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NUCLEAR
G-8 Summit highlights fate of excess nukes
Atomic weapons easy to make, scientists say
Heated row over nuclear power call
Activist Urges Depleted Uranium Clean-Up in Iraq
Iran has mastered up to 70 percent of nuclear fuel cycle
Nuclear Weapons in Iran: Plowshare or Sword?
US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
Russia, Iran Reportedly to Sign Nuclear Deal Soon
Estimates may snag nuke plans
South Korea mum on alleged North Korean nuke sales
Former LANL director talks about North Korea visit
Russia, Iran Reportedly to Sign Nuclear Deal Soon
US offers Greece radiation detectors ahead of Olympics
U.S. Sends Nuke Detection Gear to Athens
Olympics: Greece Prepares for 'Dirty Bomb' Threat
Nuclear experiment planned at test site
Manhattan Project vet remembers Oppie
Energy Department Funds Nuclear Power Research
Nuclear experiment performed at Nevada Test Site
Nevada tests worry Utahns
Entergy: Utilities Liable For Cost Of Missing Fuel
Contractor, Energy Department like early results of stepped-up monitoring
Two Wisconsin utilities plan to build 500 MW plant
MILITARY
War returns with a vengeance as allies fail the Afghan people
Iraqi weapons pipeline probed
Korea to send Iraq troops by August, minister says
Russian Scientist Dies in Ebola Accident at Former Weapons Lab
American killed in Liberia a US Defense Department employee
Beijing opposes US defence bill over "anti-China" provisions
China fines two firms for exporting missile-related products
Suspected left-over Japanese mustard gas hospitalizes eight in China
Relationship With Taiwan Remains Tense, China Warns
Colombia rebel group celebrates anniversary
US warns of likely surge in Colombia bombings around FARC anniversary
Europeans Want More Specifics in U.N. Resolution on Iraq
U.S. Finally Spending Iraq Construction Funds
The Bush Plan
No Role in Shrine Damage, U.S. Says; Clash Kills 13 Iraqis
Bush Lays Out Goals for Iraq: Self-Rule and Stability
Failing to Disband Militias, U.S. Moves to Accept Them
Israeli Army Criticized for Gaza Action
Israeli Army Ends Weeklong Attack in Gaza
Homeless and angry, Palestinians call for justice
Space Station Crew to Use Russian Suits
C.I.A. Bid to Keep Some Detainees Off Abu Ghraib Roll Worries Officials
US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
U.S. and Britain Offer New U.N. Resolution on Iraq Transition
US soldiers accused of theft
U.S. Plans to Name A New Commander
Soldiers' Doubts Build as Duties Shift
No. 2 Army General to Move In as Top U.S. Commander in Iraq
New wedding video fuels suspicion of US account
U.S. Army bases are void of soldiers
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Terror Data to Be Shared at New Center Near Albany
Balancing Depleted Ranks and Possible Disasters
Libertarian candidate snagged by no-fly list
This Made Ashcroft Gag
Double Standards?
Debating Pros, Cons Of Fingerprinting
POLITICS
Campaign Ads Are Under Fire for Inaccuracy
Networks pull plug on Bush speech
Iraq prison abuse hits home
Who is Stephen Cambone? Rumsfeld's Henchman
Bush Seeks to Reassure Nation on Iraq
Bush Poll Numbers On Iraq at New Low
A Speech Meant to Rally Public Support Doesn't Answer Key Questions
Nader Calls for Impeachment of Bush Over the War in Iraq
2 of 3 in state say Iraq war not worth the costs,
Voting requests increase among U.S. expatriates
ENERGY
Oil, gas prices push past records
OTHER
Environmental Battle Rages Over Power Plants
Largest Companies Taking Climate Change Into Account
Climate change: Boom or bust for biodiversity?
Palestinians claim Israel dumped toxic waste in West Bank
Divers assess fuel leakage from sunken car carrier off Singapore
ACTIVISTS
Judi Bari Day Marked By $4 Million From FBI, Oakland Police
Survivor groups hit for use of 9/11
Attention all vote fraud activists: This can happen to you!
Abu Ghraib Prisoners Freed During Sit-In
-------- NUCLEAR
G-8 Summit highlights fate of excess nukes
With SRS upstream, this global nuclear issue has a backyard presence for coastal Georgia.
Mary Landers mary.landers@savannahnow.com
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Savannah Now
http://www.savannahnow.com/stories/052404/2184317.shtml
Growing up in Savannah in the 1960s, Cheryl Jay was admonished not to play outside when it rained. The mothers in her neighborhood were afraid of fallout from nuclear testing in Nevada.
Decades later, the science teacher and mother of two focuses her nuclear concerns closer to home. Now, it's the Savannah River Site, a nuclear weapons factory on the banks of the river near Augusta, that worries her.
And Jay and other activists see in the upcoming G-8 Sea Island Summit a perfect opportunity to talk about this global issue that's in coastal Georgia's back yard.
During the G-8, Savannah will be about equidistant from SRS, the U.S. Department of Energy's second largest plutonium storage site, and the leaders who ultimately will decide the fate of that radioactive material, which was produced for use in nuclear weapons.
To bring attention to the issue, Jay is coordinating a Greenpeace exhibit of stark black-and-white photos taken near a Russian nuclear site called Mayak. During the Cold War, Mayak's mission was the same as that of SRS, producing plutonium for nuclear weapons.
Now that the Cold War is long over, the sites have parallel missions again. Both are part of a plan to turn weapons-grade plutonium into a fuel for commercial nuclear power plants.
This photo of children playing at Muslomovo, Russia is part of an exhibition sponsored by Greenpeace of images by Robert Knoth showing the legacy of nuclear weapons production. The exhibit will by at Starland Center for Contemporary Art June 4-15. John Carrington Savannah Morning News
But G-8 countries are in a stand-off about how to fund this controversial program.
The United States and Russia agreed to this plan in 2000. The idea is to get rid of surplus plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons and in doing so to make nuclear material - especially in Russia - harder for terrorists to steal and make into dirty bombs.
The countries would convert weapons to fuel by mixing plutonium oxide with uranium oxide. The resulting product, called mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, would power commercial nuclear plants. (MOX made from non-weapons grade plutonium already fuels nuclear power plants in Europe and Japan, but in the United States, uranium oxide is the standard.)
The Department of Energy has already trucked tons of plutonium into SRS from Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons plant in Colorado. SRS now stores six metric tons of plutonium, and is expected to eventually process 34 tons of it.
Last year, Congress appropriated $400 million for construction of the MOX plant at SRS. DOE is asking for another $368 million this year. But even with the money in place, construction on the American MOX plant hasn't yet begun. DOE has announced it's behind schedule and won't start until next year, in part because of difficulty clearing regulatory hurdles.
On the Russian side, the delays are at an even more basic level. Russia can't afford MOX on its own and few other nations want to help foot the approximately $2 billion bill.
One obstacle to full participation by G-8 and other countries is the "free rider" problem. Free-riders value, and would be willing to pay for, some "public good" - but will not do so if they are likely to receive the benefits even without actually having to pay, said Michael Reksulak, assistant professor of economics at Georgia Southern University.
"The MOX program is a classic 'free rider,'" he said. "You don't need all the players. So it's hard to get everybody to pay for it."
MOX pros and cons
This photo of the old metal factory near the Techa River in Russia is part of an exhibition sponsored by Greenpeace of images by Robert Knoth showing the legacy of nuclear weapons production. The exhibit will by at Starland Center for Contemporary Art June 4-15.
Besides this opportunity to get something for nothing, not everyone agrees that making MOX is the best way to dispose of weapons. A recent headline from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists sums up the complaints: "It costs more, it's as dangerous to make as a bomb, and burning MOX creates as much plutonium as it gets rid of. Other than that, it's a great idea."
The cost issue rankles Jay, who sees the MOX program as corporate welfare for the nuclear power industry. The DOE contracted with an international consortium comprised of Duke Energy, Cogema, and Stone & Webster to design the MOX fuel and the plant that will produce it and to use that fuel in commercial nuclear plants. MOX fuel will be used in Duke's McGuire nuclear plant in North Carolina and its Catawba nuclear plant in South Carolina.
"DOE is saying, 'We'll give you the plutonium, pay you to make MOX and then give you the MOX (to use in the commercial power plant)," Jay said. "The ratepayers in North Carolina will be paying the full rate for this thing that's being given to Duke."
Jay and other activists would prefer that excess nuclear weapons were processed as waste by being immobilized in glass and stored temporarily at SRS until a more permanent solution is found. In this state the plutonium is lethally radioactive, which thwarts efforts to steal it. The immobilization option is cheaper than MOX.
Immobilization of some plutonium was part of the original MOX agreement. But in 2002 the United States dropped immobilization.
And immobilization was never what the Russians wanted.
"Russia preferred the MOX process because it needed the economic benefit of the energy within (the plutonium)," said Rick Ford, a DOE spokesman. The safety issue revolves mainly around having to move and handle plutonium repeatedly in producing and using MOX fuel.
"MOX only amplifies the number of transports, often in form of vulnerable plutonium powder," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International.
Environmentalist Cheryl Jay is coordinating a photo exhibit for Greenpeace featuring photos by Robert Knoth showing the legacy of nuclear weapons production. The exhibit will be at Starland Center for Contemporary Art June4-15. John Carrington Savannah Morning News
Arjun Makhijani, the president of the nonprofit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, agreed.
"MOX, if it gets stolen, it's easy to do a chemical reaction to separate it and get pure plutonium for bombs," he said. "I cannot imagine so much plutonium on the roads in the U.S. being regraded in a sanguine way. It's much, much harder to imagine it in Russia."
Also, an accident at a nuclear power plant loaded with plutonium-based fuel would result in twice as many fatal cancers beyond the plant as the same type of accident at a reactor containing only conventional uranium fuel, according to a peer-reviewed study conducted by the Nuclear Control Institute.
The international consortium working on MOX points to its safety record elsewhere and required government oversight as an indication it'll be safe in the United States.
"The (MOX) technology has been used in Europe for over 25 years without any incident or accident," said Neal McCraw, spokesman for Duke, Cogema, Stone & Webster. "Our foremost mission is to design and operate this facility with safety first. We have the first obligation. But that's assured by the fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission independently reviews the design and the way we operate the facility."
A final argument against MOX is that it doesn't eliminate plutonium since MOX spent fuel still contains up to about 5 percent of its initial plutonium.
Even more plutonium than that could be created if the Russians use the MOX fuel in breeder reactors, which they've indicated they would prefer, according to Sara Barczak, safe energy director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy.
"So, if Russia wants to build breeder reactors, they'd only be making more plutonium, which would sort of defeat the whole purpose of MOX in the first place," she said.
DOE spokesman Rick Ford acknowledged the MOX process doesn't get rid of plutonium completely. But because the resulting plutonium is too hot for terrorists to handle, the DOE considers the process to be nonproliferative.
"It's in a form that's intensely radioactive. It's spent fuel," Ford said. "It would require an SRS to convert it to a metal form that could be used in weapons. It's do-able but you would need a multi-billion dollar infrastructure to get it out."
Not a protester
The topic of nuclear proliferation is as tough as globalization to explain.
People glaze over when Jay starts using terms like "MOX" and "non-proliferation," she said.
But the photos from Mayak are a human connection to this difficult topic.
Jay is quick to point out that she's not a G-8 protester.
"We're bringing focus to the issue," she said. "We're not here to protest or get involved in globalization. The tie-in locally is SRS. It's also an extremely dirty, polluted weapons facility with a long legacy of accidents and dumping radioactive waste."
The photo exhibit of 37 images from Mayak, taken by Dutch photographer Robert Knoth, puts a face on the Russian nuclear pollution, she said.
SRS hasn't seen the magnitude of pollution documented at Mayak, but Jay looks to the future.
"I worry that the legacy depicted in the Mayak pictures could be the future legacy of the people downstream of SRS in South Carolina and Georgia."
If you go
What: "Half Life: Living With the Effects of Nuclear Waste" is a photographic exhibit by Dutch photographer Robert Knoth. The photos record the social and health effects of nuclear waste on the people who live near the Russian Mayak plutonium processing facility. Mayak's American counterpart in plutonium processing is the Savannah River Site.
When: Opening reception is 6 p.m. June 4. International forum with Greenpeace Russia at 7 p.m. Exhibit continues through June 15.
Where: Starland Center of Contemporary Art, 2428 Bull St.
Sponsored by: Greenpeace, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Citizens for Environmental Justice and Georgians Against Nuclear Energy
The G-8 summit and nuclear weapons
Whether the G-8 leaders are set to discuss plutonium is anybody's guess. The formal agenda isn't revealed until just before the summit.
But the G-8 countries are the only ones wealthy enough to spearhead the funding of a $2 billion project to strip excess Russian nuclear weapons of plutonium and rework that radioactive element into a fuel called mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, for power plants.
The United States has pledged $400 million for the Russian project. The United Kingdom, France and Japan have also committed funds, but not enough.
"They have well under $1 billion committed," said Tom Clements, of Greenpeace International. "Other countries don't want to make up shortfall."
The summit's location could make plutonium harder to ignore.
"Given that the June 2004 G-8 meeting will take place relatively close to the Savannah River Site, the site chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to carry out the MOX program, the issue of plutonium disposition will likely garner significant attention," write Greenpeace officials in a G-8 Summit briefing.
Previous summits have skirted the issue, according to Arjun Makhijani, a nuclear engineer who is president of the nonprofit Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
"This has been an annual ritual at the G-8 meeting for four years," Makhijani said. "It's called the MOX money and liability waltz. Every time they dance around it and make nice promises."
The liability issue is the question of who would pay the damages to third parties, such as European countries, if a reactor accident on the scale of Chernobyl were to spew radioactivity over Europe, according to Makhijani.
"In reality, Russia says, 'It's your liability and your problem,'" he said. "The Americans say, 'We're giving you the money it's your problem.'"
If MOX funding does come up, it's likely to be under the umbrella of the two-year-old "G-8 Global Partnership Against the Proliferation of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction."
In a speech in Moscow last month, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Alexander Vershbow said that the U.S. wanted to use its position as host of the June 8-10 G-8 summit to win the support for restructuring that partnership, according to a report in "Arms Control Today."
If the G-8 fails to talk about plutonium, its silence could be meaningful, according to Tom Clements, of Greenpeace International.
"If they don't come up with new funds, then they might be noticeably silent on the plutonium disposition issue," Clements said. "If any country, such as Germany, raises hard questions about the MOX program, then there could be some fireworks."
----
Atomic weapons easy to make, scientists say
BY PETER SLEVIN
Tue, May. 25, 2004
Washington Post
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/8750917.htm?1c
WASHINGTON - Sen. Joseph Biden wondered aloud one day in 2002 whether someone could build an atomic weapon from parts available on the open market. His audience, the leaders of the government's nuclear laboratories, said it could be done.
Then do it, the Delaware Democrat, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, instructed the scientists in a confidential session. A few months later, they returned to the soundproof Senate meeting room with a workable nuclear weapon, missing only the fissile material.
"It was bigger than a breadbox and smaller than a dump truck, but they were able to get it in," Biden said in a recent speech. The scientists "explained how - literally off the shelf, without doing anything illegal - they actually constructed this device."
The relative ease with which U.S. scientists built an explosive nuclear weapon illustrates the need to secure plutonium and highly enriched uranium scattered in armories and research sites around the world, Harvard University researchers argue in a new study that contends the Bush administration is not doing enough.
Less fissile material, needed to cause nuclear fission, was secured in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001, than in the two years just before, according to the Harvard report, which was obtained by the Washington Post. Half the equipment dispatched to Russia nearly four years ago as a fast, interim solution remains in warehouses, uninstalled because of bureaucratic disputes.
Calling it a "dangerous myth" that terrorists could acquire a nuclear weapon only with the help of a rogue state, authors Matthew Bunn and Anthony Wier use the Biden example to allege that a failure of U.S. commitment and leadership could lead to a nuclear calamity. They also warn that, in an unstable country, a nuclear weapon could be bought or stolen.
"What's missing is a sense of urgency," said former senator Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who heads the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative, which funded the 111-page study. Nunn believes President Bush must focus on removing bureaucratic hurdles and work more pointedly with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"If one of the great cities of the world goes up in smoke, and you look back on these obstacles, it will make our retroactive rear-view mirror look at September 11th look like a waltz," Nunn said Sunday in an interview.
Bunn and Wier credit the Bush administration, particularly the leadership of the Energy Department, for making strides. But they write that the U.S. commitment is no match for the danger. As they put it, U.S. authorities are not meeting Bush's own pledge to "do all we can."
In one case, plans were announced six years ago to destroy 68 metric tons of plutonium stripped from bombs and warheads in the United States and Russia, but the project remains stalled because of a dispute over who would pay if an accident or sabotage occurred in Russia. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., has blamed "trivial negotiating issues."
In another example, the administration on average has requested less money to control nuclear materials and technology than was sought in the final Clinton administration budget, adjusted for inflation.
The Bush administration is preparing to announce an expanded effort to secure nuclear stockpiles and supplies of bomb-grade material, officials have said. In a Feb. 11 speech, Bush promised a series of strong steps to curtail the production and spread of fissile material that could be used in a nuclear explosive or scattered in a radiological device called a "dirty bomb."
-------- britain
Heated row over nuclear power call
KEVIN SCHOFIELD, EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT
Tue 25 May 2004,
The Scotsman
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=593652004
A SENIOR academic last night rejected calls by a veteran environmentalist for a massive expansion in nuclear power to tackle global warming.
Professor Tariq Muneer, an expert on renewable energy based at Napier University in Edinburgh, spoke out after Prof James Lovelock argued that global warming was happening at a much faster rate than originally feared.
Writing in the Independent, Professor Lovelock, an 84-year-old scientist, said there was not enough time for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power to take over from fossil fuels like coal, which have been blamed for climate change, and that nuclear power should be expanded.
He said: "By all means let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy."
The green guru claimed opposition to nuclear power was "based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood fiction, the green lobbies and the media".
Prof Lovelock added: "We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources. Civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear - the one safe, available, energy source - now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet."
But his comments were rejected by Prof Muneer, who said that the dangers posed by stepping up nuclear production far outweighed the benefits. He rejected suggestions that nuclear power was safe and that it did not contribute to global warming.
He said: "I refute what Professor Lovelock has to say about nuclear power because it is not renewable and at some point it will run out. There is also the dangers associated with storing nuclear waste, such as the risk of ground-water contamination.
"If you use heat to produce energy, such as with nuclear power or fossil fuels, you will end up dumping heat in the oceans or in rivers or lakes. And if you raise the water temperature from its natural level, you will pump out carbon dioxide and that goes up into the atmosphere."
Prof Muneer also said that global warming was "only partly responsible" for overall climate change because the Earth's current orbit means it is travelling closer to the sun.
Prof Lovelock's comments have also prompted an angry response from environmental campaigners.
Duncan McLaren, the chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: "We consider climate change and radioactive waste to be posing long-term threats to the environment and human health. We've got a moral duty to tackle both these problems, not have to choose between them.
"There is a window of opportunity to tackle climate change in other ways than choosing to go back down the failed policy of nuclear power.
"The real challenge is to choose a different, safer, more sustainable energy route for Scotland and the rest of the world."
However, Prof Lovelock, the author of the Gaia hypothesis, the theory that the Earth keeps itself fit for life by the actions of living things, did receive some support from Brian Wilson, MP, a former energy minister.
Mr Wilson, the Labour MP for Cunninghame North, said: "I hope that many others will follow him in questioning the basis of their hostility to nuclear power in the age of global warming."
Mr Wilson said it was "a self-evident nonsense" for the UK to run down its nuclear capacity at the same time that there was an unprecedented emphasis on the need to reduce carbon emissions.
"Nuclear power is our only significant source of non-carbon electricity. It is the bird in the hand, yet the green lobby wants to shoot it," he said. "It is a completely false analysis to pit nuclear against renewables. I am strongly in favour of both, and that is the logical place to be for anyone who takes the global warming threat seriously."
The Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow has re-ignited the debate surrounding the possible effects of climate change.
Starring Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal, the film envisages catastrophic freak weather conditions swamping cities and ushering in the next ice age.
Critics have claimed that it is far-fetched and vastly exaggerates the potential effects of global warming.
-------- depleted uranium
Activist Urges Depleted Uranium Clean-Up in Iraq
by Lisa Richwine
Monday, May 24, 2004
by Reuters
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0524-05.htm
WASHINGTON - The U.S. military should clean up depleted uranium ammunition scattered across Iraq to prevent future health problems such as cancer and birth defects, a leading anti-nuclear activist said on Friday.
The Pentagon said it had not found any evidence the material, which is so dense it can pierce steel tanks, causes long-term health consequences. An ongoing study of 1991 Gulf War veterans has shown no ill effects.
But Dr. Helen Caldicott, a pediatrician and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, linked depleted uranium to higher rates of cancer and birth defects in Iraq following the Gulf War.
Depleted uranium ammunition is being used by U.S. troops in Iraq and could seriously harm civilians living there in the decades to come, said Caldicott, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an anti-nuclear group that shared the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize.
"We should be taking responsibility for what is happening over there," she told reporters at the National Press Club.
The Pentagon should test buildings in Iraq for depleted uranium, destroy ones with high levels and bury the material underground, Caldicott said.
The U.S. government also should compensate people with cancer related to the material, she said.
Depleted uranium is a byproduct of nuclear fuel production. It strengthens ammunition and gives weapons twice the range of ones using other heavy metals. Tanks made with depleted uranium have proven impenetrable by enemy weapons, the Pentagon said.
There has been controversy about it since its use during the Gulf War and the Balkans conflict, including some claims that European soldiers may have developed leukemia after being exposed to the material in Kosovo in 1999.
"We don't see anything from the science" indicating long-term health problems to people exposed to depleted uranium in the environment, said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, the Defense Department's deputy director for deployment health support.
An ongoing study of 70 Gulf War veterans who were hit by weapons using depleted uranium in "friendly fire" incidents has found no major health problems for the soldiers or their 35 children, Kilpatrick said.
Kilpatrick said research on potential long-term impacts is continuing.
"We are looking at it scientifically. We are keeping an open mind to it," he said in an interview.
-------- iran / inspections
Iran has mastered up to 70 percent of nuclear fuel cycle
TEHRAN (AFP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525142205.clkrol1g.html
Iran has mastered between 60 and 70 percent of the technology needed for the production of nuclear fuel, a former Iranian representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.
Ali Akbar Salehi, quoted Tuesday in Kayhan daily, said the technology had been "developed locally" but it would still take around 10 years until Iran could introduce a "safe fuel to the heart of the Bushehr reactor".
The nuclear reactor, Iran's first, is under construction in the south of Iran with help from Russia.
"We have found the way and we do not have any scientific problems," he was quoted as saying.
"Iran has already mastered the technology to extract uranium from mines, to convert the uranium ... and its enrichment, but we must still seek the capacity to produce the uranium rods for use in the Bushehr power station."
The United States charges Iran is hiding a program to build the bomb and has called for the IAEA, which has been investigating the Iranian program since February 2003, to refer the Islamic Republic to the UN Security Council for possible international sanctions.
Iran submitted a new declaration on its nuclear program to the IAEA earlier this month after a similar document last year failed to live up to Iranian promises to fully disclose its nuclear activities.
The earlier declaration left out such sensitive information as Iran's possession of designs for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges that can enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels.
IAEA inspectors have noted a pattern of radiation contamination in Iran which could indicate attempts to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons, diplomats in Vienna where the agency is based have told AFP.
Agency 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.
Iran, which claims the patterns are caused by equipment imported through an international black market, has voluntarily suspended enrichment activities at Natanz as a sign of goodwill to the international community.
According to Salehi, the Western powers also want Iran to suspend conversion activities at the Isfahan nuclear plant, capable of producing UF6 material used in centrifuges, but Tehran had refused.
Salehi, who now serves as adviser to Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, revealed that Iranian engineers were building "a 40-megawatt (nuclear) research reactor" and had made good progress.
"At this rate, the reactor will be up and running in six to seven years," he said.
IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei said last week that Iran's cooperation with the agency had been insufficient and he had not drawn any conclusions over the nature of the country's nuclear programme.
Tehran expects the IAEA probe to be completed in June but ElBaradei has said it may take until the end of the year.
----
Nuclear Weapons in Iran: Plowshare or Sword?
May 25, 2004
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/science/25nucl.html?pagewanted=all&position=
A recurring fear haunts the West's increasingly tense confrontation with Iran: Is its work on civilian nuclear power actually a ruse for making a deadly atomic arsenal, as has been the case with other countries?
Next month, the United Nations plans to take up that question at a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna. The diplomatic backdrop includes possible sanctions and even the threat of war.
"If Iran goes nuclear, you worry that Hezbollah goes nuclear," said Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a private group in Washington, referring to the Iran-backed terrorist group.
The Iranian crisis, and related ones simmering in North Korea and also around Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani expert who recently confessed to running nuclear black markets, are giving new urgency to limiting proliferation, a central danger of the atomic era. Recently, international inspectors discovered that North Korea may have clandestinely supplied uranium to Libya, demonstrating how an aspiring state can secretly reach for nuclear arms.
The development of such arsenals is often hard to hide, because it takes place in large industrial complexes where nuclear power and nuclear weapons are joined at the hip - using technologies that are often identical, or nearly so. Today, with what seems like relative ease, scientists can divert an ostensibly peaceful program to make not only electricity but also highly pure uranium or plutonium, both excellent bomb fuels.
Experts now talk frankly about a subject that was once taboo: "virtual" weapon states - Japan, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and a dozen other countries that have mastered the basics of nuclear power and could, if they wanted, quickly cross the line to make nuclear arms, probably in a matter or months. Experts call it breakout.
The question now, driven largely by the perception that the world is entering a dangerous new phase of nuclear proliferation, is whether the two endeavors can be separated. And as difficult as that may seem, new initiatives are rising to meet the challenge.
Last year, North Korea stunned the world by withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty. It was the first time a nation had dropped out of the 1968 pact, setting a grim precedent and prompting warnings of the accord's demise.
If another virtual power crosses the line, experts fear, it could start a chain reaction in which others feel they have no alternative but to do likewise.
Yet a country like Iran can retain its virtual-weapons status - and the threat of breakout - even if the International Atomic Energy Agency gives it a clean bill of health. That kind of quandary is driving the wider debate on ways to safeguard nuclear power, especially given that the world may rely on it increasingly as worries grow about global warming and oil shortages.
"We can't give absolute guarantees," said Graham Andrew, a senior scientist at the agency. "But there will be technological developments to make the fuel cycle more proliferation-resistant."
Other experts agree. "The future looks better than the past in terms of this whole problem," said Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "At the moment, it's a very, very fast-moving arena that a lot of people are into and thinking about."
The central compact of the nuclear age - what critics call a deal with the devil - is that countries can get help from other nations in developing nuclear power if they pledge to renounce nuclear arms. That principle was codified in the 1968 treaty and has produced a vast apparatus of the International Atomic Energy Agency that not only helps nations go peacefully nuclear but also monitors them for cheating.
But surveillance has proved far from perfect, and states have proved far from trustworthy.
"If you look at every nation that's recently gone nuclear," said Mr. Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute, "they've done it through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle: Iraq, North Korea, India, Pakistan, South Africa. And now we're worried about Iran."
The moral, he added, is that atoms for peace can be "a shortcut to atoms for war."
Moreover, the raw material is growing. The world now has 440 commercial nuclear reactors and 31 more under construction.
Experts say Iran provides a good example of the breakout danger. With the right tweaks, its sprawling complex now under construction could make arms of devastating force. Recently, mistrust over that prospect soared when inspectors found that Iran had hidden some of its most sensitive nuclear work as long as 18 years.
In the central desert near Yazd, the country now mines uranium in shafts up to a fifth of a mile deep.
At Isfahan, an ancient city that boasts a top research center, it is building a factory for converting the ore into uranium hexafluoride. When heated, the crystals turn into a gas ideal for processing to recover uranium's rare U-235 isotope, which, in bombs and reactors, easily splits in two to produce bursts of atomic energy.
Nearby at Natanz, Iran aims to feed the gas into 50,000 centrifuges - tall, thin machines that spin extraordinarily fast to separate the relatively light U-235 isotope from its heavier cousin, U-238. It recently came to light that Iran had gained much help in making its centrifuges from Dr. Khan and his secretive network.
Iran says it wants to enrich the uranium to about 5 percent U-235, the level needed for nuclear reactors.
But enrichment is one place that good power programs can easily go bad, nonproliferation experts say. By simply lengthening the spin cycle, a nation can enrich the uranium up to 90 percent U-235, the high purity usually preferred for bombs.
Moreover, a dirty little secret of the atomic world is that the hardest step is enriching uranium for reactors, not bombs. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington, said the step from reactor to weapon fuel took roughly 25 percent more effort.
The whirling centrifuges at Natanz could make fuel for up to 20 nuclear weapons every year, according to the Carnegie Endowment. Others put the figure at 25 bombs a year.
The Iranians are building a large power reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf meant to be fueled with low-enriched uranium from Natanz. Here too, experts say, a good program can go bad.
Normally, uranium fuel stays in a reactor for three or four years and, as an inadvertent byproduct of atomic fission, becomes slowly riddled with plutonium 239, the other good material for making atom bombs. But the spent fuel also accumulates plutonium 240, which is so radioactive that it can be very difficult to turn into weapons.
But if the reactor's fuel is changed frequently - every few months - that cuts the P-240 to preferable levels for building an arsenal. (And since less plutonium than uranium is needed for a blast of equal size, it is the preferred material for making compact warheads that are relatively easy to fit on missiles.)
John R. Bolton, the State Department's under secretary for arms control, recently told Congress that after several years of operation, Bushehr could make enough plutonium for more than 80 nuclear weapons.
Iran strongly denies such ambitions.
"That we are on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough is true," Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran's former president, said recently, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. "But we are not seeking nuclear weapons."
If Iran wanted to recover plutonium from Bushehr, or a different reactor under construction at Arak, it would have to extract the metal from spent fuel, a hard job because of the waste's high radioactivity. Such reprocessing plants have legitimate commercial uses for turning nuclear detritus into new fuel, as France, Britain, Japan and Russia do.
Iran, too, has announced that it wants to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle, apparently including reprocessing. Last year, President Mohammad Khatami said the country wanted to recycle power-plant fuel. "We are determined," he said in a televised speech, "to use nuclear technology for civilian purposes."
Around the globe, experts are struggling to find ways to guarantee such good intentions: not just in Iran, but everywhere.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is calling for "multinational controls" on the production of any material that can be used for nuclear arms. If accepted, that would mean no single country could enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium on its own, but only in groups where members would verify each other's honesty.
Early this month, Iran signaled that it might be interested in teaming with Russia and Europe to enrich uranium, giving arms controllers some hope of a peaceful resolution to the current crisis.
Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has called for sweetening the deal by guaranteeing members of a consortium lifetime fuel supplies and spent-fuel removal if they forgo enrichment and reprocessing plants.
"What you need is an incentive," he said. One challenge, he added, would be convincing states that consortiums "won't change their minds," given that nuclear policy makers have often done so in the past.
President Bush has taken a harder line, proposing in a February speech to limit drastically the number of nations allowed to produce nuclear fuel. Only states that already have enrichment and reprocessing plants, he said, should do such work, and they in turn would service countries that aspire to nuclear power.
While many experts praise Mr. Bush's attention to the nonproliferation issue, some have faulted his specifics. "It's all sticks and no carrots," said Mr. Bunn, adding that the Bush plan would only feed global resentment toward the nuclear club. "I think you can couch this to be more carrotlike."
Down the road, a different approach involves developing new classes of reactors that would better resist nuclear proliferation, especially by making the recovery of plutonium 239 much harder. Many studies, including one last year at M.I.T., have championed better fuel cycles and security.
"There is potentially a pathway - diplomatic, technical - to see a significant global deployment" of safer technologies and strategies, said Ernest J. Moniz, a former Energy Department official who helped lead the M.I.T. study. "But it can't happen without U.S. leadership and the U.S. partnering with other countries, and that will require a re-examination of our policies."
Mr. Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute said too many of the proposals were too timid. Most fundamentally, he said, nations have to turn away from the commercial use of plutonium, which grows more abundant every day.
"Only denial and greed" can explain the world's continuing to want plutonium for peaceful uses, he said, and added, "It may take the unthinkable happening before the political process can screw up the courage to put an end to this ridiculously dangerous industry."
----
US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday May 25, 2004
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1223998,00.html
An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.
Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.
According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.
The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi's contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands.
The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war.
"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."
Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy."
Mr Chalabi has vehemently rejected the allegations as "a lie, a fib and silly". He accused the CIA director, George Tenet, of a smear campaign against himself and Mr Habib.
However, it is clear that the CIA - at loggerheads with Mr Chalabi for more than eight years - believes it has caught him red-handed, and is sticking to its allegations.
"The suggestion that Chalabi is a victim of a smear campaign is outrageous," a US intelligence official said. "It's utter nonsense. He passed very sensitive and classified information to the Iranians. We have rock solid information that he did that."
"As for Aras Karim [Habib] being a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, we have very good reason to believe that is the case," added the intelligence official, who did not want to be named. He said it was unclear how long this INC-Iranian collaboration had been going on, but pointed out that Mr Chalabi had had overt links with Tehran "for a long period of time".
An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials.
"This was 'sensitive compartmented information' - SCI - and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib," the intelligence source said.
Mr Habib, a Shia Kurd who is being sought by Iraqi police since a raid on INC headquarters last week, has been Mr Chalabi's righthand man for more than a decade. He ran a Pentagon-funded intelligence collection programme in the run-up to the invasion and put US officials in touch with Iraqi defectors who made claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Those claims helped make the case for war but have since proved groundless, and US intelligence agencies are now scrambling to determine whether false information was passed to the US with Iranian connivance.
INC representatives in Washington did not return calls seeking comment.
But Laurie Mylroie, a US Iraq analyst and one of the INC's most vocal backers in Washington, dismissed the allegations as the product of a grudge among CIA and state department officials driven by a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia bias.
She said that after the CIA raised questions about Mr Habib's Iranian links, the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) conducted a lie-detector test on him in 2002, which he passed with "flying colours".
The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry into the INC-Iran link.
An intelligence source in Washington said the FBI investigation into the affair would begin with Mr Chalabi's "handlers" in the Pentagon, who include William Luti, the former head of the office of special plans, and his immediate superior, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy.
There is no evidence that they were the source of the leaks. Other INC supporters at the Pentagon may have given away classified information in an attempt to give Mr Chalabi an advantage in the struggle for power surrounding the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.
The CIA allegations bring to a head a dispute between the CIA and the Pentagon officials instrumental in promoting Mr Chalabi and his intelligence in the run-up to the war. By calling for an FBI counter-intelligence investigation, the CIA is, in effect, threatening to disgrace senior neo-conservatives in the Pentagon.
"This is people who opposed the war with long knives drawn for people who supported the war," Ms Mylroie said.
----
Russia, Iran Reportedly to Sign Nuclear Deal Soon
May 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-russia-iran.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Iran will sign a deal soon with Russia obliging it to return spent fuel from a new nuclear reactor to Moscow, a Russian official said, in a move intended to ease U.S. fears the material could be used to make bombs.
Russia has faced down U.S. opposition to its construction of Iran's $800-million reactor at Bushehr, but it has insisted on the spent fuel deal to alleviate U.S. concerns that Iranian scientists could extract plutonium from spent fuel and potentially use it in warheads.
Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday Moscow and Tehran would sign the document during a visit to Iran this summer, ending years of talks.
``During this trip we plan to sign an additional protocol on the return of spent nuclear fuel to Russia for storage and processing,'' Itar-Tass news agency quoted Rumyantsev as saying.
The document must be signed before the end of the summer for Bushehr's first 1,000-megawatt reactor to go on-stream in 2005. The plant was originally supposed to start up in 2003.
Washington has branded Iran part of an ``axis of evil'' of states seeking illegal arms and fears Iran would use Bushehr as a cover for the transfer of other sensitive nuclear technology.
Russia says Iran could not produce a nuclear bomb, even using Moscow's nuclear technology.
Iran, which sits on the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia, also denies the U.S. allegations. It says it needs nuclear energy to meet booming demand for electricity and keep oil and gas reserves for export.
SPENT FUEL TO SIBERIA
Iran's former representative to the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, was quoted Tuesday as saying Iran was still some way from mastering the full nuclear fuel cycle.
``Iran has achieved some 60 to 70 percent of the technology needed for a full fuel cycle,'' Salehi told the hard-line Kayhan evening newspaper.
He said Iran was many years away from producing enough nuclear fuel to feed even one atomic reactor.
``We need at least ten years to feed the Bushehr nuclear plant with the fuel,'' Salehi said.
Once the protocol on returning spent fuel is signed, Russia will ship fuel to Iran to start up the Bushehr reactor. Spent fuel will be sent back to a storage facility in Siberia after roughly a decade of use.
Western diplomats in Moscow say that decade would enable Iran to acquire the necessary technology to make bombs. Russia says much longer would be required.
An official from a nuclear fuel plant in Siberia was quoted as saying that up to 168 nuclear fuel units would be dispatched to Bushehr after the signing to start up the reactor. A further 43 would be shipped each year thereafter.
Signing of the document has been delayed repeatedly. Industry insiders say disagreement over technical matters and the row with the United States nearly prompted both sides to abandon the project this year.
Rumyantsev told Tass delays were linked to ``failure to fulfil certain contract obligations by some Russian and Iranian firms.'' He did not elaborate.
-------- japan
Estimates may snag nuke plans
By TOMOJI WATANABE,
The Asahi Shimbun
May 25, 2004
http://www.asahi.com/english/business/TKY200405250142.html
NEW YORK- The latest international estimates on uranium reserves have thrown the necessity of spent nuclear fuel recycling into question, an outcome that could force Japan to rethink its costly nuclear recycling plans.
According to estimates compiled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), without any reprocessing of spent nuclear fuels, the world has 270 years of uranium reserves.
If the spent fuel were to be recycled once, it would only add an estimated 30 years to the total.
The two organizations are considered the top authorities on uranium reserves. The NEA is a Paris-based organ of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The latest estimates will be included in a biennial report set to be released soon by the two organizations.
The 2003 report will be based on data from 2002 and 2003, gathered from 44 nations.
Japan's nuclear fuel recycling program centers on a so-called pluthermal method, in which spent nuclear fuels are reprocessed and reused in conventional light-water reactors as part of plutonium-uranium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels.
Of the 270 years worth of uranium reserves, 80 years are proven reserves, according to the estimates.
If spent nuclear fuels were to be recycled once, however, known reserves would grow to just 100 years.
The organizations estimate that the known quantity of uranium is about 4.6 million tons in total, while estimated total untapped deposits are about 14.4 million tons.
The amount of non-processed uranium necessary to generate 1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity is projected to be 20.7 tons, and 18.4 tons for once-recycled uranium.
At 18.8 trillion yen, Japan's recycling program represents the most costly part of its so-called back-end operations, which include storing, moving and reprocessing spent nuclear fuels. (IHT/Asahi: May 25,2004)
-------- korea
South Korea mum on alleged North Korean nuke sales
Purported purchase of material by Libya poses fresh quandary for multilateral talks
2004-05-25
Associated Press
http://www.etaiwannews.com/Asia/2004/05/25/1085451113.htm
South Korea refused to comment yesterday on a report that neighboring North Korea may have provided nearly two tons of uranium to Libya for its now-scrapped nuclear weapons program.
The revelations stoked concern that the impoverished communist nation may have secretly cooperated with other nations to distribute fuel, components or the knowledge needed to build nuclear bombs.
South Korea's Foreign Ministry, which is involved in six-nation talks aimed at dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program, would not comment on the alleged clandestine network.
A high-ranking ministry official said on condition of anonymity that the government could not talk about intelligence issues. He also declined to say how the news might affect the next round of six-nation talks.
The two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia are trying to hold a third round of talks by July. Two previous rounds ended without much progress.
Over the weekend, diplomats told The Associated Press that North Korea was the likely source of 1.87 tons of uranium hexafluoride that Libya handed over to Americans in January as part of its decision to get rid of its own weapons of mass destruction.
Investigations into the allegations are not complete. But the evidence came from the International Atomic Energy Agency and was based on interviews with members of a clandestine network headed by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist implicated in selling his country's nuclear secrets to Libya, North Korea, Iran, and possibly other countries, according to one diplomat.
The evidence collected by the IAEA strengthens allegations against North Korea that it was running a second nuclear program using uranium enrichment, in addition to its better-known plutonium-based activities.
North Korea is demanding U.S. economic aid and other concessions in exchange for scrapping its nuclear weapons development, but denies having a uranium-based program.
U.S. officials believe North Korea already has one or two nuclear bombs and could make several more within months through its plutonium program.
The challenge
The discovery that North Korea may have supplied uranium to Libya poses an immediate challenge to the White House: while U.S. President Bush is preoccupied on the other side of the world, an economically desperate nation may be engaging in exactly the kind of nuclear proliferation that the president says he went to war in Iraq to halt.
Yet to listen to many in the White House, concern about North Korea's nuclear program brings little of the urgency that surrounded the decision 14 months ago to oust Saddam Hussein. When Bush has been asked about North Korea in recent months, he has emphasized his patience. He does not refer to the intelligence estimates that North Korea has at least two nuclear weapons, or to the debate within the American intelligence community about whether North Korea has spent the past 18 months building more.
Instead, he lauds the progress he says the United States has made in organizing China, Russia, Japan and South Korea to negotiate as one with the North Koreans - though those talks have resulted in no progress so far in ending either of North Korea's two major nuclear programs.
Just last week, the Pentagon even announced it was removing a brigade of troops that had been securing South Korea's border with the North, and sending it to provide additional forces for the Iraqi occupation.
With international inspectors recently reporting that North Korea may have shipped uranium, already processed into a gas that can be fed into centrifuges for enrichment into bomb fuel, the White House has been silent.
----
Former LANL director talks about North Korea visit
5/25/2004
AP
http://www.krqe.com/expanded3.asp?RECORD_KEY%5BLargeHeadline%5D=ID&ID%5BLargeHeadline%5D=5446
Los Alamos - Former Los Alamos National Laboratory director Sig Hecker toured one of North Korea's three nuclear reactors in January.
He says he was impressed with the facilities and knowledge at the plant, but says he could not confirm that the North Koreans could reprocess plutonium to a weapons grade.
Hecker says he can't confirm that nation has the ability to put a warhead on a missile but saysthe United States has to assume the North Koreans know how to make a simple nuclear device.
He spoke about his trip at a talk at Los Alamos lab.
Hecker toured North Korean facilities as part of an unofficial delegation.
He says he was surprised at how forthright and open the North Koreans were with the visiting delegation.
-------- russia
Russia, Iran Reportedly to Sign Nuclear Deal Soon
Tue May 25, 2004
By Maria Golovnina
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=G3AYWVHC3Z2L4CRBAEZSFFA?type=worldNews&storyID=5251633&pageNumber=1
MOSCOW - Iran will sign a deal soon with Russia obliging it to return spent fuel from a new nuclear reactor to Moscow, a Russian official said, in a move intended to ease U.S. fears the material could be used to make bombs.
Russia has faced down U.S. opposition to its construction of Iran's $800-million reactor at Bushehr, but it has insisted on the spent fuel deal to alleviate U.S. concerns that Iranian scientists could extract plutonium from spent fuel and potentially use it in warheads.
Alexander Rumyantsev, head of Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, said Tuesday Moscow and Tehran would sign the document during a visit to Iran this summer, ending years of talks.
"During this trip we plan to sign an additional protocol on the return of spent nuclear fuel to Russia for storage and processing," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Rumyantsev as saying.
The document must be signed before the end of the summer for Bushehr's first 1,000-megawatt reactor to go on-stream in 2005. The plant was originally supposed to start up in 2003.
Washington has branded Iran part of an "axis of evil" of states seeking illegal arms and fears Iran would use Bushehr as a cover for the transfer of other sensitive nuclear technology.
Russia says Iran could not produce a nuclear bomb, even using Moscow's nuclear technology.
Iran, which sits on the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia, also denies the U.S. allegations. It says it needs nuclear energy to meet booming demand for electricity and keep oil and gas reserves for export.
SPENT FUEL TO SIBERIA
Iran's former representative to the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Akbar Salehi, was quoted Tuesday as saying Iran was still some way from mastering the full nuclear fuel cycle.
"Iran has achieved some 60 to 70 percent of the technology needed for a full fuel cycle," Salehi told the hard-line Kayhan evening newspaper.
He said Iran was many years away from producing enough nuclear fuel to feed even one atomic reactor.
"We need at least ten years to feed the Bushehr nuclear plant with the fuel," Salehi said.
Once the protocol on returning spent fuel is signed, Russia will ship fuel to Iran to start up the Bushehr reactor. Spent fuel will be sent back to a storage facility in Siberia after roughly a decade of use.
Western diplomats in Moscow say that decade would enable Iran to acquire the necessary technology to make bombs. Russia says much longer would be required.
An official from a nuclear fuel plant in Siberia was quoted as saying that up to 168 nuclear fuel units would be dispatched to Bushehr after the signing to start up the reactor. A further 43 would be shipped each year thereafter.
Signing of the document has been delayed repeatedly. Industry insiders say disagreement over technical matters and the row with the United States nearly prompted both sides to abandon the project this year.
Rumyantsev told Tass delays were linked to "failure to fulfil certain contract obligations by some Russian and Iranian firms." He did not elaborate.
-------- terrorism
US offers Greece radiation detectors ahead of Olympics
ATHENS (AFP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525143703.7b68l934.html
The United States has given Greece an undisclosed number of radiation detectors as part of a bid to boost security for the Athens Olympic Games, due to take place in August.
"These devices...will help and complete the Athens Olympics' outstanding security apparatus," US Energy Secretary Spencer Abrahams, who is visiting Greece, said here on Tuesday.
"In our age, the age of unprecedented terrorism, all civilized nations must cooperate as fully as possible to ensure their citizens' security," Abrahams said in a speech at Greece's Development Ministry.
The donation involves fixed and portable detectors and is part of Greece's efforts to boost protection against possible attacks during the August 13-29 Games.
Radiation detectors are set to be installed at 32 entry points into Greece.
According to the country's development minister Dimitris Sioufas, the delivery is part of a US-funded, 40-million-dollar (33 million euros) radiation technology transfer programme known as the Cooperative radiological instrument transfer project.
Security is providing Greek Olympics organisers with a major headache.
Tension in Iraq and the Middle East have sparked fears of a terrorist attack during the Games, the first to be held after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US.
The US is part of a seven-country group advising Greece on Olympics security.
NATO will deploy a major military force against the threat of nuclear, biological and chemical warfare in Greece during the Games.
--------
U.S. Sends Nuke Detection Gear to Athens
May 25, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/sports/AP-OLY-Athens-Nuclear.html
ATHENS, Greece (AP) -- The United States provided Greek police and border officials with radiation detection equipment Wednesday to help guard the Athens Olympics against a nuclear or ``dirty'' bomb.
Recent terrorist attacks have demonstrated that the use of such weapons at the Aug. 13-29 Olympics by terrorist groups could not be ruled out, said Anita Nilsson, director of nuclear security for the International Atomic Energy Agency.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave Greece the radiation detectors, worth more than $26 million.
``They will supplement the extraordinary security apparatus at the Olympics,'' Abraham said as he delivered some of the equipment.
Permanent detectors will be installed at 32 airports and seaports and Olympic venues. Portable equipment will be given to police and border guards, customs officers and the coast guard to ``help detect, deter and interdict nuclear smuggling,'' Abraham said.
The equipment will be ``deployed to detect radioactive materials that might be used as a weapon by terrorists in a radiological dispersal device, a so-called dirty bomb,'' the IAEA said in a statement from Vienna, Austria.
A dirty bomb is a conventional explosive designed to spread radioactive material.
``There has been good cooperation with the Greek Atomic Energy Commission and with the other international partners in developing and implementing this work,'' said Mohamed ElBaradei, IAEA director general. ``We are collectively striving for a high measure of security.''
The head of the Greek commission, Leonidas Kamarinopoulos, said there was little chance a dirty bomb would be used. Authorities, however, were taking no chances.
This month, Greece increased its Olympic security budget to more than $1.2 billion. About 70,000 police officers and soldiers will patrol Athens and Olympic venues during the games.
In March, a two-week multinational security exercise tested efforts to safeguard the games from a host of possible threats ranging from hijackings to a dirty bomb.
Abraham said the United States had provided similar equipment and training to safeguard the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
The joint program began last year and aims to protect Greece's sole nuclear reactor and other sites where radioactive materials are stored.
``We are improving protection systems at the Demokritos research reactor, 22 hospitals clinic and at sensitive industrial facilities,'' Kamarinopoulos said.
The Demokritos research reactor, which uses highly enriched uranium, is located in suburban Halandri -- a few miles from the center of Athens.
Greece has held a number of exercises to deal with mass casualties from a nuclear, biological or chemical attack. NATO, which has been asked by Greece to provide aerial surveillance during the games, also has promised to fly in medicine and rescue equipment if such an attack occurs.
``An important part of our security plan has now significantly been reinforced,'' Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis said.
His ministry has been hosting a three-day meeting for 350 security experts representing national Olympic committees, sponsors and broadcasters. On the second day, the experts discussed protecting the Athens airport, the Olympic Village, hotels, transport systems, athletes and officials.
--------
Olympics: Greece Prepares for 'Dirty Bomb' Threat
May 25, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/sports/sports-sport-olympics-security.html
ATHENS (Reuters) - Greece began deploying U.S.-supplied radiation detectors at strategic points across the country to prevent a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' attack during this summer's Athens Olympics, officials said on Tuesday.
Greece is hosting the first summer Games since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and has put together the largest security plan in Olympic history, with a price tag of around one billion euros ($1.21 billion).
A series of minor bombing attacks over the past weeks, which the Greek government called ``isolated domestic events,'' has raised security concerns for the hosts and countries planning to send their teams to the Games.
A ``dirty bomb'' is a device using an explosive like dynamite that is laced with radioactive material. When the explosive is ignited it disperses the radioactive material over a wide area.
Experts say that a dirty bomb would not necessarily cause much physical damage but would be devastating due to the panic and chaos it would create.
To help prevent such an attack, the United States and seven other countries, along with the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have been providing the Greek government with technology, expertise and intelligence.
The IAEA said that radiation detectors had been installed at borders and other entry points in Greece, while mobile detection devices will be deployed elsewhere. Hand-held radiation monitors are being distributed among the thousands of security and customs officials policing the Games.
``The equipment is being deployed to detect radioactive materials that might be used as a weapon by terrorists in a radiological dispersal device, a so-called dirty bomb,'' the IAEA said in a statement.
There has never been a dirty bomb attack, but atomic experts have warned it is only a matter of time before one occurs. ``This equipment will...(help prevent) exposure to radioactive materials that can be released either by accident or through criminal intent,'' U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said at a ceremony for the arrival of U.S. detection devices.
The detectors will be installed at 32 points of entry across the country, including seven airports, 12 seaports as well as 13 border crossings and customs offices.
Greece will deploy about 45,000 armed guards in the capital, three times the amount used in the Sydney 2000 Games, in addition air and sea patrols provided by NATO.
``The Athens Games will be the safest ever organized,'' Public Order Minister George Voulgarakis said.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Nuclear experiment planned at test site
San Jose Mercury News,
May 25, 2004
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/8755298.htm?ERIGHTS=-5610349459758009001mercurynews::et@nucnews.net&KRD_RM=5qqququpsrnplmuullllllllmp|Ellen|Y
Government scientists plan to conduct an underground nuclear experiment today at the Nevada Test Site, the National Nuclear Security Administration said.
The subcritical experiment, dubbed Armando, will involve detonating high explosives around plutonium in a steel sphere while X-rays, radar and lasers chart the behavior of the radioactive element in a non-nuclear explosion.
Scientists from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are conducting the test in a tunnel 963 feet below ground at the Nevada Test Site, about 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Anti-nuclear groups criticize subcritical experiments as contrary to the spirit of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear arms. The U.S. has observed a nuclear testing moratorium since 1992, but has not ratified the treaty.
----
Manhattan Project vet remembers Oppie
By James W. Brosnan
Scripps Howard News Service
May 25, 2004
http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news04/052504_news_oppy.shtml
WASHINGTON - The chief of security for the Manhattan Project gave Capt. Thomas O. Jones a mission: "Calm down Oppenheimer!"
Three things helped Jones achieve that task in the spring of 1945: a secretary, a death and the realization that forcing Robert Oppenheimer, the internationally renowned physicist, to leave the bomb-building team at Los Alamos over his ties to communists could have blown the lid off the secret of the A-bomb.
"In my opinion he was close to resigning, which would have been calamitous," said Jones, 87, the last chief of security at Los Alamos during the war and the only living witness to the fight within the Manhattan Project over Oppenheimer.
Jones will be one of the presenters, via videotape, at a June 26 symposium on the life of Oppenheimer at the Smith Civic Auditorium in Los Alamos. The day before that, officials will dedicate the Oppenheimers' old house at 1967 Peach St., which has been sold to the Los Alamos Historical Society.
Oppenheimer is getting extra attention this year because April 22 was the 100th anniversary of his birth. (He died in 1967.)
U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Silver City Democrat, has authored a resolution, now awaiting Senate action, honoring Oppenheimer's "loyal service" to the United States and his scientific contributions to physics, nuclear energy and "the common defense and security of the United States."
The resolution makes no mention of the security controversy that dogged Oppenheimer at Los Alamos and that would ultimately result in the government pulling his security clearance in 1953.
Jones recently recalled his time at Los Alamos, reminiscing at his Washington, D.C., apartment four blocks from the White House.
It was a draft selection board that decided this English literature major from Harvard should be assigned to counterintelligence. Jones spent most of the war in plainclothes working out of a false-front office in the Chicago loop, not far from his parents' house in Highland Park, Ill.
One day he was the only junior officer around when Lt. Col. John Lansdale came out to Chicago from the Manhattan Project office in Washington looking for a security liaison in the Midwest.
To the security chief's surprise, Jones already knew a prominent University of Chicago physicist, Arthur Compton, having befriended Compton's son at summer camp.
Jones wasn't told what Manhattan was making, but he figured it was some type of bomb. He was told to be very careful not to use the word "implosion," which he would later learn was a key bomb-designing process that involved compressing plutonium enough to drive it to critical mass and make it explode.
The event that triggered Jones' departure for Los Alamos in spring 1945 was a letter from his predecessor there, Peer De Silva, to Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project.
The letter detailed De Silva's argument that Oppenheimer's associations with communists made him too great a security risk to remain at Los Alamos.
For Groves, De Silva's letter came as the last straw: Groves had already decided that Oppenheimer was too vital to the project to be dismissed and wanted to ease his stress by transferring De Silva, Jones said.
When Lansdale told Jones he had 30 days to move to Los Alamos, "I started trembling in my boots. We knew so little about Los Alamos we considered that it must be very awesome."
Lansdale told him much of the project was practically done, but it "it was imperative to calm down Oppenheimer," Jones said.
There was no doubt Oppenheimer had many associates who "ranged from pinkish to Communist Party members," Jones said.
But if Oppenheimer had resigned it would have been known by scientists nationwide and could have led to disclosing the existence of the project, he said.
On arriving in Los Alamos, Jones was pleasantly surprised to find an ally in Oppenheimer's secretary. Anne Wilson had worked in the Manhattan Project's Washington office, and the two had often chatted over the phone while Jones waited to speak to Lansdale. He was sure it was Wilson who told "Oppie" that Jones was called "Thomas O."
Within days after Jones' arrival at Los Alamos, on April 12, 1945, Lansdale called him with the news that President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died.
Jones raced out of his office and encountered Oppenheimer on a footbridge. "He said, `Thomas O, is it true?' And I said, 'Yes, Oppie.' " The two retreated to a hallway outside Oppenheimer's office where the scientist recalled meeting Roosevelt in the White House.
"It had been a very moving experience for him," Jones said. "They were immediately intimate friends. It was instant rapport. It brought us a rapport at a slightly lower place."
Jones' chief job at Los Alamos was supervising security for the July 16, 1945, test of the plutonium device.
A photo published years later shows Jones watching as two men load the bomb's plutonium core onto the back seat of a plain Army sedan. "Although I knew perfectly well that it was not going to blow up, somehow I felt better putting the car door between me and the cargo," Jones said.
Some large pieces were moved by truck, but most went by car more than 200 miles from Los Alamos to the test site near Alamogordo.
"Our policy was not to call attention to the thing, not to have a parade with tanks and planes overhead and all that stuff. Just a couple of cars taking a ride down that way; that's how it worked," Jones said. The day of the Trinity test found Jones in a room at La Posada de Albuquerque, 100 miles or so north of the secret test site. Security agents were stationed around the state to prepare for an evacuation if the blast led to a "not necessarily wrong but unexpected result," Jones said.
He recalled, "I was drowsy at the moment, having been up for three days. And we had no close estimate of the zero hour. I was exhausted and lay back on the bed. And all of a sudden it was as if somebody put off 500 flashbulbs in the room - wham, and no noise of course."
Jones jumped to the window and saw the whole sky turn red and then fade. The Army put out a cover story about a huge munitions accident, and the news media swallowed it.
Jones stayed at Los Alamos through the Bikini Atoll bomb testing in 1946. He spent most of his later career with the Atomic Energy Commission, although not in security.
Oppenheimer left Los Alamos after refusing to work on the hydrogen bomb. He headed the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J., a school dedicated to independent research. In 1953 the government took away his security clearance. De Silva's charges had caught up with him.
And Oppenheimer was accused of not being truthful with officials about his conversations with a suspected spy. Jones was relieved not to be asked to testify.
"I never have made up my mind on whether he should have been cleared or not. I never had to do that," Jones said.
But he still treasures a photograph of Oppenheimer that the scientist gave him before he left Los Alamos. Above his signature, Oppenheimer wrote, "In memory of common woes."
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- alabama
Energy Department Funds Nuclear Power Research
May 25, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-25-097.asp
A detailed study for the potential construction of a two-unit Advanced Boiling Water Reactor nuclear plant on Bellefonte site near Hollywood, Alabama is in the works. The U.S. Department of Energy announced Monday that it will cooperate on the study with a nuclear industry team led by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a federal agency.
The study, which will cost a total of $4.25 million over the next 10 months, is intended to help the TVA decide whether to build a new, advanced technology nuclear plant at the site by the middle of the next decade.
The technology is a Generation III nuclear power plant that is based on a design developed by General Electric and was certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1997.
While no plant using this technology has been built in the United States, three Advanced Boiling Water Reactor plants are successfully operating in Japan and three additional units are under construction in Japan and Taiwan.
"We see this study as an important step in industry's consideration of building new nuclear power plants in this country," said Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
"Nuclear power is the only large-scale source of domestically produced electricity that does not produce greenhouse gases," Abraham said. "It is, therefore, one of our most important energy sources today and has tremendous potential to support the nation's energy and environmental goals in the future."
The plant could produce more than 2,600 megawatts of electric energy, according to the Energy Department, which will fund half the cost of the study.
TVA has three existing nuclear power plants - combined they produce some 5,700 megawatts.
The project is part of a Bush administration initiative designed to promote renewed growth in nuclear power. No new nuclear plant has been constructed in the United States since the 1970s.
Critics of nuclear power point out that problems of disposal of high-level nuclear waste have not been solved, and they fear that an accident or terrorist stike at a nuclear power plant could contaminate a wide area with deadly radiation.
-------- nevada
Nuclear experiment performed at Nevada Test Site
By KEN RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 25, 2004
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/2004/may/25/052510036.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Government scientists performed an underground nuclear experiment Tuesday at the Nevada Test Site, the National Nuclear Security Administration said.
The subcritical experiment involved detonating high explosives packed around plutonium in a steel sphere 963 feet below the surface.
No radioactivity was released in the noon experiment, said Kirsten Kellogg, spokeswoman for the nuclear security administration in North Las Vegas.
Kellogg said scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico "recovered good data" using X-rays, radar and lasers to observe the behavior of plutonium in an explosion that did not reach the critical mass needed to become a full-scale nuclear reaction.
Anti-nuclear groups criticize the subcritical experiments as contrary to the spirit of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on nuclear arms. The U.S. has observed a moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing since 1992, but has not ratified the treaty.
"It's just the wrong message," said Peggy Maze Johnson, director of Citizen Alert, a Nevada anti-nuclear advocacy group. "We'd be screaming and yelling if any other countries were conducting subcriticals."
Federal officials call subcritical experiments essential to maintaining the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Tuesday's experiment, dubbed "Armando," was the 21st subcritical experiment at the test site since 1997.
The 1,375-square-mile federal reservation, 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, hosted 928 full-scale nuclear tests involving 1,021 nuclear detonations from 1951 to 1992.
On the Net:
National Nuclear Security Administration: http://www.nnsa.doe.gov
Nevada Test Site: http://www.nv.doe.gov/nts
Los Alamos National Laboratory: http://www.lanl.gov
-------- utah
Nevada tests worry Utahns
By Joe Bauman E-mail: bau@desnews.com
Deseret Morning News
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595065623,00.html
What is termed a "subcritical" experiment involving plutonium is to be carried out at the Nevada Test Site today, drawing criticism from a Salt Lake activist.
"We don't believe that subcritical tests are necessary," said Steve Erickson, director of the anti-nuclear Citizens Education Project. Such experiments tend to blur the distinction with actual nuclear detonations and could be an international problem, he said.
The NTS is located northwest of Las Vegas and upwind of Utah. The latest experiment at the site is about 85 miles from Las Vegas.
When above-ground nuclear detonations took place there in the 1950s and early '60s, radioactive clouds swept across Utah, dropping fallout. Above-ground tests were halted in 1963 after a test ban treaty, but underground testing continued.
However, sometimes underground tests vented into the atmosphere, sending radioactive material into the air. Since 1992, the United States has observed a moratorium on nuclear detonations. But it has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Besides the subcritical test, a new radiological defense complex is planned for the test site. Erickson said these could be part of a pattern leading to the resumption of full-scale underground nuclear testing.
On Sunday, the U.S. Department of Energy posted a press release saying the test site would conduct a subcritical experiment called Armando. The experiment, set for today, is to examine the behavior of plutonium as it is shocked by conventional high explosives.
"Subcritical experiments produce essential scientific data and technical information used to help maintain the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile," says the DOE press release. Because the experiments are subcritical, "no critical mass is formed and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction can occur."
Because of that, it adds, "there is no nuclear explosion."
The complex where the experiment was to be performed is called the U1a Complex, which is "designed to contain these experiments in a safe and secure environment." The experiment was planned for an underground lab of horizontal tunnels about 960 feet below the desert floor.
The Armando test is part of a series. The most recent experiment before today was Rocco, on Sept. 26, 2002. So far, 20 subcritical experiments have been carried out at the test site, says the release.
Another boost to operations at the Nevada Test Site would be the proposed Radiological/Nuclear Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Complex. The 50-acre complex would replicate places that terrorists could sneak radioactive materials into the country, such as roads, airport entries and railroad tracks. It would also test sensors intended to thwart such attempts.
A draft environmental assessment on the proposal is expected to be available in June.
A May 4 note by Nevada officials to the DOE says the complex "has the potential, especially in Nevada, to evoke considerable public concern, given the past history of contamination from the nuclear weapons testing program."
The letter is from Robert R. Loux, executive director of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects, and is addressed to Dick Schmidhofer, the DOE's National Environmental Policy Act document manager.
A brief DOE description of the project and Loux's letter are posted on a state of Nevada Internet site, www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/nts.htm.
In a note to Schmidhofer, Erickson requested that the DOE conduct public hearings on the proposal in St. George, Cedar City and Kanab.
"This project would involve planned releases of radioactive materials, and Utahns living downwind have had a tragic, disastrous experience with exposure to radiation released from NTS," Erickson wrote.
"Utah residents deserve the opportunity to be fully informed of the need for, nature of, and potential risks and impacts from the project."
He told the Deseret Morning News that the test site is exhibiting a pattern of behavior that is of concern. "There doesn't seem to be any public policy debate around it," Erickson said, "and that's a serious problem."
-------- vermont
Entergy: Utilities Liable For Cost Of Missing Fuel
By SUSAN SMALLHEER
Rutland Herald Staff
May 25, 2004
http://www.rutlandherald.com/04/Story/84222.html
Entergy Nuclear has put the former owners of Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant on notice that it holds them financially responsible for the missing nuclear fuel rods.
Entergy bought the Vernon reactor in July 2002 from Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp., a consortium of New England utilities led by Central Vermont Public Service Corp. and Green Mountain Power Co.
Entergy spokesman Robert Williams said Tuesday the company interpreted its 2002 purchase-and-sales agreement to mean that the Vermont utilities and their partners were on the hook for the cost of finding the missing fuel rod pieces.
"We want to ensure a common view of our agreement. It's our reading that the costs remain with Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp.," Williams said. "I'm not going to get into specifics, but the costs remain with VYNPC."
Since the fuel rods were discovered missing last month, Entergy has brought in several remote cameras to search the spent fuel pool, and has started a detailed review of computer and written documents to try and track down where the fuel went.
Investigators will also be sent to three low-level nuclear waste sites in Nevada, South Carolina and Washington state, where Vermont Yankee sent its waste from the past 32 years.
Entergy Nuclear paid $180 million for the Vernon reactor in July 2002. It was a move widely interpreted as an attempt by its Vermont and New England owners to get out from under the financial liability of owning a nuclear power plant.
Bruce Wiggett, president of VYNPC, said he interpreted Entergy's notice as the company "reserving its right" to sue the former owners over the missing fuel rod pieces.
"It's a potential lawsuit, I suspect," Wiggett said.
"Our position is we need more information, and we're assessing the situation," Wiggett said. "We thought they purchased all the _nuclear liabilities. That's one of the things we're trying to analyze as well, what under the agreement makes us liable."
Wiggett, the longtime chief financial officer for the original owners of the plant, now oversees a staff of three, including himself. The company's offices are located within Entergy's corporate offices in Brattleboro.
Wiggett said all documents that might have to do with the missing fuel rod pieces were turned over to Entergy when the plant was sold.
Stephen Costello, spokesman for CVPS, referred all comment about Entergy's letter to Wiggett. CVPS, in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, acknowledged the financial uncertainty associated with the missing rods.
"We cannot predict the outcome of this matter at this time," the CVPS notice with SEC concluded.
"ENVY (Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee) informed VYNPC that it believes that VYNPC is responsible under the purchase and sale agreement between VYNPC and ENVY, for all costs arising in connection with ENVY's inspection," both utilities stated to their stockholders in the filing.
Green Mountain Power included an identical notice in a SEC filing earlier this month.
Dorothy Schnure, spokeswoman for Green Mountain Power, said the Entergy letter was "a pro forma" notice.
"We don't have a lot of information yet. It's very early in the process," she said.
She said Green Mountain had to include the notice about Entergy's assertions in its quarterly earnings report to the SEC because it had the potential to affect the company's earnings.
"We had to report that this was going on," she said.
According to filings with the SEC, CVPS owns 35 percent of Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp., Green Mountain Power, 20 percent; National Grid, 22.5 percent; Northeast Utilities, 9.5 percent, Central Maine Power and Public Service Co. of New Hampshire, both 4 percent.
By all accounts, the missing fuel pieces were missing long before Entergy Nuclear bought the plant, even though they were only discovered missing last month.
The last time someone saw the fuel rod pieces, which are 7 and 17 inches long and about the thickness of a Magic Marker pen, was in 1980. They were removed from the reactor core in 1979 because they were damaged and leaking excess amounts of radiation.
The fuel rod pieces were supposed to have been stored in a stainless steel pail, which had been outfitted with special tubes to hold them. A close-up inspection by Entergy and an inspector from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on April 20 revealed they were missing.
Vermont Yankee is the only currently operating nuclear reactor that has discovered it has lost some of its nuclear fuel; the other 103 commercial reactors in the country are supposed to be completing an inventory of their nuclear material.
John Sayles, deputy commissioner of the Department of Public Service, said the department was unaware of the action by Entergy against the former owners. He declined any comment on the purchase-and-sales agreement between Entergy and the plant's former owners.
The sale was approved by the Public Service Board in July 2002, with the support of the Department of Public Service, which acts as the ratepayers' advocate.
Wiggett said VYNPC had already responded to the Entergy letter. The company's sole job is to act as the broker for power contracts between Entergy and the former utility owners.
Only one other nuclear utility, the owners of Millstone 1 reactor in Connecticut, has lost old radioactive fuel. Millstone spent $10 million over two years in its futile attempt to find its missing fuel rods.
Williams said he had no idea how much Entergy had spent so far on the search for the fuel rod pieces.
"We are focusing on the search itself and we are committed to keeping the former owners informed," Williams said.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
-------- washington
Contractor, Energy Department like early results of stepped-up monitoring
05/25/2004
By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D82PAEEO1.html
Initial results of expanded vapor monitoring near Hanford's underground waste tanks show low levels of one gas that had been of potential concern, the Energy Department and the contractor handling tank cleanup said Monday.
Last month, contractor CH2M Hill required workers to wear respirators with supplied air tanks when working near some tanks, due to concerns about nitrous oxide vapors from single-shell tanks and double-shell tanks that lack ventilation.
The supplied air was required because there is no commercially available respirator cartridge that filters nitrous oxide.
Workers have since been wearing individual monitors near their faces to sample for nitrous oxide, ammonia and organic chemical vapors. More than 150 samples have been taken so far, with 56 showing no detectable levels of nitrous oxide, CH2M Hill said Monday. Two showed slightly elevated concentrations. Other sample tests were still pending.
Nitrous oxide, often referred to as laughing gas, is sometimes used by dentists. In proper concentration it causes temporary general anesthesia. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has no established limit for nitrous oxide concentrations.
The heightened monitoring comes amid allegations that workers at Hanford's so-called tank farms are being endangered to speed cleanup of the nation's most contaminated nuclear site.
About 53 million gallons of radioactive liquid, sludge and saltcake, sit in 177 underground tanks less than 10 miles from the Columbia River. Plans call for turning much of that waste into glass logs and burying it at a nuclear waste repository.
CH2M Hill and the Energy Department, which manages the cleanup, say most of the chemicals are diluted and pose no danger to workers. Critics say too little is known about the waste to rule out any danger.
"The goal is to lower the level of concern and raise their confidence that the chance of them being exposed to something permanently harmful is essentially nonexistent," said John Swailes, the Energy Department's assistant manager for tank farms.
CH2M Hill also placed monitors in the workers' breathing space within 5 feet of the tanks, which showed nitrous oxide concentrations far below levels that would cause long-term health effects, said Dale Allen, a senior vice president for CH2M Hill.
Additional monitoring will continue for weeks and perhaps months, Allen said.
"The issue is about allowing the workers to be fully engaged in reviewing all the data and gaining the confidence that the environment they work in is safe to work in," he said.
More than 800 people work in the tank farms for CH2M Hill. The total work force at Hanford is about 11,000 people.
For 40 years, the Hanford reservation made plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal. Today, work there centers on a $50 billion to $60 billion cleanup, to be finished by 2035.
-------- wisconsin
Two Wisconsin utilities plan to build 500 MW plant
Reuters,
05.25.04,
http://www.forbes.com/business/energy/newswire/2004/05/25/rtr1384200.html
NEW YORK, May 25 (Reuters) - Wisconsin energy companies Alliant Energy Corp. and WPS Resources Corp. said Tuesday two of their regulated subsidiaries plan to jointly build a 500 megawatt power plant to meet rising energy demand.
A spokeswoman at Alliant, Risa Shipley, told Reuters the subsidiaries -- Madison-based Alliant's Wisconsin Power and Light Co. and Green Bay-based WPS' Wisconsin Public Service Corp. -- have not yet selected a site for the plant.
She said the plant would likely burn coal, but the utilities were also looking at other fuel sources.
The companies said in a statement they wanted to build the plant to meet their forecast demand growth by 2010.
They were joining together to build the plant to minimize the risk of building a unit on their own, Shipley said.
The venture will not necessarily be a 50-50 joint venture, Shipley said, noting, the ownership structure will likely depend on the utilities' needs.
WPL and Public Service have already partnered on several plants, including the Kewaunee nuclear and the Edgewater and Columbia coal plants.
Alliant's utilities provide electricity to more than 950,000 customers and natural gas to 400,000 customers in four states -- Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois -- and own power plants that generate more than 5,000 MW of capacity.
Green Bay, Wisconsin-based WPS' Public Service distributes electricity to nearly 410,000 customers and gas to 300,000 customers in Wisconsin and Michigan.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
War returns with a vengeance as allies fail the Afghan people
independent.co.uk
25 May 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=524628
George Bush and Tony Blair made grand promises when they took on the Taliban. They sound hollow now. What does it all mean for Iraq? Kim Sengupta reports
The road from the village of Ozbin Khol is safe no longer. The eight aid workers packed into a Toyota LandCruiser were keen to get to their destination, Sarobi, before nightfall. But a punctured tyre stopped them. Two young men, carrying Kalashnikovs, their faces covered by keffayahs, came out of the darkness, lined up the passengers and opened fire, killing five.
The killings, in Paktika province, south-east of Kabul, were at the end of February. The next month, gunmen burst into a guesthouse near the southern city of Kandahar, killing three more aid workers. Two weeks ago, two Europeans, one with a Swiss passport, were stoned and stabbed to death at Bagh Chilsthan, just 15 minutes' drive from the centre of Kabul.
Reports of the murders appeared in the international media, briefly, because the victims were either from the West, or had links with international relief agencies. There have been other deaths - 15 children killed by United States warplanes in raids while attempting to eliminate a warlord in December. Another dozen Afghans were killed in the next few weeks, either enemy combatants, said the Americans, or the result of collateral damage among civilians.
In Herat, internecine fighting between forces of the warlord, Ismail Khan, and the governor sent by Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul led to the deaths of 100 people, including Mr Khan's son.
These are snapshots of a continuing conflict in Afghanistan, a war of attrition taking place largely in the shadows with the focus of the world's media firmly fixed on Iraq.
The Afghan war was, of course, the first chapter of the War on Terror launched after 11 September. After a relatively quick and casualty-free campaign - for the American military, if not Afghan civilians - George Bush declared victory. Tony Blair pledged: "This time we will not walk away", as had happened following the war the mujahedin fought against the Russians with Western money and arms.
But that, say many Afghans, is exactly what the United States and Britain have done. And just as the official end to hostilities in Iraq has been followed by unremitting violence, so the war has returned with a vengeance in Afghanistan. With international interest concentrating on Iraq, aid money has dried up for the Afghans. The military bill for the Pentagon, so far, is $50bn (£27bn). The money for humanitarian work, on the other hand, has been $4.5bn. Out of that, much of the $2.2bn earmarked for this year has been diverted to military projects and emergency relief from long-term development.
Even where aid money is available, the security situation is preventing distribution. The five men killed in Paktika worked for the National Solidarity Programme (SDF), which is now pulling out of 72 areas in the country.
Ihsanullah Dileri, the organisation's head of co-ordination said in his Kabul office: "This is a very bad, very desperate situation. We had $60,000 to spend on each of those 72 areas, now this cannot be done.
"All these areas are badly deprived, with poor people lacking basic facilities. But I am afraid the security simply is not there for us to continue with our work. It is too dangerous."
Barbara Stapleton, of the Agency Co-ordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR) an umbrella body representing 90 national and international aid agencies, added: "We are very concerned about security and the deterioration of the situation. Impunity rules in the country. It's not just the NGO [non-governmental organisations] community, but the Afghan people at large who are exposed to these levels of insecurity."
There is also evidence that the American military is using aid as a means of acquiring intelligence. Delivering blankets and food to refugees at Dwamanda in the south, Lieutenant Reid Finn had no hesitation in telling journalists: "It's simple. The more they help us find the bad guys, the more good stuff they get." Teena Roberts, the head of Christian Aid's mission in the country, said: "The result of this is aid workers have become targets. I have not come across the use of aid in this way before."
After the fall of the Taliban, the streets of Kabul used to be busy until the 10pm curfew. Now they are deserted by eight in the evening, with the headlights of a few solitary cars hurtling through the darkness. Foreigners travel in convoys, with armed guards. Amanullah Haidar runs a stall 100 yards from the Mustafa Hotel in the city centre, one of the few places deemed to be safe for the expatriate community to meet in the evening, where the two brothers who run it carry pistols in shoulder holsters, and guards with semi-automatic rifles man the main door.
"We are disappointed by lack of progress, lack of money, lack of jobs," said Mr Haidar, a Tajik former Northern Alliance soldier. "I remember all these people who came here from Europe and America and told us how they are going to help us. But where are the factories and the offices we thought we would get? What about the elections we were promised?"
President Hamid Karzai was forced to put back to the autumn elections because of the instability. Only 1.6 million out of 10.5 million eligible to vote have registered. In the Pashtun belt, where Taliban influence is still strong, the number of women registered is below 20 per cent.
The emancipation of women, subjugated by the fundamentalist Taliban, was one of the stated objectives of the West. Even before the war ended America's First Lady, Laura Bush, declared: "Because of our recent military gains in much of Afghanistan, women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women."
According to an Amnesty International report, however: "Two years after the ending of the Taliban regime, the international community and the Afghan transitional administration, led by President Karzai, have proved unable to protect women. The risk of rape and sexual violence by members of armed factions and former combatants is still high. Forced marriages, particularly of girl children, and violence against women in the family are widespread in many areas."
After the war, dozens of girls' schools reopened throughout the country. But an Islamist resurgence has seen many of them closed down through intimidation. Families who still dare to send their female children for education can pay a terrible price. Earlier this month, three young girls, aged eight to 10, were poisoned in eastern Afghanistan, apparently as punishment for attending lessons.
The government points out, however, that four million pupils are enrolled in schools this year - including one third of the country's female children.
Twenty-five years of war have destroyed what there was of Afghan infrastructure. In a number of regions, such as the Shomali Plain, the Taliban and their Pakistani allies destroyed centuries-old irrigation systems in a scorched-earth policy against the Northern Alliance.
Following the last war, attempts were made to restore water and power. But systematic strikes by the Taliban on power lines and irrigation projects, and murders of foreign engineers, has ground much of it to a halt. At present, just 9 per cent of the population have access to electricity. Safe drinking water is estimated to be restricted to 6 per cent. The World Bank has authorised a $40m loan for water projects, but while work can begin with the funds in the north and west, it is deemed to be too dangerous in the Pashtun belt of the south and east.
The UN has stressed irrigation is essential for agriculture in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population live in rural areas. However there is no shortage of one particular crop - opium. Poppy cultivation reached a new high last year. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the area of cultivation has grown from 1,685 hectares in 2001 to 61,000 hectares in 2003. The country has the dubious distinction of accounting for 75 per cent of the world's output.
FACTS AND FIGURES THAT TELL THE STORY
HEALTH
Pregnancy: One woman dies every 20 minutes in pregnancy/childbirth
2002: Pregnancy and childbirth the leading cause of death in women
500 trained midwives for female population of 11 million
Life expectancy:
2001: 46
2004: 43
Under-five mortality rank:
2001: 4
2004: 4
Measles:
2000: 1,400 cases of measles per month
2003: 40 cases per month
Polio:
1999: 27 reported cases
2003: 7 reported cases
2004: 3 reported cases
CHILD SOLDIERS
8,000 child soldiers in official army
Feb 2004: Government starts to demobilise 2,000 child soldiers
400 children killed each month from landmines
EDUCATION
Four million children in education
1.2 million girls in education; aim to get a million more girls into education
Net primary school enrolment ratio:
1995-99: M:F 53:5
2004: M:F 42:15
Total adult literacy:
1995-99: 32
2004: 36
OPIUM PRODUCTION
2001: 185 tons of opium (reduction of 96 per cent from 1999)
2003: Second-largest opium harvest (after 1999) with yield of 3,600 tons
Poppy cultivated in 28 of 32 provinces, involving 1.7 million Afghans. Drug trade income is $2.3bn, more than 50 per cent of Afghanistan's legal GDP
69 per cent of farmers surveyed intend to increase cultivation in 2004
Nearly 30 per cent of farmers plan to more than double production
43 per cent of non-poppy farmers intend to start cultivating in 2004
Sources: UNICEF SOWC (State of the World's Children) annual report); CARE International; Afghanistan Annual Opium Poppy Survey 2001); Afghanistan Farmers' Intentions survey 2003-04); Amnesty International
-------- arms
Iraqi weapons pipeline probed
May 25, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040525-121749-1468r.htm
The Pentagon is investigating reports that Iraqi weapons are being sent covertly to Syria and that they are fueling anti-U.S. insurgents training there, The Washington Times has learned.
The shipments include weapons and explosives sent by vehicles that were detected during the past several months going to several training camps inside Syria, which has become a key backer of anticoalition forces in Iraq, according to defense officials familiar with reports of the shipments.
One defense official said the pipeline was uncovered as part of efforts to discover what happened to Iraq's arms programs - conventional as well as weapons of mass destruction.
"Everyone seems to have forgotten that there was the prospect of ongoing traffic in munitions ... that could then be re-imported into Iraq with quite considerable effect," the official said. "We are pursuing the extent and location of that."
The weapons are traveling by covered trucks and unmarked vans along routes that appear to have been set up before the U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq last year.
The night-time deliveries are reported to include small arms, bombs and explosives pilfered from some of the several thousand weapons depots scattered throughout Iraq. The Pentagon has identified more than 8,700 weapons dumps and is continuing to find caches almost daily, officials said.
The arms and explosives come back into Iraq with the Syrian-based insurgents and terrorists, the officials said.
Camps were set up by former officials in the Saddam Hussein regime and are being used to train foreign fighters who are continuing to flow into Iraq to conduct attacks on U.S. and allied forces, the official said.
Homemade bombs fashioned from artillery shells and other military ordnance stored in Iraq have caused hundreds of casualties among coalition forces.
The Syrian border with Iraq is under intense surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies and patrols involving U.S. and allied military forces. Electronic surveillance includes unmanned aerial vehicles and satellite reconnaissance.
The weapons smuggling, however, appears to be done by Iraqis and others who have found ways to avoid the surveillance.
Some defense and intelligence officials said goods related to Saddam's chemical, biological and nuclear programs were sent covertly to Syria before the war.
Several thousand foreign fighters have infiltrated from Syria into Iraq, according to military officials who disclosed the flow to The Times last month.
The 600-mile desert border between Syria and Iraq has been a key smuggling route for decades, and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has facilitated the foreign fighters' movement, providing travel papers and weapons in some cases.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said last week that Syria and Iran "have been unhelpful to what it is we're trying to do in Iraq."
Mr. Rumsfeld said Syria's "dictatorship" opposes the development of a free political system in Iraq.
Mr. Rumsfeld said the border is easily crossed "and people, terrorists, have come across that border."
"Syria has been recalcitrant with respect to freeing up Iraqi assets that were frozen in their country, and large portions of it have been disappearing," Mr. Rumsfeld said.
Mr. Rumsfeld said recent sanctions imposed on Syria are an attempt to pressure its government to change its behavior.
He said he thinks that "it is ... appropriate that Syria not be rewarded."
"The hope is that through discussion, and debate, and consideration, diplomacy, that Syria will recalibrate its direction," he said after a speech at the Heritage Foundation.
"Whether that will happen, I don't know. I wish I did know. But in the meantime, we've got to make sure that they do as little damage to what we're trying to accomplish in Iraq as possible."
On May 11, the Bush administration announced new sanctions against Syria, noting Damascus' support for terrorists and its failure to keep anticoalition fighters from crossing into Iraq.
The sanctions bar U.S. exports to Syria and restrict Syrian assets held in the United States. They were imposed after Damascus failed to address U.S. concerns about support for terrorists and about Syria's arms programs.
President Bush said in announcing the sanctions that Syria's government "must understand that its conduct alone will determine the duration of the sanctions."
Mr. Bush also noted that insurgents "bent on sowing terror continue to cross into Iraq from Syria."
The export ban is expected to keep about $100 million in goods from going to Syria.
Signed into law in December, the sanctions were imposed under the 2003 Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act. The act called on Syria to close borders to military and equipment and anti-U.S. militants headed to Iraq.
-------- asia
Korea to send Iraq troops by August, minister says
koreaherald
By Choi Soung-ah (bluelle@heraldm.com)
May 25, 2004
http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/SITE/data/html_dir/2004/05/22/200405220006.asp
Despite increasing skepticism over the U.S.-led war in Iraq and questions about the R.O.K-U.S. alliance, the Roh government is set to deploy additional Korean troops to the ravaged Middle East country by July or August.
At a Korean-American Association breakfast meeting yesterday, Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon told reporters a military fact-finding delegation will head to the Iraqi city of Irbil next week to finalize details and arrangements for the dispatch of some 3,000 Korean soldiers.
"Considering the time needed to establish base facilities, including military quarters following the delegation's completed fine-tuning mission, the actual troop deployment will take place after one or two months at most," he said.
Deployment of the Korean troops to Iraq was approved in February and initially scheduled for late April, but it has been delayed for weeks now as Seoul and Washington failed to agree on where they would be located and the timeframe.
Supporters stress that the dispatch will solidify the half-century Seoul-Washington alliance, while others oppose the U.S.-led war itself and are concerned about the heightened danger for Korean soldiers in the worsening security situation.
Ban told the breakfast meeting, billed as a session "For A Comprehensive and Dynamic ROK-US Relationship," that President Roh Moo-hyun stressed that linking a self-reliant national defense to the Pentagon's global defense posture review, or GPR, is "inappropriate."
"Korea's self-reliant defense is being done cooperatively on the basis of the R.O.K-U.S. alliance, not in exclusion of it," he said
Ban also said the government had been aware of Washington's continued GPR review and had been preparing for any possible changes.
"We will continue to apply suitable countermeasures in accordance with future changes in the alliance," he said.
The Pentagon's plan announced this week to relocate 3,600 U.S. troops from Korea to Iraq has sparked public and media criticism that Korea's alliance with the United States is on the wane.
It also raised questions on whether Washington's repositioning plans for its forces overseas will lead down the line to the complete pullout of U.S. troops from Korea.
"The government will closely cooperate with the United States so that we can be fully prepared to cope with any kind of security threat on the Korean Peninsula and clear away all security concerns," Ban said.
Charles Campbell, commander of the 8th U.S. Army, said the redeployment of American soldiers in Korea to Iraq will take place "late this summer."
Also at the breakfast meeting were U.S. Ambassador Thomas C. Hubbard, Deputy Chief of Mission Mark C. Minton and Koo Pyong Hwoi, chairman of the Korean-American Association, which was launched in 1963 to promote the U.S-ROK alliance.
Regarding the Future of Alliance Policy Initiative, formulated last year between Seoul and Washington, Ban said the two allies would seek to finalize as soon as possible terms and modalities to further strengthen the alliance and relocate U.S. military bases.
-------- biological weapons
Russian Scientist Dies in Ebola Accident at Former Weapons Lab
May 25, 2004
By JUDITH MILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/international/europe/25ebol.html
NEW ORLEANS, May 24 - A Russian scientist at a former Soviet biological weapons laboratory in Siberia has died after accidentally sticking herself with a needle laced with ebola, the deadly virus for which there is no vaccine or treatment, the lab's parent Russian center announced over the weekend.
Scientists and officials said the accident had raised concerns about safety and secrecy at the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector, which in Soviet times specialized in turning deadly viruses into biological weapons. Vector has been a leading recipient of aid in an American program to help former Soviet scientists and labs convert to peaceful research.
Although the accident occurred May 5, Vector did not report it to the World Health Organization until last week. Scientists said that although Vector had isolated the scientist to contain any potential spread of the disease and there was no requirement that accidents involving ebola be reported, the delay meant that scientists at the health agency could not provide prompt advice on treatment that might have saved her life.
The first public mention of the accident was over the weekend on Pro-Med, the informal Internet reporting and discussion network of doctors and other health care professionals, which posted the Vector account of the laboratory accident on its Web site (www.promedmail.org).
American experts said the accident had not occurred in a lab now receiving United States government or private money for research.
While officials at Vector said the scientist, Antonina Presnyakova, was working on an ebola vaccine, they have declined to identify who was financing the research or discuss its specific nature.
Terry Fredeking, the president and founder of Antibody Systems, a Texas-based company, said that while his company had spent more than $150,000 in the last five years on joint research on ebola at Vector, the accident did not involve research he was financing. "It's sad and somewhat frightening," said Mr. Fredeking, "that Vector didn't inform the W.H.O. or even its own lab directors that the accident had occurred in time for us to offer help."
Ronald Atlas, a biodefense expert at a center at the University of Louisville, in Kentucky, said that while it was important to work on vaccines to protect against deadly viruses, the accident showed the danger. "It shows we must be careful about what we are doing, as well as where and with whom we are doing it," said Dr. Atlas, in an interview here at the American Society for Microbiology's annual meeting.
An American scientist was involved in a similar accident with ebola at the Army's leading biodefense lab at Fort Detrick, Md., several months ago. But she did not contract the disease. The lab disclosed the accident within 48 hours, officials said.
Vector is also one of two repositories of the deadly smallpox virus - the other is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Since the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States has spent millions of dollars to help convert such places to peaceful research, including an estimated $10 million at Vector.
Critics of the program have opposed expanding such aid because it is hard to verify whether former Soviet scientists are using the American-supported research for peaceful purposes. But the program's defenders say it keeps scientists employed on peaceful projects and prevents them from working for anti-American states or terrorists seeking biological weapons.
-------- business
American killed in Liberia a US Defense Department employee
WASHINGTON (AFP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525173540.vg8o8di8.html
An American killed in his hotel room in Monrovia, Liberia was a civilian US Defense Department employee who was in the country as part of a military assessment team, the military said Tuesday.
The man who was found dead on Monday was not identified pending notification of next of kin.
"The individual was an employee of the US European Command and was in Monrovia as part of an assessment team reviewing the reconstruction of the Liberian security sector in support of the Liberian Comprehensive Peace Accord," the command said.
"An investigation into the cause of death is under way," it said. "Authorities initially suspect that the individual was the victim of a homicide."
The US embassy in Monrovia said on Monday said the killing was believed to be a burglary turned violent "rather than an attack specifically targeting Americans."
--------
Beijing opposes US defence bill over "anti-China" provisions
BEIJING (AFP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525183310.r6ib1c0h.html
China Tuesday said it opposed the US House of Representatives' passage of a defence funding bill for the 2005 fiscal year which it claimed had "anti-China" provisions, state media said.
Beijing had made "solemn representations" to Washington, a foreign ministry official said, according to the Xinhua news agency.
The spokesman said the bill included the proposed sale of landing vessels to Taiwan and high-level military educational exchanges with the island, which Beijing regards as part of its territory.
"The anti-China items ... posed a severe violation of the three Sino-US joint communiques and the one-China policy the US government has reiterated many times that it will abide by," Xinhua cited him saying.
Beijing urged the US administration to oppose the provisions and prevent them from being made into law to avoid harming Sino-US relations, he said.
The House of Representatives Thursday, by a vote of 391 to 34, approved a 422 billion dollar defence funding bill for the 2005 fiscal year.
Washington acknowledges Beijing's position that Taiwan is part of China and does not have official relations with the island.
However, Washington is bound by law to provide weapons to help Taiwan defend itself if its security is threatened.
The Taiwan issue is the largest friction point between the United States and China.
US President George W. Bush approved the sale of eight diesel-electric submarines in April 2001 as part of the most comprehensive arms sales to the island since 1992.
However the deal has progressed slowly as the US has not built conventional submarines for more than 40 years.
-----
China fines two firms for exporting missile-related products
BEIJING (AFP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525101729.nfidqlx2.html
Two Chinese companies have been fined "millions of yuan each" (hundreds of thousands of dollars) for allegedly violating rules on the export of missiles, missile-related products and technologies, the Ministry of Commerce said Tuesday.
In a statement on its website, the ministry, without naming the companies, said one was a trading firm based in the eastern province of Jiangsu and the other a chemical firm based in the eastern province of Shandong.
The ministry did not provide details on the products nor to which countries they were exported.
"The Chinese government always has fought against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and anti-terrorism, and has launched a series of rules controlling the export of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and missiles," it said.
To China's dismay, the United States has in recent years repeatedly sanctioned Chinese companies for proliferating missile technology or other technologies used to build weapons of mass destruction.
In September 2003, Washington imposed sanctions on the government and state-run weapons maker China North Industries Incorporated (NORINCO) for allegedly selling advanced missile technology to an unnamed country.
In July 2003, the United States slapped sanctions on NORINCO and China Precision Machinery Import-Export Corporation (CPMIEC) for allegedly supplying missile technology to Iran and another unnamed country.
Penalties were also imposed on the Taian Foreign Trade General Corporation of China, the Zibo Chemical Equipment Plant of China and the Liyang Yunlong Chemical Equipment Group Company in July 2003 for also allegedly supplying missile technology to Iran.
The Zibo chemical company and the Taian trading company are in Shandong while the Liyang Yunlong company is based in Jiangsu.
-------- chemical weapons
Suspected left-over Japanese mustard gas hospitalizes eight in China
BEIJING (AFP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525040303.jnbvqopz.html
Eight workers have been hospitalized in the northeastern Chinese city of Qiqihar after digging up a canister suspected of being a left-over Japanese chemical weapon, hospital workers and state press said Tuesday.
"They have no special symptoms, they are in stable condition and under observation," an official surnamed Song at the Number 1 Hospital of the Qiqihar Medical University in Heilongjiang province told AFP.
According to Xinhua news agency, the workers dug up a canister at a construction site in the city's Fulaerji district on Monday afternoon.
Strong odors coming from it led local military experts and police to believe it was mustard gas left by Japan's retreating army during World War II, and they sealed the site.
In August 2003, a similar incident in the same city killed one, hospitalized 43 others and ignited a diplomatic row between China and Japan.
Japan eventually paid some 2.8 million dollars in compensation for the incident.
Tokyo estimates that 700,000 chemical bombs and grenades were abandoned in China by its retreating armies, although Chinese experts put the figure at up to two million -- the world's largest stockpile of abandoned chemical weapons.
Tuesday's report comes after a high court in Tokyo overturned a lower court ruling that had awarded some 1.45 million dollars in compensation to Chinese that were forced into labor by Japanese companies during World War II.
-------- china
Relationship With Taiwan Remains Tense, China Warns
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51168-2004May24.html
BEIJING, May 24 -- The Chinese government declared Monday that, unlike the Bush administration, it is far from reassured by President Chen Shui-bian's outline for his next four-year term as leader of Taiwan.
"The root of tensions in the Taiwan Strait has not been eliminated," Zhang Mingqing, spokesman for the government's Taiwan Affairs Office, said at a news conference. "The peril affecting peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region still exists."
The Chinese declaration seemed designed as a response to Washington's warm welcome for Chen's inaugural address, in which he pledged to refrain from movement toward independence for the self-governing island. The White House congratulated Chen after the address on Thursday, calling it responsible and constructive, and urged Beijing and Taipei to resume dialogue and cooperation on that basis.
The Bush administration had pressured Chen and his advisers to avoid any language indicating an intention to change the status quo. In its statement, the White House appeared content that Chen, following U.S. instructions, had promised to postpone concrete steps toward his goal of Taiwanese independence, though he did not abandon the goal.
For Washington, which is absorbed by the occupation of Iraq, the prospect of four more years without a crisis in the Taiwan Strait was itself an accomplishment, according to knowledgeable Taiwanese and other sources. Chen's parallel insistence that Taiwan had become so different from China that unification might never be possible was of secondary importance, because it was on an undefined horizon, they said.
But Zhang made clear China did not see the problem that way. By holding on to the ultimate goal of independence and refusing to accept that there is only one China, including Taiwan, Chen risks precipitating a military conflict, he warned.
"He is riding near the edge of the cliff, and there is no sign that he is going to rein in his horse," he said.
China, which regards Taiwan as a province temporarily out of Beijing's control, has vowed to reunify it with the mainland, peacefully if possible but militarily if necessary. With the United States pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, that raises the danger of a U.S.-Chinese military confrontation at a time when the two nations have enjoyed increasingly fruitful economic and diplomatic cooperation.
Taiwan, which lies about 100 miles off southern China, broke away from mainland rule in 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces took refuge there after being defeated by Mao Zedong's Communist army. The island has developed a strong economy and, in recent years, a vibrant democracy that sets it apart from the mainland's one-party rule.
As a result, many Taiwanese have concluded there is little reason to join the mainland and compromise what they have built. For instance, Bikhim Hsiao, a legislator from Chen's Democratic Progressive Party who specializes in foreign affairs, suggested in an interview last week that the solution for China and Taiwan may be something akin to the European Union, a grouping of sovereign states.
Some Chinese officials have concluded that, given that attitude among Chen and his followers, there is little to do but wait until Taiwan elects a new president, according to Chinese sources with access to official thinking. But for Beijing, the passage of time also means that the island, its 23 million inhabitants and their political system will grow more removed from the mainland. As a result, some officials and military officers have warned that China at some point will have to act, perhaps militarily, before the separation grows too wide to bridge.
Zhang acknowledged that Chen avoided the inflammatory language he has used in the past, such as maintaining there is now one country on each side of the strait. In addition, Chen said he believed any constitutional revisions in Taiwan should exclude changes touching on territory, sovereignty and independence -- subjects China regards as red lines whose crossing could ignite armed conflict.
But Zhang pointed out that Chen failed to embrace the idea that there is only one China -- a principle Beijing regards as necessary for resumption of official dialogue -- and that he described a vision of Taiwan as starkly different from China and a future that may or may not include reunion with the mainland.
Although Chen made no explicit reference to China and Taiwan as separate nations, "the content of the whole speech was completely about Taiwan's status as an independent country," Zhang asserted.
He said China is determined to prevent Taiwanese independence "at any cost," echoing a warning in a major policy statement issued by Beijing three days before Chen's inauguration. The warning was designed to rebut some Taiwanese and other officials who have expressed confidence that China would not dare to act militarily because that could upset its plans to host the 2008 Olympics and endanger its swift economic growth.
-------- colombia
Colombia rebel group celebrates anniversary
By MARGARITA MARTINEZ
May 25, 2004 (AP)
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2004/05/25/471952-ap.html
GAITANIA, Colombia - Colombia's main rebel army celebrates its 40th anniversary this week and the Marxist guerrillas are literally digging in for the long haul - burying food stores in the mountains and predicting victory will eventually be theirs.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said in a statement posted Monday on a website linked to the group that it has "an iron will to fight and profound faith that our cause will triumph." Here in the verdant mountains of western Colombia that was the FARC's cradle, a local rebel commander said his forces have buried food caches and are splitting up into three-person units to evade government troops.
In the past five days, a string of rebel bomb attacks coinciding with Thursday's anniversary of the FARC's founding have killed at least 13 people and wounded more than 100.
Colombia's military - backed by billions of dollars in U.S. military aid and training - has the rebels on the run, with hardline President Alvaro Uribe trying to bring Latin America's longest-running insurgency to its knees.
In a speech Monday at a military base in southern Colombia that the FARC overran in 1998 and that Colombian army troops retook in February, Uribe urged the military and police forces to keep attacking the rebels.
"These terrorists, these criminals, thought they would triumph . . . but your actions will transform this arrogance into a bitter grimace of defeat," Uribe said at the Miraflores base, 420 kilometres southeast of Bogota, the capital.
Security forces, aided with U.S. intelligence, have captured several regional rebel leaders, and even netted a top rebel commander, Simon Trinidad, in neighbouring Ecuador five months ago.
But Manuel "Sureshot" Marulanda, who co-founded the FARC near this village and at 74 is still the group's top commander, has a reputation for staying a step ahead of his pursuers.
"He's got a special sense of smell that lets him know where the army is approaching from and when it is time to flee," said retired army Gen. Alvaro Valencia Tovar, who led military operations against Marulanda's band four decades ago.
Forty years ago, Marulanda - whose real name is Pedro Antonio Marin - was a demobilized Communist guerrilla living in Gaitania, a village of brick houses nestled amid towering green mountains.
Colombia's government sent troops to crush Marulanda and the other Communists, fearing they would trigger a widespread uprising like the one Fidel Castro led from the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Cuba in 1959.
"It was the era when it was said the Andes were going to be the new Sierra Maestra," said Malcolm Deas, a Latin America expert at Oxford University.
But amid the 1964 government offensive, Marulanda - who according to local lore earned his nickname by killing a policeman with a single shot at 500 metres - and 40 men fled deeper into the mountains and created the FARC.
"He was the most distant and distrustful man I have ever known, and that's why he has survived," said Pedro Ardila, 85, who lives in Gaitania, 250 kilometres southwest of Bogota.
The FARC is now believed to have some 15,000 fighters - its expansion fuelled by its entry into Colombia's cocaine trade in the 1990s. Its involvement in drug trafficking, kidnappings and extortion rackets has landed the FARC on Washington's list of terrorist organizations.
While many observers say the FARC has morphed into one of the world's biggest organized crime gangs, some insist its leaders remain focused on fighting for the poor. UN special envoy James LeMoyne touched off a storm of controversy in Colombia last year when he said he believes some FARC members are ideologically committed.
Valencia Tovar, now 83 and retired in Bogota, said the decision to attack the nascent rebel movement in 1964 was the right one, but should have been accompanied by development projects.
"The failure was not the operation . . . but that the government did not accompany it with an economic and social plan to incorporate (the region) into the life of the nation," the retired military commander said.
Analysts say neither the rebels nor the Colombian military can vanquish the other side. Uribe, who remains highly popular among voters because of his drive to end the insurgency that kills some 3,500 people a year, says he wants to squeeze the FARC enough so that they enter into serious peace talks.
But there is no sign the rebels intend to ditch their long-standing hopes of winning power.
In their Internet statement, the FARC referred to Uribe and U.S. President George W. Bush as megalomaniacs and fascists.
The FARC commander here, a 36-year-old wearing a camouflage uniform and who did not want his name to be used, made no bones about the rebels' ultimate objective.
"We are going for the presidential palace," he said.
--------
US warns of likely surge in Colombia bombings around FARC anniversary
WASHINGTON (AFP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040525212624.fzzh7q28.html
The United States on Tuesday warned US citizens in Colombia of a likely surge in terrorist bombings this week ahead of the 40th anniversary of the founding of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The State Department, through the US embassy in Bogota, said it was not aware of any specific threat to Americans but urged those in Colombia to boost their security precautions, noting a series of deadly bombings last week in the run-up to Thursday's anniversary that killed 12 people in the country's northwest.
"The FARC has historically conducted terrorist attacks, especially bombings against civilian and public security targets, around the date of this anniversary," the embassy said in a notice to US citizens in Colombia.
"This trend appears to be the case again this year, with several such bombings in recent days and more possible in the days to come," said the notice, a copy of which was provided to AFP in Washington by the State Department.
At least 12 people were killed and 110 injured in three bombings in the northwestern province of Antioquia between Thursday and Saturday, including one in a crowded discotheque in the town of Apartado, according to local authorities.
No one has taken responsibility for the blasts but Colombian officials have blamed them on the 17,000-strong FARC, whose rebellion was launched by Manuel Marulanda, whose nom de guerre was "Tirofijo," or "Sure Shot," on May 27, 1964, in southern Colombia.
Although the embassy said it had no information that US citizens or interests would be targetted by the FARC, it said Americans should "maintain a heightened level of vigilance and to continue practicing good security measures during this time to avoid becoming victims of a terrorist attack."
The FARC, the oldest and strongest left-wing guerrilla insurgency in Latin America, is one of three Colombian groups the State Department has designated a "foreign terrorist organization."
The leftist National Liberation Army (ELN) and the right-wing paramilitary United Self Defence Forces (AUC) are the others.
-------- europe
Europeans Want More Specifics in U.N. Resolution on Iraq
May 25, 2004
By BRIAN KNOWLTON,
International Herald Tribune
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/international/middleeast/25CND-POLI.html?hp
WASHINGTON, May 25 - Some members of the United Nations Security Council expressed reservations today about the new Iraq resolution drafted by the United States and Britain, but as President Bush worked to rally support, there appeared to be no move to try to block its passage.
After a telephone conversation with one of the sharpest critics of the Iraq war, President Jacques Chirac of France, Mr. Bush said he felt sure that the two shared "the same goal: a free and stable and peaceful Iraq."
But French officials said the proposed text of the resolution needed to be improved and provide for a "real transfer of power" to an interim government on June 30. And Russia, another resolute opponent of the Iraq war, said that before it casts a Security Council vote, it wants to know who will make up an interim Iraqi government.
Most international reaction, nonetheless, was favorable.
Germany, another outspoken war critic, called the draft "a very good basis on which we aim for consensus," as Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer put it.
"It is essential for us that we go forward with implementing the resolution," Mr. Fischer said.
But some diplomats said that the draft resolution failed to answer questions about the authority of the interim government, like whether it could veto military operations by the multinational force that is virtually certain to be under United States leadership and just how soon that force might leave.
Diplomats working on the problem acknowledged uncertainties over the sequence of events between now and June 30, the scheduled date of the handover.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said today that Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations envoy who has been in Iraq compiling names for the interim government, might not have his recommendations ready until next week. A Brahimi deputy had said the Algerian diplomat was struggling to meet his May 31 deadline.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said, however, that it assumes that a resolution should be adopted only after "an interim government is formed in Iraq."
And France is calling for a "round table" to vet Mr. Brahimi's choices and ensure they are "truly representative."
Some foreign observers said that Mr. Bush's speech on Monday night, meant to reassure Americans and others about his plans for Iraq, had failed to resolve many of their questions.
Mr. Chirac's office said the draft text had positive aspects but needed further discussion, and that the French leader had told Mr. Bush that a real transfer of power was necessary, the Reuters news agency reported from Paris.
Administration officials frequently refer to limits to the interim government's powers, without clearly spelling them out. But Mr. Bush told reporters at the White House that the new government would be legitimate.
After what he called a "great conversation" with Mr. Chirac, Mr. Bush said he felt sure that American and French objectives were the same. "They want to make sure that the transfer of sovereignty to the interim government is a real transfer, and that's what we want," he said.
"Our interest is for Iraq to be free and stable and whole, and at peace with its neighbors," Mr. Bush said. "What's imperative is that the Iraqi citizens develop a constitution they can call their own."
He added, "We'll do what we need to do to help the interim government succeed."
He was speaking at an event with seven Iraqi men who had recently been fitted with artificial hands, donated by an American charity and surgically attached at a medical center in Texas, after having hands amputated as a punishment under Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Bush, facing mounting criticism of his Iraq policies at home and abroad, expressed no wavering from his earlier assurances that change in Iraq could catalyze change throughout the region.
"A free Iraq will help change the history of the greater Middle East," he said.
Referring to his Iraqi guests, he said, "Some day, their children will come to America and say, `Thank goodness America stood the line, and was strong.' "
-------- iraq
U.S. Finally Spending Iraq Construction Funds
Outlay Doubles in 2 Months as Iraqis Arrive to Work Despite Security Fears
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52945-2004May24.html
A senior official responsible for overseeing rebuilding efforts in Iraq said yesterday that spending on construction has surged in recent weeks, despite continuing security problems that have kept Iraqi workers away from the job.
At a Pentagon briefing, David Nash, a retired admiral managing the spending of U.S. tax dollars, said more than $4 billion has been obligated to specific projects, about double the amounts reported two months ago.
The upbeat assessment came just weeks after the Pentagon and the U.S.-led occupation authority in Iraq were stung by criticism from lawmakers that little of the $18.4 billion allocated by Congress for the effort last year had been spent.
Nash said yesterday that at one point in recent months only about a quarter of the Iraqis working on reconstruction were showing up because of the continuing violence in the country. "Yes, it's had an impact on how many people show up to work," Nash said. "Security is having an impact on us."
But he said that more than 8,000 Iraqis, three-quarters of those scheduled, arrive for work daily and that the work is accelerating.
Some Americans and other Westerners working for U.S. contractors left Iraq over the past several weeks because of the deteriorating security situation, he said. "The contractors have showed up with great vim and vigor, and in fact they're at work," Nash said during a half-hour briefing. "So things are going very well."
He said authorities are "putting in place" up to $75 million in new construction projects every week. Briefing documents from his Program Management Office show that about $3 billion was obligated to construction projects by the end of last week, compared with about half that amount a month ago. Spending has been heaviest on electricity and water projects.
Critics acknowledged some improvements in the reconstruction effort, including the delivery of electricity and fresh water to Iraqis. But they said yesterday's briefing appeared oriented to create a favorable impression in the weeks leading up to the handover of limited authority to an Iraqi government on June 30 and in the months leading up to the U.S. presidential election.
"They're clearly trying to put the best face on this," said Tim Rieser, chief Democratic clerk for the Senate Appropriations foreign operations subcommittee, which is monitoring the spending. "Yet by any objective measure they're falling far short of what they said they were going to do when they asked for all this money."
The coalition had planned on spending nearly $8 billion through March.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the subcommittee's ranking Democratic member, said the future of reconstruction efforts hangs in the balance because the country remains so dangerous and many contractors and Iraqis are still afraid to work.
"Security is quickly becoming the X-factor that is impeding and complicating the reconstruction effort," Leahy said in a statement. "Many people predicted these problems back when the Administration made its request for far more money than it could effectively spend. The reality on the ground is illustrative of the many needless mistakes that have created the mess we face today."
Nash said he is "very enthusiastic, very positive" about the overall direction of reconstruction. He estimated that $5 billion worth of projects will be underway by July 1, when Iraqis are scheduled to be largely in control of the country.
--------
The Bush Plan
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A12
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53322-2004May24.html
Highlights from President Bush's plan to achieve peace and democracy in Iraq:
• On June 30, full sovereignty will be transferred to an Iraqi government, and the Coalition Provisional Authority will cease to exist. Ambassador John D. Negroponte will oversee the new U.S. Embassy.
• After the transfer of sovereignty, U.S. and coalition forces will stay in Iraq as part of a multinational force authorized by the United Nations. U.S. forces will remain under U.S. command and will have clear rules of engagement. The United States will retain its current troop level of 138,000 as long as necessary.
• Iraq and its armed forces will be a principal partner in the coalition. Iraqi forces will be under Iraqi civilian control, and there will be an Iraqi national chain of command for their forces. The United States is accelerating its program to train Iraqi soldiers and police.
• The United States is dedicating more than $20 billion toward reconstruction and development projects in Iraq and will continue working with Iraqi leaders to rebuild the country's infrastructure.
• The United States will fund the construction of a modern maximum-security prison. When it is completed, prisoners at Abu Ghraib will be moved and -- with approval of the Iraqi government -- Abu Ghraib will be demolished.
• Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will work with members of the U.N. Security Council to endorse a timetable on Iraqi governance and encourage more international support.
• At the NATO summit in June, Bush will speak with leaders of NATO countries about the organization's role in Iraq's security and reconstruction.
SOURCE: The White House
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No Role in Shrine Damage, U.S. Says; Clash Kills 13 Iraqis
May 25, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/international/middleeast/25CND-IRAQ.html?hp
One of Shia Islam's most sacred sites was slightly damaged in Najaf today as Iraqi militants attacked coalition forces, but a United States military official said American troops were not responsible in any way.
According to reports from Najaf, at least 13 Iraqis, some of them civilians, died in exchanges with American forces today.
The military official, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said the damage to the holy site could have been caused by clashes between two different militant factions inside the city or by forces loyal to the militant cleric Moktada al-Sadr "to try to provoke outrage so they could blame it on the coalition forces."
The general added: "We just can't tell you how much we decry the attempts by Moktada's militia, Moktada possibly himself, to violate the sacred holy shrines of the Shia religion for his own personal gain, for his own personal advancement."
American military officials say they have been careful to avoid damaging holy sites and have accused Mr. Sadr of using holy places to store weapons and seek sanctuary. Last week, American forces found a cache of weapons inside a Karbala mosque.
The Najaf shrine is named for Imam Ali, the Prophet Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law. He is the most revered saint among Shiite Muslims.
In another development, General Kimmitt said at a news briefing in Baghdad that the next release at the Abu Ghraib prison, near Baghdad, would be on Friday, when between 580 and 600 inmates would be freed. Another release is scheduled to take place on June 4, but the general did not mention any numbers.
A suicide car bomb exploded today outside the Al Karma Hotel in central Baghdad, injuring two Iraqi civilians, the general said.
Later, insurgents fired rockets from an apartment house toward a police station in central Baghdad, near the square that was once home to a statue of Saddam Hussein. The rockets set off huge explosions and an American soldier was slightly wounded.
General Kimmitt said that although Mr. Sadr's militia members seemed to have ceased operations in Karbala, they continued to attack coalition forces in Najaf and Kufa.
On Monday 24 mortar rounds landed near coalition forces patrolling the east side of the Euphrates River near the Kufa bridge, the general said, adding that coalition forces identified and killed the mortar unit's forward observer.
Later, coalition forces on the west side of the Euphrates River near the Kufa bridge were attacked by small-arms and rocket-propelled grenade fire. There were no coalition injuries, General Kimmitt said.
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Bush Lays Out Goals for Iraq: Self-Rule and Stability
May 25, 2004
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/politics/25PREX.html?pagewanted=all&position=
CARLISLE, Pa., May 24 - President Bush on Monday night sought to reassure Americans, Iraqis and other nations that he has a plan to set Iraq on a track to stable self-rule, saying his goal was to make Iraq's people "free, not to make them American."
The United States, Mr. Bush said, will use a "five-point plan" to hand over authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30, help establish security, continue rebuilding the country's infrastructure, encourage more international support and then move toward a national Iraqi election as early as next January. He did not announce the names of a new prime minister or other top Iraqi government officials, but promised that they would be released later this week by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq.
In a 33-minute address at the United States Army War College in the farmland of south-central Pennsylvania, the president said: "I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history, and find their own way."
Mr. Bush said an essential part of rebuilding Iraq would be the creation of a modern prison system. He pledged, if the new Iraqi government agrees, to destroy the Abu Ghraib prison, a longtime symbol of the cruelty of Saddam Hussein's rule and now notorious as the site of abuses of Iraqi prisoners by members of the American military.
In making the case for persevering in Iraq, the president reminded Americans that, in his view, Iraq remained "the central front in the war on terror."
Mr. Bush also held out little hope for a quick withdrawal of American soldiers, and said he would maintain troop levels of 138,000 "as long as necessary." If American commanders on the ground needed more troops, Mr. Bush said, "I will send them."
Mr. Bush's speech, the first in a series of major addresses meant to shore up support for his Iraq policy before the June 30 deadline, was as much a political event as a policy address. It came in the wake of a poll by CBS News that showed Mr. Bush's approval ratings at a new low, with 41 percent approving of the job he is doing and 52 percent disapproving.
The president, who was apparently wearing makeup to cover abrasions on his chin from a fall from his mountain bike last weekend, seemed confident and calm throughout his remarks, which were interrupted periodically by applause. The biggest applause came when Mr. Bush said the United States would raze the Abu Ghraib prison.
His evening speech was scheduled for prime time, but the White House did not ask the broadcast networks to carry it live. Still, it was shown by the cable news channels, and by distributing early excerpts of his prepared text the White House ensured that his remarks were featured on evening news programs viewed by millions.
Recent opinion surveys have shown a serious erosion in support among Americans for Mr. Bush's foreign policy, with only 30 percent in the CBS News survey approving of the way he is handling Iraq. During the past several weeks rebel insurgencies, the beheading of an American, the assassination of an Iraqi leader backed by the United States and the raid on a onetime American friend, Ahmad Chalabi, have shaken American confidence in the venture in Iraq.
The president walked Americans through the details of the transfer of power, all of it pre-existing policy, that he said would help Iraq achieve "democracy and freedom." America's task in Iraq, he said, "is not only to defeat an enemy, it is to give strength to a friend - a free, representative government that serves its people and fights on their behalf. And the sooner this goal is achieved, the sooner our job will be done."
In his remarks, Mr. Bush said he was confident that the United Nations Security Council would adopt a new resolution, introduced Monday by the United States and Britain, that would bestow international recognition on what the administration is calling the "caretaker" government of Iraq to be installed after June 30. The resolution, which is intended to encourage countries to come forward with troops and donations, would set up a multinational force in Iraq authorized by the United Nations, with American troops a part of the force and American commanders in charge.
Mr. Bush outlined a framework for the interim government, which he said would include a prime minister, a president, two vice presidents and 26 ministers who would oversee government departments like defense, justice and health.
Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, reacted to Mr. Bush's speech by saying that the president must turn "words into action" and call on allies for help. "That's going to require the president to genuinely reach out to our allies so that the United States doesn't have to continue to go it alone and to create the stability necessary to allow the people of Iraq to move forward," he said. "That's what our troops deserve, and that's what our country and the world need at this moment."
Until now, Bush administration officials have said repeatedly that they did not plan to close Abu Ghraib prison, although in recent weeks the authorities in Iraq have been rapidly discharging prisoners, aiming to cut the population by about half to fewer than 2,000 inmates.
"Under Saddam Hussein, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture," Mr. Bush said, speaking to 450 students, faculty members and military officials in the college's Jim Thorpe Hall, a gymnasium named for the athlete who once trained on the grounds here. "That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values." A new Iraq, Mr. Bush said, will need "a humane, well-supervised prison system."
The president warned that there would probably be more violence in Iraq, both before and after the June 30 transfer date. "As the Iraqi people move closer to governing themselves, the terrorists are likely to become more active and more brutal," he said. "There are difficult days ahead, and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic."
The president also acknowledged that events on the ground had not gone as the administration had planned.
"The swift removal of Saddam Hussein's regime last spring had an unintended effect," Mr. Bush said. "Instead of being killed or captured on the battlefield, some of Saddam's elite guards shed their uniforms and melted into the civilian population. These elements of Saddam's repressive regime and secret police have reorganized, rearmed, and adopted sophisticated terrorist tactics" as they linked up with foreign fighters.
"These groups and individuals have conflicting ambitions, but they share a goal," he said. "They hope to wear out the patience of Americans, our coalition, and Iraqis before the arrival of effective self-government, and before Iraqis have the capability to defend their freedom."
Mr. Bush sought repeatedly to convince his listeners that his administration meant to turn over real power to the Iraqis on June 30, and that the caretaker government would not be a puppet of the United States. He said that the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority will transfer "full sovereignty" to the Iraqis on June 30, and that the authority "will cease to exist and not be replaced."
As he concluded his remarks, Mr. Bush said that "in the last 32 months, history has placed great demands on our country." The United States, he said, "did not seek this war on terror, but this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving, and it will tend toward hope, or tend toward tragedy."
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Failing to Disband Militias, U.S. Moves to Accept Them
May 25, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/international/middleeast/25MILI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 24 - With only weeks to go until an Iraqi government takes over, American officials have failed to disarm the tens of thousands of fighters in private militias deployed almost exclusively along ethnic and religious lines.
In the 15 months since the fall of Saddam Hussein, American officials have declared repeatedly that they would disband the private militias, recognizing that their narrow, sectarian interests could threaten a unified and democratic Iraqi state.
But with the sharp deterioration of the security situation in recent months, American officials appear to have resigned themselves to working with militias in Falluja, Baghdad and elsewhere even as American soldiers die fighting them in street battles in Karbala and Najaf.
A senior allied official said Monday that the Americans were engaged in delicate negotiations with several of the country's main militias to disband and integrate them into the security forces. The official said the Americans hoped to announce an agreement with the militias as early as this week. But it is not clear, with so few weeks left before the transfer of sovereignty, whether the Americans will have the leverage to disarm the militias.
The danger is that on June 30 the Americans will hand over power to an Iraqi administration that will not have a monopoly on the use of armed force, in an environment that many fear could set the stage for sectarian and ethnic warfare as the country moves toward what are intended to be democratic elections.
As that date approaches, the Americans are quietly allowing some of these armed groups to flourish and, in some cases, have even helped recreate them.
In Falluja, the scene of deadly fighting last month, American commanders agreed to set up an Iraqi security force composed almost entirely of former members of Mr. Hussein's Republican Guard and anti-American guerrillas.
In Baghdad and southern Iraq, the Americans have allowed the two largest Shiite militias, the Badr Corps and the Dawa army, to remain intact, largely on the promise by their leaders that the fighters will stay off the streets.
In northern Iraq, as part of the effort to disband the 60,000-man Kurdish militia, entire military units simply donned police uniforms of the new Iraqi state but otherwise stayed in the same place with the same commanders.
Even fighters in the Mahdi Army of the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, whom American soldiers have been killing in large numbers in recent weeks, may be given a chance for legitimacy. In a recent news conference, the general commanding American forces in Najaf and Karbala said he would be willing to consider taking Mahdi Army militiamen into a new Iraqi security force being set up to help secure southern Iraq.
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 18, the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, suggested that the American government had accepted the continued existence of the militias, provided they remained friendly to the United States. Asked if he intended to disarm militias controlled by the mainstream Shiite parties like Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Mr. Wolfowitz suggested that he did not.
"That is not part of the mission unless it is necessary to bring them under control," he said. "The approach to those militias is to try over time to integrate them into new Iraqi security forces. And the real answer to disarming militias is to create an alternative security institution. And then the militias can go away."
Most of the militias were formed during Mr. Hussein's rule by groups opposed to him, and they have evolved into the armed wings of various political groups and factions.
The decision to turn over control of Fallujah to former members of the Republican Guard has bought a measure of peace and stability to the city after weeks of ferocious fighting.
But one former American official familiar with the issue said that while tolerating militias may lead to greater security in the short term, doing so could threaten the democratic process and risk dividing Iraq along ethnic and religious lines.
"We are not going to get free and fair elections, and we are not going to get sustainable democracy of any kind in Iraq unless we make some kind of progress in demobilizing these militias," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a former senior adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority.
Mr. Diamond said he was worried that the militias, most of which are connected to political parties, would use their guns to intimidate voters, steal ballot boxes and assassinate opponents. "Everything we know from similar situations in other countries tells us that the militias will use their control of arms to create facts on the ground," he said.
The persistence of the militias is fueled by the deep insecurity each of the main ethnic and religious groups feels about the others. No one wants to disarm first, so no one disarms at all. Iraqi political and religious leaders complain loudly about the other groups' militias, but rarely mention their own.
A senior leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq sharply criticized the American decision to gather former Republican Guard soldiers into a "security force" in Falluja.
"Of course we are not happy - they are Republican Guards, with the same uniforms, the same mustaches," said Adel Abdel Mehdi, the group's leader.
Yet Mr. Mehdi's party controls one of the largest militias in Iraq, the Badr Corps, whose cadre are thought to number in the thousands. Not only does Mr. Mehdi not regard the Badr Corps as a problem, he says they should be deployed to provide security around the country.
So far, the Americans have held firm, vowing to crush any militia, like the Mahdi Army, that comes out into the streets. But since the Iraqi security forces disintegrated in the face of the uprisings in Falluja and southern Iraq last month, the American forces have begun to reconcile themselves to two realities.
One is that the rapid military training offered to the Iraqis failed to turn them into effective fighting forces. The other is that Iraqis are reluctant to fight other Iraqis on behalf of the Americans.
With little more than a month to go before sovereignty is transferred, most of the big armed groups remain intact, sustained in the last year by either the tacit or explicit approval of the American administration.
In some cases, the Americans have allowed militias that it considers friendly simply to change their names. The Badr Corps, for instance, has changed its name to the Badr Reconstruction Organization, and its leaders claim that it is now involved only in cultural activities. The head of the group, Abu Hassan al-Ameri, remains in his same offices, and his men still carry Kalashnikov rifles. "All of our guns have been licensed by the Americans," Mr. Ameri said.
As with most other militias, the Badr organization is made up almost entirely of a single religious or ethnic group. So strong is the Shiite identification of the Badr Corps that in the 1980's, during the Iran-Iraq war, some of its members fought for Iran, another majority-Shiite country, against the Sunni-led forces of Iraq.
From the beginning, the task of disarming the militias has been a difficult one. Every Iraqi family is permitted to own one high-powered assault rifle, and virtually all of them do. Like the American minutemen of yore, the militias are composed mostly of civilians, who assemble - or disappear - on short notice.
While the United States has tried a hands-off approach with armed groups it regards as friendly, it has tried to co-opt ones that have demonstrated hostility. After the heavy fighting in Falluja last month, American commanders accepted an offer from a former general in the Republican Guards to set up a security force of his former troops.
One result is that Falluja has been mostly peaceful since the deal was reached a month ago. But the peace has come at considerable cost: It has enraged mainstream Shiites, who were stunned to learn that the Americans had resurrected the very soldiers they deposed a year before. Shiite leaders worry that the short-term peace in Falluja will give way to disaster in the future.
"Today, they are in Falluja; tomorrow they will be in Baghdad," said Mr. Mehdi, the Shiite leader.
These days in Falluja, the line separating an insurgent and a member of the "security forces" is sometimes invisible.
"All the people in Falluja are fighters," said Naji Obeid, a 35-year-old member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, an American-sponsored force.
When the Marines tried to enter Falluja last month, Mr. Obeid joined the fight against them. When the peace deal was struck, he put his Iraqi civil defense uniform back on and returned to work.
"The people, they were fighting against the Americans, and they were fighting to protect their city," he said. "And now they are in the new Iraqi Army, protecting their city."
American officials insist that the Falluja security force will be disbanded soon. Yet there are indications that far from ending the Falluja experiment, the Americans are considering applying its lessons in other cities.
In a news conference this month, Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, the commander of the American division that has been battling the Mahdi Army, said he might be willing to accept members of that militia into a new, 4,000-man security force he and his men are creating to police areas like Karbala and Najaf.
"If the militia dissolves tomorrow, what I've got is 600 unemployed young men on my hands," General Dempsey said. "Some of them are probably decent young men who have been badly led astray."
For months, the solution posed by the Americans, at least publicly, has been to break up the command structure of the sectarian militias and disperse their fighters into ethnically mixed government-run security forces. Yet American officials concede that they have seldom accomplished that.
In northern Iraq, where Kurdish militias number as many as 60,000 men, the "pesh merga" have in some cases simply changed into Iraqi government uniforms.
Anwar Dolani, 46, was a pesh merga fighter for 25 years. A few months ago, he and 891 of his comrades joined a local battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps together.
"The same peshmerga commanders are now the I.C.D.C. commanders," Mr. Dolani said.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Mr. Dolani said his primary allegiance was still to the Kurds, not the Iraqi nation. "If the Arabs try to be in charge of us and try to take our rights," he said, "we will not be silent. We will fight."
Only in rare cases have the Americans have been able to deploy ethnically diverse military units. While much of the Iraqi security forces disintegrated during the uprising of the Mahdi Army last month, one unit stood out: the 36th I.C.D.C. Battalion. That unit, a unique creation, was formed by drawing militiamen from the main Iraqi political parties and mixing them together.
General Dempsey has said the 36th Battalion is a template for the security force he plans to form to take over in places like Najaf and Karbala once the Mahdi Army is dispersed. "When things became difficult, they stood and fought," he said.
Under the plan being negotiated now, Iraqi militiamen would be offered jobs in the Iraqi security services and become eligible for army pensions. They would even qualify for job training.
But some Iraqis doubt that the 36th Battalion can be duplicated outside the ethnically mixed cities of Mosul and Baghdad. In most other parts of the country - Basra, the Sunni triangle - local populations tend to be much more homogeneous - and rivalrous.
Mr. Diamond, the former coalition authority adviser, said the Americans had initially intended to dismantle the militias fully and spread the fighters around. But after the revolts in Falluja and the south, he says he is not so sure the Americans will be willing to do that, especially with those militias that are nominally friendly, like those controlled by the Shiites.
"You are talking about a long, long process," Mr. Diamond said. "I don't see that we have the will or the stomach for it anymore."
Warzer Jaff contributed reporting from Falluja and Sulaimaniya for this article.
-------- israel / palestine
Israeli Army Criticized for Gaza Action
By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press Writer
May 25, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/ISRAEL_PALESTINIANS?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
JERUSALEM (AP) -- The Israeli government and army faced growing criticism Tuesday after a weeklong offensive in a Gaza refugee camp that netted few arms-smuggling tunnels or weapons caches, but killed 45 Palestinians, destroyed dozens of homes and earned Israel an international rebuke.
Israeli troops pulled out of the Rafah refugee camp late Monday, without completing a sweep for tunnels used by militants to smuggle weapons across the Egyptian border. The army said it uncovered three tunnels and detained 10 wanted men for questioning.
Military officials said they believe there are about 10 tunnels in Rafah, and Gaza commander Maj. Gen. Dan Harel suggested troops may resume the search later.
Rafah resident Mustafa Arja, 45, who stayed in his house as Israeli bulldozers knocked down his garden wall, said he was bracing for more raids. "I don't think that any place is safe in Rafah, and I don't think there is any guarantee left for us that they are not going to come back," he said.
Israeli tanks and bulldozers left behind piles of rubble, pitted streets and dozens of demolished or damaged buildings. A local official estimated troops caused about $7 million in damage to infrastructure in Rafah, including the electricity grid and water and sewage pipes.
Israel launched the Rafah offensive after 13 Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza this month. But the high number of casualties and scenes of displaced Palestinians picking through the rubble of their homes sparked fierce international criticism.
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last week condemning the Israeli operation; the United States, in a sign of significant displeasure with Israel, abstained rather than using its veto. A growing number of Israeli commentators joined in criticism of the raid Tuesday, saying it had accomplished little, at a very high price - both in Palestinian suffering and in harm to Israel's image.
"We could have achieved similar results, or even better ones, through much more pinpointed operations," commentator Amir Rappaport wrote in the Maariv daily.
Matan Vilnai, a retired general and opposition legislator, told Israel Army Radio: "We must understand that not everything can be solved by force."
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to seek Cabinet approval on Sunday for a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops and some 7,500 Jewish settlers from Gaza, which is home to 1.3 million Palestinians. An earlier pullout plan was rejected by Sharon's Likud Party, but polls suggest withdrawal is backed by a majority of Israelis.
Israeli Vice Premier Ehud Olmert said a one-vote majority was emerging in the Cabinet in favor of a Gaza withdrawal.
Officially, Palestinian leaders dismiss Sharon's pullout plan, which does not envision negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. However, behind the scenes, officials said there had been a change of attitudes on both sides.
Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman met Monday with Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, offering to play a major role in assuring security in Gaza and an orderly transfer of power.
Suleiman urged Palestinian leaders to go along with Sharon's plan, which would also include a withdrawal from four West Bank settlements, according to Palestinian officials.
Arafat promised to prepare a Gaza security plan by June 15, to show he is capable of running the coastal strip, the officials said.
Israeli sources said Egypt promised increased border security to clamp down on weapons smuggling into Gaza, and to train Palestinian security forces.
During the Rafah operation, 45 Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire, including at least 17 gunmen and 12 children under 16, doctors said.
The army said 41 "terrorists" were killed, but did not respond to repeated requests for a list of gunmen killed by troops.
In the camp's Brazil neighborhood, bulldozers tried to clear streets Tuesday so workers could restore electricity and repair water and sewage pipes.
Estimates of the number of houses demolished in Rafah varied. The United Nations said 45 buildings housing 575 people were razed, while Palestinian officials said about 300 houses were destroyed. Israel said 56 homes were demolished or damaged.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency said 360 families, or 1,960 people, have had their homes demolished by Israeli forces in Rafah since May 1. The agency called the period one of the most destructive in Rafah since the start of the Palestinian uprising in 2000. In all, more than 13,000 Palestinians have been made homeless by Israeli demolitions in Rafah since 2000, UNRWA said.
It was difficult to obtain an independent estimate of the most recent demolitions because razed homes were scattered through the camp.
Yousef Bahloul, a businessman, said three tank shells hit one of his two seven-story apartment buildings, leaving gaping holes in the facade.
"The aim is to destroy everything and to kill the hope of any good future for all of us," said his son Rami.
Associated Press writer Ibrahim Barzak in Rafah contributed to this report.
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Israeli Army Ends Weeklong Attack in Gaza
May 25, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/international/middleeast/25mide.html
TEL AVIV, Israel, May 24 - Israel withdrew its troops from the Gaza Strip town of Rafah on Monday after a punishing weeklong military operation. Palestinians promptly filled a soccer stadium in a mass funeral for many of those killed.
An Israeli military official said additional operations were likely to follow if the army received new information about weapons shipments across the nearby border with Egypt, or tunnels to smuggle them.
Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the commander of Israeli troops in Gaza, described the operation as a necessary and successful raid that had uncovered three tunnels and eliminated a large number of terrorists in Rafah, a flash point for violence throughout the last three and a half years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.
"Our war is not with the people of Rafah," the general told journalists at a briefing in Tel Aviv. "Our war is with the terrorists who are smuggling arms."
But to Palestinians mourning the dead and sifting through the rubble, the raid was viewed as a devastating blow to the community. The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, who was in the West Bank, called it "unprecedented criminal aggression."
Early on Monday, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles left the two hardest-hit parts of Rafah, Tel Sultan and the Brazil section of the town's refugee camp. Shortly afterward, thousands of Palestinians flocked to the soccer stadium to attend a funeral service for 16 of the dead.
Islam calls for the dead to be buried quickly, but the bodies had remained in a makeshift morgue - a vegetable refrigerator - for days because the Israeli siege kept residents off the streets.
Palestinians called for revenge, and young men fired guns into the air as the funeral cortege worked its way to a sandy cemetery.
Elsewhere in Rafah, residents on their hands and knees dug for vegetables plowed under by Israeli armored vehicles that had rumbled over farmland during the invasion.
General Harel said the Israeli forces had killed about 40 Palestinians linked to violent factions, and in addition, 14 Palestinian civilians died in the past week. The general said at least two civilian fatalities had been caused by Palestinian gunmen.
Palestinian hospital officials say more than 40 Palestinians were killed, many of them civilians, but they have not provided a precise breakdown.
No Israeli soldiers were killed.
The Israeli forces also destroyed 56 structures in Rafah, General Harel said. Previously, Israeli military officials said no more than a dozen Palestinian homes had been destroyed.
The United Nations agency that assists Palestinian refugees said 180 houses had been destroyed, Reuters reported.
General Harel said the houses had been taken down because Palestinian combatants had been using them for cover when firing on Israelis. Many Palestinians whose houses were destroyed have denied the charge, which other Israeli military officials have made in the past.
The Israeli operation came under widespread international criticism for the extensive damage caused to civilian areas. Israel began the raid on May 18. In the week before that, 13 Israelis soldiers were killed in the Gaza Strip in some of the heaviest fighting in the territory in recent years.
A senior Israeli military official said that the forces in Gaza were now taking "a deep breath," but that he expected the troops to continue searching for tunnels in Rafah. The official said there could be up to seven more tunnels in the area besides the three that had been uncovered.
The Israeli military has raised the possibility of tearing down hundreds of additional Palestinian homes to widen a road that soldiers patrol along the border with Egypt. That would create additional space between the Israeli soldiers and the Palestinians in Rafah and would also make it more difficult to dig tunnels stretching across the border.
But the military official said that proposal faced many hurdles, including legal challenges, and added that he did not believe it was likely to be carried out any time soon.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed withdrawing Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza, but his plan was voted down by the members of his Likud Party.
Mr. Sharon is expected to introduce a revised plan to his Cabinet on Sunday. According to the Israeli news media, the new proposal is likely to call for a phased withdrawal of Israeli settlements. The first stage could limit the withdrawal to 3 of the 21 existing settlements in Gaza, the newspaper Haaretz reported.
In another development on Monday, Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, met separately with Mr. Sharon and the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, for discussions on a possible Israeli pullout from Gaza.
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Homeless and angry, Palestinians call for justice
independent.co.uk
By Donald Macintyre in Rafah
25 May 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=524642
As an Israeli bulldozer began to destroy his house in Rafah's Brazil neighbourhood, Ibrahim abu Hamad, 40, was still in it. He was talking on his mobile phone to his employer - the Israeli boss of a construction company in Tel Aviv. Meir Grimstein, who has known Mr abu Hamad for 15 years and who did his own military service in Gaza, had telephoned to ask how his employee was doing. "When I told him the bulldozer had started to demolish my house, he said: 'I don't believe you. I know where your house is. It isn't near the border.'"
But when Mr abu Hamad persuaded him otherwise, "he said 'how can I help you?' I told him: 'You can't help me. The bulldozer is already here. It's too late.'" For by now Mr abu Hamad, his wife and seven children had fled to the back of the house as the bulldozer rumbled on through the front, lumbering to a halt within five metres of the rear wall to leave them room to escape while waving a white cloth in the hope that it would stop the tanks shooting at the sand around their feet.
Mr abu Hamad, like other Palestinian migrant workers, has not been able to leave Gaza since March. But contacted by telephone in Tel Aviv yesterday, Mr Grimstein said he still hoped that Mr abu Hamad would be able to return to work.
He wasn't on the spot, he said, so he wasn't in a position to express a view about the demolitions in general, but no, he didn't think it was fair in Mr abu Hamad's case. The supreme irony of losing his home in a painfully short few minutes during the height of the army's incursion into Brazil camp last week was not lost on Mr abu Hamad. "I build houses in Israel and the Israelis destroy my house here," he said.
The story is illustrative. The army was very slow to admit the destruction was happening at all. Now it has said that houses would not have been demolished were it not for the activities of Palestinian militants - including the killing of five Israeli soldiers 12 days ago. But the question, as last week's Amnesty International report highlighted, is whether the scale of demolitions is remotely proportionate to the security needs routinely cited by the military.
Mr abu Hamad, who has the trust and confidence of an Israeli employer, is no militant. His house does not disguise a tunnel. His experience helps to underline why the Shinui Party leader, Tommy Lapid, has led an Israeli cabinet revolt against the Rafah demolitions. Whether Mr Lapid, the Justice Minister, was consciously invoking memories of the Holocaust when he said the television footage of an old Palestinian scrabbling for her medicine in the rubble of her home reminded him of his own grandmother (he now says he wasn't), his opposition to the demolitions is significant.
A survey by the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem found that since the beginning of "Operation Rainbow" - the benign military name for an operation which has killed more than 45 Palestinians in eight days - 67 homes have been destroyed, making more than 750 people homeless, most of them now sheltering in rudimentary accommodation at UN schools. This comes on top of what B'Tselem estimates to be 116 homes destroyed the week before last, making 1,160 homeless, after five Israeli soldiers were killed when their armoured troop carrier was blown up by Palestinian militants. That brings the running total to 183 homes. B'Tselem counts not individual buildings - many of which are multi-occupied - but total dwelling units.
A visit to the Brazil district of the camp suggests that, if anything, that figure may be a conservative estimate. For in one small section of the Brazil neighbourhood off Nile Street and identified locally as Blocks 71-72, local residents enumerated at the weekend nine separate buildings - 206-210 inclusive, 213-15 and 219 - that had been destroyed during last Thursday's high-intensity phase of the incursion. The buildings' units house from one to seven people each and accommodated 25 families in all.
These are mere numbers, which say nothing of the human cost to those in the block such as Mr abu Hamad and his neighbours. One of those, Samir Mansur, 47, who worked as a taxi driver on the route between Rafah and Gaza City, last week lost not only his 12-member family's home, but his only means of earning a living. His 1984 yellow Mercedes taxi lay uselessly mangled, up-ended, and half buried in yet more rubble of another neighbour's home. What will he do now? "What can I say? I have no house. I have no money. My life has been destroyed. My children's future has been crushed. This is an earthquake. You can understand an earthquake because it is from God, but we cannot accept it from the Israelis," he said.
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Space Station Crew to Use Russian Suits
Associated Press
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53324-2004May24.html
CAPE CANAVERAL, May 24 -- NASA ruled Monday that U.S. spacesuits on the international space station are unusable and ordered the crew to use Russian gear instead, adding time and distance to a critical spacewalk next month.
The crew wanted to wear NASA's suits and go out by the closer American hatch to get to a broken power-supply unit on the exterior of the space station, but a cooling problem with the suits made that impossible.
The mid-June spacewalk involves replacing a power control and circuit breaker that last month shut down one of the gyroscopes that stabilize the space station and keep it oriented properly. Only two of the four U.S. gyroscopes are working, the minimum necessary for proper operation; the first one shut down two years ago and cannot be replaced until NASA's shuttles fly again.
Cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and astronaut Mike Fincke spent the past few days, without success, trying to get cooling water flowing properly in Padalka's U.S.-made spacesuit. They could not get a spare suit to work, either. So NASA managers decided to use Russian suits and conduct the spacewalk from the Russian side of the station.
The crew members need to leave from the Russian side because the Russian spacesuits are not compatible with communication equipment in the U.S. air lock. The Russian hatch is about 80 feet from the bad circuit breaker, located on the American side. The U.S. hatch is 30 feet away.
"It's not as dangerous as a minefield by any means," Fincke said in an interview with the Associated Press. "It's just going to take a fair amount of time to get there and to come back."
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ABUSE
C.I.A. Bid to Keep Some Detainees Off Abu Ghraib Roll Worries Officials
May 25, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/politics/25ABUS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 24 - The Central Intelligence Agency's practice of keeping some detainees in Abu Ghraib prison off the official rosters so concerned a top Army officer and a civilian official there that they reached a written agreement early this year to stop.
An undated copy of the memorandum was obtained by The New York Times. It was described as an agreement between the Army intelligence unit assigned to the prison and "external agencies," a euphemism for the C.I.A., to halt practices that bypassed both military rules and international standards.
Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, the Army officer who first investigated the prison abuses, concluded in his classified report that the practice of allowing what he called "ghost detainees" at the prison was "deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law." He complained that military guards were being enlisted to hide the prisoners from the Red Cross.
The memorandum provides the clearest indication to date that military officials were troubled by the practice even before General Taguba wrote his report.
A senior intelligence official said last week that the practice was intended "to keep the capture of a small number of terrorists quiet for some time," but was discontinued in January.
In an e-mail message on Monday, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the top military spokesman in Iraq, declined to comment on the undated memorandum. To do so, he said, "might compromise the fairness, integrity and impartiality of ongoing investigations."
Also on Monday, the leader of the Army Reserve suspended Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski, the commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade, pending a review of the misconduct involving members of her unit while she was commander at Abu Ghraib prison. Seven enlisted soldiers who have already been charged with crimes in connection with the abuse of Iraqi prisoners there were under her command.
Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, issued a letter of admonishment to General Karpinski in January. Officially, the leader of Army Reserve, Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, temporarily reassigned General Karpinski to the Army Readiness Command at Fort Jackson, S.C. But in effect, General Karpinski now joins a handful of officers who have been subjected to the additional step of a suspension in connection with the incident.
General Karpinski was quoted in The New York Times on Monday as saying that General Sanchez had rejected her recommendation in January that the American military make a public, Arabic-language address on radio or television to the Iraqi people to alert them to the abuses at Abu Ghraib.
A senior Army official denied there was any connection between General Karpinski's comments and her reassignment. He said the timing of the action coincided with General Karpinski leaving active duty and resuming reservist status.
"Makes me wonder what's next," General Karpinski said about her suspension, in an e-mail message to The Times on Monday.
Accounts from intelligence officials seem to indicate that the practice of keeping detainees off official prison rosters was widespread.
In one of several cases in which an Iraqi prisoner died at Abu Ghraib in connection with interrogations, a hooded man identified only by his last name, Jamadi, slumped over dead on Nov. 20 as he was being questioned by a C.I.A. officer and translator, intelligence officials said. The incident is being investigated by the C.I.A.'s inspector general, and military officials have said that the man, whose body was later packed in ice and photographed at Abu Ghraib, had never been assigned a prisoner number, an indication that he had never been included on any official roster at the prison.
The memorandum criticizing the practice of keeping prisoners off the roster was signed by Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, and a James Bond, who is identified as "SOS, Agent in Charge." Military and intelligence officials said that they did not know of a Mr. Bond who had been assigned to Abu Ghraib, and that it was possible that the name was an alias.
An intelligence official said Monday that he could not confirm the authenticity of the document, and that neither "SOS" or "Agent in Charge" was terminology that the C.I.A. or any other American intelligence agency would use. A military official said he believed that the document was authentic and was issued on or about Jan. 12, two days before abuses at Abu Ghraib involving military police were brought to the attention of Army investigators.
In presenting the military's complaints, the memorandum asserts that "inappropriate detainees" had been housed in an isolation unit at Abu Ghraib "without the approval" of the military's Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center there, which oversaw that cellblock.
A second "memorandum for the record" obtained by The Times is dated Jan. 12 and signed by Maj. Matt Price, who is identified as the operations officer in charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center. It declares that "only detainees approved by J.I.D.C. ops will be housed in block 1A/1B" and that "access to blocks 1A/1B will be controlled by an access roster."
The two cellblocks were the sites of the worst known cases of prisoner abuse, which were committed by policemen from the 372nd Military Police Company. Questioning of prisoners housed in the cellblock was the responsibility of the joint interrogation center, a military unit directed by Lt. Col. Steven Jordan and reported to Colonel Pappas.
An American military policeman said in sworn testimony early last month that the man had been brought to Abu Ghraib by "O.G.A.," initials for other government agency, or the C.I.A., with a sandbag over his head. Military guards took the prisoner to a shower room at the prison, which was used as a temporary interrogation center, according to the account by Specialist Jason A. Kenner of the 372nd Military Police Company.
"He went into the shower for interrogation and about an hour later he died on them," said Specialist Kenner, whose account left unclear whether the detainee was examined by a doctor or given any military treatment before he died.
"When we put on his orange jumpsuit to take him to the tier, we were told not to take the sandbag off at all," Specialist Kenner said. "After he passed, the sandbag was removed, and I saw that he was severely beaten on his face. At the time, they would interrogate people in the shower rooms. He was shackled to the wall."
"Later that day," Specialist Kenner added, "they decided to put him on ice."
On Capitol Hill on Monday, the Senate Armed Services Committee said the Army had promised to deliver about 2,000 pages of supporting documents missing from copies of General Taguba's report that was sent to Congress earlier this month.
Pentagon aides have described the omission as an administrative oversight. But Senate officials said the missing documents included about 200 pages from Colonel Pappas's sworn statement, including a document titled, "Draft Update for Secretary of Defense."
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US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war
The Guardian Julian Borger in Washington
Tuesday May 25, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1224075,00.html
An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.
Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.
According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.
The CIA has asked the FBI to investigate Mr Chalabi's contacts in the Pentagon to discover how the INC acquired sensitive information that ended up in Iranian hands.
The implications are far-reaching. Mr Chalabi and Mr Habib were the channels for much of the intelligence on Iraqi weapons on which Washington built its case for war.
"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi."
Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy."
Mr Chalabi has vehemently rejected the allegations as "a lie, a fib and silly". He accused the CIA director, George Tenet, of a smear campaign against himself and Mr Habib.
However, it is clear that the CIA - at loggerheads with Mr Chalabi for more than eight years - believes it has caught him red-handed, and is sticking to its allegations.
"The suggestion that Chalabi is a victim of a smear campaign is outrageous," a US intelligence official said. "It's utter nonsense. He passed very sensitive and classified information to the Iranians. We have rock solid information that he did that."
"As for Aras Karim [Habib] being a paid agent for Iranian intelligence, we have very good reason to believe that is the case," added the intelligence official, who did not want to be named. He said it was unclear how long this INC-Iranian collaboration had been going on, but pointed out that Mr Chalabi had had overt links with Tehran "for a long period of time".
An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials.
"This was 'sensitive compartmented information' - SCI - and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib," the intelligence source said.
Mr Habib, a Shia Kurd who is being sought by Iraqi police since a raid on INC headquarters last week, has been Mr Chalabi's righthand man for more than a decade. He ran a Pentagon-funded intelligence collection programme in the run-up to the invasion and put US officials in touch with Iraqi defectors who made claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
Those claims helped make the case for war but have since proved groundless, and US intelligence agencies are now scrambling to determine whether false information was passed to the US with Iranian connivance.
INC representatives in Washington did not return calls seeking comment.
But Laurie Mylroie, a US Iraq analyst and one of the INC's most vocal backers in Washington, dismissed the allegations as the product of a grudge among CIA and state department officials driven by a pro-Sunni, anti-Shia bias.
She said that after the CIA raised questions about Mr Habib's Iranian links, the Pentagon's Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) conducted a lie-detector test on him in 2002, which he passed with "flying colours".
The DIA is also reported to have launched its own inquiry into the INC-Iran link.
An intelligence source in Washington said the FBI investigation into the affair would begin with Mr Chalabi's "handlers" in the Pentagon, who include William Luti, the former head of the office of special plans, and his immediate superior, Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defence for policy.
There is no evidence that they were the source of the leaks. Other INC supporters at the Pentagon may have given away classified information in an attempt to give Mr Chalabi an advantage in the struggle for power surrounding the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.
The CIA allegations bring to a head a dispute between the CIA and the Pentagon officials instrumental in promoting Mr Chalabi and his intelligence in the run-up to the war. By calling for an FBI counter-intelligence investigation, the CIA is, in effect, threatening to disgrace senior neo-conservatives in the Pentagon.
"This is people who opposed the war with long knives drawn for people who supported the war," Ms Mylroie said.
-------- un
U.S. and Britain Offer New U.N. Resolution on Iraq Transition
Draft Presented to Security Council Would Ensure That American Forces Maintain Military Control for Another Year
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52967-2004May24.html
UNITED NATIONS, May 24 -- The United States and Britain presented the U.N. Security Council on Monday with a draft resolution that would formally transfer authority in Iraq to a "sovereign interim government" on June 30 but ensure that U.S. armed forces maintain military control over the country for at least another year.
The resolution would authorize U.S.-led multinational forces to "use all necessary measures" to keep the peace and fight terrorist elements challenging the interim government. Its mandate would be subject to review by the Security Council within 12 months or by a transitional Iraqi government to be elected by January 2005.
France, Germany, Russia and China expressed misgivings about the resolution, saying it does not offer full sovereignty to Iraqis. Envoys from those governments said the resolution would not resolve many key political issues, including the extent of Iraqis' control over their security forces in the months ahead and the duration of the multinational force's stay in Iraq.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the new Iraqi government "must be able to make decisions over security issues, or else it won't be truly sovereign." Still, Germany's U.N. ambassador, Gunter Pleuger, said the text represents "a good basis for discussion."
The 15-nation Security Council will resume negotiations on the draft on Wednesday. U.S. and British officials said they hope to have the resolution adopted by early next month.
Council envoys from France, Russia and several other countries have insisted that Iraqis be given control over their police and the right to veto U.S. orders to send Iraqi forces into combat. China's U.N. ambassador, Wang Guangya, said he and other council envoys would introduce amendments to "improve" the text.
"We need to give more say to the Iraqis on the role that will be played by the multinational force and also the duration" it can remain in Iraq, Wang said. "It seems that it will be staying there even beyond 12 months."
The United States and Britain yielded to pressure from other Security Council members and Iraq's most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to omit any reference in the resolution to a March 8 interim constitution, called the Transitional Administrative Law, that was signed by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority and the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council.
The United States had hailed the agreement, which enshrined broad protections for individual rights and established a framework for democratic self-rule. But Sistani objected to language that provided Iraq's Kurdish minority with an effective veto over a permanent constitution and the power to potentially block major decisions by a Shiite president.
The omission could generate concerns among Kurdish leaders that their interests are not being protected.
Senior U.S. and British officials said Monday that the most sensitive security issues will be handled in a separate letter from the U.S. commander of the multinational force to the new interim government. The government would then ask the Security Council to endorse the terms of the security agreement.
The Bush administration's effort to seek the council's endorsement of the political transition comes as U.S. and U.N. officials scramble to name the leaders of the interim government, which will administer the country until national elections are held between December of this year and Jan. 31, 2005.
A senior U.S. official said the United States would delay a vote on the resolution until the United Nations' special envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, returns to New York to brief the council on his efforts to identify key leaders of the interim government, including a president, prime minister and two vice presidents. The U.S. official said: "Brahimi's preference and ours is to have the interim administration named and settling in by the end of this month."
In addition to providing the United States with a legal basis for its presence in Iraq, the resolution would lift an arms embargo on the Iraqi government, outlaw the shipment of weapons and funds to terrorist infiltrators, and authorize the creation of a "distinct entity within the multinational force" to provide security to U.N. personnel serving in Iraq.
It also calls on the United States and its military allies to establish a new Iraqi police force and army that can "progressively" assume responsibility for the country's security.
James Cunningham, the U.S. deputy representative to the United Nations, acknowledged that "there is nothing in the resolution" that grants Iraqis the authority to compel U.S. forces to withdraw after an elected government takes power. But he said the United States "has said that we will leave if there is a request from the government to leave."
The resolution would also grant the interim government the authority to disburse funds generated from Iraq's oil exports, subject to monitoring by an international board. It would require the Iraqis to continue to set aside 5 percent of oil revenue to compensate individuals and companies, primarily from Kuwait, who suffered financial losses in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
Several Iraq creditors, including Russia, Germany and France, are considering forgiving billions of dollars in Iraqi debt. They have insisted that Gulf War claimants do the same.
-------- us
US soldiers accused of theft
Tuesday 25 May 2004,
Reuters
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A6D8B265-4021-4F37-AFE9-664205961B4B.htm
A human rights organistaion in Iraq has claimed that many of the aggressive US raids on civilian homes end in the theft of money and other property.
Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Adil Alami - a legal representative for Iraq's Human Rights Organisation - says the majority of his case load involves civilians seeking compensation for lost property and cash.
"It's a huge problem, almost everyone has something to say about gold, money and other valuables going missing and they don't believe they'll ever get them back."
Over the past 14 months of occupation, US forces have carried out literally thousands of raids on homes across the country, routinely seizing money, jewellery and other property from Iraqis suspected of resistance activities.
The US military says it has had some success in cutting off funding for insurgents via the policy.
But Iraqis say the raids often target the wrong people, are carried out in an aggressive, even destructive manner and complain that lifetime savings, precious jewellery and family heirlooms are regularly stolen in the process.
Examples
Last year, Wajiha Daud, an 80-year-old widow, had her house in a middle-class neighbourhood of old Baghdad raided by US troops who said they had "high-level intelligence" that the home was a safe house for Saddam Hussein loyalists.
During the raid, which lasted around 30 minutes, the woman and her family, who live across the street, were kept outside.
"Confiscation and theft during raids is rampant"
"When we went back in, the house was half-destroyed," said her son Musaddiq Yunis, an English-speaking computer technician.
"All the furniture was slashed with knives, tables and chairs were broken and the windows smashed. They didn't need to break down the front door - I told them I had the key."
When Yunis' sister arrived she immediately rushed upstairs to a small cabinet and found it empty - $5,000 in cash, gold and other jewellery, including her wedding ring, were missing.
Litigation
The family filed a claim against the US military - a complex process that took nearly three months to get a reply.
In response, the military said the raid was justified and no compensation was owed.
The officer who commanded the raid told Yunis: "My soldiers aren't thieves."
But Stewart Vriesinga, a coordinator for Christian Peacemaker Teams, a non-profit group that documents abuses in Iraq, said: "Confiscation and theft during raids is rampant."
"Soldiers don't seem to understand the Iraqi custom of not using banks - a lot of people keep fairly substantial sums of money at home.
"A soldier from Kentucky or wherever sees that and thinks the person must be up to no good, so he takes it.
"We don't know how many Iraqis have died in this war, we don't know how many are in prison and we sure don't know how much money has been taken from them ... but it's enough to have serious socio-economic consequences."
Making enemies
Vriesinga estimates that in nine out of 10 raids, the home owners raided are innocent - but suffer huge consequences.
"If the husband is hauled off as a suspect, the family has lost its breadwinner and often lost its savings and cash as well," he said, pointing out that a recent Red Cross report quoted said some army officers estimated that up to 90% of Iraqi detainees are innocent.
If Iraqis file complaints, it comes down to a case of the Iraqi suspect's word against the American soldier's, he said.
"If there's any doubt, then it's assumed the Iraqi is lying - the Americans are creating enemies by the score."
But a spokesman for the US-led coalition, Captain Mark Doggett, said he was aware of the complaints and said some soldiers had been disciplined for "inappropriate conduct".
"We're aware of it ... But there's also the possibility of Iraqis making malicious claims."
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U.S. Plans to Name A New Commander
By Thomas E. Ricks and Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52980-2004May24.html
President Bush plans to appoint a new, higher-ranking military commander for Iraq, capping an overhaul of the command structure that is likely to replace Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez as the top general on the ground there, Pentagon and other administration officials said yesterday.
Sanchez has been besieged lately by questions about his oversight of detainee operations in Iraq, especially his role in the scandal over the abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad. But administration officials said the move to install a new four-star commander has been under consideration for months, well before the mistreatment of detainees became major news.
It is not clear what will happen to Sanchez. For months senior commanders have said privately that plans envisioned a new role for him, possibly as head of the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees military operations in South America, the Caribbean and most of Central America. But that position requires a congressional confirmation hearing, which would be likely to lead to a new round of questions about the Abu Ghraib scandal and Sanchez's actions in dealing with it.
Sanchez commands most regular Army and Marine units in Iraq. But there are four other U.S. three-star generals in Iraq. The new commander will outrank all those officers and, unlike Sanchez, will also have authority over all U.S. military units there, including Special Operations forces and the Iraq Survey Group, which focuses on searching for weapons of mass destruction.
The leading contender for the new, four-star job has been Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army's second-in-command, officials said. The other senior officer under consideration for the post is Army Lt. Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. But several officials said yesterday that Rumsfeld seemed in the past week to pull back from formally proposing Craddock.
The official word from the Pentagon late yesterday was that no final decision had been taken either to establish the four-star billet or to fill it with someone other than Sanchez. "If we had something like that to announce, we would," said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman. "Any speculation prior to an announcement would be irresponsible."
At the same time, other officials noted that Sanchez has served in Iraq for just over a year and that Army and Marine Corps division commanders all have rotated out of the country during that time.
Just 10 days ago, the Pentagon formally completed a realignment of the military structure in Iraq intended to allow the top commander in the country to focus on bigger-picture strategic concerns while handing off responsibilities for battling insurgents and developing new Iraqi security services to deputies. While Sanchez now serves as head of this revamped structure, called Multinational Force Iraq, the question of whether the post would become a four-star position had been uncertain for months.
Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, who as head of the U.S. Central Command supervises U.S. military operations in the Persian Gulf region, had been pushing to make the job a four-star billet to give the senior commander added authority. As such, it would be analogous to the top U.S. commander in South Korea, who is not formally a regional commander but is treated as such.
Both the officers being considered for the post are longtime colleagues of Abizaid's.
Four years ago, Craddock succeeded him as commander of the Army's 1st Infantry Division. Casey followed Abizaid in two key Pentagon positions, first as the head of planning for the staff of the Joint Chiefs and then as the staff's director.
Sanchez is considered by many of his peers to be a solid soldier who has been overwhelmed by the task of commanding the U.S. mission in Iraq.
"I do not see in him the kind of dynamic leadership and insightful strategy that is needed to win this war," said Andrew Krepinevich, a retired Army officer who is now executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense think tank.
But retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who commanded Sanchez in the 1991 Gulf War, remembered Sanchez, who led a battalion in McCaffrey's 24th Infantry Division, as one of his best subordinate commanders. "A terrific combat commander, led from the front, great personal courage, soldiers trusted him," McCaffrey said.
Even so, McCaffrey was less than glowing in his assessment of Sanchez's performance in Iraq.
"I think Rick got sucked into Bremer's CPA and rarely broke out of his orbit," McCaffrey said, referring to the Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer.
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Soldiers' Doubts Build as Duties Shift
For Many, Prolonged Stay and New Threat Have Eroded Early Optimism
By Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52971-2004May24?language=printer
KARBALA, Iraq -- When the Army's 1st Armored Division arrived in Iraq 13 months ago, its job was to close out Iraq's past by wiping out remnants of former president Saddam Hussein's armed base of support. Now several of its units are confronting a new threat, Moqtada Sadr, a Shiite cleric who is leading an armed revolt in defiance of U.S. plans to sideline him in a new Iraq.
This shift in responsibility is hitting hard at soldiers who moved into this area south of Baghdad last Wednesday for a short mission to fight Sadr's militia. In the view of many troops in Company A of the division's Task Force 1-36, the old battle, though filled with hardship, was imbued with the optimism of liberation. The new one is tinted by pessimism. Soldiers feel themselves mired in an effort to navigate the indecipherable intricacies of Iraqi politics.
"I just think it's a lost cause," said Spec. Will Bromley, a gunner who sits inside the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle and mans a 25mm cannon whose rounds can blast walls to pieces. "This has become harder than we thought. Getting rid of Saddam Hussein, that's one thing. Getting Iraqis to do what we want is another. It's like we want to give them McDonald's and they might not want McDonald's. They have to want it or we can't give it to them."
Sgt. Jerry Sapiens, a specialist in nuclear, biological and chemical warfare, suggested there was no end in sight. "We're in the baby-sitting phase and my question is, how long can we baby-sit for the Iraqis? We want the Iraqis to change, to be like us, and to do this we will have to be here forever."
"The enemy is not the same as before," said Spec. Matthew Aissen, a medic. "I fear that people who use religion as a power point are taking over the place. It's a power struggle. Our weak point is they think we are evil and we're not so popular, so we become part of the mess."
The 1st Armored Division was supposed to be out of the powdery sand, 100-degree heat and explosive danger of Iraq a month ago. After a year in the country, they were scheduled to be back in green and placid Germany, their home base.
During its tour, Company A has seen all sides of the post-invasion phase of the Iraqi conflict. It was originally tasked to safeguard Baghdad neighborhoods, fight insurgents and crime, uncover arms depots, defuse roadside bombs and oversee reconstruction projects.
Duty in Iraq was scheduled to end in April, but in a surprise decision, the Pentagon ordered the 1st Armored Division to stay on for another three months. The disappointment was evident among many of the soldiers here, and has sharpened their doubts.
Capt. Andrew Lomax, Company A's executive officer, was scheduled not only to return to Germany, but also to end his Army service. He now worries that when he enters his post-service period as a member of the Army Reserve, he could be called back to active duty at any time. "Some of us need to make life plans. We're obviously short of forces in Iraq. Suppose the country just wants to split apart? Can we live with that? Or another dictator comes? Are we going to fix that? There are plenty of troublemakers and Iraqis who tolerate them. You could have units here forever," he said.
The soldiers have been told that Sadr and his Mahdi Army represent only a small fraction of Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority. Yet ripping Sadr posters off the walls of villages in the south is proving at least as daunting a task as tearing down the once-ubiquitous portraits of Hussein.
Some soldiers are convinced that political considerations might undermine tactical needs. For instance, Task Force 1-36 came to Karbala to invade the center of the city and drive out Sadr's militia. That complex operation was cancelled, but during the planning, commanders were told to limit the kind of munitions fired at either the Abbas or Hussein shrines in Karbala, the city's gold-topped Shiite mosques.
If someone was spotted shooting from the mosques, soldiers were to return fire with nothing larger than 7.62mm bullets, machine-gun ammunition.
Commanders fear that damaging the shrines would inflame Shiite public opinion and bolster support for Sadr. Lt. Col. Charles Sexton, commander of the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry Regiment, explained that it was "doctrinally correct" to declare specific "no-fire areas." He noted, however, that nothing would preclude a soldier's "right of self-defense" even if it meant using a high-powered weapon.
To Sgt. Maj. Robert Cormier, such decisions could complicate the soldiers' response to danger. "We definitely have political constraints. We have to watch that very closely," he said.
Cormier, a 19-year veteran, characterized as unwise a recent deal that ended heavy fighting between U.S. Marines and insurgents in Fallujah, a Sunni Muslim stronghold for Hussein loyalists. After intense fighting last month, Marine commanders brought in former officers of Hussein's army to take charge there. The city has since been quiet, yet Marines continue to take casualties in nearby areas, mostly from roadside bombs.
"This was a defeat for the Marines," Cormier said. "They didn't resolve the problem."
Task Force 1-36 was dispatched to Karbala this week to reinforce another 1st Armored Division unit that has been battling Sadr militiamen. American officials contend that the cleric presents a threat to U.S. designs to transform Iraq into a democracy. His uprising has engendered six weeks of turmoil in a half-dozen Shiite cities in the south and his forces continue to dominate two cities, Najaf and Kufa. The Mahdi Army controlled central Karbala until this week, when its fighters suddenly disappeared from the streets.
U.S. commanders want to end the violence before the planned transfer of limited authority to a new interim Iraqi government on June 30. Pacifying the Shiites is key; they make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population and were relatively receptive to the U.S. invasion last year that toppled Hussein. In central Iraq, tens of thousands of American troops are also bogged down trying to put down a year-long rebellion by Sunni Muslims.
In conversations with Company A soldiers, pessimistic outlooks appear to predominate, although some express positive views on the direction of the occupation. Frequently, opinions varied according to rank. The higher the rank, it seemed, the greater the tolerance for uncertainties in Iraq. The more likely a soldier was to make a career of the Army, the deeper his expressions of enthusiasm and the more muted his criticism.
Lt. Col. Sexton, the battalion commander, is aware of the doubts and complaints of some of his troops, but regards them as misplaced. Overthrowing Hussein and hunting down Shiite rebels are two sides of one mission, he argues. "It's all for the same reason, to build a democracy and to better Iraq. The war is the same," he said. "If what we do gives Iraqi citizens instead of armed mobs the chance to make their own decisions, that's what's important."
The extension of the 1st Armored Division's tour of duty is an acceptable necessity, Sexton indicated. "Is it a question of planning? I don't know. If it keeps our brothers in other units safe, then it's worth it. If staying a little longer helps, then it's worth it. We would expect the same of others," he said.
Capt. Buckley O'Day, the commander of Company A, said he was "willing to stay another three years" to stabilize Iraq. "The enemies of the future are the enemies of us. Making Iraq a democracy can change the whole Middle East," O'Day said.
O'Day and Spec. Bromley, the Bradley gunner, share similar stocky builds and small home towns near Dallas, but their views on the prospects for success in Iraq are continents apart. On Saturday evening, as they were loading up for a nighttime operation in a small village, the pair exchanged views. Sweating under the weight of flak jackets, helmets and rifles , the two comrades gathered close, a gesture usually reserved for the arrival of somebody's latest issue of Maxim magazine.
"Last May, possibly, there was a chance for this thing to succeed. People were happy. Then we started arresting people" for carrying ammunition, said Bromley, referring to operations to disarm Iraqis in Baghdad. "It's been easy for enemy recruiters. They just wait for something bad to happen, like if someone shoots up a family. They just have to wait, and the recruits come in."
"They don't have to like us, they just have to want to succeed and make Iraq better," O'Day responded.
"The Iraqis don't trust us," Bromley went on.
"That's why we can't abandon the fight now," O'Day shot back.
The debate ended with an order to roll the Bradleys out of the dusty lot. The objective was the town of Husseiniya, where, Company A was told, insurgents and weaponry were sheltered in a cluster of houses.
Task Force 1-36 had traveled to Karbala from Baghdad last Wednesday. The trip was uneventful. In Shiite towns along the route, some bystanders gave friendly thumbs-up signs, others gawked and still others glared. One boy in a bicycle called out, "Go back to where you came from."
At one point, a young sergeant from Company A dismounted from his Bradley to pull down a poster of Sadr that decorated a pylon at the head of a bridge. Weighed down with a heavy rucksack and M-16 rifle, the soldier was unable to leap high enough to grab it. "Just out of my reach!" he said. "Just out of reach."
The phrase turned out to describe the raid on Husseiniya as well. It was a bust.
The column of Bradleys reached the hamlet late at night. "Ramp down!" came the order from O'Day, and a Bradley's back door swung to the ground like a drawbridge. Date palms appeared in the pale fluorescent lights from silent houses. Market stalls built of mud lined the dusty road. A dog yapped from afar.
Infantrymen scrambled from the Bradleys. The first report from a forward patrol crackled across O'Day's radio. Just a woman and 14 kids here, the voice said.
And so it went: no rebels, no weapons. "Looks like we got some bad information," O'Day said.
The operation should have ended quickly, but early on, one Bradley had rolled into a canal. It sank until only its turret stuck above the water line. Soldiers struggled out the back hatch and flailed to reach the shore against the force of the current and the weight of their flak jackets. They all escaped unhurt. "I can't even swim," said Spec. Edison Ybay. "I learned quick."
Not long after, another Bradley that was going to check out a car spotted on a side road slipped into a shallow irrigation ditch. The soldiers inside waded out through knee-deep water.
It took about six hours for big, armored cranes to arrive and extricate the pair of stuck fighting vehicles.
The troops detained 13 Iraqi men, none of whose names matched those on a list of suspected insurgents provided to the soldiers. Nonetheless, the detainees were kept bound with plastic handcuffs for the entire 12-hour operation. The experience left the villagers unhappy. "You know, we used to like the Americans when they first came. How can we like this?" asked Kamel Alawi, one of the detainees.
Sexton told the Iraqis that any property damage -- Bradleys burst through some walls marking off date groves to get to the houses -- would be compensated. He concurred with O'Day that the intelligence leading them to Husseiniya was faulty. He had sensed something was wrong early on, and told Bradley drivers not to ram any of the houses in efforts to ease soldiers' entry.
"It just didn't smell right," he said explaining that decision. "If we had breached the walls, we would have had dead children. I'm just glad no one got hurt and we didn't have any drowned soldiers, either. Things could have been a lot worse."
The unit returned to the barren field in Karbala early Sunday, then the same morning to their base in Baghdad to await another call.
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No. 2 Army General to Move In as Top U.S. Commander in Iraq
May 25, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/politics/25SANC.html
WASHINGTON, May 24 - The top American officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, will leave his command this summer, to be replaced by the Army's second-ranking general, senior Pentagon officials said Monday. The change is part of an overhaul of the American command structure in Iraq that will put a higher-ranking officer in charge.
Pentagon officials said that replacing General Sanchez with the Army vice chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., in no way reflected on General Sanchez's handling of the widening prisoner-abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison, outside of Baghdad, which was under his authority.
While the move may not have come purely as a result of Abu Ghraib, General Sanchez has been under pressure recently in Iraq, especially as the insurgency has posed increasing military challenges in the central town of Falluja and in several southern towns.
His intended new assignment, which was to lead the United States Southern Command in Miami, may now have been given to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, leaving it unclear where General Sanchez will be assigned, one defense official said. Other officials said, however, that General Sanchez might not yet have lost that prize.
Some lawmakers have criticized General Sanchez, among other top officers, for failing to give Congress an early warning about politically explosive photographs of American military police officers abusing Iraqi prisoners that were turned over to military investigators in January.
A spokesman for General Sanchez said the general "stands by his testimony before Congressional committees" that he did not learn of the abuses until January, months after they began. But sending General Craddock to Iraq could have given critics of Secretary Rumsfeld a target of convenience.
Generals Sanchez and Craddock are both three-star officers who would have needed Senate approval for promotion to a higher rank, and either might have faced a lengthy confirmation process. General Casey is already a four-star officer, and presumably could be installed in the new position more rapidly.
Pentagon officials noted that General Sanchez had spent more than a year in command in Iraq, and it was natural for him to leave sometime soon after the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.
"It would be appropriate for him to be leaving in the next couple of months," said a senior Defense Department official. "He's been there longer than any other commander."
General Casey would be a logical and noncontroversial replacement for General Sanchez. A career infantryman and former commander of the First Armored Division who once directed the military's Joint Staff, General Casey is known as a forceful officer who is highly respected by Mr. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Casey holds a master's degree in international relations from Denver University.
Under a new American military command structure drawn up for the post-June 30 political setting, a four-star officer will have overall responsibility but will focus on political and reconstruction issues with the designated American ambassador, John D. Negroponte. A three-star officer, Lt. Gen. Thomas Metz, will oversee daily military operations.
The changes come during a larger reshuffling of top generals and admirals that typically happens every summer as the Pentagon carries out a regular rotation of its more senior commanders worldwide.
But the paths for Generals Sanchez and Casey have recently taken some sharp curves and dips.
For several weeks, senior military and Pentagon officials said, a leading plan was to promote General Sanchez to four-star rank, making him the Army's senior-ranking Hispanic officer and rewarding his work in Iraq by giving him the Southern Command, which has responsibility for most of Latin America.
Under that plan, officials said, General Craddock would have been awarded a fourth star, and taken General Sanchez's place in Baghdad as head of the new Multinational Force Iraq, after June 30.
But something happened in the past few days to derail that plan. Even as the military's top worldwide commanders met in Washington for a two-day conference, defense officials would not say Monday night what caused the plan to change.
Under a new plan, General Craddock would move to the Southern Command, opening the spot for General Casey in Iraq, one defense official said.
"Casey is a more forceful type than Craddock," said the defense official, who suggested that the last-minute changes may have been a result of Mr. Rumsfeld and his top advisers deciding they needed "a different personality."
"More importantly," said the official, "where is Sanchez going, because Craddock is going to Southcom instead, leaves no seats when the music stops."
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New wedding video fuels suspicion of US account
independent.co.uk
By Justin Huggler in Baghdad
25 May 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=524671
New video footage has emerged which adds to the evidence that US forces mistakenly bombed a wedding party in Iraq last week, killing 41 people including women and children.
American commanders insist their attack was on a safe house used by foreign fighters crossing into Iraq, and that most of the dead were fighters. But several Iraqi witnesses have come forward to claim there were no fighters at the scene.
The new footage shows a wedding party taking place at the same site that was filmed after the American attack strewn with wreckage. Associated Press, which obtained the new footage, said it was a home video of the wedding. It adds to the evidence of another video which emerged last week, that shows relatives burying the bodies of babies, children and women after the attack.
Crucially, the new video shows an Iraqi musician playing the electric organ at the wedding. The same man is recognisable as one of the corpses shown in the footage of the burials: his face is clearly shown in both tapes and he is wearing the same beige T-shirt.
The new tape shows a man happily cradling a baby on his knee. That could be one of two dead babies shown in the funeral footage, wrapped together in a single blanket as a makeshift shroud. It also shows children playing at the wedding. The tape of the burials shows the bodies of at least two children, one of them without a head. The Americans have conceded that up to six women may have died in the attack, but insist that no children were killed. So far, they have offered no explanation of the video footage of children being buried.
US forces appeared to give a little ground in the face of the growing evidence. There is to be an investigation of the incident. "We have not denied anything. We are very open to whatever evidence that comes forward," a military official was quoted as saying yesterday. "We still believe that when we got on the ground the intelligence that caused us to believe there were targets on the ground still remains the same. That's unchanged."
He added: "It could be that there was a wedding ... but there are still a lot of things we don't know which is why we are going to do the investigation." The main US military spokesman in Iraq, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, had earlier said: "Bad people have parties too."
The attack took place in the early hours of last Wednesday at the remote desert village of Makradheeb, about 10 miles from the Syrian border. US forces have said for months that foreign Islamic fighters were slipping into Iraq across the Syrian border to take part in the insurgency against the occupation.
The new tape starts with wedding guests arriving in pick-up trucks across the desert, among them the highly decorated pick-up truck carrying the bride. It is possible that US forces mistook this traditional wedding motorcade for foreign fighters racing across the desert to evade capture.
The large wedding tent which was filmed flattened after the US attack, and the facade of a house that was shown badly damaged in later footage are both clearly visible in the wedding party tape. Survivors have described air strikes that began in the middle of the night without warning. US forces claim they sent in a ground force first, which only returned fire after it was fired upon. Witnesses say ground troops did not arrive until after several hours of air strikes.
The new video shows hours of wedding celebrations. It shows few images of women, but the two sexes are segregated at traditional weddings in Iraqi tribal society, and it would be considered unacceptable to film the women. Male children are shown repeatedly with the men in the video.
It contains hours of footage of Iraqi men in white dishdasha robes performing traditional dances inside the tent. The family of a well-known Iraqi wedding singer, Hussein Ali, have come forward to say he was performingat the wedding and was killed in the American attack. He is clearly visible performing on the tape.
Basem Ishab Mohammed, a Baghdad musician who claims to have been the only one of the musicians at the party to survive the US attack, said the video was shot on Monday 17 May. The attack took place in the early hours of Wednesday 19 May, but Mr Mohammed said there had been two days of celebrations, which is not unusual at Iraqi weddings.
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U.S. Army bases are void of soldiers
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Kris Osborn
May 25, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040524-091644-4588r.htm
WURZBURG, Germany - The first thing a visitor to the U.S. Army base at Wurzburg notices is the lack of men.
The youth baseball diamond is still as busy as ever, but when Joe Hall, 12, smashes one deep to left field, it is not his father yelling, "Way to go," from the bleachers, but his mother, Army wife Sid Hall.
Other parts of the base are also quiet, with only a few customers frequenting the normally bustling military clothing store or the Subway sandwich shop since the soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division, 2nd and 3rd brigades, shipped off to Iraq in February.
"This is our life. It is what I expect as an Army spouse," says Mrs. Hall, cheering on her son while snapping pictures to send to his father in Iraq.
Her husband, Lt. Col. Frank Hall, has served about three months of a one-year deployment commanding a military intelligence battalion in Tikrit, Iraq.
With U.S. military deployments at their highest level since the 1991 Gulf war, the Hall family is not alone.
The Army says about 320,000 soldiers are deployed or forward-stationed overseas in more than 120 countries around the world, often cleaning out every active-duty soldier on bases such as the one in Wurzburg.
Army bases have been particularly hard hit, accounting for about 120,000 of the 138,000 U.S. servicemen and women now in Iraq, Central Command says.
At some point this year, a U.S. Army spokeswoman says, 26 out of 33 active brigades and combat teams will have been deployed overseas.
Mrs. Hall says she and the 20,000-strong community of military families in the Wurzburg area stay busy picking up the slack while their spouses are deployed.
The busiest place on post is the PX, or Post Exchange, a large department and grocery store. Inside, scores of children pick out colorful T-shirts and other items for summer.
One couple is busy searching for a stroller for their newborn son, while another is picking out sports gear for their children.
Most of all, the PX shoppers show a kindness and warmth to one another, the kind of welcoming air among strangers one would expect to find only in small-town America.
The friendliness stems in large part from the shared experience of holding up the home front while waiting for news from loved ones in Iraq.
Like many of her neighbors, Mrs. Hall wears a pin inscribed with the military's "hooah" cheer as a visual emblem of the effort to maintain a positive attitude. The pins were provided by Michelle Batiste, wife of the 1st Infantry Division commander, Maj. Gen. John Batiste.
Mrs. Hall said she often walks Joe and his sister Katie to school, something their father did regularly before he went to Iraq.
One morning, she recalled, both Joe and Katie were beaming because they had read a newspaper article in which their father was quoted.
But Mrs. Hall said she is careful about what she lets the children see. "I am confident, but I do filter the news, because I do not want to stress out the kids," she said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Terror Data to Be Shared at New Center Near Albany
May 25, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/politics/25terror.html
WASHINGTON, May 24 - A new intelligence center that begins operation on Tuesday near Albany will, for the first time, provide tens of thousands of local law enforcement officers in New York and Vermont with nearly instantaneous information drawn from classified F.B.I. counterterrorism databases, federal and state officials say.
The center, a $4 million expansion of the Upstate New York Regional Intelligence Center, is a joint effort by New York State officials and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to place more specific counterterrorism information in the hands of local law enforcement officers.
The center, whose exact location is a secret, is also a response to police chiefs and sheriffs who complained after the Sept. 11 attacks that federal authorities had failed to share enough intelligence to help them try to deter attacks, particularly when national alert levels had been raised.
"What this will allow us to do on a 24-hour-a day basis is empower more than 70,000 state and local law enforcement officers to be the eyes and ears of the people of America," Gov. George E. Pataki said in a telephone interview. "It's not enough to just respond to an attack; we have to prevent it in the first place."
As envisioned by federal and state authorities, the center will serve as a computerized clearinghouse for information for New York and Vermont, which is under the jurisdiction of F.B.I. offices in New York. Officers on the beat, sheriff's deputies and state troopers who observe suspicious activity can report what they see to the center and request any relevant information.
At the same time, the federal authorities can use the system to disseminate analytical information obtained throughout the country and overseas to alert the local authorities to specific actions, like watching for signs of preparations for attacks, that might help identify terrorists.
James K. Kallstrom, senior adviser on counterterrorism to Governor Pataki and a former top F.B.I. official who was instrumental in creating the system, said that a statewide encrypted computer network had already been set up.
"The missing piece has always been from the state to Washington," Mr. Kallstrom said. "The state center is almost an extension of an F.B.I. operation, which means a single coordination point for counterterrorism in New York."
Classified information, including data about specific people, will be filtered through screeners and intelligence analysts at the center. No classified information will be turned over to the local authorities, the officials said.
For the local authorities, the new system goes beyond existing databases like the National Crime Information Center, which provides them with criminal records, and the Violent Gang and Terrorist Organization File, which gives them information about gang members and, in some instances, suspected terrorists.
The center "shares intelligence gathered throughout the state, forwards leads and provides a mechanism for the F.B.I. to provide guidance and suggest taskings to police officers who are not members of a joint terrorism task force," the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said in a statement.
"It will foster the seamless intelligence sharing that we need to prevent acts of terror and I encourage other states to look at the New York model," Mr. Mueller added.
In part, officials said, the new system seems to recognize that the F.B.I. and other domestic security agencies lack staffing and are dependent on police officers, sheriff's deputies and state troopers, who are more likely than the F.B.I. to come into contact with terrorists.
For example, one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Nawaq Alhazmi, called the police in Fairfax, Va., when he was the victim of an attempted robbery. Another, Ziad al-Jarrah, got a speeding ticket in Maryland two days before the hijackings.
Local police officials said they hoped the new system would help make their officers more aware of who might be passing through their towns and cities.
"Whether you are the street cop in New York or a Rockland County deputy, everybody will have the capacity to inquire through their desks to get real-time information to investigate these situations," James F. Kralik, the sheriff of Rockland County, said. "It's a gigantic step forward."
Until now, Sheriff Kralik said, the local authorities had no one to consult quickly if they saw suspicious activity. Under the new system, he said, officers expect to get answers in 15 to 20 minutes.
"We're not going to be forgiven the next time," he said, referring to the possibility of another attack. "We darned well better be sure we've done everything in our power to make everybody safe."
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Balancing Depleted Ranks and Possible Disasters
May 25, 2004
By CHRIS HEDGES
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/nyregion/25profile.html
LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. - THE day Brig. Gen. Glenn K. Rieth has to preside at the conference table in this building will not be a good day for New Jersey.
The building, situated behind the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and equipped with its own power supply, waits to be used in the event of a catastrophic event like a terrorist attack. Surrounded by armed soldiers, it will become the nerve center for the military response, including those soldiers who will be stationed in such critical spots as the New Jersey side of the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, as well as the George Washington Bridge and Newark Liberty International Airport.
"We have the ability to get a helicopter up in the air with a video camera to send back pictures of anything that is happening in real time," he says, pointing to a plasma screen on the wall. "All our communications equipment will be operable even if phones are down."
It is not a cheery thought, but one that, after the attacks of 9/11, has begun to dominate planning by National Guard commanders, especially those in and around New York City. But along with this planning has come the depletion of National Guard and reserve units who are taking an increasingly prominent role in the war in Iraq. Even as General Rieth, the adjutant general of New Jersey, plans for catastrophe, he is watching his force of about 9,000 soldiers and airmen shrink as they are deployed overseas.
The deployment, he says, will not affect his ability to respond to a disaster. He has stockpiled weapons and equipment near the tunnels and other critical points so he can have units deployed rapidly to "cordon off any areas."
"We are fully prepared to respond to any emergency, if the state police request our assistance," he says.
The general, 46, takes from his desk a large photo of his wife, Linda, an elementary school Spanish teacher, and his son, Craig, wearing his blue Cub Scout uniform.
"This was taken the other night at the ceremony to send off our troops," he says, smiling.
The departure of the troops occupies most of his time at the moment. The deployments are for a year, meaning spouses are preparing for long separations from family and employment.
"We tell our soldiers to be ready to be gone anywhere from 15 to 18 months," he says.
New Jersey Army National Guard soldiers are being sent to Guantánamo Bay to help guard prisoners. Others are to be part of the multilateral peacekeeping force based between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai. There will be 1,800 New Jersey National Guard soldiers sent to Iraq to be part of the war's first National Guard infantry division. The 42nd Infantry Division will be commanded by a general from the New York National Guard and will include elements of National Guard units from New York, New Jersey and seven other states.
"We have had only six wounded soldiers so far, and only two of these were wounded seriously," he says. "We have been lucky."
General Rieth grew up in the shadow of the guard. His father, who retired as a general in the National Guard, was the deputy adjutant general in New Jersey and hauled his son along with him to events and bases.
"My father took me as a boy to the missile base in Livingston," he says. "He would get occupied, and I would wander all over the base. I spent a lot of time there."
THE general, who was the quarterback on his high school football team and went on to play for the Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, said he was always attracted to the soldier's life. His wife, Linda, is the daughter of a career Army officer who was stationed worldwide.
"Linda knows what the life is like," he says. "She moved nine times and went to seven different schools. Her father did two tours in Vietnam. She has been very active in building the support groups for our families left behind."
He said the deployments had not hurt recruiting but had brought in a new type of recruit.
"Those who joined the Guard in the 80's and 90's had different expectations," he said. "Those who join now expect an overseas deployment. Those who joined before usually had to do this for a weekend a month and two weeks in the summer."
The pull of the military life is the pull of patriotism and tradition. General Rieth has not been out of a uniform since he entered the Citadel, where he graduated in 1980. He spent five years on active duty and went directly to a full-time position in the New Jersey National Guard. He is trained as a pilot and was, until his appointment by Gov. James E. McGreevey, the director of the State Army Aviation Office.
"I loved flying," he says. "But I had to give it up with this appointment."
He has not strayed from the familiar. The subculture of military life, the one that reared him and educated him, remains the center of his world. On weekends his family, including his two children, Erika and Craig, often attend National Guard events and ceremonies. His one diversion, as constant as the rest of his life, is football.
"It is rough touch," he says. "A lot of us played high school or college football, and we keep at it on Sunday mornings in the fall."
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Libertarian candidate snagged by no-fly list
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By TOM BAXTER
5/25/04
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/nolan-nofly.htm
A candidate for the Libertarian presidential nomination, traveling to Atlanta for the party's national convention, was briefly barred from his flight at Denver International Airport on Monday when a name similar to his showed up on an airline no-fly list.
Gary Nolan, a radio talk show host based in Cleveland who has suspended his show while campaigning, said an AirTran ticket agent told him he could not get on a flight to Atlanta because his name was on the list used by the airlines to screen suspected terrorists.
Airport police cleared him to make the flight to Atlanta after determining the name on the restricted list was that of a Gary Nolan Craig, Nolan said.
Nolan said, however, that he could not be sure his ancestry and political views weren't also factors. Nolan is of Lebanese descent and has been an outspoken opponent of the Patriot Act.
He said he was told he would continue to have a problem flying if he didn't get the matter cleared up.
"Obviously, it's a flawed system and this is just another example of what could go wrong," Nolan said after arriving in Atlanta on Monday afternoon.
Mike Fierberg, the Denver regional public affairs officer for the Transportation Security Administration, acknowledged there are flaws in the system, but said they aren't the government agency's fault.
Fierberg said Nolan was flagged by CAPPS-Computer-Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening-a system run by the airlines. TSA and the Department of Homeland Security advocate replacing CAPPS, which was put in place by the airlines in the mid-1990s, with a government-operated system, CAPPS II, which would require more detailed information about airline passengers.
The current system is so broad it produces many "false positives" like Nolan's, Fierberg said.
Nolan is one of three candidates actively campaigning for the Libertarian nomination, which will be decided at the convention Sunday. His opponents are Aaron Russo, a California film producer, and Michael Badnarik, a gun rights activist from Texas.
-------- justice
This Made Ashcroft Gag
Translator keeps blowing 9-11 whistle on FBI; U.S. Keeps shutting her up
May 25th, 2004
Village Voice
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0421/mondo1.php
Details of a Florida drug case may well shed light on the claims of an FBI translator who says the agency covered up evidence warning of the 9-11 attack.
Sibel Edmonds, the translator, said in an interview Monday with the Voice that the Florida case illustrates the issues and evidence she has been trying to make public for two years. Edmonds claimed to have translated testimony in criminal and counter-intelligence cases involving different FBI field offices, going back into the late 1990s. Much of this involved tracking money, she said.
Among the Farsi translators working for the FBI, she said, it was common knowledge that a longtime, highly regarded FBI "asset" placed in Afghanistan told the agency in April 2001 that he had information from his contacts there that bin Laden was planning a major attack, involving the use of planes, in one or another of big American cities-Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York among them. The agents who took down the information from the spy wrote up reports and sent them to their superiors. That was the last the agents heard of the matter.
Edmonds said she had heard the details of the Afghan asset story in an unclassified meeting at the Capitol, but she cannot talk about the specifics because of a Justice Department gag order that classifies as secret what she has to say.
She said, however, that "there are a lot of activities in the U.S. A lot of money . . . and these activities involve money laundering, drugs, a support network for terrorism . . . people in high places . . . [people] in the political arena."
Cybercast News Service (cnsnews.com), part of the conservative watchdog Media Research Center, reports that Mehrzad Arbane, an Iranian convicted of drug smuggling and suspected of money laundering and smuggling people from the Middle East into the U.S., told an associate who had become a government informant in October 2001 that he "may have smuggled two of the hijackers who flew planes into the towers in New York on September 11, 2001." Arbane was convicted May 13 in a Florida federal court of importing cocaine. He is expected to stand trial in New York for harboring illegal aliens, including two from Iran.
Jairo Velez, "well-known" for smuggling cocaine from Mexico and Colombia into the U.S., met Arbane in 1999, and the two went into business smuggling cocaine, according to court documents obtained by cnsnews.com. But two years later, Velez, spooked because Arbane had told him of having possibly transported the hijackers, became a government informant, providing the information used by prosecutors in their case against Arbane, according to cnsnews.com.
Whether the U.S. is tracing the connections between Arbane and the hijackers is not known. However, Ecuador is one of the countries from which Arbane is believed to have operated, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a House Foreign Operations appropriations subcommittee in April 2002 that along the border between Ecuador and Colombia, "we have got . . . a bit of a problem with Al Qaeda itself and some Hezbollah elements." Armitage added, "Frankly we are afraid as we squeeze Colombia, with hopefully the assistance and support of the Congress, that like a balloon, some of the problems might balloon out in other areas. We want to do what we can to try to keep Ecuador from ballooning out."
Most of the government's efforts to stop terrorists from entering the country are focused on airports and ports. Using drug dealers to smuggle terrorists adds a new dimension to the problem. Drug sales such as the trade in opium from Afghanistan are often used to help finance terrorist groups. Dealers have long been successful in confounding narcs, and it would be difficult if not impossible to ever know whether any terrorists they transported got into the country. Ironically, our victory in Afghanistan has led to a boom in opium selling-the Taliban had slowed the growing and harvesting of poppies.
Edmonds can't tell what she may know because Attorney General John Ashcroft recently invoked an arcane law to make her statements "classified"-including previously public statements and journalism quoting her on the case.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing last week, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa summarized the Edmonds case in questioning FBI director Robert Mueller: "I would also like to, on a second point, figure out why the FBI is going back in time and classifying some pretty basic information that's already in the public sector in regard to classification of information that we have received in Congress from a whistle-blower, Sibel Edmonds. We have, for instance, an e-mail sent out by the chairman's office last week saying that the FBI is classifying two-year-old information that the committee got in two previous briefings. Ms. Edmonds worked for the FBI as a translator and was fired after she reported problems. As part of the committee's legitimate oversight, we looked into that. The e-mail I have is right here. And so I'm very alarmed with the after-the-fact classification. On the one hand, I think it's ludicrous, because I understand that almost all of this information's in the public domain, and has been very widely available. On the other hand, this classification is very serious, because it seems like the FBI would be attempting to put a gag order on Congress."
Grassley added, "I don't think this is really about national security. If it were, the FBI would have done this a very long time ago. And in fact, you'd be trying to get information back that's already been given to us about Ms. Edmonds."
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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
Newsweek
By Michael Isikoff
May 25, 2004
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5032094/site/newsweek/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.
advertisement 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. Haynes, 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.
One former official involved in formulating Bush administration policy on the detainees acknowledged that there was a double standard built into the Justice Department position, which the official said was embraced, if not publicly endorsed, by the White House counsel's office. The essence of the argument was, the official said, "it applies to them, but it doesn't apply to us."
But the official said this was an eminently defensible position because there were many categories of international law, some of which clearly could not be interpreted to be binding on the president. In any case, the general administration position of not applying any international standards to the treatment of detainees was driven by the paramount needs of preventing another terrorist attack. "The Department of Justice, the Department of Defense and the CIA were all in alignment that we had to have the flexibility to handle the detainees-and yes, interrogate them-in ways that would be effective," the official said.
-------- police
Debating Pros, Cons Of Fingerprinting
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52848-2004May24.html
Matching fingerprints involves judgment, skill and training and is extraordinarily reliable when done properly, its proponents say.
Critics charge that fingerprinting is far from infallible and is prone to more error and bias in the criminal justice system than is ever acknowledged.
The fingerprints of Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer mistakenly linked to the March 11 train bombings in Madrid, may just have been very similar to those of an Algerian man who Spanish authorities ultimately determined is a true suspect, said Simon A. Cole, a skeptic and author of "Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal Identification."
"Or while doing the analysis," he hypothesized, "someone was filled in on the idea that this guy was a Muslim lawyer with sympathies to Muslim groups and that might have biased them toward thinking there is a match."
Unlike DNA technology, said Cole, an assistant professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine, no one has quantified the error rate in fingerprinting -- meaning there are no reliable estimates of how often the process implicates the wrong person.
Proponents say fingerprinting is extremely reliable. Joseph Polski, chief operations officer for the International Association for Identification, an organization for forensic scientists, said experts are highly accurate at comparing ridge endings, bifurcations and intervening ridges between two sets of fingerprints and determining whether they match.
Prints from crime scenes are converted into digital images and computers can be used to identify a range of possible matches. But only a human expert, Polski said, can make the final call.
Polski drew an analogy to an experienced pathologist, who can look at a single cell and spot cancer, while a new medical graduate might say only that something looks wrong.
Typically, "you don't find fingerprinting mistakes being revealed," said Roger Kahn, president of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors and the head of Ohio's crime labs. "Fingerprinting is extraordinarily reliable technology."
Cole said courts should demand that fingerprinting experts study the error rate in their technique and reveal it.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Campaign Ads Are Under Fire for Inaccuracy
May 25, 2004
By JIM RUTENBERG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/politics/campaign/25ADS.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, May 24 - A record year for political advertising has brought with it a hail of televised exaggerations, omissions and mischaracterizations that pollsters say seem to be leaving voters with mistaken impressions of Senator John Kerry and President Bush.
The degree to which the advertisements push the facts, or go beyond them, varies by commercial. While Mr. Bush's campaign has been singled out as going particularly far with some of its claims, Mr. Kerry's campaign has also been criticized as frequently going beyond the bounds of truth.
In three of its advertisements, Mr. Bush's campaign has said Mr. Kerry would raise taxes by at least $900 billion in his first 100 days in office. Mr. Kerry has no such plan.
In an advertisement for Mr. Kerry, an announcer said, "George Bush says sending jobs overseas makes sense for America." Mr. Bush never said that. A report to Congress by his top economic adviser said cheaper production of goods overseas had long-term benefits but did not make the plain case that domestic job losses were a good thing.
Outside groups are getting into the act as well.
The League of Conservation Voters, which has endorsed Mr. Kerry, is running an advertisement in Florida warning that "President Bush opened up Florida's coast to offshore drilling." But the drilling area that was opened under Mr. Bush is 100 miles off the coast, much farther than it would have been under a Clinton administration proposal.
Of course, it is a time-tested practice to make one's opponent look as bad as possible in a political campaign, whether the race is for town council or the presidency of the United States. And the campaigns and outside groups say they are under no obligation to present defenses for their opponents in their own advertisements, all of which are at least tenuously based in fact.
But this campaign season, with total advertising spending at roughly $150 million since early last summer, the number of distortions and omissions is worrying some good-government groups, which say they fear that the big money behind the claims is leaving indelible impressions.
"Even people who don't think there is much information in these ads and say they don't learn anything from them tell us they believe factoids they could only have gotten from these ads, and they're wrong," said Brooks Jackson, director of Factcheck.org, an Annenberg Public Policy Center Web site that vets political advertisements for accuracy. "It's beyond subliminal - it's something else I haven't come up with a name for."
This month the Annenberg Center, at the University of Pennsylvania, released a poll of voters in battleground states that found many believed misleading statements made in the advertisements.
In a survey conducted from April 15 to May 2, 61 percent of the 1,026 voters questioned in the 18 swing states where most of the advertising has run said they believed Mr. Bush favored sending jobs overseas. And 72 percent said they believed that three million jobs had been lost during Mr. Bush's presidency. Mr. Kerry made that claim in a spot in late February, when the most commonly used Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed the actual net job loss to be closer to 2.3 million, down from 2.7 million in late summer. That number is now less than 1.6 million. (Mr. Kerry's figures did not include government jobs.)
In the same survey, 46 percent of those questioned said they believed Mr. Kerry "wants to raise gasoline taxes by 50 cents a gallon." Three spots for Mr. Bush have said that Mr. Kerry supported a 50-cent-a-gallon tax hike on gasoline, an assertion based from comments Mr. Kerry that appeared in two newspapers 10 years ago regarding a position he never acted on and has long since abandoned.
More than half of those surveyed also said they believed Mr. Kerry had "voted for higher taxes 350 times." That idea, Annenberg researchers concluded, is based on a commercial for Mr. Bush in which an announcer said, "Kerry supported higher taxes over 350 times." While Bush campaign aides say the contention is accurate and have made public a list of instances to which it refers, they acknowledge that in several of these cases Mr. Kerry had in fact either voted to maintain tax rates or even to cut them, but not by as much as Republicans had proposed.
"Each of these votes amounted to higher taxes than an alternative," said Terry Holt, a spokesman for the Bush campaign. "We expect that voters will reach the obvious conclusion that John Kerry will increase your taxes or will oppose efforts to cut taxes."
Asked why the spot did not simply say that Mr. Kerry has consistently voted for higher taxes than Republicans have proposed, which even the Kerry campaign would not dispute, Mr. Holt said, "We said `supported higher taxes,' as provably true and totally accurate."
Several other commercials this year have been criticized for pushing past the facts when they could have indisputably conveyed similar points with less sensational-sounding claims.
For instance, one of Mr. Kerry's new commercials boasts that he provided "a decisive vote" for President Bill Clinton's 1993 economic plan, which, it maintains, "created 20 million new jobs." The bill passed by a single vote in the Senate, giving anybody who voted for it a claim to have provided a decisive vote. But at the time, it was the last-minute support of Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, that was considered decisive. And even economists who credit the plan with playing a significant role in the 1990's boom say Mr. Kerry's spot goes too far.
"To say that any one economic package was responsible for all of the stuff going on in the 90's is kind of ridiculous," said L. Douglas Lee, president of Economics From Washington, an economic policy analysis firm. Still, Mr. Lee said, the 1993 package was an important factor in the boom.
Asked why the spot did not simply say Mr. Kerry voted for a package credited with helping to set the conditions for the boom, Michael Meehan, a Kerry spokesman, said: "That's why we have elections. People get to decide. We said it created 20 million jobs. If people don't believe that, they should vote for someone else."
Aides on both sides said privately that it was hard to fit all the nuance of complex policies into a vehicle designed to convey thoughts no more complex than "Tastes Great, Less Filling."
"There's only so much you can do in a 30-second ad," said an aide to Mr. Kerry, making a point that was echoed by a senior strategist for the Bush campaign.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, does not accept that. "When they could make the 30-second ad accurate and they don't, you've got to believe that they're intentionally misleading you," she said.
Kenneth M. Goldstein, an associate professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, said it was to be expected that the campaigns would take liberties, and that with both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush flush with cash, there was plenty of time for them to answer each other's claims.
"Politics is about putting your best foot forward and putting the other person in the worst light," Mr. Goldstein said. "Do we expect someone who's advertising to say, `You know, I really don't want to put this person's record in the worst light because that's not fair'?"
In the end, Mr. Jackson of Factcheck.org said, all that can be done is to continue to vet commercials for accuracy and try to set the record straight as publicly as possible. That, he said, is an occasionally thankless task:
"I've had consultants tell me, `Your ad watch runs once, my ad runs many times; who's going to win?' "
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Networks pull plug on Bush speech
(AP)
May 25, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/05/24/speech.tv.ap/index.html
NEW YORK (AP) -- ABC, CBS and NBC decided not to offer live coverage of President Bush's speech about Iraq Monday, although the cable news networks planned to pre-empt their regular programming for the address.
Bush is to deliver the first in a series of speeches about the future of Iraq at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC all said they would carry the speech live.
The broadcast networks took an unusual amount of time to tell viewers their plans for Bush's speech -- ABC did not decide until Monday afternoon -- because the Bush administration did not formally request the time.
When the White House requests the networks set aside time for a presidential address, it's unusual for them to refuse.
But it's a difficult decision for the networks, forced to weigh the newsworthiness of the event, when it is left up to them. In that case, the three networks often take their cues from one another.
Monday was one of the last nights of the May "sweeps" period, when television ratings are used to set local advertising rates.
NBC had two editions of "Fear Factor" scheduled on Monday. CBS had season finales of its popular Monday-night comedies and ABC was showing the theatrical release "A Beautiful Mind."
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Iraq prison abuse hits home
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Vicki Smith
May 25, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20040524-094639-1480r.htm
FORT ASHBY, W.Va. - Two weeks ago, this was a friendly town where folks were more likely to smile than scowl at a stranger.
Before journalists from around the globe descended, few people outside West Virginia had heard of the peaceful, middle-class community along Patterson Creek. And residents liked it that way.
Three words - "reporter" and "Lynndie England" - are now enough to send people scurrying from the Family Dollar, the ice cream stand and the bait shop.
"They trashed us," says a woman at the pharmacy, smile fading as she backs away. "Just look at the Internet."
"Nobody's going to talk to you because they don't think the media's going to tell the truth," says barber Joe Godlewski.
Pfc. England, 21, a reservist and one of Fort Ashby's own, is among seven soldiers from the Maryland-based 372nd Military Police Company charged with mistreating Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison. If convicted, she could face punishment ranging from a reprimand to more than 15 years in prison.
Privately, many people support the woman who used to bag their groceries at the IGA. The infamous leashed-inmate picture was clearly staged, they say.
"Somebody told her to take those pictures to humiliate those men," Mr. Godlewski says. "Everybody I talk to believes that."
But not everybody will say so anymore.
About 1,300 people call Fort Ashby home, and despite the image that TV cameras might project, only a few live in the tiny trailer park behind a sheep farm.
Most live in modest, well-kept homes along state Route 28. Some work on missile technology at Allegany Ballistics Laboratory. Others drive 50 miles to jobs at the Pilgrim's Pride chicken plant.
"This is a wonderful town filled with lovely people," says Laura Sours, who has lived here for 25 years. "What's happened is just horrible, and I hope to God it doesn't reflect on what the world thinks of us."
Fort Ashby is only 107 miles from the District, but it might as well be 1,000. It's a place where children play safely and people leave doors and cars unlocked.
But people say that's not how it's been portrayed.
At the height of the press onslaught, the owner of the trailer park where the England family lives banned TV crews, then all press interviews.
"They're making this place look dirt poor," she said.
Now, yellow signs stand at the entrance and in the yards. They're the same kind of signs people use to keep hunters off private property, the word "posted" a clear warning to keep out.
On Friday, a local newspaper had two news stories and three letters to the editor about the prisoner abuse.
One writer complained that his hometown of Cumberland, Md., just 15 miles up the road, has been portrayed as a home to savages.
Reporters came "to see what kind of masochistic freaks we are," wrote Bob Leasure, now of Abingdon, Va. "The city of Cumberland does not owe any of these wannabe journalists an explanation for what a few of our soldiers did in a time of battle.
"The people in Cumberland have always been first to volunteer to serve their country, and the town is getting bad publicity for a handful of soldiers that were probably doing what they were told to do anyway," he said. "This makes me sick."
In West Virginia, it is Mineral County - home to Fort Ashby - that has the highest percentage of veterans. The courthouse displays pictures of locals serving overseas, but Pfc. England's picture was removed last week.
A member of the 82nd Airborne had harsh words for Pfc. England and her unit in his letter to the Cumberland Times-News. Like Pfc. England, paratrooper Christopher Toey is now at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
"Military personnel all over the U.S. are walking with their heads down," wrote the paratrooper, whose unit captured Iraqis, then delivered them to Abu Ghraib.
"It is a shock to know that we were sending the insurgents we captured to an inhumane place such as this," he wrote. "They may be the enemy, but they do not deserve to be treated like they were. They are humans, too.
"All the trust that we have built over the past year is probably gone," he said. "They have given another reason for the Arab world to hate America. The terrorists just may have what they need to turn the people of Iraq against us now. We have no one to thank but Pfc. England and friends."
But Robert Carver, a military historian from New Orleans, said the 372nd "provides a stark contrast in how this generation of soldiers confront ethical issues."
While seven soldiers may have committed illegal acts, the unit also had a whistleblower.
"Spc. Joe Darby represents the ethos that most Americans wish for in our men and women in uniform," he wrote. "He refused to follow through on an obviously illegal order."
In Fort Ashby, people just hope time will erase any stain.
"It's like where Jessica Lynch grew up - what was it again?" says Larry Rafferty, a track coach at nearby Frankfort High School.
He meant Palestine, the Wirt County hometown of the conflict's most famous former prisoner of war.
"A year later, and everybody has forgotten the name," Mr. Rafferty says. "People won't remember this place, either."
• AP writer Gavin McCormick contributed to this report.
-------- us politics
Who is Stephen Cambone? Rumsfeld's Henchman
Antiwar.com
May 26, 2004
http://antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2659
Stephen Cambone, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's right-hand man, was for the first time caught in the glare of media attention as part of the congressional inquiry into Iraq prison abuses. Under sharp questioning by a few senators on May 11, 2004, Cambone vigorously defended both Rumsfeld and Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy. Cambone's attempt to split hairs on whether the Geneva Conventions were applicable to intelligence gathering in Iraq and his awkward defense of the role of military intelligence in interrogations put him at odds with the U.S. Army general who first investigated abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. As the first-ever undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Cambone will likely come under increased fire as the prison scandal unfolds. Some of the most intense questioning of Cambone centered on whether the Geneva Conventions were "precisely" respected. What "precisely" Cambone knew and when he knew it, and what precisely was the role of military intelligence will be questions that Cambone will be required to answer.
Cambone, who as director of strategic defense policy during the Bush I administration under Defense Secretary Cheney had been a prominent promoter of missile defense systems, served as the staff director of the two congressional commissions - one on missile defense and another on space weapons - chaired by Donald Rumsfeld in the late 1990s.
The two Rumsfeld commissions focused on the issues at the top of the list for the national security militarists and the large military contractors: the ballistic missile threat to the United States and U.S. space-based defense capabilities. In the tradition of Team B, the unstated agenda of these commissions was to turn up pressure on the administration to support new weapons programs and substantially increase major military spending. Both commissions received funding from defense spending bills - in effect using taxpayer revenues to subsidize them. But perusing the backgrounds and connections of the individuals charged with overseeing the commissions, Rumsfeld and his right-hand man Stephen Cambone, most observers at the time believed that the conclusions were preordained.
After Rumsfeld was named defense secretary, he made Cambone his special assistant in January 2001. Then, in March 2003 Cambone was appointed the first-ever undersecretary for intelligence - a position that "will allow the Defense Department to consolidate its intelligence programs in a way that could undermine CIA head George Tenet's role," one defense analyst noted. Well-known and much-despised by both military and civilian officials in the Pentagon prior to joining the Bush II administration, Cambone, serving as Rumsfeld's henchman and intelligence chief, soon began creating a new enemies list in the CIA and State Department.
While Cambone was directing the two Rumsfeld commissions, he also participated in two national security strategy and military transformation commissions sponsored by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP). The institute's 2001 report, Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control, and PNAC's Rebuilding America's Defenses were blueprints for Rumsfeld's promised "revolution in military affairs." Several other PNAC associates, in addition to Rumsfeld himself, also served on the Rumsfeld commissions, including Paul Wolfowitz, Malcolm Wallop, William Schneider, and James Woolsey. Both the NIPP and PNAC studies seem to have served as blueprints for the defense policies initiated by the administration of George W. Bush with respect to nuclear policy, national security strategy, and military transformation.
Despite - and perhaps because of - his close relationship to the defense secretary, Cambone is apparently widely disliked in the Pentagon. Tom Donnelly, PNAC military analyst and lead author of Rebuilding America's Defenses, wrote in the Weekly Standard that "fairly or not, Cambone has long been viewed as Rumsfeld's henchman, almost universally loathed - but more important, feared - by the services." The Washington Monthly reported in late 2001, "It would be hard to exaggerate how much Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top aide Stephen Cambone were hated within the Pentagon prior to September 11. Among other mistakes, Rumsfeld and Cambone foolishly excluded top civilian and military leaders when planning an overhaul of the military to meet new threats, thereby ensuring even greater bureaucratic resistance. According to the Washington Post, an Army general joked to a Hill staffer that "if he had one round left in his revolver, he would take out Steve Cambone." Cambone's reputation in the building hasn't improved much since Sept.11, but Rumsfeld's has been transformed.
When asked by the New York Times (April 11, 2003) if he thought hard-liners in the Pentagon had politicized intelligence to support arguments for the war in Iraq, Cambone responded: "Any policy maker has certain views. Policy makers are where they are and doing what they do because they have a view." Further, he said, "The politicization of intelligence, I think, happens when intelligence is thought to be more than it is. And what it can be at best is a summary judgment at a given moment in time based on the information that one has been able to glean."
Cambone's work on missile defense issues extends well beyond his participation on the influential Rumsfeld missile threat commission. According to the Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project, "As Director of Strategic Defense Policy, [Cambone] was a major contributor to President [George H.W.] Bush's decision to refocus the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative] program in 1991 and developed the concept for a global protection system. He was a member of the high-level group appointed by the president to discuss the global protection system with Russia, U.S. allies, and other states. In addition, he was responsible for addressing and resolving policy issues that arose in the compliance review group (DOD [Department of Defense] organization to oversee compliance with the ABM [antiballistic missile] treaty) and the strategic systems committee of the Defense Acquisition Board, which is responsible for approving DOD weapon system acquisition."
Before he joined the Bush Sr. administration, Cambone worked for SRS Technologies, a defense contractor. SRS recently received a $6 million contract to provide administrative and management support for the Missile Defense Agency.
SRS has also received a lot of attention recently for its work on the controversial military effort to mine the passenger records of JetBlue. Torch Concepts, the SRS subcontractor that worked on the project, "worked directly with the Army and had a specific mandate to ferret information out of data stream [to find the] abnormal behavior of secretive people," said SRS's Bart Edsall in an interview with Wired News. Privacy advocates immediately cried foul when the story broke. Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation said, "We should put the brakes on all these data-mining programs, and have a serious national conversation, because travel data is just one example of the many kinds of data every data-mining operation wants to suck in from private business."
"Stephen Cambone," Right Web Profiles (Silver City, NM: Interhemispheric Resource Center, May 2004).
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Bush Seeks to Reassure Nation on Iraq
President Talks of Razing Abu Ghraib Prison to Mark 'New Beginning'
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52711-2004May24?language=printer
CARLISLE, Pa., May 24 -- In an address to the nation, President Bush on Monday night called for demolishing Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison -- the scene of Saddam Hussein atrocities and the U.S. military's prisoner abuse -- as he vowed that the United States would succeed in turning Iraq from violence and chaos to democracy and peace.
Bush's pledge to destroy the notorious prison was the symbolic highlight of a speech designed to convince an increasingly restive public that improvement is coming to Iraq despite a recent wave of violence and an international scandal sparked by images of U.S. troops abusing Iraqi prisoners. Worries about chaos in Iraq have jeopardized both public support for the occupation and Bush's reelection prospects, and Bush's speech was the start of a fresh administration effort to build public support.
"Under the dictator, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values," Bush said in the prime-time speech. Seeking to defuse an issue that has badly undermined U.S. standing in Iraq and the Middle East, he vowed that after building a new prison and receiving Iraqis' approval: "We will demolish the Abu Ghraib prison, as a fitting symbol of Iraq's new beginning."
In the 33-minute address, delivered at the U.S. Army War College here, Bush disclosed few new details of the scheduled June 30 handover of limited sovereignty to Iraqis, declining to name the Iraqis who will take power or to clearly define the future U.S. military presence in Iraq. Instead, he used the speech to draw public attention to elements of the transition that were generally known, repackaging the U.S. policy as a five-step plan.
Bush's speech was coordinated with the release of a proposed U.N. Security Council resolution, which the United States began to circulate earlier Monday. The draft resolution was also silent on key details of the transition. While the resolution would endorse the June 30 handover and a U.S.-led multinational force, it did not say how much influence Iraq's new government would have over use of the security forces.
Bush's address, while using many of the same arguments he has employed previously, represented a subtle shift in the way he discusses the U.S. tribulations in Iraq. He gave a more frank acknowledgment of the troubles facing U.S. forces, warning that "there are difficult days ahead, and the way forward may sometimes appear chaotic."
Bush did not shy away from discussing setbacks, mentioning the insurgency in Fallujah, Karbala and Najaf, and the grisly killings of American civilians and a leader of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi authority. He gave more credit to the insurgents, previously dismissed as "few" in number, calling them "sophisticated" and noting that Hussein loyalists had reorganized and rearmed within the civilian population. As for the reluctance of U.S.-trained Iraqis to fight insurgents, he allowed: "We've learned from these failures, and we've taken steps to correct them."
Bush also acknowledged that he has had to revise plans for troop reductions. He said the 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, more than the 115,000 the administration had forecast needing, would remain "as long as necessary."
Yet his acknowledgment of some of the troubles did not reduce the overall optimism and idealism that he has expressed in such speeches in the past. He reiterated many indicators of success that he has mentioned over the past year: the building of schools, hospitals, bridges and electric infrastructure; the introduction of a new currency; the training of Iraqi security forces; and increases in oil production and foreign aid commitments. Bush continued to attest to the good intentions of the U.S. occupants.
"I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power," he said. "I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American."
Bush's speech implicitly addressed two charges that have been leveled against him by ideological friends and foes alike: that he does not have a concrete plan for Iraq, and that he has minimized the trials there. "We're making progress, yet there still is much work to do," he said. Calling Iraqis "proud people who resent foreign control of their affairs," he pledged: "The coalition will demonstrate we have no interest in occupation."
The president's speech, and the proposed U.N. resolution, described the administration's plan for the transfer of power: a June 30 handover, direct elections of a transitional national assembly by the end of January 2005, a plea for more foreign troops and financial aid, and U.S. control of security until future negotiations determine otherwise. The administration wants to have the mandate for the U.S. forces in Iraq reviewed after a year, or earlier if the transitional government requests it.
"There are five steps in our plan to help Iraq achieve democracy and freedom," Bush said. "We will hand over authority to a sovereign Iraqi government, help establish security, continue rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure, encourage more international support, and move toward a national election that will bring forward new leaders empowered by the Iraqi people."
The international reaction to the draft U.N. resolution was generally favorable, but France, which has consistently been antagonistic toward U.S. ambitions in Iraq, said it would seek a clear timeline for handing over control of the country's security.
Bush was vague about the eventual U.S. departure. "America's task in Iraq is not only to defeat an enemy, it is to give strength to a friend -- a free, representative government that serves its people and fights on their behalf," he said. "And the sooner this goal is achieved, the sooner our job will be done."
He also said the new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad would set up satellite offices in key cities to work with emerging Iraqi leaders. And U.S. forces, he said, "will be there to help."
As he has previously, Bush described the U.S. mission in Iraq as the start of a larger effort to spread democracy -- and with it, peace -- through the Middle East. "We believe that freedom can advance and change lives in the greater Middle East, as it has advanced and changed lives in Asia and Latin America and Eastern Europe and Africa."
Voicing another theme he has used consistently, Bush said the fight in Iraq has become the defining struggle against terrorism. "This would be a decisive blow to terrorism at the heart of its power, and a victory for the security of America and the civilized world," he said. Describing a clash of good against evil, he said: "We will persevere and defeat this enemy and hold this hard-won ground for the realm of liberty."
The speech, the first of several high-profile addresses Bush will give as June 30 approaches, comes as his political standing and public support for the war have fallen in tandem.
Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the president's Democratic challenger, said in a statement that Bush "laid out general principles tonight, most of which we've heard before." He added: "What's most important now is to turn these words into action by offering presidential leadership to the nation and to the world."
Bush's choice of the War College for the address underscored the difficulty he faced in convincing Americans that he was pursuing the correct strategy in Iraq. The War College, the Army's highest-level educational institution, has published multiple studies that have been critical of Bush's Iraq policy. The president delivered his speech in a gymnasium once used by Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe. About 450 military brass, with ribbons on their chests, crowded into the warm, flag-festooned hall for Bush, who was making the first visit by a sitting president to the Carlisle Barracks since George Washington.
Bush did not answer the central question of exactly who would take over power in Iraq in a little more than a month. A U.N. envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, is expected to announce that in the coming days. The administration has consulted with Brahimi but has left the public announcement to him in hopes that his efforts to balance the interests of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds would have broader support without U.S. interference.
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Bush Poll Numbers On Iraq at New Low
By Dan Balz and Richard Morin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52151-2004May24?language=printer
Public approval of President Bush's handling of the conflict in Iraq has dropped to its lowest point with growing fears that the United States is bogged down and rising criticism of Bush's handling of the prison abuse scandal, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll.
Support for Bush on virtually every aspect of the Iraq conflict has declined in the past month as the administration has battled insurgents and grappled with the expanding investigation into the treatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.
The poll underscored the political challenges that confronted Bush as he went on national television last night to defend his policy and outline the steps that will lead to a transfer of governing authority to a new Iraqi government on June 30.
Bush's overall job approval rating declined to 47 percent, the lowest the Post-ABC News polls have recorded since he took office, with 50 percent saying they disapprove. Just four in 10 Americans gave the president positive marks for his handling of Iraq, the lowest since he launched the conflict in March 2003.
On the question of whether U.S. forces should remain in Iraq until that country is stabilized or withdraw to avoid further casualties, 58 percent said they favored staying there, down from 66 percent last month. The percentage favoring a troop withdrawal reached 40 percent, up 7 percentage points in the past month.
Despite Bush's declining approval ratings, he runs even when pitted against Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), his Democratic challenger. Asked how they would vote if the election were held today, 46 percent of registered voters said Bush, 46 percent said Kerry and 4 percent said independent Ralph Nader. Without Nader factored into the competition, Kerry led Bush 49 percent to 47 percent. A month ago, Bush led Kerry 48 to 43 percent with Nader at 6 percent.
When matched against Kerry on issues of national security and terrorism, Bush was seen as a stronger leader and more reliable in keeping the country safe and more trusted in dealing with a national crisis. Bush also bested Kerry on who is better equipped to deal with Iraq and the war on terrorism, although Bush's margins have declined in the past month.
Bush's political standing has been weakened by an erosion in support among independents and by signs of potential disaffection among his typically rock-solid Republican base. Democrats continue to give the president low marks across the board.
A month ago Bush's job approval rating stood at 51 percent, and virtually all of the decline since then is attributable to a drop of 7 percentage points among Republicans. Just 20 percent of Democrats and 46 percent of independents approve of how he is handling the presidency.
On Iraq, a majority of Democrats (87 percent) and independents (58 percent) gave Bush negative marks. Among members of his party, the president's support, while strong, declined 8 percentage points over the last month, to 75 percent.
On the issue of withdrawing U.S. forces, 53 percent of Democrats favored withdrawal, which puts them at odds with Kerry, while more than four in 10 independents and one-fifth of Republicans said they preferred getting out to staying indefinitely. The number of independents and Republicans favoring withdrawal rose about 10 percentage points each in the past month.
The president received higher marks for managing the war on terrorism, although the 58 percent approval rating in the new poll marked the first time Bush has dropped below 60 percent on that question since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush's approval rating on Iraq is now lower than his economic approval rating: Forty-four percent said they approved of how he has handled the economy, compared with 54 percent who disapproved. The last two employment reports have shown significant new job creation, and although Bush's economic ratings remain negative, they are not as low as in March.
Rising gasoline prices represent a potential economic problem for Bush. Almost two in three Americans said rising prices have caused some kind of financial hardship, but fewer than two in five said the hardship was serious. Those surveyed apportioned the blame relatively evenly among the administration, U.S. oil companies and the oil-producing countries.
A majority of those surveyed also expressed optimism that the situation in Iraq will be better a year from now, but in all other respects, the public expressed pessimism about the U.S. mission there.
Those surveyed remained evenly divided over whether the war in Iraq has been worth the cost, with 48 percent saying it was and 50 percent saying it was not. But 65 percent said they believe the United States is bogged down there, 57 percent said the United States is not making significant progress in establishing a democratic government and 58 percent said Bush does not have a clear plan for Iraq.
Disapproval of Bush's handling of the prisoner-abuse scandal rose dramatically in the past month, with 57 percent giving him negative marks and 36 percent giving him positive marks. A month ago, as the scandal was first unfolding, a plurality (48 percent to 35 percent) said they approved of the way he was dealing with it. Disapproval jumped sharply among independents and Republicans as well as among Democrats. Three in five independents give Bush negative marks on the prison scandal as do almost one-third of Republicans, and three-quarters of all Democrats.
When asked to compare Bush and Kerry, those surveyed said they had more confidence in Kerry on economic issues and more confidence in Bush on national security issues. Bush's greatest advantage came in the war on terrorism, where he led Kerry by 52 percent to 39 percent. On Iraq, Bush led 48 percent to 42 percent, while on the economy, Kerry led 48 percent to 43 percent. In all cases, the public viewed Bush less favorably than in the Post-ABC poll of a month ago.
Those surveyed also see Bush as a strong leader, with 62 percent saying that characterization fit the president to 52 percent who said it applied to Kerry. Three in five said Bush can be trusted in a crisis, while 46 percent said Kerry could be trusted. A bare majority (52 percent) said Bush has made the country safer; 39 percent said Kerry will do so if he is elected.
Three in four said they see Bush as a politician who takes a position and sticks to it; four in 10 said the same of Kerry. On the other hand, while 49 percent said Bush is willing to listen to different points of view, 69 percent said that of Kerry. Kerry scored higher than Bush on which one understands the problems of ordinary Americans.
On the question of which candidate shares their values, the public was closely divided -- 49 percent said Bush shared their values while 48 percent said the same of Kerry, a finding that reflects the divided electorate.
A total of 1,005 randomly selected adults were interviewed May 20-23. The margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Assistant polling director Claudia Deane contributed to this report.
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Analysis
A Speech Meant to Rally Public Support Doesn't Answer Key Questions
By Robin Wright and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53141-2004May24.html
With only five weeks before the transition in Iraq and five months before the U.S. elections, President Bush last night called for more patience, more time, more resources and more support to transform troubled Iraq.
But Bush did not provide the midcourse correction that even some Republicans had called for in the face of increasingly macabre violence in recent weeks -- from the assassination of the president of Iraq's Governing Council and controversy over dozens killed by U.S. warplanes at a purported wedding party to the grisly beheading of an American civilian.
Nor did Bush try to answer some of the looming questions that have triggered growing skepticism and anxiety at home and abroad about the final U.S. costs, the final length of stay for U.S. troops, or what the terms will be for a final U.S. exit from Iraq. After promising "concrete steps," the White House basically repackaged stalled U.S. policy as a five-step plan.
In effect, the president said his current plan is good enough to win, and he set out to rally Americans to his cause with rousing language that placed the conflict in Iraq in the context of the larger, more popular battle against terrorism.
"Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder," Bush said. "They seek to impose Taliban-like rule, country by country, across the greater Middle East." He asserted that extremists now see Iraq as "the central front in the war on terror."
Still, the questions left unanswered last night could continue to make the administration vulnerable to criticism. "The more explicit and precise, the better. A lot of rhetoric without altering the substance will not do," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, who has been critical of the Bush administration's foreign policy. "What's involved is basically American credibility."
The president's soothing recitation of policy particulars offered few benchmarks or specifics on the most sensitive issues, such as the relationship between the Iraqi government to be installed July 1 and the U.S.-led coalition troops that are scheduled to remain in Iraq to provide basic security -- and what happens if Iraqis do not want foreign forces to launch new offensives. That issue underscores the potential controversies even after the occupation ends.
Throughout his address at the Army War College, Bush tried to generate new support for his Iraq strategy by contrasting two strikingly different scenarios for the future -- "one of tyranny and murder, the other of liberty and life." Tough times in the coming months will be offset by prospect of hopeful change in the years ahead, he said.
Echoing a theme from a year ago after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the president evoked his broad "vision" of a new Iraq inspiring freedom that will "advance and change lives in the greater Middle East." He also waxed eloquent about a future for the people of the Middle East that would allow them to "reclaim the greatness of their own heritage."
The alternative, Bush warned, is the descent of Iraq and the region into extremism. "The failure of freedom would only mark the beginning of peril and violence," he said. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were an undercurrent throughout the speech, as the president sought to rekindle the public acclaim associated with the broader war on terrorism that began by toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Bush's speech was the kickoff to a campaign to reassure U.S. voters and rally international backing for a United Nations resolution circulated yesterday at the Security Council, which the White House hopes will be put to a vote before the president leaves for D-Day commemorations in Europe the first week of June. It will be followed by a speech every week until the June 30 transition, as the Bush administration tries to shore up public support. Among Americans, 64 percent believe the president does not have a clear plan for Iraq, according to a poll released yesterday by the University of Pennsylvania's National Annenberg Election Survey.
The immediate reaction to the speech, which was not carried by any of the major broadcast networks, broke down largely on partisan lines. Republican stalwarts said Bush fulfilled the mission set out by the White House to reassure the American public. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said in a statement that Bush's speech "gave us the two things we needed most: an honest report on the present and a detailed plan for the future." Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) said Bush was "at his best tonight in laying a foundation, upon which he has to build every week to sustain the support of the American people and the world in bringing freedom to Iraq."
But Bush immediately came under attack from key congressional Democrats who specialize in foreign policy.
"I'm extremely disappointed. He didn't answer any of the important questions. I don't think he leveled with the American people. This may be the last time we have to get it right," said Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del), ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry said Bush had only repeated general principles already laid out by the administration. Kerry said the president needed instead to "genuinely reach out" to allies so the United States no longer has to "go it alone" and to create stability.
"That's what our troops deserve, and that's what our country and the world need at this moment," he said in a statement.
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Nader Calls for Impeachment of Bush Over the War in Iraq
May 25, 2004
By THOMAS J. LUECK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/25/politics/25nade.html
Ralph Nader, the independent candidate for president, condemned President George W. Bush yesterday as a "messianic militarist" who should be impeached for pushing the nation into a war in Iraq "based on false pretenses."
Mr. Bush's actions "rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors," Mr. Nader said in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in Manhattan. He said Mr. Bush had exceeded his authority in the face of widespread opposition at home and abroad.
"The founding fathers did not want the declaration of war put in the hands of one man," he said, contending that United States foreign policy goals are being hindered because the president tends to "talk like an out-of-control West Texas sheriff."
Mr. Nader said the White House should set a specific date before the end of 2004 to withdraw American troops. At the same time, he said he would advocate internationally supervised elections in Iraq.
When pressed by the audience, Mr. Nader declined to provide more detail on what immediate steps could be taken to assure stability in the region if the United States withdraws by the end of the year. But he criticized a resolution introduced by the United States and Britain on Monday in the United Nations Security Council, which would support a sovereign interim Iraqi government to take office by June 30. The White House had little credibility in making the proposal, he said, because the administration plans to build military bases in Iraq.
"We are the sovereigns,'' he said, adding that the bases will assure a permanent or long-term occupation.
People in Iraq need "a light at the end of the tunnel," he said.
Mr. Nader, who in recent days has made conciliatory gestures toward the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry, made no direct reference to Mr. Kerry's position on Iraq, but made clear that he held a different view. Mr. Kerry is sharply critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war, but has said the United States must retain and even increase its forces in Iraq while reaching out for more help from allies.
Mr. Nader also accused President Bush of exaggerating the threat of terrorism in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"To say that President Bush has exaggerated the threat of Al Qaeda is to trip into a political hornets' nest," he said. But he said it was time to raise "the impertinent question" about whether the threat had been "exaggerated for a purpose."
Mr. Nader said he believed such a deception had taken place, and had been intended in part to draw popular support for more militaristic policies and to generate military contracts for companies with close ties to the Bush administration.
In other action on Monday, Mr. Nader's campaign submitted to the Texas secretary of state 80,000 signatures of registered voters, more than enough to qualify him for the state's presidential ballot in November should his lawsuit challenging the petition process succeed.
Mr. Nader failed to submit the necessary 64,000 signatures by May 10, as required by state law. Independent candidates in Texas must obtain signatures from registered voters who did not participate in either major party primary, and must do so within a 60-day period. Mr. Nader's lawsuit, in United States District Court, contends that the law is an unreasonable and unconstitutional obstacle to independent candidates. A hearing is scheduled for July.
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2 of 3 in state say Iraq war not worth the costs,
Field Poll finds 60% of Californian's disapprove of president's handling of conflict
Chronicle
by Carla Marinucci
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/05/25/FIELD.TMP
Nearly two-thirds of Californians believe the war in Iraq is not worth the toll in American lives and costs, an almost complete reversal of views held when the war began a little more than a year ago, a Field Poll released today shows.
And six in 10 Californians disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war -- the highest rating of opposition he has received on the issue since the war began and, again, almost a complete reversal from a Field Poll in April 2003.
On the economy, the president fares only slightly better -- despite some recent good news on the jobs front. Just 37 percent of Californians approve of his handling of the economy -- down 20 percentage points from when he took office, the poll shows.
The poll constitutes the most negative assessment of Bush's presidency to date, and highlights what has been a very significant change of opinion about the president in recent months, says Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll.
"There's a consensus (on the war) that it's not worth the cost, and that Bush's handling of it has not been up to par," he said. "Right now, it's just die-hard Republicans" who are sticking by him and believe in his leadership, DiCamillo added.
The poll of 514 state residents taken last Tuesday through Sunday shows that 63 percent no longer believe the war is worth the costs in lives and in dollars to 31 percent who believe it is worth the costs -- the lowest rating since the war began in 2003.
The view that the war isn't worth the cost is held across all demographic groups -- age, sex and region of the state.
Overall, just 39 percent of Californians approve of the job Bush is doing in office, compared to 54 percent who disapprove -- another low for the Field Poll. And 57 percent of state residents say the United States is now on the wrong track -- a figure that has not been surpassed since 1992, when Bush's father was defeated in his re-election bid for president against Democratic candidate Bill Clinton.
The latest Field Poll numbers also dramatize how, in the nation's most populous state, the president's support has evaporated across the board -- in all geographic areas, among all racial and ethnic groups, even among men and white voters who have been Republican stalwarts.
While Democratic-leaning California always has held a lower approval rating for Bush than the nation as a whole, the poll could be a signal of bad news for the president nationally.
A Washington Post-ABC News Poll released Monday showed the president's approval ratings at an all-time low nationally on the same day he gave a major speech outlining plans for bringing peace and democracy to Iraq.
The Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Bush's approval rating declined to 47 percent. And, it showed that just 40 percent of Americans approved of Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, another all-time low in the Post-ABC poll since U.S. troops entered the Mideast nation in March 2003.
A CBS News poll, also released Monday, showed the president's approval ratings dropped to 41 percent -- the lowest recorded in that news organization's surveys. Only 34 percent of those polled by CBS support the president's policy in Iraq, while 61 percent disapprove.
In California, a particular danger sign for Bush appears to be his standings with independents and third-party voters, who could be the deciding factor in the president's re-election effort.
The latest Field Poll shows his approval ratings have crumbled precipitously among those voters: By 63 percent to 32 percent, nonpartisan and third-party voters in California disapprove of his job in office -- and on Iraq, a stunning 75 percent of those voters disagree with his handling of the war.
"The nonpartisans give you which way the wind is blowing, and the nonpartisans are 69-24 against the war," DiCamillo said.
But the effort in Iraq is still a partisan issue, DiCamillo said, with Republicans supporting the war despite its costs by 67 percent to 27 percent and Democrats against by 84 percent to 13 percent.
UC Berkeley political science Professor Bruce Cain said that in the state with the most electoral votes, 55, the president's approval ratings all but count out a stated GOP goal of mounting a challenge in the state.
"It makes the prospects of an election (win) in California, which were already remote, more like remote squared,'' Cain said.
Nationally, Cain said that Bush's approval numbers may not be permanently depressed -- depending on the reaction to his speech Monday and events in Iraq.
"If you were to get out of Iraq in June and the Iraqis were to get their act together, then the numbers could change again, and he could be back in the running,'' Cain said. "You lose an election if we're spending billions of dollars, and Americans are dying, and there appears to be no purpose -- and that's where we are now.
"I see no political future for the president if he decides to stay the course in Iraq and finish a mission that is still undefined,'' he said.
Even leading GOP analysts, such as Hoover Institution research fellow Bill Whalen, said the polls reflect Bush's annus horribilis -- to use a phrase coined in 1992 by then scandal-battered Queen Elizabeth II to describe her family's difficulties.
"He has had a bad week, a bad month and a bad year," Whelan said.
Whalen said the president is "on a negative trend, which is usually fatal in your last year (in office)." Now "the president must find a way to turn around the negative news in Iraq,'' he said. "But can the president end the bad news cycle by himself -- or does he need an event beyond his control to do it?''
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percent.
E-mail Carla Marinucci at cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com.
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Voting requests increase among U.S. expatriates
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jennifer Joan Lee
May 25, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040524-091648-9061r.htm
PARIS - Americans in Europe are signing up to vote in the November election in record numbers, energized by the war in Iraq and strong feelings about President Bush.
Democrats Abroad, a group started in London and Paris in 1964, said its membership in Paris has doubled in one year.
"We can't keep up with the voting requests, not only from Democrats but from independents, from Republicans, and even from people who haven't voted since the '60s," Chairwoman Connie Borde said.
The Paris-based chairman of Republicans Abroad Europe, Robert Pingeon, said he, too, has seen a "100 percent increase" in the number of expatriate Americans registering to vote through its Web site (www.republicansabroad.org/Europe.htm).
A crop of new pro-Democrat Web sites is targeting overseas voters upset over Bush administration policies by offering them direct assistance in registration and voting, an often complicated and confusing procedure. Sites such as overseasvote.com, tellanamericantovote.com, and most recently, usabroad.org say their audiences have exploded.
Hong Kong-based Brett Rierson, a co-founder of overseasvote.com, said that since the site was launched in mid-February, the number of people using it to register "is approaching exponential growth," with "well over 300 people from more than 90 countries" now downloading voting forms each day.
Bob Neer, the founder of usabroad.org who lived overseas for several years, attributed the phenomenon to a rise in the Internet as a medium as well as to a "heartfelt antipathy" to the U.S. administration.
"The Internet has fundamentally changed the ability of U.S. citizens abroad to participate in U.S. politics," he said.
"At the same time, the foreign policy of the Bush administration has really impacted overseas Americans more than anyone else. It's caused real suffering for them and even real danger."
The Web sites, operated from many countries and continents, have a common goal: to defeat Mr. Bush. Despite their proliferation, nothing similar has been created for Republicans, aside from the site run by Republicans Abroad that provides links to voter assistance programs.
Mr. Pingeon, however, said he was not worried by the trend.
"The Democrats have been very loud and very shrill, but we really think we still own the vote," he said. "The Republicans are a silent majority. Overseas Americans have always voted 3-to-1 for the Republicans, and I don't see that changing."
However, in Europe at least, a record-breaking number of expatriates have been flooding Democratic caucuses and conventions. In March, the Democrats Abroad global convention in Edinburgh, Scotland, drew more than twice as many people as the one in 2000.
Organizations such as American Voices Abroad (AVA), a nonpartisan coalition of U.S. civil rights and antiwar groups that has chapters across Europe, also have seen their memberships multiply.
"There is a sort of renaissance of American civic consciousness going on," said Colin King, an AVA campaign organizer based in Berlin.
"The cause is a painful recognition that we have an administration that does not even feel confined by the most basic rules of our Constitution and traditions of foreign policy," he said.
An estimated 3.9 million U.S. citizens living overseas voted in 2000. With overseas ballots counted in the voter's home state, the absentee ballots could be decisive in battleground states such as Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
"Up to four states will be decided by a small number of votes," said Steven Hill, a senior analyst at the Takoma Park-based Center for Voting and Democracy.
"Americans abroad represent the padding for these battleground states, so they can really tip the election."
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Oil, gas prices push past records
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Jeffrey Sparshott
May 25, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040524-092708-4456r.htm
U.S. retail prices for gasoline set a record last week, the government reported yesterday, while crude oil futures closed at a record high on anticipation of heavy demand outstripping a potential boost in production.
Regular-grade gasoline prices rose 4.7 cents to a nationwide average of $2.06 a gallon last week, the U.S. Energy Department said. Meanwhile, U.S. light crude futures closed at $41.72 a barrel yesterday, up $1.79 from Friday and slightly above the previous record of $41.55 set a week ago on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Oil futures had dipped Friday after Saudi Arabia promised to boost its output by 10 percent to 9.1 million barrels per day starting June 1. But other nation's in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries this weekend apparently balked at increasing production, and traders decided the Saudi increase might come too late to meet summertime demand.
"I think the market right now is in a 'prove it to me' stage. They want to see the increase in barrels," said Douglas MacIntyre, senior oil market analyst at the Energy Information Agency, an independent branch of the Energy Department.
Sustained higher oil and gasoline prices would affect the entire economy, including shipping costs, energy costs for manufacturers and eventually home heating oil costs.
"When you combine gasoline, natural gas prices that already are really high, and factor in crude oil prices ... that is a lot of extra costs that U.S. consumers and companies are bearing this year versus last year," Mr. MacIntyre said.
Crude oil prices are up 28.3 percent this year, and gasoline prices are up almost 58 cents a gallon from a year ago.
The high oil prices are driven by rising demand from fast-growing economies, especially in the United States and China, as well as speculation that markets may be disrupted by terrorist attacks on oil operations in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, said Ed Silliere, vice president for risk management at Energy Merchant LLC, an oil and gas marketing firm.
"The biggest reason [oil is] going up today is because speculators are pouring back into the market again. They are in the market not because they think there is a shortage of crude, but because they think there will be a shortage," Mr. Silliere said.
Mr. Silliere said prices were likely to rise above $42 per barrel this year.
Gasoline prices are driven in part by high crude prices. But analysts said other factors also affect prices, including high energy costs to run U.S. refineries, capacity limits at refineries, and government requirements to produce gasoline that causes less pollution.
Saudi Arabia last week promised increased output in a bid to show major oil consuming nation's that it, too, seeks to tame escalating oil prices. The world's leading crude oil producer also proposed that OPEC raise quotas by 2 million to 2.5 million barrels a day, but no decision is expected until the cartel meets June 3 in Beirut.
OPEC, the 11-nation cartel of oil-producing nations, was responsible for 28 million barrels a day of crude oil production last year, about 40 percent of the world total, according to Energy Information Agency figures.
At a March 31 meeting, OPEC ministers said the market was "more than well-supplied" with crude oil and confirmed a production ceiling of 23.5 million barrels per day. The cartel said bottlenecks at U.S. refineries and speculation were responsible for price rises.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Environmental Battle Rages Over Power Plants
Story by Steve James
REUTERS USA:
May 25, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25235/story.htm
NEW YORK - America may be waging a war on terrorism overseas, but there's one war at home for which President Bush has shown less enthusiasm, some state officials and environmental groups say.
To them, Bush is on the wrong side in the never-ending battle over air pollution, which saw a new skirmish last week pitting four eastern states against one of America's premier power generating companies.
The four - New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania - located downwind of coal-fired power plants, served notice they will sue Allegheny Energy Inc., claiming the company's five plants in West Virginia violate the federal Clean Air Act.
But they also pointed the finger at Bush and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for what they called lax enforcement of anti-pollution rules.
"Once again, President Bush has failed the people of New Jersey and the northeast by opting to protect the profits of polluters rather than the health of citizens," said Bradley Campbell, commissioner of New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection.
"Once again, the states must fill the void left by the federal government," he said.
"Faced with federal regulators at the EPA who have abdicated their responsibility to enforce the Clean Air Act, we will join with these other states to ensure that corporate polluters are not permitted to defy the law and profit at the expense of our environment and the health of our citizens," said New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey.
The EPA dropped its investigation of power plants last year, but New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer obtained the files on Allegheny's West Virginia plants at Albright, Maidsville and Haywood, plus two at Willow Island.
According to Spitzer, the EPA investigation revealed the Allegheny plants made major improvements without installing legally required air pollution controls. "As a result, they have continued to emit hundreds of thousands of tons more pollution each year," he said.
Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions cause smog, acid rain, respiratory disease and other harm, said Spitzer, adding that Allegheny is the fifth-largest emitter of sulfur dioxide in the United States, and 10th largest emitter of nitrogen oxide.
COMPANY DENIAL
Allegheny Energy, based in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, denied the allegations. "We believe that we have been and continue to be in compliance with all existing state and federal environmental laws," said Chairman, President and Chief Executive Paul Evanson. "We are always mindful of our responsibilities as an environmental steward in the operation of our power plants," he said, adding that the company welcomed the opportunity to meet with the four states "to amicably resolve these matters."
An EPA spokeswoman said the agency continued to enforce the New Source Review program, which "is an important tool and one component of EPA's comprehensive national strategy to achieve cleaner air.
"The most important thing we can do to improve air quality in this country is to reduce pollution from power plants and we have proposed the Clean Air Interstate Rule that will require power plants to reduce their emissions by 70 percent."
The states' notice to sue comes as one major environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), launched a campaign to cut levels of mercury, another emission of coal-fired power plants.
According to the NRDC, electric power plants are the single largest industrial source of some of the worst air pollutants. In 1998, power plants were responsible for 67 percent of the annual total sulfur dioxide, more than one-quarter of the nitrogen oxides, 33 percent of the mercury and 40 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States, it said.
The Clean Air Act, which was originally passed in the 1970s and amended in 1990, set targets and dates for reduction of pollutants. Levels of mercury were meant to be limited by the end of this year.
The NRDC had sued the EPA to force stricter enforcement of mercury limits. But the environmental group ultimately agreed to extend the deadline for those target levels to March 15 next year, to give the EPA more time.
"The Bush administration has clearly done everything in the last four years to undermine clean air legislation," said the NRDC's Ashok Gupta. "It is not sympathetic to protecting the environment and went back on campaign promises."
John Walke, clean air director of NRDC, said the EPA's move only came after the environmental group sued. "They had done such an awful job and we put pressure on them to do a better job. That's why the deadline has been extended 90 days.
But Jim Owen, of the Edison Electric Institute, a power industry group, said America's power stations had already cut mercury emissions as a result of clean-air actions.
"In fact, we have been cutting...by 40 percent in the last decade as a result of existing control technology to cut sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide which continue to be installed.
"There will be significant reductions of mercury," he said.
The NRDC's Walke was not impressed by the 40 percent reduction claim. "That's a by-product of regulations to reduce smog, which they resisted tooth and nail.
"The truth is, how much public health damage will continue to be caused by pollution? How many more people will suffer from asthma?" he asked.
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Largest Companies Taking Climate Change Into Account
May 25, 2004
LONDON, UK, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-25-03.asp
The world's largest firms are showing a growing willingness to face the potential risks and opportunities of climate change, a group of institutional investors said on Wednesday. The second annual report of the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is based on responses to a survey of the world's 500 biggest public companies.
"Investors are saying that climate change can impact shareholder value both positively and negatively, and the market needs information to assess and value the issue," said James Cameron, CDP chairman. "Companies are now acknowledging they should communicate what they know to their investors, or at the very least, find out what they don't know."
The Carbon Disclosure Project provides a coordinating secretariat for a group of institutional funders and investors. It is a special project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, with nonprofit charitable status in the United States.
The CDP was launched on December 4, 2000 at No. 10 Downing Street. The results made public by the CDP on May 19 are from the second cycle of the project which involved sending a letter and questionnaire to the 500 largest companies in the world.
Greenhouse gas emissions rise from Chemical Works, Wilton, Teesside, England (Photo by Ian Britton courtesy FreeFoto) The information request was signed by 95 institutional investment firms, two-thirds of them European, with assets of $10 trillion and sent on November 1, 2003. CDP membership has grown from only 35 when it issued its first report last year.
Fifty-nine percent of the 500 companies surveyed this year responded, compared with 47 percent last year. The report on their responses was authored by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors.
Fifty companies are identified as "climate leaders." But the CDP also praises many other respondents for quantifying and preparing to trade emissions and for issuing more coherent and comprehensive corporate climate strategies.
The CDP report welcomes the creation of multi-disciplinary teams to manage companies' risk profile, greater use of standardized measurement systems and more involvement in renewable energy projects.
"Companies failing to respond or providing weak responses to those that own a significant share of their business will invite particular scrutiny from the investment community," said Cameron. "Investors now have ample understanding and opportunity to reallocate assets to reduce climate change risk and invest in companies offering solutions to accelerated global warming."
Solar panels power the petrol pumps at a BP station in Perivale, United Kingdom. BP was one of the companies that answered the CDP survey. (Photo courtesy BP Solarex ) Companies' increased awareness is driven by factors such as the US$70 billion (€58 billion) cost of weather related natural disasters in 2003, the CDP says.
Firms are also responding to a growing array of legislation promoting a lower carbon economy - including more investment in non-hydro renewables and clean technologies.
Fears, especially in energy intensive industry sectors, about the future cost of carbon are also an important driver.
Tessa Tennant, CDP chairperson said, "We face a monumental educational challenge because most institutional investors have a knowledge deficit when it comes to obtaining systematic, portfolio-wide information about the risks companies face when it comes to climate change."
She noted that the financial consequences of climate change are almost certain to grow, and the information deficit for investors will prove costly.
Managing the financial risks of climate change does not necessarily impose a net cost on companies. The report noted that those companies surveyed who were quick to reduce gas emissions stand to gain competitive advantage, in terms of both cost and market risk management. For example BP has cut annual carbon dioxide emissions at their plants by 10 million metric tons, saving some $650 million.
Companies are facing pressure from financial market authorities and fiduciaries to deal with climate risk. The introduction of "Generally Accepted Carbon Accounting Principles" appears likely, and litigation against major emitters is possible, the CDP report states.
Despite the signs of progress it identifies, the CDP points out that there are significant "inconsistencies" between some responses and what happens on the ground.
The report was launched in New York on Friday, and it will be introduced in Melbourne, Australia on June 2 and inr Tokyo on June 3.
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Climate change: Boom or bust for biodiversity?
Reuters
By Ed Stoddard,
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-25/s_24213.asp
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Will climate change trigger mass extinctions or will new life bloom in its wake? Some of the scientific scenarios are apocalyptic and see a warmer world leading to the most profound changes since the demise of the dinosaurs.
"The biodiversity and nature impacts (of global warming) are well-documented.... All the signals are there: birds migrating earlier, flowers blooming earlier, seasons changing," said Jennifer Morgan, director of the climate change program for the conservation group WWF International.
Global warming could wipe out one-quarter of all species of plants and animals by 2050, according to one international study.
Others see a wetter and, hence, greener world as a result. Australians scientists said this month that a hotter planet could induce more rainfall, encouraging the growth of plants that soak up greenhouse gases.
Many scientists say any benefits to forest growth could not offset threats to biodiversity from human pollution, the spread of roads and cities, or rising sea levels tied to global warming.
Few scientists dispute the basic premise of the "greenhouse effect," which holds that human-induced carbon dioxide emissions are trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere. The debate intensifies when scientists attempt to forecast how fast and how far global temperatures will rise as a result.
Climate Change in the Past
One dramatic thesis asserts that humanity has been altering the Earth's climate for the past 8,000 years because of large-scale forest clearance for agriculture, which released huge amounts of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
In a paper published last year in the journal Climatic Change, William Ruddiman of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville argued that on the eve of Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, people had already raised the global temperature by an average of 0.8 degrees centigrade.
"The first phase is that of negligible human impact which stretches back, say, a million years ago. And then you have this middle phase, which begins 8,000 years ago with early agriculture and greenhouse gas levels rising slowly," Ruddiman said. "And since the Industrial Revolution there is a real acceleration (in greenhouse gas emissions) and, as a result, a stronger effect on climate," he said.
Ruddiman says that pre-industrial greenhouse gas emissions warmed the planet sufficiently to stop an ice age in its tracks. And the cause - widespread forest clearing - would almost certainly have had an impact on biodiversity, though Ruddiman himself has not speculated on this angle and declined to be drawn on it as it is not his field of expertise.
Habitat destruction is widely regarded by many ecologists as the biggest human-made reason for species loss or extinction.
Forest clearing in Europe 5,000 years ago would not be like the mechanized felling of tropical forests today. It may in fact have initially contributed to diversity, as early farmers would probably have left a variety of habitats in their wake, such as fields bordering forests, which could have benefited many species.
There is an intriguing flip side to this story.
Another Theory
Ruddiman maintains that this pre-industrial warming trend was at times reversed by reforestation in the northern hemisphere, a process set in motion by mass human deaths caused by pandemics of bubonic plague and other diseases.
His argument: The plague led to widespread abandonment of farms during the Roman empire and most spectacularly in the mid-14th century, when at least one-third of Europe's inhabitants perished in its wake between 1347 and 1350. Cultivated land also fell into disuse in the Americas because of smallpox, which devastated Native American populations as a result of their initial contacts with Europeans.
The result was that forests grew back and absorbed big enough quantities of greenhouse gases while they were at it to affect global climate patterns.
"Land-use modelers note that abandoned cropland and pasture reverts to full-forest carbon levels in 50 years or less," Ruddiman wrote. "Historical records indicate that reoccupation of farms occurred in less than a century if the plagues quickly abated but could be delayed by a century or two if repeated outbreaks kept population levels low."
This may have been a factor behind the "Little Ice Age" between 1300 and 1900, he maintains.
In short, the causes of human-induced climate change - never mind its effects - have probably already affected life on Earth in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand.
And in today's world of 6 billion people - compared with 200 million to 400 million 2,000 years ago, according to U.N. estimates - the causes of climate change may be having a far greater impact than at any other time in human history.
Pollution linked to the burning of greenhouse fossil fuels and the destruction of tropical rain forests is, in the view of most ecologists, taking a serious toll on the environment. The impact of drastic climate change itself on biodiversity may hold surprises which have not yet been imagined.
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Palestinians claim Israel dumped toxic waste in West Bank
Palestinian sources say nauseating odors led to barrels of Israeli chemical waste in Tulkarm refugee camp.
maarivintl.com
Itamar Inbari
2004-05-24
http://maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=7810
The Arabic language newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi, published in London, reported Monday that Israel is exporting toxic chemical waste into areas under Palestinian Authority control.
Palestinian sources told the paper that quantities of toxic chemical waste were discovered in the northern part of the West Bank. The sources claim that the waste originated in Israel and that it is an environmental and health hazard.
According to the report, Palestinians discovered the waste after "nauseating and choking" odors spread around the area of the Tulkarm refugee camp.
Tulkarm Municipality medical teams and representatives from the Palestinian Authority's health ministry rushed to the scene and found barrels of chemical waste. The Palestinians took samples of the waste for examination and to help determine the scope of damage it could have caused.
The Palestinian ministry of the environment's district manager, Atsam Kassem told the paper that the barrels contained sulfur and other dangerous chemicals.
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Divers assess fuel leakage from sunken car carrier off Singapore
Associated Press
By Yeoh En-Lai
Tuesday, May 25, 2004
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-05-25/s_24216.asp
SINGAPORE - Salvage divers jumped into deep, murky waters off Singapore on Monday to assess whether a ship that sank with 4,000 cars on board after colliding with an oil tanker has spilled any of its 990 tons (1,090 U.S. tons) of fuel oil, officials said.
"The damage, the hole, is huge. We're most afraid of oil leakage from any of the tanks," said spokeswoman Patsy Phay of Eukor Car Carriers, operators of the ship now lying in 40-meter (130-foot) -deep waters eight kilometers (five miles) off Singapore.
The Panama-registered car carrier MV Hyundai No. 105 sank Sunday after a head-on collision with oil tanker MT Kaminesan, which was carrying about 280,000 tons of crude oil in a busy shipping lane just south of Singapore.
MV Hyundai's crew of eight Koreans and 12 Filipinos abandoned ship 15 minutes before it sank in Indonesian waters with a cargo valued at US$40 million, Eukor said.
There was no leak from the oil tanker, but the collision tore a 50-by-20 meter (165-by-66 foot) hole in the side of the car carrier.
The MV Hyundai had about 990 tons of fuel for its journey to Europe, where it was to deliver 3,000 new Hyundai and Kia cars plus used Japanese cars in England and Germany.
Removal of oil from the 14,188-ton vessel will begin after permission is received from the Indonesian government, Eukor said. Phay said this is likely to occur in the next few days.
Two antipollution boats, one from agents for MV Hyundai and the other from Singapore authorities, were in the area checking for any leakage, the Maritime and Ports Authority said in a statement Monday.
The MPA said primary responsibility for the salvage rests with Indonesian authorities and Eukor but said it would provide assistance if necessary.
Phay said there were no initial reports of leakage from the divers.
The Panama-registered, 334,286-ton Kaminesan has been towed back to Singapore and anchored off the city-state's coast.
The cause of the accident was not clear. Weather was fine at the time and both ships communicated with each other before the crash, officials said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Judi Bari Day Marked By $4 Million From FBI, Oakland Police
May 25, 2004
OAKLAND, California, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2004/2004-05-25-091.asp
Supporters of Earth First! and the late redwoods forest activist Judi Bari gathered Monday at Oakland City Hall to commemorate the 2nd Annual Judi Bari Day as proclaimed by the City of Oakland.
The date commemmorates a car bombing in Oakland on May 24, 1990 in which Earth First! and Redwood Summer organizers Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney were the victims.
The 14 year series of events ended on May 7, as the FBI joined the City of Oakland in paying Cherney and the Bari estate a combined $4 million for violations of their First and Fourth Amendment rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. The FBI and the Oakland Police falsely accused Bari and Cherney of being terrorists injured by their own bomb. In Estate of Judi Bari v. Doyle, a jury in Ul.S. District Court in Oakland awarded $4.4 million to Cherney and the estate of Bari, who died of cancer in 1997.
In their June 2002 verdict, the jury found that Oakland police and FBI agents wrongly blamed the pair for the explosion in an effort to silence their environmental activism under the false cover of a "terrorist" investigation.
All parties in April agreed to a post-trial settlement contract that left the jury verdict intact and awarded the plaintiffs and attorneys a total of $4 million, half paid by the City of Oakland and half by the FBI. It is the largest amount ever paid by the FBI in a lawsuit for violations of civil rights. The $2 million federal share has been paid, and Oakland has paid the first of four annual installments of $500,000. After the money is distributed, no individual involved with this case will net more than $500,000.
City Attorney spokesperson Karen Boyd said the city decided against appealing and agreed to settle as a business decision. "What we analyzed was looking at a settlement in hand versus an unknown future," said Boyd.
"A lot of compromises were made by all parties," Cherney said when informed of the City Council decision. "We knew that Oakland was facing hard times, so we decided to be reasonable and forgo our motion for attorneys' fees if they were willing to be reasonable and offer us a respectable settlement."
The actual perpetrator of the bombing was never caught, nor was any genuine investigation of the bombing carried out, but the FBI and the Oakland Police Department continued to blame the victims right through the 2002 federal jury trial.
Veteran civil rights attorney Dennis Cunningham led the legal team of Bob Bloom, Tony Serra, William Simpich and Ben Rosenfeld, all of the San Francisco Bay Area. "It took 11 years to bring this David v. Goliath case to trial," Cunningham said, "but when a jury of regular people finally saw the evidence, and saw the lies, the FBI was finally busted."
For their work on this case, legal team members shared the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award for 2003, given by Trial Lawyers for Public Justice (www.tlpj.org ) The official award announcement said: "This award is bestowed annually upon the trial lawyer or lawyers who have made the greatest contribution to the public interest by trying or settling a precedent-setting case. It is the nation's single most prestigious award for trial lawyers."
Alicia Littletree, Bari's close friend and associate who was the legal team's paralegal, said Bari might react to the victory by continuing the fight. "I have a feeling Judi wouldn't have gotten over the fact that the bombing is still not solved," Littletree said. "That is a lingering part of the fight. Judi would not give up just because the money came in."
Cherney has vowed to continue the investigation of the bombing. As part of the post-trial settlement, Cherney negotiated the return of all evidence in the case and convinced the Oakland City Council to proclaim May 24 to be Judi Bari Day.
As Bari said in 1996, "This case is not about me, Darryl, or Earth First! It is about the right of all activists to work for social change without fearing repression by the government's secret police."
Find out more about Judi Bari and the FBI lawsuit please visit: http://www.judibari.org
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Survivor groups hit for use of 9/11
May 25, 2004
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040525-120156-8810r.htm
President Bush made his early reputation for toughness in the face of the terrorist challenge with his response to the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, but some of his severest critics now are members of survivor families.
Some members of the families were particularly harsh in their testimony last week to the commission investigating the September 11 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 persons died.
One of the groups is linked, indirectly, to a foundation chaired by Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
Two of the groups, the September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and the Jersey Girls have been particularly harsh in their criticism of Mr. Bush's use of September 11 video footage in campaign ads.
Peaceful Tomorrows advocates rolling back sections of the administration-backed USA Patriot Act, which it describes as "serious threats to the exercise of our constitutional rights."
The groups' efforts have prompted conservative organizations as well as pundits and watchdog agencies to accuse the groups of using September 11 for partisanship - accusations that both organizations deny.
In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal called the Jersey Girls "subsidiaries of established anti-Bush forces - political entities committed to defeating the president this fall."
Colleen Kelly, Peaceful Tomorrows' New York regional spokeswoman, yesterday said such assertions are inaccurate and said the group did not receive funding from those seeking to influence elections.
Her group seeks only "to learn the truth about what happened that day, in the days leading up to it and to protect the country against future attacks."
Peaceful Tomorrows says it has a membership of 122 relatives of September 11 victims and "thousands of supporters," and describes itself as an "advocacy organization" founded by family members of September 11 victims who are united in seeking "effective, nonviolent solutions to terrorism."
"Many have described us as a driving force in this investigation, when actually it's the families' steering committee," said Mrs. Kelly, referring to the group's 12-member committee of relatives of September 11 victims.
"All they are looking for is the truth of what happened and how it can be kept from happening again."
Peaceful Tomorrows, however, has a relationship with the liberal San Francisco-based Tides Foundation and a subsidiary organization known as the Tides Center, which have given $1.5 million to antiwar efforts since the September 11 attacks. Several members of Peaceful Tomorrows were arrested last year outside the Capitol Building in Washington protesting the Iraq war.
The Tides Foundation separately is tied to endowments chaired by Mrs. Kerry, heiress to the $500 million Heinz fortune.
The Howard Heinz Endowment and the Vira I. Heinz Endowment awarded the Tides Foundation grants totaling $230,000 from 1994 to 1998 to support a pollution prevention initiative and other environmentally friendly practices by industries in Western Pennsylvania. The Tides Center has received additional support from the Heinz Endowments, specifically to support projects in Pennsylvania.
The Tides Foundation, Tides center and Groundspring.org provide Peaceful Tomorrows with administrative and financial services. Peaceful Tomorrows pays as a fee 9 percent of all the funds it raises. In 2002 and 2003, the foundation gave Peaceful Tomorrows four grants totaling $34,665.
The Jersey Girls, according to September 11 commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey, were instrumental in getting the commission organized. He said he doubts "very much" that the commission would be in business without the involvement of the Jersey Girls.
The Jersey Girls, a handful of New Jersey women who lost their husbands in the suicide strikes on the World Trade Center, have accused the Bush administration of failing to properly respond to the September 11 attacks and not knowing beforehand such attacks were imminent, despite intelligence hints. Three of its members are on the families' steering committee at Peaceful Tomorrows.
They have singled out National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice for criticism, saying she failed to do her job. One of the group's most quoted members, Kristen Breitweiser, routinely says the nearly 3,000 people who died on September 11 were "murdered on Bush's watch."
When the September 11 commission said it lacked sufficient funds to get the job done, the Jersey Girls lobbied Congress to get more money allocated for the project. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Illinois Republican, at first would not agree, but relented when the Jersey Girls confronted him at his Washington office.
Much of the criticism of the Jersey Girls originated on the Web site FreeRepublic.com and with Rush Limbaugh. They accused the women of partisan politics in an effort to damage Mr. Bush's re-election chances.
Mr. Limbaugh said the women were "poisoned by their hate," referring to the organization as Democratic "campaign consultants ... not grieving family members ... obsessed with rage and hatred."
The New Jersey women came together after the Justice Department announced a $15 billion victims' compensation fund. They said the package was arbitrary and unfair, stating their position in a letter to the department, which was signed by hundreds of September 11 relatives.
The fund later announced the average settlement would be $1.85 million, $200,000 higher than previously estimated. The Jersey Girls then turned their attention to calling for an independent investigation of September 11, which Congress later approved in a 90-8 vote.
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Attention all vote fraud activists: This can happen to you!
Well known Teller County, CO activist, Lotus, was jailed illegally by judge Jackson Peters on May 18 after a lengthy and ongoing battle to preserve his right to protest the use of unverifiable computerized voting machines used in Teller County.
Lotus staged a courageous "Tea Party" on election day by throwing a handful of dry green tea bags at the machines, calling for them to be withdrawn from use in the name of democracy and the safety of the future of the Republic. He has been jailed for this act, and the use of easily rigged computerzied voting machines continues.
Lotus plans to file criminal charges against Judge Peters because he committed perjury in sentencing. Lotus feels he is now incarcerated illegally. The judge made erroneous statements into the record which he has been known to do in other cases.
Lotus also filed an Ex Parte Writ of Habeus Corpus with the US Supreme Court.
The Nation magazine is on top of this story as are local newspapers. Any help is appreciated in getting this out to the press.
For more information on Lotus' case, and what you can do to help, please call 719-330-3699
For more information on the battle to save democracy from corporate take-over by computer, visit http://www.wesavedemocracy.org
RE: Tea Party Jailed Illegally, Calls for Removal, Disbarring of Judge Peters
Letter to the Editor
On May 18, 2004, Teller County Judge Jackson Peters perjured himself, put false information in the public record, violated his oath of office and had Lotus illegally jailed.
During a Motion for Reconsideration, Reversal of Judgment and Dismissal, Lotus entered new information, proving that the Complaint against him was invalid and not in the form of an Affidavit and thus in violation of C.R.S. 31-10-1501. There is no statute providing for a Woodland Park Police Officer to issue a Summons for an election offense as if it were a traffic ticket as was done against Lotus.
In responding to the Motion, Judge Peters lied stating that this completely new information had already been considered on Appeal and proceeded to have Lotus jailed for 10 days. The fact that new information was discovered and that the procedure for election offenses had not been followed gave Judge Peters room to reverse his prior sentencing and dismiss the entire case.
The 9 tea bags thrown at the vote counting computer constituted no more harm to the computer than throwing a piece of paper on the machine and did not disrupt the election process.
Teller Woodland Green Tea party is calling on people to contact the District Attorney for Teller County, the Colorado Attorney General, the Governor, and the judicial regulatory council which is a division of the Colorado Supreme Court. It is time to demand that Judge Peters be investigated, removed from office and disbarred for perjury and the illegal jailing of Lotus for throwing 9 tea bags on a voting machine in protest of the electronic voting machines.
The people promoting the black box secret vote counting computers are committing treason and destroying our Republic from within, since our Republic is based on an accurate, verifiable and transparent vote count.
Lotus Teller Woodland Green Tea Party 330-3699
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Abu Ghraib Prisoners Freed During Sit-In
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 25, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A52972-2004May24.html
BAGHDAD, May 24 -- About 20 Iraqis walked out of Abu Ghraib prison Monday into the arms of an ebullient crowd staging a vigil to protest U.S. soldiers' treatment of inmates at the facility.
Protesters waved Iraqi flags and chanted "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) as they raced across a highway toward the prison's gate in response to news of the men's release.
The newly freed detainees were escorted to a tent set up across the road, where they were given water and food. Some sobbed as organizers of the vigil recorded their names.
Hundreds of people had gathered at a hot, dusty spot across the highway from the prison gate Monday in answer to a call that went out at mosques during prayer services on Friday.
Through much of the day, the demonstration felt more like a religious revival or family reunion than a protest. People pitched tents and hung banners that read in English and Arabic: "Enough humiliation to the detainees" and "Return back the parents to their families."
A young boy with a green towel draped over his head sold soda from a plastic cooler filled with ice. A contingent from the city of Fallujah sat inside one of the colorful striped tents, eating chicken, biscuits and cold pickles.
When a rose-colored tour bus drove by and honked in support, a man planting an Iraqi flag stopped to wave. "This is what any honest Iraqi would do," said Mohammed Yaseen, 37, a Fallujah resident and member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which organized the sit-in. "We are doing our best to push the occupiers to release our detainees."
Following the disclosure of abuse at the prison, U.S. officials announced plans to halve its population, which now stands at about 3,400, according to Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the military's top spokesman in Iraq.
U.S. military officials said they plan to release about 400 detainees on Friday. It was not immediately clear how Monday's batch of released prisoners was chosen or whether their release was in any way caused by the demonstrators' presence outside.
Seven soldiers from the 372nd Military Police Company from Cresaptown, Md., have been charged with abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. One of them, Spec. Jeremy Sivits, was sentenced last week to a year in prison after pleading guilty to four counts of abuse.
[Speaking Monday night at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., President Bush called for demolishing the prison.]
At the vigil, Hasoon Abood Fajr, 33, from the southern city of Mahaweel, said he was concerned that the abusers would not be appropriately punished and made a point heard often at the gathering. "They should be tried by the Iraqi law since they tortured Iraqis," he said, sitting in a tent for participants from his community. "No religion approves what they did, even Christianity, which they claim they belong to. They do only what brutal animals do."
Hussein Suheil, 22, one of the prisoners freed on Monday, said he spent nine months in Abu Ghraib on charges of possessing weapons and attacking U.S. soldiers. "They treated us badly, very badly," he said. "I cannot describe the situation for you. You should see it. The simple thing they did is that they made prisoners walk naked, without any respect to dignity. "
Suheil said interrogators sprayed a substance into his eyes and nose that made him dizzy.
By his account, treatment in the prison improved after the scandal broke. "After the pictures published in all of the newspapers, the Americans changed their way of treating us," he said. "They started treating us kindly."
Adnan Baraa, 28, who sat in the Mahaweel tent eating lunch, said he had three relatives in the prison. "But what brought me here is not only them but all of the detainees being abused day and night," he said.
Special correspondent Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.
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