghdad, fighting broke out Saturday between U.S. forces and al-Sadr's militia near the city's police directorate and the governor's office. At least 10 people were injured in the Saturday clashes, which erupted again about midnight, according to Radhi Kadhim, a nurse at al-Hakim Hospital.
Residents of Najaf reached by telephone said they could hear the sounds of automatic weapons fire and explosives late Saturday coming from Najaf's twin city, Kufa, but efforts to reach anyone there were unsuccessful.
On Friday, five people were killed and 29 injured in Kufa in clashes between al-Sadr's fighters and U.S. troops after the arrest of Mohammed al-Tabtabaei, an aide to the fiery cleric, a hospital employee said on condition of anonymity.
There was no combat in Karbala, another holy city where intense battles have occurred. Residents said there were no combatants on the streets, and al-Sadr's office said militiamen and U.S. forces had agreed to withdraw from the city.
Kimmitt said the coalition had repositioned some forces, but had not withdrawn. Early Friday, U.S. troops pulled out of a central mosque that they had occupied after ousting insurgents who had used it as a base.
"The police chief from Karbala in fact came to us the other day and said he was encouraged to start bringing back in Iraqi police into the city of Karbala," Kimmitt said.
Iraqi leaders in Karbala have been trying to negotiate an end to the fighting, though coalition officials have stood by their position that al-Sadr disband his militia and "face justice." The cleric, who launched an uprising against the coalition last month, is wanted in the murder of a rival moderate cleric last year.
Kimmitt said efforts to end fighting in Sadr City, an al-Sadr stronghold in Baghdad, had broken down because coalition forces continue to be attacked. Troops had temporarily suspended patrols to give tribal leaders time to negotiate with the militia.
Seven mortar rounds landed north of downtown Baghdad on Saturday, Kimmitt said. Two coalition soldiers and an Iraqi civilian were slightly injured.
In another area of Baghdad, a rocket struck a two-story house near the former Ministry of Information. There were no reports of casualties.
Meanwhile, a military official said the U.S. Army has rejected an attorney's request to move the court-martial of a soldier accused of abusing prisoners out of Iraq.
Gary Myers, an attorney for Staff Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick II, said in a request rejected May 14 that moving the trial to Europe or the United States was the only way to guarantee the safety of witnesses and lawyers, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Frederick is one of seven military police accused of abusing prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison. His trial will be in Baghdad's Green Zone, a heavily fortified area that houses coalition headquarters.
The request was denied by Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, the officer in charge of convening courts-martial in Iraq, Col. Jill Morgenthaler, a spokeswoman in Baghdad, told The Associated Press
Morgenthaler said the Green Zone is a "secure place" for the proceedings.
On Wednesday, another soldier accused in the case, Spc. Jeremy Sivits, received the maximum penalty of a year in prison and a bad conduct discharge in the first court-martial stemming from the abuse of Iraqis.
--------
Sudden Quiet in Karbala Is Puzzling to U.S. Forces
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46445-2004May21?language=printer
KARBALA, Iraq, May 22 -- The streets of Karbala, a town hotly contested in recent weeks by American forces and Shiite Muslim rebels, were so strangely quiet just past midnight Saturday that U.S. solders on patrol in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle were almost disappointed.
"I don't know what it means. We would have liked to go after them, but they didn't come out at all," said Staff Sgt. Rogelio Cortes, leader of the 2nd Platoon, Company C, of the task force that has been fighting in Karbala almost daily. "On the other hand, no news is good news."
Seen from the narrow, periscopic window of a Bradley, the town was ghostly. Streets were roughened by chips of concrete from buildings, broken glass glistened in the pale light of the few stores that were open and an occasional cluster of men in white robes watched as Bradleys clacked by on their steel treads.
Twenty-four hours after U.S. commanders canceled a major operation in Karbala at the last minute and then withdrew troops positioned in a mosque that had served as a rebel headquarters, it was hard to decipher just where this front of the conflict in southern Iraq was heading. U.S. commanders said they wanted to take the fight to the insurgents, yet they were treading warily.
U.S. forces are trying to put down a revolt initiated by Moqtada Sadr, a cleric who has opposed the American-led occupation of Iraq almost since it began. Besides Karbala, Sadr maintains strongholds in Najaf and Kufa, cities not far from here. And he has shown an increasing ability to incite followers elsewhere.
For more than six weeks, Sadr has defied U.S. demands to surrender and disband his Mahdi Army militia. His defiance might earn him hero status, some soldiers believe, making him more and more difficult to crush. "He just looks bigger the more it goes on," Cortes said.
A soldier on patrol Friday who declined to let his name be published said the withdrawal from the Mukhaiyam mosque perplexed U.S. troops. They fought to win the mosque, losing three comrades. "It's hard for us to figure out why we took it in the first place if we were just going to let it go before finishing off Mookie," the soldier said, using the infantrymen's nickname for Sadr.
About 20 insurgents were killed by U.S. fire during the withdrawal, U.S. officers said. An AC-130 helicopter gunship attacked rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenades. Fire from the air damaged several buildings in the city. No U.S. casualties were reported.
The Arab satellite TV channel al-Jazeera said one of its employees, Rashid Hamid Wali, was killed by gunfire while standing on the roof of a Karbala hotel.
Just outside Najaf on Friday, Sadr fighters attacked a small U.S. military base with small arms and mortars. At about the same time, U.S. forces attacked a convoy carrying Mohammed Tabtabaie, a senior Sadr aide, on the road between Najaf and Kufa, where Sadr had preached earlier in the day. Tabtabaie was arrested, but his driver was killed in the attack, witnesses said.
Concerns over the continued fighting in Najaf and Karbala, two of the holiest cities in Shiite Islam, drew hundreds of thousands of Shiites into the streets of Beirut, Tehran and Manama, Bahrain, on Friday.
The Beirut rally was called by the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, which the U.S. government classifies as a terrorist organization. "We will defend al-Quds [Jerusalem], Najaf and Karbala," Said Hasan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Hezbollah, told the enormous gathering. "The occupation forces should get out of Najaf and Karbala. The [Shiite] nation should support all Iraq with all its sects."
Sadr's revolt is running up against the June 30 handover of limited authority to a new Iraqi government. U.S. officials want to end the unrest in the Shiite south before then. American forces also face a revolt of Sunni Muslims in central Iraq.
[On Saturday, the U.S. military announced that a U.S. soldier was killed and three others were wounded in an attack in Mahmudiyah, 15 miles south of Baghdad, according to news services. The military did not say when the attack occurred.]
U.S. officials announced that one U.S. soldier and two Iraqis were killed by a roadside bomb Thursday evening in Baghdad.
Shiite rivals of Sadr have called on him to give up, but he has defied them, too. After Friday prayers in Karbala, demonstrators marched for peace on an esplanade between the shrines of Abbas and Hussein, the two chief religious monuments in the city. A representative of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief Shiite religious leader, urged all armed groups to leave the city.
U.S. officials said they still hope that tribal and religious leaders can persuade Sadr to surrender. "The point we make to them is that they should support our actions against Sadr or they will all have to face the consequences of dealing with an outlaw later," Col. Peter Mansoor, the brigade commander in Karbala, said in an interview Thursday.
Mansoor said that Shiite opponents of Sadr do not want to take the fight to Sadr. "They fear civil war. They would rather have Americans do it," he said.
Foreign fighters and Iraqis from outside the city have reinforced Sadr's militia in Karbala, Mansoor said. The newcomers were more skillful combatants than the locals, he said: "They shoot better."
Mansoor added that Sadr's forces have displayed "surprising" willingness to take large numbers of casualties but that U.S. tactics will remain the same: to kill as many of his guerrillas as possible and isolate Sadr in Najaf. Karbala is supposed to exemplify the costs for Sadr. More than 100 Mahdi Army fighters have died in fighting here, according to U.S. officials.
Yet for the moment in Karbala, it is Americans who move with caution. Commanders have been told that they must avoid damaging the shrines of Abbas and Hussein. Officials explained the pullout from the mosque as a step toward turning downtown Karbala over to Iraqi security forces, although such a step was supposed to come after Sadr's forces were ousted from the city.
On Friday, Polish and Bulgarian troops visited the mosque to check for damage and weapons. Late Friday into Saturday, Company C rattled in Bradley Fighting Vehicles through central Karbala. They rolled by the walls of the twin shrines, moved past the apparently empty mosque and then westward, all without attracting a single rifle shot.
--------
Kurds Want a Top Post in Iraq
Leaders Threaten Boycott of Planned Interim Government
By Robin Wright and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46474-2004May21.html
Iraq's Kurdish leaders yesterday told a top U.S. envoy in Iraq that they want one of the two top positions in the new interim government -- president or prime minister -- or the Kurds will not participate in the body that is scheduled to take over when the United States hands over limited authority on June 30, according to Kurdish and U.S. sources.
The Kurds were slated to take a lower position, as one of two vice presidents, in a formula designed by U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi that the Bush administration hoped to unveil next week. But Jalal Talabani, a veteran Kurdish leader and one of 25 members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, yesterday informed Robert D. Blackwill, the U.S. presidential envoy to Iraq, that the Kurds would not take the job, Kurdish and U.S. sources said.
The move is a setback that complicates U.S. hopes of winning agreement from Iraq's disparate ethnic and religious factions on the makeup of the interim government. Unless the Kurds back down or U.S. and U.N. envoys negotiate a compromise soon, the process of forming a government could drag on longer than expected -- and potentially deepen rivalries, experts on Iraq warn.
The Bush administration hopes that the Kurds are posturing and can eventually be brought around, rather than be blamed for sabotaging the third attempt to form a government.
"This is jockeying for position and status. It strikes me as politics. It's good to see and messy to watch," said a senior State Department official involved in Iraq policy. "It's how committee assignments get made in our Congress. It's part of working the process and the kind of thing you work through. Talks [on a new government] are proceeding apace."
But Talabani and Massoud Barzani, who lead the two main Kurdish parties, have together insisted that the Kurds have one of the top two positions to create balance with Iraq's majority Arab population.
"The two Kurdish leaders are united. We believe the Kurds can be a bridge between the Sunnis and the Shiites," said a senior Kurdish official who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The majority of Iraq's 25 million people are Shiite Muslim. Most Kurds are Sunnis, bolstering the Sunni minority that has felt marginalized since the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
"They don't want to be a token," said Lehigh University professor Henri Barkey. "There's no question that Barzani and Talabani are bargaining."
With the June 30 deadline looming and the Bush administration struggling to establish control, the Kurds believe they have valuable leverage -- and will use it, said Iraq scholar Phebe Marr. Their strongest tool right now is the power of delay.
"They're going to bargain as hard as they can. They think they've got us over a barrel because we're fighting on so many other fronts: the Sunni front, the Shiia front," said Marr, author of "The Modern History of Iraq."
The Kurds, long buffeted by more powerful neighbors, enjoyed 13 years of increasing autonomy and prosperity in a protected security zone since the Persian Gulf War. With Hussein's government gone and the Kurdish northern sectors being folded back into a united Iraq, Kurds are worried about losing power and influence.
Some analysts believe Kurdish politicians, who have formally forsworn long-standing demands for independence, will still seek as much autonomy as possible in negotiations over the interim government.
The Kurds are "willing to look at options as long as they have some autonomy and some real and symbolic identity," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group.
"When you step back," Schneider continued, "is the balance going to be one in which the Kurdish representations at the national level reflect their view of their stake in the future of Iraq? Obviously, the negotiations will go to the last minute."
In his talk with Blackwill, Talabani argued that Kurds who have long been loyal to the Americans deserve respect and a better deal, particularly compared with the Sunni minority that ruled Iraq under Hussein. As Barkey put it: "The Kurds clearly have been the United States' best friend in Iraq."
-------- israel / palestine
Destruction Stuns Residents of Gaza
Siege Ends, but Israel Won't Pull Out
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46628-2004May21?language=printer
RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip, May 21 -- When Israeli troops lifted their two-day siege of the neighborhood called Brazil on Friday morning, everything was in the wrong place.
Multi-story buildings were gone, bulldozed to dust and chunks of concrete. New passages had been created by tanks that crashed through back yards. Some residents of the neighborhood were nowhere to be found.
A visitor from another part of this sprawling camp, which is home to nearly 100,000 Palestinians, pointed to a pile of rubble and asked: "Where is the family that lived over there? My sister lived in that house."
Four days after the Israeli military began the sweep called Operation Rainbow, troops and armor pulled back from Brazil and parts of the nearby Tel Sultan neighborhood. Senior Israeli military officials said, however, that the forces had been repositioned and were not being withdrawn.
"The operation is continuing as usual until we reach all the targets we've set for ourselves," the commander in charge of Gaza, Brig. Gen. Shmuel Zakai, said at a briefing in Tel Aviv.
At least 40 Palestinians have been killed in fighting during the operation, which officials said is aimed at rounding up Palestinian guerrillas and destroying tunnels used to smuggle weapons and other goods under the nearby Egyptian border. Initial reports indicated that one tunnel had been found, said an Israeli army spokesman, Capt. Jacob Dallal. Hundreds of people have been questioned, he said, and a few dozen are still in custody.
In Tel Sultan, which was sealed off early Tuesday at the start of Operation Rainbow, residents reported that although restrictions on their movement had been eased, Israeli tanks still ringed the neighborhood.
With the siege lifted, residents of Brazil and Tel Sultan were able to move in and out, and humanitarian aid workers brought in essential goods that some said were in desperate short supply. U.N. trucks delivered about 10,000 gallons of water to Tel Sultan, and people were able to buy food.
Zakai and army spokesmen said Palestinian officials had exaggerated the degree of hardship in the affected neighborhoods to increase international pressure on Israel to withdraw from the area. They said residents had regular access to food, water and medical care and had received 70 ambulances and more than 40 truckloads of food, water, medical supplies, mattresses and blankets.
"There is no humanitarian crisis in Rafah," Zakai said.
But the deputy director of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency here, Christer Nordahl, said the destruction of property would be more difficult to overcome. "I'm very worried about what's going to happen in the coming days," Nordahl said. "It falls on our watch to try and find new shelter for these people."
In an effort to cut off smuggling through the tunnels, Israeli military bulldozers have destroyed more than 1,200 houses in the Rafah camp in the past 3 1/2 years, according to the U.N. relief agency. In the past week, 40 buildings have been destroyed, according to U.N. officials, and dozens have been damaged. As a result, the officials estimated, 450 people were added to the nearly 11,000 already made homeless by the bulldozers.
The U.N. agency has opened two school buildings to house the refugees, and the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and other Palestinian groups are distributing food and financial aid.
On Friday morning, many buildings in Brazil looked like wrecked dollhouses. Walls were sheared away, revealing rooms where neat doilies still lay on tables and china in cabinets.
Residents were piling donkey carts with washing machines, mattresses and television sets to be moved to safety. Others picked through the rubble to find lost items. A man walked down a sandy street balancing a pile of frying pans.
"This is the third time my house has been demolished," Faiza Malahi, 37, said as she stacked mattresses on a cart. "I'm packing my furniture, but I don't know where I'm going to put it next."
Somewhere in the rubble of his home, said Ihab Mansour, was 1,500 Jordanian dinars he had intended to use to pay the bride price for his fiancee. At nightfall, Mansour, 23, was still guarding the area from digging children, trying to figure out a way to salvage his planned marriage.
Salman Qishta, 90, was in bed just past midnight Thursday when, according to relatives, Israeli forces knocked down an adjacent building. Collapsing walls crashed down on Qishta's home, partially pinning him under a pile of bricks and a water tank.
Qishta escaped with mild shock and head injuries, his relatives said, but his bedroom was destroyed, so on Friday he slept in a makeshift bed in his garden.
Israeli officials said only seven houses were demolished this week but conceded that many more had been extensively damaged in fighting. Armored bulldozers tore up the pavement of virtually every street in a search for mines and other explosives planted by militants, they said.
During the siege, Ashraf Alkhapeed, 26, an emergency medical technician for the Palestinian Red Crescent, shuttled between treating the injured near Tel Sultan and trying to reach his own family, besieged in Brazil.
Once his wife phoned while he was giving oxygen to a wounded 13-year-old. "There are Israeli tanks right outside the door," she said. "Please come and get the baby out."
Alkhapeed borrowed an ambulance and tried to enter Brazil four times, but the vehicle was shot at by tanks posted at the entrance to the neighborhood.
He said he told his wife over the phone: "Don't be afraid. I'm going to come to help you. Don't anybody go to the window or the door. Don't make noise."
But the baby wouldn't stop crying.
When the Brazil area opened Friday morning, Alkhapeed had to work for several hours before he could break away and look for his family. When he could, he rushed home to find everyone fine but his house riddled with bullet holes. So he arranged to send the family out of town, and he went back to work.
Correspondent Glenn Frankel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
--------
Gaza Paradox: Israeli Army Moves In So It Can Pull Out
May 22, 2004
By JAMES BENNET
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/international/middleeast/22mide.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, May 21 - Israeli forces have poured into the Gaza Strip this week partly because Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and most Israelis want to pull out of the Gaza Strip.
But no one knows when - if ever - Israel may actually withdraw its 7,500 settlers and the troops who protect them, and what effect that might have. That means this kind of fighting is likely to continue, military analysts say, and no one can know for how long.
The world is paying particular attention to Gaza now, as Israeli troops at least temporarily ease off one of their most overwhelming operations there since seizing the coastal strip in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. But the waves of violence have been rising, and crashing closer and closer together, ever since Mr. Sharon said on Feb. 2, "I am working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza."
Now in its fourth day, with some 40 Palestinians dead, the Israeli incursion helps explain the seeming paradox that a proposal to withdraw could lead to bloodshed.
Israeli military and political leaders have presented several goals for the raids - so many, in fact, that one Israeli official confessed Friday, "I'm not sure exactly what we want to accomplish there."
The army's most pressing tactical objective is to close smuggling tunnels to block what it says is an impending shipment of weapons, including Katyusha rockets, which would significantly extend militants' reach from Gaza.
But military officials have also spoken of a broader, strategic goal: enhancing, or restoring, the deterrent threat of the Israeli Army days after 11 Israeli soldiers were killed in separate attacks on armored vehicles in Gaza. Mr. Sharon's advisers say Palestinian militants are doing their best to make any Israeli withdrawal look like a retreat.
For Israeli security officials, that Palestinian campaign began in the port of Ashdod on March 14, when two suicide bombers killed 10 Israelis. It was the first time Palestinian suicide bombers had overcome Israel's fenced boundary with Gaza. Israeli officials called the focusing on the port, where dangerous chemicals are often stored, a serious increase in hostilities.
A week later, with a missile strike near a mosque in Gaza City, Israel killed the founder and ideological leader of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin.
Discussing that killing that week, Raanan Gissin, Mr. Sharon's spokesman, said, "The terrorist organizations entertain the notion that if we're going to execute this unilateral withdrawal, it's going to be under fire." If so, he continued, "it's going to be our fire, not their fire."
On April 17, Israel killed Sheik Yassin's replacement, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, also with a missile strike in Gaza City.
The immediate background for Israel's concern with deterrence is its withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. Israelis believe that that departure, which was unilateral, led Palestinians to think Israel would run from a fight, and so to start their uprising five months later.
But the preoccupation with deterrence runs deeper. For this small Jewish state in an Arab region, deterrence has long been the cornerstone of defense. That is one reason that Mr. Sharon's Likud Party resoundingly rejected his withdrawal plan in a vote by members on May 2.
Mr. Sharon is pushing ahead with an amended plan. The action in Gaza may reassure Israelis, at least, that Israel is not running from a fight.
But even for a nuclear power with the mightiest army in the Middle East - outside Iraq, at least - it is hard to make foes see a withdrawal under fire as an act of strength.
"At the end of the day, you're withdrawing, and it looks like you're withdrawing in response to force, and therefore the only language you understand is force," said Yossi Alpher, a military analyst and co-editor of Bitterlemons.org, an Israeli-Palestinian Internet dialogue. "And you know what? If indeed we do withdraw, to a large extent it's true. But we're not the only side who understands only force."
So far, militants in Gaza show no change in attitude. At a rally in the Jabaliya refugee camp outside Gaza City on Friday, Ismail al-Ashkar, a leader of Hamas, declared, "Gaza is waiting for you, Sharon." He predicted Palestinian victory.
The stated tactical objective of the Israeli raids, the tunnels, further underscores how difficult it will be for Israel to end the violence by means of the withdrawal plan. Smugglers dig the tunnels from the Rafah refugee camp, under an adjoining Israeli-patrolled strip along the Egyptian border, and into Egypt.
So far Israeli troops in Rafah have not found any tunnels in this raid. But even if they successfully destroy all of the existing ones, many Israeli analysts have wondered what would stop the Palestinians from digging more.
The army says it has already destroyed some 80 tunnels in more than three years of conflict. The hunt for smugglers has made Rafah the most persistent, deadliest battleground of the conflict.
It is a measure of Israel's anxiety about this problem that one solution dreamed up by military planners was to dig a sea-water canal along the border. The idea was rejected as costly, and also obnoxious to Egypt because it would allow saltwater to seep into freshwater aquifers.
Israel's chief solution so far has been to gradually widen the route its soldiers patrol by demolishing houses in Rafah.
Figures kept by the United Nations agency that oversees refugee camps show that Israel has been demolishing houses throughout Gaza at an accelerating rate throughout the conflict, reshaping the terrain to suit its perceived security needs.
The rate of demolition accelerated from an average of almost 12 houses a month in the first three months of the conflict at the end of 2000 to 65 a month last year and 104 a month in the first months of this year. In all, Israel has destroyed some 2,018 houses in Gaza during the conflict, leaving 18,382 people homeless, according to the agency.
In the first 15 days of May, Israel demolished 191 houses in Gaza, the United Nations agency says. The bulk of that demolition has been in Rafah. The army says militants use buildings along the Israeli-patrolled zone, which it says are usually abandoned, to fire at soldiers.
Last week, after the armored vehicles were destroyed, Israeli officials spoke of demolishing hundreds more homes to double the width of the Israeli zone to 500 yards. At the start of the incursion, Israeli military officials were quoted in the Israeli news media as saying that this was a last opportunity to reshape the terrain before a withdrawal.
So far, after an international outcry over the proposal, there has been no systematic demolition along the border.
Yet even if Israel does widen its zone of control, militants could dig longer tunnels, Mr. Alpher said.
Another solution would be to enlist Egypt against the smugglers. "They can do much more," a senior Israeli military official said. But Egypt shows little inclination to confront Arab militants who are causing a problem for Israel, not for Egypt.
That is why this fight over tunnels is a possible Achilles' heel of the Gaza withdrawal plan. According to Israeli officials, military officers insisted that Israel retain control over the zone along the Egyptian border after any evacuation, for fear that Egypt would let the weapons flow.
That means that even if Israel does ultimately leave, Rafah will probably remain a flash point and the battles over tunnels will probably continue. Mr. Sharon says Israel will feel free to re-enter Gaza whenever it feels threatened from there.
As a result, there is a back-to-the-future quality to the violence now in Gaza, a quality that may endure after an Israeli withdrawal.
One can easily conjure a situation in which after a withdrawal, a young Israeli officer will lead a devastating raid - much like the one under way now - against an Arab base in Gaza in response to militant attacks.
That is what happened on Feb. 28, 1955, when Gaza was still held by Egypt. The officer was Ariel Sharon.
--------
New Sharon still the old Sharon: the Gaza debacle
jang.com.pk
By Neve Gordon
May 22, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/may2004-daily/22-05-2004/world/w7.htm
Two weeks after 60,000 Likud members voted against a pullout from the Gaza Strip, about 150,000 Israelis filled Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv, calling upon the government to proceed with the withdrawal plan. The first group supports the vision of a Greater Israel; the second supports the state of Israel. The first group believes that without Gaza Israel will be destroyed; the second believes that with it Israel will be destroyed.
The contested area is an extremely densely populated yet arid region. Enclosed by a security fence on three sides and the Mediterranean Sea on the fourth, Gaza has become a prison for most of the population. Within it live 1.3 million Palestinians, of which over 900,000 are refugees who moved to the region after losing their homes in 1948. There is barely any industry in the Strip, and very few residents have been able to obtain permits to leave in search of work.
Unemployment rate is estimated at 50 percent, and figures indicate that 84 percent of the Palestinian residents live in poverty, with an average per capita income of $2 per day. Considering that the Strip is on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, it is not surprising that most people have become dependent on aid handouts. Practically all doors have been closed, except, of course, the mosque doors.
7,500 Jewish settlers also live in this desolate region, less than one percent of the total population of Gaza. They believe in the Greater Israel, and now control over one third of the Strip's territory. Whereas about half of the Palestinians live in squalid refugee camps, the settlers have nice villas with green lawns and playgrounds, and use about seven times more water than their occupied neighbours.
Ironically, Sharon's unilateral plan to dismantle the Gaza settlements and withdraw the troops who guard them, while closing of all the Strip's borders - including access from air and sea - was also informed by the Greater Israel paradigm. Sharon realized that the occupied Palestinians will always have a demographic advantage in the area, and he is no longer willing to allocate outrageous amounts of resources to protect the handful of Jewish settlers living there. One senior United Nations official recently put it to me in the following way: "Sharon intends to remove the wardens, lock-up the prison, and throw the keys into the sea."
Sharon's proposal, though, is also about annexation, not only withdrawal. One clause stipulates that areas within the West Bank "will remain part of the state of Israel, among them civilian settlements, military zones and places where Israel has additional interests." The Bush Administration supported this clause, legitimating Sharon's request to annex de jure what has already been annexed de facto. The idea is to provide legal standing to the 220,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and the 180,000 living in East Jerusalem, and, in this way, reduce the possibility that they will need to return to Israel proper in any future agreement.
Paradoxically, though, the Likudniks rejected their leader's plan. The highly efficient yet extremist West Bank settler organization, the Yesha Council, managed to hijack the ruling party. In the days leading up to the referendum, settlers went from door to door, convincing Likud voters to reject Sharon's proposal; ultimately, 60 percent were persuaded.
Why, one might ask, did the West Bank settlers reject Sharon's unilateral plan? After all, in return for relocating 7,500 settlers, Bush acknowledged the legality of 400,000 settlers and, in this way, helped cement the dream of a Greater Israel.
The answer is simple. The settlers know, better than anyone else, that in the occupied territories the rule of law matters much less than facts on the ground. The settlers learned as much from Sharon himself, who is considered the father of Israel's unruly settlement project. They accordingly care less about legalisms and more about implementation, and a withdrawal from Gaza would create a dangerous precedent: it would be the first time that Jewish settlements were dismantled within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And if it can happen in the Strip, it can happen in the West Bank as well.
Sharon no longer accepts this logic, and while he might have lost the battle, he has yet to lose the war. He is intent on moving forward with his original plan, and the military campaign launched in Gaza in many ways serves his objective.
Sharon turned Gaza into a military playground some time ago. Yet after his recent defeat at the polls he decided to transform it into a Lebanon of sorts. Whereas only 12 out of the 116 terrorist attacks perpetrated inside Israel since the eruption of the second Intifada came out of the Gaza Strip, 45 percent of the Palestinians killed by the Israeli military are Gazans (about 1,000 people). The Israeli military has destroyed hundreds of houses in the Strip, thus rendering over 17,500 people homeless. In the past few days the south part of Gaza was cut-off from the north, and as scores of Palestinians were killed and over 100 houses were demolished, thousands fled Rafah in fear of being hurt. A whole civilian area was transformed into a war zone. The Lebanonization of Gaza has succeeded.
On the one hand, Sharon has successfully convinced large segments of the Israeli public that the military campaign in Gaza, including the massive house demolitions, are carried out in order to "stop the terrorist cells' oxygen." Unlike his 1982 invasion of Beirut, this time even the Supreme Court has given its green light, rendering both Sharon and his campaign kosher.
On the other hand, the senseless deaths of 13 Israeli soldiers during the campaign's first days have shocked the Israeli public, reminding it of the pointless occupation of Lebanon. Their deaths have become an impetus for insisting on the withdrawal of troops and the dismantling of settlements.
Sharon, so it seems, is destroying Gaza in order to withdraw from it, thus suggesting that the new Sharon is still the old Sharon. His myopic plans, informed by short-term security concerns, totally ignore Israel's aspiration to be a democratic state in the Middle East and have nothing to do with a vision of peace. Regardless of whether he manages to implement his plan, the vision of a Greater Israel, as opposed to a state of Israel, has, for the time being, triumphed.
-------- mideast
Arab Meeting Expected to Produce Mostly Criticism of U.S.
May 22, 2004
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/international/africa/22arab.html
TUNIS, May 21 - Arab leaders gathering for a summit meeting on Saturday and Sunday in this North African capital are expected to issue a collective criticism of the United States for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners and what they view as the anemic American effort toward ending the Arab-Israeli conflict.
They probably will also issue a joint statement favoring domestic political reform that political activists and other analysts call far too diluted. Wrangling over wording acceptable to league members forced a two-month delay in the meeting.
The Bush administration had hoped that this summit meeting would showcase a greater political openness in the Arab world stemming from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Instead, it appears likely that it will highlight how spiraling violence in Iraq, as well as in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, is hobbling attempts to reshape the region.
"It will be difficult for America to promote democratic change, given the great failure in Iraq," said Wahid Abdel Maguid, an Egyptian political analyst at Al Ahram Center for Strategic Studies. "The model doesn't exist, plus the U.S. doesn't have the moral credibility that it used to have to impose its will on other countries."
A draft version of the final communiqué sharply censures the United States for the mistreatment of Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere.
"The Arab leaders strongly condemn the inhumane and immoral crimes and practices committed by the occupation forces against the Iraqi detainees in the prisons and demand that the perpetrators of these crimes be tried," the draft document reads in part. It also calls for an effective United Nations role in ending the occupation of Iraq.
The draft criticizes President Bush's recent statements supporting Israel's permanent control over some Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and rejecting Palestinian refugees' "right of return'' to what is now Israel.
The document suggests that the Bush administration should be working on carrying out the president's vision of a Palestinian state rather than undermining negotiating positions needed to solve such problems. It also condemns the recent Israeli incursion into the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, which has claimed about 40 Palestinian lives.
On the issue of political reform, it suggests that the Arab leaders will commit themselves to the general idea, saying they are "determined to continue the steps toward comprehensive reform already started."
Some Arab officials call that commitment a historic achievement.
"This is the first time this is being considered by the Arab League, and it is a good start," said Hossam Zaki, the spokesman for the league, noting the difficulty in getting 22 different nations to agree on any such fundamental change. "These issues are extremely critical and delicate."
The fight over the reform wording, among other issues, provoked tensions in March that prompted the Tunisian president to postpone the meeting. The tension started in the winter, when the Bush administration made known that it would introduce its own blueprint for Arab reform at the meeting of eight leading industrialized nations in June.
The Arabs balked at the idea of reform plans being imposed on them and scrambled to come up with their own outline before June. Some of the smaller countries, including Tunisia, Jordan and Bahrain, pushed for more specific language than larger Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Syria.
The working document is a compromise, but Arab press reports were predicting further tension because the smaller countries have been invited to take part in the Group of Eight meeting while the larger ones have not.
Political experts said the proposals had been watered down to the point that they were open to wide interpretation. The draft document, for example, calls for "responsible freedom of expression" rather than outright freedom of speech, giving despotic governments plenty of leeway to crush anything they deem irresponsible.
Three of Tunisia's tiny opposition parties issued a statement calling on the Arab League to bolster its reform agenda by issuing a specific timetable and a mechanism for carrying it out.
The statement included a long list of specific measures. On freedom of speech, for example, it called for Arab League members to commit themselves to steps like freeing up the licenses and distribution of newspapers, ending state monopolies on radio and television and ending controls over the Internet.
But even the authors of the petition conceded that the Arab public in general was paying far more attention to the violence in Iraq and the Palestinian territories than to reform in their own countries.
"It would be a discussion without any credibility if they talk about reform while people in Iraq and in Palestine are living under occupation and being tortured," said Rashid Khashana, a Tunisian political activist and journalist.
Indeed, the problem of the Arab League, especially in recent years, is that the general public views it as all talk and no action. Much of the drama in recent decades has been caused by spats among individual countries.
Last year, when they were supposed to be finding a way to prevent the American invasion of Iraq, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, got into a argument over which of them was the greater lackey of the West.
This year, the crown prince is staying away, along with the leaders of all the Persian Gulf states except Qatar, the presidents of Yemen and Sudan and the interim leader of Iraq.
Some Tunisians said they would like the meeting to issue a statement supporting the Iraqi resistance to the American-led occupation, but they do not expect that to happen. In fact, they do not expect much.
"They provide no real solutions, and even if they did, nobody is committed to these resolutions and no one can impose it on the others," said Asma Allam, a 24-year-old economics student walking along one of Tunis's leafy main avenues. "So what is the point?"
-------- pakistan / india
Commonwealth Ends Suspension of Pakistan
May 22, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-commonwealth-pakistan.html
LONDON (Reuters) - The Commonwealth readmitted Pakistan on Saturday, citing the country's progress on democratic reforms since its suspension after a military coup five years ago.
The decision ends the exclusion imposed after President Pervez Musharraf seized power in 1999 and seals Pakistan's reintegration into the international fold.
Pakistan, which has one of the world's biggest Muslim populations, has already been embraced by the United States as a major ally, widely seen as a reward for its support in the U.S-led war against terror.
``The (Commonwealth) welcomed the progress made in restoring democracy and rebuilding democratic institutions in Pakistan,'' Secretary-General Don McKinnon said.
``(It) decided therefore that Pakistan should no longer remain suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth.''
But the group of 53 mostly former British colonies said after a meeting of foreign ministers and diplomats it would monitor further reforms and expected Musharraf to meet a pledge to stand down as chief of the army by the end of this year.
If the nuclear power fails to continue along the road to democracy or if Musharraf does not stand down as army chief the Commonwealth will consider fresh action, officials said.
Many analysts had predicted the Commonwealth would lift the suspension.
``The fact that Pakistan has been accepted by other countries and institutions would have put the Commonwealth out on a limb if it had not made this decision,'' said Gareth Price, South East Asia expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
``MORAL VICTORY''
Pakistan, which has a population of 149 million, had long argued it had met Commonwealth demands.
``This is our moral victory. We deserve it,'' said Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.
Pakistan's high commissioner to London, Maleeha Lodhi, said Musharraf would stick to his undertaking to resign as army head.
``Let's remember he has stood by every commitment he has made, that's his track record,'' she said.
Musharraf was made army chief in 1998 and ousted the elected prime minister Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup a year later.
Diplomats said earlier an apparent softening of his pledge to give up his army uniform and the deportation earlier this month of Nawaz Sharif's younger brother Shahbaz Sharif had raised concerns.
Critics accuse Musharraf of building up a personal power base by strengthening pro-military groups before quitting as army chief and point out that top opposition leaders including former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have been in exile for several years.
Farhatullah Babar, spokesman for Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, said: ``The decision is not surprising as western countries, taking General Musharraf's promise to fight against terror on its face value, wanted to reward his government.''
Emeka Anyaoku, a former Commonwealth Secretary-General, said it was ``a tragic blow to the hard earned credibility of the (Commonwealth) as a force for promoting its fundamental principle of democracy.''
Representatives from Nigeria, India, Canada, Tanzania, Lesotho, the Bahamas, Malta, Samoa and Sri Lanka made the decision in the name of the Commonwealth.
McKinnon said the decision had no direct impact on Zimbabwe which withdrew from the Commonwealth last December after its suspension was extended.
- Additional reporting by Zeehsan Haider in Islamabad
--------
Pakistan Army Lodges Protest
Associated Press
By MUNIR AHMAD
May 22, 2004
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-pakistan-us-troops,0,4417940.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan's army has lodged a strong protest with U.S.-led coalition forces based in neighboring Afghanistan over an incursion by U.S. troops into a Pakistani tribal region while chasing terror suspects, an army spokesman said Saturday.
The incursion occurred Thursday at Lowara Mandi, a remote village in northwestern Pakistan, where American soldiers searched several homes for about three hours but returned to Afghanistan when officials rushed there and told them to leave.
Pakistan army spokesman Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press that the military has filed a protest with the coalition forces and received an apology, much like what occurred following a similar incursion May 5. The apology was accepted, Sultan said.
In Washington, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said any border crossing by American troops would have been accidental. "We'll take precautions to make sure it doesn't happen again," he told CNN International in an interview.
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. military in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has been a key U.S. ally since U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Since then, the Americans have hunted Taliban fugitives and their al-Qaida allies, many of whom, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be hiding in Pakistan's rugged borderlands. Pakistan does not allow hot pursuit across its border.
Pakistan has deployed 70,000 troops in the tribal areas to block the insurgents, but suffered a setback recently when dozens of troops were killed in clashes with suspected al-Qaida fighters.
------- prisoners of war
Double Standards?
A Justice Department memo proposes that the United States hold others accountable for international laws on detainees-but that Washington did not have to follow them itself
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Michael Isikoff Investigative Correspondent
Newsweek
May 22, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5032094/site/newsweek/
May 21 - In a crucial memo written four months after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Justice Department lawyers advised that President George W. Bush and the U.S. military did not have to comply with any international laws in the handling of detainees in the war on terrorism. It was that conclusion, say some critics, that laid the groundwork for aggressive interrogation techniques that led to the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
The draft memo, which drew sharp protest from the State Department, argued that the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to any Taliban or Al Qaeda fighters being flown to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, because Afghanistan was a "failed state" whose militia did not have any status under international treaties.
But the Jan. 9, 2002 memo, written by Justice lawyers John Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty, went far beyond that conclusion, explicitly arguing that no international laws-including the normally observed laws of war-applied to the United States at all because they did not have any status under federal law.
"As a result, any customary international law of armed conflict in no way binds, as a legal matter, the President or the U.S. Armed Forces concerning the detention or trial of members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban," according to a copy of the memo obtained by NEWSWEEK. A copy of the memo is being posted today on NEWSWEEK's Web site.
At the same time, and even more striking, according to critics, the memo explicitly proposed a de facto double standard in the war on terror in which the United States would hold others accountable for international laws it said it was not itself obligated to follow.
After concluding that the laws of war did not apply to the conduct of the U.S. military, the memo argued that President Bush could still put Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters on trial as war criminals for violating those same laws. While acknowledging that this may seem "at first glance, counter-intuitive," the memo states this is a product of the president's constitutional authority "to prosecute the war effectively."
The two lawyers who drafted the memo, entitled "Application of Treaties and Laws to Al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees," were key members of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, a unit that provides legal advice to the White House and other executive-branch agencies. The lead author, John Yoo, a conservative law professor and expert on international law who was at the time deputy assistant attorney general in the office, also crafted a series of related memos-including one putting a highly restrictive interpretation on an international torture convention-that became the legal framework for many of the Bush administration's post-9/11 policies. Yoo also coauthored another OLC memo entitled "Possible Habeas Jurisdiction Over Aliens Held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," that concluded that U.S. courts could not review the treatment of prisoners at the base.
Critics say the memos' disregard for the United States' treaty obligations and international law paved the way for the Pentagon to use increasingly aggressive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay-including sleep deprivation, use of forced stress positions and environmental manipulation-that eventually were applied to detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The customary laws of war, as articulated in multiple international treaties and conventions dating back centuries, also prohibit a wide range of conduct such as attacks on civilians or the murder of captured prisoners.
Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, who has examined the memo, described it as a "maliciously ideological or deceptive" document that simply ignored U.S. obligations under multiple international agreements. "You can't pick or choose what laws you're going to follow," said Roth. "These political lawyers set the nation on a course that permitted the abusive interrogation techniques" that have been recently disclosed.
When you read the memo, "the first thing that comes to mind is that this is not a lofty statement of policy on behalf of the United States," said Scott Horton, president of the International League for Human Rights, in an interview scheduled to be aired tonight on PBS's "Now with Bill Moyers" show. "You get the impression very quickly that it is some very clever criminal defense lawyers trying to figure out how to weave and bob around the law and avoid its applications."
At the time it was written, the memo also prompted a strong rebuttal from the State Department's Legal Advisor's office headed by William Howard Taft IV. In its own Jan. 11, 2002, response to the Justice draft, Taft's office warned that any presidential actions that violated international law would "constitute a breach of an international legal obligation of the United States" and "subject the United States to adverse international consequences in political and legal fora and potentially in the domestic courts of foreign countries."
"The United States has long accepted that customary international law imposes binding obligations as a matter of international law," reads the State Department memo, which was also obtained by NEWSWEEK. "In domestic as well as international fora, we often invoke customary international law in articulating the rights and obligations of States, including the United States. We frequently appeal to customary international law." The memo then cites numerous examples, ranging from the U.S. Army Field Manual on the Law of Land Warfare ("The unwritten or customary law of war is binding upon all nations," it reads) to U.S. positions in international issues such as the Law of the Sea.
But the memo also singled out the potential problems the Justice Department position would have for the military tribunals that President Bush had recently authorized to try Al Qaeda members and suspected terrorists. Noting that White House counsel Alberto Gonzales had publicly declared that the persons tried in such commissions would be charged with "offenses against the international laws of war," the State Department argued that the Justice position would undercut the basis for the trials.
"We are concerned that arguments by the United States to the effect that customary international law is not binding will be used by defendants before military commissions (or in proceedings in federal court) to argue that the commissions cannot properly try them for crimes under international law," the State memo reads. "Although we can imagine distinctions that might be offered, our attempts to gain convictions before military commissions may be undermined by arguments which call into question the very corpus of law under which offenses are prosecuted."
The Yoo-Delahunty memo was addressed to William J. Hanes, then general counsel to the Defense Department. But administration officials say it was the primary basis for a Jan. 25, 2002, memo by White House counsel Gonzales-which has also been posted on NEWSWEEK's Web site-that urged the president to stick to his decision not to apply prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions to captured Al Qaeda or Taliban fighters. The president's decision not to apply such status to the detainees was announced the following month, but the White House never publicly referred to the Justice conclusion that no international laws-including the usual laws of war-applied to the conflict.
One international legal scholar, Peter Spiro of Hofstra University, said that the conclusions in the memo related to international law "may be defensible" because most international laws are not binding in U.S. courts. But Spiro said that "technical" and "legalistic" argument does not change the effect that the United States still has obligations in international courts and under international treaties. "The United States is still bound by customary international law," he said.
--------
Punishment and Amusement
Documents Indicate 3 Photos Were Not Staged for Interrogation
By Scott Higham and Joe Stephens
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46523-2004May21.html
Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers, according to previously secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Several of the photographs taken by military police on the cellblock have become iconic, among them the naked human pyramid, the hooded man standing on a box hooked up to wires, and the three naked prisoners handcuffed together on the prison floor. The documents show that MPs staged the photographs as a form of entertainment or to discipline the prisoners for acts ranging from rioting to an alleged rape of a teenage boy in the prison.
The documents include statements by four of the seven MPs now charged in the abuse scandal: Spec. Sabrina Harman, Spec. Jeremy Sivits, Sgt. Javal S. Davis and Pfc. Lynndie England. Their statements provide new insights into the unfolding case.
For instance, they contain tantalizing hints about the role of military intelligence officers who operated in the shadows of Tier 1A at the prison. One military police officer said in a sworn statement that civilian and military intelligence officers frequently visited Tier 1A at night, spiriting detainees away for questioning out of sight of the MPs inside a "wood hut" behind the prison building. The documents also offer the first detailed account of how the abuse scandal unraveled.
Spec. Joseph M. Darby told investigators that he returned to Abu Ghraib from leave in November and heard about a shooting at the prison's "hard site," which contains Tier 1A. He said that he asked the MP in charge of the tier's night shift, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., if he had any photographs of the cell where the shooting took place.
Darby said Graner handed him two CDs of photographs.
"I thought the discs just had pictures of Iraq, the cell where the shooting occurred," Darby told investigators.
Instead, Darby viewed hundreds of photographs showing naked detainees being abused by U.S. soldiers.
"It was just wrong," Darby said. "I knew I had to do something."
He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.' "
In the newly obtained documents, the MPs who gave statements describe Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II as the leaders and organizers of the abuse. Frederick was the enlisted man in charge of Tier 1A and worked as a prison guard in Virginia.
Graner, Frederick and Spec. Megan Ambuhl requested lawyers and declined to provide investigators with sworn statements.
Attorneys for several of the charged MPs said their clients were acting at the behest of military intelligence officers at the prison to soften up the detainees for interrogation sessions.
"They were following orders," said Danielle Guebert, an attorney for England. "The orders came from military intelligence."
Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski has said that military intelligence officers were in charge of the cellblock at the time. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross who visited the prison in mid-October, shortly before the worst of the recorded abuses, complained that detainees were being stripped and humiliated. "The military intelligence officer in charge of the interrogation explained that this practice was 'part of the process,' " the Red Cross said in a report. It remains unclear exactly what role military intelligence officers played in the abuses that have been documented in photographs and videos taken by MPs on the cellblock.
Davis, one of the MPs, said he lied when he was initially confronted by military investigators about his role in the abuse, according to the documents. He gave a second statement on Jan. 15. "It bothers me that I did not tell the truth," he said. "When I was asked about it today, I decided I needed to be honest and maintain my integrity and admit my fault."
Davis said that civilian and military intelligence personnel frequently visited Tier 1A and took detainees to a wood hut outside for interrogations.
Portions of Davis's statement were included in an investigative report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. But his full statement contains fresh details about what took place on the cellblock.
There were different rules and procedures on Tier 1A, he said.
"I never saw a set of rules or SOP [standard operating procedure] for that section -- just word of mouth," Davis said. "I did see paperwork provided by the MI [military intelligence] soldiers regulating sleep and meals for some of the MI-hold prisoners."
He said he was asked by Graner to help prepare the detainees for interrogation. MPs or their attorneys have said that Graner served as the liaison on the cellblock between the MPs and the intelligence officers, who had taken control of Tier 1A by the fall of 2003.
Davis said Graner told him "the agents and MI soldiers would ask him to do things, but nothing was ever in writing, he would complain."
Special visitors frequented the wing at night, Davis said. They included representatives from the military's Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and other government agencies (OGA), a common expression for the CIA.
"On the night shift, FBI, OGA, CID, MI would be in and out of the wing interrogating prisoners, bringing them in, or taking them away to the wood hut behind the hard site or away period," Davis said. "Someone was always there from the other agencies or military personnel, it seemed."
He said he was disgusted by the treatment of the detainees.
"You mentioned you saw various things you thought were immoral," one investigator asked him. "What things are you referring to?"
"The sleep and food plan that was the majority of the crap," Davis said. "You see inmates stand all day and not get food until they are scheduled to sleep. They stand for three to four hours. . . ."
"Why did you not inform your chain of command about this abuse?"
"Because I assumed that if they were doing anything out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something," Davis said. "Also, the wing belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse."
Davis said Graner and Frederick encouraged him to participate in the incidents.
"The MI staffs, to my understanding, have been giving Graner compliments on the way he has been handling the MI holds," Davis said. "Example being statements like 'Good job, they're breaking down real fast'; 'They answer every question'; 'They're giving out good information, finally'; and 'Keep up the good work' -- stuff like that."
Investigators asked if he had heard military intelligence officers directing the guards to abuse detainees.
"Yes," he said.
Davis said the intelligence officers told Graner and Frederick: "Loosen this guy up for us. Make sure he has a bad night. Make sure he gets the treatment."
"What is the name of the MI staff member who made the previously stated comments?" investigators asked.
"I don't know the name because they often don't wear uniforms, and if they do they don't have name tapes," Davis said.
Harman also hinted that military intelligence officers were orchestrating events on Tier 1A. She described a number of abuses, including soldiers letting a dog bite a detainee on both legs. She said that an interpreter practiced karate kicks to the head of another detainee, nicknamed the "Taxicab Driver." She said he was hit so hard he required stitches.
"MI, CID, OGA, etc., have all been involved," she told investigators.
England also told investigators that "MI had told us to 'rough them' up to get answers from the prisoners." All the MPs who provided statements also described abuses that appeared to have little to do with intelligence gathering. Instead, they said detainees were beaten and sexually humiliated as punishment or for fun.
On Oct. 24, the MPs decided to punish three detainees suspected of raping a teenage boy at the prison. To make the men confess, the MPs stripped them and handcuffed them together.
"They started to handcuff the two rapist[s] together in odd positions/ways," England told investigators. "Once the two were handcuffed together, the third guy was brought over and handcuffed between the other two. Then they were laying on the floor handcuffed together, so all the other prisoners could see them. CPL Graner and SSG Frederick then asked me to start taking pictures with the camera."
The resulting images, which show several soldiers other than Graner and Frederick, have been cited by Graner's attorney as evidence that such practices were condoned by military intelligence officers.
Several of the worst abuses photographed took place on a single day, Nov. 8.
In one of the most striking images to surface, a detainee jokingly referred to as "Gilligan" by the MPs was forced to stand on a box of food, with wires connected to his fingers, toes and penis.
Harman said she attached the wires to "Gilligan" and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.
"Why did you do this to the detainee 'Gilligan'?" a military investigator asked.
"Just playing with him," Harman said.
Also that day, MPs punished seven detainees they said were instigating a riot in a part of the prison outside Tier 1A.
The detainees were stripped and forced to the floor of the cellblock.
"Graner was placing them into position," Harman told investigators.
"How long did the human pyramid last?" an investigator asked her.
"The pyramid lasted about 15 to 20 minutes," she said.
At one point, David jumped onto the pile of naked men, Sivits said.
"That is when Sergeant Davis ran across the room and lunged in the air and landed in the middle of where the detainees were," Sivits said. "I believe Davis ran across the room a total of two times and landed in the middle of the pile of detainees. A couple of the detainees kind of made an 'ah' sound."
--------
Soldiers and Detainees Tell Stories Behind the Pictures
By Josh White and Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46555-2004May21.html
The images have become so familiar that the words "Abu Ghraib" conjure visions of moments harrowing, disturbing and violent -- but lacking context.
And they have left many questions unanswered. How did the man with the wires get there? Why is the soldier holding the man by a leash? Are the pictures staged?
Now, with sworn statements obtained by The Washington Post, in which both the soldiers charged in the abuse and the alleged victims have told investigators their views of what happened, the stories behind the photographs have begun to take shape.
Pfc. Lynndie England had a chance to explain why she was standing in a prison hallway, holding a naked man on a leash. She said another widely reproduced photograph of a fellow soldier threatening to hit a detainee was a ruse. He never did follow through, she said. Spec. Jeremy Sivits, however, described how soldiers did in fact punch detainees, even knocking one unconscious.
There are also the detainees' versions. One prisoner, who tells investigators he was among those forced to lie in a pile of naked men -- a formation captured in one of the first Abu Ghraib photos to be released -- said the guards "treated us like animals, not humans. . . . No one showed us mercy."
Then, finally, there is a voice for the man seen worldwide with arms outstretched and wires attached to his body.
In sparse, pained language, he described standing there wearing nothing but a hood and a blanket as a soldier put "electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis."
He heard someone say, "Which switch is on for electricity?"
Then, through his hood, he saw a flash of light and knew someone just took his picture.
A soldier, Spec. Sabrina Harman, gave investigators another perspective. The man attached to the wires was nicknamed Gilligan, she said. "He was just standing on the box with the sandbag over his head for about an hour. I put the wires on his hands. I do not recall how. I was joking with him and told him if he fell off he would get electrocuted."
The soldiers displayed a broad range of emotions while discussing the abuse captured in the photographs. At times, they delighted in what was being done to the prisoners, likening them to pranks. Other soldiers participated reluctantly, they said, posing in the pictures at the direction of others.
Sgt. Javal S. Davis said he questioned the morality of what was happening. Others said they were surprised at the sudden bursts of violence that were unleashed on the prisoners. They were contrite about not doing more to stop it.
The prisoners expressed an amalgam of humiliation and horror as they described being photographed as part of a human pyramid, being forced to masturbate or standing in uncomfortable positions handcuffed to a cell door.
One told of being stripped and forced into the pile. He said he was handcuffed to a bed, and that a soldier punched "us in the stomach and hit us on the head and face. . . . When I see him, I'm scared to death."
But he seemed to know that, coming from a prisoner, his words would be viewed with skepticism. And so he told the investigators another thing, something that would confirm everything he had described: The soldier who abused him took pictures, he said, and they are out there somewhere.
Find the pictures, he said, "and you will find everything I said was true."
--------
Punches and Kicks 'Knocked the Detainee Unconscious'
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46656-2004May21.html
It was late October or early November, and the alleged abuses were escalating. According to soldiers, detainees and dozens of photographs, the physical violence included shoves into walls, slaps, punches and karate-style kicks to the head.
Some prisoners needed stitches; one was hit so hard in the chest that he stopped breathing; another was knocked unconscious by a single punch to the temple.
In a series of photographs, one soldier is seen with a pile of detainees. In one picture, he is cocking his fist while holding the detainee in a headlock; in another, he is posing on top of them, flexing his muscles for the camera.
The scene was one that several soldiers recounted in statements, and one that appeared to echo other, and similar, attacks on detainees.
"At one point after a couple of the detainees were stripped, and I do not know what provoked Graner, but Graner knelt down to one of the detainees . . . put the detainee's head in a cradle position with Graner's arm, and Graner punched the detainee with a lot of force, in the temple," Sivits told investigators. "Graner punched the detainee with a closed fist so hard in the temple that it knocked the detainee unconscious. . . . I do remember Graner saying 'Damn, that hurt' . . . after Graner had done this he went over to the pile of detainees that were still clothed and he put his knees on them and had his picture taken."
Shalan Said Alsharoni, a detainee at Abu Ghraib, told investigators that the beatings were commonplace, intertwined with "torture" that included soldiers hitting prisoners' genitals with gloved hands. Alsharoni recalled an incident that appeared very similar to the image depicted in the photo, when he said a group of detainees resisted being placed naked next to each other.
"And when they refused, Graner beat them up until they put them on top of each other and they took pictures of them," Alsharoni said, according to the documents. "After they brought six people, and they beat them up until they dropped on the floor and one of them his nose was cut and the blood was running from his nose and he was screaming but no one responded."
Davis said he became emotional when dealing with some of the detainees.
"I did step on the inmates' hands and feet on purpose and not on purpose," Davis said. "I was very upset at the inmates for wanting to kill some of my fellow soldiers from my company. I wanted to scare them."
England told investigators that not all of the photos are what they appear to be. She said the photo of a soldier cocking his fist was a ruse.
"Graner and Frederick told me to grab the camera and get some pictures of them pretending to hit the prisoners," England said in her statement. "While I was taking the pictures at no time did they actually hit the prisoners."
--------
The Electrocution Threat 'Just Playing With Him'
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46863-2004May21.html
The photo of the hooded man standing on a box was one of the first images to emerge in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and it is one of the most indelible. The detainee's emotion was fear; the soldiers described it as a joke in interviews with investigators.
Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh told Army investigators that Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr. took him to Abu Ghraib's Room No. 37, a shower room, where Graner allegedly "started punishing" him. Then the detainee nicknamed Gilligan by soldiers was ordered to stand on a box of food, clothed only in a blanket.
An unidentified soldier then put the bag over his head. Wires were attached to his fingers, toes and genitals.
The wires stretched to the back wall of the room, behind the detainee.
"Which switch is on for electricity?" a male soldier said, before screaming at Faleh through a loudspeaker, according to the detainee's statement.
Harman told investigators that she, Graner and Staff Sgt. Ivan L. "Chip" Frederick II were there when the picture was taken. She said the detainee stood on that box for about an hour.
Her statement to a special agent with the Army Criminal Investigation Division on Jan. 15 detailed this exchange:
"Agent: Who took the pictures of this?
"Harman: I took one and Frederick took one.
"Agent: Why did you do this to the detainee 'Gilligan'?
"Harman: Just playing with him."
Faleh said he was made to pose and then he fell because of exhaustion. He said Graner then ordered him to stand up and hold a box of food, depicted in another photograph obtained by The Post this week.
"I was so tired, and I dropped it," Faleh told investigators. "He started screaming at me in English. He made me lift a white chair high in the air. . . . And I slept after that for about an hour, and then I woke up at headcount time. I couldn't go back to sleep after that because I was very scared."
--------
The Naked Pyramid 'I Was Laughing at Some of the Stuff'
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16
Washington Post
It was the night of Nov. 8, and documents show that seven prisoners were brought into Tier 1 at Abu Ghraib for allegedly starting a riot in the outside tents at the prison compound. The detainees were dragged into piles, stripped and at times hit, according to photos and videos.
Then, soldiers told investigators, someone came up with the idea of placing the naked detainees into a pyramid in the middle of the floor. One detainee after another was put in a crouching position on the floor and a soldier directed the action. One by one they were placed on top of one another, forming a human tower.
The picture, of soldiers grinning behind the pile, is one of the most widely known images of humiliation at Abu Ghraib.
Harman said Graner was placing the detainees into position, and said the entire pyramid lasted 15 to 20 minutes. Sivits said he was surprised by some of what the soldiers were making the detainees do, which later included a string of naked, hooded detainees standing in a line masturbating.
"I was laughing at some of the stuff that they had them do," Sivits told investigators. "I was disgusted at some of the stuff as well. As I think about it now I do not think any of it was funny."
The investigator then asked: "What part did you think was funny?"
Sivits answered: "The tower thing."
Shortly after, the documents show, the detainees were ordered to masturbate while soldiers stepped back to take photos and video. England said she was then asked to walk over and point at one of the men, which she said she did reluctantly.
"I really didn't want to get that close him masturbating but posed for the picture anyway," she said, referring to the well-known photo in which she points cheerily at a detainee's genitals, a cigarette hanging lazily from her mouth.
--------
The Dogs 'They Let the Dogs Corner Him'
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46655-2004May21.html
Dogs appear in at least four photographs with their unidentified handlers, who seem to be restraining the animals from attack. Terror is etched on the prisoners' faces as they cower, some in prison hallways, another backed into a corner, another naked against a wall.
The dogs are unmuzzled, and in some images their teeth can be seen. They are face to face with the inmates. "I recall an occasion when two dogs were brought into 1A to scare an inmate," Harman said.
"He was naked against the wall when they let the dogs corner him. They pulled them back enough and the prisoner ran . . . straight across the floor like he was trying to jump in their arms. The prisoner was cornered and a dog bit his leg."
This, apparently, wasn't enough for the handlers. According to Harman's account, the dogs were kept close enough to the detainee so they could strike again. "A couple seconds later he started to move again, and the dog bit his other leg," Harman said. "The guy ran straight for the door, where they tackled him."
According to Harman's account, she ran to get a first-aid kit and another soldier then came to help stitch up the detainee's wounds: "Pictures were taken, but not by us," she said. "The dog handlers have copies."
Harman said the handlers appeared in the cellblock by themselves. One detainee, Ameen Saeed Al-Sheik, said the soldiers threatened to unleash the dogs on him if he didn't tell them what they wanted to hear.
"They said they will torture me, and they will come every single night to ask me the same question accompanied with soldiers having weapons," he said. "And they point a weapon to my head and threaten that they will kill me, sometime[s] with dogs. And they hang me to the door allowing the dogs to try to bite me."
--------
The Leash 'I Simply Stood With The Strap in My Hand'
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A16
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46657-2004May21.html
Judging from the photo itself, it is unclear whether England is dragging the grimacing, naked prisoner across the floor, or if she is just standing there holding the leash around his neck.
According to the statement she gave investigators, it is the latter -- and it was not her idea.
England, whose family said she processed inmates but did not work inside the cellblock, said she visited a wing where many prisoners were held. Only two soldiers were on duty, Graner and Spec. Megan Ambuhl.
They had mentioned that there was a detainee named Gus in solitary confinement, England said. He had been arrested for "attacks on coalition forces," she said, and had told other soldiers that he "hated Americans and wanted to kill us."
Graner had suggested taking a picture of the detainee, and he wanted England to pose, "pretending to drag him on a leash-type thing," she said.
Graner got out the leash, and they went down to a solitary confinement cell where the detainee was being held, she said. The detainee emerged naked but not handcuffed. And after Graner made him lie down on the floor, she said, he loosely looped the strap around his neck and handed it to her.
Then he got out his camera, she posed and he snapped a photo.
"I did not drag or pull on the leash," she said. "I simply stood with the strap in my hand. Gus started to crawl on the floor and . . . Graner took another picture. We then took the strap off of him and placed him back in his cell."
All this time, she said, Ambuhl stood and watched.
-------- spies
Chalabi Aides Suspected of Spying for Iran
Raid at Leader's Home Targeted His Associates
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46417-2004May21?language=printer
BAGHDAD, May 21 -- Members of the political organization headed by Ahmed Chalabi are suspected of providing information to Iran on U.S. troop positions in Iraq and of kidnapping a prominent physician from his home, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials familiar with three investigations into a group the Bush administration once favored to run postwar Iraq.
On Thursday, Iraqi police, backed by U.S. soldiers, raided Chalabi's home and the offices of the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of parties that opposed the government of Saddam Hussein. Until recently, the group received $335,000 a month from the Pentagon for help in gathering prewar intelligence about Hussein's government and in finding his top lieutenants after the invasion.
Chalabi, a longtime exile leader who was once the Pentagon's preferred choice to be Iraq's postwar leader, characterized the raids as retaliation for his criticism of U.S. policy in Iraq.
Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, of which Chalabi is a member, met Friday in an emergency session to discuss how to respond to the raid, which many of its members linked to U.S. occupation officials.
In interviews Friday, INC members, senior officers of the Iraqi police force and U.S. officials outlined three distinct investigations into the INC, which in addition to Defense Department funding received $33 million from the State Department over the past four years.
The inquiries are focusing on allegations of corruption, kidnapping and robbery, and on a U.S. suspicion that one of Chalabi's closest advisers is a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service, according to U.S., INC and Iraqi police officials. The adviser, Aras Habib, has a long working relationship with the Defense Intelligence Agency and is now a fugitive.
Chalabi is not wanted for arrest.
One of Chalabi's advisers said Friday that INC officials received advance notice of U.S. plans to search the INC intelligence building and removed their computers weeks ago. The adviser, Francis Brooke, said "nothing of any intelligence value" was recovered in the raids.
With the United States preparing to transfer limited power to an interim Iraqi government in a little more than a month, the move against the INC has been portrayed by Chalabi as a U.S. effort to isolate him before the new government is named.
The Bush administration once regarded Chalabi, a moderate Shiite Muslim businessman who spent decades in exile, as a leading candidate to be Iraq's leader after Hussein was toppled. But over a difficult year of U.S. occupation, Chalabi has accused U.S. officials of failing to move quickly enough to transfer power and has criticized U.N. involvement in the process.
At a hearing on Capitol Hill, some Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee expressed puzzlement over the latest turn of events regarding Chalabi.
"We support our troops, and we support you gentlemen -- it's your civilian bosses in the Pentagon I'm increasingly worried about," Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said to Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and two other senior officers testifying before the panel. "This seems to be a substantial development in the war, when one of the most highly paid and trusted advisers may have deliberately misled our nation for months and years and some of our officials may have swallowed it hook, line and sinker."
Myers said he knew very little about Chalabi, despite the Iraqi's close relationship with the Pentagon.
"If this man was on the U.S. payroll until last week, what has changed in the last few days to make him the subject of a raid of this type?" Cooper asked.
"That I can't tell you," Myers responded. "What I can tell you is that the organization that he is associated with has provided intelligence to our intelligence unit there in Baghdad that has saved soldiers' lives."
Myers was pressed again on the issue by Rep. Timothy J. Ryan (D-Ohio), who asked, "Have we been duped by a con man?"
"I don't have the information that can allow me to make that judgment," Myers said. "I think that remains to be seen, probably. But I just don't know."
Sometime in the past few weeks, L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, referred the results of an Iraqi police investigation of the INC to the U.S.-created Central Criminal Court of Iraq. An Iraqi judge outlined charges Thursday that included kidnapping and torture, fraud and "associated matters."
"Ambassador Bremer doesn't intervene in these respective cases, he just handles the procedural matter of referring it," said Daniel Senor, Bremer's spokesman.
A senior Iraqi police officer involved in the case said most of the eight suspects the police sought Thursday were involved in an armed robbery and kidnapping last month that was allegedly carried out by INC members.
The officer, who declined to be named for fear of losing his job, said his office had received complaints for months about INC members impersonating police officers, breaking into homes and carrying out robberies. He said police officers had warned the INC offices several times about the allegations. In the past three weeks, he said, police have arrested four INC officials on robbery charges.
"They knew all about this," the officer said. "It was not the first time."
In April, a respected cardiologist from Baghdad Medical City filed a criminal complaint alleging that he was kidnapped by men he identified as INC members.
The men visited his home one night, accused him of harboring terrorists and asked to search his house, according to the officer who took the complaint. They stole $20,000 in cash and a computer, then they took him away in an SUV, the officer said.
The doctor said he was hooded and driven to a building where he was interrogated, according to the officer. When the men removed the hood, the doctor said, he recognized four of them as INC members. The men were among the eight suspects whom police officers were seeking Thursday.
The officer, who participated in the raid at Chalabi's house, said Chalabi challenged them politely at his door.
"He asked, 'Why are you guys working with the Americans? You are the major crimes unit?' " the officer recalled. "I said, 'We aren't. We're the police. We have a warrant and we are executing it.' "
Brooke, the INC adviser, said the raids were likely related in part to the investigation of Sabah Nouri, a German national whom Chalabi picked to be the Iraqi Finance Ministry's anti-corruption officer. Nouri was arrested in April after auditors discovered a $22 million shortfall in the program overseeing Iraq's transition to a new currency this year. Brooke called him "a low-level" INC official.
Brooke said Habib, the INC's longtime intelligence chief, was the primary target of the investigation. A U.S. official in Washington said Habib was being investigated on suspicion of being a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service and that the allegations stemmed from current activity with foreign governments.
According to Brooke, a former subcontractor on a CIA program in northern Iraq who has a 10-year association with Chalabi, Habib had been at odds with the CIA for a decade. When a CIA officer asked Habib in the mid-1990s to use an INC intelligence network in northern Iraq to gather intelligence against Iran, Habib "told him to stick it in his ear," Brooke said.
In October 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency took over a State Department program that paid the INC $335,000 a month to gather intelligence. To qualify, Habib and other INC figures were required to take polygraph tests that focused almost entirely on his connections with foreign intelligence agencies.
"He passed," said Brooke. He said Habib acknowledged during the screening he had connections with intelligence services in Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Brooke's account could not be independently verified.
While stirring anger among Iraqi political leaders, Chalabi's plight appears to have generated little fresh support among ordinary Iraqis who never embraced the longtime exile as a potential leader. A small protest gathered Friday in front of the Green Zone, as the compound housing occupation headquarters is known, to protest U.S. treatment of Chalabi and its failure to prevent the assassination Tuesday of the Governing Council's acting leader Izzedine Salim. But the demonstration dissipated quickly.
"It took them four years to discover he was a liar," said Ali Hashem Ali, 46, a mechanical engineer. "And it took us two days to discover he was a thief and a liar."
But Brooke said the fallout has had political benefits, particularly in galvanizing council support for Chalabi.
"This has been good for us," Brooke said. "We got what we wanted. Saddam Hussein is gone."
Staff writers Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks in Washington and staff writer Jackie Spinner and special correspondents Huda Ahmed Lazim and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad contributed to this report.
--------
Dogs and Other Harsh Tactics Linked to Military Intelligence
May 22, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Time
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/politics/22ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 21 - The use of dogs to intimidate prisoners during interrogation at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was approved by military intelligence officers at the prison, and was one of several aggressive tactics they adopted even without approval from senior military commanders, according to interviews gathered by Army investigators.
Intelligence officers also demanded strict limits on Red Cross access to prisoners as early as last October, delaying for a day what the military had previously described as an unannounced visit to the cellblock where the worst abuses occurred, according to a document from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The role of intelligence officers in the abuse scandal is still under investigation, and the newly disclosed documents provide further details of their involvement in abuses that so far have resulted in formal charges against the prison guards, but not the interrogators.
Other Army documents first obtained by The Denver Post provided new evidence that harsh treatment extended beyond Abu Ghraib to more American-run detention centers in Iraq, revealing details about three previously unreported incidents in which Iraqi prisoners died after questioning by American interrogators.
At the Pentagon on Friday, the Army revised an earlier estimate to say that it is now actively investigating the deaths of nine prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, and that eight had already been determined by medical examiners to be possible homicides, involving acts committed before or during an interrogation.
In previous statements, it was not clear that so many prisoners died in interrogation, rather than being shot during riots or escape attempts. At Abu Ghraib, military intelligence units were responsible for interrogations, and military police units for guarding the prisoners and preparing them for interrogation.
The documents assembled by Army investigators starting in January and obtained by The New York Times cite accounts by American dog handlers who say the use of military working dogs in interrogations at Abu Ghraib was approved by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. Previously, Pentagon and Army officials have said that only the top American commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, could have approved the use of the animals for interrogations. A "memorandum for the record" issued on Oct. 9 by the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison listed as permissible a number of interrogation procedures that Army officials have said were allowed only with approval from General Sanchez. Among other things, the memorandum said the use of dogs in interrogations and the confining of prisoners to isolation cells was permitted in some cases without a prior approval from General Sanchez.
In a November report to military commanders in Iraq that was included in the documents, the Red Cross complained that its inspectors had faced restrictions "at the behest of Military Intelligence," including a one-day delay in interviewing prisoners, who were to be seen for only a short time, and asked only about their names and their health.
In the four-page report, which has not previously been made public, the Red Cross said it had nonetheless found naked prisoners covering themselves with packages from ready-to-eat military rations, and subjected to "deliberate physical violence and verbal abuse." Prisoners were found to be incoherent, anxious and even suicidal, with abnormal symptoms "provoked by the interrogation period and methods."
The document said the prison authorities "could not explain" the lack of clothing for prisoners and "could not provide clarification" about other mistreatment of prisoners.
On Capitol Hill, some Senate Republicans and Democrats expressed concern that the Pentagon withheld important supporting documents when it sent Congress copies of the 6,000-page investigative report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
But a spokesman for Senator John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said the Army was working to fill any gaps in materials. "There does not appear to be a problem in producing materials that are germane to the facts of the inquiry," said the spokesman, John Ullyot.
The documents show that military intelligence officers at the prison and civilian contractors under their control adopted harsher tactics than previously known, and enlisted the military police in some of their interrogation methods. In many details, the documents elaborate on what has already been known since the photos of the abuses first became public last month.
To date, only seven enlisted soldiers from a military police company have been charged with crimes in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib, all in a single cellblock, known as Tier 1. But most have argued that they were acting with the knowledge or encouragement of the military intelligence officers who oversaw the interrogations and exerted authority over the cellblock.
A new time line provided by an Army spokesman also showed that the involvement of military intelligence personnel in abuses at Abu Ghraib began in October 2003. The first reported episode involved soldiers assigned to the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center, months before the major criminal investigation initiated in January into misconduct at the prison, which focused on the involvement by the military police.
Three enlisted soldiers from the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion were fined and demoted in the incident, whose broad outlines have been reported previously. The spokesman, Lt. Col. Billy Buckner, declined to identify the soldiers involved or the details of the incident, citing privacy concerns.
The documents obtained by The Times included transcripts of sworn statements from military intelligence, the military police, civilian contractors and others who were interviewed by Army investigators last January as they began to look into allegations of abuse.
The statements include several accounts from officers, including Capt. Donald J. Reese of the 372nd Military Police Company, who acknowledged having seen Iraqi prisoners stripped naked while in American detention. Captain Reese, among others, said they had been told that nudity was part of "an interrogation procedure used by M.I." or military intelligence.
One intelligence officer, Specialist Luciana Spencer, said interrogations had been staged "in the showers, stairwell or property room" of the cellblock, as well as in two interrogation centers that were formally in control of the Joint Information and Debriefing Center. The officer in charge was Capt. Carolyn A. Wood of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, who other Army officers have said brought to Iraq the aggressive procedures the unit had developed during her previous service in Afghanistan, from July 2002 to January 2003. She served in Afghanistan as the operations officer in charge of the Bagram Collection Point.
Steven A. Stefanowicz, a civilian interrogator who worked under contract to the intelligence unit, described an interrogation tool that he called a "Sleep Meal Management Program," in which prisoners were allowed no more than four hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, in a regime that usually lasted 72 hours. Mr. Stefanowicz said in a statement that military police were "allowed to do what is necessary," within certain limits, to keep prisoners awake during that period.
At least two noncommissioned officers, Sgts. Michael J. Smith and Santos A. Cardona, said they had used unmuzzled military dogs to intimidate prisoners under interrogation. They said they were acting under instructions from Colonel Pappas, the commander of the intelligence brigade.
Both sergeants said Colonel Pappas had assured them that the use of dogs in interrogation was permitted and did not require written authorization or approval from senior officers. The memorandum for the record issued by the interrogation center on Oct. 9 also listed the "presence of working dogs" as "approved" on the basis of authorization from the interrogation officer in charge.
Colonel Pappas has declined requests for interviews, but other Army officials have said the use of dogs in interrogations could have been approved only by General Sanchez, as outlined in a policy he issued on Oct. 10. An unclassified Dec. 12 situation update sent by Colonel Pappas's unit describes interrogation techniques permitted for use in Iraq, including "sleep management, sensory deprivation, isolation longer than 30 days, dogs," as among the "harsh approaches" that could be introduced only with prior approval from General Sanchez.
Some new details involving deaths of Iraqi prisoners that are being investigated as possible homicides were first reported in Wednesday's editions of The Denver Post, and several of them involved Special Operations Forces. The details of the incidents were confirmed Friday by Pentagon officials, who said the deaths were among the nine now being investigated by the Army.
Among the previously unknown incidents was the death in January 2004 of an Iraqi prisoner at a forward operating base in Asad, Iraq, where a detainee had resisted questioning by Special Forces soldiers from Operational Detachment Delta. The prisoner died after he was gagged and his hands were tied to the top of his cell door, in an incident being reviewed for "consideration of misconduct," the Army documents said.
In a second incident in June 2003, at a "classified interrogation facility" in Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner was found dead after being restrained in a chair for questioning, and after being subjected to physical and psychological stress, the Army documents show. The Denver Post said an autopsy had determined that he died of a "hard, fast blow" to the head; and that while an investigation was continuing, no disciplinary action has been taken.
A third incident, whose broad outlines had been previously known, involved the death in custody of a high-ranking general, Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who died in November at a detention facility run by the Third Armored Cavalry, a unit based in Fort Carson, Colo. A Nov. 27 announcement by the American military command in Baghdad described General Mowhoush as having died "of natural causes."
In fact, according to the Army documents cited by The Denver Post, General Mowhoush died after being shoved head-first into a sleeping bag, and questioned while being rolled repeatedly from his back to his stomach. Then, according to the documents, an interrogator sat on the general's chest and placed his hands over his mouth.
The documents say the "preliminary report lists the cause of death as asphyxia due to smothering and chest compressions." American intelligence officials have said General Mowhoush died several days after C.I.A. officers handed over custody of him to the military, but they say the agency's inspector general is examining possible wrongdoing involving C.I.A. personnel.
Altogether, a senior military official said at a Pentagon briefing on Friday afternoon, 37 prisoners have died in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan since August 2002, all but five in Iraq.
Of these, 15 prisoner deaths have been determined by the Army to be cases of death by natural or undetermined causes, and 8 as justifiable homicides. Two have been determined to be homicides inside American detention centers.
Three others, including one homicide, took place outside American prisons, the senior military officer said. The officer described the remaining nine as being under active investigation. Of them, the Army official said, two were at Abu Ghraib, including the death of a prisoner there in an incident that the C.I.A. has said involved agency personnel.
The Pentagon also released copies of 23 death certificates of prisoners who died while in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department announced Friday that it was opening a criminal investigation into a civilian contractor in Iraq. The action represents the first time that the Justice Department has formally begun a criminal investigation in the prisoner abuse scandal, although it has been reviewing its jurisdiction in three death cases involving the C.I.A., including one in Afghanistan.
Justice Department officials said they had received a criminal referral from the Pentagon on Thursday, but would not identify the civilian contractor who is under investigation. An internal Army report in March identified two contractors at Abu Ghaib who were suspected of abuses, but it is not clear whether either one of them is the subject of the criminal investigation.
The Justice Department has asserted its jurisdiction over the conduct of civilians working for the military under an as yet untested federal statute, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, which allows contractors and other nonmilitary personnel working for the armed forces to be charged with crimes in civilian courts.
David Johnston and Kate Zernike contributed to this article.
-------- un
U.N. Approves Peacekeeping Force for Burundi
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46734-2004May21.html
UNITED NATIONS, May 21 -- The U.N. Security Council on Friday authorized a new peacekeeping mission with more than 5,600 troops for Burundi, adding to a series of U.N. operations that are taxing the resources of the international organization.
The new U.N. mission is designed to prepare elections for October 2005 in the French-speaking Central African country, where an 11-year civil war has cost more than 200,000 lives and forced more than 800,000 people from their homes. But it is adding to the burden on the United Nations as its peacekeeping is growing faster than at any time in more than a decade.
The United Nations, which oversaw a peacekeeping force of about 37,000 troops in 13 missions around the world in April 2003, is set to expand to an army of nearly 70,000 uniformed peacekeepers in 16 countries in the coming months. Most of those new peacekeepers will serve in French-speaking countries, including Burundi, Haiti and the Ivory Coast.
The new operations will cost an additional $1 billion by the end of the year, the United Nations estimates. The United States is required to pay more than 25 percent of U.N. peacekeeping costs.
Senior U.S. officials say that the new U.N. missions will contribute to U.S. efforts to restore peace in Haiti and in Burundi and other African trouble spots. But they acknowledge that they face a struggle in Congress to raise hundreds of millions in additional funds to finance them.
"Resources are stretched, both within our government and at the United Nations," Stuart Holliday, the U.S. representative for political affairs at the United Nations, said in an interview Friday. "The capacity issue will need to be addressed."
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the U.N. missions are already being hampered by shortages of French-speaking peacekeepers, civilian administrators and a range of "specialized military capacities," including communications, logistics and advanced weaponry. "The scale of the current surge may well outstrip our capacities to backstop the operations," Annan told the Security Council last week.
With the world's most powerful armies committed to military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans, the United Nations has to rely on developing countries that frequently lack the capacity to equip their troops adequately or transport them to distant lands.
English-speaking peacekeepers from Pakistan, South Africa and Nepal will form the backbone of the peacekeeping mission in Burundi. But U.N. officials say they are engaged in an intense struggle with other U.N. missions to identify hundreds of qualified French-speaking police and civil administrators to serve in Burundi.
Despite the growing strains on the United Nations, Annan said he was pleased with the council's decision to establish the Burundi mission. "I hope the people of Burundi and the protagonists will see this as the interest the international community has in the process," he said. "It's gone on for too long and the people of Burundi have suffered enough."
--------
Timor accused tears up military deal
theage.com.au
By Matthew Moore
May 22, 2004
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/05/21/1085120115440.html#top
The most senior of the former militia commanders in East Timor has torn up an agreement with the Indonesian army to leave the border area in West Timor.
He is building a house within sight of the country where he is wanted for murder.
Joao Tavares, described by UN war crimes prosecutors as the East Timor Supreme Militia Commander, left the West Timor border town of Atambua last August under a deal that the European Community funded.
According to UN and military sources involved in getting Tavares out of the sensitive border region, the militia commander agreed to live far away in Yogyakarta, Java, for two years as part of a plan to reduce the tensions his activities were causing.
But when The Age visited Atambua this week, Tavares was in the final stages of building a house to replace the one the Indonesian military bought from him last year with money the European Union provided.
He said he spent seven months in Yogyakarta and returned to Atambua around March.
While admitting he had sold his Atambua house to the military, he denied he signed an agreement put to him.
"The agreement was made by the danrem (regional commander) but when they asked me and my wife to sign it, we refused," he said.
But Colonel Moeswarno Moesanip (the danrem) said yesterday from Kupang, several hundred kilometres from Atambua, that Tavares had signed the agreement and he (the colonel) had a copy.
"He's just gone back to Atambua to visit his mother-in-law... there's no way he can stay in Atambua, his ID card says he lives in Yogya and his pension is paid there," he said.
Tavares said he would stay in Atambua for good and was spending around $A130,000 on one of the biggest houses in the town. He expects to move into the house in a month.
"I'm an Indonesian citizen, I can go anywhere in the world, to the USA or Australia or without reporting to anyone," he said.
Just over the border, Tavares has been indicted twice for crimes against humanity including murder and torture and could be arrested if he left Indonesia.
UN-funded prosecutors allege he ordered the killing of one of three men murdered in Poega village on April 12, 1999. He is also one of 57 people charged with 14 counts of crimes against the civilian population in Bobonaro District between May and September 1999.
Tavares said he had come back to Atambua after unknown people smashed down his door and assaulted his guard at his Yogyakarta house.
At 72, he said he was an old man and was no longer interested in the notorious activities for which he is known.
"I don't want to create problems, it just makes a headache," he said. "It's better to chase pretty women and make love than fight wars."
Tavares' return to the border region is certain to be raised with the Indonesian military by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the UN's East Timor peacekeeping forces, who were unaware that Tavares had reneged on the deal they helped strike.
-------
Gadhafi, Arab leaders, for U.N. in Iraq
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
By Beth Potter
May 22, 2004
Tunis, , May. 22 (UPI) -- Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi said Saturday that United Nations peacekeepers should watch over Iraq rather than the U.S.-led troops who toppled the regime of former president Saddam Hussein a little more than a year ago.
"They should withdraw and hand over security to the U.N.," Gadhafi said in a press conference at the presidential guesthouse outside of Tunis after he walked out of the opening session of the two-day Arab League summit.
U.S.-led administrators in Iraq are expected to hand over sovereignty to an as yet unnamed "caretaker government" on June 30.
Lakhdar Brahimi, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative to Iraq, is currently meeting with representatives from around the country to come up with a list of leaders that might form the new government. The current U.S.-appointed Iraq Governing Council has asked for the more than 130,000 U.S.-led troops to stay in the country following the transfer of power. But U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has also said that U.S. troops will leave if they are not asked to stay.
"I can guarantee that United Nations troops would not be violent to the Iraqi people, and Iraqi people would not be violent to them," Gadhafi said. "This would save the United States and Britain from the situation they are in. It would save the embarrassment of the Arab states and it would relieve the honor of the United Nations."
At the same time, Amr Moussa, the spokesman for the Arab League, told leaders of the 22 members that the United Nations could help calm the situation. United Nations workers are expected to organize national elections for next January. United Nations officials have said it takes at least eight months to technically organize such an election, from creating rules for voting to registering voters and finding polling stations, among other things.
"We're looking for United Nations help in Iraq, and that will make the situation better," Mousa said. "It will be good when the United Nations takes a role in Iraq."
Gadhafi said the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization should help Iraq just as the two international bodies helped Kosovo following NATO bombing Yugoslavia in 1999. He compared the number of people being killed in Iraq since U.S.-led troops rolled in to the number of people massacred in Kosovo under Milosovic.
Arab countries may also contribute to such an international peacekeeping force he is proposing, Gadhafi said.
"Such forces would help to build peace until things are safe," Qadafi said.
At the same time, Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in an interview Friday said that Egypt and other countries such as Jordan and Syria might send troops to Iraq if U.S. forces left. Neighboring Jordan already has trained several hundred Iraq police and soldiers at training courses run for the most part by private U.S. security companies.
Leaders at the two-day summit are discussing, many for the first time, issues of democracy, women's rights and civil society. The summit is also to address creating a common Arab investment bank and creating other conditions necessary to develop a common economic market similar to the European Union.
-------- us
Number of Army Probes of Detainee Deaths Rises to 33
Eight New Criminal Cases Include That of Iraqi Major General Who Led Hussein's Air Defenses
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46659-2004May21.html
The Army announced yesterday a jump in the number of criminal investigations it has launched into detainee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, among them a case involving one of Saddam Hussein's top generals, who died last November while being interrogated by U.S. soldiers.
A senior military official, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, said the Army has completed or is still conducting criminal probes into 33 cases involving the deaths of 32 detainees in Iraq and five in Afghanistan.
The new tally amounts to an increase of eight cases over the 25 reported on May 4 by the Army's top criminal investigator as the scandal over abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison was erupting.
It also pointed to wider problems beyond the Abu Ghraib facility, raising the possibility that coercive interrogations and other mistreatment by U.S. soldiers may have resulted in the deaths of some detainees.
In the case of Iraqi army Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, who once headed Hussein's air defenses, the Pentagon initially attributed his death last November to natural causes. But an autopsy released by the Pentagon yesterday said Mowhoush, who was found in a sleeping bag, died of "asphyxia due to smothering and chest compression." At the briefing, the military official confirmed a Denver Post report Wednesday that his case is being probed as a homicide.
The Pentagon released autopsy reports on 22 other prisoners, with causes of death including "multiple gunshot wounds," "strangulation," "blunt force injuries and asphyxia," as well as some natural causes.
Included in other deaths under criminal investigation that were first revealed by the Denver Post are a detainee suspected of having been choked in January while his arms were shackled over his head to his cell door at a U.S. base; a detainee who died during interrogation by U.S. Special Forces at Abu Ghraib in November; and a prisoner who died at an interrogation facility in Baghdad in June from an apparent blow to the head.
Army officials attributed part of the increase in the number of death investigations to the inclusion of three detainees who died outside a facility but in the custody of U.S. soldiers. The previously reported tally covered only deaths inside detention centers.
In one case, the senior military official said, a soldier shot and killed an Afghani who had lunged toward a weapon. In another instance, an Iraqi drowned after being forced off a bridge. In the third case, a U.S. soldier shot an Iraqi who had lunged at a sergeant escorting the Iraqi.
The rest of the reported increase was attributed by officials to a further review of records dating to 2002.
Investigations into more than two-thirds of the cases have been closed, with only one U.S. soldier reported disciplined. In that homicide case, in September 2003, a soldier shot and killed an Iraqi prisoner who was throwing rocks at him.
The soldier was charged with using excessive force, reduced in rank and dismissed from the military. Another case, which also was ruled a homicide, involved a contractor employed by the CIA and has been turned over to the Justice Department.
Nine Army death cases remain open. One is suspected of having resulted from natural causes. The other eight have been classified as homicides and involve suspected assaults of detainees before or during interrogation sessions, the senior military official said.
The longest-running investigations involve two deaths in December 2002 at a U.S.-run detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan. Mullah Habibullah died of a pulmonary embolism due to blunt force injuries to the legs, according to an autopsy report released yesterday. A detainee known only as Dilawar died from blunt force injuries to his lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease.
Asked why the probes have taken so long, the military official said the cases were complicated.
"We do cases to a standard and not to time," he said. "I understand that 17 months is a long time, but I would rather have you ask me why it's taking me so long than you ask me about why we didn't do a good job on the investigation."
Of the cases closed so far, 15 deaths were attributed to a natural cause, such as a heart attack or illness, or to undetermined factors.
Four cases, involving a total of eight Iraqi deaths, were ruled justifiable homicides, meaning U.S. soldiers were found to have killed in self-defense or to prevent an escape.
Three of the four cases took place at Abu Ghraib -- in November 2003, March 2004 and last month. The fourth occurred at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq in April 2003.
As for assaults of prisoners that did not result in death, the Army has initiated investigations into 16 cases in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has closed 14 of them, the official said, without providing the results.
Earlier this month, Les Brownlee, the Army's acting secretary, testified that investigations are underway into an additional 42 potential cases of misconduct against civilians that occurred outside detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This week, Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, put the total number of detainee abuse cases investigated since the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan in late 2001 at "around 75."
-------
Iraq War Veteran Found Guilty of Desertion
Sergeant Who Had Called Conflict 'Oil-Driven' Is Sentenced to Year in Prison
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45441-2004May21.html
A soldier who abandoned his Florida National Guard unit after serving in Iraq last year and then surrendered to military authorities two months ago was found guilty of desertion yesterday by a military court-martial in Fort Stewart, Ga.
Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, 28, who is from Miami, was sentenced to one year in prison, a bad-conduct discharge and a reduction in rank.
"I have no regrets. Not one," Mejia told jurors before they spent 20 minutes considering his sentence, the Associated Press reported. "It would be sad to go to jail. . . . But I will take it, because I will go there with my honor, knowing I have done the right thing."
A nine-year military veteran, Mejia went into hiding after returning to the United States on a two-week furlough in October. On March 15, he turned himself in to authorities at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts after a news conference in which he took the unusual step of publicly criticizing his commanding officers, who he said unnecessarily put soldiers in harm's way.
He applied for conscientious objector status, maintaining that his tour in Iraq -- which included a bloody ambush that caught civilians in the crossfire and a mix-up at a medical unit that led to the death of an Iraqi child -- had turned him against all wars. He called the Iraq conflict "oil-driven."
Mejia's attorney, Louis Font, said in an interview that his client had been ordered by commanders to deprive Iraqi prisoners at a detention facility of sleep. Font said he hoped to raise the issue upon appeal to the U.S. Army Court of Appeals.
But his commanders contended that he was a poor soldier whose unexcused absence harmed his unit, the 1st Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment.
"We have faith in the justice system and think the outcome was fair," Lt. Col. Ron E. Tittle, a spokesman for the Florida National Guard, said yesterday.
The lead prosecutor, Capt. A.J. Balbo, said in his closing argument: "The defense says [Mejia] accomplished all his missions. Except the most important one -- showing up."
Font told jurors the soldier believed that "because he had become a conscientious objector, he would not be required to serve in Iraq anymore."
Font, a West Point graduate and conscientious objector to the Vietnam War who specializes in military law, said his client should have been discharged a year ago under a National Guard regulation that limits the amount of time noncitizens can serve to eight years.
Born in Nicaragua, Mejia is a permanent U.S. resident but not a U.S. citizen. He has a young daughter and was set to graduate from the University of Miami when he was called to duty in Iraq. Mejia's conscientious objector application is being processed in a separate proceeding.
According to the Army, 1,076 soldiers deserted their units between October 2003 and March of this year, fewer than during the same period a year ago.
--------
COURT-MARTIAL
Soldier Who Refused to Return Is Found Guilty of Desertion
May 22, 2004
By ARIEL HART
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/international/middleeast/22SOLD.html
ATLANTA, May 21 - A military jury convicted a member of the Florida National Guard on Friday at a court-martial in Fort Stewart, Ga., on charges of desertion because he refused to return to his unit in Iraq, saying he objected to the war there.
The soldier, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, was sentenced to the maximum penalty of one year in prison, reduction in rank to private, and a bad-conduct discharge at the end of his prison term.
His family said he would appeal. "I couldn't be more proud of this brave and courageous young man," said Norma Castillo, his aunt. "We're not going to stop until justice prevails."
His claim of conscientious objector status, filed months after his desertion, is being considered separately. His lawyers said the judge's decision to exclude the application from all but the sentencing phase of the court-martial "gutted" his case.
American military law recognizes conscientious objection to war in general only and not to specific conflicts, said Eugene Fidell, a founder of the National Institute of Military Justice.
Sergeant Mejia, 28, has said his experience in Iraq, seeing brutality, senseless deaths and commanders who he said put glory over good decisions, convinced him that the war was "oil driven" and immoral.
The judge would not let him testify about the mistreatment of detainees he said he saw, incidents his lawyers said violated the Geneva Convention. Sergeant Mejia's unit was assigned to secure prisoners at a holding facility in al-Assad last May, said Lt. Col. Ron Tittle, a spokesman for the Florida National Guard.
In October, Sergeant Mejia legally left his unit, the First Battalion, 124th Infantry, for a brief furlough in the United States to look into a Guard rule that foreign citizens may not serve more than eight years, a term he had fulfilled. Sergeant Mejia is a dual citizen of Nicaragua and Costa Rica and a permanent resident of the United States.
When that rule did not help him, he went into hiding. He turned himself in to military authorities in March, just as his unit returned home, Colonel Tittle said.
Col. R. D. Davis, the state judge advocate of Florida, said different rules applied when a Guard unit was activated and its term extended in war. He said the defense's suggestion that Sergeant Mejia might have thought he was free of service in a good-faith "mistake of fact" was undercut by his admitted five months hiding in Boston and New York.
The defense also argued that an 1851 treaty between the United States and Costa Rica says Costa Rican citizens cannot be made to serve involuntarily in the military of the United States. That provision referred to a draft, Colonel Davis said.
Members of Sergeant Mejia's unit testified that he showed bravery and was a good leader in Iraq.
Mr. Fidell said his conviction in the court-martial was no surprise.
"Notions of self-help are typically frowned upon in the law," he said, "and this case is no exception. You can't have an organized force of troops where people are coming and going essentially as they please."
--------
US says no evidence that forces struck wedding party in Iraq
BAGHDAD (AFP)
May 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040522150646.65hksyl7.html
The US military Saturday displayed photographs of military equipment, medical supplies and "dormitory" style accommodation at the site of a US airstrike that some people claim had hit a wedding party in Iraq.
US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt showed the images at a press conference in Baghdad in response to repeated questions over the incident, in which some media organisations have reported more than 40 people were killed at a wedding.
Kimmitt said US forces which scoured the area of the combined ground and air attack in the western Iraqi desert had found "no evidence of a wedding".
Instead they discovered items such as "terrorist training manuals", military binoculars, foreign passports, medical equipment and possible narcotics, and dormitory-style accommodation for 300 people.
He repeated that the attack on Wednesday was based on intelligence that armed insurgents were gathering in the remote desert near the Syrian border and that US ground forces were fired upon before calling in the air strike.
The Arab satellite news channel Al-Arabiya aired footage of bodies wrapped in blankets and loaded on trucks, and quoted witnesses as saying that aircraft also destroyed other houses apart from the venue of the wedding party.
--------
Only a Few Spoke Up on Abuse as Many Soldiers Stayed Silent
nytimes
By KATE ZERNIKE
May 22, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/international/middleeast/22WITN.html?ex=1086238466&ei=1&en=fa8d1c965b0d16a0
Specialist Joseph M. Darby had just arrived at Abu Ghraib in October when his friend Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. showed him a picture on his digital camera of a naked prisoner chained to his cell with his arms hung above him.
"The Christian in me says it's wrong," Specialist Darby would later tell investigators Specialist Graner had said. Specialist Darby said Specialist Graner then said that as a corrections officer he enjoyed it.
Specialist Darby came forward two months later, he told investigators, after deciding that the photo and others he saw were "morally wrong."
He said in his sworn testimony: "I knew I had to do something. I didn't want to see any more prisoners being abused because I knew it was wrong."
Specialist Darby's report would initiate the investigation into mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other military facilities in Iraq and raise questions about whether the misconduct was authorized by military officials.
In alerting criminal investigators, Specialist Darby, a 24-year-old from from Maryland, stood out from other soldiers who learned of the abuse. According to documents obtained by The New York Times, many other people, including medics, dog handlers and military intelligence soldiers - and even the warden of the site where the abuses occurred - saw or heard of similar pictures of abuse, witnessed it or heard abuse discussed openly at Abu Ghraib months before the investigation started in January.
Mistreatment was not only widely known but also apparently tolerated, so much so that a picture of naked detainees forced into a human pyramid was used as a screen saver on a computer in the interrogations room. Other soldiers easily stumbled onto photographs of naked detainees left on computers in the Internet cafe at the prison. Some soldiers saw detainees being left naked for days, screamed at, threatened with dogs and beaten with furniture. A few tried to report abuse or stop it, but nothing came of their efforts.
"I saw prisoners being handcuffed to each other naked, having two inmates walking in the isolation section of the cells naked and handcuffed to each other," said Specialist Roman Krol, a reservist with the 325th Military Intelligence Battalion. "One of the M.P.'s took a Nerf football and threw it at the detainees, and another M.P. threw water at the detainees. I had never seen anything like that before."
Specialist Darby left a disc with the photographs and a letter describing its contents anonymously, then came forward a day later. When asked why he wanted to be anonymous, he said, "I was worried about retaliation from other people in my company if they found out."
The seven soldiers charged in the investigation are all from his unit, the 372nd Military Police Company based in Cresaptown, Md.
Much of the evidence of abuse at the prison came from medical documents. Records and statements show doctors and medics reporting to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch wounds, tend to collapsed prisoners or see patients with bruised or reddened genitals.
Two doctors recognized that a detainee's shoulder was hurt because he had his arms handcuffed over his head for what they said was "a long period." They gave him an injection of painkiller, and sent him to an outside hospital for what appeared to be a dislocated shoulder, but did not report any suspicions of abuse. One medic, Staff Sgt. Reuben Layton, told investigators that he had found the detainee handcuffed in the same position on three occasions, despite instructing Specialist Graner to free the man.
"I feel I did the right thing when I told Graner to get the detainee uncuffed from the bed," Sergeant Layton told investigators.
Sergeant Layton also said he saw Specialist Graner hitting a metal baton against the leg wounds of a detainee who had been shot. He did not report that incident.
Sgt. Neil Wallin, another medic, recorded on Nov. 14: "Patient has blood down front of clothes and sandbag over head," noting three wounds requiring 13 stitches, above his eye, on his nose and on his chin.
--------
Marines admit abuse at second prison
UNION-TRIBUNE
By Rick Rogers
May 22, 2004
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/iraq/20040522-9999-1n22marines1.html
While world attention was focused on the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, two Marines were court-martialed May 14 for abusing an Iraqi prisoner with electricity, it was disclosed yesterday.
Five more Marines have been implicated in the same early April incident at a Marine-run detention facility and might face charges, according to Marine officials in Iraq.
Andrew J. Sting and Jeremiah J. Trefney, both 19 and privates first class assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment at Camp Lejeune, N.C., pleaded guilty to charges that included cruelty and maltreatment for shocking an unruly prisoner, according to a Marine statement in response to questions from The San Diego Union-Tribune.
The East Coast-based infantry battalion is attached to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, which has headquarters in San Diego.
The prisoner had been detained at Al Mahmudiya prison.
Sting was sentenced to a year in jail and Trefney received eight months. Both were reduced in rank, will forfeit all pay and will leave the military with a bad conduct discharge.
According to information provided by the 1st MEF, here is what happened:
Sting, Trefney and three other Marines concocted a plan to shock a detainee with 110-volt electricity as he returned to his cell from the bathroom. The prisoner was targeted for punishment because he was loud and had thrown trash out of his cell.
"The Marines attached wires to a power converter and pressed the live wires against the body of the detainee to create a shock," according to the Marine statement.
An investigating officer has recommended court action against two of the three. There was no conclusive word on whether the third was cleared or received some form of administrative punishment.
Two other Marines could also face disciplinary action, the Marines said, although it's not clear what role the Marine Corps believes they played in the case.
About 25,000 Marines are assigned to the 1st MEF, which is responsible for occupying Anbar province. Of that number, roughly 19,000 are from either Camp Pendleton or Marine Corps Air Station Miramar.
Since March, the Marines have run eight detention centers with a combined population of about 300 prisoners, including common criminals and enemy insurgents.
The Marines said their guards are trained on the proper treatment and handling of enemy prisoners of war and on cultural sensitivity.
In addition, the Marines now in Iraq received a two-week training session on detention practices at March Reserve Air Force Base in Riverside.
The Marines said there are no other prisoner abuse investigations involving the service.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
DETAINEES
U.S. Preparing for Influx of Compensation Claims by Abused Iraqis
May 22, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/politics/22COMP.html
WASHINGTON, May 21 - The Pentagon is preparing for an influx of compensation claims stemming from the charges of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Defense Department officials said Friday.
So far, only two claims have been submitted related to allegations of prisoner abuse, one at Abu Ghraib and one at Camp Bucca, near Basra, one department official said. In those cases, both claimants said they had United States residency.
Since last June, the military has paid more than $2.5 million in compensation claims in Iraq, the official said. Most of those involved accidents or cases of negligence, "like when a tank runs over a garden," he said. Military leaders in the field were frequently given cash and wide latitude to distribute it among Iraqis injured in military operations.
Pentagon officials said they expected more claims to emerge as evidence continued to surface implicating American troops in the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld cleared the way for restitution over prisoner abuse earlier this month, when he told members of the House Armed Services Committee that it was critical for the United States government to try to make amends.
"I am seeking a way to provide appropriate compensation to those detainees who suffered grievous and brutal abuse and cruelty at the hands of a few members of the U.S. military," Mr. Rumsfeld said on May 7. "It is the right thing to do."
Mr. Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, said this week that while the Bush administration was seeking to provide restitution, "in the best possible way," he said that Pentagon lawyers were concerned about interfering with military trials of the accused. Mr. Wolfowitz nevertheless vowed "to do it as quickly as we possibly can, and as generously as we possibly can."
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller was subsequently assigned to set up a system for investigating claims and paying compensation, officials said.
The officials said the abuse claims would be processed under the Foreign Claims Act, and not under the authority of the Geneva Conventions. The 1982 act provides compensation to foreigners for injury, death or property damage caused by noncombat activities of American troops. The government's liability under the act is broad, though certain types of claims are excluded. Payment is not approved, for instance, for "claimants who are deemed unfriendly to the United States." It was not immediately clear whether Iraqi detainees might be viewed as unfriendly.
Amnesty International, the human rights organization, sent a letter to President Bush in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal calling for "full reparations" for any victim of torture or inhumane treatment, as required under international law, said Karen Schneider, the group's Washington spokeswoman.
-------- justice
Contractor Investigated By Justice
Criminal Inquiry Targets Civilian
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46864-2004May21.html
The Justice Department said yesterday it has opened a criminal investigation of a civilian contractor in connection with the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Neither the Justice Department nor the Defense Department would identify the contractor. "We remain committed to taking all appropriate action within our jurisdiction regarding allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners," Mark Corallo, Justice Department director of public affairs, said in a statement. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment.
Meanwhile, Titan Corp., which provided translators at the prison, confirmed yesterday that it had terminated an employee, Adel L. Nakhla, who was cited in an Army report on the abuses there.
Nakhla was one of three civilian contract employees who were criticized in the report. He was listed as both a suspect and a witness, although there are no allegations against him spelled out in the portion of the report that has been publicly released. Several thousand pages of the report remain classified.
Nakhla's wife, Nadine, answered the door of their two-story townhouse in Montgomery Village yesterday and referred questions to a lawyer, Francis Hoang. He did not return messages left at his office.
A lawyer for Steven A. Stefanowicz, another of the civilian contractors, said he was not aware of an investigation of his client.
The Army report on the prison abuses said Stefanowicz, an interrogator employed by Arlington-based CACI International Inc., "allowed and/or instructed MPs, who are not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions' which were neither authorized and in accordance with applicable regulations/policy. He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse."
Stefanowicz's attorney, Henry E. Hockeimer Jr., said his client did nothing wrong.
The third civilian identified in the report, John Israel, is accused in the Army report of lying to investigators about seeing interrogations that violated the rules. Israel could not be reached to comment. He worked for a Titan subcontractor, SOS Interpreting Ltd.
"He was an employee of SOS -- I am not sure if he is at this point," said Bruce Crowell, chief financial officer of SOS Interpreting.
Titan spokesman Ralph "Wil" Williams confirmed that Nakhla had been terminated, but declined to say why, citing a company policy of personnel confidentiality.
Nakhla gave sworn statements to Army investigators who were probing abuses at Abu Ghraib and was questioned about several detainees who had been accused of rape, according to the Army report by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba.
In a statement to investigators obtained by The Washington Post, Nakhla said he served as a translator when a juvenile detainee alleged that he had been sexually assaulted by two older cellmates.
Nakhla said MPs who were investigating ordered the detainees who had been accused to "do strange exercises by sliding on their stomach . . . then they handcuffed their hands together and their legs with shackles and started to stack them on top of each other."
Nakhla said in the statement he tried to intervene on behalf of the prisoners, telling the MPs "that this is not an acceptable behavior in this society and that other inmates are not happy with what is happening which finally convinced the MP's to stop doing this."
Asked why he did not report the abuses to higher authorities, Nakhla told investigators: "I have seen soldiers get in trouble for reporting abuse, and I was scared. I didn't want to lose my job."
Staff writers Ellen McCarthy and Brigid Schulte contributed to this report.
-------- police
Police redeploy to raise profile in neighborhoods
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Derrill Holly
May 22, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040521-101101-5132r.htm
D.C. officials are trying to reduce crime in the city's neighborhoods by redeploying police and stepping up enforcement of city building and health codes.
The effort is aimed at boosting the confidence of residents who might help police if they believe their efforts will make a difference.
"Everyone ought to be able to sit on their front porch without hearing gunshots, without having drug dealers standing out there, or prostitutes walking down the street," Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said yesterday.
Since May 2, officers in the city's seven police districts have been redeployed under a plan designed to increase police presence, particularly in areas where crime has been a pernicious problem.
The number of Police Service Areas in the city has been cut from 83 to 44, with a minimum of 21 officers assigned to each PSA, except for one that includes Bolling Air Force Base. The goal of the realignment is to enable police and residents to become more familiar with each other, even as officers are working criminal cases.
Chief Ramsey said the new alignment will strengthen another anti-crime effort begun in January that focuses on crime hot spots. That initiative involves D.C. police and 19 other agencies in coordinated efforts designed to root out crime and force building owners to bring their properties up to code.
Inspectors make owners board up abandoned buildings; derelict vehicles are towed; vacant lots are cleaned; and rat-baiting efforts are increased as part of the $10 million program. The effort was begun in 14 areas of the city that accounted for 41 of the city's murders and 581 other violent crimes over a 13-month period ending Jan. 20.
"We need to target the individuals whether in gangs or otherwise who are doing business in these hot spots," City Administrator Robert C. Bobb said.
In the four months since the effort was begun, those areas have seen a 22 percent reduction in violent crime, while property crimes have been reduced by 8 percent compared to last year, officials said.
The police department recently has considered installing sound detectors to enable police to determine where gunshots have been heard, and officials are considering expanded the use of video cameras.
"We can provide for more surveillance using cameras and using monitoring," said Mayor Anthony A. Williams, adding that the equipment can be used without compromising the civil liberties of law-abiding residents who live near the hot spots.
-------- torture
Outsourcing Torture and the Problems of 'Quality Control'
antiwar.com
by Charles Knight
May 22, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/knight.php?articleid=2612
In October 2001 a Yemeni student by the name of Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, who was suspected of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole, was captured and turned over to the United States by Pakistan. U.S. authorities then flew him to Jordan for interrogation. Other "high-value" prisoners in our "Global War on Terrorism" have been shipped off to Egypt, Morocco, and Syria at the request of the United States.
What all four countries have in common is a history of using torture to extract information from suspected enemies of the state.
Amnesty International, in a November 14, 2003 briefing, cited "persistent reports and rumors of detainees being secretly 'rendered' to countries with a record of abusing suspects in order to extract information." Amnesty further reported that "Officials ...have openly stated that the USA may deliberately send some detainees to countries where they are abused during interrogation."
This practice can aptly be described as "outsourcing torture." Through this scheme the Bush administration apparently hopes to maintain our image globally as "the good cop" while still getting the benefits of forcefully extracted intelligence from hired "bad cops." Much of this "rendering" of prisoners appears to be done by covert units of the CIA and Pentagon intelligence agencies, providing the dual benefits of the standard covert operations "deniability" and the arms-length deniability that comes by having the dirty work done in a foreign country. We have to assume that our government is paying top dollar for the cooperation of these foreign "intelligence specialists."
Now the cover on the U.S. practice of torture has been blown by the publication of dozens of photos of unmistakable brutality in an Iraqi prison. Two things are notable about this incident:
1. The numbers of prisoners for processing in Iraq are so great that the professionals began to rely on the assistance of under-trained and youthful soldiers who were so "shockingly undisciplined" that they took photos of their activities to send home. This is yet another indicator of how poorly prepared for a large scale occupation the United States was before going into Iraq; and
2. The Pentagon hired private contractors to help extract intelligence information from prisoners. These incidents neatly illustrate the most fundamental problems of accountability when private contractors do work that involves force. Apparently, even though the Secretary of Defense is surely the prime contractor, he is not really responsible for any abuses encouraged or condoned by private sub-contractors. Beware the rogue state in action.
On May 6, President Bush told King Abdullah II of Jordan that he was "sorry for the humiliation suffered by Iraqi prisoners, and the humiliation suffered by their families." Many have questioned why Mr. Bush chose to apologize to the King of Jordan rather than directly to Iraqis. To understand this particular piece of diplomacy it helps to remember that for the neoconservative advisors to President Bush, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is the favored compliant Arab country, and they would like nothing better than for a relative of King Abdullah to take over in Iraq.
What was not reported about the May 6 Rose Garden photo session with the King of Jordan was whether a White House physician stood at the ready in case either leader suffered facial spasms from excessive winking when the subject turned to "abuse of prisoners."
Issues of clever "deniability" and pipe dreams of Jordanian hegemony over Iraq aside, these points remain: the issue of the United States as a state sponsor of torture, perpetrated or exported to foreign stooges, is having a ripple effect globally that will damage American diplomacy for a long time to come. Second, the issue of command control and responsibility, when it relates to allowing prisoners to be tortured by our people or our paid foreign henchmen, is one that deserves serious national scrutiny and major policy debate. It cannot come too soon.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Reporters Subpoenaed in CIA Leak
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46823-2004May21.html
Journalists at Time magazine and NBC News were subpoenaed yesterday to appear before a federal grand jury investigating whether administration officials illegally leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer last summer.
Tim Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," and Time reporter Matthew Cooper were subpoenaed by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald. NBC said in a statement that it would fight the subpoena, as did a lawyer for Time.
"Time Inc.'s policy is to protect confidential sources," said Robin Bierstedt, deputy general counsel for the magazine.
Bierstedt said the prosecutors asked Time a week ago to cooperate but the magazine declined to do so. She said Fitzgerald wants to question Cooper about a story that appeared in Time on July 21, 2003, and another that ran on Time's Web site on July 17.
On July 14, columnist Robert D. Novak wrote that when he asked why the CIA sent former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV -- a critic of the Bush administration's foreign policy -- to check claims that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Niger, he was told by two administration officials that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA officer, had recommended her husband for the trip.
Under federal law, it is a crime to reveal a covert officer's identity if it is done with the intention of exposing the officer's undercover status.
The request to interview reporters may suggest that the probe is nearing a conclusion, because Justice Department guidelines require that prosecutors exhaust all other avenues before calling reporters before a grand jury. Attorneys for several grand jury witnesses and news organizations said it is not clear whether Fitzgerald is moving toward seeking indictments in the case or whether he is preparing to complete it without bringing criminal charges.
Last week, Fitzgerald asked to interview reporters at The Washington Post and Newsday. A Newsday lawyer said last night that the paper had declined the request but has not received a subpoena.
Eric Lieberman, a Post lawyer, declined yesterday to comment on the response to the request for voluntary interviews with reporters Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler. He also would not comment on whether the reporters have been subpoenaed.
--------
Journalists subpoenaed in CIA leak case
CNN Washington Bureau
From Scott Spoerry
May 22, 2004
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/05/22/journalists.subpoena/
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Two journalists, including NBC's Tim Russert, have been subpoenaed by the Justice Department in the investigation into who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative, according to the journalists' media outlets.
Russert, host of NBC's "Meet the Press," and Time Magazine columnist Mathew Cooper received subpoenas from investigators trying to learn who disclosed the identity of Valerie Plame, wife of former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson.
Wilson, a longtime career Foreign Service officer with expertise in African affairs, believes his wife's name was leaked by Bush administration officials in retaliation for his criticism of the administration.
He recounts what he thinks happened in his book "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir," published in April.
Wilson visited Niger in early 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate reports alleging Iraq had tried to buy significant quantities of "yellowcake" uranium ore there and in other African countries. He said he found the reports groundless.
Almost a year after Wilson delivered his findings to the CIA, President Bush cited the African uranium connection in his 2003 State of the Union address as evidence Iraq was trying to restart its nuclear weapons program.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said in the address. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog group, later said the British report was based in part on forged documents.
Last July, Wilson wrote an op-ed article for The New York Times suggesting officials allowed the information to be included in Bush's speech to bolster the case for war even though they knew it was suspect.
Wilson was interviewed on "Meet the Press" the same day the article appeared.
Shortly afterward, CIA Director George Tenet admitted the Iraq-Africa reference should not have been included in the speech and took responsibility for the error. (Full story)
Syndicated newspaper columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame's identity as a CIA operative in a July 14 article, saying the CIA sent Wilson to Niger at his wife's suggestion. Novak, who also is a CNN contributor, cited two senior administration officials as his sources.
It is a felony offense to reveal the name of a CIA operative, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Novak refused to say whether he has also received a subpoena; he is referring all questions on the matter to his attorney.
In a statement, NBC News President Neal Shapiro said the network would fight the subpoena, although Russert was not the recipient of a leak.
"The American public will be deprived of important information if the government can freely question journalists about their efforts to gather news," Shapiro said. "Sources will simply stop speaking to the press if they fear those conversations will become public."
Time Magazine general counsel Robin Bierstedt told CNN that the publication would also fight the subpoena, saying that Time's policy is to protect confidential sources. Time Magazine and CNN are related companies, both part of the Time-Warner Co.
Former federal prosecutors told CNN that investigators are required to exhaust other possible leads before resorting to questioning journalists, so that issuing subpoenas is a signal that the investigation is in its final stages.
-------
Man Sought by 9/11 Panel Emerges to Tell of Chaos
May 22, 2004
By IAN URBINA and KEVIN FLYNN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/nyregion/22warden.html?pagewanted=all&position=
For several months, the national commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks has been searching in vain for a man it believes could help answer some of the most critical questions of what happened inside the World Trade Center that day. His name is Lloyd Thompson, and for much of that morning two and a half years ago he was posted at the epicenter of chaos.
As the deputy fire safety director in the complex's north tower, Mr. Thompson stood in the lobby, fielding panicked calls from those trapped on the upper floors. He struggled to make evacuation announcements over a public address system that was damaged by the plane crash. And, most significant, he had a role in overseeing a powerful piece of radio equipment that the commission believes is central to one of the core mysteries of what went wrong that day: Why did fire chiefs have such a hard time communicating with firefighters upstairs in the building?
Yesterday, weeks after the commission began sending him letters, interviewing former colleagues and checking with employers, Mr. Thompson emerged to tell his story. Contrary to what some investigators have speculated, Mr. Thompson said that he did not believe he ever touched the radio equipment known as a repeater, a device that amplifies the hand-held radios firefighters use.
The panel found that the repeater was working that day but fire chiefs mistakenly thought it was broken and stopped using it. The problem, the panel said in a report earlier this week, is that someone forgot to push a button, a mistake that created confusion about whether the repeater was working.
But the button was indeed pushed, although not by him, Mr. Thompson said yesterday as he gave an account that is at odds with the commission's leading theory on what went wrong.
"There was total chaos, and the situation at the console was not simple," he said in a telephone interview, referring to the security desk in the lobby at which he was stationed. "I think the commission will need to take a closer look at this."
Mr. Thompson's testimony is critical because communications difficulties have emerged as one of the leading problems that hindered emergency rescuers after the terrorist attack. The commission has concluded that the repeater could have provided an effective communication link among fire officials. Indeed, a fire chief in the south tower somehow later discovered that the repeater channel was working and used it to communicate as he climbed to the 78th floor.
These transmissions were captured in a tape recovered from the rubble and proved that, for at least a part of the morning, the repeater was working. But fire officials have consistently said the repeater did not work reliably enough to have been used.
At least a third of the 343 firefighters who died on Sept. 11 were in the north tower, where evacuation orders, issued before and after the collapse of the south tower, were not heard by many firefighters. On Wednesday, the families of some of those who died heckled former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as he testified before the commission because they said they did not believe he was honestly discussing the communication and other coordination problems.
Mr. Thompson said that he, too, continued to suffer the memories of that day. "The most painful thing is that they died, but I'm still alive," he said in an hour-long interview.
Mr. Thompson, who lives in Yonkers, said he wanted to rebut depictions of him as a mystery man who had made himself unavailable to the investigation. He said he never received the commission's letters or knew they were looking for him. "I was definitely not hiding. I've actually been seeking them out, not the other way around," he said. "I've been getting up every day and going to work just like a normal citizen.''
Al Felzenberg, the commission's spokesman, said Mr. Thompson had left a phone message at the panel's New York office yesterday but no one from the commission had spoken to him yet. "The commission staff has tried to locate him, and I know they are looking forward to speaking with him," Mr. Felzenberg said.
Mr. Thompson, who still works as a fire safety director in a building, said the calls from the upper floors and the images from the lobby had been impossible to forget. After a year of psychological counseling, he said he still struggled with nightmares, and colleagues at work knew not to ask about what happened.
Visits to the families of the victims help in healing, he said. But he said he still could not watch video taken in the lobby that morning. "It's too painful," he said, his voice breaking.
Mr. Thompson, a fire safety director for 17 years, said he grew up in New York, dreaming of becoming a firefighter, but a spinal condition prevented him from passing the physical test. Instead, he worked as a fire safety director for private companies that help manage emergencies in buildings. He had been working in the trade center for eight years at the time of the terrorist attack and was employed by O.C.S. Security, which held the security contract.
From a command desk in the lobby, he was responsible for watching the building's various security and fire safety computer systems. A normal emergency might mean that one alarm button on the console would light, Mr. Thompson said. On Sept. 11, 2001, however, the panel was red with panic calls. "The problem was that no one had any idea what had happened," he said.
Mr. Thompson also sat near the console that operated the repeater, which was installed after the 1993 trade center bombing, when firefighters also had difficulty communicating with each other. Their radios have historically had problems sending signals in high-rise buildings because of the many layers of concrete and steel that must be pierced. The repeater was designed to boost the signal.
The repeater was in 5 World Trade Center, an adjoining building, but it could be operated from consoles in the lobbies of the north and south towers. The consoles, which looked like phones, had several buttons, one of which was pressed to turn on the system and a second that activated the handset to talk through.
The commission concluded that the second button was not pressed down, creating the perception that the repeater itself was not working when fire chiefs tested it. Consequently, the chiefs decided to switch to alternative radio channels that did not have the benefit of the booster.
Video from that morning shows Deputy Assistant Chief Joseph W. Pfeifer, one of the first fire officials on the scene, asking Mr. Thompson to turn the repeater on. But Mr. Thompson said yesterday that when he looked over to check the repeater, which was about five feet from his post, it was already on. A red light that only came on when both buttons were pressed was lighted, he said, and several supervisors confirmed that the unit was operating.
But when Chief Pfeifer tested the system minutes later, he could not communicate with another chief standing nearby in the lobby. "I don't think we have the repeater," the video shows Chief Pfeifer saying to the other chief. "I pick you up on my radio, but not on the hard wire," he said, referring to the repeater's handset.
Chief Pfeifer has said he believed that he could not rely on the repeater at that point and switched to another radio channel. A spokesman for the Fire Department, Francis X. Gribbon, said yesterday: "There is overwhelming evidence that the repeater could not possibly have worked correctly and completely throughout the morning. Chief Pfeifer did not have the luxury of time to figure out what was wrong with it."
Without the boosted channel, a fire chief who tried to call units down to the north tower lobby at 9:32 a.m., about half an hour before the south tower collapsed, found that no one acknowledged his message. A second evacuation order given by Chief Pfeifer, after the south tower had collapsed, was heard by some firefighters.
Chief Pfeifer has said it was a good thing that he was not using the repeater channel when he made that announcement because the repeater antenna was damaged as the south tower collapsed, and thus no firefighters would have heard his order. Mr. Thompson agreed. "They would have been in trouble once the repeater system went down with the collapse of the first building," he said. "They would have had no other method for communicating."
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owned the trade center and installed the repeater at the Fire Department's request, has said it worked that morning. Mr. Thompson said he was not sure who was responsible for turning the repeater on.
On Monday, Mr. Thompson will release a statement of his account to the commission, said Ronald L. Kuby, his lawyer. Mr. Thompson said he hoped to move forward with plans to be married once the attention subsided. For now, he said, the anguish of Sept. 11 has returned, not just for him but for his family and fiancée.
"It's my duty to help in whatever way I can to get answers about the events that day," he said, "and I'm eager to do that. But in the end, I just want to get back to the healing process, which has taken a long time to start."
--------
US extends custody deaths probe
bbc.co.uk
22 May, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3737787.stm
Pentagon officials have revealed eight more investigations into the suspected murder of prisoners in US custody.
The new inquiries bring to 37 the number of detainee deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan which under examination by US officials. Ten of the deaths are categorised as homicide.
Several prisoners were found to have died before or during interrogation.
Two detainees died at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad which is at the centre of allegations of abuse by US soldiers.
In a separate announcement, the US Department of Justice said it had opened the first criminal investigation of a civilian contractor for alleged mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq.
Violent deaths
Thirty-two of the deaths under investigation took place in Iraq and five in Afghanistan. Some of the deaths date back to August 2002.
Most of the detainees died inside detention facilities and around half of the deaths have been attributed to natural causes.
Other causes of death given include:
- multiple gunshot wounds with complications
- blunt force injuries and asphyxia
- blunt force injuries complicated by compromised respiration
- strangulation
- pulmonary embolism due to blunt force injury to the legs
Two weeks ago, the Pentagon announced that two investigations had concluded that prisoners had been murdered.
An army official said a soldier had been convicted of using excessive force when he shot dead a prisoner who was throwing stones at him.
He was thrown out of the army but did not go to jail.
The other murder was committed by a private contractor who worked for the CIA, the official said.
-------- propaganda wars
'We're on the Brink of Success,' General Says of Iraq Situation
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A22
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46399-2004May21.html
The nation's top military officer yesterday gave a strongly optimistic assessment of the military, political and economic situation in Iraq, citing "great progress on all fronts" there.
"It's going to be tough, but, no, I don't think we're on the brink of failure" in Iraq, as some have asserted recently, said Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Rather, he told the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, "I think we're on the brink of success."
The latest in a series of congressional hearings on the Bush administration's handling of Iraq was marked by partisan sniping. Political squabbling is unusual in Armed Services Committee hearings, and it indicates how divided Congress is becoming over the U.S. situation in Iraq. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), the committee chairman, engaged in an extended argument with Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek, a freshman from Florida, over whether the committee was paying sufficient attention to the torture of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers.
Hunter, who has been critical of the Senate for focusing on the abuse situation, told Meek, "I don't know where you were, but we've had more hearings, open and closed, on this one subject than any other issue that has been before this committee."
Meek replied, "I'm sorry for trying to be a congressman asking questions that may not necessarily be welcomed."
But the day's hearing was dominated by Myers's upbeat account of trends in Iraq, which contrasted somewhat with the previous Capitol Hill appearance of a senior Pentagon official. When Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz testified earlier this week, he conceded that several major miscalculations had marred the U.S. occupation effort over the past year.
Myers accentuated the positive, usually in fairly vague terms. Talking about the restoration of power, water and sanitation services, he said: "There's lots of that kind of thing that is going on in the country that I think give us great, great hope."
The general especially expressed great expectations of Iraqi support for the planned turnover of limited authority to an interim Iraqi government at the end of next month. "I think there is reason for great hope that the Iraqi people will take this and run with it," he said.
Some Iraqis, defense experts and members of the committee have said they are deeply concerned by the political situation in Iraq, with the assassination this week of the Iraqi Governing Council president, the lack of clarity about who actually will be running Iraq six weeks from now, and fears about whether an interim government established during wartime conditions will survive.
But Myers expressed faith that the Iraqis will rally to their new government. "I think that as the new transitional government stands up, that there will be traction there with the Iraqi people that will be very important to them," he said.
The general also asserted, without citing evidence, that most Iraqis know that the only reason the U.S. military is in Iraq is to help bring peace to the country. "I think the majority of Iraqis understand that," he said.
That assertion appears to conflict with a recent poll conducted for the U.S. occupation authority in Iraq, which found that 82 percent of Iraqis have a negative view of U.S. and allied forces. The poll was taken before the prisoner-abuse situation became a major scandal.
Myers did see a few clouds on the Iraq horizon. "I think there will continue to be a big security threat to progress in Iraq past 30 June, clearly," he said.
He also expressed specific concern about signs of growing cooperation among disparate Iraqi insurgent groups, such as Shiite extremists and loyalists to deposed president Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. "We are seeing, I think, more coordination between them . . . tactical agreement that they can help one another, share weapons and so forth," he said.
Myers also defended the outcome of the fighting in the troubled western Iraqi city of Fallujah, where the Marine Corps turned over control to a former Iraqi general -- a move that has puzzled some inside the military and some outside defense experts. For example, Thomas Donnelly, an Iraq hawk who is a security analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said in an interview: "The quasi-retreat is potentially very bad. I don't think you can fool the American people into thinking that Fallujah is a famous victory."
But Myers argued that "this is the right way to do it." Sometimes, he explained, a nuanced use of force is needed. "We need to know when to use force. We need to know when to back off," he said.
He specifically noted that the agreement in Fallujah gives Baathists some hope of reclaiming a place in Iraqi society short of violence. "I think what you're seeing in Fallujah now is part of that process, to give these people that provided a lot of the senior leadership to Saddam's regime, you're giving them hope that there is a way forward without just fighting the coalition," he said.
Democrats on the committee seemed less inclined to accept Myers's broad assertions of progress in Iraq than they have been in the past. "I just can't sit here any longer, with all due respect, General Myers, and take people's assertions that things are being taken care of when this thing has been botched so badly so far," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher (Calif.).
--------
Sonny melts down
By MARGARET GUNNING
Saturday, May 22, 2004
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040522/BKFIRE22/TPEntertainment/Books
The Fire Thief By Stephen Guppy Thomas Allen, 380 pages $24.95
It's a curious thing about poets and short story writers. No matter how brilliantly they excel at their craft, there's a sense they haven't quite made the grade until they crack that ultimate literary form: the novel. We could ponder why such deep and difficult forms as poetry and short fiction are always perceived as poor cousins to the real thing.
In the meantime, Vancouver Island poet Stephen Guppy's debut novel The Fire Thief is an effort more admirable than enjoyable, in which he does all the correct things, works very hard to fulfill what he thinks a novel demands, but somehow fails to create a main character engaging enough to inspire much empathy or compassion.
It's too bad about this, as Guppy has more than proved his talent in collections like Another Sad Day at the Edge of the Empire and Understanding Heaven. And I am not for one minute saying that we necessarily have to like or admire a novel's protagonist. But for true engagement to take place at deeper than a cerebral level, we have at least to care, to be invested enough to want and even need to know how it all turns out.
I got so fed up with Sonny Wheeler, the main character described as "a good Canadian kid" transplanted to a fictional American city called Danforth during the Cold War years of the early 1960s, that I wanted to shake some sense into his head. Danforth is nicknamed "Atomic City, U.S.A." for a nuclear power plant that manufactures plutonium for bombs: "The drive-in where I hung out with my friends was called Nukie's," Sonny recalls in his first-person narration. "There was a street called Plutonium Crescent. You get the idea."
Guppy opens with a vignette about 820 radioactive beagles, test animals subjected to extreme radiation from nuclear fallout, setting a dark and paranoid tone for a tale of nuclear madness that seems to melt down the lives of every character he introduces.
I suppose we could view Sonny as damaged, growing up fatherless in Vancouver after his Dad is killed in action at the end of the Second World War. His mother Betty works long hours at a psychiatric hospital, where Sonny spends a lot of time playing cards with the inmates and aching for his mother's attention. Then she meets and marries an American nuclear engineer, and the family is uprooted to Danforth, where nuclear mania soon infects the teenaged Sonny. He joins the Science Club, drawn in as much by the dishy, brainy blond Karen Sullivan as by his mentor, science teacher Mr. Crashaw, and his oddball daughter Curie.
Guppy puts a lot of energy into creating period atmosphere, as in his description of Betty in Nuclearville: "She strode through the house in crisp pastel dresses, mouth slicked with lip gloss, hair as puffed and flipped as Jackie Kennedy's, high heels tapping efficiently on the lino-tile floors." His eccentric Aunt Alice, a lounge singer from Las Vegas, drifts about in the background, adding a touch of the wild side to Danforth's suburban blandness.
As the sixties roll on, Sonny is increasingly caught up in drug-soaked dissipation, aimless sex and a general wasting of his potential. The "longhairs" he hangs out with, science geeks all, seem to feel no qualms of conscience about the dark side of nuclear technology, though FBI agents lurk about Danforth like menacing shadows.
As Karen becomes ever more fiercely radical, Sonny drops out of university and drifts into mind-numbing routine work at the plutonium plant, wasting his brain on drugs in his spare time.
A subplot involving Curie Crashaw bearing him a son named Eden seems grafted on, and Sonny's casual disregard for this poor child, abandoned by his unstable mother, does nothing to strengthen our already-stretched sympathies. His involvement with Karen's increasingly violent political activities is peripheral, even vicarious.
Does Sonny really care about anything? And if not, how can we continue to care about him? This is the central dilemma of a novel that does not lack in care of crafting or detail, but lacks that one indispensable element of a truly engaging novel: a soul.
The storyline peaks somewhat prematurely, leading to a long, sad denouement in which Sonny reunites with a cancer-ravaged Aunt Alice in the radiation-soaked Nevada desert. Nuclear madness catches up with everyone here, and while the novel is effective in tracing the fallout, Sonny is such a loser that it leaves a flat and bitter taste.
If the sixties were all about idealism and fierce commitment to causes, Sonny Wheeler misses the boat; he's too wasted in every sense of the word to make us genuinely care about his fate.
Margaret Gunning's first novel Better Than Life has been shortlisted for an Alberta Book Award.
-------- us politics
Bush to define Iraq strategy in major speeches
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Bill Sammon
May 22, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040521-114116-7733r.htm
President Bush on Monday will give the first of several major speeches to detail his strategy for Iraq and lay out how coalition forces will address concerns about security, sovereignty and international diplomacy as they close in on the June 30 transfer of sovereignty.
"We are approaching a pivotal phase," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy. "The president looks forward, on Monday evening, to discussing with the American people and with a global audience a clear strategy on how we need to move forward."
Mr. Bush will address the nation at 8 p.m. from the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. The White House did not ask the broadcast television networks for air time, although cable news channels are expected to carry the speech live.
The speech comes amid record-low job approval ratings for Mr. Bush, caused in part by mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq and wall-to-wall media coverage of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. There have also been complaints, even among some Republicans, that Mr. Bush has not been aggressive enough in articulating his strategy for Iraq.
"He realizes, as well as most Americans do, that we have difficult challenges ahead, that the enemies and foes of freedom in Iraq will do anything to stop the progress," Mr. Duffy told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Mr. Bush foreshadowed the speech during his commencement address yesterday at Louisiana State University.
"The will and character of America are being tested," he told graduates. "Americans are not the running kind. When this country makes a commitment, we see it through."
The president sought to take a step back from the daily drumbeat of negative news from Iraq in order to remind graduates of his overarching strategy for keeping America secure.
"We have an historic opportunity, the establishment of a peaceful and democratic Iraq at the heart of the Middle East, which will remove a danger, strike a blow against terrorism, and make America and the world more secure," he said.
"We will complete the mission for which so many have served and sacrificed," he added. "And the world can be certain we will defend the freedom and security of this nation, whatever it takes."
Monday's speech will be followed by similar high-profile addresses, roughly once a week, until June 30. The second speech will be next Saturday at the dedication of the new World War II Memorial in Washington.
Other speeches will be delivered next month at the Air Force Academy, the Group of Eight Economic Forum in Georgia and a ceremony in Normandy, France.
Bush campaign officials hope the speeches reverse the decline in the president's job approval ratings. The challenges of postwar Iraq are even driving down the public's opinion of the booming economy.
"The bad news we've had out of Iraq over a couple weeks has had an impact on some other indicators, too," Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman told The Washington Times.
"I think it's short term," he added. "And I think that ultimately it's not indicative of where people think things are going."
Mr. Mehlman said such swings in the polls can occur "whenever you have an event or series of events that galvanize public attention." He pointed out that the public had a more favorable view of the economy months ago, even though it was weaker, because of positive news from Iraq.
"I think what you're dealing with is the converse of something we saw in December, right after Saddam Hussein was captured," he explained. "If the events are good news, they tend to have an impact of causing a lot of numbers to rise.
"And if the events are negative, they sometimes have the impact of causing all the numbers to fall," he added.
Despite the proliferation of negative events, Mr. Bush showed his lighthearted side during yesterday's commencement address.
"In my job, I got to pick just about everybody I work with," he said. "I've been happy with my choices - although I wish someone had warned me about all of Dick Cheney's wild partying."
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Russia Backs Kyoto to Get on Path to Join WTO
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46416-2004May21.html
MOSCOW, May 21 -- Russia signaled Friday that it would ratify the Kyoto climate change treaty in exchange for European support for its bid to join the World Trade Organization, a breakthrough that could revive the long-stalled pact designed to curb global warming.
Russian and European Union officials reached a trade agreement that helps open the way to WTO membership for Russia, the largest country that remains outside the international group. President Vladimir Putin then recommitted to the Kyoto treaty after months of mixed signals, characterizing it as a tradeoff for the economic agreement.
"We are for the Kyoto process," Putin said during a news conference after a summit with European leaders. "We support it, although we do have some concerns over the obligations that we will have to assume. The European Union has met us halfway in negotiations on the WTO, and it could not help but have a positive effect on our attitude toward ratification of the Kyoto protocol."
The arrangement appeared to end an impasse that had long held up both Russia's integration into the world economy and enactment of the plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. European countries have been eager to win Russia's ratification of Kyoto, and they made significant concessions in the trade talks to obtain it.
Ever since the United States backed out of the Kyoto pact after President Bush took office in 2001, Russia has held the treaty's fate in its hands. To take effect, the treaty requires ratification by countries producing at least 55 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, and Russia, with its 17 percent share, was the only nation left that could put it over the top.
Putin promised last year to move toward ratification, but his top economics adviser, Andrei Illarionov, launched a vigorous public campaign against it, portraying Kyoto as "a death treaty" and "international Auschwitz" that would strangle the Russian economy just as it was growing again. Some analysts interpreted that as a sign that Russia would not ratify the treaty, but others said Putin used the conflicting signals to make Kyoto a bargaining chip for economic benefits.
"Russia hasn't given up anything very significant," said Alexei Moiseyev, an economist at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow investment bank. "The things they gave up they were planning to give up anyway. . . . It seems that for the EU, Kyoto is more important than Russia joining the WTO, and so they were willing to accept the . . . deal."
The Kyoto pact requires participating countries to cut back greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels. By a quirk of history, Russia stands to benefit from Kyoto, because after a decade of economic dislocation, its emissions today are already substantially below what they were in 1990, when Russia was part of the Soviet Union.
Thus, Russia would be able to sell its excess pollution quota to other countries under terms of the agreement. Canada, Japan, and European Union states have expressed interest in buying some, which would allow them to exceed their own limits but remain in compliance with the protocol.
Putin has made joining the 147-country WTO a priority, and Friday's deal marks the most significant progress toward membership since Russia applied 11 years ago. To join the organization, which sets and enforces rules of world trade, an applicant first must strike market-opening deals with major trading partners that are also WTO members. The 25-country EU accounts for more than half of Russia's foreign trade.
"It's an important step in the common integration of the Russian economy in the world economy," Mikhail Zadornov, a former finance minister, said by telephone Friday. Others oppose membership for Russia out of fear that lowering trade barriers will expose the country's antiquated industries to overpowering international competition. Dmitri Rogozin, leader of the Motherland party in the Duma, said in an interview that the WTO is "a club for aged lords" and that Russia should not be made to conform to other countries' economic rules.
Russian officials expect to strike similar agreements soon with Japan and South Korea. U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick recently expressed optimism that Russia was on a path to finish negotiations with the United States by the end of the year.
In reaching agreement Friday, the EU settled for less than it had demanded. The Europeans had insisted that Russia raise its subsidized domestic natural gas prices to five times current rates, allow foreign companies access to its pipeline network, end the gas export monopoly of state-controlled Gazprom and open up its financial services, insurance and telecommunications sectors to foreign companies, among other things.
Under the agreement, Russia will cut some tariffs and open up some sectors, but it gave only a little on natural gas, the most sensitive issue because it supplies a quarter of Europe's gas at far higher prices than it charges at home.
-------- genetics
Monsanto Beats Farmer in Patent Fight
Canadian Court Upholds Claim to Gene-Altered Seed
By Rick Weiss and Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, May 22, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45322-2004May21?language=printer
Sometimes, Goliath wins.
Capping a seven-year, globally watched legal battle between biotechnology giant Monsanto Co. and a scrappy 73-year-old Saskatchewan farmer, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled yesterday that Percy Schmeiser violated Monsanto's patent by growing the company's high-tech canola and saving the valuable seeds produced by those plants.
The landmark 5 to 4 decision marks the first time a high court in any country has ruled on how extensively a company can control a farmer's use of its gene-altered seeds and plants. By affirming broad proprietary rights for Monsanto in Canada -- a country that allows only limited patents on life forms and is considered relatively friendly to farmers' rights -- the court set both national and global precedents that strengthen the hand of agricultural biotechnology corporations.
Carl Casale, Monsanto's executive vice president, hailed the ruling as a seminal declaration that will give agricultural companies a clear legal framework in Canada.
"It's a great day," Casale said from Monsanto headquarters in St. Louis. "Other companies beyond Monsanto were just told today that Canada continues to be a very good place to invest for the benefit of farmers."
But opponents of genetically engineered food and other activists, for whom Schmeiser has grown to be a folk hero, vowed to continue their battle against what they claim is an emerging corporate monopoly over the world's seed and food supply. Among other approaches, they said they would lobby Canada's Parliament to change the country's patent law.
"The biotech industry should recognize that today's victory will be short-lived," said Nadege Adam of the Council of Canadians, an advocacy group that had supported Schmeiser. "They need to know that the backlash will come. It will continue and get stronger."
The ruling was the most definitive judgment to date in a series of legal controversies over agricultural technology playing out in the world's courts and legislatures.
Monsanto had sued Schmeiser after learning that much of the farmer's land was sown with the company's patented Roundup Ready canola, although he had never purchased the seed from the company or signed a required grower agreement. The variety has a gene that makes the plants resistant to Monsanto's Roundup weed killer, allowing farmers to spray the herbicide freely without worrying about harming their crop.
Farmers who purchase the seeds are not allowed to collect and replant seeds from the plants they grow -- even though seed saving is a long-standing tradition among canola farmers. Monsanto has argued that seed saving would prevent the company from recovering its research and development costs, since first-time buyers would never have to purchase the expensive seeds again.
Schmeiser claimed the gene-altered plants arrived on his land around 1997 uninvited, perhaps as a result of pollen blowing from a neighbor's field. Two lower courts, noting that more than half of Schmeiser's 1,030 acres bore the high-tech plants by 1998, concluded that he had infringed Monsanto's patent by saving and replanting the seeds and ordered him to pay more than $100,000 in costs and penalties.
The case took on special significance in Canada, whose Supreme Court had previously ruled that patents cannot be issued on "higher organisms," including animals and plants. The question arose: Since Monsanto's Canadian patent was only on canola genes and cells, could Schmeiser's unintentional possession of entire plants -- which cannot be patented -- constitute infringement?
Although four members of the court flatly said no, five said yes. But the court reversed the lower courts' monetary penalties against Schmeiser, saying there was no evidence he had profited from the added gene because he did not use Roundup weed killer. The court told each side to pay its own legal costs.
After he and his wife got the news yesterday morning, "we both had tears in our eyes," Schmeiser said. "But at least we still have a roof over our heads. This could have broken us financially."
Monsanto has sparked the wrath of farmers in the United States and Canada by using private detectives to investigate their fields, and a few jurisdictions have passed laws giving farmers certain rights and protections in those cases.
Some states have considered legislation that would make biotech companies liable for windblown pollen that invades fields of conventional crops, which in some cases are worth more than the engineered varieties. In Canada, organic farmers have filed a class action against Monsanto and another company for allegedly polluting their fields with gene-altered pollen.
Some legal experts said that case might be strengthened by yesterday's ruling.
"If you're going to claim ownership of this gene wherever it lands, then you ought to assume responsibility, too," said Terry Zakreski, Schmeiser's attorney in Saskatoon.
Monsanto has sued scores of farmers in both the United States and Canada. The company has said it does so only as a last resort, after settlement talks fail, and only in cases in which it believes the violations of company patents were knowing and deliberate. When the company sues, "it is not an accident," said Monsanto's Casale. "We have never lost a case."
The issue is not squeezing out "every last nickel" for Monsanto, he said, but keeping the playing field level. If a few farmers are able to use the technology free while others have to pay, the dishonest ones will gain a competitive advantage on their neighbors, he said.
"I can't tell you the number of farmers I've talked to who have said, 'I understand the value this technology brings,' " Casale said. " 'I have no problem paying for this technology. I just want to know that everybody else is paying, too.' "
But activists said they feared the precedent bode poorly for the world's subsistence farmers, who are dependent on saving seed from each year's crop to plant the next year.
"The decision has grave implications for farmers and society everywhere the gene giants do business," said Pat Mooney, executive director of ETC Group, an advocacy group that focuses on the risks of technology and had intervened in the case in Schmeiser's defense. "The decision not only undermines the rights of farmers worldwide, but also global food security and biological diversity."
--------
Males Not Needed; Mouse Born from Unfertilized Egg
REUTERS USA:
April 22, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/24821/newsDate/22-Apr-2004/story.htm
NEW YORK - For the first time, Japanese researchers have created a viable mouse via "virgin birth," or parthenogenesis - that is, the offspring was derived solely from female genetic material contained in the mother's egg, without any contribution from a male animal.
The researchers note in their article in the science journal Nature that parthenogenesis is seen in insects and reptiles, but it does not occur in mammals. In the lab, mammalian embryos generated when an animal's egg is persuaded to start dividing as if it had been fertilized have always died after just a few days of gestation.
The barrier seems to be the necessity for a process called imprinting. This ensures that one of the two copies of every gene found in a cell - usually one each from the father and mother - is turned off. If this doesn't happen, the embryo stops developing.
By making sure that certain genes were deleted, Dr. Tomohiro Kono, the Tokyo University of Agriculture, and colleagues were able to produce a mouse from a reconstructed egg that contained two sets of maternal genetic material.
The mouse pup (female, of course) grew to adulthood and was able to reproduce.
These results show that, normally, parthenogenesis is prevented because the paternal genes control imprinting, the team concludes. This ensures that "the paternal contribution is obligatory for the descendant" - at least until science intervenes.
-------- ACTIVISTS
'Fahrenheit 9/11' Wins Top Award at Cannes
May 22, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/movies/22WIRE-CANNES.html
CANNES, France (AP) -- American filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," a scathing indictment of White House actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, won the top prize Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" was the first documentary to win Cannes' prestigious Palme d'Or since Jacques Cousteau's "The Silent World" in 1956.
"What have you done? I'm completely overwhelmed by this. Merci," Moore said after getting a standing ovation from the Cannes crowd.
The grand prize, the festival's second-place honor, went to South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook's "Old Boy," a blood-soaked thriller about a man out for revenge after years of inexplicable imprisonment.
Moore was momentarily flabbergasted when he took the stage to accept the award, a big difference from his fiery speech against President Bush after winning the best-documentary Academy Award for 2002's "Bowling for Columbine."
"You have to understand, the last time I was on an awards stage, in Hollywood, all hell broke loose," Moore said.
The best-actress award went to Maggie Cheung for her role in "Clean" as a junkie trying to straighten out her life and regain custody of her young son after her rock-star boyfriend dies of a drug overdose.
Fourteen-year-old Yagira Yuuya was named best actor for the Japanese film "Nobody Knows," in which he plays the eldest of four sibling raised in isolation, who must take charge of the family when their mother leaves.
The directing and writing prizes went to French filmmakers. Tony Gatlif won the directing honor for "Exiles," his road-trip about a couple on a sensual journey from France to Algeria.
Agnes Jaoui and her romantic partner, Jean-Pierre Bacri, won the screenplay award for "Look at Me," their study in self-image centering on an overweight young woman who feels neglected by loved ones. Jaoui and Bacri also co-star.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" won the top award from sharply divided Cannes moviegoers, who found a solid crop of good movies among the 19 entries in the festival's main competition but no great ones that rose to front-runner status.
While "Fahrenheit 9/11" was well-received by Cannes audiences, many critics felt it was inferior to Moore's Academy Award-winning documentary "Bowling for Columbine," which earned him a special prize at Cannes in 2002.
Some critics speculated that if "Fahrenheit 9/11" won the top prize, it would be more for the film's politics than its cinematic value.
With Moore's customary blend of humor and horror, "Fahrenheit 9/11" accuses the Bush camp of stealing the 2000 election, overlooking terrorism warnings before Sept. 11 and fanning fears of more attacks to secure Americans' support for the Iraq war.
Moore appears on-screen far less in "Fahrenheit 9/11" than in "Bowling for Columbine" or his other documentaries. The film relies largely on interviews, footage of U.S. soldiers and war victims in Iraq, and archival footage of Bush.
Just back in Cannes after his daughter's college graduation in the United States, Moore dedicated the award to "my daughter and to all the children in America and Iraq and throughout the world who suffered through our actions."
"Fahrenheit 9/11" made waves in the weeks leading up to Cannes after the Walt Disney Co. refused to let subsidiary Miramax release the film in the United States because of its political content. Miramax bosses Harvey and Bob Weinstein are negotiating to buy back the film and find another distributor, with hopes of landing it in theaters by Fourth of July weekend.
Quentin Tarantino headed the nine-member jury that handed out prizes in Cannes' main competition. The other jurors included actresses Kathleen Turner, Tilda Swinton and Emmanuelle Beart.
Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Tropical Malady" -- widely regarded by Cannes audiences as a snoozer for its elongated scenes of a man wandering a jungle alone, with no dialogue -- won the festival's third-place jury prize.
Another jury prize went to Irma P. Hall for her role as an elderly Southern woman who foils a casino robbery in the Coen brothers' crime comedy "The Ladykillers," starring Tom Hanks as the heist's ringleader.
Keren Yedaya's "Or," about a Tel Aviv prostitute in failing health and her teenage daughter, won the Golden Camera award for best film by a first-time director. The U.S.-born Yedaya, who grew up in Israel, gives lectures about the problems of prostitution for government officials and mental-health professionals.
Earlier Saturday, Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembene's "Moolaade," an examination of the ritual of female circumcision that earned rave reviews, won the top prize in a secondary Cannes competition called "Un Certain Regard."
The 12-day festival's closing film -- "De-Lovely," Kevin Kline's musical biography of Cole Porter -- screened immediately after the awards. Kline and co-star Ashley Judd then hosted a beach concert featuring Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette, Natalie Cole and other singers from "De-Lovely" performing Porter tunes.
The festival was to wrap up Sunday with encore screenings of award winners and other key movies that played the festival, including a combined, four-hour version of Tarantino's two "Kill Bill" installments.
--------
Eighteen detained in Turkish demo against NATO warships
ANKARA (AFP)
May 22, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040522132910.pajsc02q.html
Turkish riot police on Saturday detained 18 people as they broke up a demonstration to protest NATO warships visiting a port in the south of the country, Anatolia news agency reported.
Police used water cannons and tear gas against the protestors -- members of minor left-wing parties -- who refused to disperse and blocked traffic on a road leading to the port of Antalya where ten ships from Italy, the Netherlands and Bulgaria were anchored, it said.
The demonstrators retaliated by pelting the officers with eggs and stones.
The subsequent chase saw 18 demonstrators taken into custody.
Four of the protestors were slightly hurt when they fell while running away from police, the agency said.
Ships from NATO member countries regularly visit the port of Antalya, a popular tourist resort on the Mediterranean.
Turkey is preparing to host a NATO summit in its biggest city Istanbul on June 28-29 which will be attended by US President George W. Bush and several other Western leaders.
-----
Peace activists march on Kissufim crossing
Haaretz
By Correspondents Nir Hasson. Lili Galili, Yuval Yoaz and Tsahar Rotem,and Itim
22/05/2004
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/430445.html
Hundreds of people marched on the Kissufim crossing between the Gaza Strip and Israel on Friday to protest the Israel Defense Forces operation in Rafah, in which 40 Palestinians have been killed as the army works to flush out militants and drug smugglers in the south Gaza refugee camp. The demonstration was supposed to take place at the Sufa crossing, which is closer to Rafah, but the protesters decided on Kissufim instead after being threatened by police at the Sufa crossing, protest organizers said.
The peace bloc issued a statement Friday saying, "None of us can sit at home at a time like this. None of us can say, 'We didn't know!'"
Six people were held for questioning during the march, three of whom were released a short time later. Protesters blocked the road, and vowed to remain there until the three remaining detainees were also released.
On Thursday, about 500 people demonstrated for the second consecutive day in front of the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. The demonstration was organized by Peace Now and attended by members of refusnik organizations, the Yahad Knesset faction, the Yahad youth movement, and leftist student groups.
Yahad chairman Yossi Beilin called for an immediate evacuation of the Gaza Strip, saying Prime Minister Sharon's plan to evacuate the Strip in stages would mean getting stuck there. An unusually large police contingent was present but unlike the previous day's demonstration, it passed without disruption.
At a hearing on a police request to release with limitations two minors arrested during Wednesday's demonstration, Youth Court judge Ruth Ben-Hanoch said: "The court must warn against using court procedures to silence protesters or limit their rights to express their opinions." Judge Ben-Hanoch had harsh words for the behavior of the police in holding the minors overnight at Abu Kabir lockup.
Attorney Gabi Laski will submit a complaint to the police investigations unit in the Justice Ministry with regard to one minor who needed medical care after an injury by police during the demonstration. In an unusual move, all attorneys for the eight people arrested during Wednesday's demonstration were denied access to their clients at the Yarkon region police station, although ambulances had to be summoned for three who were injured.
Among the six adults arrested in Wednesday's demonstration were David Zonshein of Courage to Refuse, and Yonatan Pollack of the anarchists' movement, who were released yesterday. The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court refused a police request to limit their approach to within a one-kilometer radius of the demonstration area, and all six returned to demonstrate yesterday.
Yonatan Shapira, among the signatories to the pilots' refusnik letter, and his brother Zohar, who signed the Sayeret Matkal refusniks' letter, said that police officers threatened to kill them if they did not let go of the four-meter-long black flag they held during the demonstration.
Zami Ben-Horin, of Kibbutz Ga'ash on the coastal plain, started a protest march Thursday from Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Ben-Horin, who is calling for an Israeli evacuation from the Gaza Strip, is accompanied by his wife Sigal, his son Gal, age 14, and his daughter Orian, age 12. Ben-Horin, who described himself as "not one who demonstrates in the squares" said the deaths of the 12 soldiers in the Gaza Strip last week brought him out of his apathy.
Yoel Marchuk of the Kibbutz Movement, who provided logistical support for the march of social activist Vicki Knafo, is also assisting Ben-Horin, who said that he didn't believe that the failure of Knafo's march meant that his would also fail.
"Everyone marches in his own niche," he said. Marchuk said he doubted Ben-Horin's march would become a mass movement. "When the soldiers are fighting, it's hard to get people out for a struggle like this," he explained.
-------
------- 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.