Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Freeing Iraq from a Fulfilling Childhood
Latvian nuclear reactor to be decommissioned with U.S. funds
India sets dovish tone with Pakistan,
Why Musharraf called Vajpayee
US welcomes India-Pakistan peace talks
Iran Largely Welcomes Report on Nukes
Iran: Report Shows No Nukes
Iran Retains Option of Refining Uranium
Iran repeats warning to Israel against bombing nuclear facilities
More possibly bomb-grade highly enriched uranium found in Iran - IAEA
Watchdog Blasts Iran On Nuclear Program
US accuses Iran of nuclear 'deceit and denial'
ISRAEL BELIEVES IRAN FALLS BEHIND IN NUKE PROGRAM
Only a matter of time before terrorists use 'dirty bomb'
Kerry Details Nuclear Material Safeguards
Kerry addresses 300 in Riviera Beach
Kerry Proposes Nuclear Plan
Kerry Promises Speedier Efforts to Secure Nuclear Arms
Kerry warns of nuke-terror threat
'IAEA unable to verify Pak-Iran nuclear link'
Public can speak on MOX fuel plan June 15
No cause found yet in outage at nuclear plant
AREVA Decontamination Method Chosen for Demonstration and Testing
Debate Intensifies on Nuclear Waste
MILITARY
U.S. lacks plan to end Afghanistan drug trade
Fighting in the Shadow of Iraq
Bin Laden within reach of US-led force several times
U.S. Command Requires More Armored Humvees for Iraq, Army Says
Kerry Vows to Work With Allies on Bioweapons Ban
Half of Britons against Iraq war
E-Mail Links Cheney's Office, Contract
Accenture Is Awarded U.S. Contract for Borders
Taiwan seeks special 18.2 bln military budget amid tensions with China
China war games seen as 'message'
U.S. Begins Transfer of a Shaky Haiti to U.N. Hands
Interim Leaders Named In Iraq
Iraqi group parades 'collaborators'
Iraq Group Threatens to Kill Hostages
Bombs, Bullets and Kidnappings: Just a Quiet Day in Iraq
UN Members Say Iraq Needs More Control of Its Army
Full sovereignty in Iraq might not be so
Iraq Moves Ahead, But Attacks Persist
6 Killed As U.S. Fights Militants in Iraq
Tribespeople resist Israel's government-built towns
Attackers Hit Saudi Police At Checkpoint
Pakistan may launch air strikes against militants in tribal area
Shi'ites riot over bombing
U.S. Is Sued Over Records of Military Prisoner Abuse
Powell Presses C.I.A. on Faulty Intelligence on Iraq Arms
Chalabi Warned Iranians, U.S. Says
Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code
Many Hurdles Ahead for U.S.
U.N. Envoy Urges Iraqis to Give New Leaders a Chance
Army Expanding Program to Keep Soldiers on Duty
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Abortion ban ruled unconstitutional
U.S. Details Case Against Terror Suspect
U.S. Spells Out Dangers Posed by Plot Suspect
Rules for Interrogating Juveniles Are Upheld
Database on U.S. Visitors Set for Huge Expansion
POLITICS
Bush Outlines Terror Strategy at Air Force Academy
Neocon Collapse in Washington and Baghdad
Management Style Shows Weaknesses
Kerry Long Distrusted Iraqi Leader Chalabi
Kerry criticized on Patriot Act
ENERGY
World Bank vows to raise lending for renewable energy
Green groups worried about outcome for renewable energy conference
Electrical power plants are the main polluters in North America
OTHER
U.S. to Divulge More About Modified Crops
ACTIVISTS
Canadian Studio Plans to Distribute Moore's 9/11 Film
Kach supporters chase away Vanunu
Dalai Lama worried about moves to lift EU arms embargo on China
New York expecting protesters
Syrian dissident walks free
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- depleted uranium
Freeing Iraq from a Fulfilling Childhood
By Joanne Baker
02/06/2004
Islam Online
http://www.islam-online.net/English/Science/2004/06/article01.shtml
"Whereas the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care..."
"Whereas mankind owes the child the best it has to give." Declaration of the Rights of the Child, 1959
It is a tragedy for the children of Iraq that the United Nations gave the power of occupation of their country to the only nation in the world (apart from the stateless Somalia) not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We should not be surprised that in the past year the children of Iraq have been subjected to every breach of human rights imaginable and that the United States aided and abetted by Britain have shredded the most fundamental tenets of our common humanity.
To enter Iraq one year after occupation is like visiting another world. I remember an April day in Baghdad two years ago, watching some young girls playing happily and safely in the street outside their home, and praying that the US would never invade this beautiful city. I don't know where those children are now, whether they are alive or dead, but even my fearful imaginings of that time could not grasp the terrible reality that was to come.
The children of Iraq now live in a permanent state of fear and insecurity. It is difficult for the world at large to grasp that their situation is far worse now than it was at the time of Saddam and sanctions. Looking back to Iraq of 2002, it now seems a relatively golden era. Even those who suffered under Saddam are now angered by the occupation. They are angry because in post war Iraq all protection for the family and every semblance of security have been taken away. Some are saying that the occupiers have managed to do more damage to Iraq in one year than Saddam did in thirty!
Vicious Circle of Poverty and Hunger
In June/July 2003, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) sent a mission to Iraq. They found that approximately 48% of the population was food insecure and that while starvation had been averted, "chronic malnutrition problems persist especially among vulnerable groups including children and mothers due to a lack of nutrition diversity".
They emphasized that only a marked improvement in the economy as a whole would change the situation because, although there was potentially enough food in Iraq, half the population lacked the buying power for a sustained nutritious diet. This was due to unemployment, chronic poverty and the absence of a head of household.
Now, a year on, this situation has deteriorated on all three counts. Unemployment has risen; many more men have either been killed or are detained in concentration camps leaving women to fend alone, and chronic poverty is worsened by a substantial rise in prices and the absence of any state subsidies. A Christian Aid survey of a poor area of Baghdad showed that two-thirds of poor children no longer go to school. They are often kept at home to help their parents. For some, the only household income is the food ration continued from the oil-for-food deal - rice, sugar, flour, pulses, cooking oil, tea, soap and detergent - the US have removed all dairy products except for infants, and even one of these most basic items may be missing. It provides calories but virtually no protein and no micronutrients.
Before the war, a draft document leaked from the office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned that the Iraqi people were far more vulnerable to any major conflict than they had been in 1991. "Of particular concern are the high levels of existing vulnerability and the dependence of most of the population on the Government of Iraq for their most basic needs...All but the most privileged have exhausted their assets and, in most cases, their cash assets."
Now the Government of Iraq has been dismantled and even people's meager savings are at risk from US looting. With no functioning banks, people are forced to keep money and valuables in their homes. It is routine practice for US troops to confiscate (i.e. steal) all savings, jewellery and valuables during their raids. To give an example, Occupation Watch asked us to speak to a single mother with three children whose house was raided early one morning. She had hidden her savings under a cupboard, but the soldiers discovered it when trashing her home. They took this along with her fourteen-year-old son who is now detained in a concentration camp. She not only fears desperately for her son, but has no money to care for her other children. This is a common event in occupied Iraq.
Health System Dismantled
Perhaps one of the greatest crimes of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) has been to dismantle an entire state apparatus, effectively unraveling the fragile systems of survival for millions of people. All senior civil servants have been dismissed as members of the Ba'ath party and now Iraq is administratively in complete chaos.
The Ministry of Health, for example, has been unable to provide a single hospital in Iraq with any medication since the beginning of the occupation despite the fact it now has a $3 billion budget. When Professor Khondah, head of the Gynecology Department at Medical City, questioned the Ministry about this, he was told that trucks of medicines paid for by the Iraqis were entering Iraq but were being directed immediately into Iran and Turkey.
This is not a small matter, especially as the occupiers are legally bound by the Geneva Conventions to ensure "the food and medical supplies of the population". It is a disgrace to Britain and America that UNICEF is reporting a rise in acute and chronic malnutrition amongst children since the occupation that doctors are observing a significant decline in birth weight, and epidemics of water-borne diseases such as typhoid and cholera are spiraling.
The Reconstruction Farce
One of the most illusive concepts in post-war Iraq is that of 'reconstruction'. In June/July 2003 we were shocked by the lack of electricity in Baghdad, the pools of sewage, the bombed out buildings and bridges. In April 2004 nothing had changed - except for the worse!
Some NGOs are struggling to stem the deterioration with their limited means but where are the great US corporations and where is all the money going? The only construction we saw in Baghdad was concrete blockades and reams of razor wire.
Iraqis are understandably confused and angry. Saddam's regime, under the most ferocious embargo, was able to repair buildings, bridges, roads, water systems, electricity and telephone services in a matter of months. Iraqi engineers are supreme in their ability to 'fix'. The US with its seemingly infinite resources has managed to do nothing at all, and in the meantime the people suffer.
Children succumb to water-borne diseases; in the hot months of the summer they cry all night from thirst and in the winter there is little light or heating. The destruction of Baghdad's telephone exchanges means no communication and breeds a terrible sense of fear and insecurity. Mobile phones now sell at $150 plus. Few can afford them.
Wanton Killing and Terrorizing of Children
If lack of food, clean water and medicines are the silent killers, far more overt and deliberate crimes are taking place. These include the indiscriminate shooting of children, indefinite detention of children in concentration camps, willful terrorizing of children and indiscriminate bombing and maiming.
Many children are simply shot in cold blood. Amnesty International has cited the case of an eight-year-old child being shot by a British soldier in Basra; an 11-year-old boy was shot by a drunken US soldier when she fired indiscriminately into a market square from her tank; a four-year-old boy was shot dead for playing with a toy gun outside his home in Baghdad; a mother and child were shot in the head while climbing into an ambulance in Fallujah; a seven-year-old boy was shot in the leg while sleeping in bed, resulting in its amputation, and so the list goes on and on. These are well-documented cases.
Children, as young as 11, are being interned in concentration camps without any legal help. Often they are kept as hostages for their fathers or are detained in mass punishment raids. A sixteen-year-old described to a Christian Peacemaker Team how he was arrested with other male members of his family and was kept standing in the sun (50°C) for two days with his hands tied so he could not drink. When he pleaded for water, he was severely beaten. He was eventually released and made to walk home in just his underwear, which was deeply shaming. His mother says he now has constant nightmares.
While UNICEF and other humanitarian bodies are questioning such treatment, it seems that no one is asking why any child in Iraq should be interned at all - unless it is to keep them with their families, in which case very stringent rules apply under the Geneva conventions. We have on video an interview with the head of the Red Cross in Baghdad last July, who told us bluntly that the Red Cross was bound by an agreement with the US not to disclose anything it witnessed. He could not even disclose whether or not the US was upholding the Geneva Conventions and he certainly could not facilitate any legal access to a client. Considering the appalling revelations of torture and abuse that are now emerging and that children as well as adults are detained, this is of tremendous concern and should be questioned at the highest level.
Children are being terrorized by troops raiding their homes. During such raids they may witness many forms of physical and verbal abuse, including the shooting dead of family members. They are terrorized by tanks and blockades in the streets and by violent behavior. US soldiers often shoot at cars indiscriminately. A doctor told me how her friend's husband was shot dead while driving his children to school. The children were still in the car and when bystanders tried to take care of the body, they were prevented from doing so. Another father was shot dead while going to work in a taxi, leaving his widow with no means to bring up the children.
Often whole areas or villages are cordoned off. The children feel terrified and trapped. In a telling report, aid-worker Helen Williams wrote: "In Abu Ghraib, just outside Baghdad, no one has been able to leave/enter the town for over one week because the Americans are blocking the roads. If the children see a helicopter or tank attacking someone, the parents say 'why, this is democracy and freedom' - the children are now scared of democracy and freedom!"
An Iraqi NGO called Childhood's Voice has set up two centers in poor areas of Baghdad, which work with local children and street children, giving them opportunities to do art, music, and drama. They told us that the children come with many behavioral problems including aggression, depression and anxiety. They are responding to the work done at the centers but progress is very fragile and can easily be halted or reversed by negative events.
The massacre of Fallujah in April had a devastating impact. Hundreds of children in Fallujah were killed, maimed, lost close family members, had their homes destroyed and were left deeply traumatized. Many fled to Baghdad as refugees to stay with relatives or to be housed in Red Crescent camps. They came with terrible stories and no one in Baghdad was unaffected. It is generally believed that every child in Iraq is suffering from some level of post- traumatic stress.
Rehabilitation Faces Many Challenges
After so much devastating military action, Iraq has an extraordinary number of children with disabilities and there is virtually nothing in the way of rehabilitation. Baghdad's main rehabilitation hospital was seriously looted by an armed gang last April and had 80% of its equipment and materials taken. Nothing has been replaced. There is currently no material for making prosthesis in Iraq.
In March last year, 13-year-old Nagan heard a loud explosion and ran up to the flat roof of her house to investigate. She stepped on one of the cluster bomblets that had been scattered across her neighborhood and her leg was sliced off just below the knee. She now has a temporary prosthesis, which she finds very painful. She is too traumatized to go back to school.
In July 2003, UNICEF reported over one thousand injuries and child deaths caused by unexploded ordnance - many of them from cluster bombs - and noted 800 hazardous sites in Baghdad alone. We were told by Help, a German/Swedish de-mining NGO in Baghdad, that the US would give them no assistance in locating sites, let alone help clearing them. Nagan's district had been cleared by an Iraqi soldier and residents had written a warning message on a wall. With 300,000 bomblets showered across Iraq last year and more again in Fallujah, and with a 30% failure rate, the toll will continue daily. Children, especially those under five, are at greatest risk.
Radioactive Children
The director of the rehabilitation hospital also told us that apart from war victims, many of his patients are children with cerebral palsy. This problem has increased greatly since 1991 and he fears it may be due to the increase in radioactivity following the use of depleted uranium weapons. Downs syndrome has also increase by 4. 5-fold and there is a steep rise in genetic birth defects.
In Basra, childhood malignancies and leukemia were seen to have risen 384% and 300% respectively in areas heavily contaminated with DU. In 1991 the allies used around 350 tons in Southern Iraq and in this latest war the amount is unknown. It could range from 200 tons to 2000 tons. Unless US weapons systems are inspected, we may never know, but an increase in genetic illnesses and malignancies in the next few years will give some indication.
Children again are more vulnerable than adults to radioactivity and chemical toxicity due to their fast cell growth, and as DU has a half-life of 4. 5billion years, this could affect countless generations. Visiting a gynecology ward in a major Baghdad hospital in April, we were told that there had been a marked increase in congenital abnormalities in February and March of this year, almost a year after the initial bombing. If this pattern continues, it deserves some serious research.
If anything has improved in post war Iraq, it is that cancer drugs and pain relief are no longer sanctioned and are being provided by some NGOs. But with the health system in disarray, a general lack of medicines, and patients often unable to get to hospitals, many of Iraq's children are unnecessarily sick and dying. The environment in Iraq is heavily polluted from a number of sources and as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has emphasized, in any matter of post conflict clean up "timeliness is paramount".
Blatant Unpreparedness
Iraq is just one example of the hypocrisy of the West in regard to human and environmental rights. Those who campaigned so vociferously against the human rights abuses of Saddam Hussein are now silent in the face of a far worse genocide. Many choose to ignore the fact that Iraq of the 1980s rose to 67th place in the Human Development Index, had the best health care in the Middle East and excellent education, with a virtual eradication of illiteracy. The majority of children in Iraq, even under Saddam, had happy and healthy childhoods. This is very far from the plight of children in 2004.
Even if the war had been legal, knowing the vulnerability of the majority of the population of Iraq and of its children in particular, the occupation should have been prepared for. The failure of the US and UK to form any coherent post-Saddam policy and to refuse to adhere to the international conventions they are bound to is criminal. It shows a complete disregard for the people of Iraq and makes a lie of any humanitarian concern.
The children of Iraq are paying the price, not of conflict, but of a deep-seated colonial mindset that we in the West have still not managed to discard. If we are to stand by the human rights conventions we so seriously enacted after 1945, then they must be seen to be applied universally. Let us collectively ensure that they are applied in Iraq and that there is some hope and justice for Iraq's children.
Joanne Baker is director of Child Victims of War. She has been a frequent visitor to Iraq since 1999 - initially to campaign against the sanctions and to research into the health effects of depleted uranium. She has been to Baghdad twice since the occupation, in June/July 2003 and from 27th March - 22nd April 2004.
Child Victims of War has been set up as a response to the dire situation of children in Iraq since the war. Their particular concern is with the environmental effects of warfare and the effects on children's health and well being. In Iraq, they are promoting research into the health effects of depleted uranium and aiding the rehabilitation of children injured by cluster bombs and other unexploded ordinance. They intend their work to be community based and welcome your support.
You can reach them at: info@childvictimsofwar
The above article will be published in the next edition of Third World Resurgence Magazine. Health & Science
Please feel free to contact the Health & Science editor at: ScienceTech@islam-online.net
-------- europe
Latvian nuclear reactor to be decommissioned with U.S. funds
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
By Timothy Jacobs,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-02/s_24440.asp
RIGA, Latvia - A nuclear reactor in this Baltic state will be decommissioned and its uranium sent to neighboring Russia under the auspices of a new U.S. program to stem the availability of material that could be used in dirty bombs, officials said Tuesday.
Andris Salmins, director of the Latvian Radiation Safety Center, said that Latvia's Salaspils Nuclear Reactor will have its waste nuclear fuel removed as part of the US$450 million Global Threat Reduction Initiative unveiled last week in Vienna by U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, concerns have mounted that terrorists might be trying to acquire material for a so-called dirty bomb, a device that uses conventional explosives to spread low-level radioactive material over several city blocks.
The Salaspils nuclear reactor, located 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of the capital, Riga, was built in 1961 during the Soviet occupation of Latvia for research into highly enriched uranium. It has never been used to generate energy.
The facility was closed in 1999 after the government decided it was obsolete, but the plant's decommissioning, including the removal of its nuclear waste, has been put off several times because of a lack of funds.
Under the U.S. plan, Salmins said Latvia will only pay a small percentage of the costs of removing the spent fuel. He said the decommissioning is expected to done by 2010.
Latvia will pay for the fuel to be stored in Latvia and then shipped to Russia. The United States will pay for the transportation of the fuel inside Russia and for its storage and recycling there.
Salmins said the complete cost of decommissioning and removing the uranium could range between US$10 million-US$20 million but said the figures were initial estimates.
-------- india / pakistan
India sets dovish tone with Pakistan,
China in call for nuclear coordination
NEW DELHI (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602090246.lml74psb.html
By calling for a "common nuclear doctrine" with Pakistan and China, India is adopting a non-aggressive tone towards two neighbours with which it has had uneasy ties, analysts said Wednesday.
But analysts said the new Indian government's proposal was still in its initial stages and it would take time to flesh out any three-way dialogue among Asia's declared nuclear states.
Natwar Singh, the foreign minister in India's new left-leaning government, said Tuesday that India and Pakistan "are now nuclear powers and so is China."
"The three countries should get together and work out a common nuclear doctrine. This is a matter that needs to be discussed at the highest level," Singh said.
The remarks are a change in tone from the early statements of the previous government led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The last administration called China the top threat that justified India's controversial 1998 decision to test nuclear weapons and responded angrily when the United States urged a role for Beijing in easing tensions with Pakistan.
But a year ago, then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee visited China and the world's two most populous countries agreed to step up dialogue to resolve their border disputes, which triggered a war in 1962.
"Both the BJP and the new Congress government pursue a policy that those Americans who would hope to use India as a strategic balance to China would find troublesome," said Stephen Cohen, an expert on South Asian military affairs at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
Singh, a 73-year-old career diplomat and stalwart of the ruling Congress party, also said Tuesday that India and Pakistan would hold discussions on June 19-20 on easing nuclear tensions.
In Pakistan, foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan told AFP that Singh's statement on a three-way nuclear dialogue "looks like a new and innovative proposal which needs further and deeper examination."
Riffat Hussain, head of the strategic studies department at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, said Singh seemed to suggest that Pakistan was an equal player in the "trilateral nuclear equation."
"It is significant because so far the Indians have been arguing that their security concerns go beyond Pakistan and they have refused the effort by the international community to have India, Pakistan and China sit together and talked about nuclear issues," Hussain said.
But while India has historically been concerned about the nuclear arsenal of China, the opposite does not seem to be the case, with Beijing's nuclear strategies built around Russia and the United States.
The Indian proposal "will help in China's efforts to improve relations between India and Pakistan," said David Zweig, a China watcher at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
"China wants to become a regional player, and it's a region where it can have some influence," he said.
The first Indian premier to visit China after the border war was Rajiv Gandhi in 1988 who had called for a nuclear-free world by the end of the 20th century.
The Congress party, now led by Gandhi's widow Sonia Gandhi, has kept some of the idealistic tone.
The coalition government platform said India will take "a leadership role in promoting universal nuclear disarmament" although it would maintain a "credible nuclear weapons program."
C. Raja Mohan, a strategic analyst who writes for The Hindu newspaper, cautioned not to overinterpret Singh's statement, as it did not appear to be a concrete proposal.
"There is already an agreement with Pakistan on nuclear confidence-building measures and between India and China there is a nuclear dialogue. The question of harmonisation of these dialogues is not a practical proposition," he said.
----
Why Musharraf called Vajpayee
By Siddharth Srivastava
Jun 2, 2004
Asia Times
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FF02Df01.html
NEW DELHI - This is one achievement of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government that need not be undone - shooting off one's mouth on Indian-Pakistan relations that may hamper the process kick-started by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The first two weeks of the Congress-led Manmohan Singh government have witnessed this precise pitfall - too many people talking about too many subjects related to the two neighbors, including the issue that needles Pakistan the most, Kashmir.
Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf on Monday took the unprecedented step of calling up Vajpayee, and in a 15-minute conversation urged him to remain involved in guiding relations between the two countries. This move surely could not have gone down too well with the current establishment headed by the chairman of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and president of the Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi.
It all began well for the Manmohan Singh government, with mandatory phone calls from across the border, including Musharraf's, congratulating him as well as Sonia. An invitation was also extended to Sonia to visit Pakistan as the next big symbolic act of friendship between the two countries, after the Vajpayee-Musharraf handshake in Islamabad last January - all within protocol and an acceptance of the fact that there are no dual centers of power in Delhi, just one, which is Sonia. The Manmohan visit could follow where the nitty-gritty of alliances and pacts can be further ironed out and a comfort zone of communication, as with the last government, established.
The problems started when new External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh in an interview last week chose to talk about Kashmir to the media in terms not very palatable to Pakistan. Singh said his usual bit about downplaying Vajpayee's achievements in foreign policy and laying credit for the current entente on the framework established by Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister. This was expected. Singh also talked about the importance of the Non Aligned Movement and of India following an independent foreign policy rather than being linked too closely with the United States, including his displeasure with the Vajpayee government's support to the National Missile Defense program. This too was along expected lines.
What raised the hackles of Pakistan was Singh's declaration that India and Pakistan should follow the Sino-India model in foreign relations, wherein border disputes have been put aside to move forward in other areas. "I tell our Pakistan friends you are very friendly with China, why don't you follow their example? They put the border [problem] aside. Why are you harping on Kashmir and blocking everything? Let us put Kashmir aside; it doesn't disappear, but let us get on with everything else."
What has followed is a war of words and a hardening of stance harking back to the pre-peace-process days. Musharraf criticized Natwar Singh in an interview and impressed on the centrality of Kashmir in all talks between India and Pakistan.
When reminded of Singh's interview, in which he also said that the July 1972 Simla Agreement would form the "bedrock" of India-Pakistan relations, Musharraf said: "Well, I believe I am a very pragmatic person. I believe in ground realities. Every agreement is interpreted differently by different people and different governments. If he [Natwar Singh] means that there will be no movement or a status quo decision, well, I beg to totally differ with him. That is not the solution. If the Line of Control [separating the Pakistani and Indian-administered sections of Kashmir] is to be made permanent and that is all, this is not the solution. If he means we will go by the Simla Agreement, then I don't agree with him. But if he means that we need to address the Kashmir issue and solve it through dialogue, then we will follow the Simla Agreement," he was quoted by the Daily Times as saying.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri has reiterated much of what Musharraf said. Natwar Singh further complicated matters by telling reporters that Musharraf "should take the advice of his foreign minister" before commenting on relations with India. Indian Foreign Secretary Shashank did nothing to douse the fire when he said in a statement that Pakistan was deliberately trying to get in the way of India-Pakistan dialogue and used words such as "menace of terrorism" that have not been part of either nation's lexicon in the past few months.
To invite further trouble, new union Home Minister Shivraj Patil deviated from official policy to condemn Pakistan's recent testing of a Ghauri missile as "escalating the arms race". Patil is obviously not familiar with the Indian government's long-standing policy of not criticizing Islamabad for testing its missiles. In April 1999, Jaswant Singh, who was foreign minister then, reacted to the testing of a Ghauri missile by saying: "There is no arms race, there is no danger." In October 2002, after Pakistan tested the Shaheen-I, Yashwant Sinha said: "They are a sovereign country, they have tested their missiles, good luck to them." After the May 25, 2002, Ghauri test, Nirupama Rao, who was the Foreign Ministry spokesperson at the time, said: "We do not take it seriously ... we are not perturbed. It is part of the stocks, clandestinely procured by Pakistan, and aimed at addressing a domestic audience." Vajpayee also said: "We don't take the test-firing of missiles by Pakistan seriously."
Observers in India feel that the country has erred in speaking openly about issues that need to be part of the backroom negotiations process. It vitiates an atmosphere of camaraderie that has extended to the grassroots level. While the damage is not irretrievable, it is an indication to the new dispensation about the delicate nature of relations between the two countries, where every nuance is used and misused by vested interests. While Natwar and the Foreign Ministry should be forgiven for their current gaffes, it may not be a bad idea to look back and understand the dexterity displayed by the Vajpayee government that has brought relations between the two countries thus far.
Leeway has to be given to Musharraf, given the threats that he faces from extremist elements within Pakistan keen to derail the talks. Any words that sound like a compromise on Kashmir are sure fodder for the fundamentalists to gun for the president. As indicated by Musharraf himself, elements within the Pakistani army plotted to assassinate him. It has to be realized that Musharraf remains the best bet for a reasonable and continued dialogue process.
The media, always keen to play up any rhetoric, should be spoken to in general terms while the specialists thrash out the details, with the new dates for talks likely to be decided soon. The Congress Party has been out of power for almost a decade now. It is an inviting prospect to be the center of all attention once more. There are bound to be initial false starts, but it is important to crank the engine in place fast, or else there will be more calls to Vajpayee from Musharraf, if he is still around.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New Delhi-based journalist.
----
US welcomes India-Pakistan peace talks
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040601222825.im3f4z1v.html
The United States welcomed an announcement in New Delhi Tuesday that India and Pakistan would hold more talks this month aimed at ending more than half a century of hostility between the two nuclear rivals.
At his first major news conference sketching the new Indian administration's foreign policy, Foreign Minister Natwar Singh said the talks would focus on the Kashmir issue and nuclear confidence-building.
"We certainly have welcomed the new government, and we're glad to see that it is, as it said it would, continuing that policy of peaceful dialogue," US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
He said the United States had supported the process of dialogue and discussion that had been under way between the two countries.
Singh said India and Pakistan would hold discussions on easing nuclear tensions in New Delhi June 19-20 followed by a foreign secretaries meeting on the peace process June 27-28.
Tuesday's announcement was the latest step towards reconciliation between the neighbours since they launched the peace drive a year ago after coming to the brink of war in 2002.
-------- iran
Iran Largely Welcomes Report on Nukes
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,121477,00.html
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Wednesday a report by the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog signaled that the deep dispute over Tehran's nuclear program could soon be closed.
"The report makes it clear that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful and there has been no diversion from the peaceful path," Hasan Rowhani told a news conference. "However, the report has some problems ... (it) has touched upon cases that it should not."
The report, issued Tuesday by Mohamed ElBaradei (search), head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (search), said Iran (search) has acknowledged importing parts for advanced centrifuges that can be used to enrich uranium.
It credits Iran with more openness about its nuclear program but says the agency still has questions about nearly two decades of secret activities.
The report also says Iran has continued production of centrifuge components at three workshops belonging to private companies despite its declaration it would suspend such activities. Iran said the companies continued production because they had not received adequate compensation for the termination of contracts, according to the report.
The report was issued for the June 14 meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, which has wrestled for more than a year over what to do about what the United States and its allies say is a weapons program.
The IAEA report alleges Iran had tried to buy critical parts for advanced P-2 centrifuges that can be used for energy purposes or to enrich uranium to weapons grade.
Rowhani acknowledged Iran has purchased parts that can be used for P-2 centrifuges, but played down the significance.
"We told the IAEA that we didn't import P-2 centrifuge parts, except a magnet that can be used for production of both the less advanced P-1 or advanced P-2 centrifuges," Rowhani said.
Iran has confirmed it has produced P-1 centrifuges, which are used for low-grade enrichment.
Rowhani said Iran has been doing research for years on the advanced P-2 centrifuges, and has produced sample parts.
"On P-2 centrifuges, we are at the stage of completing our research. We have produced sample parts of P-2 and we have provided information and photos about it to the IAEA. Once research is completed, we will make our decision about production of P-2s," he said.
Rowhani also acknowledged parts for the P-1 centrifuge were still being made in Iran.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year under strong international pressure but continued with its centrifuge program. It eventually said in April that it had stopped building centrifuges.
"Government companies have already suspended building (P-1) centrifuge parts but three private companies continue building centrifuges because we haven't settled the issue of compensation with them for stopping work," he said.
In an interview with The Associated Press before the report was issued, U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton accused Tehran of engaging in "denial and deception."
"We are convinced that they are pursuing a clandestine program to acquire nuclear weapons," he said.
Bolton said Washington was determined to have Iran answer to the U.N. Security Council.
Iran long has rejected U.S. allegations its nuclear program is for military purposes. ElBaradei said Tuesday his agency had not found proof to date of a concrete link between Iran's nuclear activities and its military program, but "it was premature to make a judgment."
ElBaradei's report did not appear critical enough of Iran to marshal strong support at the IAEA board meeting for U.N. Security Council action against Iran - which the United States wants.
The agency had verified the suspension of uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities at several sites, including Kalaye, Natanz, Lashkar Ab'ad, the report said, but added that the verification was delayed because Iran wouldn't give immediate access to military sites and "not yet comprehensive" because of the private companies' continued production.
Iran argues that its suspension declaration does not include the production of uranium hexafluoride, a refined uranium that if enriched in a centrifuge could be used to make a nuclear weapon, and has said it plans to test a plant that would produce the uranium hexafluoride.
These tests are "at variance with the agency's previous understanding us to the scope of Iran's decision regarding suspension," the report said.
----
Iran: Report Shows No Nukes
TEHRAN, Iran,
June 2, 2004
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/12/world/main611359.shtml
"We are convinced that they are pursuing a clandestine program to acquire nuclear weapons." Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton
Iran's Bushehr facility, one of the plants where nuclear activity has aroused suspicion. (Photo: SPACE IMAGING INCORPORATED)
(CBS/AP) Iran's top nuclear negotiator said Wednesday a report by the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog signaled that the deep dispute over Tehran's nuclear program could soon be closed.
"The report makes it clear that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful and there has been no diversion from the peaceful path," Hasan Rowhani told a news conference. "However, the report has some problems ... (it) has touched upon cases that it should not."
The report, issued Tuesday by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran has acknowledged importing parts for advanced centrifuges that can be used to enrich uranium.
It credits Iran with more openness about its nuclear program but says the agency still has questions about nearly two decades of secret activities.
The report also says Iran has continued production of centrifuge components at three workshops belonging to private companies despite its declaration it would suspend such activities. Iran said the companies continued production because they had not received adequate compensation for the termination of contracts, according to the report.
The report was issued for the June 14 meeting of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, which has wrestled for more than a year over what to do about what the United States and its allies say is a weapons program.
The IAEA report alleges Iran had tried to buy critical parts for advanced P-2 centrifuges that can be used for energy purposes or to enrich uranium to weapons grade.
Rowhani acknowledged Iran has purchased parts that can be used for P-2 centrifuges, but played down the significance.
"We told the IAEA that we didn't import P-2 centrifuge parts, except a magnet that can be used for production of both the less advanced P-1 or advanced P-2 centrifuges," Rowhani said.
Iran has confirmed it has produced P-1 centrifuges, which are used for low-grade enrichment.
Natural uranium is enriched to produce molecules with the right number of electron particles for fission. Centrifuges are used to spin uranium gas rapidly to separate molecules of different weights. More enrichment is required for weapons material than for nuclear plant fuel.
Rowhani said Iran has been doing research for years on the advanced P-2 centrifuges, and has produced sample parts.
"On P-2 centrifuges, we are at the stage of completing our research. We have produced sample parts of P-2 and we have provided information and photos about it to the IAEA. Once research is completed, we will make our decision about production of P-2s," he said.
Rowhani also acknowledged parts for the P-1 centrifuge were still being made in Iran.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year under strong international pressure but continued with its centrifuge program. It eventually said in April that it had stopped building centrifuges.
"Government companies have already suspended building (P-1) centrifuge parts but three private companies continue building centrifuges because we haven't settled the issue of compensation with them for stopping work," he said.
In an interview with The Associated Press before the report was issued, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton accused Tehran of engaging in "denial and deception."
"We are convinced that they are pursuing a clandestine program to acquire nuclear weapons," he said.
Bolton said Washington was determined to have Iran answer to the U.N. Security Council.
Iran long has rejected U.S. allegations its nuclear program is for military purposes. ElBaradei said Tuesday his agency had not found proof to date of a concrete link between Iran's nuclear activities and its military program, but "it was premature to make a judgment."
ElBaradei's report did not appear critical enough of Iran to marshal strong support at the IAEA board meeting for U.N. Security Council action against Iran - which the United States wants.
The agency had verified the suspension of uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities at several sites, including Kalaye, Natanz, Lashkar Ab'ad, the report said, but added that the verification was delayed because Iran wouldn't give immediate access to military sites and "not yet comprehensive" because of the private companies' continued production.
Iran argues that its suspension declaration does not include the production of uranium hexafluoride, a refined uranium that if enriched in a centrifuge could be used to make a nuclear weapon, and has said it plans to test a plant that would produce the uranium hexafluoride.
These tests are "at variance with the agency's previous understanding us to the scope of Iran's decision regarding suspension," the report said.
----
Iran Retains Option of Refining Uranium
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
Associated Press Writer
Jun 2, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran left open the option of producing a centrifuge capable of making weapons-grade uranium, its top nuclear negotiator said Wednesday, a day after a U.N. agency credited Tehran with more openness but expressed concern about years of secret activities.
Hasan Rowhani said the International Atomic Energy Agency report meant that scrutiny of Tehran's nuclear activities, which the United States alleges is aimed at making weapons, was nearly over.
"The report makes it clear that Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful and there has been no diversion from the peaceful path," Rowhani said.
"However, the report has some problems ... (it) has touched upon cases that it should not," he said, adding the IAEA was getting hung up on technical details.
The report by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei was prepared for the June 14 meeting of the agency's 35-nation board of governors, which has wrestled for more than a year over what to do about what the United States and its allies say is an Iranian weapons program.
The IAEA report alleges Iran had tried to buy critical parts for advanced P-2 centrifuges that can be used for energy purposes or to enrich uranium to weapons grade.
Rowhani acknowledged Iran has purchased parts that can be used for P-2 centrifuges but played down the significance.
"We told the IAEA that we didn't import P-2 centrifuge parts, except a magnet that can be used for production of both the less-advanced P-1 or advanced P-2 centrifuges," Rowhani said. Although he didn't say so clearly, Rowhani implied that the imported parts were for use in the P-1.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department expressed concern about Iran exploring the possibility of producing a centrifuge capable of making weapons-grade uranium.
"There is no doubt that they have an extensive program of nuclear activity and that many of those activities are in no way peaceful," said spokesman Richard Boucher. Rather, they "are specifically intended to create weapons."
Kenneth Brill, chief U.S. delegate to the IAEA, told reporters Iran was still stalling.
"The ... report provides just the latest evidence that Iran is still trying to 'beat the system' and keep critical aspects of its nuclear weapons program secret," he said. "The question is how long the Board of Governors and the international community will tolerate this."
Iran has confirmed it has produced P-1 centrifuges, which are used for low-grade enrichment.
According to the IAEA report, Iran had imported some magnets and had asked about buying 4,000 or more.
Rowhani said Iran held open the option of producing P-2 centrifuges, adding that it had been doing research for years on P-2s, and had even produced sample parts.
"On P-2 centrifuges, we are at the stage of completing our research. We have produced 9-12 sample parts of the P-2 and we have provided information and photos about it to the IAEA," Rowhani said.
"Once research is completed, we will make our decision about production of P-2s," he said.
Rowhani also acknowledged that parts for the P-1 centrifuge were still being made in Iran.
"Government companies have already suspended building (P-1) centrifuge parts but three private companies continue building centrifuges because we haven't settled the issue of compensation with them for stopping work," he said.
Rowhani said Iran had provided complete information about its P-2 program to the IAEA.
"Considering the latest information we have offered to IAEA in the past two or three days, the issue of P-2 has been resolved. The IAEA report also acknowledges the agency has obtained the report but needs time to study," he said.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year, and in April it said it had stopped building centrifuges. The moves followed mounting international pressure after IAEA inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at two Iranian sites last year and evidence that Iran was trying to build centrifuges capable of producing weapons-grade uranium.
Iran said the uranium was already on contaminated materials imported from abroad.
In an interview with The Associated Press before the report was issued, U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton accused Tehran of engaging in "denial and deception."
"We are convinced that they are pursuing a clandestine program to acquire nuclear weapons," he said.
Bolton said Washington was determined to have Iran answer to the U.N. Security Council.
Iran long has rejected U.S. allegations its nuclear program is for military purposes. ElBaradei said Tuesday his agency had not found proof to date of a concrete link between Iran's nuclear activities and its military program, but "it was premature to make a judgment."
ElBaradei's report did not appear critical enough of Iran to marshal strong support at the IAEA board meeting for Security Council action against Iran.
----
Iran repeats warning to Israel against bombing nuclear facilities
TEHRAN (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602114755.hne8nx89.html
Israel will suffer a "painful" response if it dares to attack any of Iran's nuclear facilities, the Islamic republic's top national security official warned Wednesday.
"I do not think Israel will make such a stupid move because it knows full well how we will respond," Hassan Rowhani told a news conference.
"Our response will be painful to Israel," he said, but dismissed all talks of an Israeli attack as "propaganda".
Last month Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Iran was "probably the main existential threat" to his country.
Both Israel and the United States suspect Iran is developing nuclear weapons under cover of a effort to generate nuclear energy. In 1981, Israel attacked an Iraqi nuclear facility, and there has been specualtion it may consider doing the same for Iran -- which continues to call for the destruction of the Jewish state.
Rowhani's comments came as he answered to new revelations from the UN nuclear watchdog that bolstered suspicions over the Islamic republic's shadowy atomic energy programme.
----
More possibly bomb-grade highly enriched uranium found in Iran - IAEA
VIENNA (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040601224008.iqnxr0z8.html
United Nations nuclear inspectors have found more traces in Iran of highly enriched uranium that could be bomb-grade, the UN atomic energy agency said Tuesday, ahead of a meeting on US allegations that Tehran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran has also admitted to importing parts for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels, going back on claims that it had made the parts domestically, according to a confidential report by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei, which was obtained by AFP.
And while Iran has insisted its P-2 is a research program, the IAEA said Iran had asked through a European intermediary about the possibility of buying 4,000 special magnets, or enough for 2,000 centrifuges.
Nuclear expert David Albright told AFP from Washington that Iran's "centrifuge story just doesn't hold up".
He said the numbers made it look like Iran rather than doing research was seeking "to go into serial production." Highly enriched uranium (HEU) can be nuclear fuel or the explosive in an atom bomb.
Particles of 36-percent HEU found at Farayand, a new site after IAEA inspectors had last year detected such particles at the Kalaye Electric Comany in Tehran, leave the IAEA unable to confirm Iran's claims the contamination was from imported equipment, probably from Pakistan, rather than a sign the Iranians may have been trying to enrich uranium on their own.
"This means they're probably lying about the origin of that 36 percent enriched uranium," a Western diplomat close to the IAEA said.
"Obviously they either imported the enriched uranium from abroad or it originated in their own enrichment," the diplomat said, mentioning that the HEU might be from a Russian research reactor.
The United States renewed accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons after the IAEA revelations.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington's view was "borne out by the facts."
Iran must clear up these questions about uranium contamination and centrifuges if the international community is to believe Iran's claims its nuclear program is strictly peaceful, the IAEA said ahead of a June 14 meeting of its 35-nation board of governors.
The United States has called for the IAEA, which has been investigating the Iranian program since February 2003 after being alerted to it in August 2002, to refer the Islamic Republic to the UN Security Council for possible international sanctions.
But ElBaradei told a NATO meeting in the Slovak capital Bratislava Tuesday "the jury is still out" on Iran's nuclear program.
He said there was at this time "no evidence that the Iranian program has some military dimension."
Diplomats said the IAEA will not be able to reach a decision on Iran in June since Tehran has delayed inspections and only last month submitted a report on its program which the agency will need months to evaluate.
ElBaradei's report praised the Iranians for "cooperating in providing access to locations in response to agency requests, including workshops situated at military sites."
But the report also said that three workshops in Iran are continuing to produce centrifuge components despite Tehran's claim that it has suspended uranium enrichment and related activities.
Iran has said that it had suspended production of centrifuge components as of April 9 as a confidence-building measure with the international community.
But Iran is determined to resume production of uranium hexafluoride (UF6), a feed material for enriching uranium, the report said.
"The Iranians don't seem to be taking suspension seriously," Albright said.
Iran had agreed to the suspension last October in striking an agreement on cooperation with the European big three -- Britain, France and Germany.
Albright said that if Iran "continues to embarrass" these countries by hiding aspects of its program, Tehran may lose their support, and perhaps by December be taken to the Security Council by the IAEA board.
----
Watchdog Blasts Iran On Nuclear Program
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7875-2004Jun1.html
Iran repeatedly misstated details about its nuclear program and pursued uranium enrichment technology more aggressively than it initially admitted, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded yesterday in a sharply critical assessment.
The report by the United Nations' nuclear watchdog raises new questions about Iran's intentions and appears certain to persuade the agency's board of governors not to end intrusive inspections when it meets later this month.
The 20-page document is the third consecutive quarterly report to raise significant doubts about Iran's performance. It comes as the Bush administration, which has pledged to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, struggles to curb a proven atomic weapons program in North Korea.
The IAEA credited Iran with providing fresh information about its nuclear efforts, but cited a wide array of missing details and contradictory explanations in a confidential report to board members obtained yesterday.
After declaring that it had built all of its uranium enrichment equipment, for example, Iran recently admitted to IAEA inspectors that essential magnets were imported from Asia.
Questioned further on the basis of new IAEA information, Iranian officials also admitted that an Iranian company had contacted a European intermediary about buying 4,000 magnets for sophisticated P-2 gas centrifuges -- enough for 2,000 machines, more than needed for simple research.
Indeed, Iran made such fast progress in assembling and testing advanced P-2 centrifuge equipment that IAEA experts expressed doubts about Iranian assertions that the project lay dormant for six years after scientists first acquired designs in 1995.
The IAEA also raised fresh doubts about Iran's assertion that uranium enriched to 36 percent U-235 had come from used centrifuge parts imported from Pakistan via Abdul Qadeer Khan's illicit supply network. The amounts the agency found on those parts were larger than the traces one would find from prior use, the agency said.
One possibility, officials said yesterday, is that quantities of enriched uranium are available on the international market, possibly originating in Russia.
IAEA investigators trying to identify the source of enriched uranium traces in three Iranian facilities could not follow the trail mapped by the Iranian authorities.
"Their explanation was so complex that it was not particularly helpful in helping the agency figure out the origin," said a diplomat in Vienna, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The origin is going to be very important."
Iran has been slow to reveal information about the centrifuge project and other matters, the IAEA report said. Understanding the program "frequently required repeated requests, and in some cases continues to involve changing or contradictory information."
The IAEA assessment comes amid signs that European governments that tried to negotiate a suspension of Iran's nuclear program last year are frustrated with Tehran's response. Iran counters that the Europeans have not fulfilled promises of economic and diplomatic cooperation.
The document provides support for Bush administration officials who contend that Iran is hiding an atomic weapons program behind an insistence that the goal is nuclear energy.
"It's absolutely full of unanswered questions and things that don't compute," said a U.S. official, who requested anonymity. "It's a strong argument for the need to continue the investigation."
The IAEA report is a quarterly update on Iran's compliance with an international safeguards pact. A November report revealed the existence of a secret 18-year-old nuclear project, and a February review faulted Iran for hiding the extent of its program despite promises to reveal details.
Much of the report's focus is on previous Iranian statements and contradictory new information produced by Iran voluntarily or under pressure. Iran, for example, changed its account of what happened to several pounds of uranium hexafluoride, saying first that it had leaked, then affirming that it had been used in research.
In another case, the Iranian government told U.N. inspectors that rotors for gas centrifuges were manufactured by a private company in Tehran when, in fact, they were built at an Iranian defense industry site, the IAEA said.
The agency checked to see whether Iran had halted enrichment-related activities and suspended the manufacture, assembly and testing of centrifuges, as the Tehran government promised the IAEA in February.
Inspectors found that Iran continued to assemble rotors for P-1 centrifuges until April. Between February and April, the U.N. report said, Iran assembled 285 rotors.
----
US accuses Iran of nuclear 'deceit and denial'
VIENNA (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602190704.097ilq35.html
The United States accused Iran on Wednesday of using deceit and denial to hide clandestine development of nuclear weapons, after damning new revelations from the UN nuclear watchdog on the Islamic republic's atomic energy program.
US ambassador to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy AgencyKenneth Brill told reporters that Iran's refusal to fully cooperate with the agency "fits a long-term pattern of denial and deception that can only be designed to mask Iran's military nuclear program."
He was commenting after an IAEA report released on Tuesday charged that agency inspectors had found more traces in Iran of highly enriched uranium that could be bomb-grade.
The IAEA also reported that Iran, which claims its nuclear program is for peaceful, civilian purposes, has admitted to importing parts for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges for enriching uranium, going back on claims that it had made the parts domestically.
"Almost two years after the IAEA became aware of Iran's covert nuclear program, and fully one year after the discovery of Iran's attempts to conceal their work at the Kalaye Electric Company (in Tehran), delayed access, inconsistent stories and unanswered questions continue to be the hallmark of Iranian cooperation with the agency," Brill said.
"Even a disinterested observer must now ask, what is it that the Iranians are so intent on hiding," Brill said.
The IAEA report is to be submitted to the agency's 35-nation board of governors on June 14.
The United States has called for the IAEA, which has been investigating the Iranian program since February 2003 after being alerted to it in August 2002, to refer the Islamic Republic to the UN Security Council for possible international sanctions.
In Tehran, Iran's top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani said Wednesday that Iran had "no secret nuclear activities".
Rowhani said: "Iran's nuclear dossier is on the way to being sorted out and there is nothing very important that is pending."
But Brill said: "Iran is still stalling, providing last-minute declarations and contradicting earlier definitive statements. The IAEA continues to find new, incriminating evidence of undeclared activity."
"The question is how long the (IAEA) board of governors and the international community will tolerate this," he said.
But diplomats and experts said they expected nothing would happen until after the presidential election in November in the United States, and a change in US policy, since Washington does not have a "smoking gun" to prove Iran is making nuclear weapons and so can not convince the IAEA board to back it in taking the issue to the Security Council.
"It looks like this meeting in June is not going to produce much," Gary Samore, a London-based non-proliferation expert, told AFP.
"The United States is stymied unless the IAEA can come up with some devastating revelation that Iran is lying or hiding something," he said.
He said the Iranians may even be emboldened with their success in putting the IAEA off to resume the enrichment of uranium, something they voluntarily suspended in order to build confidence with the international community.
But Samore said the European big three -- Britain, France and Germany -- which struck an agreement last October for Iran to suspend enrichment "have warned the Iranians very strongly against this."
A Western diplomat close to the IAEA said such a move by Iran "would spark a crisis with the EU-3 and others and I don't think that's a price Tehran wants to pay."
Highly enriched uranium can be used for fuel in reactors but also the explosive in atomic bombs.
Another diplomat said nothing less than the international non-proliferation regime was at stake in Iran.
The diplomat said getting to the bottom of the Iranian program was "difficult but crucial for non-proliferation and for the IAEA."
"If progress is slow, there will come a time when the Europeans will have to reflect on their policy," the diplomat said .
But the diplomat said this time was not imminent.
"Even if Iranian cooperation is not 100 percent, progress (since IAEA investigations began 15 months ago) has still been considerable," in uncovering Iranian nuclear activities, the diplomat said.
-------- mideast
ISRAEL BELIEVES IRAN FALLS BEHIND IN NUKE PROGRAM
02 Jun 2004
[MENL]
http://menewsline.com/stories/2004/june/06_03_1.html
JERUSALEM -- Israeli military intelligence has determined that Iran has fallen a year behind schedule with its nuclear weapons program.
Israeli intelligence chiefs told senior Cabinet ministers in a briefing in mid-May that Teheran's nuclear weapons program has been hampered by the international effort to inspect Iran's nuclear facilities. The intelligence chiefs were quoted as saying that the inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency of undeclared nuclear facilities led to a suspension of plans to begin massive uranium enrichment in 2004.
The IAEA effort, backed by the United States, has led to a revision of when Iran would achieve independent capability to produce nuclear weapons. The original assessment issued in mid-2003 asserted that Iran would achieve such capability around July 2004.
But following the IAEA inspections at such facilities as Kalaye and Natanz, Israeli intelligence said Iran would not be able to achieve indigenous nuclear weapons capability until the second quarter of 2005. Israeli sources said the revised assessment assumes that Iran will eventually establish the facilities and develop the methods required for the operation of centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
-------- terrorism
Only a matter of time before terrorists use 'dirty bomb'
PARIS (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004:
New Scientist
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602190039.xx9pymw1.html
Gloomy experts believe it is only a question of time before terrorists use a "dirty bomb," a device that would spew radioactive debris over a city, making parts of it uninhabitable for years, New Scientist says.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) records point to "a dramatic rise" in the smuggling of radiological substances, the raw material for this bomb, the British science weekly says in next Saturday's issue.
"In 1996, there were just eight of these incidents, but last year there were 51," the report says.
"Most cases are believed to have occurred in Russia and elsewhere in Europe. Smugglers target the radioactive materials used in factories, hospitals and research laboratories, which are not guarded as securely as those used by the nuclear industry."
A "dirty bomb" is not a nuclear bomb. It would use conventional explosive to disgorge radioactive material over a wide area, unleashing panic and making the area unusable.
Since 1993, there have been 300 confirmed cases of illicit trafficking in radiological materials, 215 of them in the past five years.
But, according to the IAEA documents, the true figure may be far higher. There have been 344 further suspected cases of trafficking over the past 11 years that have not been confirmed by any of the 75 states that monitor this activity.
The agency adds that there are still 1,000 radioactive sources that are unaccounted for in Iraq. And of 25 sources stolen from the Krakatau steel company in Indonesia in October 2000, only three have been recovered.
A terrorist attack of this kind is "a nightmare waiting to happen," Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant and former British nuclear military scientist, was quoted by New Scientist as saying.
"I'm amazed that it hasn't happened already."
And last year, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the British counter-intelligence agency MI5, said a crude radiological attack against a major western city was "only a matter of time," the report said.
----
Kerry Details Nuclear Material Safeguards
02/06/2004
Noticia nº: 25559
http://www.noticias.info/Asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=25559&src=0
John Kerry: http://www.johnkerry.com
Warning that "shadowy figures may someday have their finger on a nuclear button," Sen. John F. Kerry outlined a plan Tuesday that he said would make America safer by reducing terrorists' access to the components of nuclear weapons.
The Massachusetts senator said the Bush administration has dragged its feet in protecting the nation from the threat of nuclear terrorism by withholding resources from existing programs designed to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union.
"If we secure all bomb-making materials, ensure that no new materials are produced for nuclear weapons and end nuclear weapons programs in hostile states like North Korea and Iran, we can and will dramatically reduce the possibility of nuclear terrorism," Kerry said during his 17th trip to Florida.
In addition, the presumptive Democratic nominee charged that Bush has been "fixated" on Iraq while ignoring threats elsewhere. The government has secured less bomb-making material in the two years after terrorists struck on Sept. 11, he said, than it did in the two years leading up to the attacks.
While Kerry has not put a price tag on the effort, advisors estimated the cost to be about $30 billion over four years, of which half would be paid by American allies.
Components of the plan include:
Safeguarding nuclear materials worldwide within four years by making the effort a cornerstone of U.S.-Russian relations.
Negotiating a global ban on the production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium used to create nuclear weapons.
Ending U.S. production of so-called bunker-busting nuclear weapons and mini-nuclear devices.
Making the end of North Korea's nuclear weapons program a top priority by continuing multinational negotiations.
Appointing a presidential coordinator to prevent nuclear terrorism.
Many of the components of his plan would simply bolster and speed existing efforts.
Republicans on Tuesday noted that the leaders of the top industrial nations the so-called Group of 8 which includes President Bush declared a year ago that weapons of mass destruction and international terrorism constitute "the preeminent threat to international security."
Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) called Kerry's plan "pretty much a belated, me-too approach." In a conference call arranged by the Bush campaign, the chairman of the House Select Intelligence Committee said that the "proliferation of nuclear weapons is not a new subject. "
But Kerry advisor Graham Allison argued Tuesday that, while the Bush administration "has learned to name a program for every problem," the president's efforts toward nuclear nonproliferation are characterized by "an absence of urgency."
"Where do we stand now as compared to where we stood when the Bush administration took office?" asked Allison, who served as assistant secretary of Defense in the first Clinton administration. "We've either been plodding along at a snail's pace or gone backward, way backward."
Kerry's address here was the second of three major policy speeches focusing on national security which he plans to deliver during an 11-day campaign swing. He kicked off the trip last week in Seattle by outlining his framework for addressing national security matters.
He is set to discuss his plan to modernize the military on Thursday in Independence, Mo.
During the Democratic primary season, Kerry spoke regularly about the need to stop U.S. efforts to build bunker-busting bombs. He also talked frequently about the need for the United States to buy up Russian stockpiles of loose nuclear materials.
----
Kerry addresses 300 in Riviera Beach
By Brian Crowley,
Palm Beach Post Political Editor brian_crowley@pbpost.com
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/politics/content/auto/epaper/editions/wednesday/news_04dbe45a7231918e0061.html
The U.S. Secret Service agents thought the worst of their detail with John Kerry was over Tuesday evening.
He had made it safely to and from his events, and now they were just waiting on the tarmac at Palm Beach International Airport. The Democratic presidential candidate was throwing a baseball, then a football.
Then, engine roaring, red and blue lights flashing, he suddenly took off on a Palm Beach County sheriff's deputy's Harley Davidson, leaving the Secret Service agents slack-jawed.
"I'm glad he didn't fall over," muttered one agent as Kerry, who owns a Harley, skillfully pulled the motorcycle back into a line of 16 sheriff's and West Palm Beach police motorcycles that had been used to block traffic and escort his motorcade during a campaign trip of more than six hours in Palm Beach County.
Kerry's minute-long ride on the tarmac capped a day in which the U.S. senator from Massachusetts spoke in Riviera Beach about the need to safeguard all the nuclear weapons and materials that exist around the world to keep them out of the hands of terrorists, then stopped for ice cream in West Palm Beach.
During the afternoon speech at the Port of Palm Beach, where the temperature hit 94 degrees, supporters shielded themselves from the sun with newspapers and poster boards. They shot pictures with digital cameras while workers distributed water to the sweaty crowd.
As Kerry approached the stage about 1:45 p.m., a man in a suit collapsed. Riviera Beach Fire Rescue workers carried him to an ambulance and he was transported to St. Mary's Medical Center. Rescue workers would not say whether the collapse was heat-related.
Kerry told a crowd of about 300 that President Bush has "secured less bomb-making material in the two years after 9/11 than we had in the two years before."
That material, he said, is being sought by terrorists who seek the ability to explode nuclear devices in the United States and other countries.
"At this hour, stockpiles go unguarded, bomb-making materials sit in forgotten facilities and terrorists plot away," Kerry said. "They have their technology. They have their scientists. All they need is that material. But we can stop them. Remember: No material, no bomb, no nuclear terrorism."
Kerry, who stood before a banner reading "New strategies for new threats," said the Bush administration had not done enough to work with "our greatest allies" to prevent the spread of nuclear materials. He said the administration had set a bad example by trying to develop new nuclear weapons while asking other nations not to do the same thing.
"What kind of message does it send when we're asking other countries not to develop nuclear weapons but we're developing new ones ourselves?" asked Kerry, who said he would end development of the nuclear bunker-buster bomb.
If elected, Kerry said he would begin an aggressive program during his first term that "treats all nuclear materials needed for bombs as if they were bombs." He also said he would work with countries previously part of the Soviet Union to remove potential bomb materials from vulnerable sites.
America must "lead an international coalition to halt, and then verifiably ban, all production of highly enriched uranium and plutonium for use in nuclear weapons," Kerry said.
In a telephone conference call organized by the Bush campaign in response to Kerry's speech, U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, said the Bush administration "has taken hugely important steps" in the effort to stop increases in world stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Goss, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said it was "odd" that Kerry did not speak about the threat of biological and chemical weapons. He described Kerry as "naive to suggest we are going to get all the nukes under a lock-box somehow."
But the crowd, many of whom were veterans and all of whom were there by invitation, generally found Kerry impressive.
Edith Bush, attending the event dressed in a white shirt decorated with Kerry bumper stickers, said she was "really impressed" with his idea of bringing about world peace through a coalition of allies.
"He's for a stronger America that will be respected and not feared," said Bush, of West Palm Beach.
Sam Oser, vice president of the Century Village Democratic Club, assured that Democrats will "get the vote up for Kerry."
"We're still angry as hell about the 2000 election, which we felt was stolen," he said.
"I think Bush is wrecking the country," said World War II veteran Jack Kushner.
After the speech, Kerry dropped by Sloan's ice cream parlor in downtown West Palm Beach for a coffee milkshake. Then the entourage returned to the airport near the Galaxy general aviation terminal, where Kerry tossed a baseball with his staff and a football with U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami.
His dash around the tarmac seemed to please the deputies, who spoke with him at length about motorcycles. But when a grinning Kerry returned from his short jaunt, his agents clearly seemed relieved that their protectee was back in their midst.
Kerry will be in Tampa today, where he will again speak on national security issues.
----
Kerry Proposes Nuclear Plan
Senator Says U.S. Must Move Faster to Safeguard Materials
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7874-2004Jun1.html
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., June 1 -- Sen. John F. Kerry criticized President Bush here on Tuesday for failing to take more aggressive action to reduce the threat of a nuclear attack by terrorists, and the Democrat pledged to lead an effort to secure the world's nuclear bomb-making materials within four years if he is elected president.
The senator from Massachusetts described the threat of nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists as the greatest danger facing the United States and said more forceful presidential leadership and a more ambitious timetable for reducing the risk are needed to keep the country safe.
Speaking at the Port of Palm Beach in Riviera Beach, Fla., with a container ship as a backdrop, Kerry invoked images of Cold War dangers to underscore his contention that the nuclear threat has a new face in this era of terrorism.
"The question before us now is what shadowy figures may someday have their fingers on a nuclear button if we don't act," he said. "It is time again that we have leadership at the highest levels that treats this threat with the sense of seriousness, urgency and purpose it demands."
In the face of evidence that terrorist groups, such as Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, seek to obtain bomb-making material, Kerry said, the Bush administration has gone backward since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in securing such materials in the former Soviet Union. He said that at its current pace, the Bush administration's program to secure nuclear materials there would take 13 years to complete. "We simply can't afford another decade of this danger," he said. "My plan will safeguard this bomb-making material in four years."
Bush campaign officials contested Kerry's claims that the administration has not made nuclear nonproliferation a major priority. Speaking for the campaign, Richard Falkenrath, former White House deputy director for homeland security, said Bush has "pushed harder on the nonproliferation agenda than any other president and accomplished more," including an agreement by Libya to dismantle its nuclear program.
He also described Kerry's proposals as "hollow promises" that included "preposterous claims," and he said Kerry had offered no new idea for gaining greater cooperation from a Russian government that does not accept the U.S. view of how serious the problem is.
As Kerry campaigned in Florida, Vice President Cheney was in Kansas City, where he defended the Patriot Act and criticized Kerry for questioning its effectiveness. Cheney said that rather than infringing on civil liberties, the law "has helped us to defend our liberty."
Kerry's speech here was the second of a series he is giving as part of an 11-day focus on defense and national security issues. Last week in Seattle, he outlined the principles of a Kerry administration foreign policy in a speech critical of the president for trying to bully the world rather than establish international alliances. On Thursday in Independence, Mo., the senator will focus on restructuring the military to meet the threats of terrorism.
The speech came as Kerry's campaign unveiled a 30-second television commercial that will air in 19 battleground states. The new ad says that "a stronger America starts at home" and says Kerry has "real plans" for creating jobs and lowering the cost of health care.
Kerry has talked about the dangers of nuclear nonproliferation, but until Tuesday he had not provided a strategy to reduce the threat that nuclear materials pose. He argued that terrorists do not have the capability to produce nuclear bomb-making materials by themselves and that, if the world acts together under U.S. leadership, existing stocks can be keep out of terrorist hands.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said a program to safeguard all nuclear weapons and materials should begin by accelerating efforts to secure nuclear stocks in the former Soviet Union, where nearly 20,000 weapons, and the material to produce another 50,000 nuclear bombs of the size used on Hiroshima in World War II, remain.
Kerry rebuked Bush for failing to take more aggressive action in his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin to force the Russians to overcome bureaucratic obstacles and said he would "seek an agreement to sweep aside the key obstacles."
Kerry also said he would attempt to clean out the highly enriched uranium that exists in research reactors in many countries, and said the administration's 10-year timetable should be reduced to four years. He called for strengthening the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and establishing international standards for safeguarding nuclear materials.
Signaling another break with the administration, Kerry said he would halt development of a new generation of nuclear weapons by the United States, including so-called "bunker-busting bombs," saying the United States must lead by example in reducing the nuclear threat.
Citing the dangers that exist in North Korea and Iran, Kerry said the United States must lead a global effort to prevent those nations from developing nuclear weapons.
Kerry said he would keep all options on the table for dealing with North Korea, but he reiterated his criticism of the Bush administration for its unwillingness to engage in direct talks with the North Koreans, saying he would be open to such discussions in addition to the six-party negotiations underway. On Iran, he said the administration's preoccupation with Iraq has hindered efforts to curb that nation's nuclear program.
Finally, Kerry said he would create a White House-level position to coordinate the nuclear terrorism prevention effort, to elevate the significance of the program in his administration.
Kerry offered no cost estimates for his plan. Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who accompanied Kerry to Florida, said the United States spends about $1 billion a year on efforts to safeguard nuclear materials and that, under Kerry's accelerated timetable, the cost could rise to between $5 billion and $6 billion annually. He said the United States could get other nations to help share the cost.
----
Kerry Promises Speedier Efforts to Secure Nuclear Arms
June 2, 2004
New York Times
By JODI WILGOREN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/campaign/02kerry.html
RIVIERA BEACH, Fla., June 1 - Evoking images of mushroom clouds and terrorists "with their fingers on a nuclear button,'' Senator John Kerry vowed Tuesday to significantly speed the timetable for securing the world's nuclear weapons and materials, saying it would be his No. 1 security goal if elected president.
Mr. Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, promised to appoint a White House nonproliferation coordinator and to safeguard weapons as well as raw plutonium and uranium in Russia and 40 other countries within four years instead of the Bush administration's expected 10 to 13. He also said he would set an example by curtailing United States production of nuclear weapons; engage in bilateral talks with North Korea; and call Iran's "bluff" by corralling allies into offering it nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes in exchange for spent fuel that could be turned into bombs.
"The world has changed, and the war has changed, the enemy is different, and we must think and act anew," Mr. Kerry told about 200 people sweltering in 90-degree sunshine here at the Port of Palm Beach. "When war and peace, when life and death, when democracy and terror are in the balance, we owe it to our soldiers and our country to shape and follow a coherent policy that will make America safer and make America truer to our ideals."
The 35-minute speech, layered with lofty language about the legacies of Presidents Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, was the second of four that Mr. Kerry plans during an 11-day focus on national security he began Thursday in Seattle. Calling the nexus of nuclear weapons and terrorism "our most urgent priority in providing for America's long-term security," he turned the focus from Iraq to an issue that has not been central to campaigns since the Cold War ended.
It came one day after Russia agreed to join 15 founding nations in signing the Proliferation Security Initiative, which President Bush proposed last May to increase interdiction of ships and aircraft carrying components of unconventional weapons.
Richard Falkenrath, a proliferation expert who left his post as deputy assistant to President Bush only two weeks ago, denounced Mr. Kerry's speech as "me-too-ism" filled with "hollow promises and empty rhetoric." Mr. Kerry's timetable is unrealistic, he said, arguing that the easiest of Russia's hundreds of nuclear sites had been secured under the first President Bush and President Bill Clinton, and that those remaining involve more complex bureaucratic challenges.
"It's simply a preposterous claim for anyone to be able to say that the American government could compel the Russian government to transfer its nuclear materials from one facility to another - no amount of bribery or coercion or arm-twisting could ensure that," Mr. Falkenrath said in an interview. "Senator Kerry suggests there's some magic wand he can wave to make this move faster. There is none. We're making progress where progress is possible."
In a conference call arranged by the Bush campaign, Senator Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, said it was a mistake to make nuclear materials, rather than terrorists, the top priority.
"As long as you have terrorists out there, there are going to be weapons that are available to those terrorists," Mr. Chambliss said, adding later that Osama bin Laden's ability to hide underground was a good reason to keep developing bunker-busting nuclear weapons. "So the No. 1 goal, frankly, is to eliminate the terrorists. Weapons of mass destruction mean nothing without terrorists."
In contrast, Mr. Kerry said in his speech, "Remember, no material, no bomb, no nuclear terrorism."
A 20-year veteran of the Senate's foreign relations committee, Mr. Kerry spoke here at the nation's 18th busiest commercial port, in front of a massive cargo ship piled with colorful containers, an American flag tacked on its port side for the occasion. It was his ninth day in the critical electoral battleground of Florida over the past three months, part of his 17th visit since beginning his presidential bid; Mr. Bush has returned to the state that handed him the White House 21 times since his election.
Mr. Kerry argued that the Bush administrations has been preoccupied with Iraq, leaving other problems unchecked. His aides cited an Energy Department study showing that security was upgraded for just 7 percent of the 600 tons of nuclear material in the former Soviet Union in the two years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, compared with 9 percent of that material in the two years before.
"Since that dark day in September, have we done everything that we could to secure these dangerous weapons and bomb making materials?" Mr. Kerry asked. "Have we taken every step that we should to stop North Korea and Iran's nuclear programs? Have we reached out to our allies and forged an urgent global effort to ensure that nuclear weapons and materials are in fact secure?"
From the crowd, some of whom had fashioned three-cornered hats out of newspapers to shield heads from the heat, came cries of "No!"
"The honest answer in each of these areas is that we have done too little, often too late, and we have even cut back on our efforts or turned away from the single greatest threat that we face in the world today, a terrorist armed with nuclear weapons," Mr. Kerry continued. "The Cold War may be over, the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States may have ended, but the possibility of terrorists using nuclear weapons is very real indeed."
James P. Rubin, a senior Kerry aide on foreign policy, said he was unsure what it would cost to secure the world's nuclear weapons in 4 years rather than 13, but that it was a "doable task" that relied principally on the commitment of a president.
"Mostly it is not a money problem, mostly it is a question of whether an administration's leadership has decided to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles to put it on the agenda," Mr. Rubin said, suggesting that a White House coordinator - similar to ones for drugs or terrorism - would underline its importance. "If there are additional funds necessary, Senator Kerry is going to find ways to pay for them."
Richard W. Stevenson contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
----
Kerry warns of nuke-terror threat
June 02, 2004
By Stephen Dinan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040602-010015-7104r.htm
Calling nuclear terrorism the greatest threat to U.S. national security, Sen. John Kerry yesterday said that if elected, he would secure the world's supply of plutonium and enriched uranium by the end of his first term.
In Florida yesterday, Mr. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, said President Bush has paid too little attention to the threat of nuclear terrorism. He said it is relatively easy for terrorists to make a bomb once they obtain plutonium or enriched uranium, and therefore, the key is to deny them access to these materials.
"If we secure all bomb-making materials, ensure that no new materials are produced for nuclear weapons, and end nuclear-weapons programs in hostile states like North Korea and Iran, we can and will dramatically reduce the possibility of nuclear terrorism," the Massachusetts senator said.
Mr. Kerry added that the United States must look to nonmilitary solutions to preserve its national security and that it cannot successfully act alone.
"We can't eliminate this threat on our own. We must fight this enemy in the same way we fought in World War I, World War II and the Cold War - by building and leading strong alliances," Mr. Kerry said. "Our enemy has changed and is not based within one country or one totalitarian empire, but our path to victory is still the same: We must use the might of our alliances."
This was the second national-security speech Mr. Kerry gave in the past week. On Thursday, he said international alliances must be restored in the 21st century to detect and prevent terrorism.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter J. Goss, Florida Republican, said the speech was "little more than political 'me-tooism.' "
"While John Kerry today ignored the remarkable progress that has been made under President Bush, he largely embraced the goals that the president has already laid to make the world a safer place," he said.
Mr. Goss said the administration has had success with the disarmament of Libya, multilateral talks with North Korea, disruption of the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, and an agreement among Group of Eight nations to make nonproliferation its top international security concern.
But Mr. Kerry said the administration hasn't made progress on North Korea, and that the United States should acquiesce to North Korea's request for direct talks.
"We should maintain the six-party talks, but we must also be prepared to talk directly with North Korea. This problem is too urgent to allow China or others at the table to speak for us," he said.
As for Iran, Mr. Kerry said the United States should "call their bluff" by offering, along with other states, nuclear fuel that Iran claims to need for power and collect the existing spent fuel that Iran could use to create a bomb.
"If Iran does not accept this, their true motivations will be clear. The same goes for other countries possibly seeking nuclear weapons. We will oppose the construction in any new countries of any new facilities to make nuclear materials, and lead a global effort to prevent the export of the necessary technology to Iran," he said.
Also yesterday, Mr. Kerry ran the first of what his campaign says is $18 million worth of ads during June. The new ad, which will run in 19 states, features Mr. Kerry calling the nation "a country of optimists."
Campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said they have been thrilled with the response to the ads Mr. Kerry has run, which are mostly positive and biographical.
"Because of our record ad buy, Kerry's image is improving in battleground states, while Bush's is deteriorating," she said in a conference call with reporters.
-------- u.n.
'IAEA unable to verify Pak-Iran nuclear link'
Wednesday June 02, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jun2004-daily/02-06-2004/main/main13.htm
VIENNA: The International Atomic Energy Agency was unable to verify that contamination by highly enriched uranium found in Iran was bought from Pakistan, a diplomat close to the agency said on Tuesday.
The UN nuclear inspectors have found more contamination in Iran by highly enriched uranium that could be bomb-grade, the agency said ahead of a meeting on US charges that Tehran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
Iran has also provided "changing or contradictory information" on its work involving sophisticated P-2 centrifuges, which can enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels, according to a confidential report by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, which was obtained by AFP.
Iran must clear up these questions about uranium contamination and centrifuges if the international community is to believe Iran's claims its nuclear programme is strictly peaceful, the IAEA said ahead of a June 14 meeting of its 35-nation board of governors.
A diplomat close to the IAEA said the agency now felt it could not verify that the contamination was, as Iran insists, from contaminated equipment bought in Pakistan and not from Iranian attempts to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU).
The contamination by 36 per cent U-235 was at a site in Farayand, following on such contamination already found at the Kalaye Electric Company in Tehran and the Natanz pilot enrichment plant, the IAEA report said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- south carolina
Public can speak on MOX fuel plan June 15
In Brief
June 2, 2004
The Rock Hill Herald, South Carolina
http://www.heraldonline.com/local/story/3623833p-3224821c.html
The federal Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will hear brief public statements June 15 about Duke Energy's request to amend the operating license of the Catawba Nuclear Station on Lake Wylie to allow the use of mixed oxide, or MOX, fuel.
MOX fuel contains a mix of plutonium and uranium oxides. Duke has submitted a request to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to use MOX as part of a U.S.-Russian program to dispose of surplus plutonium from nuclear weapons. The plutonium will be converted into MOX fuel and used in nuclear power reactors.
The ASLB will hear the public statements from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. June 15 in the Grand Ballroom of the Omni Charlotte Hotel, 132 Trade St.
People who have submitted a written request to make a statement will get priority over those who haven't. Requests should be sent by Monday as follows: by mail, Office of Secretary, Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, D.C. 20555-0001; by fax (301) 415-1101 or by e-mail, AMY@nrc.gov.
-------- texas
No cause found yet in outage at nuclear plant
By JACK DOUGLAS JR.
Wed, Jun. 02, 2004
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/8819580.htm
A cause has not been determined for an hourlong complete power outage at a nuclear weapons plant near Amarillo, and the investigation is expanding, an official said Tuesday.
The May 19 blackout affected the entire Pantex plant, America's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility, but backup power kicked in "very, very quick," said Jud Simmons, plant spokesman.
Simmons said that it was the most severe power outage ever at the plant -- a depository of large amounts of radioactive materials -- but that security was never compromised.
When such an emergency occurs, he said, "we have a lot of different backup systems to make sure we can place all weapons systems in a safe and stable configuration."
After more than two weeks of searching for a cause for the outage, Simmons said the internal probe has expanded, including hiring additional people to investigate. "We are keeping the Department of Energy informed, of course, on what we're doing," he said.
Considered a potential terrorist target, Pantex is a 16,000-acre facility, 17 miles northeast of Amarillo, where some nuclear warheads are put together, others are disassembled, and still others have their radioactive components -- plutonium and uranium -- removed to heavily guarded storage banks.
In January, Pantex was cited by federal investigators who said workers there could have caused a catastrophic event when they taped together broken pieces of highly explosive materials taken from the plutonium trigger of an old warhead. If any of the explosives had been dropped during the improper handling, it could have set off a "violent reaction," the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a letter to Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.
In the May 19 power outage at Pantex, Simmons would not comment on whether officials had ruled out sabotage of the power system.
"Until a final determination is made, I think it's premature to speculate on anything," he said.
John Salsman, the radiation safety officer for Texas A&M University and the former emergency planning manager for the Comanche Peak nuclear plant near Glen Rose, characterized the Pantex outage as minor, as long as backup systems engaged quickly.
However, the fact that the plant still does not know what caused the outage could be an "area of concern," Salsman said.
Mavis Belisle, who lives across the highway from the plant and is the director of Peace Farm, a nuclear watchdog group, said she suspects that Pantex is playing down the significance of the event.
Even a brief loss of power could affect the air conditioning that cools the plutonium and uranium, stall radioactive monitors and disengage palm-print machines that control access to the facility, Belisle said.
"Anyone who thought it [the power outage] wasn't a concern is being extremely naive," she said.
A Pantex news release, issued soon after the outage occurred, said plant operations were suspended until power was restored. "For security reasons," the release said, "some plant personnel were temporarily restricted from entering or exiting the plant."
Walt Kelley, emergency management coordinator for the city of Amarillo, said Pantex officials have told him that they did not notify outside emergency services -- such as hospitals or fire departments -- at the time because they felt "there was nothing in a critical mode."
Since the outage, Kelley said, Pantex officials have agreed to give outside authorities at least a "courtesy notification" if such an event happens again. Jack Douglas Jr., (817) 390-7700 jld@star-telegram.com
-------- washington
AREVA Decontamination Method Chosen for Demonstration and Testing at the Hanford Site
June 2, 2004
PRNewswire
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/06-02-2004/0002185864&EDATE=
BETHESDA, Md. - AREVA, through its subsidiary companies COGEMA Engineering Corp., STMI, and Framatome ANP, Inc. together with Thompson Mechanical, Inc. and team lead Lucas Engineering and Management Services, Inc. has been selected by Fluor Hanford, Inc. to design, fabricate and test an innovative gel spray decontamination system. The contract covers work to be carried out through September 2004 and includes options for work in 2005 and 2006.
The gel product, developed and patented by AREVA subsidiary STMI, will undergo demonstration testing mid-July 2004. The system works by spraying the surface to be decontaminated with the gel which reacts with metals so that contaminants are leached out. When the process is complete, the gel becomes a white powder that can be removed by vacuuming.
"We believe this technology offers our customers a proven technology that will minimize worker exposure inherent with any decontamination activity and represents a significant cost savings over current baseline technology," said Martin Talbot, President of COGEMA Engineering Corp. "The technology is applicable not only to glove boxes, but to other types of equipment requiring decontamination. We are confident the gel system is suitable for use in other facilities, not only at Hanford but throughout the DOE complex."
Fluor Hanford, an M&O contractor for the Department of Energy at the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington, is evaluating the gel spray decontamination system, among other new technologies, as part of ongoing D&D activities at the Hanford Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP).
More about AREVA
With manufacturing facilities in over 40 countries and a sales network in over 100, AREVA offers its clients technological solutions for nuclear energy production and electricity transmission and distribution.
AREVA also provides interconnect systems, principally in the telecommunications, computer and automotive markets.
The 70,000 AREVA employees are thus committed to the major challenges of the 21st century: access to energy for everyone, preservation of the planet and responsibility toward future generations. For more information: http://www.AREVA.com
-------- us nuc waste
Debate Intensifies on Nuclear Waste
Lawmakers in Affected States Press Bush Administration on Cleanup
By Blaine Harden and Dan Morgan
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7951-2004Jun1.html
RICHLAND, Wash. -- Using the nation's largest and leakiest nuclear waste dump as a backdrop, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) complained last week that the Bush administration is using a "sneaky" legislative maneuver to avoid cleaning up Cold War-era poisons that are tainting groundwater here and oozing into the Columbia River.
"They are trying to create a loophole in the definition of nuclear waste big enough to drive a truck through and leave Washington state to deal with a mess that we don't want," Cantwell said, echoing the worries of state environmental officials who help monitor the federal Hanford Nuclear Reservation here.
Cantwell's complaint will animate a debate expected this week on the Senate floor. She and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) plan to lead an effort to strip language out of the defense authorization bill that would allow the Energy Department to leave some radioactive waste in buried tanks -- rather than get it up and ship it off for entombment in Nevada.
The fight over nuclear waste, which involves Washington, Idaho and South Carolina, has slowed debate on the nearly $450 billion annual defense bill, which pays for everything from the Iraq war to multibillion-dollar weapons systems.
A vote on the Cantwell-Hollings amendment could be close, with Democrats lining up solidly against the Bush administration. Cantwell and her supporters say they are courting several moderate Republicans who often vote against the administration on environmental issues.
The Energy Department maintains that it could save more than $85 billion -- while avoiding the risk of deaths and injuries to cleanup workers -- if allowed to leave the last remnants of nuclear waste in underground tanks and seal it in place with a special kind of concrete.
It is "nuts" to classify all the waste from nuclear bomb production throughout the Cold War as "high level," when a small fraction of it can be safely stored in existing tanks, said Kyle McSlarrow, deputy secretary of energy.
"We want to do this -- not to them, but with them," said McSlarrow, referring to the three states with major cleanup projects underway at old bomb-making sites.
There is considerable disagreement about how dangerous the last remnants of waste are. Cantwell and such groups as the Natural Resource Defense Council point to studies showing that up to half the radioactivity in an underground tank can be contained in the sludge residue at the bottom of the tank.
A federal court in Idaho last year ruled against an earlier effort by the Energy Department to keep some waste in the aging tanks rather than moving it to Nevada for burial beneath Yucca Mountain. Because of that ruling, which is under appeal, McSlarrow said his department urgently needs new language in the defense bill, or "we can't spend money" to continue the cleanup. Cantwell has called this "blackmail."
Here along the Columbia River, Hanford is by far the largest of the cleanup sites. Once the primary factory for making weapons-grade plutonium, the site stores about two-thirds of the country's high-level nuclear waste. It is kept in 177 underground tanks, a third of which have been leaking for decades. Hanford is bordered by the Columbia, the largest river in the West.
The leaks have tainted groundwater, creating a slowly expanding 80-square-mile plume of contamination that violates federal water standards. The plume abuts the Columbia and is a risk to the water supply for Richland, where many scientists and bureaucrats employed in the $2 billion-a-year Hanford cleanup now live.
Last month, the Energy Department persuaded Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to introduce language into the defense bill that would allow South Carolina to entomb in concrete and sand some of the waste left over from bomb-building operations at the Savannah River nuclear site near Aiken.
In this, Graham has the support of the governor and state health and environmental officials in his home state. The Energy Department had tried, but failed, to get similar support from state officials in Washington and Idaho.
A key issue is the extent to which the federal government can order states to do its bidding. Graham has insisted that South Carolina will retain final control over cleanup decisions. Most of the waste, he noted, would be shipped to a permanent repository planned for Nevada.
"I would never do this unless my state encouraged me to do it," Graham said. "I wouldn't do this for a second if it was going to jeopardize groundwater."
But his Senate colleague from South Carolina disagrees.
"This is monkeyshines," Hollings said on the Senate floor last month. He warned that the tanks were near a major earthquake fault line and could leak into the Tuscaloosa aquifer or the Savannah River.
What particularly upsets Cantwell about the proposal to reclassify waste is that it was inserted in the defense bill without public hearings and without going through the Senate committee that oversees the Energy Department.
"This is a serious policy change that they are trying to make through closed-door meetings," she said.
Morgan reported from Washington.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
U.S. lacks plan to end Afghanistan drug trade
June 01, 2004
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040601-123212-4071r.htm
Farmers in Afghanistan have harvested another bumper crop of heroin-producing poppies, but the Bush administration still cannot decide on a strategy to eliminate this new source of al Qaeda funding more than two years after the Taliban fell.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Afghanistan in April and told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the opium-producing plant is a threat to stability, two officials said.
"I know he has raised those concerns with the secretary," said a senior defense official. "There is a general understanding that al Qaeda is raising money" from the drugs.
But officials say that given the political and security picture in the emerging democracy, it is better to leave the crop alone - for now.
The following are among the drawbacks of ending poppy cultivation:
•More than 80 percent of Afghans live in rural areas and a good portion of them live off poppy cultivation, especially in the south around Kandahar. There are no comparable crops that would bring in as much income.
The British, lead allies in counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan, attempted to persuade some farmers to grow the expensive spice saffron, but it never caught on. Afghanistan is the largest supplier of heroin for street sales in Britain.
•Afghan President Hamid Karzai is trying to create a security situation stable enough to hold elections in September. For this, he needs the support of warlords who control the poppy-growing areas. The warlords skim money off the drug trade as shipments move by donkey or vehicle. The fear is that the warlords would revolt if deprived of the drug money.
c The Bush administration has all but ruled out the aerial spraying of herbicides to kill the poppy crop, as is done in Colombia by the State Department to kill the cocaine-producing coca. Not only would spraying enrage warlords, but it also is likely to harm farmers and their families because the poppies grow near farmhouses.
c The U.S.-led coalition is relying on poppy growers as spies for information on movements of Taliban remnants and al Qaeda. Taking down the crop might alienate these sources of information.
"There is no easy answer," said a Pentagon official involved in counterdrug discussions.
"There's always been proposals to go after the crop" with no agreement on when or how to do it, the official added.
Military intelligence officers have collected a bounty of anecdotal evidence that an opium trade that once derived profits from Europe-centric traffickers now also is taking money from al Qaeda operators, who sell the drug for cash to fund terror operations.
"We don't know how much," the Pentagon source said. "But it doesn't take a lot of money for al Qaeda to do an operation."
The Afghan drug trade works roughly this way: The poppy sap is converted into a mash cake in rudimentary field labs and sold to black marketeers who pay off the warlords to move the packets out of Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the cakes are converted into opium and sold to al Qaeda operatives for resale.
Coalition ships this year have intercepted at least two drug shipments and detained persons linked to al Qaeda, the Navy said.
U.S. officials think that al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is turning to drug money as allies shut off his traditional source of funds, such as Islamic charities and front companies.
Under Taliban's harsh rule, Afghanistan became the world's No. 1 producer of opium and its derivative, heroin, in the late 1990s. The Taliban eventually moved to stamp out the crop, but it has spread since the allies ousted the regime in December 2001.
"It seems clear to me heroin is the No. 1 financial asset of Osama bin Laden," Rep. Mark Steven Kirk, Illinois Republican, said after returning from a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan in January. "There is a need to update our view of how terrorism is financed. And the view of Osama bin Laden relying on Wahhabi donations from abroad is outdated. And the view of him as one of the world's largest heroin dealers is the more accurate, up-to-date view." Wahhabis are members of a strict Muslim sect that adheres closely to the Koran.
A United Nations' 2003 drug survey estimated that farmers and traffickers garnered $2.3 billion from opium in Afghanistan, about one-half the country's gross domestic product.
"Out of this drug chest, some provincial administrators and military commanders take a considerable share," the U.N. report said. "The more they get used to this, the less likely it becomes that they will respect the law, be loyal to Kabul and support the legal economy. Terrorists take a cut as well. The longer this happens, the greater the threat to security within the country and on its borders .... Enormous sums of money are being made with impunity."
The United Nations estimates that 1.7 million Afghans in farming families, or about 7 percent of the country's 24 million population, rely on poppy income.
At a May 21 House Armed Services Committee hearing, Rep. Tim Ryan, Ohio Democrat, asked Gen. Myers a series of questions to determine the administration's plan for eliminating the drug trade financing al Qaeda.
But Gen. Myers offered no specifics. He said that the poppy crop this year came in early and that Britain is in charge of the problem.
"A strategy is being developed," Gen. Myers said.
----
Fighting in the Shadow of Iraq
Some Fear Afghanistan Has Become a Forgotten War
By Vanessa Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7873-2004Jun1?language=printer
When Michael O'Neill heard about the two young soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division who were killed several weeks ago in Afghanistan, a twinge of pain tore through him. He immediately remembered the day last fall when he got a call at the firehouse to come home.
His son, Pfc. Evan W. O'Neill, was killed on Sept. 29 during a firefight with suspected al Qaeda and Taliban insurgents in Shkin, Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. Evan O'Neill also had served with the 10th Mountain Division. And even though his son was in a different battalion, and probably did not know Staff Sgt. Anthony Lagman and Sgt. Michael Esposito Jr., O'Neill considers them family.
"Those are my son's people; those are our people," said O'Neill, a lieutenant in the Andover Fire Department in Massachusetts. "And we grieve for them and their families."
It troubles O'Neill that his son's sacrifice, and those of other soldiers in the treacherous mountain terrain of Afghanistan, might have escaped the notice of much of a public transfixed on the raging conflict in Iraq.
"Not to downgrade Iraq," he said. Indeed, O'Neill, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, said he agreed with the decision to invade the country and topple Saddam Hussein. "But I want people in this country to realize that the initial get-go, prior to Iraq, was Afghanistan. And it had to do with the people that attacked our country: al Qaeda, the Taliban. . . . The ongoing conflict is being overshadowed by Iraq. It shouldn't be that way."
More than two years after the fall of the Taliban, the radical Islamic government that harbored al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, about 15,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan. Their primary mission, said Marine Capt. David T. Romley, a Pentagon spokesman, is to "provide security and hunt down the remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda."
In carrying out that mission, 126 service members have died since Oct. 7, 2001, when the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom, after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Seventy-seven have died in Afghanistan, including four who were killed on Saturday when their vehicle hit a land mine. Forty-nine more have died in other regions, including neighboring Pakistan, as part of the campaign to hunt down members of the al Qaeda network, which claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks. Two CIA officers also have died.
The death of former professional athlete Patrick Tillman in April shined a brief spotlight on the war in Afghanistan. Tillman, 27, who walked away from a multimillion-dollar contract with the National Football League's Arizona Cardinals to enlist in the Army, was killed by "friendly fire" after his unit was ambushed by militia forces about 90 miles south of Kabul.
Tillman reportedly was moved to become an Army Ranger after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks. Many soldiers were inspired by the same emotions. Evan O'Neill, who enlisted right after graduating from high school and was 19 when he was killed, wanted to be in the battle, his father said.
"His whole goal in life was to go to Afghanistan to fight the people who attacked our country," O'Neill said. "He died doing that."
Nicholes Golding, another recent casualty, shared that goal, said his mother, Cynthia Coffin. "He said nobody was going to get away with that in our country. 'I'm going to get 'em.' . . . He was really angry."
Golding, 24, was stationed in Hawaii at the time of the Sept. 11 attacks, his mother said. He immediately began applying for a transfer into a unit that would take him to the war against terrorism. "He knew if he got into the 10th Mountain Division, he would go to Afghanistan or Iraq," his mother said from her home in Steuben, Maine.
He got the transfer and was sent to eastern Afghanistan last August. He died in February when his Humvee struck a mine in Ghazni.
Low-Level War
The two soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division killed on March 18 -- Lagman, 26, of Yonkers, N.Y., and Esposito, 22, of Brentwood, N.Y. -- were on a mission to root out enemy forces from a mountain village when their unit came under fire. They became two of the 31 soldiers who have been killed in action.
By contrast, in April, the Pentagon reported that 135 American troops died in Iraq, all but nine of them in combat.
Richard H. Kohn, chairman of curriculum in peace, war and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a former Pentagon chief of Air Force history, said Afghanistan has not been "forgotten, but I'd say it's been pushed to the back of people's minds."
Although the invasion of Afghanistan failed to capture or kill bin Laden, Kohn said, the United States did succeed in disrupting al Qaeda's base of operations and routing the Taliban. He argues that the effort in Afghanistan is more important in the war against terrorism than the campaign in Iraq is.
"The campaign in Afghanistan does not require tens of thousands of American troops. The level of operation is very low and very small and very dependent on intelligence and our allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan and so it's just not as visible or dramatic" as Iraq, he said.
Michael Donovan, a research analyst for the Center for Defense Information, a liberal think tank based in Washington, agrees that the war in Afghanistan has been eclipsed by Iraq, but he argues that it is because it is not a priority with the Bush administration.
Afghanistan "doesn't have any oil; it's not strategically located," he said. " . . . If it's fallen off the radar screen, it's because the stakes are not there for the administration."
He warned that the lack of attention to Afghanistan, which never recovered politically and economically from its decade-long war with the former Soviet Union and ensuing civil war, has led to rising instability in recent months, and said it was in the United States' interest not to let Afghanistan fail again.
"We found out that it was not so much a case of state-sponsored terrorism, but a terrorism-sponsored state in Afghanistan, and that could come back to haunt us," Donovan said.
The Pentagon's Romley dismissed suggestions that Afghanistan is heading for a new round of trouble. "The reality is the security situation in Afghanistan has dramatically gotten better over time," he said. The United States and its allies have "killed or captured two-thirds of the al Qaeda organization." He also acknowledged that "there are still terrorist elements in Afghanistan" and that "the war against terrorism is going to be long."
'Bad Mission'
The rugged topography that was once home to al Qaeda poses different kinds of risks to the troops there than those in Iraq. Five men died during a mission in November when their helicopter stalled as it climbed in mountainous terrain east of Bagram Air Base. Seven Marines were killed in March 2003 when their Hercules air tanker grazed a peak and caught fire in Pakistan. One Special Forces soldier fell 25 feet while descending by rope from a helicopter into an enemy cave complex.
From the ground, the troops draw their own comparisons and conclusions. "Urban terrain is about the toughest terrain to fight in," Maj. Michael Stefanchik e-mailed last week from Afghanistan. "Afghanistan doesn't have a whole lot of urban terrain -- a la Najaf -- for terrorists to operate in," he explained. "The firefight in Falluja will no doubt get more notice than the same type engagement on a remote mountain in Afghanistan -- though it is without doubt every bit as dangerous."
A hostile mission in either place always holds danger. Dawn Esposito told Newsday that her son had called her a few days before he was killed to tell her that he was headed out on a "bad mission." Lagman also called his mother shortly before taking off, but did not let on that he was embarking on a dangerous assignment, said his father, Joaquin Lagman.
Lagman said his son never complained about military life.
"He liked it; he loves adventure," said Lagman, whose older son also served in the Army. "He told me he wanted to finish his career in the military and then become a recruiter. He would say, 'Ma, we will retire in Hawaii and buy a house.' " Lagman said his son was supposed to return from Afghanistan in January, but his tour was extended to May.
Eleven soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division have died in Operation Enduring Freedom, said Maj. Daniel Bohr, public affairs officer for the division. The remaining members began arriving home last month. The Pentagon recently announced that 2,000 soldiers from the 10th were being deployed to Iraq.
During his six months in Afghanistan, Golding earned commendations for finding and securing a weapons cache in an enemy cave. He also was cited for helping to remove his squad and then securing their helicopter after it was forced to land in hostile territory. He received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart.
"He did some pretty amazing things," Coffin said after reading his letter of commendation aloud.
Golding was married with two young children, including a daughter born last September whom he had never met. For his birthday on Jan. 30, Coffin made a card, a five-page collage of pictures from his childhood. She sent it to him in mid-January.
Golding was killed two weeks after his birthday.
"I didn't know whether he got it or not," Coffin said.
Several days after she buried her son, Coffin received a letter from him, postmarked Feb. 7.
It read, in part: "I have to say I just love the card you sent. It's funny, I can remember all those pictures. It takes me back to the past that's so full of memories."
----
Bin Laden within reach of US-led force several times: French general
KABUL (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602185313.hhd4oy36.html
Al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden has been within reach of the US-led coalition force in Afghanistan several times, the chief of staff of the French armed forces General Henri Bentegeat said Wednesday.
"The coalition on several occasions has had Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda operatives directly within reach," Bentegeat said during a press conference following a 24-hour visit to Afghanistan.
"Since 2002, on at least two occasions, they have been able to locate him but he has managed to escape," he said, adding that there was a difference between finding and trapping an individual.
"To my knowledge, there has not recently been any incidents of this nature... but sooner or later, he will be arrested."
Asked about the possible places of refuge for the suspected mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, Bentegeat said he did not have any information which would help locate the Saudi dissident.
In a radio interview with Europe 1 in March Bentegeat said bin Laden had slipped past French commandoes on several occasions.
France is one of the members of the US-led coalition which has been fighting against remnants of the Taliban regime and Al-Qaeda and other militants since late 2001.
About 200 French special forces soldiers have been working in the Spin Boldak region on the border with Pakistan since August 2003 to destroy Taliban and Al-Qaeda networks.
"French special forces are continuing their mission without change in the (southern) Kandahar region," Bentegeat said Wednesday.
Bentegeat also said France would also increase the number of its troops serving with the NATO-led peacekeeping International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, a force which will be led by a French general from mid-August.
"France has decided to strengthen her participation in the ISAF mission beginning next August," he said.
An extra 300 French troops will be stationed in the Central Asian nation, bringing the country's contingent to a little more than 1,000 servicemen and women.
"From August 11, a French general will take command of ISAF," the general said without identifying the officer who will take command of the 6,500 troops from more than 30 nations.
The peacekeepers work under a UN mandate to maintain security in the capital Kabul. Late last year the mandate was extended to the rest of the country but so far the force has only moved to the northern city of Kunduz.
Bentegeat ruled out a French-led provincial reconstruction team in Afghanistan, saying his country had more than 15,000 troops outside France and as such was obliged to limit its commitment in Afghanistan.
The general, who met with senior Afghan, US and ISAF security officials while in Kabul, said despite an increase in attacks in the south and southeast the overall security situation in the country was improving.
-------- arms
U.S. Command Requires More Armored Humvees for Iraq, Army Says
June 2, 2004
(Bloomberg)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a8V2TEdUD0KA&refer=us
The U.S. Central Command may request ``several thousand'' more heavily armored Humvee transports for Iraq operations to help minimize growing casualties from snipers and roadside bombs, according to Army and Pentagon officials.
The extra vehicles would be in addition to the roughly 4,400 so-called ``Up-Armored'' Humvees the Army already deemed necessary, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers told the House Armed Services Committee May 21.
``The Army has received additional requests from CENTCOM that outlines possible additional requirements for more Up-Armored Humvees,'' Army spokesman Major Gary Tallman said. ``So far we are talking about 50 additional Humvees and we are standing by to respond as required.''
The Army last year accelerated the purchase and fielding of more heavily armored Humvees from AM General Corp., which builds the basic vehicle, and Armor Holdings Inc.'s O'Gara-Hess & Eisenhardt subsidiary, which applies the armor.
The Army's requirement has grown to 4,400 Up-Armored Humvees today from 235 in August 2003 as Iraq's insurgency intensifies and road-side attacks using improvised explosives increase. There are 4,420 fortified Humvees in Iraq today, Tallman said.
The Humvees can stop armor-piercing 7.62-millimeter rounds, provide overhead protection from the blasts of 155-millimeter shells exploding overhead and withstand a 12-pound mine detonation under the front axle, O'Gara-Hess officials told the trade journal Defense Week.
``The requirement for Up-Armored Humvees is likely to continue to grow,'' Myers said in his testimony. ``We have indications, while they're not a formal requirement yet, it could grow by several more thousand and we're paying attention to that because that will dictate how we facilitize the plants and so forth so we can continue to produce the Up-Armored Humvee.''
Troop Protection
In response to the almost daily deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq from roadside bombs or snipers, the House of Representatives last month passed a $422 billion bill that adds about $1.2 billion for equipment in fiscal 2005 to better protect troops, including $700 million for heavily armored Humvees.
A companion Senate bill that has not yet passed adds $900 million for vehicle armor.
Myers's number ``may be accurate but we are still assessing the requirements we are receiving,'' Tallman said.
Robert Mecredy, president of Armor Holding's Phoenix, Arizona- based Aerospace and Defense Group, did not immediately return phone calls or e-mails seeking comment.
Ramping Up
O'Gara-Hess, now installing armor on 300 vehicles a month at its plant in Fairfield, Ohio, has told the Army and industry analysts that it can refit as many as 450 a month by October, according to Tallman and a May 11 research note from Friedman Billings Ramsey & Co. analyst Michael Hoffman.
Hoffman rates Jacksonville, Florida-based Armor Holdings ``outperform'' on the strength of existing orders for Humvees.
Armor Holdings' shares fell 5 cents to $38.70 at 10:27 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading after touching an all- time high of $40.35. The shares have almost tripled in the past year as demand for Armor's vehicles increased in parallel with the rising insurgency in Iraq.
Armor yesterday raised its second-quarter profit forecast to as much as 75 cents a share from its previous forecast of as much as 65 cents, primarily because of the accelerated production of Up- Armored Humvees. The company had net income of $4.61 million, or 17 cents a share, in the same quarter a year earlier.
For the year, Armor's sales are expected to more than double to $820.5 million, from $365.2 million in 2003, according to the average forecast of four analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial.
The company also owns Simula Inc., of Phoenix, which makes ceramic plates used in the Army's bulletproof vests. The Defense Logistics Agency has placed $13.7 million in accelerated orders this year for plate deliveries through December, according to agency figures.
-------- biological weapons
Kerry Vows to Work With Allies on Bioweapons Ban
June 2, 2004
By MARIA NEWMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/campaign/02CND-KERR.html?hp
Saying that a bioterrorist attack "could kill or endanger millions of Americans," Senator John Kerry said today that as president he would work with America's allies to strengthen a bioweapons ban and improve security in labs that handle dangerous pathogens.
Mr. Kerry, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, said in remarks prepared for an audience of emergency medical technicians and paramedics in Tampa, Fla., that President Bush has not done enough to safeguard Americans from a bioterrorism threat.
"Nearly three years after the anthrax attacks, there are significant gaps in our efforts to prevent bioterrorism," Mr. Kerry said, according to excerpts of the speech made available by his campaign. "There is no national strategy and no high-level individual in charge of coordinating efforts across multiple agencies.
"While funding for biopreparedness has increased since 2001, President Bush is now proposing cuts in key areas," he said.
The Massachusetts senator said that Mr. Bush has proposed cutting the state and local bioterrorism preparedness program by 11 percent, or $105 million, and funding for biodefense countermeasures by $49 million.
The Bush campaign responded by saying that the president had demonstrated "an unprecedented commitment to bolstering the nation's defenses against biological attacks."
Mr. Kerry was making the third of four speeches he plans during an 11-day focus on national security that he began in Seattle last week.
He said that in addition to working with American allies to strengthen the bioweapons ban, he would also work with Russia to have scientists who once built bioweapons to "use their skills for peaceful purposes developing vaccines and antidotes."
Domestically, Mr. Kerry said he would do more to strengthen the nation's health system and homeland security.
"Our hospitals are overburdened, and there has been inadequate development of essential drugs and vaccines," he said. "Too many hospital and emergency rooms are overwhelmed, staggering beneath the every day burdens of our broken health system."
He also said he would appoint one person to be in charge of overseeing all bioterrorism programs, budgets and strategic priorities.
On Tuesday, when he talked about speeding up the timetable for securing the world's nuclear weapons and materials, he said he would appoint a White House non-proliferation coordinator to safeguard weapons. His campaign said it did not know what the cost of such a program would be.
Mr. Kerry also said he would put America's scientists to work on chemical defenses in what he called a "Medical Arsenal of Democracy." And he called for speedier work on drug and vaccine improvements.
The statement from President Bush's campaign said he had increased the federal bioterrorism budget to $5.2 billion in fiscal year 2004 from $294 million in fiscal year 2001.
"He has expanded bioterror research by an even greater margin," the statement said. In fiscal year 2005 it will be $1.7 billion, officials said, while it was $53 million in fiscal year 2001.
"President Bush's historic commitment to building up the biological defenses of the United States has rendered it far less vulnerable to the threat of bioterrorism than it was just three short years ago," the statement said. Mr. Kerry, who is traveling to Kansas City, Mo., later today for a rally, also received the endorsement of the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics, a 7,000-member labor organization.
"The Bush Administration lacks a concrete plan on how we would respond to a myriad of potential threats that could cripple our nation," said Michael Eosco, the group's national vice president.
"John Kerry has a vision and a plan," Mr. Eosco said. "Improving and coordinating our public health infrastructure is a top priority for John Kerry. He envisions a national homeland health initiative that ensures our public health system is prepared to detect or contain a major outbreak."
"We believe that Kerry's vision for a stronger America will save lives," he said.
-------- britain
Half of Britons against Iraq war
From correspondents in London
June 2, 2004
Agence France-Presse
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9728020%5E1702,00.html
FIFTY percent of Britons think the war in Iraq was unjustified, compared with 33 percent who felt it was, an opinion poll revealed today.
More than a year after Britain joined the United States in invading Iraq, 72 percent of Britons felt their country's reputation had worsened across the globe, according to the poll by the ICM organization.
But 48 percent agreed with Prime Minister Tony Blair that troops should stay in Iraq "until the job is done", against 41 percent who did not agree.
Britain announced last week that it would send some 370 extra troops to its zone of occupation in southern Iraq, taking the total to 8,900, to shore up security after the June 30 handover to an interim government in Baghdad.
Forty-six percent of respondents also said they were "more afraid of terrorism" than a year ago, compared to 45 percent who felt the same and seven percent who were less afraid.
The ICM survey for the "BBC Breakfast" program was conducted among 1,001 respondents between last Friday and Sunday.
-------- business
E-Mail Links Cheney's Office, Contract
Officials Say Only Involvement in Halliburton Deal Was Announcing It
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7908-2004Jun1.html
Shortly before the Pentagon awarded a division of oil services contactor Halliburton Co. a sole-source contract to help restore Iraqi oil fields last year, an Army Corps of Engineers official wrote an e-mail saying the award had been "coordinated" with the office of Vice President Cheney, Halliburton's former chief executive.
The March 5, 2003, e-mail, disclosed over the weekend by Time magazine, noted that Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, had signed off on the deal "contingent on informing WH [the White House] tomorrow."
"We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's office," it continued.
Three days later, Halliburton subsidiary KBR was granted the contract, which was worth as much as $7 billion, according to information on the Army Corps of Engineers Web site. The first job under the contract was putting out oil fires. It was later expanded to include shipping fuel to Iraq, which led to Pentagon auditor charges that KBR had overbilled the government.
Yesterday, officials in Cheney's office and at the Pentagon played down the significance of the note, saying the word "coordinate" referred only to the public announcement of a deal that had been quietly in the works for months to prepare for the possibility that diplomatic efforts to avoid war in Iraq might fail. The United States began hostilities March 20.
"Vice President Cheney and his staff have had no involvement whatsoever in government contracting decisions since he left private business to run for vice president," said Cheney spokesman Kevin Kellems. Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. DiRita said the vice president's office took part in interagency discussions about the possible need for such a contract, starting in the fall of 2002. But DiRita said Cheney's office had no role in the decision to grant the award. He described the use of the word "coordinate" in the e-mail as a "catch-all phrase" that signified "it's time for this contract to be executed."
The author of the e-mail about the contract was blacked out of the document, first obtained through a lawsuit by Judicial Watch, a nonprofit watchdog group in the District. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Scott Saunders described the official who wrote the note as "just a messenger."
"Coordination with the vice president's office, if any, would have been done at a much higher level than the Corps of Engineers," Saunders said. "It certainly wouldn't have been done by anyone in the corps."
Democrats in Congress seized on the e-mail to revive allegations about a Cheney role in the Halliburton contract. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to provide details about officials involved in the decision to award the contract and for "unredacted copies of all communications" between the Pentagon and White House about Halliburton contracts.
The campaign staff of Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, arranged a conference call to raise questions about the e-mail.
Later, in an e-mail, Kerry campaign spokesman Chad Clanton said, "It's time for Dick Cheney to come clean and start answering questions about this e-mail. What 'coordination' did Cheney's office do? Who coordinated for Cheney?"
--------
Accenture Is Awarded U.S. Contract for Borders
June 2, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JOHN MARKOFF
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/technology/02secure.html
WASHINGTON, June 1 - The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday named Accenture as the prime contractor for a multibillion-dollar project aimed at creating a "virtual border" around the country to head off would-be terrorists entering the United States.
Asa Hutchinson, the under secretary in charge of border security, said the project, called U.S.-Visit was "a significant milestone in the history of the department" and in the bolstering of border security since the Sept. 11 attacks. "I really don't think you could overstate the importance of this responsibility in terms of securing our nation," he said.
The project will use the latest technology, including biometrics, to identify people coming into the United States. The contract was awarded to Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting, over two competing contractors, Lockheed Martin and Computer Sciences. Several industry executives and analysts said that the award surprised them and that Accenture had widely been considered the outside candidate.
The award also brought controversy. Accenture is incorporated in Bermuda, and some critics attacked the idea of awarding a contract so valuable and important to national security to a company with its headquarters outside the United States.
After Accenture was named, Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, suggested the company took advantage of an uneven playing field to win the contract over Lockheed Martin and Computer Sciences.
"If companies truly want to contribute to our nation's security, they can pay their fair share of taxes. If they want a slice of the American pie, they had better help bake it," he said in a statement.
A spokesman for Accenture said that the company paid United States taxes.
Representative Richard E. Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, also questioned the award.
"This decision is outrageous," he said, in a statement. "The Bush administration has awarded the largest homeland security contract in history to a company that has given up its U.S. citizenship and moved to Bermuda. The inconsistency is breathtaking."
But homeland security officials said they were satisfied that Accenture, which has an operation in Reston, Va., with 25,000 employees, meets the legal requirements for an American-based company. The three bidders "were all U.S. companies," Mr. Hutchinson said.
The bid proposal set a range of $10 million to $10 billion over the 10-year life of the project. Mr. Hutchinson said the project was "certainly going to be a billion-dollar project when all is said and done."
Investigators at the General Accounting Office, however, have called the program "a very risky endeavor" because of management and financial concerns. They have estimated that the total cost, including financing needed from other agencies, could reach $15 billion.
Mr. Hutchinson said he was unperturbed by the findings.
"I would've been frustrated if they'd said it was not a risky endeavor," he said. "I could've told you that from Day 1."
Homeland security officials said that Accenture, in its bid proposal, provided an estimated cost of $72 million for two initial phases of the project, including the securing of the nation's 50 busiest land ports by the end of the year. Citing legal restrictions, officials would not disclose whether that represented the lowest bid. Other factors, including the companies' business and technical strategies and their experience were also considered, officials said.
Part of the challenge of the U.S.-Visit project will be integrating at least 19 large government databases, and that was a factor in the choice of Accenture, said T. Jeff Vining, an intelligence and law enforcement analyst at Gartner, the research firm.
"The government is basically soliciting on-the-fly R.& D.," he said, referring to research and development. Accenture also had the strongest team of subcontractors with international reach, he added.
Cindy Shaw, a financial analyst at Schwab SoundView Capital Markets, said the company had a successful track record with the Transportation Security Agency.
"One of the things that got lost in this whole competition is that Accenture helped T.S.A. put together its airport screening process," Ms. Shaw said. "They showed well under pressure there."
The project manager for the Accenture team said the company would take a similar approach to a contract it holds with the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency in deploying the U.S.-Visit system.
"We view this as a business transformation and we're talking about changing business processes," said Eric Stange, Accenture's program manager for the project. "We're looking at the human dimension as well as the technology dimension."
Mr. Stange said that in its work with the Defense Logistics Agency, Accenture had altered job descriptions and employee deployment. He said the border security project was similar in size and scale to the Pentagon contract. He refused, however, to make specific estimates either about the number of federal employees who would be involved or the number of Accenture employees who would take part.
The Department of Homeland Security has talked about using digital fingerprint and photographic information to help ensure identity. Mr. Stange, however, said that Accenture was continuing to evaluate other potential biometric techniques for accurate identity checks.
"Part of our approach is to continually assess technology innovations," Mr. Stange said. "For a 10-year contract that's a generation or two of technology, and biometrics is a very hot area."
The contract is for five years, with one-year options for five years after that.
Accenture's stock rose 75 cents on the news, to close at $25.36. Asked about what appeared to be a rise in the company's stock before the markets opened Tuesday, Mr. Hutchinson said he was unaware of any leak that might have driven up the stock but that the department would investigate. Wall Street analysts said, however, that there had been "chatter" about the award to Accenture before the market opened.
-------- china
Taiwan seeks special 18.2 bln military budget amid tensions with China
TAIPEI (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602113632.p8b7asw4.html
Taiwan's cabinet on Wednesday approved a special military budget of 610 billion Taiwan dollars (18.2 billion US) for the purchase of advanced weaponry amid tensions with China.
The draft bill, aimed at overriding the restrictions of existing laws governing official budgets, calls for the procurement of eight submarines, a modified version of Patriot anti-missile systems PAC-III and a fleet of anti-submarine aircraft over a 15-year period beginning in 2005.
United States President George W. Bush offered the sales in April 2001 as part of the most comprehensive arms package to the island since 1992.
Government spokesman Chen Chi-mai told reporters: "The Executive Yuan is highly concerned about the steady rise of military spending by the Chinese communist forces."
In order to finance the purchase, the Taiwanese government planned to sell land and stocks of state-run enterprises as well as issue government bonds, Chen said.
Taiwan's parliamentary speaker Wang Jin-pyng confirmed he would lead a delegation to the US in late June for the mega arms sales.
The visit "is related to arms sales", Wang said, without providing details.
A breakdown of the extra military budget was 144.9 billion Taiwan dollars for PAC-IIIs, 412.1 billion for conventional submarines, and 53 billion for anti-submarine aircraft.
But opposition parties reacted to the proposed special military budget by saying a big chunk of it would be a waste of taxpayers' money.
Parliamentarian Lu Hsiu-yen, from the opposition People First Party, said military experts had pointed out that such spending would do more to help the US arms industry than it would to help in meeting Taiwan's defense needs.
"What is more, given the financial difficulties, I think the public will oppose the arms sales," said Lu, a member of the parliament's defence committee.
Taiwan's approval of the special military budget came one day after the United States warned China over its arsenal of weaponry targeting Taiwan, including approximately 500 short-range ballistic missiles.
The US Defence Department warned in a report two days earlier that China was developing "credible military options" to prevent Taiwan from achieving independence, including tools to discourage the US from coming to the island's aid in a conflict with the mainland.
If equipped with adequate guidance systems, these missiles could destroy key Taiwanese leadership facilities, military bases and infrastructure with minimal advance warning, Pentagon analysts point out.
Some of these weapons are believed to be capable of hitting US military bases in Okinawa, Japan.
Taiwan has deployed three batteries of PAC-II missiles to defend its densely populated greater Taipei area.
Separately, the Taipei-based Chinatimes Express evening newspaper reported in a dispatch from Washington that Major General John Allen, in charge of Asia Pacific affairs in US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office, would visit Taiwan in July, becoming the most senior active US military officer here in 25 years, in a trip likely to anger Beijing.
The US 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 and calls for peaceful settlement of the sovereignty dispute between Taipei and Beijing.
China, which split with Taiwan in 1949 at the end of a civil war, has repeatedly threatened to take the island by force should it declare formal independence.
----
China war games seen as 'message'
June 02, 2004
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040602-010016-1638r.htm
China's military is preparing to hold large-scale war games intended as a "political message" to Taiwan, amid heightened tensions between the island and mainland, according to U.S. intelligence officials.
The military exercises are part of China's annual maneuvers involving large numbers of troops, ships, aircraft and missiles, and will take place on Dongshan Island. The island is located off the coast of Fujian province along the southern Chinese coast near Taiwan.
A U.S. intelligence official said the exercises will begin later this month.
"It isn't just a training exercise. It's also intended to send a political message [to Taiwan]," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The official said the political message in the exercises is one of "military readiness," intended to signal to Taiwan that China is ready to use force if necessary to reunite the island with the mainland.
Past war games on Dongshan, which is used for amphibious assault exercises, have involved 30,000 to 100,000 troops and large numbers of warships, submarines and combat aircraft.
The maneuvers are set to begin as the governments of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) last week traded accusations that rival patrolling warplanes crossed the line dividing the Taiwan Strait into Chinese- and Taiwanese-controlled waters.
The government-owned Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao, which first disclosed the exercises in a report published Monday, said that about 18,000 troops would participate and that the war games are practice for "seizing control of the air over the Taiwan Strait."
The exercises are expected to continue through July, the newspaper said.
China's communist government has expressed anger through press statements in recent weeks. China views plans by Taiwanese leader Chen Shui-bian for a referendum on updating the island's constitution in 2006 as a move toward formal independence, which Beijing opposes.
The Pentagon on Friday released an annual report on Chinese military power, which said Beijing is making strides at boosting its space defense capabilities.
The report provided information that the Chinese military is working on methods of space warfare against U.S. intelligence.
It was the first public warning by the Pentagon that the Chinese are considering ways of "blinding" U.S. eyes in space before launching any attack on Taiwan.
The space-warfare elements of the report bolster the findings of a 1999 congressional commission led by Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican, that said China is developing space weapons.
-------- haiti
U.S. Begins Transfer of a Shaky Haiti to U.N. Hands
June 2, 2004
By TIM WEINER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/international/americas/02hait.html?pagewanted=all&position=
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, June 1 - United States commanders began turning over this anarchic, flood-ravaged, starving nation 500 miles from Florida to a handful of United Nations troops on Tuesday.
The 3,600-member American-led military force brought a measure of stability to Haiti after the first Marines landed Feb. 29, the day President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced from power under rebel attack and American pressure.
Despite its best efforts during the past three months, it leaves behind a mess. The United Nations mission is to help make Haiti a functioning democracy capable of holding national elections sometime next year. That task may take longer than the mission's six-month mandate.
The rebels first rose up against President Aristide in February, and they still hold much of the countryside. Since their rebellion began, Haiti has been hit by disasters both natural and man-made.
In March, political chaos led to looting and burning in the capital, destroying government offices, hospital clinics and warehouses holding food for the hungry in the poorest nation in the Western world. In April, a transitional government installed with American backing proved unable to provide most basic public services, surviving on a lifeline of foreign money and military force.
Then came the torrential rains that killed thousands and left tens of thousands homeless a week ago.
The United Nations force, now a few hundred soldiers but intended to become 8,000 strong, confronts the immediate crisis of the flood. The toll is more than 2,600 dead and missing in Haiti, 700 dead and missing over the border in the Dominican Republic. The missing are presumed dead.
Some 75,000 people affected by the flood will need help to get through the rainy season, which officially started Tuesday.
International aid agencies will bear the brunt of that task. They say they initially underestimated the scale of the disaster and are scrambling for food, money and transportation to flood-struck villages, where roads have been eradicated.
American helicopters carrying tons of food to 15,000 survivors ceased flying Monday, a week after the floods struck. "The U.N. peacekeeping mission doesn't have helicopters right now, and it will take weeks for them to deploy some," said Íñigo Álvarez, a spokesman for the United Nations World Food Program, which was already feeding half a million Haitians before the flood. "Without them, we have a big problem to solve. The helicopters were essential."
Guy Gauvreau, the food program's director in Haiti, added, "We deeply deplore that the multinational force has other priorities."
The aid workers are talking about using mules to ferry aid to thousands of victims. Given the state of Haiti's interim government, the agencies say they may have to rent bulldozers and rebuild the ruined roads themselves.
All the while, Haitian politics continues, a discourse often carried out at gunpoint.
The interim Haitian government is outgunned by rebel forces, who control many Haitian towns and villages. The rebels include former soldiers of the Haitian military, a force corrupted by Colombian cocaine kingpins and charged with political killings. In 1991, the military helped overthrow Mr. Aristide, Haiti's first - and only - democratically elected leader.
These rebels are calling for the resurrection of the Haitian Army, disbanded by Mr. Aristide in 1995.
American commanders say the last thing Haiti needs is the return of its military, long an instrument of political terror. Armed Aristide loyalists remain a force in Port-au-Prince, though Mr. Aristide is in exile in South Africa, and unlikely to be allowed to return anytime soon.
Only a handful of the soldiers for the force cobbled together by the United Nations are now in Haiti. They have no headquarters and little money.
Some troops from Canada, France and Chile, nations now in the American-led force, will remain in Haiti. A handful of Americans here might stay past June 30, the deadline for their withdrawal.
The Americans may return. Gen. James T. Hill, chief of the United States Southern Command, is talking privately about rotating American forces through Haiti in military exercises later this year, a senior Western diplomat said Tuesday.
Brig. Gen. Ronald S. Coleman of the United States Marines handed over the international military presence to Gen. Augusto Heleno Ribeiro Pereira, of the Brazilian Army, at a ceremony held Tuesday morning at the National Police Academy here. He will lead the United Nations force.
"The stakes are high," Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said in a message read at the ceremony on Tuesday. "This time, let us get it right."
The event at the academy was largely protocol. Actual command authority will be vested in the United Nations force on June 20. Some 1,200 Brazilian troops, 150 from Paraguay, 150 from Uruguay and 350 from Argentina should be on the ground in Haiti by June 30.
The United Nations has mandated 6,700 troops and 1,622 police officers from 30 countries. The mission may never reach that force; less than half that number have signed on.
The American-led disarmament effort rounded up fewer than 200 weapons. The new force has a mandate for disarmament, a task Haiti's interim government lacks the power to undertake. "Disarmament is very important," General Pereira said. "However, spiritual disarmament is even more important than physical disarmament."
The United Nations troops, who are here as peacekeepers, are unlikely to try to disarm gunmen by force.
Though American troops are leaving, American foreign policy stays the same.
It seeks to stop the flow of refugees to Florida. It wants to fight cocaine traffickers' power to corrupt Haitian officials who help ship their drugs to the United States. It will assist Haiti's interim government as it tries to find its way to elections in 2005.
The interim government was appointed in the chaotic days following the fall of Mr. Aristide, with armed rebels looting the capital and pro-Aristide militias shooting at the newly landed marines. It remains unrecognized by Caricom, the 15-member community of Caribbean nations.
Many Haitians see the interim government as hand-picked or heavily influenced by the United States, which escorted Mr. Aristide out of Haiti on an American plane. In the slums of Port-au-Prince, where Mr. Aristide's rise from priest to president began, many still see him as Haiti's true leader.
Leslie F. Manigat, who served as Haiti's president in 1991 and now leads a new political party, the National Democratic Progressive Coalition, said the desperate problems of the past three months will resound long after the six-month mandate of the new United Nations force.
"These latest events are going to affect this country on the economic and the political level for a very long time," he said. "There have been mistakes, lots of mistakes since Aristide left, starting with the way in which he left, and the way things have been handled since then."
"I am not a pessimist by nature," the former president said. "But I have gnawing doubts about the future."
-------- iraq
Interim Leaders Named In Iraq
Appointees Are Diverse; U.N. Envoy Is Rebuffed On Choice for President
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7879-2004Jun1?language=printer
BAGHDAD, June 1 -- A diverse group of secular figures, political independents and technical specialists was appointed Tuesday to serve as Iraq's caretaker administration after the U.S. occupation relinquishes authority at the end of this month.
But the U.N. envoy entrusted by the White House to form Iraq's interim government failed to seat his choice for president because of stiff opposition from Iraqi leaders, forcing him to select Ghazi Yawar, a 45-year-old Sunni Muslim tribal sheik who has no government experience beyond a 10-month stint on the U.S.-appointed Governing Council.
The envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, had offered the largely ceremonial presidency to Adnan Pachachi, 81, a former foreign minister and also a Sunni. But Pachachi turned down the job on Tuesday morning after determining that the government should not begin under a cloud of dissension.
The newly appointed interim administration assumed responsibilities from the Governing Council, which dissolved itself on Tuesday morning so the new government could start work immediately. Iraq's interim leadership will face the daunting challenges of stabilizing this violence-wracked nation, winning over a skeptical population, working out a security agreement with the United States and preparing for general elections early next year.
Reminders of those hurdles were evident on Tuesday, as numerous Iraqis voiced doubts about Brahimi's selections and a car bomb exploded near the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, killing at least five people and injuring 20. A roadside bomb detonated near a U.S. base in the northern city of Baiji, killing 11 Iraqis, including seven members of the Civil Defense Corps, and wounding more than 22 people, including two U.S. soldiers.
Mindful of the difficulties confronting the new government, Brahimi beseeched Iraqis to support their interim leaders. "Give them a chance," he said at a ceremony announcing his appointments. "Help them. Judge them after looking at their progress and the actions they take. The country needs real national unity."
Brahimi also formally appointed Ayad Allawi as prime minister. He was nominated by the Governing Council on Friday. Allawi, a Shiite politician whose party had been supported in exile by the CIA, also was not Brahimi's first choice, but U.N. officials said Brahimi was compelled to support him after intense pressure from the council.
In addition to the prime minister and the president, the new government includes two vice presidents and a 32-member cabinet. A 100-member assembly that will have veto power over the cabinet's decisions is to be chosen by delegates to a national conference in July.
At the announcement ceremony before 400 Iraqi and foreign guests, including the U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, Yawar pledged to rise "above sectarianism and divisions" to build a "pluralistic, federal and democratic Iraq" free of "totalitarianism and discrimination."
Dressed in a flowing white Arab robe with gold fringe and a traditional tribal headdress, Yawar said he would focus the government's energies on restoring security and preparing for national elections early next year.
Allawi, the prime minister, said there was still a need for international military forces "to help in defeating the enemies of Iraq," taking a position favored by the United States but opposed by many Iraqis. He said his government would enter into security agreements with "our allies."
At the White House, President Bush praised the new government, saying its selection "brings us one step closer to realizing the dream of millions of Iraqis: a fully sovereign nation with a representative government that protects their rights and serves their needs."
Bush and other senior U.S. officials expressed satisfaction with Allawi's comments about security cooperation with the United States. The officials also said they were optimistic that Yawar, who served on the Governing Council's security committee, would support the continued presence of U.S. forces in Iraq despite saying in a recent television interview that he blamed "the United States 100 percent for the security in Iraq."
"I can tell you firmly and without any contradiction, this is a terrific list, a really good government, and we are very pleased with the names that have emerged," said Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. "These are not America's puppets. These are independent-minded Iraqis who are determined to take their country to security and democracy."
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called the interim government "a new beginning." But he also hinted at the pressure Brahimi faced.
"I think we all have to recognize that the process wasn't perfect and it was a difficult environment," Annan said. "And I think given the circumstances, I believe Mr. Brahimi did as best as he could."
Although Brahimi's decisions were made in secret, in consultation with senior U.S. officials and a handful of Iraqi leaders, he insisted the final product was the result of broad input from Iraqis. He said he met "hundreds, if not thousands of people and consulted with them" about the formation of the interim government.
Despite the council's influence in the selection of Allawi and Yawar, Brahimi appeared to have a freer hand in selecting cabinet members. Six of the new ministers are women and several are technocrats, reflecting Brahimi's desire for an administration without political affiliations. Only six of the 32 belong to large political parties.
Although Brahimi consulted with Allawi on cabinet appointments, a senior U.N. official said all but two of the ministers were chosen by Brahimi. Most of the ministers appointed by the Governing Council last year were removed, including three who were close to fundamentalist Muslims and two with connections to Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi politician who used to be a favorite of the Pentagon but has become an opponent of the U.S. occupation.
Chalabi, once regarded by some in the U.S. government as Iraq's president in waiting, did not attend the ceremony. No one from his Iraqi National Congress party was appointed by Brahimi.
The two vice presidents, Ibrahim Jafari of the Dawa party and Rowsch Shaways of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, are politicians, but they represent key constituencies -- conservative Shiites and ethnic Kurds.
Another senior Kurdish politician, Barham Salih, who served as Washington representative of the Kurds' autonomous region in northern Iraq during the 1990s, was appointed deputy prime minister. Leaders of Iraqi's Kurdish minority had sought either the presidency or the prime ministership but agreed to accept one of the vice presidential posts and two senior ministries. Another Kurd, Hoshyar Zubari, will continue to serve as the foreign minister.
Although it took over from the Governing Council on Tuesday, the new administration will be subordinate to the U.S. occupation authority until June 30, when the United States hands over limited authority. The next 29 days are regarded by U.S. officials as on-the-job training for the new government.
But there were already signs that participants would not be content with that role alone. Members of the new administration said they would attempt to influence the wording of a U.N. Security Council resolution that will set out the terms of the handover. Shaways said Zubari, who was traveling to U.N. headquarters in New York, would urge the Security Council to give the new administration full control of Iraqi security forces, a step the Bush administration has been resisting because it deems the country's army and police force unready for full autonomy. Yawar and other Iraqi leaders also want the new government to have greater control over the activities of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Asked about military control after June 30, Bush said: "We'll be flexible." At times, he said, the Iraqis may ask the United States to stay out of a situation; at other times, they may ask for help. But in no circumstance, he said, would U.S. troops "in harm's way" have to consult with anyone other than their own commanders.
During the past few weeks, there were indications of significant disagreement between the Governing Council and the trio of officials sorting out the transition: Brahimi, Bremer and White House envoy Robert D. Blackwill. Council members sought to play a central role in the process, while Brahimi and the U.S. officials wanted to broaden consultations to include provincial, tribal and religious leaders not represented on the council.
Tensions peaked when council members received word of Brahimi's initial choices for prime minister and president. The U.N. envoy had wanted to appoint Hussain Shahristani, a Shiite nuclear scientist, to the prime ministership, but Shiite politicians balked last week, forcing Brahimi to choose Allawi, whose candidacy had the support of U.S. officials.
When Brahimi sought to give the presidency to Pachachi, the council once again objected and insisted that the job go to Yawar. Both were on the Governing Council, but many members argued that Yawar, a civil engineer who lived in Saudi Arabia until the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, was a better choice. He is a leader of a large tribe, the Shamar, which includes both Sunnis and Shiites. He also was regarded by council members as more independent and less supportive of U.S. policies in Iraq than Pachachi.
A brief biography of Yawar distributed by the occupation authority stated that he studied at Georgetown University, but Laura Cavender, a university spokeswoman, could not confirm that he ever attended the school.
Brahimi, a former foreign minister of Algeria, was convinced that Pachachi, a diplomat who had been active in the exiled opposition to Hussein, would make a better president. Despite Yawar's support in the council, the U.N. envoy regarded Pachachi as more popular among other groups of Iraqis. "He was the top choice," an official involved in the process said. "He had much more support among the public at large."
After lengthy negotiations with Yawar, Allawi, other Iraqis and U.S. officials, Brahimi decided to offer the presidency to Pachachi. But when he formally conveyed the offer on Tuesday morning, Pachachi demurred.
"The president should be a force for unity, not division," Pachachi said.
Less than a half-hour later, Brahimi offered the job to Yawar, who immediately accepted. Asked about the contest between himself and Pachachi, Yawar said: "It was in a very friendly team spirit."
U.N. and U.S. officials said Brahimi did not offer the job to Pachachi with the expectation he would turn it down, although there were indications over the weekend that Pachachi was having second thoughts. "There was a hope he would accept," the official involved in the process said. "We didn't know for sure what he would say until the very end."
A senior Bush administration official in Baghdad said the U.S. government did not push for one candidate over the other. "We didn't lobby anybody," the official said. "We thought either one of them would make a fine president of Iraq."
Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.
----
Iraqi group parades 'collaborators'
Up to 40 foreigners have already been captured in Iraq
Wednesday 02 June 2004
Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B3416C1B-7771-42D4-AE95-2F50132FF277.htm
An Arab satellite channel has aired footage of a group of armed men threatening to kill an Egyptian and a Turkish prisoner if their countries do not condemn the US-led occupation in Iraq.
"Death will be the fate of these people if their governments don't condemn the occupation," said a masked man holding an assault rifle as two men crouched in front of him holding up their passports. The footage was aired by al-Arabiya television on Wednesday.
"I deliver foodstuffs from Kuwait to the US army," said one of the men, who was clean-shaven and spoke in Arabic with an Egyptian accent. The other man had a moustache and spoke in what sounded like Turkish.
Both men attempted to identify themselves on the tape, but the quality was so poor it was difficult for viewers to be sure of what they were saying.
However, in similar footage, obtained by Associated Press Television News, the two men reportedly identified themselves as Bulent Yankik, a Turk born in 1969, and Victor Tawfiq Jerges, an Egyptian born in 1959.
The camera zoomed in on a document reading "ESS company vehicle list".
One of the gunmen read a statement saying "our Jihad brothers" had captured the two drivers "while they were providing the American army with supplies and goods".
He did not say where or when they were seized.
Governments blamed
"We are going to treat them in accordance with Islamic law, and we warn everyone who is assisting the Americans that they will meet the same fate," the gunman added.
"We are going to treat them in accordance with Islamic law, and we warn everyone who is assisting the Americans that they will meet the same fate"
Armed hostage-taker "We hold their governments responsible for their actions."
Both men appeared unharmed and were eating food from plates on a carpet on the floor.
On Tuesday, two Polish contractors and five Kurdish employees were captured near a US compound close to Baghdad.
One of the Poles managed to escape, a spokesman for their company said. They were taken from their office at around noon by people who drove up in vehicles, a spokesman for their Jedynka construction company told Polish television.
The wave of kidnappings of foreigners was sparked by the intense clashes that began in April. Up to 40 people from several nations have been seized, though most were later freed. Agencies
----
Iraq Group Threatens to Kill Hostages
Wed Jun 2, 2004
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5319263
DUBAI - Al Arabiya television aired footage on Wednesday of an Iraqi group threatening to kill an Egyptian and a Turkish hostage if their countries did not condemn the U.S.-led occupation in Iraq.
"Death will be the fate of these people if their governments don't condemn the occupation," said a masked man holding an assault rifle as two men crouched in front of him holding up their passports.
"I deliver food stuffs from Kuwait to the U.S. army," said one of the men, who was clean-shaven and spoke in Arabic with an Egyptian accent. The other man had a mustache and spoke in what sounded like Turkish.
Both men attempted to identify themselves on the tape, but the quality was so poor it was difficult for viewers to be sure of what they were saying.
Scores of foreigners have been taken hostage by Iraqi armed groups, who are battling the U.S.-led presence in Iraq. Some hostages have been released but others have been killed.
On Tuesday, Iraq's new government was sworn in with the president-designate demanding the United Nations give "full sovereignty" when the U.S.-led occupation authority is dissolved on June 30. A U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
----
Bombs, Bullets and Kidnappings: Just a Quiet Day in Iraq
By EDWARD WONG
June 2, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/international/middleeast/02CND-MAYH.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 2 - Shihab Salim heard the first explosion this morning as he was sitting with his children in his home in northern Baghdad.
The children started running for the door to check out the blast. Mr. Salim wanted to stop them, to tell them there might be a second explosion. But it seemed all the children of the neighborhood were already racing down the street, as if the ice cream truck had come around.
Then the second bomb went off.
"I wasn't even able to get myself away," said Mr. Salim, a construction worker, as he lay in a hospital bed with blood covering his white robe. He had been gouged in the thigh by flying glass or shrapnel. One of his children had also been injured.
All told, five people were killed and 38 wounded by two bombs that exploded in succession in a car parked in the Adhamiya neighborhood, said Abdullah Sahib Younis, general director of Numan Hospital. But such statistics are rough guesses at best; it is difficult to piece together the body parts so quickly.
The blasts occurred around noon. Most of the trauma cases received by the hospital were considered serious. The ages of the victims varied widely.
So began what was considered a relatively quiet day in Iraq. By the standards of most modern societies, such a day would have been labeled horrific: a car bomb went off in Baghdad, fighting continued in the holy city of Kufa between American soldiers and militiamen loyal to a rebel Shiite cleric, assassinations and firefights and kidnappings no doubt took place in other parts of the country.
But this is Iraq, a country inured to violence and heartache, and so such a day was considered a breather, a day when one could sit back and take stock of the new slate of Iraqi officials charged with leading the country to its first democratic elections by early next year. A day to talk of what the future might hold, because the present was too ugly.
The appointment of an interim government will likely spur on insurgents rather than assuage them, since the Iraqi officials are still considered by many to be puppets of the White House. The car bomb that went off in Adhamiya was the third one in Baghdad in as many days. On Monday, one exploded near an entrance to the American headquarters, killing at least four Iraqis, and another detonated on Tuesday outside the headquarters of a Kurdish political party, killing at least three.
It was unclear whether the one that exploded today was the work of a suicide bomber. Mr. Salim said he had seen the car parked on one side of Omar bin Abdul-aziz Street as he walked in the morning to the bakery. He said it was a dark-red Chevrolet sedan. He did not mention seeing anyone inside.
Such distinctions did not matter to him, or to the woman wailing at the entrance of the hospital because a family member had been killed, or to the bloodied victims lying on stretchers in the cramped hallway waiting to be taken to air-conditioned rooms.
There were not many such rooms, and so the people waited.
A crowd pressed against the reception desk, asking about friends and family.
"I think whomever did this was trying to create disruptions in the country after the announcement of the new government," Mr. Salim said. "They don't want the situation to settle down. They're terrorists."
By 1:15 p.m., most of the bodies and body parts had been carted away from the scene. What remained were charred bits of metal, pieces of glass and the burnt hulk of the car. Iraqi police officers blocked off the area.
Dozens of men carried a coffin draped with an Iraqi flag from the doorway of a nearby mosque. A body washer had performed the proper Islamic ritual. The corpse was ready for burial.
In the southern city of Kufa, soldiers with the First Armored Division fought against members of the Mahdi Army, the militia of radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Kufa is where Mr. Sadr preaches every Friday, and his men there have refused to honor a cease-fire announced a week ago.
The fighting today left four Iraqis dead and 35 wounded, a hospital official said. The previous day, five Iraqis were killed and 11 injured in clashes. There were no immediate reports of Americans killed on either day.
The battle today began at 10 p.m. when a large American patrol rolled into town and took up a position between two mosques, witnesses said. It lasted about an hour. Most of the injured were not wounded directly in the battle, but by stray mortar rounds fired by the Mahdi Army that landed in residential areas, officials at two hospitals said.
"We don't want anything more than just to be safe," said Fadhil Jasim, whose 3-year-old son, Muhammad, was one of seven people injured by a single mortar. "Others are fooling around with people's lives, and we are the ones paying for it."
Ali Hussein, a 25-year-old militiaman, said the Mahdi Army will start attacking American tanks and Humvees with suicide explosive belts next week if a peaceful solution is not reached. But Mr. Sadr made a similar threat nearly two months ago, and it has yet to be carried out.
Around 8 p.m. in Baghdad, the sun slipped toward the horizon as boys dived into the Tigris along the east bank and kicked around soccer balls in a dusty field. A full moon rose above palm trees. So ended a quiet day in Iraq.
Iraqi employees of The New York Times contributed reporting from Baghdad and Kufa.
----
UN Members Say Iraq Needs More Control of Its Army
Wed Jun 2, 2004
By Evelyn Leopold
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5327539
UNITED NATIONS - Several U.N. members said on Wednesday a new U.S.-British draft resolution failed to give Iraq enough control over its own forces, despite giving Baghdad considerable authority over security and the economy.
Russia, France, China and others greeted the revised draft Security Council resolution on Iraq positively but said it could be improved. Moscow took the toughest line, diplomats said.
The United States and Britain submitted a second draft of the resolution on Tuesday that would give a new interim Iraqi government, which takes power on June 30, control of its police, border patrols and other security forces.
To meet objections to the previous draft, the new version says that once a transitional government is elected next year, it can ask a U.S.-led multinational force to leave, providing the Security Council agrees.
The resolution also stipulates that the mandate of the international force would expire automatically once a permanent Iraqi government takes office, as envisaged for 2006. The original draft had an open-ended mandate for the foreign troops, now about 160,000-strong, with only a review process
One of the main concerns raised by council members is that the new draft does not spell out whether the Iraqi military can refuse an offensive action ordered by the U.S. command, which would have authority to take "all necessary measures."
The measure relegates this issue to a separate exchange of letters between Iraqi leaders and the U.S. military.
French President Jacques Chirac told reporters in Paris that the resolution was a good basis for discussion but needed improvement "to affirm and confirm the full sovereignty of the Iraqi government, particularly in the military domain."
Russia has a long list of demands, including wanting two resolutions, one immediately to endorse an interim government and another after it takes office for all other issues.
Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said during a visit to Norway that it was vital the new Iraqi interim government was recognized as legitimate both inside and outside Iraq.
"The Security Council (must) be certain that the government commands acceptance inside Iraq and outside Iraq, in other words that it is legitimate," he said.
And Algerian Ambassador Abdallah Baali, the only Arab delegate on the council, said earlier, "We wish to see the interim government's views on major military operations prevail when the multinational force intends to carry out major operations." He said several other members agreed.
But U.S. deputy ambassador James Cunningham indicated that the relationship between the Iraqi and U.S. militaries was not a matter for the council to decide, although the resolution asks members for authorization of the force.
He said the issue was for the Iraqis and the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq to "work out among ourselves."
No vote is scheduled before the 15-nation council hears the views of Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari on Thursday. Few expect the resolution to be rejected, but some language changes are anticipated.
Members also want to confer this weekend with U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who has spent most of the last month in Baghdad trying to forge an interim government.
The Iraqi interim government that is to take office on June 30 is to be followed by elections for a transitional government in January 2005. A permanent government is envisaged to take power by about early 2006.
----
Full sovereignty in Iraq might not be so
By GEORGE GEDDA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apmideast_story.asp?category=1107&slug=Iraq%20What%20Is%20Sovereignty
WASHINGTON -- President Bush and top U.S. officials repeatedly stress that Iraqis will have "full sovereignty" after June 30. The interim Iraqi government that takes power then, however, will be more caretaking than autonomous, unable to do basic functions such as make laws or control military forces.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser to former President Carter, says the term "full sovereignty" - emphasized Tuesday by Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice - lacks credibility. No government can be fully sovereign while its country is "still being occupied by a foreign army, 140,000 men, subject to our authority," he said.
Brzezinski envisions a government of "limited sovereignty," the same wording used by Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman before Congress in April.
The Bush administration quickly disavowed that phrase in favor of "full sovereignty."
Nevertheless, the Iraqi administration to be installed on July 1 is more a caretaker government than an entity with broad authority to exercise its will.
As an example, U.S. forces there will remain under American control. Also, the approval of any new laws must await the early 2006 installation of an elected government contemplated under the current timetable.
The main task of the interim authority will be to run the country through the various government ministries and to organize elections in January for what Bush calls "the first freely elected, truly representative national governing body in Iraq's history."
The State Department said Tuesday the interim government - a 33-member cabinet was announced Tuesday in Baghdad - will be free to establish diplomatic relations with Iran or other countries if it wishes.
But Simon Chesterman, of the Institute for International Law and Justice at New York University, likens U.S. relations with the future Iraqi caretaker government to the dominant role the Soviet Union maintained over pliable East Bloc allies during the last century.
U.S. officials say the two situations are not comparable, based on the permanent nature of the Soviet troop presence in Central Europe contrasted to the U.S. goal of leaving Iraq as quickly as possible and American support for a transfer of power to an elected government.
Powell said Tuesday he believes the transfer in Iraq from the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority will be genuine.
"The Iraqi people will now see that their destiny is in the hands of their own leaders," he told reporters. "The occupation as they know it is coming to an end, in that their political leaders are in charge."
Brzezinski sees things far differently.
"The transfer of nominal sovereignty to a few chosen Iraqis in a still-occupied country will brand any so-called sovereign Iraqi authority as treasonous," Brzezinski says.
But U.S. officials hope that Iyad Allawi, prime minister of the new government of the still nonsovereign Iraq, will gain more acceptance from Iraqis than the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council, which dissolved itself Tuesday.
In terms of public support, Allawi appears to have a leg up on the council because he has the blessing of Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. envoy to Iraq.
The more the new government is seen as sovereign by outsiders, the better its chance of acceptance by Iraqis.
Accordingly, the administration is nurturing in virtually all public statements the notion that a "fully sovereign" Iraq is about to be born. Powell is confident that the U.N. Security Council will endorse the new arrangement.
The United States and Britain submitted a revised resolution to the council Tuesday that for the first time sets a deadline, 2006, for the departure of U.S. and other foreign troops. It also would give the interim government control over Iraqi army and police forces.
Bush will have plenty of opportunity to present his case to allies. He leaves Thursday for visits to Italy and France. After meetings with leaders of both countries, Bush travels to Sea Island, Ga., to host next week's summit of the Group of Eight, the world's seven major industrial democracies plus Russia.
EDITOR'S NOTE - George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.
----
Iraq Moves Ahead, But Attacks Persist
Five Dead in Bombing of Kurdish Office
By Daniel Williams and Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5632-2004Jun1.html
BAGHDAD, June 1 -- Hope, skepticism and bombs greeted the naming of Iraq's interim president on Tuesday.
Within the barbed wire and concrete confines of the Green Zone, the area that houses the headquarters of the U.S.-led occupation administration, politicians made brave speeches about taking control of the country's destiny. Outside under the white-hot sun, the hidden opponents of both the occupation and the new ministers who aspire to lead Iraq to stability and democracy exhibited their unchecked capacity to sow mayhem.
A suicide bomber detonated explosives packed into a Chevrolet Caprice sedan in front of the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, a U.S.-allied party that represents part of Iraq's Kurdish minority. The blast killed at least five people, hospital officials said, when it sprayed metal 50 yards, smashed windows and brought down a first-floor ceiling in the building.
The attack occurred just an hour after a rocket landed in the Green Zone, near an ornamental gate fronting the grounds of the main Baghdad palace of Iraq's deposed leader, Saddam Hussein. The rocket arrived just before noon as Arabic-language television announced the appointment of Ghazi Yawar as Iraq's interim president. No one was hurt in the attack.
The contrast between the orderly announcement of the new interim Iraqi leadership and the lack of security on Baghdad's streets elicited expressions of both helplessness and determination from survivors of the car bombing. "No one does anything against the terrorists," said Muwaffak Khasrae, an office worker at the Kurdish party's headquarters who suffered lacerations on his left arm. "Maybe we have to pay for freedom with blood."
"These things are happening every day. Maybe the new government will help or maybe not, but the sacrifices are great," said Sajde Nawe, a secretary in the building. She had cuts on her head, back and hands.
The car bombing was the second in the capital in two days and appeared to be part of a developing pattern of striking at political targets after months targeting police stations, hotels and military installations. On May 17, a car bomber assassinated Izzedin Salim, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council.
Kurds at the scene interpreted the targeting of the Kurdish political building as an assault by Iraqi Arabs on the Kurdish campaign for autonomy in the new Iraq. A group of Kurdish men became angry when an Arab suggested to a reporter that the explosion was caused by a rocket from a U.S. helicopter rather than a car bomb.
The Arab shouted that Kurdish guards had sprayed the street with gunfire, killing Arab passersby. There was shooting, but the assertion of casualties could not be confirmed.
Meanwhile, near the town of Baiji north of Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military base and killed 11 Iraqis, including seven members of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, a U.S.-trained paramilitary organization charged with helping to keep order in Iraqi towns. In the turbulent west, a U.S. Marine was killed while on patrol, a U.S. military statement said.
In the south, politicians tried to patch up a frayed cease-fire between U.S. troops and insurgents loyal to the Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr. Sadr's forces clashed with an American patrol in the city of Kufa on Monday. Two soldiers and about 20 guerrillas were killed in an hour-long firefight.
Reaction to Yawar's appointment among people in Baghdad was subdued. At Al Nour cafe, Shamoun Hermiz rang up orders for lamb and falafel sandwiches, while a long line of cars waiting for gasoline snaked along the busy commercial street outside. Hermiz, 40, said Yawar was the right choice because he would represent the Iraqi people, even though the people did not elect him.
"Ghazi Yawar is a good person," Hermiz said.
While Hermiz was talking, Ali Hussein Radhi approached from behind the counter, where he had been cooking a side of meat on a rotating spit. "The Iraqi people do not know Yawar and have not even heard about him," Radhi said, interrupting. "The Americans are the ones who appointed him. His job will be just filling orders."
Radhi said Yawar "represents America only. . . . It is just a drama performed in front of the people."
Outside, two college students sipped coffee under the bright red canopy of the cafe. Yousif Ali Hasan, 23, said Yawar's presidency was not legitimate because the U.S.-appointed Governing Council chose him. The council "does not represent the Iraqi people," he said.
Ali Hussein Mohammed, 25, nodded his head while his friend talked. "America interfered in choosing the president," he said. But Mohammed said he was optimistic that Yawar would be a good leader. "Yawar seems to be a good man," he said. "He seems to be just and moderate. The question is: Will he be able to make his own decisions or will he fill orders?"
Mohammed said people were tired of waiting for change. "People want security and work, and for these things they are ready to give even the oil to get them," he said. "Enough. We went though wars and oppression for 35 years."
In the gas line in front of the cafe, Amer Isa Mohammed, a taxi driver, stood outside his beat-up brown hatchback and waited for the line to move. "I hope the new president can govern Iraq to achieve security," said Mohammed, 30. "Ghazi Yawar is an Iraqi, and he will feel like us and will try to fix everything."
Across the street, Luei Khazal weighed bags of potato chips for sale at his stall. Yawar "is a good personality and has good and wide relations," Khazal said. "He is well educated and diplomatic. I think he will be able to run the country, and he'll get wide authorities for the benefit of Iraq."
Special correspondents Muhanned M. Salim and Bassam Sabti contributed to this report.
--------
6 Killed As U.S. Fights Militants in Iraq
June 2, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html
KUFA, Iraq -- Militants loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr clashed Wednesday with U.S. forces near a mosque in this Shiite holy city and in Baghdad, and officials said six Iraqis were killed and 40 others wounded.
In other Baghdad violence, a third fatal car bomb in as many days exploded in a Sunni Muslim district, killing at least five people and wounding about 33 others, including children, police said.
West of the capital, insurgents fired mortars at a police stations near the guerrilla stronghold of Fallujah, killing an Iraqi civilian and wounding three people, including a U.S. Marine. The mortar rounds hit the station in the Fallujah suburb of Kharma.
Explosions rocked the industrial sections of Kufa, where Shiite leaders have been struggling to save a shaky cease-fire. Many of the injured suffered shrapnel wounds from a mortar round that missed a U.S. convoy, witnesses said.
Gunfire reverberated through the largely deserted streets as fighters loyal to al-Sadr took positions near the mosque, where gunbattles have raged in past days. Tanks and Humvees rolled into the center of the city at midmorning, prompting terrified civilians to scramble for cover.
Five people were killed in the fighting, hospital sources said. In skirmishes lasting about an hour, two militiamen were injured, fighters said.
Near sunset Wednesday, several strong explosions and bursts of gunfire resounded through Kufa. Al-Mahdi militiamen crouched behind walls of residential buildings, waiting to see if the Americans would advance into their area.
At a Kufa hospital, officials said about 30 people were admitted for various wounds. One of them, 16-year old Malik Ali, lay in a hospital bed, his face and clothes covered with blood. Neighbors said he was shot outside his home.
Al-Sadr's forces and U.S. troops also exchanged gunfire in the Shiite district of Baghdad known as Sadr City, killing one fighter and injured three, officials in al-Sadr's office said.
Fighters threatened to conduct suicide operations if talks failed.
``We will use explosive belts to attack the U.S. tanks,'' said one fighter, Ali Hussein.
Clashes have rocked Kufa nearly every day since Shiite leaders announced an agreement by al-Sadr to end a 2-month-old standoff with the Americans here and in nearby Najaf.
One proposal under discussion calls for al-Sadr's militia to withdraw from Najaf over a 72-hour period. In return, American troops would stay away from Shiite holy sites in Najaf and Kufa -- where U.S. and militia forces have battled since al-Sadr launched an anti-occupation uprising in early April.
Ahmad al-Shibani, an official from al-Sadr's office in Najaf, said al-Sadr's movement will likely have objections to the deal because it calls for them to surrender their weapons and provides for joint patrols including U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police.
On Wednesday, Shiite negotiators blamed coalition forces for a ``clear violation'' of the cease-fire agreement.
``What's going on now is targeting the people of holy Najaf who have gone out to the streets, optimistic,'' the statement said. ``We can only hold you responsible for these actions.''
The Shiite team said that since Tuesday evening, American troops attacked the Kufa mosques three times, twice targeting the same mosque. An industrial neighborhood was also attacked.
There was no comment from U.S. officials, who have repeatedly said they were not a party to any agreement with al-Sadr but had agreed to suspend offensive operations.
The car bomb in Baghdad exploded in the city's Azimiyah district in the north of the capital. Hospital official Nazdar Kadhim said five Iraqis died and 33 were hurt, including five children. Wailing relatives of the injured gathered at the hospital, only to be stopped from going into the emergency room.
Witnesses said two blasts occurred -- an initial explosion followed by a second one that went off just as a crowd had gathered. A convoy of SUVs, favored by Western contractors, had passed by moments before the bomb went off.
A grocery bag full of apples lay scattered on the street, dropped by an elderly woman injured in the blast. Bloodstains surrounded the blackened and twisted wreckage of the car.
On Tuesday, a car bomb killed three people and injured about 20 near the headquarters of the pro-American Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. A day earlier, a vehicle exploded near the headquarters of the U.S.-run occupation authority in central Baghdad, killing two people and injuring more than 20.
Security was stepped up Wednesday at the PUK's headquarters city of Sulaimaniyah, with police setting up more checkpoints and increasing the number of patrols.
U.S. officials say insurgents will step up attacks in the days leading to the June 30 transfer of sovereignty from the occupation authority to the interim Iraqi government.
On Wednesday, Associated Press Television News obtained a video showing a Turkish and an Egyptian truck driver said to have been kidnapped in Iraq. The gunmen said the drivers were delivering supplies from Kuwait to Iraq and were seized because they were working for occupation forces.
The tape was obtained in Ramadi, 100 miles west of the capital Baghdad. Ramadi is part of the so-called Sunni Triangle, a center of Sunni Muslim resistance to the American occupation.
A similar tape was broadcast by Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, two Arabic language satellite television stations.
Two Polish contractors and five other employees of a construction company were abducted Tuesday near Baghdad, but one of the Poles escaped, said Lt. Col. Robert Strzelecki, a Polish army spokesman.
The group was abducted from their office and forced into a car, before one got away, Strzelecki said. Authorities are searching for the missing people, including three Kurdish security guards and two other staffers whose nationality was not immediately known, he said.
AP correspondent Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this story from Baghdad.
-------- israel / palestine
Tribespeople resist Israel's government-built towns
June 02, 2004
By Jason Keyser
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040601-115409-4044r.htm
BIR HADAJ, Israel - Like a mirage, this sprawling desert shantytown of thousands of Bedouin tribespeople fades in a twilight dust storm. There is no electricity, and it soon is lost in the night.
Israel refuses to run electricity, water or roads to 45 Bedouin encampments in the southern Negev Desert, or even list them on maps, because it rejects the tribes' land claims.
With some Israeli officials warning that the country is losing its last frontier for Jewish settlements to an exploding Bedouin population, the government has adopted a plan to remove the encampments gradually. It will encourage residents to give up claims to scattered tribal grounds in return for housing lots in new towns.
But similar efforts to settle the Bedouin in towns in the past three decades largely have failed. There is growing Bedouin resentment over neglect, and some Jews worry about the possibility of violence.
About half the 140,000 Bedouin in the Negev have refused to leave villages that Israel considers illegal squatter camps. Many of those who did move to seven towns built by the government to house Bedouin since the 1960s have experienced bleak lives afflicted with drugs, poverty and unemployment.
Some in the outlying camps - though without running water, electricity or sewers - say they are better off than those in the towns because they have held onto their lands and a traditional livelihood of herding sheep and goats.
The harsh landscape mirrors a difficult life. On a recent afternoon in the Bir Hadaj encampment, wind and dust blasted dilapidated shacks. A few solitary figures moved about, silhouetted against the orange sky. A group of men left a mosque with their faces wrapped in scarves against the sand.
Under the new program, approved at an April 2003 meeting of a ministerial committee on the Bedouin, $110 million would be used to start building the infrastructure for seven new towns.
Bedouin activists and human rights lawyers say Israel isn't so interested in Bedouin welfare, but rather wants to clear Israeli Arabs from large swaths of land that the government hopes to settle with Jews.
"The aim is to concentrate as many [Arab] people as possible on as little land as possible," said Marwan Dalal, an Arab civil rights lawyer in Israel.
One town is planned for the area of the Bir Hadaj encampment, which is home to 5,000 Bedouin.
Ayid al-Azazmeh, 35, living at Bir Hadaj, said he would welcome living in a place with electricity. But he worries a town here might suffer the same ills that have befallen other government-built Bedouin towns. And, he said, the Bedouin could end up with considerably less land.
Bedouin tribes, most of them once semi-nomadic, began migrating to the Negev from the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa around the 5th century. In a desert of scrub and sand, they herd sheep, goats and camels.
After Israel's creation in 1948 and the Mideast wars, many Bedouin fled or were pushed out with other Arabs. Retroactive zoning laws in Israel classified much of their land as nonresidential, effectively making Bedouin villages illegal, civil rights groups say.
Traditionally, Bedouin land contracts were oral, and with no documents to prove ownership, few have made successful claims to keep land, said Alean al-Krenawi, a Bedouin college professor.
Yaakov Katz, director of the government's Administration for Advancement of the Bedouin, denies the intent of the new-town plan is to uproot the Bedouin. He said towns will help the tribesmen as well as stop illegal construction in the encampments.
Mr. Katz also said the government hopes to reverse past mistakes, most notably the neglect of the 70,000 Bedouin who moved to government-built towns only to languish in poverty.
Those towns have Israel's highest jobless rate - around 15 percent, compared with about 10 percent for the country as a whole. With more than half the people in the towns under age 18, academics and analysts warn of the danger of an entire new generation's impoverishment.
The plan allocates $55 million over the next six years to improve roads, electricity, sewerage systems and build sports centers in the existing towns.
In Tel Sheva, the first of the towns built three decades ago, 10,000 people live in cramped houses on crowded lots. With few jobs, many live on welfare while trying to hold onto a lifestyle of subsistence agriculture. Sheep, goats and camels roam trash-strewn lots and muddy streets.
"I wish I could go to the past and live the way I lived before," said Mohammed Abu Dawam, 47, who remembers raising sheep and goats with his family before he left his tribe's nearby land. "We felt happier then. We felt safe."
He said he hasn't had a job since he worked years ago at a laundry in a nearby city.
Making things worse, the jumble of tribes gathered into the towns quarrels, sometimes violently, over property and control of town councils, one of the few employers.
There is also resentment over the two dozen nearby Jewish towns and villages that are flourishing, their neatly farmed rows of green crops bursting from the desert.
Shmuel Rifman, a local government official in charge of developing the Negev, wants to build a belt of Jewish communities around the desert city of Beersheba, but thinks it will be impossible if the Bedouin are not moved.
With one of the highest birthrates in the world - the women average 10 children - the Bedouin population doubles every decade, he said. Without action, a chain of Arab desert villages will soon link the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, cutting Israel in half, Mr. Rifman argued.
He complained that the money hasn't been allocated yet for the new Bedouin program. Meanwhile, he said, Bedouin are growing angry and identifying more closely with the Palestinians.
"We are sitting on a powder keg," he said.
-------- mideast
Attackers Hit Saudi Police At Checkpoint
Reuters
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7821-2004Jun1.html
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, June 1 -- Saudi police fought a gun battle with suspected Islamic militants who had opened fire on a checkpoint in western Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, a government official said.
The shootout occurred near the city of Taif, near the Muslim holy city of Mecca, after gunmen fired on police manning the checkpoint in the mountainous region, the source said. There were no reports of casualties, he added.
A local journalist told al-Jazeera television that police were hunting for the men in nearby mountains.
Saudi Arabia has tightened security around Western targets after a weekend rampage by Islamic militants in Khobar, on the other side of the vast country, which killed 22 civilians. Three of the attackers escaped.
It was not immediately clear if there was any link between Tuesday's gun battle and the weekend violence.
Saudi Arabia has been locked in battle in the past year with militants linked to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, which is trying to bring down the U.S.-backed monarchy. The violence in the world's largest oil exporter has caused jitters in world oil markets.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan may launch air strikes against militants in tribal area
WANA, Pakistan (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602112147.gh7tx5el.html
Pakistani authorities Wednesday warned of possible air strikes against foreign Al-Qaeda-linked militants in the northwestern tribal belt who failed to report for registration.
"We are not satisfied at all with the performance of tribesmen in finding and handing over the foreigners hiding in the area," local administrator of South Waziristan Ismatullah Gandapur told AFP.
"Pakistan Air Force personnel have arrived in (the region's main town) Wana for the survey of suspected hideouts" of the fugitive fighters, Gandapur added, indicating that the impending operation would involve air strikes.
Under a deal brokered by tribal elders in April the government allowed an estimated 500 foreigners to stay in the rugged terrain bordering Afghanistan if they denounced militancy and registered with the authorities.
However, despite the expiry of several deadlines, none has registered.
Gandapur said the the authorities were frustrated with the inaction of tribal elders in the hunt for suspected Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
"These are unfortunate people and will take action only after a bloodshed involving hundreds of people," Gandapur said.
"I have literally begged them to do something as the time is running out fast."
The latest warning came in the wake of an economic blockade of tribesmen over the weekend. Troops erected road blocks and shut down thousands of shops and gas stations in the markets of Wana.
The Pakistani army launched its fiercest operation in March and lost at least 46 troops in a 12-day siege and search operation. The government changed its strategy and agreed to seek a political solution to the problem.
----
Shi'ites riot over bombing
June 02, 2004
By Zarar Khan
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040601-115412-9243r.htm
KARACHI, Pakistan - Shi'ite Muslims, enraged by a mosque bombing that killed 20 worshippers, battled police and burned American fast-food restaurants yesterday as the government struggled to contain a third day of violence in Pakistan's largest city.
Mass funerals for the victims of Monday's attack sparked what appeared to be orchestrated violence as hundreds of young people rampaged near the wrecked Imam Bargah Ali Raza mosque, stoning police and setting fire to shops and buses.
Along a quarter-mile battle-scarred stretch of Karachi's main road, men with guns took up four or five positions on rooftops and fired at police and paramilitary rangers.
Police Chief Asad Ashraf Malik said four policemen were wounded by gunfire, and that 150 had been arrested - in addition to more than 50 detained during street rioting Monday night. Chief Malik said that in all, about 35 vehicles and 12-to-15 shops and restaurants were burned, including a Kentucky Fried Chicken and a McDonald's.
He threatened more force.
"We have decided not to be lenient. If anyone goes on the streets to cause trouble, they will be dealt with strictly," he said.
Karachi, a volatile city of 14 million, is no stranger to armed violence motivated by crime, politics and religion. Sectarian strife between militant elements of majority Sunni Muslims and minority Shi'ites has only deepened since President Pervez Musharraf gave his support to the U.S.-led war on terrorism in late 2001.
But the city has endured three unusually turbulent weeks after a May 7 suicide attack at a Shi'ite mosque killed 22 persons. It was followed by clashes during elections that left at least 10 dead and a twin car bombing near the U.S. consul general's residence last week that killed a policeman and injured 40 others.
The drive-by shooting Sunday of prominent Sunni cleric Nazamuddin Shamzai made matters worse, triggering unrest and raising fears of sectarian clashes - a fear magnified after Monday's bombing at the Shi'ite mosque that killed 20 persons and injured 75. Police suspect it was a suicide attack.
No one has taken responsibility for any of the recent attacks.
Mr. Musharraf pledged action to stem the bloodshed, but no new measures were announced. Separately, he warned in a speech to representatives of Muslim countries that the world risked plunging into an "abyss of barbarism" unless it tackled the poverty and alienation that feeds Islamic extremism.
Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the president was expected to make "important decisions" in the coming days - perhaps replacing the leadership of the Karachi or provincial security establishment - but appeared to rule out the possibility of emergency rule by the army.
Among the estimated 10,000 mourners who gathered for the funerals of the victims of Monday's bombing, many vented anger at Gen. Musharraf, chanting "Death to America" and slogans against his government as they beat their chests in grief.
-------- prisoners of war
U.S. Is Sued Over Records of Military Prisoner Abuse
Wed Jun 2, 2004
By Gail Appleson
(Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5326694
NEW YORK - Civil-rights and veterans groups on Wednesday sued the U.S. government for what they said was illegally withholding records about American military abuse of prisoners held in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other locations.
The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, charges that the U.S. departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State have failed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the groups last year. Other defendants in the suit include the FBI and CIA.
The plaintiffs are seeking records documenting torture and abuse which they said has occurred since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. They said that after they filed the FOIA request in October, numerous news stories and photographs have documented mistreatment of prisoners held in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"There is growing evidence that the abuse of detainees was not aberrational but systemic, that in some cases the abuse amounted to torture and resulted in death, and that senior officials either approved of the abuse or were deliberately indifferent to it," the suit said.
The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, The Center For Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The groups said this is the first suit seeking to force the government to disclose these records under FOIA.
They said that the only information that has been released since their FOIA request was a set of guidelines that State Department employees are to use when answering questions from reporters about the treatment of detainees. An ACLU lawyers said the guidelines emphasized that prisoners were being treated humanely.
The groups are asking the court to order the immediate release of records about the abuse of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib and other overseas detention facilities, the deaths of detainees in United States custody and the policies governing the interrogation of detainees in United States custody.
They also want information about the government's "rendering," or turning over, of detainees to countries known to use torture. The FOIA request cited reports that the United States is using the practice to sidestep domestic and international laws prohibiting such abuse.
"The administration's refusal to release these records in light of all we now know about rampant abuses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere is simply outrageous," said Jeffrey Fogel, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The American public has a right to know what was condoned, by whom, and how far up the chain of command it went."
A spokesman for the Department of Defense could not immediately be reached and a spokesman for the Department of Justice had no comment.
-------- spies
THE WEAPONS
Powell Presses C.I.A. on Faulty Intelligence on Iraq Arms
By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER
June 2, 2004
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/02inte.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 1 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has pressed the Central Intelligence Agency for several months to account for the faulty intelligence that led Mr. Powell to tell the United Nations last year that Iraq definitely possessed illicit weapons, several senior administration officials said Tuesday.
In particular, Mr. Powell has sought answers about the C.I.A.'s sources of information for the evidence, now considered false by the agency, that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons laboratories. Serious doubts have now arisen about all four of the sources that the C.I.A. relied on, intelligence officials say. At least two of the sources were Iraqi defectors introduced to intelligence agencies by the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmad Chalabi, the government officials said.
The contention that Saddam Hussein had developed the mobile laboratories was a critical element of Mr. Powell's presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, which was broadcast around the world. In past interviews, Mr. Powell has described an intensive process he went through at the C.I.A. in the days and nights before the speech, reviewing the intelligence.
He said last summer that the mobile labs were "some of the most solid" evidence the United States possessed, but in the past few months he has stepped back from those remarks, and then reversed himself. Two weeks ago he declared "the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases, deliberately misleading."
"And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it," he added.
Now, said one senior State Department official, "he is asking the agency, 'What can you tell me about this?' "
"He has raised a number of questions over a number of months," the official added, but has not requested a formal report.
After the American invasion last year, the White House and the C.I.A. initially said that suspicious semitrailers found in Iraq were the mobile biological weapons facilities that the sources had described, and a May 2003 C.I.A. white paper making that case is still posted on the agency's Web site. As recently as January, Vice President Dick Cheney cited the trailers, saying if they turned out to be what he and others long suspected, he "would deem that conclusive evidence" that Mr. Hussein had such programs.
A spokesman for Mr. Cheney declined to say whether Mr. Cheney had asked for the updated intelligence on the mobile labs question.
"It's an issue that Powell is intensely interested in," said one senior administration official. "If Cheney is still interested, he isn't saying."
But the C.I.A. and the administration, except for Mr. Cheney, have since backed away from those assertions, which were based primarily on an I.N.C. defector to Germany known as Curveball, according to senior intelligence officials. The role played by Curveball was first reported earlier this year by The Los Angeles Times. Most intelligence analysts now believe that the trailers were to produce hydrogen for weather balloons used in artillery practice.
Intelligence officials acknowledged earlier this year that one of the four sources cited by Mr. Powell had been labeled a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency in May 2002. Because of a mistake in the handling of that warning, the officials said, the information provided by that source, a major from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, found its way into the Powell presentation.
Mr. Powell was never warned about the D.I.A. concerns, officials say, even though during two of the evenings that the presentation was being reviewed, a D.I.A. official was in the room. "We believe that only the official who put the warning into the system had access to it," one senior State Department official said. "It does not appear anyone else did."
The D.I.A. source had described only the existence of mobile facilities that could have been used for biological weapons research, not the production of biological weapons.
In the past two weeks, the administration has moved to sever its close ties with Mr. Chalabi, whose group received more than $4 million a year from the Defense Intelligence Agency, and who sat behind Laura Bush, the first lady, at the State of the Union address earlier this year.
Nevertheless, at the White House on Tuesday, President Bush sought to play down the role of Mr. Chalabi and his group as a source of information in his administration's decision to go to war in Iraq. "My meetings with him were very brief," Mr. Bush said, saying that he might have met with Mr. Chalabi at the State of the Union address as part of a "rope line" greeting. "I haven't had any extensive conversations with him."
Government officials have described Mr. Powell as still angry about the intelligence briefings that served as the basis for his United Nations speech. "Powell has made it clear that he wants to know how this could have happened," an administration official said.
A senior intelligence official said that Mr. Powell and other senior administration officials were being provided briefings by the C.I.A. "as we develop new information" about the intelligence that led the administration to assert before the war that Iraq possessed illicit weapons.
George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has said it is too soon to say whether the agency was mistaken in asserting that Iraq possessed illicit weapons, even though no such weapons have been found in the 14 months since the American invasion. But the agency has begun several internal reviews to examine the basis for its assertions, and while it has said almost nothing in public about any findings, the intelligence official said the information was being shared among Mr. Bush's principal foreign policy advisers.
"Obviously, everyone is interested in the facts at hand," the official said.
Mr. Powell's assertion about the mobile labs was one of the most dramatic elements of his presentation to the United Nations, which was intended to make public the Bush administration's best case for invading Iraq. For days before this speech, Mr. Powell sat in a conference room at the C.I.A., examining the sources of information for each accusation that he planned to make.
But intelligence officials now say that serious doubts have arisen about the three other sources as well. Curveball had provided his information to German intelligence officials and may have been a relative of an aide to Mr. Chalabi, according to American intelligence officials. That source, described in the C.I.A. white paper as having provided "the majority of our information on Iraq's mobile program," was never interviewed by American intelligence officials before the war, an American government official said Tuesday, and the German government had developed doubts about his information last May.
The two other sources, described in the C.I.A document as "a civil engineer" and simply "the third source," were described as having "corroborated information related to the mobile biological weapons program."
Douglas Jehl reported from Washington for this article, and David Sanger from Palo Alto, Calif.
--------
Chalabi Warned Iranians, U.S. Says
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8464-2004Jun2.html
The FBI is investigating an intercepted Iranian message that alleges Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi told Tehran officials that the United States had broken Iran's secret code, U.S. officials said.
The message alleges Chalabi said he had been told about the code-breaking by a drunken U.S. official, one senior Bush administration official said.
The New York Times reported in today's editions that about six weeks ago, Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East. Rumors about the alleged intercept had been circulating in Washington for weeks, and Chalabi himself brought up the topic during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on May 23. At that time, he said, "There are intercepts -- anyone who has intercepts, who has information, any documents -- I am prepared to go and face all of this in the United States Congress. . . . These are allegations that are put forward and directed by the CIA."
At that time he denied he ever passed secret information to Iran, a nation President Bush has cited as part of the "axis of evil."
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for the CIA, said last night he would not comment on the matter.
Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress and once a favorite of many Bush administration officials, has fallen out of favor in recent months as he became an unspoken critic of the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority.
An appointed member of the now-dissolved Iraqi Governing Council, he headed up its finance committee and placed supporters in the Ministry of Finance and the Iraq central bank. He also was chairman of the de-Baathification committee, which gave him power over who could get jobs in the new Iraq government.
Chalabi's appointees have been replaced in the government that was announced yesterday in Baghdad. He has no position in the new cabinet.
The first overt sign of his problems came on May 20, when Iraqi police conducted an early morning raid on his party headquarters and left with computers and boxes of documents. The raid was carried out under a warrant from an Iraqi judge, but Americans were on the scene helping to direct the Iraqi police.
Today's edition of the Times disclosed that the newspaper had withheld publication of the story at the request of the U.S. government but yesterday was released from that request. An article by Jane Mayer in the current issue of the New Yorker magazine also discusses the intercept.
Chalabi's relationship with Iranian officials was well known, and he maintained an office in Tehran, which one of his aides said was paid for by U.S. government money. Before last month's raid, the Defense Intelligence Agency cut off the $340,000-a-month payment the INC received for supplying intelligence before and after the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
"Indeed, I have had many meetings with the Iranian government, but we have passed no secret information, no classified documents to them from the United States because principally we are allies of the United States and we do nothing to harm the United States," Chalabi said during the "Meet the Press" interview.
Richard N. Perle, a onetime chairman of the Defense Policy Board under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration, has been a vocal supporter of Chalabi for years. He said yesterday he knew nothing about the FBI investigation and believes the U.S. position in Iraq would have been much better if the administration had listened to Chalabi's advice to put more exiles in power earlier, rather than trying to run the country through the CPA.
--------
Chalabi Reportedly Told Iran That U.S. Had Code
June 2, 2004
By JAMES RISEN and DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/02CHAL.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 1 - Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi leader and former ally of the Bush administration, disclosed to an Iranian official that the United States had broken the secret communications code of Iran's intelligence service, betraying one of Washington's most valuable sources of information about Iran, according to United States intelligence officials.
The general charge that Mr. Chalabi provided Iran with critical American intelligence secrets was widely reported last month after the Bush administration cut off financial aid to Mr. Chalabi's organization, the Iraqi National Congress, and American and Iraqi security forces raided his Baghdad headquarters.
The Bush administration, citing national security concerns, asked The New York Times and other news organizations not to publish details of the case. The Times agreed to hold off publication of some specific information that top intelligence officials said would compromise a vital, continuing intelligence operation. The administration withdrew its request on Tuesday, saying information about the code-breaking was starting to appear in news accounts.
Mr. Chalabi and his aides have said he knew of no secret information related to Iran and therefore could not have communicated any intelligence to Tehran.
American officials said that about six weeks ago, Mr. Chalabi told the Baghdad station chief of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security that the United States was reading the communications traffic of the Iranian spy service, one of the most sophisticated in the Middle East.
According to American officials, the Iranian official in Baghdad, possibly not believing Mr. Chalabi's account, sent a cable to Tehran detailing his conversation with Mr. Chalabi, using the broken code. That encrypted cable, intercepted and read by the United States, tipped off American officials to the fact that Mr. Chalabi had betrayed the code-breaking operation, the American officials said.
American officials reported that in the cable to Tehran, the Iranian official recounted how Mr. Chalabi had said that one of "them" - a reference to an American - had revealed the code-breaking operation, the officials said. The Iranian reported that Mr. Chalabi said the American was drunk.
The Iranians sent what American intelligence regarded as a test message, which mentioned a cache of weapons inside Iraq, believing that if the code had been broken, United States military forces would be quickly dispatched to the specified site. But there was no such action.
The account of Mr. Chalabi's actions has been confirmed by several senior American officials, who said the leak contributed to the White House decision to break with him.
It could not be learned exactly how the United States broke the code. But intelligence sources said that in the past, the United States has broken into the embassies of foreign governments, including those of Iran, to steal information, including codes.
The F.B.I. has opened an espionage investigation seeking to determine exactly what information Mr. Chalabi turned over to the Iranians as well as who told Mr. Chalabi that the Iranian code had been broken, government officials said. The inquiry, still in an early phase, is focused on a very small number of people who were close to Mr. Chalabi and also had access to the highly restricted information about the Iran code.
Some of the people the F.B.I. expects to interview are civilians at the Pentagon who were among Mr. Chalabi's strongest supporters and served as his main point of contact with the government, the officials said. So far, no one has been accused of any wrongdoing.
In a television interview on May 23, Mr. Chalabi said on CNN's "Late Edition" that he met in Tehran in December with the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Iranian president, Mohammad Khatami. He also said he had met with Iran's minister of information.
Mr. Chalabi attacked the C.I.A. and the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, saying the agency was behind what Mr. Chalabi asserted was an effort to smear him.
"I have never passed any classified information to Iran or have done anything - participated in any scheme of intelligence against the United States," Mr. Chalabi said on "Fox News Sunday." "This charge is false. I have never seen a U.S. classified document, and I have never seen - had a U.S. classified briefing."
Mr. Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said, "We meet people from the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad regularly," but said that was to be expected of Iraqi officials like himself.
Some defenders of Mr. Chalabi in the United States say American officials had encouraged him in his dealings with Iran, urging him to open an office in Tehran in hopes of improving relations between Iran and Washington. Those defenders also say they do not believe that his relationship with Iran involved any exchange of intelligence.
Mr. Chalabi's allies in Washington also saw the Bush administration's decision to sever its ties with Mr. Chalabi and his group as a cynical effort instigated by the C.I.A. and longtime Chalabi critics at the State Department. They believe those agencies want to blame him for mistaken estimates and incorrect information about Iraq before the war, like whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.
One of those who has defended Mr. Chalabi is Richard N. Perle, the former chairman of the Defense Policy Board. "The C.I.A. has disliked him passionately for a long time and has mounted a campaign against him with some considerable success," Mr. Perle said Tuesday. "I've seen no evidence of improper behavior on his part. No evidence whatsoever."
Mr. Perle said he thought the C.I.A. had turned against Mr. Chalabi because he refused to be the agency's "puppet." Mr. Chalabi "has a mind of his own," Mr. Perle said.
American intelligence officials said the F.B.I. investigation into the intelligence leak to Iran did not extend to any charges that Mr. Chalabi provided the United States with incorrect information, or any allegations of corruption.
American officials said the leak about the Iranian codes was a serious loss because the Iranian intelligence service's highly encrypted cable traffic was a crucial source of information, supplying Washington with information about Iranian operations inside Iraq, where Tehran's agents have become increasingly active. It also helped the United States keep track of Iranian intelligence operations around the world.
Until last month, the Iraqi National Congress had a lucrative contract with the Defense Intelligence Agency to provide information about Iraq. Before the United States invasion last year, the group arranged for Iraqi defectors to provide the Pentagon with information about Saddam Hussein's government, particularly evidence purporting to show that Baghdad had active programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. Today, the American intelligence community believes that much of the information passed by the defectors was either wrong or fabricated.
-------- un
Many Hurdles Ahead for U.S.
Success of U.N. Draft Resolution May Be Pivotal for Bush
By Robin Wright and Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7912-2004Jun1?language=printer
With the introduction of both a new Iraqi government and a new U.N. draft resolution, the Bush administration senses the beginning of the end to its controversial and costly intervention in Iraq. But the relief visible at the White House yesterday may be short-lived, for the United States still faces serious obstacles.
President Bush was almost giddily buoyant during a Rose Garden news conference about Iraq's interim government, heralding the 36 Iraqi appointees as "a team that possesses the talent, the commitment and the resolve to guide Iraq through the challenges that lie ahead." Not since the "Mission Accomplished" photograph aboard the USS Lincoln on May 1 last year, when Bush declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq, has the administration appeared as upbeat about the future.
"This is a very hopeful day for the Iraqi people and the American people. It's going to send a clear signal that terrorists can't win," Bush told reporters, adding that Iraq is now "one step closer to democracy."
Washington hopes the new U.N. draft resolution, circulated just hours after the government was announced, will provide a further boost, drawing international support for the handover of political power now just a month away. It addresses key demands from France, Russia and China -- three of the five Security Council countries with vetoes -- plus Germany by providing an approximate timetable and terms for a troop withdrawal.
The draft stipulates that the requested U.N. mandate for a U.S.-led multinational force will expire after Iraq completes its new constitution and elects a permanent government, which it is now scheduled to do by the end of 2005.
It also pledges that the multinational force will withdraw earlier if the Iraqi government requests it, and that the Iraqi government will have complete control over its own army and police.
The resolution further stipulates that all arrangements will be made only with the full consent of the Iraqi government and makes clear that as of June 30, Iraqis will have full sovereignty and full control of their financial and natural resources.
"People can now see that we're developing real momentum for the handover of sovereignty," said a senior State Department official who requested anonymity.
These developments, the most hopeful in months, come at a pivotal time for the administration. The chaos in Iraq, combined with the revelations about abuses of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. soldiers, has driven Bush's approval ratings to the lowest of his presidency.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released last week showed that 58 percent of Americans disapproved of his handling of Iraq, a politically perilous figure.
Bush aides contended over the weekend that the president has bottomed out politically. They told White House allies in Washington that the new government would mark a turning point by showing progress and would strengthen Bush for his meetings with European leaders later this week by putting Iraq's postwar future on a multinational track.
Yet through June 30 and beyond, the United States will enter a much more complex phase on Iraq. For the past year, the U.S.-led coalition has technically had sole authority over Iraq. With the appointment of the interim government and a return to the United Nations, the United States begins to cede formal control over what happens next.
After weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations, the messy selection of the interim government reflects the degree to which Washington had to turn to others -- the Iraqi Governing Council and the United Nations -- to meet its deadlines.
In addition, the new government has to win local support, despite strong U.S. and U.N. endorsements for including balance among ethnic and religious factions as well as between technocrats and politicians, and for including tribal leaders, women and many new faces. If it is rejected, the U.S.-led coalition has no fallback plan -- and the transition could be suddenly in jeopardy.
That is not beyond the realm of possibility, U.S. experts say. Because of the selection process and the strong U.S. ties of many in Iraq's interim government, "there is more of an appearance of legitimacy" than the government actually has, said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It's not going to convince the Iraqi people as a whole, or certainly our more violent enemies."
Bush acknowledged the threat of attacks. "There's still violent people who want to stop progress. Their strategy hasn't changed. They want to kill innocent lives," he told reporters.
Major U.S. concessions in the latest U.N. draft, which were the subject of intense negotiations in New York among Security Council envoys last night, also reflect the scramble to win badly needed support for an ongoing foreign military presence -- with the clock rapidly ticking.
"I've been speaking with a variety of world leaders, to encourage them to -- by telling them we're willing to work with them to achieve language we can live with but, more importantly, language that the Iraqi government can live with," Bush told reporters.
But U.N. officials say the draft is unlikely to win passage before June 6, the anniversary of D-Day and the original goal. "We don't want to ram it through in a huge hurry. We need to get it right and make sure that the status of the [military] mission and forces agreement respects sovereignty . . . so that those who say this is a shell game are wrong," said a senior U.N. official who requested anonymity because of ongoing negotiations.
In contrast to four previous U.N. resolutions, talks yesterday went well, U.S. officials said. "In months past, we've had knock-down, drag-out debates on substance. In contrast, we were today truly in the weeds about small, arcane changes," said a senior U.S. official at the United Nations present for the discussions.
Besides France, the biggest unknown is Spain, which co-sponsored previous U.N. resolutions advocating military intervention. But the Spanish government that deployed troops in Iraq was replaced earlier this year, and U.S. officials say it is unclear how Spain may use its Security Council vote.
After the talks, U.S. Ambassador James B. Cunningham told reporters that the delegations would "go away and reflect." Iraqi interim Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zubari is expected to arrive in New York today to brief the Security Council.
In words that may not expedite the big diplomatic push, Bush said yesterday, "You know how the United Nations is. Sometimes, it can move slowly, and sometimes it can move quickly."
Bush will try to generate further momentum behind his Iraq policy today at the Air Force Academy commencement address, when he delivers the second of a weekly series of Iraq speeches until the transition. He will detail his view of how Iraq fits into the broader war on terrorism and why the stakes are high. He plans to argue that the war is a clash of ideologies between the civilized world and al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists, and will describe similarities and differences between this war and World War II, U.S. officials said.
--------
U.N. Envoy Urges Iraqis to Give New Leaders a Chance
June 2, 2004
By TERENCE NEILAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/international/middleeast/02CND-IRAQ.html
The special United Nations envoy to Iraq appealed to the Iraqi people today to give the country's new interim government a chance to succeed, even as continuing violence left at least nine people dead in Baghdad and Kufa, south of the capital.
"There is a real opportunity for an open political discourse to finally take place in this country," the envoy, Lakdhar Brahimi, said at a briefing in Baghdad.
"The best way to honor this opportunity is to seek peaceful debate and disagreement rather than to shy away from disagreement because it is uncomfortable and inconvenient."
He acknowledged, however, that not all Iraqis are pleased with the current situation, and that not all who opposed the government were terrorists.
"I think it's a little bit too easy to call everybody a terrorist," he said. "I think if you find out that there are people who are not terrorists, who are respectable, genuine Iraqi patriots, you must find a way of talking to them."
Mr. Brahimi struck a mildly surprising note when, in answer to a reporter's question, he referred to the American occupation administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, as "the dictator of Iraq."
"He has the money," he said. "He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country."
Mr. Brahimi added, in a reference to Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations: "And he signed the letter to the secretary general asking him, `Please, can you come and help?' So we've worked with Ambassador Bremer, with the government of the United States."
Mr. Brahimi later confirmed his use of the word dictator, adding that Mr. Bremer would be leaving Iraq on June 30, when the coalition forces hand over sovereignty to the interim Iraqi government.
He was then asked how the issue of sovereignty could be addressed if American troops remained in the country.
"It doesn't speak to the issue of sovereignty," Mr. Brahimi replied. "It speaks to the issue of authority. And this is what - you know, what I say needs to be discussed."
In today's violence, a car bomb in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiya killed at least 5 people and wounded at least 38, according to hospital officials. The bomb exploded about noon, but it was unclear whether it was a suicide bomb.
There are no immediately discernible targets in Adhamiya, a stronghold of Sunni Arabs that has always been one of the most anti-occupation neighborhoods in Baghdad.
In Kufa, clashes continued between American troops and militia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical young cleric. The fighting left no doubt that a cease-fire does not exist in Kufa, though there has been no violence in the adjoining city of Najaf since a truce was declared last Thursday.
The fighting in Kufa today left 4 people dead and 35 wounded, according to hospital officials. Clashes on Tuesday left 5 dead and 11 wounded.
Both the Americans and the militiamen have accused the other of shooting first in these bursts of violence.
Edward Wong contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
-------- us
Army Expanding Program to Keep Soldiers on Duty
June 2, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/international/middleeast/02CND-SOLD.html?hp
WASHINGTON, June 2 - Tens of thousands of soldiers bound for Iraq and Afghanistan will have to remain in the service after their originally scheduled discharge dates, the Army said today.
The move, which will probably mean several months' more time in the military than the soldiers had anticipated, will affect units that are within 90 days of deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck told reporters at the Pentagon.
Although unit commanders will be able to make exceptions for individuals with special circumstances, most soldiers will not be able to leave the service or transfer to different units until after their return to their home bases from Iraq and Afghanistan, said General Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.
Reginald Brown, the assistant Army secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, said in a statement that the service had to put the "stop loss" policy into effect "to ensure our formations remain a cohesive element throughout their deployment."
Or, as General Hagenbeck put it, the idea "is to have cohesive, trained units going to war together."
There are now about 138,000 American troops in Iraq. The continuing violence in that country, as well as the United States presence in Afghanistan, has put severe strains on units.
Mr. Brown said that if the stop-loss policy were not used, an average division would have to acquire more than 4,000 soldiers from other units to bring itself up to strength. In other words, each division would be replacing as many as one-fourth of its soldiers, sapping it of the cohesiveness prized by commanders.
Necessary or not, the stop-loss policy has been criticized as running counter to the spirit of an all-volunteer military service, since thousands of men and women who thought they had a firm retirement or discharge date will now be away from their families, homes and civilian lives longer than they had planned.
In today's New York Times, Andrew Exum, a former Army captain who served in Afghanistan, said the soldiers caught in the stop-loss program are being subjected to "shameful" treatment and might as well have been drafted.
"Many if not most of the soldiers in this latest Iraq-bound wave are already veterans of several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan," he wrote on the Op-Ed page of The Times. "They have honorably completed their active duty obligations. But like draftees, they have been conscripted to meet the additional needs in Iraq."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Abortion ban ruled unconstitutional
June 02, 2004
By Amy Fagan
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040602-010021-2605r.htm
A federal judge in California ruled yesterday that the partial-birth-abortion ban, signed into law by President Bush last year, is unconstitutional and can't be enforced against Planned Parenthood doctors.
"Today's ruling is a landmark victory for medical privacy rights and women's health," said Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the group that challenged the government's ban in California's Northern District Court.
"This ruling gives a whole new meaning to the notion that justice is blind," countered Wendy Wright, senior policy director of Concerned Women for America, noting that the American Medical Association has said the procedure is never medically necessary.
The law also is being challenged in New York and Nebraska, but those courts haven't ruled. Both sides expect the issue will end up before the Supreme Court.
Yesterday's ruling by U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton - appointed by President Clinton in 2000 - means that the administration cannot enforce the ban against Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide or against any doctor to whom Planned Parenthood makes referrals, said Roger Evans, one of the Planned Parenthood lawyers who argued the case. Planned Parenthood has about 900 clinics nationwide.
San Francisco also joined Planned Parenthood in the suit, so the city's medical facilities also can't be banned from performing the procedure - also known as intact dilation and extraction - in which an unborn child is partially delivered before its skull is punctured and it is killed.
The ban would continue to be enforced for other abortion doctors, including independent abortion facilities in San Francisco or elsewhere that aren't associated with Planned Parenthood and do not take referrals from the group.
It was not clear whether the government would appeal the case. A White House spokesman said that the president "strongly disagrees" with the ruling and that "the administration will take every step necessary to defend this law in the courts."
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, denounced the ruling as "yet another example of a judge with a supersized view of her authority."
He said Judge Hamilton totally ignored Congress, which crafted the law based on medical evidence, and approved it overwhelmingly.
Rep. Steve Chabot, the Ohio Republican who sponsored the ban in the House, agreed that yesterday's ruling was "a seriously flawed decision by a lone federal judge in San Francisco." He said that the law "is sound, constitutional legislation" and that the Supreme Court will be the ultimate arbiter.
He noted that the ruling came from within "the Ninth Circuit, the most frequently overturned federal circuit in the nation."
The ruling will make abortion a political issue in an election year.
Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot said the "tragic ruling ... shows why America needs judges who will interpret the law and not legislate from the bench."
He said Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry's "nominees would simply frustrate the people's will and allow this grotesque procedure to continue."
Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said that Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat who voted against the ban, "voted to restrict late-term abortions but only where there was a clear exception for life or health of women," while Mr. Bush pushed a law that was struck down yesterday because it "failed to protect the health of women." She said as president, Mr. Kerry will appoint judges "committed to upholding the Constitution not pursuing an ideological agenda."
Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of NARAL ProChoice America, warned that "if Bush gets a chance to fill multiple seats on the Supreme Court, not only this decision, but the fundamental right to choose itself will be at risk."
Judge Hamilton concluded that the ban is unconstitutional because it unduly burdens a woman's right to choose a second-trimester abortion, is overly vague and doesn't contain an exception to allow partial-birth abortion when the doctor determines it's needed to preserve the woman's health. She said the ban's wording could be interpreted to apply throughout any trimester of pregnancy and could ban another, more common type of abortion in which the fetus is dismembered in utero and removed vaginally.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned a Nebraska partial-birth-abortion ban in 2000 on the grounds that it was overly vague and didn't contain a health exception.
The federal ban was passed by Congress last year. Doctors who violate it would face fines and up to two years in prison.
Congressional Republicans say they addressed the Supreme Court's concerns by tightening the wording of their ban to ensure it wasn't vague. They didn't add a health exception, but rather added a findings section stating that, based on lengthy congressional hearing testimony, partial-birth abortions are never medically necessary, pose significant health risks to the woman and are outside the standard of medical care.
These points were stressed in the California case by Justice Department lawyers, who also argued that the procedure causes pain to the unborn child. Pro-choice advocates argued that a woman's health during an abortion is more important than how the unborn child is terminated and that the banned procedure is often a safer solution than other types of abortions.
Attorney General John Ashcroft tried to obtain medical records from Planned Parenthood clients earlier this year in connection with the case, but Judge Hamilton ruled in March that the government didn't have the right to view the confidential records.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----
U.S. Details Case Against Terror Suspect
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7872-2004Jun1?language=printer
Jose Padilla, the former Chicago gang member accused of planning to set off a radiological bomb in the United States, also plotted with some of al Qaeda's highest-ranking operatives to blow up U.S. apartment buildings using natural gas and had sworn to carry out attacks when he was arrested two years ago, according to an unusual release of classified interrogation information by the government yesterday.
The seven-page summary of the case against Padilla, a U.S. citizen, also alleges that he met repeatedly with senior leaders of the al Qaeda terrorist network, including lieutenant Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, who took a keen interest in Padilla because he speaks English and held a valid U.S. passport.
The allegations were unveiled as part of a vigorous defense of the government's treatment of Padilla, one of two U.S. citizens held for long stretches without charges in the United States as "enemy combatants," without access to courts or lawyers. Their cases are pending before the Supreme Court.
At a Washington news conference, Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey Jr. said information gleaned from interrogations of Padilla and others since his arrest show that he was intent on killing innocents in the United States but "would likely have ended up a free man" if prosecuted in the criminal justice system, because his attorney would have advised him to tell authorities nothing. That would have left authorities without the information they have obtained and with the responsibility of watching Padilla for the rest of his life, Comey said.
The release of information yesterday was not related to the Supreme Court case, Comey said, but was in response to a request for information from Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Nor did yesterday's news conference come in response to criticism last week that new warnings of a heightened terrorist threat were vague and unsubstantiated by new information, he said. The move was approved Friday in a letter to Comey from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.
"We have decided to release this information to help people understand why we are doing what we are doing in the war on terror and to help people understand the nature of the threat we face," Comey said.
But some legal experts said the effort appeared to be aimed at influencing the Supreme Court, and Padilla's court-appointed attorney attacked the disclosure as "the opening statement in a trial they have refused to allow."
"We can't give our response," said Donna R. Newman, who in February was granted restricted access to Padilla at the discretion of the Pentagon. "They control everything. . . . They zip our lips, they unzip [Padilla's] lips for their own purposes, and they do whatever they want, whenever they want. This is not what the U.S. Constitution had in mind."
Douglas W. Kmiec, a Justice Department official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations who now teaches constitutional law at Pepperdine University in California, said it is unlikely that the material released yesterday will affect the Supreme Court's decision. The justices heard oral arguments in April in the cases of Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan who is also held as an enemy combatant in a military brig in South Carolina.
Under normal protocols, the court already would be drafting opinions, Kmiec said. Instead, the information appears aimed primarily "at the court of public opinion."
"It is important to the attorney general and the Department of Justice that not only the Supreme Court sanction the detention of Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, but that the public also condone it as necessary," Kmiec said. He added that continuing revelations of prison abuses in Iraq may also have played a role in the information's release.
According to the summary released by the Justice Department, Padilla has admitted during interrogations to meeting Mohammed, who dispatched him and an unidentified accomplice on a mission to blow up as many as 20 apartment buildings by sealing off units, filling them with natural gas and using timers to set off the explosions. New York was the most likely target, but Washington, Florida, Chicago and other targets were discussed, the government alleged. Padilla's accomplice is also in custody, Comey said.
The government alleges that Padilla first came in contact with terrorist operatives during a trip to Saudi Arabia in March 2000, where he met a Yemeni recruiter, and would later meet with much of al Qaeda's top echelon, including Mohammed; military commander Muhammad Atef, who became a mentor on terrorist tactics for Padilla; lieutenant Abu Zubaida; and Ramzi Binalshibh, who coordinated the Sept. 11 attacks.
All are in U.S. custody except Atef, who was killed in a U.S. military strike in Afghanistan and whose body Padilla helped dig out of the rubble.
In March 2000, Padilla told U.S. officials, he made a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, where he met an unidentified terrorist recruiter. Padilla made his way to Kandahar, Afghanistan, where his terrorist training allegedly began. The FBI obtained a copy of Padilla's training camp application, completed under an alias and found in a binder with more than 100 others, according to the summary.
At the al Farouq camp that fall, he was trained in firearms, communications, surveillance, explosives and other skills. During this time he met Atef, then al Qaeda's military commander. The two would meet several times, including a session in July or August 2001 when Atef asked Padilla to blow up apartment buildings in the United States, the government alleged.
His partner in that first mission was another al Qaeda operative, Adnan G. el Shukrijumah, a trained pilot and one of seven al Qaeda associates named in the warning issued last week by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft. According to the summary released yesterday, Padilla and Shukrijumah -- who had known each other in the Miami area -- could not get along, and their mission was scrapped.
Shortly after Atef's death in November 2001, Padilla and an unnamed accomplice approached Zubaida with a plan to "travel to the United States and detonate a nuclear bomb they learned to make on the internet," according to the government documents. Zubaida arranged for Padilla and his accomplice to propose the idea to Mohammed.
But both Zubaida and Mohammed believed plans to use nuclear or radioactive material were impractical, and the two al Qaeda leaders steered the volunteers toward blowing up apartment buildings instead. Mohammed envisioned as many as 20 simultaneous explosions, probably in New York, but left the details up to Padilla, the summary says.
According to one version of the plan, involving three high-rise apartment buildings, "they would rent two apartments in each building, seal all the openings, turn on the gas and set timers to detonate the buildings simultaneously at a later time," the summary said.
Padilla insists that "he returned to the U.S. with no intention of carrying out the apartment building operation," according to the government document. "However . . . Padilla does admit that he accepted a terrorist mission from al Qaeda, trained for that operation, and then traveled to the U.S."
Comey said that FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel conducted the interrogations and Padilla was not mistreated.
Staff writers Charles Lane and Susan Schmidt and research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.
--------
U.S. Spells Out Dangers Posed by Plot Suspect
June 2, 2004
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/politics/02PADI.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 1 - Just weeks before the Supreme Court is to decide whether the Bush administration improperly declared Jose Padilla an enemy combatant, the Justice Department on Tuesday released newly declassified documents that it said showed the grave terrorist threat he posed to the United States.
Officials disclosed for the first time that Mr. Padilla, a former Chicago gang member accused of becoming an operative for Al Qaeda, had cooperated extensively with American interrogators after his capture in May 2002. While the broad outline of the accusations against Mr. Padilla has been known for two years, the declassified documents provided new details about plots to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" or blow up an apartment building, perhaps in New York City.
"We now know much of what Jose Padilla knows, and what we have learned confirms that the president of the United States made that right call and that that call saved lives," James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, said in releasing the declassified documents.
The unusual declassification of the Padilla documents is not expected to have any direct impact on his case pending before the Supreme Court, which many legal analysts say the Bush administration is in danger of losing. The court has already heard oral arguments on the question of whether the government had the right to detain American citizens like Mr. Padilla indefinitely, and the new material is not expected to be entered into the record.
But the Justice Department's move appeared aimed at helping win over public opinion in a case in which even some conservatives have questioned the rationale for locking up Mr. Padilla indefinitely in military custody. And it also left open the door for the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against him.
On Tuesday, defense lawyers for Mr. Padilla and critics of the Bush administration's policy on enemy combatants attacked what they characterized as efforts by the government to try Mr. Padilla in the news media, rather than in court. They challenged the Justice Department to bring criminal charges against Mr. Padilla if the evidence against him was as strong as officials had suggested.
"If we believe someone is bad, there's a new form of justice: we put them in a black hole," said Donna Newman, one of Mr. Padilla's lawyers.
Donald G. Rehkopf Jr., a lawyer in Rochester, N.Y., who has written amicus briefs in the case on behalf of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, suggested that the new allegations against Mr. Padilla could have "an inevitable spillover" in unduly influencing the high court just as it nears a decision in the case.
"You have nine people up there, and they don't live in a vacuum," he said. "They all read newspapers and watch CNN."
But Mr. Comey said the timing of the release in advance of the Supreme Court decision was coincidental, and said the Justice Department, the Defense Department and other agencies had been working on the declassification for several months as a way of answering public concerns about the case. "If it had been done sooner, it would have been released sooner," he said.
The Bush administration has endured criticism for months for declaring Mr. Padilla an enemy combatant in 2002 and jailing him in a military brig in South Carolina with only scant public disclosure of what he was accused of doing. He was held incommunicado until this March, when the Defense Department relented and allowed his defense lawyers to meet with him.
While defending the enemy combatant policy, Mr. Comey acknowledged the public relations conundrum that the case represented. "Every place I went to speak," he said, "people would say, 'We agree with the war on terror, but we've got a problem with this Padilla thing. I wish we knew more about it.' ''
The material released Tuesday depicts Mr. Padilla as a committed terrorist who had contacts with high level Qaeda leaders and wanted to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a hotel or apartment building, perhaps in New York City. Among his contacts, officials said, was a former Florida resident, Adnan G. el-Shukrijumah, one of seven suspected Qaeda associates whom the F.B.I. said last week it was trying to locate.
Mr. Comey described Mr. Padilla's case as "sobering story" that underscored the danger the United States faces from Al Qaeda and "why that terrorist organization so badly wants operatives who can move freely into and out of the United States."
A declassified report from the Pentagon said Mr. Padilla, now 33, left Florida for Egypt in 1998 and, after making a hajj to Egypt, was recruited to Afghanistan by a Yemeni recruiter. In Afghanistan, the report said, he admitted that he attended the Al Farouq terrorist training camp in late 2000 and received training in weapons, explosives, topography, communications and other areas.
Mr. Comey said Mr. Padilla had stayed in the same safe house in Afghanistan near Kandahar that was occupied by Muhammad Atef, a senior Qaeda military leader. The house was destroyed in November 2001 in an American military raid, with Mr. Atef killed. Mr. Padilla was staying at another safe house that night but returned to dig his mentor's body out of the rubble, Mr. Comey said.
Officials said that Mr. Padilla had also met with other senior Qaeda officials, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, and that they had discussed the prospect of detonating a nuclear or radiological bomb in the United States, perhaps in Washington. But Qaeda leaders ultimately decided the plot was probably unworkable, officials said.
Instead, Mr. Mohammed suggested an alternate plan for Mr. Padilla in March 2002. He and an accomplice were to enter the United States from Mexico or Puerto Rico, identify three high-rise apartment buildings that used natural gas, rent two apartments in each building, seal all the openings, turn on the gas and set timers to detonate the buildings simultaneously.
"Selection of the target city in the United States was left up to Padilla," the document said. He indicated to interrogators that New York City was the primary target but that Florida and Washington were also discussed. Mr. Mohammed also asked Mr. Padilla to consider setting fire to a hotel or a gas station, the report said.
Mr. Padilla left Pakistan in April 2002, bound for the United States via Zurich. But the reported plans never came to pass, as the F.B.I. - using intelligence developed on Mr. Padilla - arrested him as a material witness shortly after his arrival in Chicago.
The Pentagon report said much of the information Mr. Padilla provided had been corroborated by other sources. However, the report also said - in a footnote - that Mr. Padilla had also sought in interrogations to play down or deny his involvement with Al Qaeda. He said, for instance, that he was never part of Al Qaeda and that the "dirty bomb'' idea was proposed "only as a way to get out of Pakistan and avoid combat in Afghanistan, yet save face with Abu Zubaydah," the report said.
Mr. Comey said that had the Bush administration brought criminal charges against Mr. Padilla in the beginning, rather than jailing him as an enemy combatant, it might never have found out about his plotting.
"He would very likely have followed his lawyer's advice and said nothing, which would have been his constitutional right," Mr. Comey said. "He would likely have ended up a free man, with our only hope being to try to follow him 24 hours a day, seven days a week and hope - pray really - that we didn't lose him."
--------
Rules for Interrogating Juveniles Are Upheld
High Court Rejects New Restraints on Police
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6333-2004Jun1.html
The Supreme Court declined to impose new restraints on police questioning of juveniles yesterday, ruling that a California state court had reasonably upheld the murder conviction of a 17-year-old who confessed to a detective without being advised of his rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present.
By a vote of 5 to 4, the justices ruled that under applicable Supreme Court precedents, the California Court of Appeal did not have to factor in the youth and inexperience of the suspect, Michael Alvarado, when it decided that he was not clearly in custody during his two-hour session with a detective. The requirement that police advise interviewees of their rights applies only to those who are under arrest or who, under the circumstances, reasonably believe they are not free to leave.
"Our opinions applying the Miranda custody test have not mentioned the suspect's age, much less mandated its consideration," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, referring to the 1966 Supreme Court case that first required authorities to inform suspects of their rights once they are in custody.
Kennedy acknowledged that "fair-minded jurists could disagree over whether Alvarado was in custody" -- but said that was a reason to uphold the conviction because federal law requires federal courts to accept constitutional decisions by state courts unless they are clearly unreasonable or violate Supreme Court precedent.
The case had attracted attention as a test of the court's views on juvenile interrogation, especially after such recent cases as that of five New York teenagers who served prison sentences for the 1989 beating and rape of the woman who became known as the Central Park jogger based on confessions that they later recanted and that new DNA evidence proved false.
In a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Alvarado, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers urged the court to take into account "the special vulnerabilities attendant to youth," which the organization argued have led to police "abuse" in questioning juveniles.
For its part, the Bush administration, supporting California's state authorities, told the court in a friend-of-the-court brief that "age and experience are not relevant considerations in determining whether a juvenile is 'in custody' under Miranda."
But yesterday's decision, while rejecting new limits on police questioning based on suspects' age, does not rule out the possibility that age-based limitations could be taken into account in a future case.
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who provided a fifth vote to a majority that also included Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, added a short concurring opinion in which she qualified her vote by noting that, although Alvarado was nearly 18, "there may be cases in which a suspect's age will be relevant to the Miranda 'custody' inquiry."
In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said that "[c]ommon sense, and an understanding of the law's basic purpose in this area, are enough to make clear that Alvarado's age . . . is also relevant to the inquiry."
"What reasonable person in the circumstances . . . could have thought to himself, 'Well, anytime I want to leave I can just get up and walk out?' " Breyer wrote.
The case began on Sept. 17, 1995, when Alvarado and another man tried to hijack a truck in Santa Fe Springs, Calif. The other man shot the driver to death.
A month later, police asked Alvarado's mother to bring him in for an interview. Alvarado appeared at the station accompanied by both parents.
His parents asked to come with him to an interrogation room but were kept outside as he spent two hours talking with a detective, who did not place him under arrest but eventually elicited an admission that he had been involved in the crime. Then, Alvarado went home. A month after that, police issued a warrant for Alvarado's arrest, and he turned himself in. He was convicted of second-degree murder based on his confession and sentenced to 15 years to life.
The case is Yarborough v. Alvarado, No. 02-1684.
-------- immigration / refugees
Database on U.S. Visitors Set for Huge Expansion
Reston Firm's Contract Worth Up to $10 Billion
By Anitha Reddy and Sara kehaulani goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7961-2004Jun1?language=printer
The Department of Homeland Security yesterday awarded a contract worth up to $10 billion to Accenture LLP to oversee and expand a massive U.S. program to track millions of foreign visitors as they cross American borders.
The project, called U.S. Visit, collects and stores information about foreigners entering and exiting the country on visas through airports and seaports. The data, including digital photographs and fingerprints, are stored in an electronic database and shared among some government agencies to ensure that visitors do not overstay their visas and to help authorities capture suspected terrorists and criminals.
The program debuted at U.S. airports and seaports in January and has processed more than 4.5 million people. Homeland Security officials said they have used U.S. Visit to deny entry to suspected terrorists and to arrest more than 500 wanted or suspected criminals.
Now the program will expand to track all foreign visitors entering and exiting the country, including those who don't need visas and those who arrive by land.
Accenture will oversee or replace a number of government contractors that are working on the existing pieces of the U.S. Visit program, which began under the former Immigration and Naturalization Service. The company's task will be to vastly broaden the project to visitors crossing land borders without slowing international commerce. About 94 percent of all foreign visitors enter and exit the country by land.
"I don't think you could overstate the impact of this responsibility, in terms of security of our nation," said Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for Border and Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security. "If you look at the 9/11 terrorists, they came here in violation of our immigration laws."
Some critics complained that Reston-based Accenture LLP should not have won the contract over its competitors, Lockheed Martin Corp. and Computer Sciences Corp., because its parent, the consulting firm Accenture Ltd., is based in Bermuda. "Accenture isn't contributing its fair share to the costs of the very contract that it's now been given," because of the tax advantages it receives, said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who has authored a bill to eliminate incentives for American companies that move their headquarters abroad.
Homeland Security's Hutchinson said yesterday that Accenture LLP is a U.S. taxpayer and is qualified to bid on U.S. government contracts. He said the agency chose Accenture based on its management and technical ability, its past performance on government contracts and the amount of its bid.
Officials yesterday declined to provide the total value of the five-year contract, saying it would range from $10 million to $10 billion, depending on how much funding the program receives from Congress, the agency's policy decisions and Accenture's performance. Homeland Security officials said Accenture bid $72 million to complete the first year's work.
Accenture will help Homeland Security meet two ambitious deadlines. By Dec. 31, Homeland Security must begin fingerprinting and photographing foreigners who enter the country at the 50 busiest land borders. A Homeland Security spokesman said that initially most Canadians and Mexicans will be exempt from the program, but eventually all Mexicans and Canadians may have to comply. By Dec. 31, 2oo5, the program will be extended to all land crossings.
Some vehicles crossing land borders are already equipped with radio frequency tags that transmit data about the driver, including photographs, to immigration and customs officers, much as EZPass technology works at tollbooths. Homeland Security officials envision eventually using similar technology to allow drivers and passengers to transmit their personal information instantly while crossing the border.
Under Accenture's plan, U.S. Visit would create "virtual" folders for each foreign traveler entering by air, sea or land that would electronically store visa application information, fingerprints, photographs, entry and exit dates, and the purpose of the visits. For travelers with a student visa, for example, the folder would also include relevant details such as the school and period of enrollment.
"They selected us because we had a clear understanding for their vision of the future of border management for this country," said Eric Stange, Accenture's managing partner for defense and homeland security.
Accenture will create a chief privacy officer because the system will give inspectors unprecedented access to travelers' personal information. Originally conceived as an immigration program, U.S. Visit is now being designed to integrate immigrations databases and to share information about millions of foreigners with a host of federal and state agencies.
The program will enable Homeland Security officials to share information about individuals with the Departments of Justice, Transportation and Commerce and the FBI. Officials said they would only share information with other agencies as part of a specific criminal investigation or "authorized purpose," such as the agency's Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes citizenship applications.
David L. Sobel, general counsel for Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the government should be more clear about the conditions under which it shares people's information. "The large-scale collection and sharing of information is a serious concern," he said. "Its always inevitable that once one agency has a large collection of information, it's really only a matter of time [before] that information" is sent throughout the government.
The contract is the largest yet awarded by the 18-month-old Homeland Security agency and is widely seen as a stepping stone to other big department contracts.
The U.S. Visit program received $367 million for fiscal 2003 and has received $340 million for fiscal 2004.
"That's why all of these companies are working so hard to really try to win these contracts," said Philip Finnegan, an analyst for the Teal Group, a defense research firm. "They all really see homeland security as a bit of a wild card but a real potential growth area."
Accenture's team comprises 29 subcontractors, including AT&T Corp., Dell Inc. and KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co.
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Bush Outlines Terror Strategy at Air Force Academy
June 2, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-US-Iraq.html
AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AP) -- President Bush, preparing new Air Force officers for war, cast the fight against terrorism as a struggle between freedom and tyranny similar to World War II and the Cold War.
``Our goal, the goal of this generation, is the same,'' Bush said Wednesday, after referring to World War II. ``We will secure our nation and defend the peace through the forward march of freedom.''
Bush told 981 graduates that they will be joining a war whose central front is Iraq.
``Each of you receiving a commission today in the United States military will also carry the hopes of free people everywhere,'' the president said.
The graduates wore dress uniforms of white pants, blue tunics and gold sashes around their waists. Bush spoke in the academy's football stadium -- at more than 7,000 feet above sea level -- under partly cloudy and breezy skies.
Attorney General John Ashcroft and Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., an Air Force Academy graduate, were among the officials who joined Bush on stage.
Bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq, Bush has argued, will undercut the stagnation and despair that feeds the extremist ideologies of al-Qaida and its terrorist allies.
The president's trip to Colorado came after he voiced his support Tuesday for the interim Iraqi government taking shape before the scheduled June 30 transfer of political power from the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority. Bush praised the newly chosen prime minister, Iyad Allawi, and president, Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, as part of democracy's vanguard in Iraq.
The new Air Force officers will enter a military strained by an occupation of Iraq that has become increasingly violent in the past two months. Bush and other administration officials say they expect the violence to continue, even after the caretaker government takes over in July.
Plans call for elections in Iraq by January to form a fully independent Iraqi government. The U.S.-led military coalition in Iraq will remain largely in control of Iraqi security until then, and Pentagon officials say they expect to keep about 135,000 American troops in Iraq until at least the end of 2005.
Bush this week is repeating his pledges to stay the course in Iraq despite the surging violence and the failure so far to neutralize anti-American fighters from Sunni extremists around Baghdad to followers of a radical Shiite cleric in southern Iraq.
``We will finish what we have begun and we will win this essential victory in the war on terror,'' Bush said at a fund-raising dinner in Denver Tuesday night.
American forces have not found the weapons of mass destruction stockpiles Bush cited as a primary justification for the March 2003 invasion. And officials have not announced any evidence directly linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida or the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Still, Bush is pressing his assertion that toppling Saddam and installing democracy in Iraq is an indispensable goal in the wider war on terrorism.
``Part of winning the war on terror is spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East,'' Bush told reporters at the White House before leaving for Colorado on Tuesday.
Colorado is important to Bush for more than the Air Force Academy. Bush wants the nine electoral votes from a state he won four years ago, 51 percent to 42 percent for Al Gore. Republicans also want to keep the Senate seat of retiring Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
Bush raised more than $2.2 million for the Republican Party at Tuesday night's event, for which couples paid $5,000 or more to attend. Bush called his Democratic rival, Sen. John Kerry, soft on the war on terrorism.
Bush's speech also is an opportunity for the Air Force Academy to polish its image in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal. Air Force Secretary James Roche replaced the top four officials of the school last year after dozens of female cadets complained they had been raped or sexually assaulted and their attackers were given light punishment or no punishment at all.
Several dozen Bush supporters cheered and waved campaign signs along the road into the academy, which is nestled in the Rocky Mountain foothills near Pikes Peak.
-------- us politics
Neocon Collapse in Washington and Baghdad
by Jim Lobe,
June 2, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=2726
Fourteen months after reaching the zenith of their influence on U.S. foreign policy with the invasion of Iraq, neoconservatives appear to have fallen entirely out of favor, both within the administration of President George W. Bush and in Baghdad itself.
The signs of their defeat at the hands of both reality and the so-called "realists," who are headed within the administration by Secretary of State Colin Powell, are virtually everywhere but were probably best marked by the cover of Newsweek magazine last week, which depicted the framed photograph of the neocons' favorite Iraqi, Ahmad Chalabi, which had been shattered during a joint police-U.S. military raid on his headquarters in Baghdad. "Bush's Mr. Wrong" was the title of the feature article.
The victory of the realists, who also include the uniformed military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), appeared complete Monday with the unveiling of the interim Iraqi government to which an as-yet undefined sovereignty is to be transferred from the U.S.-led occupation authorities Jun. 30.
Not only was Chalabi's archrival-in-exile, Iyad Allawi, approved by the Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) as prime minister, but neither Chalabi nor any of his closest IGC associates, especially Finance Minister Kamel al-Gailani - who is accused of handing over much of Iraq's banking system to Chalabi during his tenure - made it into the final line-up.
"It looks like Chalabi is the big loser," said one congressional aide who follows Iraq closely. "And neocon has become a dirty word up here," he added, referring to the Congress, where Republicans have become increasingly restive as a result of recent debacles in Iraq, including the scandal over the abuse by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi detainees and leaks that Chalabi had been passing sensitive intelligence to Iran, and may have done so for years.
"We need to restrain what are growing U.S. messianic instincts - a sort of global social engineering where the United States feels it is both entitled and obligated to promote democracy - by force if necessary," said Senator Pat Roberts, a conservative Kansas member of Bush's Republican Party and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a speech last week that was understood here as a direct shot at the neocons.
The neoconservatives, a key part of the coalition of hawks that dominated Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy, were the first to publicly call for Saddam Hussein's ouster, which they saw as a way to transform the Arab world to make it more hospitable to western values, U.S. interests and Israel's territorial ambitions.
Since the latter part of the 1990s, when they led the charge in Congress for the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act (ILA), Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress (INC) was their chosen instrument to achieve that transformation.
While no neocons were appointed to cabinet-level positions under Bush, they obtained top posts in the offices of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld - where Paul Wolfowitz was named deputy defense secretary and Douglas Feith undersecretary for policy - and Vice President Dick Cheney, whose chief of staff and national security adviser was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
On the White House National Security Council staff, they were able to place former Iran-contra figure Elliott Abrams and Robert Joseph in key positions dealing with the Middle East and arms proliferation, respectively.
Rumsfeld's Defense Policy Board (DPB) was dominated by neocons, notably its former chairman, Richard Perle, former CIA chief James Woolsey, former arms-control negotiator Kenneth Adelman and military historian Eliot Cohen.
Neocons, more than any other group, pushed hardest for war in Iraq after 9/11 and predicted, backed up by Chalabi's assurances, that the conflict would be, among other things, a "cakewalk" and that U.S. troops would be greeted with "flowers and sweets."
Within the administration, the neocons, again relying heavily on Chalabi's INC, developed their own intelligence analyses to bolster the notion of a link between former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terrorist group, and exaggerated Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide a more credible pretext for war.
Their friends on the DPB and in the media then stoked the public's fears about these threats through frequent appearances on television and a barrage of newspaper columns and magazine articles.
While analysts and regional experts at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the State Department, which had dropped Chalabi as a fraud and a con-man in the mid-1990s, tried to resist the juggernaut, they were consistently outflanked by the neocons, whose influence and ability to circumvent the professionals was greatly enhanced by their access to Rumsfeld and Cheney, who served as their champions in the White House and with Bush personally.
Their influence reached its zenith in early April when Chalabi and 700 of his paid INC troops were airlifted by the Pentagon to the southern city of Nasiriya on Cheney's authority against Bush's stated policy that Washington would not favor one Iraqi faction over another. Bush's own national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, professed surprise when informed of the move by reporters.
While they were still riding high as U.S. troops consolidated their control of Iraq, the neocons' star began to wane already last August when it became clear that their and Chalabi's predictions about a grateful Iraqi populace were about as well-founded as their certainties about Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda and his WMD stockpiles.
Sensing trouble ahead, Rice asked former ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, to return to the White House, where he had been her boss during the presidency of George HW Bush, the current leader's father (1989-93). By October, she and he had formed an inter-agency Iraq Stabilisation Group (ISG) that gradually wrested control of Iraq policy from the Pentagon.
It was a process in which Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) chief Paul Bremer, who had come to detest Chalabi and his neocon backers in Baghdad and Washington, was an enthusiastic participant and which was effectively completed with the announcement late last month that the State Department was taking over the $14 billion in reconstruction money for Iraq that the Pentagon has not yet spent.
In the last month, the neocon retreat has turned into a rout, particularly as reports of Chalabi's coziness with Iran gained currency and, just as important, senior military officers indicated that a military victory over the Iraqi insurgency was not possible.
The public attention given to a blistering attack on the neocons by the former chief of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Anthony Zinni, on the popular television program, 60 Minutes, also demonstrated that the media, ever cautious about taking on powerful figures, now saw them as fair game.
When Perle, Woolsey and several other neocons visited Rice at the White House on May 1 to protest the shoddy treatment Chalabi was receiving at the hands of the CIA, Bremer and the State Department, participants said she thanked them for their views and offered nothing more. Neither Rumsfeld nor Cheney nor any of their neocon aides attended.
----
Management Style Shows Weaknesses
Delegation of Responsibility, Trust In Subordinates May Have Hurt Bush
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 2, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A7869-2004Jun1?language=printer
President Bush has long prided himself for focusing on big goals rather than on niggling details and delegating significant responsibility to his aides. But his belated attention to the brutality at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison has revealed vulnerabilities in a management style that had brought him personal and political success.
Bush's aides say the graphic images documenting the abuse of detainees took him by surprise. But as they tell it, the president and his staff received many clues over the past year that there might be a problem -- for example, periodic reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross -- and did nothing because they had been assured the Pentagon was on the case.
A variety of presidential advisers and scholars said the White House's failure to recognize the significance of the warnings points to flaws in Bush's approach to governing that also could have contributed to the administration's inadequate planning and inaccurate presentations in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Fred I. Greenstein, a Princeton University politics professor and author of a text on presidential leadership, said Bush "hews to goals, and has the vision thing in spades," but has "an excessive reliance on subordinates" and "doesn't turn over the rock" to find out what might be waiting to bite him.
Bush, the first president with a master's degree in business administration, has taken pride in his approach to management. "I put a lot of faith and trust in my staff," he wrote in his 1999 autobiography, "A Charge to Keep."
"My job is to set the agenda and tone and framework, to lay out the principles by which we operate and make decisions, and then delegate much of the process to them," Bush wrote, adding that he sees holding people accountable as an essential ingredient.
White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, who came to Washington with Bush after serving as his counsel in the Texas governor's office and one of his appointee to the Texas Supreme Court, said it is "contrary to the way this president operates, and I think it's really sort of bad government, to try to micromanage -- particularly the military."
After weeks of research, officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon said they were still unable to supply a specific timeline of what Bush knew, and when, about allegations of systemic problems in military prisons. They have, however, supplied some data about the subject for the first time since an April 28 broadcast by CBS's "60 Minutes II" set off an international furor.
Until that broadcast, officials said, Bush had not been told that photos or videos existed of U.S. soldiers' use of intimidation, humiliation and excessive force. White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell "kept the president informed in a general nature about detainee issues that had been raised by the International Committee of the Red Cross," including how long people were detained, how they were processed and how their families were notified.
Powell told reporters that Bush was kept "fully informed" about detainee issues raised by the Red Cross, which were discussed at National Security Council meetings and elsewhere in the president's presence. A State Department official said the administration has been unable to pin down the dates or frequency of the briefings. But the official said Powell's "recollection is he talked to Bush on various occasions in the last year or so about the fact that the ICRC had concerns about the treatment of detainees and prisons at Guantanamo, Afghanistan and then later Iraq."
Aides said Bush was told that the Pentagon was dealing with these allegations and that he accepted those assurances. A presidential adviser who has discussed the crisis with officials in the West Wing said people closest to Bush "feel that the military chain of command let him down." The adviser called that conclusion "a rare point of agreement" among Vice President Cheney, Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., senior adviser Karl Rove and former counselor Karen Hughes.
McClellan said Bush "wanted to make sure the appropriate people were taking those issues seriously and addressing them."
"In terms of Red Cross issues related to Iraq, it is our understanding that the military was working to address those issues," McClellan said.
In early March, Bush's National Security Council received a 24-page report from the ICRC alleging that detainees at Abu Ghraib, outside Baghdad, had been "made to walk in the corridors handcuffed and naked, or with women's underwear on the head," and were showing "physical marks and psychological symptoms," including incoherent speech and suicidal tendencies, that "appeared to be caused by the methods and duration of interrogation."
A senior administration official said the report never reached Bush, but was dealt with through "NSC staff-level discussions with the Pentagon."
Outsiders, including some Republicans who speak forlornly about the debacle, said the Abu Ghraib scandal is the price Bush is paying for lacking curiosity and showing unwillingness to delve into potential roadblocks to his larger mission.
Paul C. Light, an authority on bureaucracy who is a political scientist at New York University, said Bush "should have been sharp enough to see the potential damage to the U.S. reputation, if not his own." But Light said that with Bush's approach to governing, an international group's concerns about detainees would have been viewed as "nothing but a rounding error" in the greater goal of fighting global terrorism.
"This administration has been blinded by its hubris," Light said. "The way this group of people operates is to have this kind of echo chamber in which they hear what they want to hear, see what they want to see. . . . They have no formal or informal method for challenging themselves, and that is a perfect recipe for this kind of result."
Laurence H. Tribe, a liberal Harvard University law professor who has advised Democrats, said Bush has proven to have better instincts than many people thought when he took office, but he "accepts the most ridiculous and self-serving explanations."
Tribe pointed to a report in Bob Woodward's "Plan of Attack" that during a White House meeting in 2002, Bush raised questions about the intelligence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, asking whether the evidence he had been presented "is the best we've got." The book reported that CIA Director George J. Tenet replied that it was "a slam dunk case," and Bush went on to put his credibility behind assertions that turned out to be false.
"He doesn't seem to have the follow-through and patience that makes it worthwhile to raise the questions," Tribe said.
Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas government professor who has studied Bush throughout his political career, said the administration's slow response to indications of trouble in military prisons reflects "the tendency for everybody to take signals from the president that this is what we need to do and we're not going to let irritants of a lesser nature divert us from our course."
The presidential adviser said that Bush has had the same management style ever since he bought Major League Baseball's Texas Rangers and ran for governor and that he does not expect him to make any significant change despite his current straits. "When he started to use the strong-CEO's approach of delegation and real responsibility and real accountability, that's when he started to succeed mightily, both in business and in politics," the adviser said. "It's impossible to change a successful man."
----
Kerry Long Distrusted Iraqi Leader Chalabi
June 2, 2004
KTVU
http://www.ktvu.com/politics/3375042/detail.html
TAMPA, Fla. -- Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said Wednesday he has long had misgivings about Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, now under suspicion for passing secret U.S. government information to Iran, while the Bush administration "bought into Mr. Chalabi hook, line and sinker."
On the same day Kerry told Associated Press Radio that significant gaps remain in the nation's preparations for bioterrorism, he answered several foreign policy questions during a campaign stop in the state that held the decisive recount in the 2000 election.
He said Bush's description of Iraq as a main front on the war on terror is "once again misleading Americans" because Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
"The main front on the war on terror is in 60 countries around the world with al-Qaida and a host of other radical organizations, some of which are in countries that are our friends," he said.
Kerry said he wants Bush to be successful in bringing other nations to help in Iraq. But he said it will be difficult because of the "Washington-slash-Haliburton" perception that other nations will be kept out of the responsibility for reconstruction. A subsidiary of Halliburton, an oil services company once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, has been awarded several U.S. contracts for the reconstruction effort in Iraq.
Bush campaign spokeswoman Nicolle Devenish responded: "John Kerry's pessimistic dismissal of the progress in Iraq shows a lack of leadership and understanding of the significance of a free and democratic Iraq in the heart of the Middle East."
With the FBI investigating who in the U.S. government leaked information to Chalabi that then made its way to the Iranian government, Kerry recalled meeting Chalabi years ago in London. He said he "made the decision at that time that we should not be supportive of his efforts."
Kerry added: "I regret that this administration, for whatever reasons, bought into Mr. Chalabi hook, line and sinker. I think it's cost us significantly."
Chalabi had provided intelligence to the Bush administration about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was used to justify going to war. But his information came under criticism after no such weapons were found. The CIA has long been suspicious of Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, but he had maintained strong supporters in other U.S. government agencies, such as the Defense Department.
Government officials, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because the information remained classified, said the U.S. government has evidence that Chalabi or his followers told Iran that Washington had cracked some of it secret codes for transmitting sensitive information.
While in Tampa, Kerry held a 90-minute round-table with emergency responders on the dangers of a biological attack. Kerry said he's not trying to scare people, but he revived images of anthrax-laced letters arriving in mailboxes.
Envelopes laced with anthrax were mailed in fall 2001 to news media and government offices. Five people died, including a tabloid newspaper editor in Florida, and 17 were sickened. Those cases remain unsolved.
Before the round-table, Kerry told AP Radio that the federal government needs to do a better job of preparing homeland security for a biological attack.
"You need to prepare your public health facilities," he said. "You need to prepare your hospitals and all the immediate first responders. Many of them will tell you right now that despite the talk over the course of the last years, there has not been that kind of preparation."
Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt rejected Kerry's assertions and said Bush's budget proposal for 2005 includes $1.7 billion for biodefense research, far more than the $53 million allocated for that purpose in 2001, the year of the final Clinton budget.
----
Kerry criticized on Patriot Act
June 02, 2004
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040602-010015-5515r.htm
Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday criticized Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry for supporting the rollback of specific Patriot Act provisions, saying the stance conflicts with the senator's original vote in favor of the law.
Mr. Cheney told 500 supporters during a campaign speech in Kansas City, Mo., that it had been a rare moment when he and the Massachusetts Democrat had agreed on the vote.
"In a statement supporting the Patriot Act, Senator Kerry said the law would, and I quote, 'make it a lot more difficult for new terrorist organizations to develop,' " Mr. Cheney said.
"I won't be saying this very often during the next few months, but Senator Kerry was right," Mr. Cheney said.
Several provisions of the Patriot Act passed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks will expire at the end of 2005, including sections that allow intelligence and law-enforcement agencies to share information.
The act also gives federal agents a "reasonable period" to search homes and businesses without informing people that their property was searched, and to use roving wiretaps.
Mr. Kerry is among some Democratic and Republican lawmakers who originally supported the bill, but now want to restrict those provisions.
A Kerry spokesman cited Marc Racicot, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who agrees with the senator that the Patriot Act should be reformed.
Spokesman Phil Singer pointed to comments by Mr. Racicot in the fall at the Arab American Institute's National Leadership Conference in Michigan that Congress would review the law, refine it, and provide balance "so that it does not end up invading the civil rights of any American."
Mr. Racicot is the chairman of President Bush's re-election campaign.
"John Kerry and Marc Racicot are in agreement on making this a better counterterrorism tool," Mr. Singer said.
The Bush campaign began pushing the Patriot Act as a package of effective law-enforcement tools to catch terrorists in a central message last week, with TV advertisements in 17 states.
Former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, a Republican and vocal critic of the Patriot Act, said the message must be testing positive in campaign polling.
"I suspect they have discovered in polling that the Patriot Act resonates more with people if you talk about it in general terms and cast it as a vital tool in fighting terrorists," Mr. Barr said.
Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, called Mr. Cheney's speech "reckless."
"The White House is waging a disinformation war about the Patriot Act while support grows among conservatives, libertarians and liberals to fix about a dozen controversial provisions in the law," Mr. Romero said.
According to a report released last week by the Council for Excellence in Government, 56 percent of Americans polled think that the Patriot Act is necessary to prevent terrorism, while 33 percent said the law went too far.
Thirteen percent said the law is not working and should expire, and 50 percent said a thorough debate is necessary before the law is renewed.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
World Bank vows to raise lending for renewable energy
BONN (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.terradaily.com/2004/040602165641.69sdynfs.html
The World Bank said Wednesday that it would increase the amount of money it lent for renewable energy projects by 20 percent every year for the next five years.
At a renewable energy conference in Bonn, officials said its strategy was designed to ensure that alternative energy sources were seen as economically viable.
"We are convinced more than ever that the transition to a cleaner energy future will be won project by project, village by village and nation by nation," World Bank Group managing director Peter Woicke said in a statement here.
He said the increased lending would effectively double the Bank's current pace of roughly 200 million dollars per year by 2010.
The move still needs the approval of the Bank's board of directors.
The conference in Bonn is one of the most ambitious meetings ever held on wind, solar, hydro, biofuels and hydrogen.
It is due to wrap up Friday with a political declaration by ministers and senior officials from more than 150 countries, and there will also be a bulky "action plan" spelling out a vision for increasing renewables' share of the world energy mix.
According to the World Bank statement, it has been the largest lender for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in developing nations since 1990, investing more than six billion dollars in resources it manages itself, and mobilising more than 10 billion from other public and private sources.
----
Green groups worried about outcome for renewable energy conference
BONN (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.terradaily.com/2004/040602094822.4agfwqd7.html
Green activists fretted Wednesday that the outcome of a global conference here aimed at boosting renewable energy would be gutted by US opposition and European reluctance.
The four-day symposium, one of the most ambitious meetings ever held on wind, solar, hydro, biofuels and hydrogen, wraps up on Friday with a political declaration by ministers and senior officials from more than 150 countries.
There will also be a bulky "action plan" in which participants spell out their vision for increasing renewables' share of the world energy mix.
But ecologists said that behind-the-scenes haggling could dangerously water down these documents, ruining the best political opportunity in a generation to help wean the world off oil, a vulnerable commodity that on Tuesday spiked to a new record high.
The United States, supported also by Japan, France and Brazil, was trying to dilute terminology in the draft political statement about the commitment to renewables, one source said.
A similar row dogged the 2002 World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, where the United States also pushed through a conservative energy agenda that rooted out any reference to timetables or market percentages.
As for the action plan, "we are seeing weak political commitment from the EU," WWF International spokeswoman Mitzi Borromeo told AFP.
"It looks as if the EU is failing in its commitment to go beyond 2010," she said, referring to the European Union's current goal of having renewables meet more than 22 percent of its energy needs by the end of the decade.
"The way things look at the moment, Asia could overtake Europe on its commitment to renewable energies."
She singled out China for praise, noting that Beijing is proposing a new law that would "practically double" renewables' share of the national energy supplies, which are heavily dependent on coal, and increasingly, on oil.
The Bonn conference gathers more than 3,000 representatives from corporations, consumers, environmental groups as well as policymakers.
Renewables account for just a tiny part -- only five percent -- of world energy supplies, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) figures for
That compares with 38 percent for oil, 50 percent for coal and gas, and seven percent for nuclear.
On current trends, the shares will be almost unchanged by 2030, even though fossil fuels have been condemned for driving climate change through carbon pollution.
One reason for this is that fossil fuels are well entrenched in the global economy. They can only be dethroned if oil prices remain high, giving the edge to renewable technologies that are still in their infancy and remain costly and relatively energy-inefficient.
The price of crude edged downwards in early London trading on Wednesday, with North Sea Brent swapping hands at 38.65 dollars a barrel for July delivery.
On Tuesday, Brent rocketed upwards by more than two dollars, smashing the 39-dollar mark for the first time since October 1990, in a movement driven by terror attacks in Saudi Arabia as well as the Iraq war and growing consumption by India and China.
In New York on Tuesday, crude surged 2.45 dollars to a record closing price of 42.33 dollars a barrel.
-------- energy
Electrical power plants are the main polluters in North America
MONTREAL (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.terradaily.com/2004/040602203027.jwhy5ynd.html
Electricity power plants are the largest single air polluters in North America, responsible for almost half of all industrial air emissions in 2001, according to a North American Free Trade Agreement environmental report out Wednesday.
The report compares data submitted to US and Canadian federal officials by 21,254 power plants on their releases of toxic chemicals, including carcinogens and neurotoxicants to the air, land and water. Mexican companies are not under the same obligations.
According to data compiled by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, 46 of the top 50 air polluters in North America were power plants.
"The sector generated 45 percent of the 755,502 tonnes of toxic air releases in 2001, with hydrochloric and sulfuric acids being the chemicals most commonly released from the burning of coal and oil," read a statement on the report.
Power plants "also accounted for 64 percent of all mercury air emissions, mainly from coal combustion."
Between 1998 and 2001 overall pollutant air releases decreased by 18 percent in North America.
However air releases, including smokestack emissions, "continued to account for almost two-thirds of the chemicals released by companies on-site. For electric power plants, the decrease in toxic air releases was half the rate of other sectors over the same time period," the statement report read.
In the United States, three coal-fired power plants -- one in North Carolina, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Georgia -- reported the largest toxic air releases in 2001.
In Canada, one single site, Ontario Power Generation's Nanticoke Generation Station, was found responsible for eight percent of all toxic air emissions.
The CEC, of which all three countries participate, is based in Montreal.
-------- OTHER
-------- genetics
U.S. to Divulge More About Modified Crops
June 2, 2004
By ANDREW POLLACK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/business/02crop.html
Responding to criticism that a controversial farming practice is shrouded in secrecy, the Department of Agriculture plans to disclose more information about crops that are genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals, an official said yesterday.
The official, Cindy Smith, the deputy administrator for biotechnology regulatory services, said in an interview that the department planned to begin using its Web site to post its analysis of the risks and environmental impacts of the crops that are being grown in field trials.
"We do agree that more transparency would reassure the public and the stakeholders," Ms. Smith said. "We want to be more transparent in advance of this technology really scaling up."
Biotechnology companies say that genetically modified crops could be a way to produce certain pharmaceuticals inexpensively.
Food companies and environmental groups, however, have objected, particularly to the use of food crops for this purpose. A commonly expressed fear is that drugs might inadvertently end up in somebody's corn flakes.
Critics have also complained about the lack of information about the field trials and the lack of public discussion before permits are granted.
The Department of Agriculture makes some information about field trials available. But it usually leaves out what pharmaceutical is being produced, the acreage involved, and the location other than the state, because such data are usually classified as confidential business information by the company conducting the trial.
The new policy seems likely to mollify critics, although not completely. It would allow the public to comment before a permit is issued for field trials deemed large or risky enough to require a formal environmental assessment. But there would be no comment period, Ms. Smith said, for smaller, more routine trials that receive a more abbreviated risk assessment.
The Agriculture Department would still not disclose information that companies consider confidential, she said.
The new policy comes as the number of such field trials is on the rise after a hiatus.
Companies applied for 13 permits and public research institutions for three, in the 12 months that ended in April, according to a report being issued today by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group.
That came after a sharp decline in trials that occurred after incidents in 2002 in which corn containing a pig vaccine became intermingled with food crops, even though the authorities said the problems were caught before any such food was eaten.
The company involved in those incidents, ProdiGene, was fined, regulations were toughened and applications for field trials slowed.
From July 2002 to June 2003, the government approved only four trials, down from 25 in the previous year, according to the consumer group's report, which used data from the Web site listing trials of genetically engineered crops.
The report said that 11 of the 16 applications involved a food crop and the rest tobacco. Six applications were to grow corn in Iowa, Nebraska or Texas, states that produce large amounts of corn for food and feed.
Some companies, including ProdiGene, are already selling products made in genetically modified crops grown in the trials, the report said.
ProdiGene applied for four permits in the last year, according to the report. Other applicants included Large Scale Biology, Chlorogen and SemBioSys.
Ms. Smith said that field trial activity is still not back to the level it was before the ProdiGene incidents. Many field trials being applied for now are very small, she said.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Canadian Studio Plans to Distribute Moore's 9/11 Film
June 2, 2004
By SHARON WAXMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/business/media/02film.html
LOS ANGELES, June 1 - The independent studio Lions Gate Films will distribute Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which has gained wide notice for its critique of President Bush and was spurned for distribution by the Walt Disney Company.
It will be released on June 25 in about 1,000 theaters. IFC Entertainment is putting up 25 percent of the theatrical distribution costs, which could range from $8 million to $10 million, said executives involved in the deal. Showtime, which already has a deal in place with Lions Gate, will show the film on pay cable.
Harvey and Bob Weinstein, co-chairmen of Miramax, privately acquired the film last week from Disney after Disney instructed them not to distribute the film because of its political nature.
The film is critical of Mr. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq and details the Bush family's ties to powerful Saudi families like the bin Ladens. The film won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival last month.
Big studios like Warner Brothers and Paramount shied away from distributing the film, according to several people close to the negotiations. Focus Features, the Universal studio owned by General Electric, was heavily involved in the bidding, but Robert C. Wright, G.E.'s vice chairman, was called to ensure there would not be a conflict, they said.
Ultimately, the Weinsteins struck a deal with Lions Gate, a studio based in Canada that has distributed Miramax movies that have proved controversial in the past.
Jon Feltheimer, the chief executive of Lions Gate, said: "We're distributing this movie because we think it's a good movie, and a good piece of business. We don't shy away from those kinds of controversies, but we're certainly sensitive to it."
Mr. Moore said he was surprised it had taken this long to find a distributor, even after winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes. "I thought we'd have a distributor within a week," he said.
Because of Disney's rejection of the film, Harvey Weinstein wanted as many companies involved in distributing the film as possible, according to people involved with negotiating the distribution deal.
----
Kach supporters chase away Vanunu
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN
Jun. 2, 2004
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1086058011212
Supporters of the outlawed far-right Kach Party assaulted Mordechai Vanunu at the Jerusalem District Court on Tuesday, forcing him to seek refuge in a nearby pharmacy.
Vanunu, who was accompanied by an unidentified woman, later slipped out of the store without notice.
The crowd had come to the court in support of former Kach spokesman Noam Federman, who was fighting his administrative detention when Vanunu suddenly appeared. They called out, "Traitor! Collaborator! Leave the country!"
Vanunu was released from prison last month after an 18-year sentence for leaking secrets about the Dimona nuclear reactor where he once worked.
----
Dalai Lama worried about moves to lift EU arms embargo on China
LONDON (AFP)
Jun 02, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040602175833.20qoxxsn.html
The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, voiced concern Wednesday that the European Union could lift its ban on selling arms to China, in comments made days ahead of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre.
When asked about reports that Britain would join other EU powers France and Germany in urging an end to the arms embargo, he said it was a "delicate question".
He insisted he was "basically always against the arms trade".
The Buddhist leader's measured statement came after a speech to members of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh, his last stop on a weeklong trip to Britain hotly condemned by China.
It also comes amid moves by EU heavyweights to let slide their arms embargo slapped on China in June 1989, after its communist rulers stamped out pro-democracy protests on Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and killed hundreds of students and civilians.
Most of the Dalai Lama's points concerned the promotion of universal values and interfaith alliance, as well as autonomy for Tibet. The spiritual leader says he does not seek independence for the Himalayan kingdom, but only cultural freedom and an end to persecution of ethnic Tibetans.
But he also used Iraq to show the dangers posed by the weapons trade.
"Saddam Hussein, the dictator, had not come from the sky", he said, implying that his power emanated from his military capabilities.
"Those weapons used by Saddam Hussein's army were not produced in their own country, but from outside.
"So, therefore, when things become difficult, to blame everything on one person is unfair," the Tibetan leader concluded, in an indirect suggestion that arms traders and builders shared in the blame for Saddam's strength.
The Dalai Lama said the only way to eliminate the risk of similar misuse of force was to stop the arms trade.
He added that China was already militarily "very powerful".
Britain is expected to line up alongside France and Germany in arguing that the restrictions, imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, should be ended, according to a British news report Monday.
In return, London is pushing for Beijing to sign up to an international agreement guaranteeing human rights, according to The Times newspaper.
The Dalai Lama began his trip last Thursday in London, and met with top British figures including Prince Charles and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, although Prime Minister Tony Blair chose not to see him.
The Buddhist leader, respected worldwide for his teachings and principles of non-violence, leads the Tibetan government-in-exile in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamsala, where he fled in 1959.
Beijing occupied Tibet, which it insists has been an integral part of the Chinese nation for centuries, in 1951.
Since then it has been accused of trying to wipe out Tibet's unique Buddhist-based culture through political and religious repression as well as mass ethnic Chinese immigration.
----
New York expecting protesters
June 02, 2004
By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040602-010015-5755r.htm
Police in New York will be outfitted to deal with the thousands of demonstrators expected to show up to protest the Republican National Convention in August.
Protesters will find the 10,000 police officers assigned to convention duty with handguns, batons and tear gas canisters on the hip. More equipment will be stashed in strategic spots throughout the city and other officers will be on call as backup.
It's the same system that the city's police have used for years when expecting protests.
But exactly what the police have at their disposal is what Eric Laursen of the Campaign to Demilitarize the Police is trying to find out via a Freedom of Information Act request to the New York Police Department.
"The police have ramped up the tactics they use against protesters in the last few years," Mr. Laursen said. "In Miami, they use what are known as nonlethal weapons, which is a misnomer because it includes rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray. And [these weapons] have killed people. Our goal is to stop these weapons from being used as a common practice."
A New York Police Department official said there was a "myth" circulating in the protest community about the existence of a special NYPD weapons cache for dealing with protesters that is simply not true. He said the department's focus is not on the planned demonstrations.
"These protesters have an inflated view of their importance," said NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne. "Our main concern is to protect against a terrorist attack. We have 600 demonstrations annually just below 59th Street. We have plenty of experience in this and there are no secret weapons."
The department does not use rubber bullets, he said.
NYPD's emergency service unit, used primarily to deal with emotionally and potentially volatile individuals, will be available to remove any disruptive elements among the protesters.
Mr. Laursen said he feared the conflict that happened in Miami between police and protesters will repeat itself in New York.
In November, police clashed with groups protesting international officials who gathered in Miami to discuss a free-trade zone to span the Western Hemisphere.
Police showed reporters there materials confiscated from demonstrators, including rubber wrist slings used to fire debris at police and ingredients for Molotov cocktails.
"The use of force in Miami was used to create a military lockdown of the city," Mr. Laursen said. "Police had undercover cops that were there to provoke violence, and they were arresting people who were peaceful protesters."
Mr. Browne countered: "We don't consider protesters to be our enemy."
Both the Republican convention and the Democratic convention in Boston were noted by Attorney General John Ashcroft last week when he announced new warnings of possible terrorist action against U.S. targets.
New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said last week that police would change some plans because of the threats, including the use of "Hercules" teams that patrol the streets with body armor and machine guns.
The department was dealt a setback in its security efforts last week when a federal judge ruled that Mr. Kelly will have to answer questions about the tactics officers use during protests.
Lawyers representing groups planning protests during the convention want to question Mr. Kelly in connection with three lawsuits charging police tactics during protests are unconstitutional.
"Security plans for the convention are sensitive," Mr. Browne said. "We are being forced to disclose information that could be used by groups like al Qaeda."
----
Syrian dissident walks free
By Magdi Abdel Hadi
BBC correspondent in Aleppo, Syria
Wednesday, 2 June, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3769309.stm
Syria's emergency legislation has been in place more than 40 years One of Syria's most prominent civil rights activists has walked free after appearing in court charged with defaming the state authorities.
Abdul Razzaq Eid, an academic and well known critic of the ruling Baath Party, had written in one of his articles that a "corrupt clique" in Syria had stolen 95% of the country's national wealth.
Mr Eid was being tried at a military tribunal in accordance with an emergency law in Syria which has been in force for more than 40 years.
Under the watchful eye of plain clothes security police a small crowd of young and veteran civil rights activists gathered outside the military tribunal building in Aleppo. The aim is to silence all the people, to silence all intellectuals Eid supporter One of Mr Eid's supporters explained why he thought this was such an exceptionally important trial.
"An intellectual, a very important intellectual is being put on trial for the first time," the supporter told the BBC.
"The aim is to silence all the people, to silence all intellectuals. It's like raising a stick against or in the face of all of society, an attempt to intimidate us all.
"People here they don't want a regime change, they're just asking for democracy, they are asking for their rights."
Political trial
After Mr Eid's case was dismissed, he emerged from the court building, followed by a number of lawyers who had volunteered to defend him.
They were all smiling and the mood changed from gloom to happiness. His friends hugged and kissed Mr Eid on the cheek.
I asked him what happened inside the court.
"The lawyers questioned the competence of the court to consider a case like this one which is the political trial of an intellectual," Mr Eid said.
"But the judge overruled them, basing his ruling on the emergency law.
"He asked me what I meant by a 'corrupt clique'. So I told him I meant the financial clique. I'd said 5% of the people controlled 95% of the national wealth. There was the suspicion that I was referring to government officials which of course I wasn't.
"I told him the word clique in Arabic means a rascal and asked him whether it was offensive to him to describe the corrupt as rascals. He said, no it was not, and declared me innocent of the charge.
So is that the end of court process?
"Well I think they wanted to send me a message that they're keeping an eye on what I write so I'd better watch it," Mr Eid said.
-------
------- OneList (submissions from subscribers)
------- Depleted Uranium Keeps On Killing!
-----------
Posted
without profit or payment for research and educational
purposes only,
in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107.