Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
SELLAFIELD FIRM FIRED AFTER SITE ACCIDENTS
China's doubts about North Korean nuclear ambition puzzling
Why is the US spying on India?
Iran admits to high levels of contamination of bomb-grade uranium
Iran Said Interested in Nuclear Parts
'N-armed Iran would be more vulnerable'
Iran's Nukes: For Peaceful Purposes
Russia Qualifies Its Nuclear Cooperation with Iran
Europeans seek IAEA rebuke of Iran
Iran and the EU 3
UN agency to rap Iran over nuclear program but keep cooperating
Iran Warns G8 It Will Not Halt Nuclear Program
Iraqi Missile Engines Found in Jordan
Banned Iraqi missile engines found in Jordan - U.N.
North Korea tests new missile engine: report
G8 Urges Comprehensive Dismantlement of North Korea's Nuclear Programs
China view on arms in North Korea puzzles U.S.
Why Russia belongs in the G-8
KERRY PLEDGES TO GIVE NUCLEAR TERRORISM HIS TOP PRIORITY
U.S. House panel votes to block new nuclear weapons
New Nuclear Program Sidelined
Congressman slashes nuke plans
UC keeps Livermore Lab till 2007
Lab impact comment period over
Livermore Lab Contract to Be Extended
Nevada nuclear waste project faces budget problems
Ginna power plant sold for $408 million
New Hanford medical provider takes over
AdvanceMed up and running
MILITARY
Sudan blames West for Darfur conflict
Divided army puts Congo peace accord at risk of collapse
Some Aussies Say No to US Bases
Iraq war boosts global military spending
MIDEAST ARMS SPENDING RISES BY 10%
World conflicts drop, arms spending rockets
Lawmakers Oppose Plan to Ease Sales of U.S. Arms
Calif. Researchers Unaware Anthrax Live
Britons Punish Blair at Polling Booths Over Iraq
U.S. Contractor CACI Responds to Suit Over Iraq Abuse
Army to begin destroying deadly nerve agent at Indiana depot
Army Withholds Chemical Attack Antidote
China Says Doubts N.Korea Has Uranium Program
Kurds Win Round on Constitution
Gaza Settlers Urged to Leave Before Vote
Two Are Said to Tell of Libyan Plot to Kill Saudi Ruler
Leaders Dispute NATO Role in Iraq
Bush: New NATO Troops in Iraq Not Likely
Militant's Defiance Puts Pakistan's Resolve in Doubt
U.S. Halves Prisoner Numbers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib
Despite a Pledge to Speed Work, Fixing an Internal Problem Takes Time
U.N. to Keep Distance in Iraq Because of Safety Fears
Document warns Guantanamo employees not to talk
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Capitol Cleared Over Errant Small Plane
Seeding Security in the Heartland
Whatever Happened To The Constitution?
The Torture Working Group
Rumsfeld 'told officers to take gloves off with Lindh'
POLITICS
The u-turn that saved the Gipper
Higher-Ranking Officer Is Sought to Lead the Abu Ghraib Inquiry
State Dept. Concedes Errors in Terror Data
Powell blames terror error on new system
A New Action Hero
The Capital Pays Homage to 'a Graceful and a Gallant Man'
Economy Provides No Boost for Bush
On foreign policy, Bush follows the Reagan model
ENERGY
Fuel Cell Maker Scraps IPO
Energy Watchdog Forecasts More Oil Demand
OTHER
The dimming of the light
Five Word Definition Could Keep Oil Out of U.S. Waters
ACTIVISTS
At G-8, a Kinder, Gentler Age of Protesting
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
SELLAFIELD FIRM FIRED AFTER SITE ACCIDENTS
Published in Whitehaven News
Thursday, June 10th 2004
UK Business Gazette
http://www.businessgazette.co.uk/viewarticle.asp?id=105513
A CONTRACT company was ordered off the Sellafield site following an incident in which some heavy duty lifting equipment overturned.
Brian Watson, Sellafield's top boss, has revealed that the company has had its contract terminated. The incident happened last January on the Calder landfill site.
Two months later there was another incident in which a fork-lift truck overturned spilling chemicals.
Mr Watson told Sellafield Local Liaison Committee: "These trucks are dangerous things when they are carrying chemicals and it is a source of management concern. No one was injured and the clean up work was extremely well managed..
"I worry deeply about these sorts of incidents, it is the second of its type in a fairly short period of time. In the first we had to ask the contract organisation to leave the site and terminate their contract. We felt it was unavoidable. We did not like doing it but we had to."
The site's director also expressed concern about a radiological incident in March when four operators were contaminated. It happened in the B299 plutonium plant and contamination was spread in the building itself.
"It was the second incident in the plant and we must make sure we break away from that pattern of incident. It is something of very great concern to us and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. We are working closely together to take all the necessary steps and measures."
NII principal inspector, Peter Watson, said BNFL's follow-up actions, to make sure there was no repeat of the incident, were being watched closely.
-------- china
China's doubts about North Korean nuclear ambition puzzling: US
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jun 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040609220211.uceq1vs3.html
The United States maintained Wednesday that North Korea had been trying to build nuclear bombs using uranium, despite doubts expressed by China.
Deputy Chinese foreign minister Zhou Wenzhong in an interview with the New York Times published Wednesday said he doubted US claims that North Korea had an enriched uranium program and urged Washington to stop using the allegations to hold up nuclear talks.
He said the United States had yet to persuade China that North Korea had both uranium and plutonium programs to develop fuel for nuclear bombs.
The US State Department described Zhou's statement as "puzzling.
"We saw the story and, frankly, we find the assistant foreign minister's comments somewhat puzzling," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters.
"We have made clear over time that there is very conclusive information that North Korea has a covert uranium enrichment program," he said.
North Korea had itself acknowledged previously that it was pursuing uranium enrichment, Boucher said.
"They have asserted their so-called right to develop nuclear weapons," he said.
Boucher cited recent revelations by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan about North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Khan, a one-time national hero credited with making Pakistan a nuclear power, has admitted selling nuclear secrets abroad and to assisting North Korea's nuclear enrichment program.
"So, certainly there can be no doubt that North Korean's nuclear activities represent a clear threat and they violate several important international agreements as well as the commitments that North Korea has made in the past," Boucher said.
He pointed out that it was up to the North Koreans to demonstrate that they were willing to "completely and irreversibly abandon their nuclear programs through a verifiable dismantlement of all the elements of those efforts."
North Korea has acknowledged having a plutonium program but denies that it is enriching uranium to make nuclear fuel.
"We know nothing about the uranium program," Zhou told the New York Times. "We don't know whether it exists. So far the US has not presented convincing evidence of this program."
China is hosting key talks to resolve the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula.
It had hosted two rounds of six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program and is preparing to convene a third.
Zhou's comments represent a potentially important shift in Beijing's approach to the talks, which China has sought to keep afloat despite scant evidence of progress, the New York Times said.
Though China has longstanding ties to North Korea, it had previously adopted a strongly neutral position in the negotiations, which have now stretched over a year, the newspaper said.
-------- india / pakistan
Why is the US spying on India?
June 10, 2004
Rediff.com India
http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/jun/10spec2.htm
The media reported on June 5, the dismissal by the President of retired Major Rabinder Singh, a joint secretary at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency, under Article 311(2) (c) of the Constitution. This Article enables the President to dismiss any officer of an all-India service without holding a formal departmental enquiry against him if such an enquiry is considered not to be in the national interest. There is no provision for a judicial review of the decision.
According to media reports, Rabinder Singh, who held charge of the South-East Asia portfolio, has been absconding from his duties for nearly three weeks and is suspected to have fled abroad, most probably to the US, after he came under suspicion of working for US intelligence. It is said the suspicion arose following the recovery of photocopies of some classified documents from his briefcase during a check by RAW security staff as he was leaving office.
His dismissal under a special provision of the Constitution would seem to have been taken as he was no longer available for a formal enquiry into his alleged act of espionage for a foreign power. The dismissal order is meant more to deter similar acts of espionage by other officers of the intelligence agencies than to repair the damage caused by him to the organisation and the nation.
Whatever damage he might have caused cannot be set right. One can only prevent a recurrence of such incidents if one draws the right lessons from the case and tightens the loopholes in the internal security system at RAW, which enabled Rabinder Singh to betray the secrets of the organisation to a foreign agency.
Rabinder Singh is a clean-shaven Sikh, who came on deputation to RAW from the army in the 1980s. He held the rank of major at that time. He did not go back to the army on completion of his deputation. He gave up his lien in the army and chose to be permanently absorbed in RAW as a member of its Research and Analysis Service.
Throughout his career, he was considered by many of his peers as an average officer. He was poor as an intelligence analyst, but somewhat good as a field operative.
During his career, he worked as head of the RAW office in Amritsar and subsequently as a field operative in West Asia and West Europe. In Amritsar, his principal task was the collection of trans-border HUMINT (human intelligence) about the Pakistani military and about the training of Sikh terrorists by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence in Pakistani territory. In West Asia, his task was monitoring the activities of terrorist groups there. In West Europe he focused on the activities of Sikh terrorist elements operating there.
In counter-intelligence, which is the technique of preventing infiltration by moles of foreign intelligence agencies, it is often difiicult to get provable evidence. One has, therefore, to act on suspicion. Article 311 (2) of the Constitution is helpful in such cases. Foreign intelligence agencies have a provision in their service rules called the 'golden handshake.' Under this, they can ease out of the organisation incapable or unreliable or suspicious officers by persuading them to quit in return for handsome monetary compensation. They use this provision quite often to weed out undesirable elements without getting involved in protracted and controversial litigation.
When RAW was formed in September 1968, R N Kao, its founder, persuaded then prime minister Indira Gandhi to agree to the inclusion of a 'golden handshake' provision in its service rules. It is not clear as to why RAW did not act against Rabinder Singh under the 'golden handshake' provision or Article 311 (2) earlier than it did since his track record was reportedly not impressive.
It is said there was a question mark over his reliability since the early 1990s when an operation he began for the collection of intelligence about US government activities in South Asia through a sister of his, who was employed in a sensitive US agency with links to the CIA, was found to have been fishy.
Initially, some good documents came out of this operation, but subsequently, there were grounds for suspicion that the CIA might be using his sister to plant disinformation on the Government of India through him. One such piece of disinformation, which they allegedly tried to feed through this channel in the late 1980s, was that the US embassy in New Delhi had reported to the State Department that the then Chief of the Army Staff was planning a coup against Rajiv Gandhi.
This is the third detected instance of the penetration of the Indian intelligence by the CIA.
In the first instance detected in 1986-1987, a senior RAW officer of the rank of director (one rank below joint secretary) belonging to the IPS, posted in Chennai for handling sensitive Sri Lanka operations, was allegedly found to have been working for the CIA.
During a random surveillance of a suspected CIA officer posted in the US consulate in Chennai, the RAW officer was allegedly discovered to have clandestine contact with the CIA officer and going for morning jogs with him.
After collecting video-recordings of a series of such clandestine meetings, a joint counter-intelligence team of the Intelligence Bureau and RAW confronted him with the evidence. He reportedly broke down and made a clean breast of it. He was dismissed under Article 311 (2) of the Constitution and jailed in Tihar for a year to serve as a deterrent example to others.
The second instance detected in 1995-1996 related to a senior officer of the Intelligence Bureau belonging to the IPS, who held a rank equivalent to that of an additional secretary, one level below secretary. He might have risen to be the head of the organisation within a few months if his contacts with the CIA had not been detected. He had served for some years in the ministry of external affairs. He was responsible for internal security and counter-intelligence in the MEA and used to interact with a large number of foreign intelligence officers posted in their diplomatic missions in New Delhi. He also developed social relationship with them.
After reverting to the IB at the end of his MEA tenure, he reportedly became the head of its counter-intelligence division and was responsible for maintaining a surveillance of all foreign intelligence officers based in New Delhi in order to prevent any attempts by them to penetrate the IB and other government departments.
It was alleged that unauthorisedly and without the knowledge of the Director, Intelligence Bureau, he continued to maintain his personal and social relationships with the foreign intelligence officers, which he had built up in the MEA.
Accidentally, the IB's counter-intelligence division reportedly found that a woman CIA officer posted in the US embassy was in contact with government servants and others on a mobile telephone, allegedly registered in the name of their boss, the suspect IB officer. Without alerting him, they brought this to the notice of the director, IB.
A joint counter-intelligence team of the IB and RAW then kept him under surveillance, collected video-recordings of his clandestine meetings with the CIA officer and then confronted him with the evidence.He reportedly broke down and admitted his contacts with her.
It was stated that during the investigation it was found that apart from facilitating her operational work by hiring a mobile in his name and giving it to her, he had not betrayed any sensitive secrets. He was reportedly sent on premature retirement and no further action was taken.
There were two unsuccessful attempts by the CIA to penetrate Indian intelligence.
In the first instance which took place in the 1980s, a director-level non-IPS RAW officer posted in a West European country, came under pressure from the CIA to work for it. He immediately alerted RAW about it. He was withdrawn and the CIA's plans were thwarted.
In the second instance, in the early 1990s, a CIA officer posted at the US embassy in New Delhi tried to recruit an IB officer, who immediately reported it to his superiors. They laid a trap for the CIA officer, collected evidence of his misdeeds and ordered him to leave the country.
Since 1947, India has had a long history of intelligence co-operation relationship with the intelligence agencies of the US and other Western countries as well as with those of the erstwhile USSR, Russia and other East European countries. Underlying all such relationships is an unwritten gentlemen's agreement that the agencies would not take advantage of this relationship to penetrate each other.
Most intelligence agencies of the world try to observe this, but not the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are aggressive and do not care for any dos and don'ts in intelligence cooperation relationships. They do not hesitate to clandestinely penetrate their sister agencies with which they have an official relationship if they get an opportunity to do so.
The IB has the over-all responsibility for counter-intelligence. It is responsible for the pevention of penetration of its own set-up as well as of other government departments.
RAW has a counter intelligence and security division, whose responsibility is limited to maintaining internal security and preventing the penetration of the organisation. It performs the security role by keeping a tab on the use of photo-copying machines, scanners, computers with external connections etc, by random door checking of the contents of the briefcases of staff and other methods. It performs the counter intelligence task by monitoring the lifestyles and work habits of its staff and their contacts with outsiders. It has no capability for external surveillance for which it has to depend on the IB's counter intelligence division.
It is possible, but not certain that it was the IB's counter intelligence division which first rang the alarm bells about Rabinder Singh after noticing a clandestine meeting of his with a suspect CIA officer. If this was not so and if it was RAW, which detected his contacts, it is not known whether it immediately alerted the IB and sought its cooperation in the further investigation as all government departments are expected to do.
In all intelligence agencies of the world, the head of the counter intelligence division is a hated officer in the organisation because he is perceived as spying on his colleagues and friends. James Angleton, head of the CIA's counter intelligence division during the initial Cold War years, became a detested man because of his aggressive investigative methods and has been spending his sunset years with very few friends from amongst retired intelligence officers. Competent intelligence officers avoid heading the counter intelligence division since they find spying on their colleagues and friends distasteful.
In 1980, M D Dittia, a police officer of the Delhi cadre, who headed the counter intelligence division at RAW, was gheraoed by lower and middle-level staff who accused him of harassing and humiliating them under the pretext of counter intelligence. They went on strike demanding, inter alia, the abolition of the counter intelligence division. The late N F Suntook, then the chief of RAW, rejected their demands, had the ring-leaders of the strike dismissed under Article 311 (2), got those who instigated the gherao arrested and prosecuted and persuaded Indira Gandhi to have legislation enacted banning strikes in RAW.
No counter intelligence division can be effective without the cooperation of the colleagues and friends of a suspect mole, who have to alert the division if they notice anything suspicious. Many officers find this distasteful and avoid communicating their suspicions to the counter intelligence division due to an impression that 'gentlemen do not rat on their colleagues and friends.'
During the first Clinton administration, Aldrich Ames, a well-placed mole of Soviet and Russian intelligence, was detected by the CIA. He was responsible for the deaths of many CIA moles in Moscow, whose identities he had revealed to the Soviet and Russian intelligence services. During the investigation, it was discovered that he was an alcoholic, that he and his wife were given to expensive living, that he was always in heavy debt and that he was in the habit of visiting the Russian embassy in Washington DC, without the knowledge of his superiors.
A Congressional enquiry found that over a dozen colleagues of his were aware of all these, but refrained from alerting the CIA director or the head of its counter intelligence division about it. They thought that would amount to carrying tales about a colleague and friend, which, in their view, was just not done.
Such an attitude has to change if counter intelligence has to be effective and penetration by foreign agencies has to be prevented.
While collecting intelligence about foreign adversaries and terrorists is a highly exciting and glamorous job, which immediately attracts the attention and commendation of organisational and political superiors, collecting intelligence about one's own colleagues and friends can be a terribly boring and to many, distasteful and thankless job, which does not bring the officer to the good notice of his or her superiors. Foreign intelligence agencies take advantage of this mindset in their efforts at successful penetration.
-------- iran
Iran admits to high levels of contamination of bomb-grade uranium
VIENNA (AFP)
Jun 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040610195144.bvkvty3z.html
Iran admitted Thursday to higher levels of contamination by bomb-grade uranium than previously thought but still insisted this came from imported equipment rather than from Iranian enrichment activities, diplomats said.
The Iranians were speaking at a technical briefing of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, where IAEA officials said the Iranians had indicated to international black marketeers that they would be interested in buying tens of thousands of magnets for sophisticated P-2 centrifuges that can enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels, the diplomats said.
Washington charges that Iran is secretly trying to develop atomic weapons and should be taken to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions. Iran's clerical regime insists its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
The IAEA's 35-nation board of governors is to meet on Iran next week and is expected to rap the Islamic Republic for hiding sensitive atomic activities but avoid provoking a showdown over the country's alleged secret weapons programme.
Tens of thousands of magnets would be enough to make production-line cascades of thousands of centrifuges to manufacture raw material for nuclear bombs.
"At two magnets per P-2 centrifuges, that's quite a few centrifuges," a Western diplomat said.
Two thousand P-2 centrifuges can produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) for two nuclear devices per year, experts said.
Diplomats said the Iranians, who claim they are only doing research into centrifuges rather than trying to start large-scale manufacture of HEU, had told the IAEA they were inquiring about such a large purchase of magnets only to get the price down.
Iranian officials confirmed at the briefing that agency inspectors had found particles of uranium enriched to 54 percent, the diplomats said.
The previous highest level made public in its ongoing Iran investigation was 36 percent.
"There was a silence in the room when they mentioned 54 percent," said one diplomat, who asked not to be named. "People were shocked by the figure."
Uranium enriched to over 20 percent can be used to make a nuclear bomb but most nuclear weapons are made with levels of over 80 percent enrichment.
Diplomats said an IAEA chart at the briefing indicated contamination in some cases of close to 80 percent.
IAEA officials said they were so far unable to determine the source of the
An Iranian official told reporters after the meeting that American "misunderstandings" about Tehran's nuclear programme had been cleared up, but a US diplomat denied this.
"Mainly the US had a number of misunderstandings that we hope have now been made clear," Iranian foreign ministry official Amir Zamaninia told journalists after the closed-door technical meeting.
But US ambassador to the IAEA Kenneth Brill said he had told the IAEA "that in the official written statement which the Iranians issued on March 5 about the P-2 program about their centifuge program there were at my count at least four errors of accounting that were corrected by the most recent report" of IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei on Iran.
"I didn't hear anything that corrected that understanding although I did hear an effor to try to explain it away," Brill said.
A tough Washington-inspired IAEA board resolution in March that condemned Iran for omitting to report its work into sophisticated P-2 centrifuges led Tehran to delay crucial agency investigations.
The United States looks ready to sign on this time to a British-French-German draft resolution that sharply criticizes Iran for failing to answer questions about alleged nuclear weapons activities but presses for continued cooperation with Tehran, diplomats said.
At their meeting in Sea Island in the US state of Georgia on Wednesday, G8 leaders chastised Iran for allegedly failing to fully disclose its nuclear programme.
----
Iran Said Interested in Nuclear Parts
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer
Jun 10, 2004
http://breakingnews.nypost.com/dynamic/stories/N/NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=NYNYP&SECTION=INTERNATIONAL&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran told a black market supplier it was interested in "tens of thousands" of parts for its covert nuclear program, diplomats said Thursday, as the U.N. atomic watchdog prepared to rebuke Tehran for hindering an agency probe of its activities.
The diplomats, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the revelation about Iran's offer was made at a closed-door meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
An IAEA report leaked last week mentioned that Iran had acknowledged inquiring about 4,000 magnets needed for uranium enrichment equipment with a European black-market supplier and had dangled the possibility of buying a "higher number" of such markets.
At Thursday's preparatory meeting for Monday's IAEA board of governors' conference an IAEA official was more precise, saying that Iran had said it was interested in "tens of thousands" of such magnets in future contracts, according to diplomats present at the closed meeting.
With two magnets per uranium enrichment centrifuge, tens of thousands of such parts would translated into a centrifuge program that significantly exceeds what Iran insists was only an experimental project.
Uranium enrichment can be used to generate power or make nuclear weapons, depending on the level of enrichment. Iran insists it was interested only in energy generation and that its offer was purposely exaggerated to spark interest from the potential black market supplier.
The United States and other nations say such arguments are an attempt to cover up nearly two decades of covert activities aimed at making nuclear weapons and point to what they say is continued Iranian secrecy on the scope of its enrichment program and other activities.
The other main area of concern remains the source of traces of weapons-grade uranium on Iranian centrifuges. Tehran asserts the traces were inadvertently imported on purchases through the nuclear black market and that it has not enriched uranium beyond the low levels used for power generation.
But IAEA investigators have not been able to test that claim because Pakistan - the main source of the equipment - has blocked free access to its nuclear material, meaning the agency cannot match isotope samples to the traces found in Iran. At Thursday's meeting Thursday, IAEA officials complained that the agency has in some cases waited in vain for information on enrichment since October.
Coming out of the meeting, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, Amir Zamaninia said his country had attempted to clarify "a number of misunderstandings on the part of ... mainly the United States."
But another delegate present said members of the Iranian and U.S. delegations had clashed on a number of issues at what was supposed to be a technical meeting, likening their deep differences on the nature of Iran's nuclear program to a chasm between "two worlds."
The testiness reflected tensions ahead of Monday's board meeting, which is expected to censure Iran for continued foot-dragging a year into the IAEA probe of its nuclear ambitions.
A draft resolution written by France, Germany and Britain is heavily peppered with negative terms, "deploring" omissions and delays by Iran in cooperating with the agency probe or noting them with "serious concern."
Diplomats said the United States, Iran's harshest critic, was generally satisfied with the tone of the draft. But they said Washington would push for some kind of deadline for Tehran to come up with the missing information needed to prove or disprove the Islamic Republic's weapons ambitions.
Speaking in Tehran for Iran's powerful conservatives, lawmaker Manouchechr Mottaki warned of a "strong reaction" if the IAEA rules against the country at the board meeting. That meeting will review the IAEA report on Iran.
Mottaki said any decision by the IAEA board against Iran could draw "relatiation" by Iran's paliament.
"The board decision will definitely affect the parliament's debate whether or not approve the additional protocol to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," Mottaki told The Associated Press.
The report addresses the same concerns voiced in the draft and brought up at Thursday's meeting - that Iran had tried to buy critical parts for advanced P-2 centrifuges and that ambiguity remains on the source of traces of weapons grade uranium found inside Iran.
In the face of mounting international pressure, Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year, and in April it said it had stopped building centrifuges.
Iran long has rejected U.S. allegations its nuclear program is for military purposes. ElBaradei said last month 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."
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency, www.iaea.org
----
'N-armed Iran would be more vulnerable'
Thursday June 10, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jun2004-daily/10-06-2004/world/w3.htm
TEHRAN: Iran would be less safe if it acquired nuclear weapons because it cannot hope to match the arsenals of existing nuclear powers such as Israel and the United States, the Islamic republic's former envoy to the UN nuclear watchdog was quoted as saying Wednesday. "Suppose we have a nuclear weapon, our nuclear weapon of course will not be as good as those developed by the Russians, nor will it be able to compete with the nuclear weapons of Israel and by extension of the US," Ali Akbar Salehi told Iran Daily.
"A country like Iran cannot have prestige by acquiring nuclear weapons. I think a country like Iran would raise more threats against it, and not get security, by having nuclear weapons," he argued. "We cannot buy more security by having nuclear weapons, only invite more threats against ourselves," said Salehi, whose tenure at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was marked by increasing suspicions that Iran is seeking the bomb.
The United States and Israel accuse Iran of using an atomic energy programme as a cover for the development of nuclear weapons, a charge Iran angrily denies.
Salehi, who was Iran's envoy to the IAEA for five years up to late last year, did however stress in the interview that civil nuclear power was a matter of national prestige. "If a country has access to the cutting edge nuclear technology, it can be proud," said the former envoy, now a top advisor to the regime on national security and nuclear issues. "Take Switzerland which has about six million people.
----
Iran's Nukes: For Peaceful Purposes
by Shalom Freedman
Jun 10, '04 / 21 Sivan 5764
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=3787
On June 2, 2004 the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran had been lying about its nuclear program. Iran had claimed that it was not employing Pakistani-designed P-2 centrifuges to enrich uranium. The P-2 centrifuges with traces of such enriched uranium were found by IAEA inspectors in the nuclear facility at Natanz. Iran had also promised the IAEA that it would stop work on the heavy water (a deuterium plant) to manufacture plutonium that it had been operating. IAEA discovered that the plant at Arak was up and running still.
In response to these clear violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in response to the broken promises of Iran, the best IAEA director Mohammed El-Baradei could muster was that he was not certain whether Iran was in fact developing a nuclear weapons program. Iranian President Mohammed Khatemi had assured him that their nuclear program was for "peaceful purposes". This is the best El-Baradei could do, though Iran has been lying to the IAEA and the world community about its nuclear program since 1991. It has repeatedly broken promises about halting various activities, continuing to build new plants despite the clear violations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. One of Iran's major lies was about a two-thousand ton shipment of uranium that it received from China and denied knowing anything about, until confronted with clear evidence by IAEA inspectors.
The "peaceful purposes" of Iran are, of course, well understood by any amateur inspector of world affairs. Since the Ayotallah Khomeini takeover in 1979, the Iranians have made no secret of their desire to export the Islamic revolution.. In a 2003 Commentary article, Gabriel Schoenfeld gave a brief and telling picture of Iranian motivations and past actions. "Iran is an oil-rich country. It has no need for an ambitious civilian nuclear-energy industry. That it has been vigorously developing one was a red flag that the ayatollahs did not deign to conceal."
To augment the menace, Iran is "the most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world, according to the U.S. State Department. Tehran has carried out a series of kidnappings and assassinations in Europe. It has funded and provided training and arms to a variety of Palestinian terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and factions within Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization. It was almost certainly behind the bombings in Argentina of the Israeli Embassy in March 1992, killing 29, and the Jewish community center in July 1994, killing 86. It is thought to have had a hand in the June 1996 bombing of the Al-Khobar barracks in Saudi Arabia that took the lives of 19 U.S. soldiers. It has ties with Al-Qaeda and, in the wake of September 11, it may have given shelter to some of its leading operatives. The list goes on and on.
To augment the menace even more, Iran has also been building missiles at a feverish pace. In July it successfully tested the Shehab-3 (a variant of the No Dong missile first provided to it by North Korea), with a range of 930 miles and capable of carrying a small nuclear warhead. Iranian engineers are similarly moving forward with the Shehab-4 and Shehab-5, with ranges of 1,240 and 3,100 miles respectively. Brig. Gen. Rahim Safavi, who heads Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, declared not long ago that "Iranian missiles can cause irreparable damage to either Israel or the United States." This is partly bluster. Israel indeed lies within range of Iranian missiles; The United States does not -- not yet.
The peaceful intentions of Iran were, however, most tellingly revealed in an interview given by two-term former President of Iran Hashemi Rafsanjani on June 14, 2002. In this article, he suggested that the purpose of Iranian nuclear weapons would be to erase the "Zionist appendix" from the map of the Middle East. He said, "If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in its possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate, because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel, but the same thing would just [cause] damage in the Islamic world." He went on to say that the Islamic world could suffer any blow Israel would give and still survive, while one nuclear weapon would put an end to Israel.
Iran has, with the chutzpah typical of fundamentalist fanatics, already demanded that the UN and the IAEA end its inspections. In any case, all past experience shows that it has no intention whatsoever of complying with the IAEA or anyone else. This is, after all, the same IAEA that did not stop India or Pakistan from developing nuclear weapons. And Iran, too, might look with encouragement at the way several US administrations turned their heads and allowed Pakistan to develop the Islamic bomb - the same Pakistan that, of course, provided the centrifuge technology to Iran.
As it is now, no sanctions have been taken against Iran by the international community, and none are likely. And if they are placed in effect, learned observers are certain that Iran will simply, and with much popular approval at home, defy them. Iran has made it clear that it is going ahead with its programs and that no sanctions or peaceful means of persuasion are going to stop it.
As to the military option, this seems unlikely at the moment. The US Administration has the more difficult case of North Korea, which already possesses nuclear weapons, to deal with . The Bush administration is struggling in Afghanistan and Iraq and is under increasing international and domestic criticism as to its aggressive pursuit of the war of terror. It seems highly unlikely that it will act now, and certainly not before the elections, which may bring the Kerry-Clinton line into power.
As for the country most immediately threatened, Prime Minister Sharon seems at present more interested in evacuating Jews from Gaza and northern Samaria than in focusing on a problem whose successful management is vital to the existence of Israel.
----
Russia Qualifies Its Nuclear Cooperation with Iran
Story by Richard Balmforth
REUTERS USA:
June 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25461/story.htm
SAVANNAH, Ga. - Russia on Tuesday refused to halt plans to build a nuclear reactor for Iran but, in the face of U.S. pressure, said Tehran must meet international calls for openness about its nuclear program.
The thorny issue of Russia's plans to construct a $800- million reactor at Bushehr was raised with Russia's Vladimir Putin by President Bush who has branded Iran part of the so-called "axis of evil."
"We have cooperated with Iran and will continue to cooperate with Iran in nuclear power generation," Sergei Prikhodko, a senior Putin aide, told reporters after talks between the two leaders at the Group of Eight summit of industrial countries.
"This is conditional on Iran fulfilling the International Atomic Energy Agency's conditions and the extent to which we can, bilaterally, solve all remaining technical problems concerning construction of the Bushehr power plant," he added.
The issue of Iran's atomic program, which the United States says is a front for developing nuclear weapons, cropped up too in discussions between Bush and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder -- indicating Washington's desire to forge a common view among the G8 of the threat it sees posed by Iran.
"I would say Schroeder and Bush share a degree of skepticism about Iran's intentions," a senior U.S. administration official said, adding that Washington was lobbying other of the European G8 members -- Britain, France and Italy -- on the issue.
Tehran says its atomic program is peaceful and denies U.S. charges that it is trying to develop a nuclear weapon covertly. It says it needs nuclear energy to meet booming demand for electricity and keep oil and gas reserves for export.
Earlier on Tuesday, France, Britain and Germany, in a draft resolution, called for a sharp rebuke of Iran by the IAEA, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.
The text, seen by Reuters, calls for IAEA inspections to continue and urges "Iran to take all the necessary steps on an urgent basis to resolve all outstanding questions" on its atomic program, which Washington says is a front for developing arms.
It was not clear, however, if the G8 leaders meeting on Sea Island, Georgia would succeed in reaching anything more than a generalized statement on Iran.
"I think that the leaders' statement tomorrow, hopefully, will show that, in fact, they are united, unmistakably united, in their determination that Iran not achieve nuclear weapons ... there is no division among the G8 that a nuclear weapons-equipped Iran would be unacceptable," another senior administration official told reporters.
MOSCOW UNDER PRESSURE
The United States has been pressing Moscow hard to think twice about building the Bushehr reactor, saying it fears the Islamic republic may use the project as a cover for the transfer of other sensitive nuclear technology.
Russia says Iran could not produce a nuclear bomb, even using Moscow's nuclear technology, but all the same has told Tehran it must agree to a deal to return spent fuel from the reactor to Moscow.
Such a deal could help alleviate U.S. concerns that Iranian scientists could extract plutonium from spent fuel and potentially use it in warheads.
A Kremlin official, who did not wish to be named, said however that the Iranians were trying to wring concessions from the Russian side over the deal.
He did not elaborate but said: "They are trying as usual to pull the blanket toward them. But we will only start work on the plant only when contractual problems are solved."
In theory, once this deal has been signed -- possibly in summer -- the 1,000-megawatt reactor could go on stream in 2005. The plant was originally supposed to start up in 2003.
----
Europeans seek IAEA rebuke of Iran
Jordan Times,
Thursday, June 10, 2004
http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/June/10n/Europeans%20seek%20IAEA%20rebuke%20of%20Iran.htm
A draft resolution circulated by France, Britain and Germany at the International Atomic Energy Agency does not mention reporting Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions
VIENNA (Reuters) - The UN's nuclear watchdog will sharply rebuke Iran for sluggish cooperation under a draft resolution circulated by France, Britain and Germany at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Tuesday.
The text, seen by Reuters, calls for IAEA inspections to continue and urges "Iran to take all the necessary steps on an urgent basis to resolve all outstanding questions" on its atomic program, which Washington says is a front for developing arms.
As expected, it does not mention reporting Iran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions, which the United States says would be justified given Iran's18 -year cover-up of a uranium enrichment program capable of making bomb material.
But Western diplomats on the IAEA board told Reuters the text would likely be acceptable to most board members, including the Americans.
Tehran says its atomic program is peaceful. Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment on the draft, which will be revised and submitted to the next IAEA governing board meeting.
Iran's foreign ministry said on Sunday it had done everything necessary to clear up concerns about its nuclear program and called for an end to the IAEA's investigation.
But one diplomat said the main point of the resolution was to keep the case open until the IAEA gets to the bottom of Iran's program, the full extent of which Tehran tried to keep secret for nearly two decades.
The draft said the IAEA "acknowledges Iranian cooperation in responding to agency requests for access to locations" - including military sites - but "deplores... the fact that this cooperation has not been complete, timely and proactive".
The text also "deplores" Iran's decision to delay March inspections of sites connected with its advanced P- 2centrifuge program, which Iran had failed to mention in an October declaration it said was a full picture of its program.
The European Union's "big three" also noted "with concern that the agency's investigations have revealed further omissions in the declarations previously provided by Iran" about the P- 2and other potentially weapons-related research.
Doubts about Iran's story
IAEA chief Mohammad Al Baradei said in a report last week that Tehran had changed its story and admitted to importing P-2 centrifuge magnets, which it had said were produced at home. This has raised more doubts about the veracity of Iran's story.
The IAEA has been investigating Iran's nuclear program since August2002 , when an exiled Iranian opposition group said Tehran was hiding an underground uranium enrichment plant and other sites from UN inspectors.
While the draft includes some praise of Iran, it is predominantly critical, said one diplomat familiar with it.
A European diplomat told Reuters he believed the resolution was "not aggressive but constructive and factual."
Several diplomats said US negotiators would push for even harsher language in revisions over the next few days.
A US official, who declined to be named, said: "We have seen the draft. We think the board is going to take appropriately firm action when it meets next week."
The draft also urges Iran to scrap plans to begin operating a uranium conversion facility and constructing a heavy water research reactor that would produce bomb-grade plutonium.
The text says the IAEA board also "deeply regrets" that Iran has not fully suspended all aspects of its uranium enrichment program, as it had promised to do under a deal Tehran struck last year with the three European states.
----
Iran and the EU 3
June 10, 2004
Washington Times Editorial
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040609-084112-6630r.htm
According to a report issued last week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Tehran continues to respond to inspections of its nuclear facilities with stonewalling and defiance. With the next IAEA board meeting scheduled for Monday in Vienna, the critical question now is whether three EU nations - Britain, France and Germany, also known as the "EU 3" - are prepared to join the United States in stepping up pressure against the Iranian regime.
Over the past seven months, three IAEA reports have documented Iran's deceptions. In November, the IAEA issued a 30-page report showing that Tehran has been deceiving the international community about its intentions for almost 20 years. In February, the IAEA criticized Iran for promising to provide details about its nuclear programs, but failing to do so.
The latest IAEA report, issued last week, suggests that two months after Iran pledged to suspend its nuclear program, it continues to produce items that can be used to build nuclear weapons. The IAEA suggests that Iran has provided false information about its nuclear program; that it takes repeated requests to pry loose information; and that the information it has provided is not particularly useful. One of the most troubling points deals with Iran's promise on April 9 to suspend production of centrifuge parts. While Iran suspended such activities at three state-run facilities, centrifuge work continued at three private companies. Iran's behavior "fits a long-term pattern of denial and deception that can only be designed to mask Iran's military nuclear program," said Kenneth Brill, U.S. ambassador to the IAEA. "Inconsistent stories and unanswered questions continue to be the hallmark of Iranian cooperation with the agency."
In the days leading up to next week's IAEA meeting, Tehran has sounded unrepentant. The head of Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards warns that the United States is pursuing a policy of "bullying" Muslim nations that "will stir up the hatred of more than 1 billion Muslims" and bring divine wrath upon America.
At issue now is whether Britain, France and Germany, which have been repeatedly embarrassed by Iran's broken promises over the past year, are prepared to take a more assertive stance. Indications are that the EU 3 will oppose any effort by Washington to get the IAEA to go on record declaring Iran in violation of its commitment not to build nuclear weapons. At some point, the European nations will be forced to choose between their commercial interests in engaging the current Iranian regime and the need to give real credibility to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a safeguard against the development of atomic weapons by rogue states. The hour is growing late.
----
UN agency to rap Iran over nuclear program but keep cooperating: diplomats
VIENNA (AFP)
Jun 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040610014801.idznzote.html
The UN atomic agency will rap Iran for hiding sensitive atomic activities but not provoke a showdown over Tehran's alleged secret weapons program when the agency meets in Vienna next week, diplomats said.
"We're in a holding pattern for this meeting" opening Monday of the 35-nation International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board of governors, a Western diplomat, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
A tough Washington-inspired IAEA board resolution in March that condemned Iran for omitting to report its work into sophisticated P-2 centrifuges which can make bomb-grade uranium led Iran to delay crucial agency investigations, a delay that makes it difficult for the IAEA to draw conclusions this June.
The United States looks ready to sign on this time to a British-French-German draft resolution that sharply criticizes Iran for failing to answer questions about alleged nuclear weapons activities but presses for continued cooperation with Tehran, diplomats said.
The resolution "deplores" the fact that that Iran's "cooperation has not been complete, timely and proactive," according to extracts read to AFP by diplomats.
But it "acknowledges Iranian cooperation in responding to agency requests for access to locations including workshops" on military sites.
"It is a message. It makes it clear what we expect from them", a diplomat said.
The resolution is modeled on a report IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei submitted ahead of the board meeting, the diplomat said.
The United States charges that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and should be taken to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions.
But Washington does not have support at the IAEA for its hardline stance and is also hampered by the situation in Iraq, where it needs Iran's backing to not further inflame the Shiite population, diplomats said.
In addition, the so-called EU-3 of Britain, France and Germany have since last October backed an agreement they worked out with Iran for cooperation in resolving questions about its nuclear program.
A US official said the United States "thinks we're going to get a firmly worded resolution out of the IAEA board of governors."
A Western diplomat said Washington "was involved to at least a degree" in drafting the EU-3 resolution and felt the draft had "strong language and was moving towards where the United States wants to be."
The United States clearly expects more revelations to come forth of Iran hiding weapons development, diplomats said.
This could mean that the showdown over Iran at the IAEA may only be on hold until after the US presidential election in November, the diplomats said.
Diplomats said even the EU-3 was getting impatient with Iran, as the IAEA has been investigating the Iranian program since February 2003 with Iran consistently failing to deliver on promises for full disclosure of its atomic activities.
"There are two main points they (the Iranians) have to resolve, as the report makes clear. These are research into sophisticated P2 centrifuges that can make bomb-grade uranium and what is the source of highly enriched uranium contamination which IAEA inspectors have found", a Western diplomat said.
Another Western diplomat said: "At some point we either have to have a breakthrough and progress or have failure and take the issue to the Security Council."
Iran's clerical regime repeated on June 2 its claim that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and that there is no clandestine effort.
Iran's top national security official Hassan Rowhani told reporters: "Iran's nuclear dossier is on the way to being sorted out and there is nothing very important that is pending."
But the Euro-3 resolution "deeply regrets that Iran has not fully implemented" promises to halt all activities related to enriching uranium, including "taking steps to produce" uranium hexafluoride, an enrichment fuel, and "continuing to produce centrifuge components."
----
Iran Warns G8 It Will Not Halt Nuclear Program
By REUTERS
June 10, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iran-nuclear.html?pagewanted=print&position=
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran warned the Group of Eight on Thursday it had no intention of halting its nuclear program despite criticism by G8 leaders of Tehran's cooperation with the United Nations's nuclear watchdog.
``Using peaceful nuclear energy is Iran's natural right and...G8 countries should not expect Iran to abandon this right,'' Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said in a statement carried by state media.
G8 leaders from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia issued a statement on Wednesday accusing Iran of dragging its feet on full disclosure of its nuclear activities.
``We deplore Iran's delays, deficiencies in cooperation and inadequate disclosures,'' the statement said.
Iran strongly denies Washington's assertion that it is building a secret nuclear arms capability. Tehran says its nuclear program will be used exclusively to generate electricity.
Asefi described the G8 statement as ``illogical.''
``Iran has shown its full commitment to the non-proliferation of atomic weapons in practice and its wide and transparent cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is proof of that,'' Asefi said.
IAEA governing board members are due to discuss Iran's nuclear program next week based on an IAEA report which, while praising Tehran's increased cooperation, said it could still not confirm Iran's nuclear aims were entirely peaceful.
Asefi said G8 nations, instead of putting pressure on Iran, should provide technology and equipment to help it finish its nuclear program.
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraqi Missile Engines Found in Jordan
By EDITH M. LEDERER
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30198-2004Jun10.html
UNITED NATIONS - Twenty engines from banned Iraqi missiles were found in a Jordanian scrap yard along with other equipment that could be used for weapons of mass destruction, a U.N. official said, raising new security questions about Iraq's scrap metal sales since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Acting chief United Nations inspector Demetrius Perricos revealed the discoveries to the U.N. Security Council in a closed-door briefing Wednesday. A text of his briefing was obtained by The Associated Press.
The U.N. team that found the 20 engines was following up on an earlier discovery of a similar Al Samoud 2 engine in a scrap yard in the Dutch port of Rotterdam. Perricos said inspectors also want to check in Turkey, which has also received scrap metal from Iraq.
Perricos suggested that the interim Iraqi government, which will assume sovereignty when the U.S. and British occupation of the country ends on June 30, may want to reconsider policies for exporting scrap metal that apparently began in mid-2003. The sales are regulated by the U.S.-led coalition.
"The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks ... thereby also rendering the task of the disarmament of Iraq and its eventual confirmation, more difficult," Perricos said.
The missile engines and some other equipment discovered in the scrap yards had been tagged by U.N. weapons monitors because of their potential dual use in both legitimate civilian activities and banned weapons production.
In his briefing to the Security Council, Perricos said U.N. inspectors do not how much material has been removed from Iraq that they had been monitoring. But he later told reporters that up to a thousand tons of scrap metal was leaving Iraq every day.
"The only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap," he said, according to the text of his briefing.
The discoveries raise questions about the fate of material and equipment that could be used to produce biological and chemical weapons as well as banned long-range missiles.
U.N. inspectors were pulled out of Iraq just before the war began in March 2003, and the United States has refused to allow them to return, instead deploying its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction.
Perricos told the council that the 20 SA-2 missile engines were discovered when U.N. experts visited "relevant scrap yards" in a visit to Jordan last week.
The U.N. team also discovered some processing equipment with U.N. tags - which show it was being monitored - including heat exchangers, and a solid propellant mixer bowl to make missile fuel, he said. It also discovered "a large number of other processing equipment without tags, in very good condition."
"These visits provide just a snapshot of the whole picture since the scrap metal has a short residence time and is re-exported to various countries," Perricos told the council.
In its quarterly report to the council on Monday, the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, which Perricos heads, said a number of sites in Iraq known to have contained equipment and material that could be used to produce banned weapons and long-range missiles have been cleaned out or destroyed.
The inspectors said they didn't know whether the items, which had been monitored by the United Nations, were at the sites during the U.S.-led war in Iraq. The commission, known as UNMOVIC, said it was possible some material was taken by looters and sold as scrap.
UNMOVIC said its experts and a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body responsible for dismantling Iraq's nuclear program, were jointly investigating items from Iraq discovered in a scrap yard in Rotterdam.
--------
Banned Iraqi missile engines found in Jordan - U.N.
(Reuters)
By Evelyn Leopold
Thursday June 10, 7:33 AM
http://in.news.yahoo.com/040610/137/2dk0a.html
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Engines for long-range missiles have turned up in Jordan from unguarded sites in Iraq that were once monitored for materials that could produce banned weapons, U.N. inspectors said on Wednesday.
In a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting, Demetrius Perricos, the acting director of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, warned that too many pieces of equipment were leaving Iraq, some as scrap.
"We found a few more engines and a few other items in Jordan," Perricos told Reuters. "It is getting bad. Too many things are coming out."
UNMOVIC, using photographs and serial numbers, previously reported discovering SA-2 engines among scrap in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam. They were used in Iraq's Al Samoud 2 banned missile program.
The motors found in Jordan were also SA-2 engines "and that is why we were interested," Perricos said.
U.N. inspectors left Iraq shortly before the war in March 2003 and have not been allowed to return since. The United States has sent its own teams to search for weapons of mass destruction. The fate of the search teams is not known under the new Iraqi interim government that takes office on June 30.
Perricos briefed the Security Council on his recent report that showed satellite pictures of the engines discovered in the Netherlands and a site in Iraq stripped of its equipment, possibly by looters.
The site, called the Shumokh stores, northwest of Baghdad, had contained equipment that could be used for chemical and biological weapons and was once monitored by UNMOVIC.
PAKISTAN PROTESTS
Perricos suggested that UNMOVIC's arms experts could be used in other international disarmament areas, such as a new council anti-terrorist program that seeks to punish black marketeers who traffic in nuclear, chemical and biological weapons components.
But Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram, lashed out at Perricos, saying his commission should be shut down and had no right to propose other tasks, diplomats reported.
"We see this as an organization which is unable to do its job," Akram told reporters afterward. "The job may not be there to be done, and therefore we think that the quicker we find some way to certify that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the better it is."
Other delegations, notably Russia and Germany, disagreed, arguing that UNMOVIC's expertise in Iraq should not be wasted.
Pakistan admitted this year that Abdul Qadeer Khan, a scientist revered as the father of the country's nuclear bomb, had smuggled nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya, and was under house arrest.
In order to get Pakistan's support, the council's resolution setting up the new non-proliferation program said any action would not be retroactive.
Romanian Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc was chosen on Wednesday to head a new council committee that would monitor unconventional weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.
-------- korea
North Korea tests new missile engine: report
SEOUL (AFP)
Jun 10, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040610050334.demuipi2.html
North Korea, denounced by the United States as a leading global proliferator of weapons of mass destruction, tested an engine for a ballistic missile last month, a South Korean newspaper reported Thursday.
Engine testing was conducted successfully in early May at North Korea's Musudan missile complex in North Hamgyong province, the JoongAng newspaper said, citing diplomatic sources.
The engine is being developed to power North Korea's multi-stage Taepodong-2 missile with a range of up to 6,000 kilometers (3,600 miles), it said. Engine testing is often the last step before an actual flight test of a missile.
"US intelligence agencies think that the size of the combustion trace and the amount of liquid fuel used, hint that the test is part of an experiment to develop the Taepodong-2 missile," a diplomatic source was quoted as saying.
South Korea's defense ministry refused to comment on the report.
Unification Minister Jeong Se-Hyun, however, said the reported test could be a negotiating tactic by North Korea to give it more leverage with the United States ahead of a new round of six-way talks on its nuclear weapons drive.
"North Korea has a record of making such gestures," he said.
The Stalinist country has traditionally used harsh rhetoric or provocative moves ahead of crucial negotiations with the outside world.
Jeong said he was unable to confirm that a test had occurred but he said North Korea has been eager to develop long-range ballistic missiles.
"This may not be entirely for negotiations. There may be other purposes," he said of the alleged test.
Late last year, North Korea restored facilities for missile engine testing destroyed by an explosion in December 2002.
The Taepodong-2 missiles use Chinese liquid fuel engines as a first stage rocket and a Rodong missile as a second stage. US intelligence measure the flame of North Korean rockets during engine combustion testing to determine the capability and range.
Pyongyang stunned the world in August 1998 by test-launching over Japan a Taepodong-1 missile with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers, claiming it was a satellite launch.
Japanese news reports have said Tokyo and Washington would from next year begin joint exercises simulating their response to a missile attack on Japan.
From September, the US navy plans to deploy an Aegis warship with anti-missile capabilities in the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea.
North Korea has already deployed short-range Scud missile and Rodongs with a range of 1,300 kilometers, while actively developing longer-range missiles. US intelligence reports say North Korea has developed ballistic missiles with a range of up to 4,000 kilometers.
South Korea's defense ministry estimates North Korea has about 600 Scuds and 100 Rodong missiles.
The cash-strapped country has refused to stop missile exports, a major source of hard currency earnings.
Pyongyang sold 60 million dollars' worth of missiles and parts to Iraq, Iran, Syria and Yemen in 2002, according to South Korean defense data.
----
G8 Urges Comprehensive Dismantlement of North Korea's Nuclear Programs
JUNE 10, 2004
by Soon-Taek Kwon (maypole@donga.com)
Dong-A Ilbo
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=060000&biid=2004061108028
At the second day of the G8 Summit held at Sea Island, Georgia, US., the G8 leaders adopted a joint statement that strongly urged a complete dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear programs and promised to support six-way talks to resolve the issue.
The leaders from the eight industrialized countries urged the comprehensive, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement (CVID) of all nuclear programs, saying that the history of the North's missile proliferation has been a serious concern for all. The leaders also called for dismantlement at last year's summit. They also pointed out that the North's continuous pursuit of nuclear weapons by plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment is a breach of international obligations. The joint statement reconfirmed that CVID should be the precondition to the comprehensive and peaceful resolution of North Korea's nuclear issue.
In addition, G8 urged to set international rules restricting access to uranium enrichment and reprocessing technology in a year and to refrain from related technology transfer, in order to prevent the WMD proliferation.
Seven nations, including Korea and Australia, were welcomed in the joint statement to join the Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction.
----
China view on arms in North Korea puzzles U.S.
Reuters
Thursday, June 10, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=524355.html
WASHINGTON A U.S. State Department spokesman has said he is baffled by a Chinese official who questioned the Bush administration's view that North Korea is trying to build nuclear bombs with uranium.
Zhou Wenzhong, China's deputy foreign minister, said in an interview with The New York Times that the United States has yet to persuade China on North Korea's nuclear program.
"We know nothing about the uranium program," Zhou said in the interview. "We don't know whether it exists. So far the U.S. has not presented convincing evidence of this program."
Zhou said that if North Korea does have a uranium program, then China agreed that it must be included in the scope of the six-country nuclear talks. Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said the evidence presented to Beijing is clear.
"We find the assistant foreign minister's comments somewhat puzzling," Boucher told reporters at a briefing. "We have made clear over time that there is very conclusive information that North Korea has a covert uranium enrichment program." "We've certainly briefed the Chinese," he said. "This picture of North Korea's uranium enrichment programs has, in fact, become clearer over time, as opposed to anything else."
Boucher noted North Korea has acknowledged that it was pursuing uranium enrichment and has withdrawn from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
"They've restarted activities geared to the production of plutonium-based weapons," Boucher said. "They've asserted their so-called right to develop nuclear weapons."
The United States is prepared to hold a third round of six-party talks the week of June 21, Boucher said, adding that it was his understanding the Chinese were still consulting with North Korea to confirm the timing.
He said he had heard no suggestion of postponing the talks. "That would have to come from the Chinese, depending on what they hear from the North Koreans. We and others have made clear our willingness to go."
Zhou's comments may represent a potentially important shift in Beijing's approach to the talks, which China has sought to keep afloat despite scant evidence of progress. China has long-standing ties to North Korea but had previously adopted a neutral stance in the negotiations.
The two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia have met with China in Beijing twice without reaching agreement on dismantling North Korea's covert nuclear weapons program.
-------- russia
Why Russia belongs in the G-8
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Charleston Post & Courier
http://www.charleston.net/stories/061004/edi_10edit2.shtml
Nuclear security is among the major topics at the G-8's Sea Island summit, and with good reason. As a column today by former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook notes, there are good reasons to be concerned about the large amounts of unsecured nuclear materials remaining in the world, given the determination of terrorist groups to obtain nuclear weapons.
To give just one example recently cited by The Washington Post: It takes only 13 pounds of plutonium to build an atomic bomb. Yet as former Sen. Sam Nunn and a co-author wrote in the Post this week, "less than one-quarter of Russia's nuclear bomb-making materials -- hundreds of metric tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) -- has been adequately secured against theft or diversion."
The G-8 already recognizes this problem. Two years ago, the member nations pledged $20 billion for a 10-year Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction "to reduce the risk of catastrophic terrorism," as Mr. Nunn noted. But Ms. Albright and Mr. Cook correctly suggest that the G-8 needs reminding. The United States has met its pledge of $10 billion, but the other seven members are $3 billion shy of their collective share. Meanwhile, Russia remains the indispensable partner in this cooperative threat reduction program. It has the largest unsecured collection of weapons in the world, including highly portable tactical nuclear weapons. But efforts to neutralize its weapons have been stalled for the past two years by haggling between Russian and American bureaucrats.
As Ms. Albright and Mr. Cook suggest, logjams can be broken if top leaders are sufficiently determined. That will require a willing Russian president. A recent Washington Post editorial questioned whether Russia still belongs in the G-8, since its economy is no match for the other members and it appears to be sliding back toward autocracy under President Vladimir Putin. The nuclear issue demonstrates one important reason why it is necessary to keep Russia in the G-8. There are others -- it may be premature to give up on Russian democracy, for one -- but it is clearly in the interest of the industrialized nations to cooperate to bring Russia's massive nuclear resources under tighter control.
Ms. Albright and Mr. Cook also urge the G-8 to close a loophole in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that allows member nations to produce more enriched nuclear material. President Bush announced such a proposal in February, and White House National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters Monday the president will take it up this week. But Ms. Albright and Mr. Cook suggest that there should be a quid pro quo in the proposal under which the United States joins the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty and gives up efforts to develop new "bunker-buster" nukes.
Closing the loophole has nothing to do with U.S. weapons programs. As Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has pointed out, the new weapons under development are a response to emerging threats, including terrorism and North Korea. Giving them up would only reduce the nation's options for meeting the challenges to the nation's security.
-------- terrorism
KERRY PLEDGES TO GIVE NUCLEAR TERRORISM HIS TOP PRIORITY
June 10, 2004
From David Krieger - dkrieger@napf.org
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
In his speech, "New Strategies to Meet New Threats," delivered in West Palm Beach, Florida on June 1, 2004, John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President, referred to the possibility of nuclear terrorism as "the greatest threat we face today," and offered a program to eliminate this threat based on US leadership. Kerry promised to prevent nuclear weapons or materials to create them from falling into the hands of al Qaeda or other extremist organizations. "As President," he pledged, "my number one security goal will be to prevent the terrorists from gaining weapons of mass murder, and ensure that hostile states disarm."
Kerry recognizes that the US cannot accomplish this task by itself and pledged to build and repair coalitions. "We can't eliminate this threat on our own," he stated. "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."
In order to confront nuclear terrorism, Kerry offered a four-step plan. His first step called for safeguarding all bomb-making materials worldwide. He called for an approach that would "treat all nuclear materials needed for bombs as if they were bombs," and pledged to secure all potential bomb material in the former Soviet Union within his first term as president. "For a fraction of what we have already spent in Iraq," he pointed out, "we can ensure that every nuclear weapon, and every pound of potential bomb material will be secured and accounted for."
Kerry's second step called for US leadership to verifiably ban the creation of new materials for creating nuclear weapons, including production of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium. He pointed out that there is strong international support for such a ban, but that the Bush Administration has been "endlessly reviewing the need for such a policy."
Kerry's third step called for reducing excess stocks of nuclear materials and weapons. He recognized the importance of the US adopting policies consistent with what we are asking other countries to do. He asked rhetorically, "If America is asking the world to join our country in a shared mission to reduce this nuclear threat, then why would the world listen to us if our own words do not match our deeds?" In line with this commitment, Kerry promised that as president, he would "stop this administration's program to develop a whole new generation of bunker-busting nuclear bombs." He called the bunker-buster "a weapon we don't need," one that "undermines our credibility in persuading other nations."
The fourth step in Kerry's plan called for ending the nuclear weapons programs in other countries, such as North Korea and Iran. He called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, strengthening enforcement and verification through the International Atomic Energy Agency, and tightening export controls to assure no future black market activities in nuclear materials.
In order to accomplish these goals, Kerry pledged to appoint a National Coordinator for Nuclear Terrorism and Counter-Proliferation to work with him "to marshal every effort and every ally, to combat an incalculable danger." Kerry made clear that "preventing nuclear terrorism is our most urgent priority to provide for America's long term security."
President Bush has also called for steps to prevent nuclear terrorism, but in a number of respects Kerry's position on nuclear terrorism is stronger than that of the current administration. First, and most important, Kerry pledges to end the double standard of calling on others not to develop nuclear weapons while the US moves forward with research on new nuclear weapons, such as the bunker buster. Research on the bunker buster, as well as on lower yield, more usable nuclear weapons, has been an important aspect of the Bush Administration's nuclear policy.
Second, Kerry pledges to gain control of the nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union at a far more rapid rate than that of the Bush Administration. Third, Kerry promises to appoint a Nuclear Terrorism Coordinator to work with him in the White House in overseeing this effort. Finally, Kerry calls for taking prompt action on a verifiable ban on the creation of new fissile materials for nuclear weapons, a step long supported by the international community and nearly all US allies, but never before acted upon by the US.
Both Bush and Kerry have called for strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but only in relation to preventing nuclear materials from civilian nuclear reactors from being converted to nuclear weapons. Neither Bush nor Kerry has set forth a plan to fulfill US obligations for nuclear disarmament under Article VI of the treaty. This is a major omission since the nuclear disarmament requirement of the treaty is a foundational element, and without US leadership to achieve this obligation it may be impossible to prevent nuclear terrorism.
"We must lead this effort not just for our own safety," Kerry stated, "but for the good of the world." Kerry is certainly right that the world now needs US leadership on this critical issue. This leadership must include a dramatic reduction in the size of nuclear arsenals on the way to their total elimination, as agreed to by the parties to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in order to prevent the nuclear warheads from being available to terrorist organizations.
If any leader of the United States is truly serious about preventing nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, he must realize that nuclear disarmament is an essential element of the equation. Kerry posited the equation: "No material. No bomb. No terrorism." That equation must be expanded to include: "No material. No bombs - period. Not in anyone's hands."
There are no good or safe hands in which to place nuclear weapons. In the end, to eliminate the threat of nuclear terrorism will require more than attempting to prevent nuclear proliferation; it will require the elimination of all nuclear weapons, a goal agreed to by the United States, United Kingdom and former Soviet Union in 1968 when they signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (http://www.wagingpeace.org).
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
U.S. House panel votes to block new nuclear weapons
Thursday, June 10, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-10/s_24727.asp
WASHINGTON - A House subcommittee defied the Bush administration Wednesday and slashed funds to study a new generation of deep-earth-penetrating nuclear weapons and so-called low-yield nuclear weapons.
The House Appropriations Energy and Water subcommittee denied the $36 million the administration sought to study the nuclear weapons it says may be needed to confront emerging threats since the end of the Cold War. It took the measure while considering a $28 billion bill to fund energy, water, and nuclear weapons programs.
The subcommittee also cut the funds last year, but the full Congress in later House and Senate votes restored them.
The administration has said it has no plans to develop the weapons. But it does not want to close the door to the "bunker-busting" nuclear weapons it said may be needed to bore into underground facilities and the smaller weapons with less than half the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Critics contend that just considering such weapons will spur a renewed arms race and takes nuclear warfare out of the realm of the unthinkable.
In a vote last month on a bill authorizing defense programs, the House narrowly defeated an amendment pushed by Democrats to block the study.
The Senate is expected to debate the issue next week in an amendment pushed by Democrats on its defense authorization bill and later when it takes up its version of the bill to fund energy, water, and nuclear weapons programs.
----
New Nuclear Program Sidelined
By Noah Shachtman,
Jun. 10, 2004
Wired
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,63795,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
It ain't dead, yet. But the Bush administration's push to research and develop new nuclear weapons could be on the verge of collapse, after a key Congressional leader moved on Wednesday to eliminate funding for the atomic arms projects.
Ohio Republican Rep. David Hobson, who chairs the House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee, wiped out $96 million in nuclear projects from the government's budget for next year -- including funds for researching nuclear "bunker-buster" bombs and low-yield, "mini-nuke" weapons. Hobson also snapped the purse strings of projects to build thousands more plutonium hearts for nuclear weapons and to fast-track atomic testing.
Just last week, the Department of Energy submitted a plan to pare thousands of weapons from America's existing nuclear arsenal. But, despite the proposal, much of the country's nuclear arms budget is still at "Cold War" levels, Hobson complained in a statement. The Energy Department "needs to take a 'time-out' on new initiatives until it completes a review of its weapons complex in relation to security needs, budget constraints and this new stockpile plan."
Anti-nuclear activists were giddy after Hobson's stand. Two weeks ago, the full House of Representatives narrowly defeated an amendment to take away the money for researching the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" -- a weapon designed to burrow deep into the ground before unleashing a nuclear hell-storm in underground bunkers. Taken together, activists said they believe the maneuvers forecast a gloomy future for a new atomic arsenal.
"With so little enthusiasm for research, there's not going to be any chance for developing and deploying new nuclear weapons," " said Stephen Young, a senior analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
But the nuclear weapons budget still has a long way to go before Hobson's cuts are made final. And there are powerful members of Congress -- including Republican New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici -- who have been successful at preserving atomic funds.
"An extremely significant line in the sand has been drawn, courtesy of Mr. Hobson," said Jay Coughlan, executive director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico. "But these are just cuts marked up by a subcommittee -- albeit a very powerful subcommittee. Let's see how it survives the entire appropriations process."
Hobson has had a contentious history with the Energy Department's atomic overseers. Last year, he pared back proposed funding for some weapons research programs. For others, he withheld funds until the Bush administration came up with a plan to shrink the country's nuclear weapons stockpile. That road map -- to halve the American arsenal by 2012 -- was submitted last week.
"After several years of frustration, we finally put a fence around some of (Energy Department's) advanced concepts funding and said that it would not be available until the department delivered a revised stockpile plan," Hobson said in a statement. "I admit that we held a DOE program hostage until they produced this revised stockpile plan, and you know what? -- the power of the purse does work!"
Now, Hobson is going several steps further. He has taken away all the money for a plant to make nuclear weapons' plutonium cores, and for researching so-called "mini-nukes" -- low-yield, tactical nuclear weapons with less than a third of the destructive power of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Energy Department did not respond to requests to comment. But Hobson's efforts are potentially bad news for the department's nuclear weapons facilities, like Los Alamos National Laboratory. After the House lifted a ban on low-yield research last year, National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks told lab chiefs in a memo (PDF) that, "We should not fail to take advantage of this opportunity. I expect your design teams to engage fully."
----
Congressman slashes nuke plans
Republican puts dent in Bush administration's plan for new nuclear weapons design
By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Tri-Valley Herald
http://www.trivalleyherald.com/Stories/0,1413,86~10669~2204207,00.html
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2204053,00.html
A powerful House chairman slashed $96 million in nuclear weapons design, manufacturing and testing funds sought by the Bush administration, suggesting wan support for the president's weapons plans in his own party.
Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee, struck all of the Bush administration's requests for research on a high-yield, nuclear bunker buster and other new and modified nuclear weapons. He also cut planning money for a plutonium bomb core factory and for shortening the preparation time for a nuclear test, in case the president orders one.
Last year, Hobson held up money for new weapons design until the Bush administration delivered a report on the future size and composition of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, now numbering 11,000 bombs and warheads.
The administration's stockpile report would cut the arsenal almost in half by 2012, and reduce fielded nuclear weapons to 2,200, as agreed in the 2002 Moscow Treaty.
"After years of maintaining a nuclear stockpile sized for the Cold War, we are finally bringing the numbers down to a more realistic and responsible level," Hobson said Wednesday. "I admit that we held a DOE program hostage ... and you know what? The power of the purse does work."
But while the total arsenal is declining, Hobson said, the nation still is paying for a huge complex of factories and billion-dollar laboratories.
"Much of the DOE weapons complex is still sized to support a Cold War stockpile," he said. The department's weapons arm, the National Nuclear Security Administration, "needs to take a 'time-out' on new initiatives until it completes a review of its weapons complex in relation to security needs, budget constraints and this new stockpile plan."
Critics of the administration's weapons policies cheered the cuts and Hobson's tough language.
"It's a pretty clear rebuke," said Kathy Crandall, an analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"I'm ecstatic," said Marylia Kelley, head of a Livermore-based lab watchdog and disarmament group that agitated against the new weapons projects. "Today's a great day for nonproliferation and our communities."
"Hobson is exhibiting refreshing common sense on this issue," said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. "It's courageous of him to pursue this approach given where the administration stands on the issue. There is increasing concern about the ultimate direction of this research, and it's going to become more and more difficult for the administration to eke out a majority as they move into the development phase."
The power of appropriations chairmen will come into play again by fall, as Hobson and his Senate counterpart, New Mexico Republican Pete Domenici, a reliable supporter of the administration's new weapons initiatives, enter closed-door negotiations on weapons and public works spending.
If the outcome this year matches the past, the result will be a compromise that partially funds each of the four weapons programs that Hobson cut.
If the National Nuclear Security Administration spreads the leaner funding by the same logic as this year, most of the weapons design money will end up in California, where Lawrence Livermore lab and Sandia National Laboratories-California are studying the bunker buster.
The funding shortage shut down a similar study in New Mexico, directing almost all of the work to conversion of the B83 bomb, the most powerful nuclear weapon in the U.S. arsenal at 1.2 megatons, into the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator, designed to plunge dozens of feet into rock and destroy underground military bunkers.
Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
UC keeps Livermore Lab till 2007
Energy secretary adds 2 years to current contract
Keay Davidson, Science Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/06/10/MNGRA73HV01.DTL
The U.S. Energy Department is extending the University of California's contract for running Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory until September 2007, two years longer than originally scheduled.
The decision Wednesday came as a relief to officials at UC and Livermore. Announced by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, the decision means the budget- strapped UC won't have to compete to renew its contracts for two nuclear weapons labs, Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, at the same time in 2005.
UC has run both labs for a half-century. Over the past two years, after repeated investigations of alleged UC mismanagement at Livermore and Los Alamos, the Energy Department and Congress ordered that future lab contracts be open to outside competition. The current Los Alamos contract runs out in September 2005.
Until Wednesday, the Livermore contract was scheduled to expire at the same time. The Energy Department has not yet issued formal plans for the competitions; there has been speculation that a competition might be a form of winner-take-all, in which the winner would be awarded the contracts for both labs.
But Abraham announced Wednesday that he is extending Livermore's contract until Sept. 30, 2007, and splitting the competitions into separate races -- one for the Los Alamos contract ending in 2005, and one for the Livermore contract now ending in 2007.
Abraham is doing this because "it is very important to ensure we have the broadest possible competition for future contracts. Separating these two competitions will achieve that result," he said in a press statement.
But Abraham's decision goes against a recent recommendation by the nation's most distinguished scientific advisory body, the National Research Council, which advised in May that competitions to manage the two labs should be held at the same time.
The council's report emphasized the value of having a single manager operate the two labs. They are "national treasures" and "there is a strong sentiment at the laboratories that their coordination and constructive competition are facilitated by their being managed by the same contractor," said the report, issued May 17.
George Blumenthal, vice chair of the UC Academic Senate, said Wednesday that Abraham's decision is "possibly not good news for UC." To Blumenthal, the decision seems to be saying that if an institution other than UC is selected to manage Los Alamos, it'll make for an easier transition for the new management if UC is still running Livermore.
Nonetheless, Livermore spokeswoman Lynda Seaver said that people there "are pleased with the decision. They support the decision."
The UC regents haven't formally decided whether to compete for the contracts. At meetings over the past year, regents expressed concern over whether the UC system can afford potentially expensive competitions at a time of state budget crisis. Some observers believe the competition for one lab might cost roughly $25 million.
Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Walnut Creek, issued a statement saying Abraham's decision is "in the best interests of Livermore, our nuclear mission, and our nation, in order to ensure continuity at America's nuclear labs."
Abraham recently indicated he would investigate the possibility of removing all plutonium -- the fissile trigger for nuclear weapons -- from Livermore and shipping it to a remoter, less populous region, perhaps rural New Mexico. In a phone interview, however, Tauscher said she wants at least some plutonium to remain at Livermore.
"Plutonium is a necessary component of the mission at Livermore," she told The Chronicle.
E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.
----
Lab impact comment period over
By Betsy Mason
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Thu, Jun. 10, 2004
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/living/science/8887639.htm?1c
The Department of Energy rejected a request from U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer to extend the public comment period on the site-wide environmental impact statement being done for Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.
The environmental impact statement, updated once a decade, includes proposals to increase the amount of plutonium and tritium stored at the lab.
The original 90-day comment period ended May 27, and nearly two dozen environmental organizations had asked for the period to be extended by 30 days. Boxer, D-Calif., joined the effort by sending an extension request directly to Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
Boxer received notice from the Department of Energy on Friday that the public comment period would not be extended or reopened. However, in the written notice, Everet Beckner, deputy administrator for defense programs, said late comments would be considered "to the extent practicable."
Beckner's letter points out the comment period was already twice as long as the required 45 days and that the DOE made considerable efforts to alert the public and solicit comments. There were five public hearings -- two each in Livermore and Tracy and one in Washington D.C. -- and advertisements in local newspapers.
Thomas Grim, the National Nuclear Security Administration's document manager for the environmental impact statement, said he has continued to accept public comments, but that they have trickled off considerably.
The final environmental impact statement is scheduled for release in September. Grim said he will continue to include comments he receives in the immediate future, but didn't have an estimate as to how long he would be able to do so.
"I have not rejected any comments yet," said Grim, noting there were a few more than 200 unique comments submitted.
Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment, a Livermore-based lab watchdog group, said she is extremely disappointed in the DOE's decision.
"Beckner's response doesn't deal with any of the specific points in Sen. Boxer's request," such as the 2,500-page length and technical nature of the document which make it very difficult to assess in a reasonable period of time, Kelley said.
----
Livermore Lab Contract to Be Extended
By ERICA WERNER
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30394-2004Jun10.html
WASHINGTON - The University of California's contract to run Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California will be extended for at least two years beyond its 2005 expiration date, say federal officials.
The extension will allow the Energy Department to conduct separate competitions for contractors to operate Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos National Laboratory, the other federal nuclear weapons laboratory now managed by the University of California.
California officials welcomed the announcement Wednesday, although Energy Department officials said it signaled no change in their plan to force the University of California to compete for the first time to operate two of the nation's premiere nuclear weapons laboratories. That policy emerged last year after a series of management lapses at the labs, mostly involving sloppy business practices.
"I have concluded that it is very important to ensure that we have the broadest possible competition for future contracts," Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said in a statement. "Separating these two competitions will achieve that result."
UC's management contract to run Lawrence Livermore is set to expire Sept. 30, 2005. The Energy Department has congressional sanction to extend the contract for two years but will seek an extension of 3 1/2 years, department spokesman Anson Franklin said.
That time will allow any new management at Los Alamos to settle in well before the competition to manage Lawrence Livermore, he said.
UC's contract for Los Alamos also expires Sept. 30, 2005. The contract bidding process has not begun and no date for it has been announced, but Franklin said it is expected to be completed by the time the current contract expires.
-------- nevada
Nevada nuclear waste project faces budget problems, possible delay
Thursday, June 10, 2004
By H. Josef Hebert,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-10/s_24738.asp
WASHINGTON - A House panel approved only a fraction of the money the administration says it needs to keep a proposed nuclear waste project in Nevada on schedule, jeopardizing its planned completion by 2010.
While the facility at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, has widespread congressional support, a budget glitch forced a House Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday to provide only $131 million for the program in the next fiscal year.
The Energy Department had requested $880 million it says it will need to begin seeking permits for the waste repository, go ahead with design work, and develop a plan for transporting waste to the site from nuclear power plants around the country.
"I think we have an obligation to get (the facility) opened and funded," said Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee. "But I don't have the tools right now to get that done."
The Yucca Mountain money is part of a $28 billion spending bill for energy and water projects that the subcommittee approved by voice vote Wednesday. While there may be opportunities to increase funds for Yucca Mountain as the bill works its way through the House, Hobson was not optimistic about the prospects.
Hobson said funding for the program has been put in jeopardy because the administration, in requesting the funds, linked the remaining $749 million to Congress passing separate legislation on how lawmakers use a special nuclear waste fund for the Yucca project.
Congress has used that fund, which now totals nearly $15 billion, to help shrink the federal deficit, and there is little prospect that the legislation offered by the administration will pass this year.
Given the tight budget situation, Hobson could not find the money elsewhere, so Yucca Mountain funding for the 2005 fiscal year, beginning in October, was limited to the $131 million allocated for defense waste.
The government wants to bury 77,000 tons of nuclear waste - used reactor fuel now held at power plants in 31 states as well as defense waste - at Yucca Mountain. Next year has been described as pivotal for the program since the Energy Department will begin the process for getting a permit from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and developing a transportation plan for the waste.
Margaret Chu, director of the Energy Department office that heads the program, has told lawmakers that if it does not get the full $880 million, it would be impossible to meet the 2010 deadline for accepting the first load of waste.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., also a strong supporter of the Yucca project, said it would take "something extraordinary" to find the funding the administration says is needed given the legislative box that the White House Office of Management and Budget has created by linking the funding to separate legislation.
The administration has always relied on the House to come up with the needed money for Yucca Mountain and counter problems in the Senate, where Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, an ardent Yucca opponent, is in the leadership and has the ability to sidetrack legislation or keep funding down for the waste project.
Although Congress overrode Nevada's objections to the waste facility in 2002, the state and its congressional delegation continue to fight the project in the courts and anywhere else possible.
Domenici said he planned to discuss with administration officials ways to get out of the budget problem and ensure full funding for the program. But he said finding the money may be "very, very difficult."
-------- new york
Ginna power plant sold for $408 million
By TOM ADAMS
Rochester Business Journal (NY)
June 10, 2004
http://www.rbj.net/fullarticle.cfm?sdid=50364
The sale of the R.E. Ginna Nuclear Generating Station in Wayne County was completed Thursday, with a final purchase price of $408 million, officials announced.
The town of Ontario plant has transferred from Energy East Corp. to Maryland-based Constellation Energy Group LLC.
The purchase price is $7 million more than initially projected. Along with the sale price for the 34-year-old, 495-megawatt facility is a $21 million charge for the plant's nuclear fuel. The purchase price is subject to adjustments following the initial closing.
Ginna had been under the control of Energy East subsidiary Rochester Gas and Electric Corp.
Representatives from Constellation Energy on Friday plan to detail the company's plans for Ginna as well as its strategy for long-term growth nationally.
For a complete story on the sale, see Friday's print edition of the Rochester Business Journal.
-------- washington
New Hanford medical provider takes over
06/10/2004
Associated Press
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D834D1K01.html
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/aplocal_story.asp?category=6420&slug=WA%20Hanford%20Medical%20Provider
The contractor who won the bid to take over occupational medicine services for workers at the Hanford nuclear reservation has opened for business here.
AdvanceMed Hanford began offering services to about 11,000 Hanford workers this week. AdvanceMed officials already have met with several of the Hanford contractors managing cleanup at the nuclear site, and plan to cooperate with contractors on matters such as exposure data and working with industrial hygienists to identify hazards.
AdvanceMed, a wholly owned subsidiary of Computer Sciences Corp. of Falls Church, Va., won the occupational medicine contract valued at about $96 million over 10 years. The company outbid the nonprofit Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, which had held the contract since 1965.
Earlier this month, a federal judge denied an HEHF motion to block AdvanceMed from taking over services. Still pending is a lawsuit filed by HEHF, arguing that state law bars for-profit corporations not controlled by licensed medical professionals from employing doctors and providing medical services.
AdvanceMed plans a high-quality care program, but its emphasis will be on preventing injury and illness, said Dr. Loren Lewis, the medical director.
Many Hanford workers are at risk of chemical, radiological and construction hazards as they clean up the Hanford site where plutonium was produced for nuclear weapons from World War II through the Cold War.
AdvanceMed plans to hire the equivalent of 79 full-time employees. About 70 positions were being filled with employees who used to work at HEHF, Zizzi said. Only one part-time doctor for HEHF will transfer to AdvanceMed.
Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com
----
AdvanceMed up and running
Thursday, June 10th, 2004
Tri-City Herald
By Annette Cary staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/business/story/5175919p-5108597c.html
Some boxes are still stacked along corridors, and a few nonessential walls are nothing but blue tape outlines on the carpet, but AdvanceMed Hanford is open for business.
It began offering occupational medicine services to about 11,000 Hanford workers this week. The Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, or HEHF, had held the contract since 1965 but lost a bid award to continue the contract early this year.
AdvanceMed Hanford plans a high-quality care program, but its emphasis will be on preventing injury and illness, said Dr. Loren Lewis, the medical director. Many Hanford workers are at risk of chemical, radiological and construction hazards as they clean up the Hanford site where plutonium was produced for nuclear weapons from World War II through the Cold War.
"Work site visits will be very integral to what we do" so health care professionals can develop a thorough understanding of the risks workers face, Lewis said.
AdvanceMed Hanford officials have met with several of the Hanford contractors and would like a close relationship on matters such as exposure data and working with industrial hygienists to identify hazards. Officials also are interested in extending AdvanceMed Hanford's reach to work with the rest of the Tri-City medical community and with advocates for the health and safety of the workers.
AdvanceMed Hanford is hiring the equivalent of 79 full-time employees, with a few positions yet to fill. About 70 positions are being filled with employees who used to work at HEHF, said Martin Zizzi, director of Healthcare Delivery Services for Computer Sciences Corp., or CSC.
AdvanceMed, which won the occupational medicine contract valued at about $96 million over 10 years, is a wholly owned subsidiary of CSC of Falls Church, Va.
None of HEHF's doctors will transfer to AdvanceMed Hanford other than a part-time doctor who also will do some part-time work at the new contractor.
Four doctors, including Lewis, will work at AdvanceMed Hanford full time. All will be board certified and residency trained in occupational medicine, Lewis said.
AdvanceMed Hanford will be led by four principals:
-- Zizzi also has responsibility for AdvanceMed occupational medicine service contracts at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Rocky Flats nuclear site in Colorado. He will be moving to the Tri-Cities.
-- Lewis comes to the Tri-Cities from Hill Air Force Base in Utah, where he was medical director of occupational medicine. He holds a master's in public health and is trained in family practice and occupational medicine.
-- Jason Zaccaria of Prosser will serve as clinic director. He holds a master's in health administration and has a decade of hospital and clinic experience.
-- Hollie Mooers, the owner of HPM Corp. in Richland, will serve as deputy principal manager. She started HPM three years ago. She also has worked for the Department of Energy as an occupational health services program manager and is a former board member of the Tri-Cities Cancer Center.
HPM is an embedded subcontractor for AdvanceMed Hanford and will fulfill the contract requirements for small business participation. HPM will own certain functions such as quality assurance, accreditation and emergency preparedness.
Although DOE announced in January that AdvanceMed had won the occupational medicine contract, the start of the contract was delayed by protests by the losing bidders. HEHF also has filed suit against AdvanceMed but could not persuade a federal judge to delay the start of the contract while the suit is being heard.
AdvanceMed Hanford turned 22,000 square feet of empty space at 1979 Snyder St. in Richland into a clinic in six weeks with office space, a behavioral health center, a conditioning center, nine exam rooms, an X-ray room and two trauma rooms, which include decontamination capabilities.
It's begun by offering essential services in the mornings and doing staff training in the afternoons. It expects to be open full days by June 21. The transition has been smooth, due in large part to the professionalism, good attitude and good training of the former HEHF staff, Lewis said.
AdvanceMed Hanford will draw on its corporate parent for some functions, such as payroll. It also should benefit from technical expertise at CSC's other occupational medicine programs, including Rocky Flats, which has experience in chronic beryllium disease. Some nuclear workers exposed to the metal beryllium develop a chronic lung disease.
HEHF has questioned in court papers whether AdvanceMed and CSC's many contractual relationships with the parent companies of contractors responsible for Hanford cleanup will compromise its dedication to patients.
Zizzi said he had never seen an issue come up that compromised AdvanceMed's occupational medicine services. It's held many long-term contracts, including a 20-year contract with CDC.
"The most important thing (for AdvanceMed Hanford) is a very strong corporate philosophy to accord the highest priority to the health and safety of Hanford workers," Lewis said.
After AdvanceMed Hanford has some time to become established, Lewis has plans for additional programs. He's interested in offering academic internships, bringing in occupational medicine residents from the University of Washington and University of Utah to do clinical rotations, hiring an epidemiologist and doing research publishable in professional journals.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Sudan blames West for Darfur conflict
Fighting in the dirt-poor region has displaced one million people
Thursday 10 June 2004
(AFP)
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FDC68573-E931-4359-BEAA-2446200692B9.htm
Sudan's vice-president has blamed the West for the conflict in western Darfur, which the UN has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
Ali Osman Taha told Egyptian and Sudanese intellectuals and politicians in Cairo on Thursday that the conflict was "fabricated" by the international community.
The same parties that were responsible for creating war in the southern Sudan nearly 50 years ago are the ones responsible for the confict in Darfur, he said.
Taha did not provide any hard evidence to support his claims but singled out the European Union for criticism, saying it was holding an estimated $400 million in Sudanese government funds.
He said the government wanted to use the funds for projects in Darfur, but the EU refused to release them unless Khartoum resolves the conflict in the south.
"They hold your money and tell you to heal myself," Taha snapped.
Sharp reminder
The vice-president's comments came as world leaders at the G8 summit in the United States called on Sudan to disarm militias they blamed for "massive human rights violations" in the Darfur region.
"We call on all parties to the conflict to immediately and fully respect the ceasefire, allow unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need, and create the conditions for the displaced to return safely to their homes," the Group of Eight leaders said in a joint statement.
Taha said the EU was witholding crucial funds for Darfur The call follows a sharp reminder to Khartoum by the UK that it must rein in Arab militias and ensure help reaches the needy.
"I made it very clear to the government of Sudan that they must bear the primary responsibility for bringing the fighting to an end, for reining in the Janjawid militia and for seeking a political solution for what is a crisis of security," International Development Secretary Hilary Benn said on Wednesday.
Benn was speaking to reporters in London upon his return from a trip earlier this week to Sudan, where he visited three refugee camps inside Darfur, met officials in Khartoum and announced a new $27 million humanitarian aid grant.
Protection force
Meanwhile, the EU has announced it will provide $14.46 million to support observers monitoring a ceasefire between Khartoum and two rebel groups in Darfur.
The 12-month funding was requested by the African Union, which is leading the international mission of up to 120 observers and a possible protection force of 270 soldiers.
"We call on all parties to the conflict to immediately and fully respect the ceasefire, allow unimpeded humanitarian access to all those in need, and create the conditions for the displaced to return safely to their homes"
G8 leaders' statement "We believe that the success of this mission is crucial ... to deliver humanitarian assistance which is very much needed at this time in Darfur," said Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe, spokesman for the EU executive, on Thursday.
A deal signed on 28 May provided for an international ceasefire commission and the despatch of civilians and troops to monitor ceasefire violations in the region's key flashpoints.
An estimated 10,000 people have died since rebels complaining of government neglect of their impoverished region launched an uprising in Darfur in February 2003. The uprising was met with fierce retaliation by government and Janjawid forces.
It is thought that one million people have been displaced in Darfur and 130,000 others have fled across the border into Chad.
--------
Divided army puts Congo peace accord at risk of collapse
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Carter Dougherty
June 10, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040609-104124-6502r.htm
BUKAVU, Congo - The fall last week of this important town in eastern Congo to renegade soldiers underscores how a year-old peace agreement has few friends and a lot of enemies, say Congolese observers and Western diplomats in the region.
Last week's events at the southern tip of Lake Kivu spiraled into chaos as soldiers quartered in the town mutinied against government troops, and a few days later another group of armed renegades marched in from the north, seized Bukavu and went into an orgy of pillage, rape and murder.
Under pressure from the United Nations and the Congolese government in Kinshasa, the men began leaving Bukavu this week.
Yesterday, troops loyal to President Joseph Kabila reoccupied the town to the cheers of inhabitants, but the insurgent leaders appeared to have departed unpunished and Congo's army remains as divided as ever.
"I can't say anything has been accomplished, but for the moment nothing is going wrong," said Louis Michel, foreign minister of Belgium, Congo's former colonial master, who jetted to several regional capitals seeking to rescue the unraveling peace.
In July, Mr. Kabila and the rebel groups that control parts of eastern Congo signed an accord that was supposed to end Congo's five-year civil war. The conflict, which caused more than 3 million deaths by combat, starvation and disease, began in 1998 as Rwanda and its rebel allies sought to overthrow Mr. Kabila's father, Laurent Kabila, who ousted longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.
The Second Congo War, also known as "Africa's First World War," drew in the armies of a half-dozen other countries on the continent.
Laurent Kabila was killed at the presidential palace in Kinshasa during an apparent coup attempt in January 2001. He was succeeded as president by his son Joseph, then 29.
Last year's peace agreement created an unwieldy government in which Mr. Kabila presides over four vice presidents. One comes from the Rally for Congolese Democracy, the main, Rwanda-backed rebel group. The others are drawn from other rebel groups and the political opposition in Kinshasa. Dozens of ministries, some new, were distributed to senior government and rebel officials, as were hundreds of seats in a new parliament.
This transitional government is supposed to wind down any remaining hostilities and hold elections late next year, paving the way for Congo's first democratically elected government since independence in 1960.
As the violence in Bukavu escalated last week, European, American and South African officials who helped broker the peace scrambled to persuade Congolese factions to reaffirm the deal they signed.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called Mr. Kabila to dissuade Kinshasa from responding with force, and Rwandan President Paul Kagame to urge him to keep Rwandan forces out of the fighting, diplomatic sources said.
The violent flare-up in Bukavu, Congolese and U.N. officials said, exposed the failure of the transition government to integrate the warring factions into a single national army and underlined the ill will among the various groups.
No side in the conflict has adhered to the agreement, keeping the army divided into government and rebel factions. For many Congolese, more battles like the one in Bukavu seem inevitable.
"You leave soldiers out there with weapons, and you don't pay them," the head of Bukavu's chamber of commerce, Chubagala Chinja, had said before the latest bloodshed. "What do you think is going to happen?"
As long ago as September, Mr. Kabila's military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Liwanga Mata Nyamunyobo, summoned several military officers to Kinshasa for refusing to assume posts to which they had been appointed - including Brig. Gen. Laurent Nkunda, who remained in Goma, a former rebel stronghold near the Rwandan border.
Gen. Nkunda, like many senior figures in the Rally for Congolese Democracy party (RCD), is a Banyamulenge - a tribe often called Congolese Tutsis because of their linguistic and other ties to the Tutsis of Rwanda, who now dominate that country but were targeted for extermination by the rival Hutus in the Rwandan genocide of a decade ago.
When another dissident officer began fighting in Bukavu with troops loyal to Kinshasa two weeks ago, Gen. Nkunda marched on Bukavu to save Banyamulenge there from a "genocide."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher denied claims of an extermination campaign in eastern Congo.
"Suggestions that a genocide or mass killing of Congolese Tutsis has taken place are irresponsible and unnecessarily inflammatory," Mr. Boucher said after the capture of Bukavu by Gen. Nkunda's renegade soldiers.
Nevertheless, the heavy presence of Banyamulenge among Gen. Nkunda's troops led Mr. Kabila to take a bellicose tone toward his eastern neighbor.
"Once again, Rwanda has made it clear that it does not want peace," Mr. Kabila told the British Broadcasting Corp.
Rwanda has denied interfering in Congo.
But Mr. Kabila, Western diplomats say, regrets the compromises that gave the RCD the defense ministry and other senior military posts. He also has built up the presidential security force to 7,000 well-equipped troops that he alone controls.
The RCD, Congolese say, turned to violence again because of its failure to convert from a rebel army into a political party, which it now claims to be. The RCD's long-standing ties to Rwanda has made it perhaps the most hated faction in Congo, and few Congolese give it much of a chance in free elections.
"The RCD never really convinced anyone here," said the Rev. Joseph Gwamuhanya, a priest in Bukavu and member of the new Congolese parliament.
The RCD's political weakness made its officers, among them Gen. Nkunda, reluctant to accept assignments from Kinshasa that would take them outside the territories they controlled as rebels, and away from the troops loyal to them.
Many Congolese feared Gen. Nkunda's attack on Bukavu was the start of a "third Congo War," in which renegade RCD members would try to carve out a separate state between Congo and Rwanda and end their allegiance to Kinshasa. But Congolese sources said the behavior of his troops after taking Bukavu might have alienated like-minded RCD members, and forced his withdrawal.
RCD member Azerias Ruberwa, who became a vice president under the power-sharing agreement, spent much of the Bukavu crisis holed up in Goma with other party leaders and either declined or failed to restrain Gen. Nkunda from taking the town.
------- australia
Some Aussies Say No to US Bases
(Inter Press Service)
by Sonny Inbaraj
June 10, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/inbaraj.php?articleid=2780
DARWIN (IPS) - Peace activists plan massive protests if the federal and Northern Territory governments allow a deal to go ahead between the United States and Australia to station U.S. troops and equipment in the so-called Australian Top End.
The Northern Territory, which enjoys a long familiarity and friendliness with its Asian neighbors, is branding itself as a regional gateway to attract the United States to build a major military training center on Australian soil.
Federal Defense Minister Robert Hill confirmed Monday, after meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Singapore, that the United States was expected to announce a decision next month to spend tens of millions of dollars to enable the training of its troops in northern Australia.
"It's to enhance mutual capability, ensure inter-operability and to assist a critically important ally," Hill told a press conference.
Last February, Australia committed 2,000 troops to Iraq, just before its invasion, joining 200,000 U.S. and British troops already in the Gulf.
But Hannah Middleton, spokesperson for the Australian Anti-Bases Campaign Coalition, attacked the federal government's support for yet another United States military base in Australia.
"We do not want another U.S. military base on our soil. Australia does not have to be a cog in America's military machine," Middleton told IPS.
The Territory Greens have planned nationwide protests if the facility is allowed in northern Australia.
"We will mobilise peace activists to oppose the U.S. base to be built here, or to be built anywhere in Australia. We are closely watching developments and we are ready to go on the streets to protest," said Greens coordinator Ilana Eldridge.
"It is a critical issue for us," stressed Eldridge.
The United States currently has a base in Pine Gap in central Australia, which is officially known as the Joint Defense Space Research Facility.
Set up by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in 1968, it is one of the largest and most important U.S. satellite ground control stations in the world which processes information gathered by Rhyolite signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellites and transmits that information to the United States.
But Defense Minister Hill told reporters the U.S. would not pre-position equipment at the northern Australia center and it would not be termed a U.S. base.
No sites have been identified yet in that part of the country, also known as the Top End, which covers the Northern Territory and part of Queensland state.
While the Queensland state government has so far remained mum over the issue, the Northern Territory, however, is confident it can elbow the state out of a behind-the-scenes contest to attract facilities where thousands of U.S. soldiers, marines and air force personnel would be sent.
The Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin said there would be significant economic spin-offs for whoever hosts the base and she believes the Territory is the logical choice.
"We have a significant (Australian) defense presence here and we have land and goodwill from (federal) government and sites closer to where U.S. forces might be needed," she told IPS in an interview.
Added Martin: "We've been loud and clear about saying put it (the training center) in the Territory."
The military's First Battalion is currently based in the Northern Territory.
The Australian Industry Defense Network also agrees there would be a multitude of benefits to the Northern Territory if the U.S. facility was built in the area.
Mike Turner, of the network, said one of the benefits to the Territory would be the influx of overseas military personnel to the capital Darwin.
"Especially if it were to be located within the Territory probably the only location where those guys could rest and relax on the way in or the way out would be Darwin," he said.
"So from the local point of view there would be considerable benefit in accommodation and entertainment avenues for the expenditure of U.S. dollars within the town," Turner told IPS.
The Northern Territory capital is closer to Jakarta than it is to Sydney, down south. Also the relative ease at which Australians, here, relate to their Asian neighbors to the north is generally not evident in other parts of the country.
But this proximity with Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, is what entices the United States to this part of Australia, especially after the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001 and the 2002 Bali bombings.
The Bali bombings, which killed at least 190 people, have been blamed on the Indonesia-based Jemaiah Islamiyah group - a regional network that aims to create a pan-Islamic state in South- east Asia and which several governments have classified as a terrorist organization.
Some governments and certain intelligence agencies claim a connection between Jemaiah Islamiyah and the al-Qaeda network and allege the Islamic regional grouping's members had trained with al-Qaeda militants in Afghanistan.
"This is why the United States is so keen to have a presence in northern Australia," said an intelligence analyst, who did not want to be named.
"Being in the proximity of Southeast Asia and in a western country at the same time is something hard to find in the world," the analyst told IPS.
Added the analyst: "The Northern Territory's proximity to potential regional trouble spots promotes the early arrival of U.S. military forces due to shorter transit times and reduces potential problems that could arise due to late arrival."
According to U.S. defense reports, Washington is considering moving most of the 20,000 Marines presently on the Japanese island of Okinawa to new bases that would be established in Australia.
That however has angered the Greens.
"The U.S approach to militarism is offensive rather than defensive. We don't want the Northern Territory to become another Okinawa where people have to pay a heavy social price for hosting foreign troops," said Eldridge.
The U.S. presence in Okinawa has aroused bitter opposition on the island since the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by three Marines.
-------- arms
Iraq war boosts global military spending
Thursday, June 10, 2004
AFP
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1128447.htm
Worldwide military expenditure accelerated in 2003, with the war in Iraq accounting for the bulk of the increase, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Global military spending, on the rise for five straight years, increased by 11 per cent in 2003 to total $US956 billion dollars.
The increase followed a hike of 6.5 per cent a year earlier.
"This is a remarkable increase," SIPRI commented in its annual report.
It says prompted by the war on Iraq, the USs military spending saw a "massive increase".
"The changes in US military doctrine and strategy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, unleashed huge increases in US military spending in 2002 and 2003," SIPRI said.
It notes that excluding the additional US spending - directed mostly at Afghanistan, Iraq and "anti-terrorist" activities - worldwide military expenditure would have increased by just 4 per cent rather than 11.
The world's rich countries are also the biggest spenders on weapons.
High-income states accounted for three quarters of the world's military spending but just 16 per cent of its population.
To illustrate its point, SIPRI calculated that the combined military spending of these countries was slightly higher than the aggregate foreign debt of low-income countries and 10 times higher than their combined official development aid.
There was "a large gap" between what countries were prepared to pay for their security and what they were willing to allocate to alleviating poverty in the world.
Russia and the United States remained the world's biggest arms suppliers.
Their main recipients were China and India in the case of Russia; and Taiwan, Egypt, Britain, Greece, Turkey and Japan in the case of the United States.
While continued big spending by Washington would ensure global military expenditure remained high for some time, both the economic burden and ethical considerations would prevent it reaching similar growth rates in the future.
SIPRI said the US doctrine of pre-emptive wars was being challenged on both ethical and legal grounds, as well as "because of the large costs and dubious successes associated with it.
The pace of military spending was likely to fall back over coming years, since it was "doubtful whether current levels will be economically and politically sustainable".
--------
MIDEAST ARMS SPENDING RISES BY 10%
LONDON [MENL]
10 Jun 2004
http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2004/june/06_11_1.html
-- Middle East militaries have increased spending by nearly 10 percent in wake of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in a report issued on Wednesday that Iran and Kuwait were responsible for most of the increase in Middle East military spending. The report said this contrasted with Israel, who decided to cut spending in wake of the war in Iraq in 2003.
"Military expenditure in the Middle East increased by almost 10 percent in 2003," the institute said in its annual strategic study. "The increase was caused mainly by two countries that share contiguous borders with Iraq: Iran and Kuwait."
The report said Saudi Arabia, the biggest spender in the Middle East, marginally increased its military expenditure. Instead, Saudi Arabia invested additional resources in bolstering internal security.
-----
World conflicts drop, arms spending rockets
AP
June 10 2004
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=24&art_id=vn20040610100709737C388560&set_id=1
Worldwide military spending rose 11 percent in 2003, with the main costs coming from the United States-led invasion of Iraq, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has said.
The US was responsible for nearly half of 2003 military spending with its missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and the general war on terror, the Stockholm-based think tank said on Wednesday.
Countries spent about US$956-billion (about R6 400-billion) on defence costs in 2003, or 2,7 percent of the world's gross domestic product (GDP), reflecting a "remarkable increase" of nearly 18 percent from 2001, the institute said.
"It's very close to the Cold War peak in 1987," said institute researcher Elisabeth Skoens, who co-authored the annual report.
'It's very close to the Cold War peak in 1987' Individually, the US accounted for 47 percent of the spending. It was followed by Japan with five percent, and Britain, France and China, each with four percent.
The rise in defence spending also came the same year that the number of conflicts worldwide fell to 19, the second-lowest since the think tank began issuing the reports 35 years ago. In 2002 there were 20 conflicts and in 2001 there were 23.
Attempts to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons, however, were hampered in 2003 when North Korea withdrew from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and by recent information suggesting Iran may have nuclear knowledge and materials, the report said.
Those developments were offset by Libya's voluntarily abandoning its own nuclear programme, a researcher said. - Sapa-AP
-----
Lawmakers Oppose Plan to Ease Sales of U.S. Arms
NYTimes.com
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
June 10, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/politics/10arms.html?ex=1087444800&en=63de38f07be93953&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
ASHINGTON, June 9 - House Republican leaders are blocking a Bush administration plan to waive licensing rules so Britain and Australia, two of America's closest allies in the fight against terrorism, can buy certain military items from the United States.
In a sharply worded report released last month, the House International Relations Committee said the administration's effort to relax controls on the sale of "low sensitivity" military items would play into the hands of terrorists seeking to acquire vital American technology.
But administration officials, who have spent three years negotiating with the two countries over the terms for such waivers, say safeguards are in place to keep weapons from being diverted.
For example, most sales would be from government to government, and the only private importers involved in Britain or Australia would be handpicked by the United States after extensive research, they said.
Apart from commercial concerns, they say President Bush dearly wants to confer a special status on the two nations for their steadfast support in Iraq.
But in its report, the committee wrote, "We are persuaded that this is a moment in our nation's history to strengthen, not relax, export controls over all weapons technology - not only weapons of mass destruction (the ultimate weapons which terrorists seek), but also conventional weapons and munitions, which our enemies are already using against our civilians and U.S. servicemen and women."
The administration's proposal, which needs approval from Congress to take effect, "seems unhinged from U.S. counterterrorism and nonproliferation policy," said the committee, whose chairman is Representative Henry J. Hyde of Illinois. Also signing the report were Representative Duncan Hunter, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Representative Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on International Relations. In the Senate, the waivers appear to have broad support.
The exports affected by the waivers would include spare parts for aircraft and tanks, and most of the items on the State Department's list of closely regulated munitions, ranging from firearms to rockets. A number of items would still require licenses, including small arms, ammunition and night vision equipment, administration officials said. The dispute involving the waivers was first reported last week in The Financial Times.
The House report said some of the supposedly "low sensitivity" items affected by the waivers were highly lethal, including shoulder-fired Stinger missiles, bombs and military explosives. Administration officials say it is unclear whether Stinger missiles, which are used to shoot down aircraft, would be covered by the deal.
State Department officials say there are practical and symbolic reasons for the waivers. One, they say, is a growing backlog of license requests - about 60,000 projected for this year. But bureaucratic efficiency is only part of the impetus, the officials say. "We want to increase defense cooperation with countries that we think are reliable and good players," a senior State Department official said.
A spokeswoman for the British Foreign Office said Wednesday that new export control legislation that took effect this year placed London on a par with Washington in regulating the sales of sensitive weapons and data.
A State Department official said any private companies that receive United States exports would be closely vetted. "We're not talking about an Iranian front company with a P.O. box in Stoke-on-Trent," the spokesman said.
The two countries account for about 20 percent of the American weapons technology licensed for export in a given year. If granted the waivers, Britain and Australia will join Canada, now the only country exempt from the licensing requirements.
The House report found that Washington's experience with Canada was a negative example. During the late 1990's, the State Department concluded that front companies had been set up in Canada with the sole purpose of acquiring American weapons technology. Countries including Iran, Libya, Sudan and China sought to exploit Canada's liberal regulatory environment to obtain equipment, from Kiowa helicopters to armored personnel carriers to infrared cameras and detectors.
At least one American military contractor used its Canadian subsidiary to circumvent sanctions against United States sales to Pakistan, the report said.
The House critics, who have vowed to block the legislation making its way through Congress, say that breakdown of the system in a contiguous nation merely underscores the opportunities for diversions of exports overseas.
-------- biological weapons
Calif. Researchers Unaware Anthrax Live
By PAUL ELIAS
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 10:19 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32933-2004Jun10.html
SAN FRANCISCO - At least six researchers may have been exposed to deadly anthrax after a shipping foul up led them to believe they were working with dead rather than live bacteria, officials said Thursday.
None of the researchers from Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute has shown signs of infection, and officials do not believe they were exposed, said hospital spokeswoman Bev Mikalonis. However, she said they were being treated with antibiotics as a precaution.
The researchers, who are attempting to develop an anthrax vaccine for children, thought they were working with dead bacteria until mice they were using in experiments began to die.
The researchers followed proper procedures while handling the anthrax shots, Mikalonis said. The liquid anthrax went directly from the syringes into lab mice, she said.
"We do not see a threat or a danger to anyone in the community," said Dr. Richard Jackson, California's public health officer. "This really has been very well-controlled."
The anthrax arrived in Oakland from the Frederick, Md., laboratory of the Southern Research Institute about three months ago, Mikalonis said.
Thomas Voss, who is in charge of homeland security and emerging infectious diseases at Birmingham, Ala.-based SRI, said the company is investigating.
"We aren't totally sure of the sequence of events," he said.
Mikalonis said other workers who were in the area when the researchers handled the bacteria may have been exposed but she did not elaborate. She said federal, state and local officials - including the FBI - are investigating.
The Oakland laboratory is located about a mile from the Children's Hospital but officials said there was no threat to the hospital.
Anthrax attacks killed five people and sickened 17 others in 2001 in the United States. No one has been arrested in the attacks, which spurred the development of better vaccines and treatments than are currently available.
Anthrax produces severe flu-like symptoms in most of its victims. If inhaled, ingested or otherwise introduced into the body, it can kill.
Associated Press writer Michelle Locke contributed to this story.
-------- britain
Britons Punish Blair at Polling Booths Over Iraq
Reuters
Thursday, June 10, 2004
By Mike Peacock
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33321-2004Jun10?language=printer
LONDON (Reuters) - Britons handed Tony Blair heavy electoral reverses with results on Friday from local polls showing his Labour Party losing support, and Iraq took the blame.
Ministers said the war and ensuing instability had taken a toll, with returns suggesting something close to a drubbing for the prime minister.
Thursday's polls for local government, the European Parliament and London's mayor were the biggest public test for the government outside a general election. Results for the London and European votes will not land until late Friday and Sunday respectively, but results from local council seats showed Labour shedding support fast.
Some 6,000 seats on 166 councils in England and Wales were up for grabs in the local elections which are staggered over a four-year cycle.
With 72 councils having reported, Labour had lost a net 191 seats, closing in on the overall net loss of 400 or more which analysts said would amount to a serious reverse for Blair. But they cautioned regional and European elections, often used to kick the government of the day, tend to have little bearing on the next general election.
The BBC projected Labour's share of the vote at just 26 percent, 12 points behind the Conservatives and below Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats, for the first time in living memory.
"An awful night for Labour, really seriously dreadful," said Anthony King, professor of government at Essex University. "But if the Conservatives were on a roll they ought to be at 40 or above."
The Conservatives supported war in Iraq. The Liberal Democrats didn't.
Blair, in power since 1997, was universally predicted to fare badly and fresh speculation about his leadership could now spark into life, although he says he is in no mood to hand over the reins to a party successor.
Most experts still see him winning a third general election, expected in 2005, despite public disquiet over Iraq.
"There is clearly a very strong protest vote," cabinet minister Tessa Jowell told BBC television. "Iraq is certainly a factor but it is only a factor."
Blair's public trust ratings have plunged over the last year but his Conservative opponents, although perkier under new leader Michael Howard, have not yet made a leap in the polls to suggest they are ready to take power again.
IRAQ SHADOW
With a new U.N. resolution agreed on Iraq, conferring international legitimacy to a new interim government from June 30, Blair's aides are quietly hoping they can move on from a saga that has battered the government.
But not soon enough for voters this time.
"The worries over Iraq have been a shadow over our support," Blair told reporters at the G8 summit in the United States.
But he said the government's domestic record would stand it in good stead "if Iraq gets into a better place."
In 1999, at the last European polls, the Conservatives won 36 percent of the vote to Labour's 28, but were thrashed at the general election two years later.
This time in the European elections, the hopes of the opposition Conservatives may have been hit by the rise of the fringe anti-EU UK Independence Party, which a poll for the European Parliament said would win up to 12 of 78 British seats.
The Conservatives oppose a planned constitution for the bloc while the UKIP advocates outright withdrawal from the EU.
A split in the rightwing Euroskeptic vote could dent Conservative recovery hopes.
-------- business
U.S. Contractor CACI Responds to Suit Over Iraq Abuse
Reuters
Jun 10, 1:18
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040610/ts_nm/arms_caci_dc_1
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. defense contractor CACI International on Thursday denied allegations in a lawsuit that it conspired with U.S. officials to torture and abuse prisoners in Iraq.
CACI and Titan Corp. were charged in the suit with engaging in "heinous and illegal acts" to show they could get intelligence from detainees, thereby positioning themselves to get more government contracts.
"CACI rejects and denies the allegations of the suit as being malicious recitation of false statements and intentional distortions," the company said in a statement.
Philadelphia-based lawyer Susan Burke and New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights filed the lawsuit on Wednesday.
Employees from CACI and Titan, which provided interrogation and translation services in Iraq, were named by U.S. Army investigator Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in a report in May on prison abuse in Iraq.
A number of U.S. military investigations into the abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners were launched after graphic photographs leaked to the media showed naked prisoners simulating sex acts for prison guards and being tortured in other ways.
The lawsuit said plaintiffs were hooded and raped, subjected to repeated beatings and stripped naked. The suit said one was forced to watch his father tortured and abused so badly that he later died.
The suit also charged that CACI and Titan created a joint enterprise with a third party that became known as "Team Titan," which was hired by the United States to provide interrogation services in Iraq.
"CACI does not have and has never had any agreement with Titan Corporation or anyone else pertaining to conspiring with the government or to perpetrate abuses of any kind to anyone," CACI said in its statement.
On Wednesday, Titan spokesman Wil Williams called the lawsuit "frivolous" and said the company would aggressively defend itself against the charges. He said the Titan employee named in the Taguba report, Adel Nahkla, had since left the company.
The lawsuit charged that Stephen Stefanowicz and John Israel of CACI Inc. and Nahkla "directed and participated in illegal conduct" at the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.
Attorney Burke said evidence given to lawyers by former Iraqi inmates did not directly link employees from Titan or CACI to their abuse, adding this came from the Taguba report.
However, inmates distinguished between uniformed interrogators and those in civilian clothing and provided names, descriptions and nicknames of abusers.
Nine plaintiffs were named on the lawsuit, including Sami Abbas Al Rawi, Mwafaq Sami Abbaas al Rawi as well as individuals who gave only their first names and others who were not named because of the graphic nature of their complaints and fear of retribution, lawyers said.
-------- chemical weapons
Army to begin destroying deadly nerve agent at Indiana depot
Thursday, June 10, 2004
By Rick Callahan,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-10/s_24736.asp
NEWPORT, Indiana - In a cavernous, pipe-filled structure known simply as the Utility Building, Army contractors are getting ready to destroy a Cold War-era concoction so lethal it could kill untold millions.
After years of controversy, workers will begin chemically neutralizing 1,269 tons of the ultra-deadly nerve agent VX this summer as part of a plan to eliminate the nation's chemical weapons stockpile.
Residents near the Newport Chemical Depot are ready to see the VX go. So are activists who keep tabs on the nation's cache of weapons of mass destruction.
"One drop the size of George Washington's eye on a quarter is enough to kill a healthy, 180-pound male. It's the most lethal chemical on the planet," said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentucky-based watchdog organization.
But a dispute over what will become of the project's wastewater could leave the rural community about 70 miles west of Indianapolis stuck with the nerve agent's legacy.
Opposition from Dayton, Ohio, residents scuttled the Army's plan to dispose of up to 4 million gallons of nerve agent wastewater, or hydrolysate, at a plant there. Now plans to truck the waste to Deepwater, New Jersey, for treatment and disposal at a DuPont Co. plant are in doubt amid opposition in New Jersey and Delaware.
The Army plans to heat the VX, a liquid with the consistency of mineral oil, in chemical reactors to destroy its structure. Army officials liken the resulting hydrolysate to liquid drain cleaner and say it will contain no detectable VX at sampling levels of 20 parts per billion.
Although VX was never used by the American military in combat, there have been human exposures - but no deaths - in the United States. Its lethal potential was demonstrated in 1968 when an aerial spraying test of VX at Utah's Dugway Proving Grounds went awry, killing about 6,000 grazing sheep.
The VX stockpile was produced at the 7,000-acre Newport complex between 1961 and 1968 as a doomsday deterrent. For years after production ended, containers of the nerve agent sat rusting in a field, apparently regarded by the depot's workers as just part of the landscape.
"They used to eat lunch on top of the containers," said Lt. Col. Joseph Marquart, Newport's commander. "We don't do that anymore."
The containers now sit in heavily guarded concrete bunkers built after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Since President Nixon halted the manufacture of chemical weapons in 1969, about 31,000 tons of VX, sarin, and mustard nerve agent have been stored at Newport and seven other chemical depots in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Oregon, and Utah.
Destruction is under way at four of the eight in compliance with the international Chemical Weapons Convention treaty.
At the Newport depot, Army contractors will open the first of 1,690 VX-filled steel containers late this summer inside a building from which no air escapes without being heavily filtered. Security cameras keep watch, and air monitoring equipment scans for trouble. Inside, workers will drain the 6.5-by-3-foot containers in airtight glovebox chambers, with technicians outside the reinforced glass using thick gloves to attach a special pumping device.
The VX will then be transferred to a steel reactor where it will be neutralized by adding it over a 36-minute period to a mixture of water and sodium hydroxide heated to about 195 degrees. Two sets of paddles will agitate the mixture to complete the reaction.
Workers will carry a VX antidote in case of an accidental release.
Neutralizing all the VX should take about 2.5 years. But where it will go from there is unclear. DuPont wants to dump treated hydrolysate into the Delaware River. But fears that the chemical could ruin decades of river cleanup led Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner and New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey to send the Army a letter of protest.
"There's too many questions," said Gregory Patterson, Minner's spokesman.
DuPont spokesman Anthony Farina said the company will not accept an Army contract to handle the hydrolysate until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency complete studies of DuPont's plans.
Because of the uncertainties, the Army intends to buy 50 5,000-gallon tanks that will allow it to store at Newport about 240,000 gallons of hydrolysate - the amount expected to be produced in the first six months.
Sara Morgan, a teacher who lives a few miles from the depot, is glad the neutralization will soon begin. She led a campaign that forced the Army to drop its original plans to incinerate Newport's VX, a method some feared could release toxins into the air. Yet she believes the project's waste should stay at Newport, not get sent off to become New Jersey and Delaware's problem.
"The citizens of the area where this is going to be treated should be accepting of it," she said. "I don't think it should be shoved down their throats."
--------
Army Withholds Chemical Attack Antidote
By SHARON THEIMER
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 10:07 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32839-2004Jun10?language=printer
WASHINGTON - Despite the interest of emergency officials, the government is refusing to provide U.S. communities an antidote controlled by the Army and stockpiled by other countries to treat victims of a chemical terror attack.
The product, Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion, was developed by the Canadian military years ago, won Food and Drug Administration approval in 2003 and is sold in other NATO countries for neutralizing sarin, mustard gas and other chemical agents.
It is being tested by the Army. But the companies that make it aren't permitted to sell it or even advertise it to state and local governments in the United States.
"Right now they have no product to decontaminate people other than soap and water," said Phil O'Dell, president of O'Dell Engineering, a Canadian-based company licensed by the Canadian government to sell the lotion. "There is only one FDA-approved. It's the RSDL. These first responders correctly have been trying to buy RSDL since FDA approval."
Dr. Dani Zavasky, a deputy medical director for the New York Police Department's counterterrorism bureau, thinks the antidote is promising and wonders why her agency cannot buy it.
As described by the FDA at the time it approved it for the Army in April 2003, a lotion-soaked sponge is packaged in a special foil pouch that people can carry, ready to rip open and wipe on any exposed skin as soon as possible after exposure to a chemical attack.
Zavasky said she heard about the antidote from Marines, not from the Army or the Homeland Security Department, whose duties include tipping off state and local governments to new anti-terrorism technologies.
"I'm not aware of any substance other than this out there that has been used for so long by others that has this benefit," Zavasky said. "I've been hearing about it for a year and a half now and still it's not widely available."
The Army says it wants to do more testing on issues such as whether the lotion is safe to use with bleach, before it making it standard issue for its troops or letting police, firefighters and other first responders buy it.
"The manufacturer will have to be patient. Until the compatibility with bleach solutions is determined and can be clearly defined, we can't field it," said Maj. Gary Tallman, an Army spokesman. "It wouldn't be proper to field it to our war fighters and our first responders."
In the United States, the Army rather than O'Dell Engineering obtained the FDA's approval, meaning O'Dell cannot sell it to state and local governments without Army permission. But that doesn't preclude other federal agencies from trying to bring the drug to first responders.
Homeland Security Department spokesman Kirk Whitworth said the agency doesn't comment on specific products but is "committed as a department to speeding the access to the most effective products available."
Frustrated by the delay, O'Dell Engineering and its U.S. business partner, New York state-based E-Z-EM Inc., have started lobbying lawmakers and the Army.
"The companies are all part of the group that are approaching their members of Congress, number one to educate them about this issue and number two to give them their spin on it and basically say if we don't produce this in the United States, they're going to produce this overseas," said James Albertine, a Washington lobbyist coordinating the campaign.
The lobbying is paying off: At least two Republicans whose constituents include companies involved in the making of RSDL - Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and New York Rep. John Sweeney - have written the Army.
The Army could be at least two years away from buying RSDL in significant quantities.
That time lag could force companies that make RSDL ingredients to shut down or scale back their assembly lines, raising RSDL's cost or making it hard to produce large quantities quickly, said Tony Lombardo, chief executive of E-Z-EM, a health care company involved with the lotion.
Lombardo estimates the product, packaged in a pouch that can treat one person, would cost roughly $20 to $22 per pouch.
E-Z-EM and O'Dell Engineering said the product has been used safely in several countries, including NATO allies, for years and that they are considering seeking FDA approval themselves to market the lotion to first responders.
J.R. Thomas, director of the Franklin County Emergency Management Agency in Columbus, Ohio, and past president of the International Association of Emergency Managers, said he wasn't aware of RSDL.
"That's one of our big beefs as local emergency management people, is we need to make sure there's a good wave of communication between the federal government, the states and the locals," Thomas said. "Not only policy but also these materials that are coming through the pipeline. Because we don't know what's good and what's bad."
Fire Chief Joe Wallin of Minnetonka, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb, said he too never heard of RSDL, but questions whether many communities would buy it when soap and water can remove chemical agents from many people.
The NYPD's Zavasky said that while removing contaminated clothes and using soap and water works, the lotion would be useful after showering to neutralize any chemical agent that penetrated the skin.
Army:http://www.army.mil/
O'Dell Engineering:http://www.odel.on.ca/500ml.html
-------- china
China Says Doubts N.Korea Has Uranium Program
Reuters
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 6:08 AM
By Benjamin Kang Lim
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30439-2004Jun10?language=printer
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has cast doubt on U.S. assertions that North Korea has a uranium program, the biggest stumbling block to defusing a crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, as Beijing gears up to host a new round of talks.
The United States had yet to persuade China that North Korea had a uranium program in addition to a plutonium program to develop fuel for nuclear bombs, China's deputy foreign minister, Zhou Wenzhong, said in an interview with The New York Times.
"We know nothing about the uranium program," Zhou said. "We don't know whether it exists. So far the U.S. has not presented convincing evidence of this program."
If North Korea did have a uranium program, then China agreed that it must be included in the scope of the six-country nuclear talks, he said.
Beijing wants a third round of six-way talks, likely to start on June 23. The two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia and China have met in Beijing twice without reaching agreement on dismantling the North's covert nuclear weapons programs.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said achieving progress was not easy but urged countries taking part in the talks to be patient.
"We hope all parties can adopt an active and constructive attitude, demonstrate flexibility, unceasingly seek and expand consensus, and narrow differences," Liu told a news conference.
"But...the Korean nuclear issue is very complicated. Achieving progress is not very easy. Adequate patience is needed. At the same time, (we) should not have excessive expectations of the six-party talks," Liu added.
Zhou told the Times the administration of President Bush should stop making charges about the uranium program unless it can offer more conclusive evidence that it exists.
The United States wants North Korea to abandon completely both a program to make weapons-grade plutonium and the uranium enrichment program, which Pyongyang says does not exist.
Chinese analysts underscored Beijing's view that the United States was in a position to unlock progress in the nuclear talks but was more interested in "regime change" than disarmament.
"I increasingly doubt U.S. sincerity in peacefully resolving this issue," Niu Jun, a U.S. watcher at Peking University.
"All parties involved in the talks have acknowledged North Korea's attitude has softened," Niu said. "Other parties except the United States do not have a policy of regime change.
U.S. PUZZLED
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington that the evidence presented to China was clear.
"We find the assistant foreign minister's comments somewhat puzzling," Boucher told reporters on Wednesday. "We have made clear over time that there is very conclusive information that North Korea has a covert uranium enrichment program.
"We've certainly briefed the Chinese," he said. "This picture of North Korea's uranium enrichment programs has, in fact, become clearer over time, as opposed to anything else."
U.S. officials say North Korea acknowledged in late 2002 it was pursuing uranium enrichment. Early the next year it withdrew from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but has said its ambitions were focused on its plutonium plant at Yongbyon.
"They've restarted activities geared to the production of plutonium-based weapons. They've asserted their so-called right to develop nuclear weapons," Boucher said.
The United States was prepared to attend a third round of talks in the week of June 21, Boucher said, adding that it was his understanding the Chinese were still consulting with North Korea to confirm the timing.
The Times said Zhou's comments represented a potentially important shift in Beijing's approach to the talks, which China has sought to keep afloat despite scant sign of progress.
China has long-standing ties with North Korea but has long adopted a neutral stance in the negotiations, the newspaper said. China fought alongside the North against the United States and the South in the 1950-53 Korean War.
Liu, the ministry spokesman, said there has been no change in China's stand and that Zhou merely reiterated it in the interview with the Times.
North Korea, in need of aid for its struggling economy, wants compensation for giving up its nuclear program, with a deal for a freeze as a first step. The Untied States wants Pyongyang to abandon its programs completely and unconditionally.
"The United States has come up with slogans such as verifiable and irreversible...but it has not provided any opportunity to resolve the issue," said analyst Niu.
The crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear arms programs erupted in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea had disclosed it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium for weapons, in violation of an international agreement. (Additional reporting by Cher Gao in Beijing and JoAnne Allen in Washington)
-------- iraq
POLITICS
Kurds Win Round on Constitution
June 10, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/international/middleeast/10KURD.html?hp
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 9 - Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Wednesday that his government would adhere to the interim constitution agreed to in March until elections are held next year, in an effort to defuse, at least temporarily, a looming crisis with the Kurdish leadership.
In a statement issued by his office late in the evening, Dr. Allawi's spokesman, George Hada, declared the new government's "full commitment" to the interim constitution until democratic elections are held later this year or in January.
The statement from Dr. Allawi's office followed a threat this week by Kurdish leaders to pull back from the Iraqi state and possibly secede. The leaders were alarmed after officials in New York failed to include the interim constitution in the United Nations Security Council resolution, approved Tuesday, on the return of sovereignty to the Iraqis.
The Kurds are worried that without the protections in the interim constitution, they might lose the broad autonomy they have garnered since 1991 under American military protection. The interim constitution recognizes the autonomy of the Kurdish region and grants the Kurds extraordinary powers to protect it.
But the commitment made by Dr. Allawi will likely only postpone a solution. His statement binds the new Iraqi government to the constitution only during "the provisional period," which will end when elections are held.
Many Shiite leaders say it is at that point, when the Shiites will likely hold a majority of the seats in the national assembly, that they would remove the language that grants the Kurds effective veto power over the permanent constitution.
That language was a central component in the compromise that persuaded the Kurds last March to agree to the interim constitution - and to affirm a commitment to the Iraqi state.
The statement issued by Dr. Allawi's office followed a flurry of activity involving Shiite political leaders and the country's most powerful Shiite religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani. Iraqi officials say Ayatollah Sistani, who earlier this week warned the Security Council against including the interim constitution in the sovereignty resolution, tried to reassure Kurdish leaders.
Kurdish leaders, most of whom have left Baghdad and gone to their homes in the north, reacted cautiously to Dr. Allawi's statement. The top Kurdish leaders spent much of the day discussing the future, which they have increasingly suggested may include secession.
"We are happy to see the prime minister reaffirm his commitment," to the interim constitution, said Barem Saleh, a senior leader of the Patriotic Union for Kurdistan.
But Mr. Saleh said he and other Kurdish leaders were disheartened by what they regarded as a casual commitment made by many Shiite leaders, who endorsed the interim constitution last March only to announce their opposition to parts of it immediately after the signing ceremony.
Mr. Saleh said the Kurdish public, which often clamors for independence from Baghdad, has also been angered by the episode.
"If a community in Iraq wants to hijack the constitutional process in the name of majority rule, this won't work," Mr. Saleh said. "It really smacks of a lack of interest in a viable future."
The impasse over the interim constitution represents the collision of the Shiites' dream of majority rule, which been repressed for centuries, and the Kurdish desire for minority rights, trampled often and brutally in the past.
The key language that worries the Shiites - and is so crucial to the Kurds - relates to the ratification of the permanent constitution. The interim constitution says that the permanent charter will be drawn up after democratic elections, and will be put to a vote of the Iraqi people.
Under the rules, the permanent constitution will pass on a majority vote, unless two-thirds of the voters in three of the country's 18 provinces reject it, in which case it will fail. There are three provinces with a Kurdish majority.
Mowaffak al-Rubiae, Iraq's national security advisor and a Shiite who is close to Ayatollah Sistani, said the dispute was deeper than just one clause. The Shiite leadership, he says, believes it is wrong that an interim constitution that was drawn up by an unelected body - the Iraqi Governing Council - should bind the freely elected national assembly.
He suggested that the assembly would likely disregard all or parts of the document.
"You cannot control the will of the people," he said. "Whatever they will do, they will do."
But Dr. Rubaie said he was sympathetic to Kurdish fears and said Shiite leaders would try over the next several months to reassure the Kurds that they would not lose their autonomous status. "I don't believe a majority of Iraqis would deny the Kurds their rights of full federalism," he said.
For his part, Mr. Saleh said he did not have much patience for the Shiite views.
The interim constitution, with all of the provisions now being objected to, was unanimously approved by the governing council's Shiite leadership, he noted. "When we sign something, we should mean it," he said.
-------- israel / palestine
Gaza Settlers Urged to Leave Before Vote
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 6:38 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30485-2004Jun10?language=printer
JERUSALEM - Israel will encourage Jewish settlers in Gaza to leave their homes in exchange for compensation this summer - months before a Cabinet vote to approve evacuation of the settlements, according to a government document obtained by The Associated Press.
The government timetable, presented Wednesday to the committee overseeing the pullout, calls for completion of the process by Sept. 30, 2005, three months ahead of the original target date.
Settlers who refuse to leave by Sept. 1, 2005, will be forced out of their homes by the middle of the month, according to the document.
The document was a sign of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's determination to go ahead with the pullout despite opposition from hard-liners who this week deprived him of his parliamentary majority and threatened to bring him down.
"Israel made a decision this week crucial to its future, a decision on the disengagement plan that will be completed by the end of 2005," Sharon said Wednesday.
In order to win Cabinet support for the withdrawal, Sharon agreed to hold separate votes in the future before each of the four planned stages of evacuation.
The release of the timetable, however, signaled that Sharon will encourage settlers to leave voluntarily well before any vote takes place.
According to the plan, 21 settlements in Gaza and four isolated enclaves in the West Bank would be evacuated by Sept. 15, 2005. The army would pull out of Gaza by the end of that month.
The process would begin with a voluntary evacuation by settlers, beginning this August. Among the key details that remain to be worked out are compensation for the settlers and figuring out where to relocate them.
Some 7,500 Jewish settlers live in Gaza, many of them deeply attached to the land and unlikely to leave voluntarily.
"Everyone who thinks that they will buy us with money is going to have a very big surprise," said Yigal Kirshenzaft, a resident of the Neve Dekalim settlement. "When they come to remove us, they will be surprised at the strong resistance."
However, Shimon Damari, a resident of Nissanit in northern Gaza, said many of his neighbors will be willing to leave - if the price is right.
"There is definitely room for the government to turn to us and decide what they are giving," he told Army Radio.
The Cabinet approved the withdrawal plan on Sunday, the first time Israel has decided in principle to remove longtime settlements from the West Bank or Gaza.
On Wednesday, the committee overseeing the pullout held its first meeting, setting the timetable. Participants said the schedule could be changed if opposition surfaces.
A government official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Gaza would be "pilot" for further unilateral moves.
Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, a former mayor of Jerusalem, said in an interview published Tuesday in the Jerusalem Post that Israel might cede six Arab neighborhoods.
"Jerusalem is dear to me, but one must not lose sight of proportions over peripheral areas we do not need," said Olmert, who bitterly opposed any division of the city when he was mayor.
Such a stance would mark a dramatic policy shift by Israel, which captured the Arab neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city in 1967 and considers all of Jerusalem to be its capital. Officials in Sharon's office were quoted as saying Olmert's comments were only a "trial balloon."
According to the timetable approved Wednesday, the Cabinet is to vote next February on approving evacuation of settlements. But the process would be in motion months before then.
The voluntary settler evacuation period would begin in August and continue through July 2005.
Entry into the settlements would be banned after Aug, 14, 2005 to stop people from going to protest or block the pullout. Evacuation "by force" of settlers who refuse to leave would take place between Sept. 1 and Sept. 15, 2005.
The timetable also calls for negotiating with international organizations, such as the World Bank, about issues like transferring property. The target date is October 2004.
In Washington, Sharon adviser Zalman Shoval said the houses at the settlements would be destroyed, but the public buildings would remain.
He told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a private research group, that many Israelis did not want to see Palestinian flags flying from homes once occupied by Israeli Jews.
A third section orders the military to begin preparing for the withdrawal this July, and pulling out troops during the last two weeks of September 2005.
Sharon says the pullout will improve Israel's security in the absence of a serious Palestinian negotiating partner. He has largely cut out the Palestinians from the planning process and instead turned to Egypt, which borders Gaza, to help guarantee security in the area after a pullout.
In new violence, a militant from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade was killed in an exchange of fire overnight with Israeli troops in the West Bank town of Jenin, Palestinian security officials said. The group is loosely linked to Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction.
In Gaza violence on Wednesday, a Hamas militant was killed as Israeli troops moved into Palestinian areas, surrounded a house and flattened farmland, Palestinian officials said. The military said soldiers fired after an anti-tank missile was fired at them.
-------- mideast
Two Are Said to Tell of Libyan Plot to Kill Saudi Ruler
June 10, 2004
By PATRICK E. TYLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/international/africa/10LIBY.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 9 - While the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, was renouncing terrorism and negotiating the lifting of sanctions last year, his intelligence chiefs ordered a covert operation to assassinate the ruler of Saudi Arabia and destabilize the oil-rich kingdom, according to statements by two participants in the conspiracy.
Those participants, Abdurahman Alamoudi, an American Muslim leader now in jail in Alexandria, Va., and Col. Mohamed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer in Saudi custody, have given separate statements to American and Saudi officials outlining the plot.
Mr. Alamoudi, has told Federal Bureau of Investigation officials and federal prosecutors that Colonel Qaddafi approved the assassination plan. Mr. Qaddafi's son, in an interview in London, called the accusation "nonsense."
American officials confirm that Mr. Alamoudi and Mr. Ismael have offered detailed accounts of a Libyan plot to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah and that they appear to be credible enough to have launched an American investigation. But the officials said they are still examining the scope of the plot, how far it advanced and whether Colonel Qaddafi was involved. They said the accusations were one reason the United States had not removed Libya from the State Department's list of nations that support terrorism.
On Wednesday, a senior administration official said: "We are fully aware of Libya's significant past involvement with terrorism. Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi has pledged to end Libya's ties with terrorism and cooperate with the United States and our allies in the war on terrorism. We continue to monitor closely Libya's adherence to this pledge."
As a revolutionary who overthrew a monarchy, Colonel Qaddafi has long regarded the Saudi royal family with a degree of contempt. The feeling was often mutual as he charted an erratic course in the Middle East. In recent years, however, Saudi and British diplomats worked behind the scenes to help Libya negotiate an end to sanctions resulting from the Libyan terrorist operation that downed Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.
Mr. Alamoudi's statements were offered in plea negotiations with federal prosecutors that are not complete. He was indicted last October in the United States District Court in Alexandria accused of violating United States sanctions by traveling to Libya and receiving money from Libyan officials.
Under federal guidelines, prosecutors could urge a judge to reduce his prison term in exchange for his statements, criminal lawyers said.
The statements of the two conspirators were described by three people with extensive official knowledge of the case who insisted that they not be identified because information about it remains classified in intelligence and law enforcement channels. Senior officials in the American, British and Saudi governments have been aware of the investigation of the assassination plot for several months.
Colonel Qaddafi and Crown Prince Abdullah clashed at the Arab summit meeting that immediately preceded the war in Iraq. The two leaders exchanged insults in open session, accusing each other of selling out to colonial powers. An indignant Prince Abdullah glared at Colonel Qaddafi and said, "Your lies precede you and your grave is in front of you."
A Libyan terrorist plot, if verified by American, British and Saudi governments who are working in close coordination to investigate it, would undermine Colonel Qaddafi's public pledges that his government has abandoned terrorism. It could also trigger a reinstatement of international sanctions on Libya that were lifted by the United Nations Security Council last September after Colonel Qaddafi's government renounced terrorism, admitted responsibility for the 1988 Pan Am 103 bombing and agreed to pay $10 million compensation to the families.
A senior Bush administration official said that the emergence of convincing evidence that Colonel Qaddafi ordered or condoned an assassination and terror campaign could cause a "180 degree" change of American policy toward Libya.
President Bush has conveyed to the Saudi royal family that he is going to find out what happened in the alleged conspiracy, according to a diplomat.
Mr. Alamoudi has told prosecutors that he twice met with Colonel Qaddafi, in June and August of 2003, to discuss details of the assassination plan, according to people with official access to his statements. In June, Mr. Alamoudi said, Colonel Qaddafi told him, "I want the Crown Prince killed either through assassination or through a coup." By August, according to Mr. Alamoudi's account, Colonel Qaddafi asked why he had not yet seen "heads flying" in the Saudi royal family.
Mr. Alamoudi's account is critical for federal prosecutors because it ties the terrorist plot that has been said to exist to a head of state. For that reason, Mr. Alamoudi has been questioned in great detail about his two meetings with Colonel Qaddafi, including descriptions of the Libyan leader's farm in Sidra, where they reportedly met in June, and of Colonel Qaddafi's office in Tripoli, where they reportedly met in August.
F.B.I. investigators from the Washington field office are trying to arrange meetings with two of Mr. Alamoudi's associates to whom he confided details of the plot as further corroboration.
The first person to provide Saudi, the British and American authorities with an account of a plot was Colonel Ismael, 36, who was captured by Egyptian police after he fled Saudi Arabia last November in an aborted "drop" of $1 million to a team of four Saudi militants who were prepared to attack Prince Abdullah's motorcade with shoulder-fired missiles or grenade launchers, according to his statements.
Colonel Ismael has said that his orders to be operational commander of the plot came from Libyan intelligence chiefs, Abdullah Senoussi and Musa Kussa, both of whom report directly to Colonel Qaddafi, according to the people who described the statements.
F.B.I. and Central Intelligence Agency officers have twice traveled to Saudi Arabia to interview Colonel Ismael. Investigators are said to believe that the account matches that of Mr. Alamoudi and that, taken together, the accounts could form the basis of a criminal indictment against Colonel Qaddafi on charges of leading a conspiracy that included an American citizen, Mr. Alamoudi.
Mr. Kussa played a leading role last fall with American and British intelligence teams to work out a surrender of Libya's illicit weapons programs.
F.B.I. officials have yet to interview the four Saudis who were to carry out the assassination attempt, but Saudi officials said that they would agree to make them available upon receiving a request.
The Saudis were arrested Nov. 27 as they prepared to receive $1 million in cash from Colonel Ismael and a team of Libyan intelligence officers at the Hilton Hotel in Mecca. The hotel overlooks the holiest shrine in Islam. Though two people with access to the statements of Mr. Alamoudi and Colonel Ismael said that the plan to attack Prince Abdullah was to strike his motorcade with armor-piercing missiles or rocket-propelled grenades, a third person said there was a suspicion that the four Saudis arrested in Mecca were going to fire their weapons at Prince Abdullah's apartment, also overlooking the shrine.
In the reported conspiracy, Mr. Alamoudi and Colonel Ismael traveled to London seeking to make contacts among Saudi dissidents through whom they could recruit militants in the kingdom willing to participate in the plot. They distributed more than $2 million in cash in this recruitment drive in London, according to the account of their statements.
Colonel Qaddafi's son, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, described the reported plot as "nonsense" in an interview in London, though he acknowledged that the Libyan intelligence officer, Colonel Ismael, was missing and presumed by Libya to be in Saudi custody.
"I don't know exactly what he is saying in custody, but I can guarantee that nobody asked him to create cells and assassinate people," the young Mr. Qaddafi said.
Mr. Qaddafi said he could not say whether Colonel Ismael was an intelligence officer. "I don't know in fact, but maybe yes and maybe no," he said.
Colonel Qaddafi also indicated that there may have been a "misunderstanding" over Libyan support for what he called "reform" in Saudi Arabia.
"If we support the people who want to reform Saudi Arabia, if doesn't mean we are working against the government," he said.
Mr. Alamoudi, an American citizen living in Falls Church, Va., has been a longtime spokesman for Muslim views in America as founder of the American Muslim Council.
The State Department paid him as a consultant to travel overseas and advocate tolerance and reconciliation among Jews, Christians and Muslims, but was thereafter accused of making statements in support of terrorism.
A person close to Mr. Alamoudi said he believed that Mr. Alamoudi entered into the reported conspiracy because he badly needed money and did not believe that Colonel Qaddafi would carry out the plan to kill Prince Abdullah.
The accusations present a difficult problem for Saudi Arabia, which has suffered a series of major terrorist attacks in the last year, the most recent of which left 22 people dead during a shooting spree by militants in Khobar on the Persian Gulf coast.
Crown Prince Abdullah is said by two officials to be convinced that Colonel Qaddafi was out to kill him and decapitate the Saudi government. But the Saudi leader is also concerned about playing into the hands of American hardliners who might use the case to call for leadership change in Libya, a step that Saudi Arabia would oppose, officials said.
"We are going to really jam Qaddafi over this, but there is no pretext for regime change," the Saudi official said. "What is in our interest is to keep the caged animal in his cage."
Within weeks of the confrontation between Mr. Qaddafi and Crown Prince Abdullah at the Arab summit meeting last March, Mr. Senoussi, one of the Libyan intelligence chiefs, convened the first meeting to plan a campaign against the Saudis, the two participants said.
Present at the meeting was Mr. Alamoudi, who had been summoned from the United States by Mr. Senoussi. Mr. Alamoudi was paired with Colonel Ismael to start making money "drops" in London as part of what was generally described as a "destabilization" campaign, according to persons with access to Mr. Alamoudi's statement.
Mr. Senoussi's instruction remained vague during the initial phase, but when Mr. Alamoudi arrived at Colonel Qaddafi's farm at Sidra in June, the dimensions of the plot escalated greatly, according the people familiar with the statements.
Colonel Qaddafi asked Mr. Senoussi and a Libyan ambassador to leave the room so he could talk privately with Mr. Alamoudi.
"Why do you cooperate with us against the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia?" Colonel Qaddafi said, according to persons with access to Mr. Alamoudi's statement.
"Because I disapprove of what the Crown Prince said to you," Mr. Alamoudi was reported to reply.
After a number of large cash transfers, Mr. Alamoudi traveled to Tripoli in August and stated that, while there, he met again with Colonel Qaddafi.
"How come I haven't seen anything? How come I have not seen heads flying?" Colonel Qaddafi reportedly demanded?
Mr. Alamoudi briefed him on how plans were progressing.
In early August, Mr. Alamoudi was arrested at Heathrow Airport carrying $340,000 in cash that he later said he had received from a Libyan intelligence officer. British officials confiscated the cash and interrogated Mr. Alamoudi, who said he had accepted the money from the World Islamic Call Society, a Libyan-backed charity.
Mr. Alamoudi boarded a flight from London to Washington Dulles airport in late September, he was arrested upon landing.
He was later indicted accused of violating United States sanctions by traveling to Libya and by receiving funds from Libyan officials.
Colonel Ismael has freely spoken about the plot, according to persons familiar with his statement. During one F.B.I. interrogation, he was asked whether he had been tortured or abused in detention. He replied that he had been treated well and that he wanted to apply for political asylum, because he assumed that if he returns to Libya, he will be killed, the people said.
-------- nato
Leaders Dispute NATO Role in Iraq
Chirac's Rejection of Bush Idea Hints at Summit's Underlying Tensions
By Glenn Kessler and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29434-2004Jun9?language=printer
SAVANNAH, Ga., June 9 -- France and the United States clashed anew over Iraq on Wednesday, jarring the Group of Eight summit that the Bush administration had hoped would bury the diplomatic battles of the past.
Just hours after President Bush expressed hope that NATO could play an expanded role in providing security for Iraq, French President Jacques Chirac emphatically rejected the idea. "I do not think that it is NATO's job to intervene in Iraq," Chirac told reporters in a videoconference from Sea Island, the private resort where the leaders have gathered. "Moreover, I do not have the feeling that it would be either timely or necessarily well understood," said Chirac, adding that he had "strong reservations on this initiative."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a guest at the summit, later echoed Chirac's concern. Asked whether NATO, which includes Turkey as a member, should have a role in Iraq, Erdogan said: "The concept we've been emphasizing is the role of the United Nations."
The dispute hinted at the tensions simmering beneath the surface of the summit. The administration is eager to capitalize on the unanimous passage Tuesday of a U.N. Security Council resolution recognizing the interim Iraqi government, and it has pressed for agreements here on a range of issues, including Bush's signature effort to promote democracy in the Middle East. But officials from other nations said they reluctantly accepted some of the administration's ideas, and then only in watered-down or otherwise revised form.
Bush also failed to win support from the other leaders for writing off the vast majority of Iraq's $120 billion in debt, after France and Germany balked at giving the new Iraqi government a discount of more than 50 percent, officials said.
Leaders of the G-8 countries -- which also include Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan and Russia -- met in the relaxed setting of the private island off the coast of Georgia. All the leaders but Chirac were tieless as they arrived at the sessions in golf carts decked in national colors.
The dispute over NATO's role with Iraq came on a day on which the Bush administration had sought to showcase unity over its plans for Iraq and for the region. Bush was host of a lunch for G-8 leaders and the leaders of seven countries from what the G-8 calls the broader Middle East and North Africa -- Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Turkey, Algeria, Afghanistan and Iraq -- to highlight the administration's plans to spread democracy in Islamic countries.
The formal text of the plan, released Wednesday, said the G-8 would create a forum for discussions on reform with leaders of business and civil society in the region, among other initiatives. Leaders of key countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco spurned Bush's lunch invitation.
After lunch, Bush held his first meeting with Ghazi Yawar, the new interim Iraqi president.
"I really never thought I'd be sitting next to an Iraqi president of a free country a year and a half ago, and here you are," Bush said. Hailing the U.N. Security Council's new resolution on Iraq, an emotional Bush reiterated his intention for a "transfer of full sovereignty" to Iraq, adding: "It's been a proud day for me."
Yawar, in white headdress and brown robe, thanked Americans for "the sacrifices" endured during the war in Iraq and said Iraqis are "determined to have a free, democratic, federal Iraq." He assured Bush that "we are moving in steady steps towards it."
Bush had unexpectedly raised the question of a NATO role after meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the morning. He said he had discussed NATO's involvement in Iraq over breakfast with Blair, "and we believe NATO ought to be involved." He added that he understood that "there is going to be constraints" and "a lot of NATO countries are not in a position to commit any more troops."
NATO, which operates on consensus, will hold a summit later this month in Istanbul, and a senior administration official briefing reporters on the Bush-Blair session said the two agreed to explore this question in the weeks leading up to the summit. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity before Chirac spoke, said the French and Germans have "expressed strong reluctance" about sending troops to Iraq but "they have not been quite as categorical about NATO's role in Iraq."
Sixteen of the 26 NATO members have troops in Iraq; NATO provides some logistical help for a Polish-led division there.
But NATO officials have privately said there is little chance for a significantly expanded role anytime soon. NATO has taken over the multilateral force in Afghanistan with great difficulty -- efforts to send six Dutch Apache helicopters to Kabul were stymied until Luxembourg came up with the money, for instance -- and NATO officials said the alliance cannot play a major role in Iraq until it completes its mission in Afghanistan.
Chirac took other opportunities to needle the administration. He said he told Bush and the other leaders about his "concern and thoughts" that the large U.S. budget and trade deficits may hurt currency markets and push up interest rates. He also warned that efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East ran the risk of backfiring.
"We must stand ready to help. But we must also take care not to provoke," Chirac said. "For that would be to risk feeding extremism and falling into the fatal trap of the clash of civilizations: precisely what we wish to avoid."
Echoing a common European complaint about the administration's approach, Chirac said the Arab world did not need "missionaries" of democracy. Instead, he said, conflicts such as the long-running struggle between Israelis and Palestinians must be addressed.
"The conflicts ravaging the region are today the paramount obstacles to its development," Chirac said. "We must take measure of the resentments and frustrations from one end of the Arab world to the other, fueled by the daily spectacle of violence and humiliation in places so laden with history and symbols."
In addition to the democracy initiative for the Middle East, the G-8 leaders adopted and released a long list of agreements and "action plans," including plans to accelerate global trade negotiations, eliminate poverty through entrepreneurship, provide greater security in international travel and stop the spread of nuclear proliferation.
Administration officials said the proliferation plan was especially significant because it built on a speech earlier this year by Bush and included an agreement to stop the transfer of nuclear reprocessing technology to new nations for a year. But some experts said the plan was relatively modest and had been watered down to win agreement from the other nations.
"The administration set overly modest goals and I don't think they achieved those goals," said Robert J. Einhorn, who was a senior nonproliferation official in the Clinton administration.
--------
Bush: New NATO Troops in Iraq Not Likely
By TOM RAUM
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 4:15 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31929-2004Jun10.html
SAVANNAH, Ga. - President Bush said Thursday it is unrealistic to expect NATO to send more troops to Iraq but suggested European countries might expand their role by training Iraqi forces.
"I don't expect more troops from NATO to be offered up. That is an unrealistic expectation," Bush said at a news conference concluding a three-day summit of the Group of Eight powerful countries.
A U.N. Security Council resolution on Iraq approved earlier this week will have the "practical effect" of allowing the leaders of countries with troops already in Iraq to persuade their governments to keep them there, Bush said.
French President Jacques Chirac, who had a one-on-one meeting with Bush on the summit's final day, has expressed reservations about deploying further soldiers from NATO in Iraq, as has German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Asked about a Justice Department memo that said the United States could use torture to interrogate prisoners in the war on terror, Bush said that he cannot recall if he saw the memo.
The president said that his instructions for interrogations were to "conform to U.S. law" and to act "consistent with international treaty obligations."
"What I authorized was staying within U.S. law," said Bush.
Photos of Iraqi prisoners being abused by U.S. soldiers have raised questions about whether the Bush administration's rules on interrogations created too lax of an environment.
The president also said the United States was looking into whether Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's intelligence chiefs had ordered a covert assassination attempt on Saudi Arabia's ruler.
"We're going to make sure we fully understand the veracity of the plot line," Bush said. "And so we're looking into it."
The United States has begun slowly warming up to Libya after it renounced ambitions for nuclear weapons, but has not renewed diplomatic ties.
On Iraq, Bush said he expected that a disagreement that surfaced among the G-8 countries over an expanded role for NATO will be resolved before a NATO summit in Turkey at the end of this month.
He suggested any expanded role for NATO would focus on training Iraqi forces to keep peace in the country.
-------- pakistan / india
Militant's Defiance Puts Pakistan's Resolve in Doubt
June 10, 2004
By DAVID ROHDE and MOHAMMED KHAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/international/asia/10bord.html?pagewanted=all&position=
ESHAWAR, Pakistan - A brash 27-year-old Taliban fighter named Nek Muhammad is the talk of the town in this famed border city, long a haven for adventurers, rogues and revolutionaries. His defiance raises a central question in the American-led drive against terrorism: is President Pervez Musharraf doing all he can to hunt down Osama bin Laden?
Mr. Muhammad soared to national prominence on March 18, when Pakistani forces surrounded what General Musharraf had called a "high-value target" near Mr. Muhammad's home in the remote tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Suspicions rose that a top leader of Al Qaeda might have been encircled after Pakistani forces had tried to raid Mr. Muhammad's house and met unexpectedly stiff resistance.
At the time, General Musharraf vowed to hunt for hundreds of foreign militants, possibly including Mr. bin Laden, who are believed to be hiding in the border area. But for the last few months Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas have been suspended as General Musharraf's government has negotiated with Mr. Muhammad.
Pakistani officials say they remain committed to driving all foreign militants from the tribal areas, although now they are trying to end the standoff peacefully. Mehmood Shah, chief of security in the tribal areas, said in a recent interview that negotiations were worthwhile but that the Pakistani government was deploying troops and preparing for a military offensive.
At dawn on Wednesday, militants launched surprise attacks on two army posts with mortars, rockets and machine guns, killing at least 13 Pakistani soldiers and scouts, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. Mr. Shah declined to comment on the number of government casualties, but said at least six militants had been killed, including three believed to be Uzbeks and Chechens. The posts, six miles apart, border the Shakai Valley, where hundreds of foreign militants are believed to be hiding, officials said.
On Thursday, gunmen attacked the motorcade of the army commander in Karachi, killing at least two policemen and a civilian, a security official and a doctor told the Reuters news agency. A security official, who did not want to be identified, said it was unclear whether the commander had been hurt.
One Pakistani military official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the government was taking advantage of the American focus on Iraq to delay acting in the tribal areas. The official said the government hoped to wait out American demands for action until the presidential election was over and American attention and pressure might drop.
Militants, meanwhile, continue to use the area as a haven, a recruiting base and an incubator, according to Afghan officials and Western diplomats. After slumping in late March during fighting around Wana, attacks by suspected Taliban in Afghanistan have returned to previous levels.
Mr. Muhammad's compound was raided in March after he appeared in a DVD used to recruit militants, and promised to protect foreign fighters.
"They have fought a jihad against the Russians and before them the British," Mr. Muhammad declared. "Now that the Americans are here we will wage jihad against them."
After the initial clash at Mr. Muhammad's compound, a pitched battle ensued. House-to-house fighting raged near the town of Wana; militants ambushed government convoys in outlying areas; and rockets were fired into Peshawar. The government appeared to be facing an open rebellion in the tribal areas.
Several days later, the army declared a successful end to the operation. But the "high-value target," if there ever had been one, escaped. Other wanted militants, including Mr. Muhammad, slipped away too.
All told, at least 60 soldiers and another 60 militants died in the fighting, including eight soldiers whom the militants executed after their capture. After the clashes, many expected a crushing military response from General Musharraf, who narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in December thought to have been ordered by Al Qaeda.
Instead, his government started negotiating with Mr. Muhammad, a small, photogenic young man whose long jet-black hair and beard give him the air of a revolutionary. Pro-government tribesmen call him a common criminal who is paid enormous amounts of money by the foreign militants they say he shelters.
After several weeks of negotiations, Pakistani officials announced that a deal had been reached. In a moment of tribal theater on April 24, a Pakistani Army corps commander flew to the remote village of Shakai to accept the surrender of Mr. Muhammad and four other wanted Pakistani militants.
Mr. Muhammad and his brethren presented the corps commander with a Kalashnikov rifle, a pistol and a rusted sword. They then promised to live peacefully and not use Pakistani soil to carry out attacks on neighboring countries. In return, the corps commander pardoned all of them, including Mr. Muhammad. Minutes after the conclusion of the ceremony, Mr. Muhammad appeared to backtrack. He told Pakistani journalists that he would continue to wage jihad, said no foreigners were hiding in the area and professed his loyalty to the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Muhammad Omar.
He also later disavowed a central tenet of the deal. Government officials said Mr. Muhammad had agreed that all foreigners in the tribal areas would register with the government within six days. Mr. Muhammad said no such agreement had been reached.
In the weeks since Mr. Muhammad's "surrender," not a single foreigner has registered, according to Pakistani officials. Some officials in Washington, while continuing to publicly support General Musharraf, have privately expressed concern that Pakistan is backtracking in the hunt for Mr. bin Laden.
Militants continue to recruit. In recent weeks a new professionally produced Pashto-language recruiting DVD has begun circulating in the tribal areas. The DVD features computer graphics and crisp, well-shot digital images of the March battle in Wana, taken from the perspective of the militants. As the narrator assails General Musharraf for "allying with the infidels," burning Pakistani Army convoys, dead Pakistani soldiers and heroic-looking militants flash across the screen.
For 35 minutes, images of American soldiers abusing Iraqis, Israeli soldiers abusing Palestinians and Pakistani soldiers abusing Pakistani civilians are weaved into a mosaic. The DVD concludes with a one-line message: "Let's wage jihad."
New Clashes in Afghanistan By The New York Times
KABUL, Afghanistan, June 9 - In a second large-scale clash in less than a week in southern Afghanistan, American military officials said Wednesday that United States marines and Afghan government troops had killed about 20 suspected Taliban fighters in combat in Oruzgan Province on Tuesday. They said two Americans, two Afghans and one interpreter had been wounded.
The announcement came five days after American officials said 17 Taliban had been killed in a remote area that straddles Kandahar and Zabul Provinces, next to Oruzgan. The recent clashes are the most serious involving American forces in Afghanistan in months.
[About 20 "armed terrorists" gunned down Chinese workers at a construction site in Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least 10, Reuters reported, quoting China's official New China News Agency said. The attack occurred on a Chinese aid project in the northern province of Kunduz, the New China News Agency said. The cause of the attack was not known but China has pledged to help Afghanistan rebuild a major irrigation project near Kabul.]
The heavy military engagements in the south come amid a surge in attacks by suspected Taliban across Afghanistan. In the last eight days, among other incidents, a police chief was assassinated in the eastern city of Jalalabad on June 1, five aid workers were killed in the northwestern province of Baghdis on June 2 and a United Nations convoy carrying 15 election workers was attacked near the city of Khost on June 6.
-------- prisoners of war
U.S. Halves Prisoner Numbers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib
reuters
By Alistair Lyon
Jun 10, 2004
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=MPOQLMXVNDBYCCRBAEZSFEY?type=topNews&storyID=5391463&pageNumber=1
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military has halved the number of Iraqi prisoners held at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail since March, either through releases or transfers to other detention centers, a Red Cross spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is anxious to ensure that people detained by U.S.-led forces do not remain in legal limbo after the occupation formally ends on June 30 and an interim Iraqi government takes over.
"No one should be left in a vacuum, not knowing his legal status," spokeswoman Nada Doumani said.
In its latest visit to Abu Ghraib, at the heart of a scandal over the abuse of prisoners by U.S. forces, an ICRC team found 3,291 internees, including three women and 22 boys under 18, compared to 6,527 in March.
"We have no precise information on how many have been freed and how many transferred elsewhere," Doumani said.
She declined to comment on conditions at Abu Ghraib, but said the ICRC had discussed them with the prison director after its visit, conducted between May 30 and June 3. She said the ICRC would soon hand a working paper to U.S. Major-General Geoffrey Miller, in charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq.
A similar ICRC report, leaked in May, cataloged abuses at Abu Ghraib, some of which it said were "tantamount to torture."
The ICRC, which confirmed the report's authenticity, normally keeps its findings confidential because it believes it can get greater access to prisoners and do more good by reserving its reports for the authorities concerned.
Six U.S. soldiers face possible courts martial and one has already been jailed for a year over the abuses at Abu Ghraib, where photographs have shown detainees being sexually humiliated, physically tormented, and threatened with dogs.
FATE OF PRISONERS
U.S. officials have pledged to cut prisoner numbers at Abu Ghraib to about 2,000 by June 30. President Bush has offered to tear down the jail, which was also infamous in Saddam Hussein's era, and fund construction of a replacement.
Saddam is among a few dozen people still held in Iraq as prisoners of war by U.S. forces that invaded last year to oust him and destroy still undiscovered weapons of mass destruction.
Prisoners of war are normally released once hostilities are over, according to the Geneva Conventions.
The United States has said Saddam and his aides will be handed over to Iraqi authorities for trial.
Doumani said they could be turned over to face penal proceedings as civilians, provided there was a commitment by Iraqi authorities to give them judicial guarantees.
Most of the thousands of detainees interned by U.S.-led forces have been seized for "anti-coalition activities." They are usually detained for up to six months or until the U.S. military decides they are no longer a security threat.
A U.S.-led multinational force will still be able to detain people in Iraq after June 30 for "compelling security reasons," according to a letter from Secretary of State Colin Powell that is attached to a new U.N. Security Council resolution.
The resolution itself, adopted on Tuesday, does not spell out what happens to U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, their inmates or any new detainees after the handover.
Doumani said the new government could cede powers to the multinational force by agreement, but anyone held by foreign troops in the Iraq conflict would be entitled at least to the protections offered by the Geneva Conventions.
"The important thing is that no one should stay in a legal limbo. Their judicial rights must be assured," she declared.
-------- spies
INTELLIGENCE
Despite a Pledge to Speed Work, Fixing an Internal Problem Takes Time at the C.I.A.
June 10, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/politics/10inte.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 9 - The Central Intelligence Agency has yet to put in place a plan to address what senior officials have described as a major flaw in its operations, despite a pledge four months ago that the problem would be resolved within 30 days.
The problem, which contributed to errors in the agency's prewar estimates on Iraq, is rooted in practices that severely limit how much information about human sources is shared with analysts who produce intelligence assessments, according to senior intelligence officials.
In a Feb. 11 speech, a senior C.I.A. official, Jami Miscik, described the problem as an example of "imperfections in our system" and said that George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, had given subordinates 30 days "to devise a permanent and lasting solution." But on Wednesday, a senior intelligence official said that a team headed by the agency's executive director, A. B. Krongard, had only recently carried out a pilot program that had not yet been adopted broadly.
The difficulty of working out a solution reflects a deep gulf between the C.I.A.'s operations directorate, which recruits and supervises spies around the world and is always sensitive about revealing information that might endanger them, and the intelligence directorate, which is in charge of sifting through raw intelligence from spies, satellites and eavesdropping devices and drawing broad conclusions from it.
In the case of Iraq, senior intelligence officials have said, analysts who produced reports stating that Iraq possessed illicit weapons did so without knowing that some of the central charges came from defectors linked to exile organizations that were promoting an American invasion, including Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Much of the information that Mr. Chalabi's organization provided to the United States and to news organizations including The New York Times now appears to have been wrong, exaggerated or fabricated, according to internal reviews by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Intelligence Council, an interagency group charged with putting forward a consensus on matters important to national security that reports to Mr. Tenet.
In these and other cases, the prewar assessments about Iraq's illicit weapons were based on reports from intelligence sources who did not have firsthand information about what they described. That fact, too, was sometimes known to intelligence officers but rarely shared with intelligence analysts, according to senior intelligence officials.
In her speech in February, Ms. Miscik said that "the biggest lesson" to have emerged from apparent missteps in the agency's prewar assessments on Iraq was "the importance of getting the analyst as much information as possible about a source's access."
"Analysts can no longer be put in a position of making a judgment on a critical issue without a full and comprehensive understanding of the source's access to the information on which they are reporting," Ms. Miscik said in the speech to intelligence analysts at the agency. The promise of a quick change in procedures was reported at the time.
A former Defense Intelligence Agency official, Marc Garlasco, said the problem outlined by Ms. Miscik extended into his agency as well. "The problem is that information going to the analysts is not properly put into context," said Mr. Garlasco, who is now a senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch.
A senior intelligence official who described the review underway at the C.I.A. said that a working group had "developed an approach to expanding and institutionalizing the practice of getting to analysts the operational details they need to do their jobs better. The working group has recently set up a pilot program. We will be monitoring it to ensure that it is effective before expanding it more broadly."
Although intelligence estimates before the American invasion last year said that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons, no evidence of such weapons has been found in more than a year, as American inspectors have scoured the country.
Under longstanding arrangements that Ms. Miscik said would change, the directorate of operations typically shields information about the identity, motivations and even access to information of its sources from the directorate of intelligence. The reports produced by the operations directorate typically identify sources only by numbers or code words and assess their credibility only in bland, generic terms, often without sharing details about sources' motivation or their precise access to information.
In her speech, Ms. Miscik did not cite specific examples in which problems involving inadequate sharing of information had led to mistakes in the prewar intelligence on Iraq. But she said an internal review had found cases in which a single source had been described in different ways, so that an analyst might believe that information came from multiple sources.
A senior intelligence official said this week that the recently announced departures of Mr. Tenet and James L. Pavitt, the deputy director for operations, had contributed to delays in working out the new arrangement on intelligence sharing.
As described by Ms. Miscik, a team assembled by Mr. Krongard was directed by Mr. Tenet "to ensure that significant breakthroughs are made quickly" to resolve the information-sharing problem. In the speech, Ms. Miscik described Mr. Pavitt as having been "an advocate of information-sharing," but former intelligence officials say the directorate of operations has continued to resist the idea of more widely sharing information for fear that its sources might be endangered.
"When it comes to foreign intelligence, there should be no such thing as D.I. and D.O. information; it is agency information," Ms. Miscik said in the speech. "We are not brushing aside the agency's duty to protect sources and methods, but barriers to sharing information must be removed."
The flawed intelligence that contributed to prewar assessments on Iraq included claims from a defector who was identified as early as May 2002 as a fabricator by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, reports based on his debriefings arranged by the Iraqi National Congress found their way into documents and speeches, including Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation in February 2003 to the United Nations Security Council, which laid out the case for war.
According to senior administration officials, Mr. Powell has been seeking explanations from the C.I.A. about that episode and others. They include the fact that serious questions have now been raised about the veracity of not only that source, but three others that Mr. Powell cited in the United Nations speech as having told American intelligence that Iraq possessed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons, a claim now widely doubted within American intelligence agencies.
-------- un
U.N. to Keep Distance in Iraq Because of Safety Fears
By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29662-2004Jun9.html
UNITED NATIONS, June 9 -- The day after the U.N. Security Council unanimously granted the United Nations a "leading role" in building democratic institutions in Iraq, wary officials of the world body were asking one another what will happen if bombs continue to explode.
A deadly terrorist attack on its headquarters drove the United Nations from Iraq last August, forcing the organization to operate largely from outside the country and shaking the confidence of U.N. staff. Now, the Security Council has set a task that some U.N. officials said they will accept more from duty than desire.
"There is enormous trepidation at every conceivable level. We're not even at the point where we have secure facilities for Iraqi staff," said one well-connected U.N. worker who explained that the organization also faces formidable logistical challenges. "There's a real question about how fast the U.N. can respond."
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell committed the Bush administration to establishing or supporting a force of 4,000 to 5,000 troops to protect U.N. workers. A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that no countries have yet agreed to take up arms on the organization's behalf.
The bulk of the United Nations' foreign staff will continue to be based outside Iraq for safety reasons, said a senior adviser to Secretary General Kofi Annan. The organization expects to depend more than usual on approximately 600 Iraqi employees able to work less obtrusively than foreigners who have been targeted by guerrillas.
The effectiveness of the United Nations in bridging Iraqi political divides and helping to stage national elections by the end of January will depend, said another top official, "on how the security situation evolves and whether the spoilers try to spoil. Security is the major constraint."
The reaction of U.N. staff members after Tuesday's vote illustrates the difficulties ahead as the U.S. administration seeks to broaden international participation in Iraq's transition. Mindful of reluctance abroad to send personnel to Iraq, the White House hopes the imminent transfer of limited authority to Iraqis will combine with U.S. military operations to quiet a violent insurgency.
Meanwhile, as U.N. planners studied the implications of the council's endorsement of the interim Iraqi government and the beginnings of a U.S. exit strategy, officials in Baghdad and Washington sought Wednesday to extinguish a brush fire over Iraq's constitution.
Kurdish and Shiite Arab leaders are arguing over a section of Iraq's interim constitution, approved in March, that allows voters in any three provinces to nullify a permanent constitution by a two-thirds vote. The provision, designed to protect the Kurdish minority, is considered unfair by some Shiite politicians who fear being handicapped by a Kurdish veto.
Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani, Iraq's two most prominent Kurdish politicians, warned in a letter to President Bush this week that Kurds would refuse to participate in the central government if the Shiites do not honor the March agreement. Two weeks ago, the Kurds similarly threatened to pull out of the interim government unless they received more prominent cabinet assignments. The tactic succeeded.
At a news briefing in New York, U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said both sides have legitimate concerns. He expressed confidence that the Kurdish leaders want to be "full partners" in Iraq's future and said they deserve a promise that their rights as a minority will be respected. He said the Shiites, by the same token, are right to want an assurance that Kurds seeking autonomy will not deliver a blanket veto.
After nearly a year when the United Nations was forced to limit its presence in Iraq to protect the safety of its workers, the Bush administration's newfound willingness to relinquish control and the Security Council's passage of the latest resolution appears likely to create a larger U.N. role.
As Brahimi told reporters, "The United Nations cannot say no to helping the Iraqis recover their sovereignty, no matter how difficult, no matter how complicated. . . . We accept those risks if the work we are asked to do is important enough to warrant the risks."
That issue was much debated in the corridors of the United Nations after the Aug. 19 bombing, which killed U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others. The attack shocked the world body, which had focused on humanitarian deeds after the Security Council refused to endorse the U.S.-led invasion. Feelings ran high that U.N. employees were enduring too much danger in return for marginal influence.
With that equation shifting, one challenge for the United Nations is to define a role that has long been vague. The principal effort laid out in the resolution is to help assemble a political conference to be held in July and prepare for elections to a national assembly by the end of January.
U.N. experts are also expected to help plan a comprehensive census, advise on the drafting of a permanent constitution and offer wisdom on government services, judicial reform and human rights. Money is not a problem, U.N. officials said, but the ability to put together an effective staff and operate inside Iraq remains to be seen. One worry in the corridors is that the Security Council's expectations are unrealistic.
The Annan adviser reported that even some Iraqi staff members have been threatened and have moved from their homes to locations they consider safer.
"I don't think we put a lot of people in there," he said.
Staff writer Robin Wright in Washington contributed to this report.
-------- us
Document warns Guantanamo employees not to talk
USA TODAY
By Toni Locy
6/10/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-06-10-gitmo-gag_x.htm?POE=click-refer
WASHINGTON - Military and civilian employees at the U.S. prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were warned recently not to talk with attorneys who represent detainees held there, according to a document prepared by the legal office of the Army-led task force that runs the facility.
The document, obtained by USA TODAY, says that soldiers and interrogators are not required to give defense attorneys statements about the "personal treatment of detainees" or any "failure to report actions of others." It also says that refusing to cooperate with defense attorneys "will not impact your career."
The warning - titled "Interaction with Defense Counsel" - has surfaced at a time when the treatment of the nearly 600 detainees at Guantanamo is under scrutiny because of the abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqis in U.S. custody at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, former commander at Guantanamo, went to Iraq last year to share interrogation techniques used in Cuba.
A Defense Department spokesman said the document was aimed at ensuring that Guantanamo employees "know what their rights are." The spokesman said the references to detainee treatment are "relevant examples that make such training better."
Military law analysts and human rights advocates agree that Guantanamo employees should be advised against making incriminating statements. But they say the advice should be neutral.
The document "suggests that there is something that needs to be hidden" about how detainees are being treated, says Scott Silliman, a Duke University law professor and a former Air Force lawyer. "It suggests that the default should be: Don't talk."
Gary Solis, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, says he gave similar advice to witnesses when he was a military prosecutor. "There's no impropriety," says Solis, who teaches law at Georgetown University. But "the context of this advice gives the appearance of encouraging (people) to be less than forthcoming."
The Pentagon has been secretive about interrogation tactics at Guantanamo, where suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives have been held for more than two years.
President Bush has designated six Guantanamo detainees for trial by military tribunal. Four have been assigned military defense lawyers, who want to question interrogators, soldiers and other detainees. The lawyers want to explore whether evidence against their clients was gathered through abusive tactics. Three of the six detainees have been charged.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
A Scare
Capitol Cleared Over Errant Small Plane
Kentucky Governor's Craft Had Special Permission, but Transponder Was Broken
By John Mintz and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28863-2004Jun9.html
The U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court were briefly -- and dramatically -- evacuated yesterday when an unidentified plane was reported entering restricted air space about 40 minutes before the jet carrying the remains of former president Ronald Reagan was to land at Andrews Air Force Base.
Legislators and staff members working in the Capitol heard an emergency warning through the building intercom at 4:37 p.m., saying they should exit immediately and get as far away as they could.
Scores of members of Congress and thousands of staffers poured out the doors as police officers shouted, "This is not a drill!"
As they fled, some people dropped briefcases and women flung off high heels. Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), said police told people to "run, get out of the Capitol," because of the "imminent" approach of an airplane.
Nearby on the Mall, U.S. Park Police and Capitol Police ordered people to flee. "Do not stop," officers yelled. "Keep moving."
"Ladies and gentlemen, let's move like our lives depend on it. I mean it!" a D.C. police officer screamed.
F-16 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters were sent to intercept the errant twin-engine turboprop plane. It turned out to be a Kentucky State Police aircraft ferrying newly elected Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, to Washington for Reagan's funeral.
Such small aircraft have generally been off limits at Reagan National Airport since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But officials said the Kentucky plane was one of several given special permission from the Federal Aviation Administration to land at National for the funeral.
The plane's transponder, which signals its identifying information to ground controllers, was broken, said Brian Roehrkasse, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security.
Officials at the FAA command center in Herndon feared that the transponder could have been turned off by a pilot being hijacked, as a distress signal to ground controllers -- or by terrorists trying to disguise the aircraft's identity.
When the plane was about 15 miles southwest of the airport, controllers sounded an alert, FAA spokesman Greg Martin said.
Pilots in the military aircraft identified the Kentucky plane in the air, about eight miles from the airport. The Black Hawks escorted it to the airport runway.
In Washington, the emergency evacuation was called off at 5:08 p.m. "It took a few minutes to sort out the plane was not a threat," Roehrkasse said. "Out of an abundance of caution, security measures were put into place, including the evacuation of the Capitol."
--------
Seeding Security in the Heartland
By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 2:16 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A31501-2004Jun10?language=printer
Cincinnati is the first metropolitan area to be picked for a new Department of Homeland Security program aimed at helping state and local governments identify technologies to aid in homeland security efforts.
The program, called the Regional Technology Integration Initiative (RTI), was unveiled on Monday and is intended to help governments assess how selected urban regions are doing with emergency preparedness and response plans and to test and implement readily available technology products to help improve security. Three more regions have been selected for the $10 million initiative and will be named in coming weeks, according to Donald Tighe, spokesman for the DHS's Science & Technology directorate, which is managing RTI.
"These initial locations will provide the science and technology community with a realistic environment to test maturing hardware and concepts. The program will also provide information of how best to choose, deploy and manage these technologies to strengthen the security posture of these and other communities," the DHS said in a statement. As UPI put it in its coverage of the program, RTI will "help local governments gain access to cutting edge security technology.
RTI is being funded initially with a relatively small $10 million from DHS's science and technology budget, but government contractors are advised to take the opportunity seriously, since products vetted by this effort could wind up being recommended to local governments around the country. As Information Week noted, the $10 million will help the four regions spot "private-sector technology that can quickly make an impact on efforts to combat terrorism and neutralize biological or chemical attacks, says a Homeland Security Department spokesman. 'The goal here is not for the cities to develop the technologies themselves but to look to technology already being developed by industry,' he says. Researchers and scientists will then conduct internal research regarding the effectiveness of technology available and issue reports that can be disseminated to other cities for their own homeland security programs."
Federal Computer Week explained more about how funding will trickle down: "Once the assessments are complete, DHS officials will determine funding for the actual deployment of technologies in each area. The initiative will be closely tied to other technology-related programs at the department, such as the Safecom wireless interoperability initiative. "DHS will provide assistance at all levels for the state and local officials in each area -- including technical and management assistance, potential upgrades for any local baseline technology needs -- but the local governments must be willing to serve as test beds for many advanced and unproven technologies. Local officials must also be willing to find other sources of funding to implement and sustain any solutions developed as part of the testing, according to department officials."
RTI will be integrated with other DHS efforts beyond Safecom, Washington Technology reported, including the Urban Area Security Initiative grants program and the National Incident Management System. More funding "for deployment of technology systems will be determined based on the results of the initial studies," the article said.
The DHS has published a fact sheet about the program on its Web site.
A Win For Queen City
So why was Cincinnati picked first? DHS undersecretary Charles McQueary said it's partly due to the city's new 40,000-square-foot emergency operations center, according to a Cincinnati Enquirer news article. More from the newspaper's report: "About $500,000 will be spent to build a sleek, mission-control-like operating pit with giant video screens and rows of computer stations where analysts will work year-round to assess local terror threats and study ways to beef up security at potential targets, such as high-rise buildings. Another reason for choosing Cincinnati is the research already being conducted at the National Homeland Security Research Center, based at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency offices on Martin Luther King Drive in Corryville."
More from FCW on how the DHS envisions the pilot program providing a blueprint for other parts of the country: Cincinnati and the other three regions were chosen "because the lessons learned there will be applicable in locations nationwide with similar characteristics, according to DHS officials. The areas were also chosen because they are participating in the Urban Area Security Initiatives (UASI) grant program and have already started putting in place an infrastructure and organization that can support new technologies."
"Proven Track Records"
DHS's Tighe talked with washingtonpost.com yesterday about the DHS's new regional technology program. The DHS's Science & Technology directorate has an emergency preparedness and response group, which will oversee the RTI program. An edited Q&A follows:
What is the basic idea of this program?
Tighe: "[For] first responders, we do a lot of work in helping communities in general apply what is available [technology-wise] right now. The ongoing central homeland security grants program ... is focused on getting communities what they need ... and helping them with funding and to know what to buy. We've put out standards for personal protective gear. This helps give them a guideline from a national point of view. Eight billion dollars has already gone to states and localities for helping them to procure the training and equipment. ... In between those two things -- HSARPA [DHS's Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency] and the ongoing real-time homeland security grants -- is this project, RTI."
How were the four regions selected?
"They were selected because they have proven track records of effective regional cooperation. ... But they've also done a very good job of demonstrating a willingness to search for and implement technology. ... There is some technology that is not yet at the market but is near readiness that this RTI is going to help through. Really, these four regional efforts are meant to develop models for quicker adoption ... and integrate them into the current system.
"The regions that have been selected already participate in the Homeland Security Urban Area Security Initiative grant program, which is for areas that have a heightened need for robust homeland security programs."
Can you explain more about how the participation in the Urban Area Security Initiative influenced the department's choice of four cities for the RTI awards?
"We had seen a track record of how they [the cities] would apply for homeland security grants and how they demonstrated regional cooperation across jurisdictions and an ability to combine their ongoing response capability with the new capabilities of their [systems]."
Why has only Cincinnati been named so far?
"They have [all] been selected. Cincinnati was fully cooked. ... The others are just finalizing the aspects of the operating agreements and they are all far along."
Has it been hard for state and local governments to find technology products and services on their own? Is that a problem this initiative is aiming to address?
"The assessment of need is part of the program because there is going to be collaboration with the local leadership. The initial part of the program is the assessment phase ... meeting with first responders, medical personnel, state and local leadership, making sure that we receive their guidance. ... And it is beyond the cities. It is a regional approach. ... Cincinnati, for example, is a very significant ... river port. ... The lessons learned from this Regional Technology Integration Initiative are to come up with on two levels -- lessons learned and the best practices to other cities and regions across the country."
How will the success of this pilot program be measured?
"We will have benchmarks, reports, measurable progress and best practices and lessons learned. A sister-city [program is planned]."
How long is the program planned for?
"Roughly two years. It will expand to other communities. So in two years, it won't end, but during the rest of this year and beginning of next year, we will be working in cooperation with state and local leaders in the assessment phase. The integration phase will span from 2005 to 2006."
How will these pilot locations give the science and technology community an environment to test hardware and concepts?
"This is going to be stuff that is already functioning. It is going to allow scientists and tech experts and engineers to help in analyzing gaps ... and finding and delivering the technology and implementing the lessons learned. ... This is a $10 million project which includes all four regions. But it is not a new grant-making mechanism. That money will support the integration of scientists and experts into a collaborative evaluation."
What contractors are participating or will take part in the effort?
"It's up to the specific locations. ... We will be working with national labs as well as colleges and universities."
The Honeymoon Is Over For Accenture
Accenture Ltd. was the talk of contracting circles last week when it was awarded the huge U.S. Visit contract, a high-tech border security program that could wind up costing $10 billion. Well, the celebrations are getting cut short pretty quick. A House committee yesterday voted to block the contract award. The Chicago Tribune said the vote is "intended to punish the company for incorporating in Bermuda to reduce its U.S. tax burden. Reflecting rising concern in Washington about U.S. businesses moving abroad, the amendment also would prohibit other companies that have incorporated overseas from participating in U.S. government contracts." Accenture says it pays taxes on work it does in the U.S.
The Wall Street Journal had more details on the congressional action yesterday: "The House Appropriations Committee approved a $32 billion Homeland Security budget after attaching provisions to bar a multibillion border-security contract awarded last week to a coalition of companies led by the U.S. unit of Bermuda-based Accenture Ltd. ... The 35-17 vote reflects the bipartisan resentment in Congress toward companies whose parents locate offshore to limit their U.S. tax liability. With powerful allies in the House Republican leadership, Accenture still hopes to strike the restrictions before the spending bill becomes law, but the level of anger underscores the staying power of the expatriate tax issue in this presidential election year."
The DHS is not wavering in its decision, Washington Technology reported. "Based on our review of the bid by DHS legal counsel, all bidders were U.S. companies under law and therefore qualified to bid on the contract," said DHS spokeswoman Kimberley Weissman. National Journal's Technology Daily noted that the House Rules Committee "will decide if the provision should remain in the legislation before it is brought to the House floor for a vote."
DHS End Notes
In other DHS news, the General Accounting Office slammed the department for its overall IT planning. "The Homeland Security Department's sluggish progress on an IT strategic plan, enterprise architecture, capital planning and investment control are jeopardizing billions of dollars of systems investment, the General Accounting Office said in a May 25 report," Washington Technology reported on Monday. One suggestion? The GAO says the DHS should give CIOs more say in what goes on. "Congress is reviewing legislation that could strengthen the CIO's authority," WT said.
Meanwhile, the DHS is dealing with some employment woes. The department said a hiring freeze would stay in place since recruiting needs for this fiscal year have been met, GovExec.com reported. "Earlier this year, DHS stopped hiring agents and officers at the bureaus of Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Citizenship and Immigration Services because internal audits showed the departments might be on track to exceed their budgets. After a review, DHS officials determined the projected budget shortfall was actually a result of mismatched accounting systems," the article said.
-------- justice
Whatever Happened To The Constitution?
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Molly Ivins,
Texas Observer.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18919
AUSTIN, Texas -- When, in future, you find yourself wondering, "Whatever happened to the Constitution?" you will want to go back and look at June 8, 2004. That was the day the attorney general of the United States -- a.k.a. "the nation's top law enforcement officer" -- refused to provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with his department's memos concerning torture.
In order to justify torture, these memos declare that the president is bound by neither U.S. law nor international treaties. We have put ourselves on the same moral level as Saddam Hussein, the only difference being quantity. Quite literally, the president may as well wear a crown -- forget that "no man is above the law" jazz. We used to talk about "the imperial presidency" under Nixon, but this is the real thing.
The Pentagon's legal staff concurred in this incredible conclusion. In a report printed by The Wall Street Journal, "Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department. ...
"The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by national security considerations or legal technicalities."
The report was complied by a group appointed by Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes II, who has since been nominated by Bush for the federal appellate bench. "Air Force General Counsel Mary Walker headed the group, which comprised top civilian and uniformed lawyers from each military branch and consulted with the Justice Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies. It isn't known if President Bush has ever seen the report."
When members of the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned Ashcroft about his department's input, he simply refused to provide the memos, without offering any legal rationale. He said President Bush had "made no order that would require or direct the violation" of laws or treaties. His explanation was that the United States is at war. "You know I condemn torture," he told Sen. Joe Biden. "I don't think it's productive, let alone justified."
But another memo written by former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge in California, establishes a basis for the use of torture for senior Al Qaeda operatives in custody of the CIA. I am not one to leap to conclusions, but it seems quite clear how whatever perverted standards allowed at Guantanamo Bay jumped across the water to Abu Ghraib prison.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, commander at Gitmo, was dispatched last August to Abu Ghraib to give advice about how to get information out of prisoners. "Miller's recommendations prompted a shift in the interrogation and detention procedures there. Military intelligence officers were given greater authority in the prison, and military police guards were asked to help gather information about the detainees," according to The New York Times.
Among the legal memos that circulated within the administration in 2002, one is by White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, famously declaring the Geneva Convention "quaint," and another from the CIA asked for an explicit understanding that the administration's public pledge to abide by the spirit of the Geneva Convention did not apply to its operatives. The only department consistently opposing these legal "arguments" was State. In April 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld sent a memo to Gen. James T. Hill outlining 24 permitted interrogation techniques, four of which were considered so stressful as to require Rumsfeld's explicit approval before they were used.
It has been apparent for some time that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated instances -- torture from Afghanistan to Gitmo to Iraq has so far resulted in 25 deaths now under investigation. As the late Jacabo Timmermann, the Argentine journalist who was tortured during "the dirty war," said, "When you are being tortured, it doesn't really matter to you if your torturers are authoritarian or totalitarian." I doubt it helps any if they're supposed to be bringing democracy, either. And as Ashcroft said, it isn't productive.
The damage is incalculable. When America puts out its annual report on human rights abuses, we will be a laughingstock. I suggest a special commission headed by Sen. John McCain to dig out everyone responsible, root and branch. If the lawyers don't cooperate, perhaps we should try stripping them, anally raping them and dunking their heads under water until they think they're drowning, and see if that helps.
And I think it is time for citizens to take some responsibility, as well. Is this what we have come to? Is this what we want our government to do for us? Oh and by way, to my fellow political reporters who keep repeating that Bush is having a wonderful week: Why don't you think about what you stand for?
-------- torture
The Torture Working Group
antiwar.com
by Paul Sperry
June 10, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=2786
On the eve of the Iraq war, Pentagon lawyers gave license to torturing suspected terrorists in custody. Use of drugs on prisoners wasn't banned in all cases. Even killing in some cases was justified.
That's the gist of a March 6, 2003, draft Pentagon report titled, "Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogations in the Global War on Terrorism."
Or at least the first half of it. Pages 1-56 have been declassified, but the rest of the 100-plus-page report - starting with a key section called "Considerations Affecting Policy" - is still classified. And the administration refuses to let even Congress see it.
The unclassified first half of the report focuses on interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees at Gitmo. It says torturing them, even to death, may be justified if it extracts information that can prevent future 9-11s. And it duly notes the terrorists, who were captured in Afghanistan, are "unlawful combatants" not covered by Geneva Convention protections against such abuse.
Though legally licensing torture is a ghoulish first for America, so was 9-11. So I'm not losing any sleep over any al-Qaeda torture victims at Gitmo who have information about another attack.
Question is, does the second half of the report also authorize torturing Iraqi detainees, who had nothing to do with 9-11 and are protected by Geneva rules?
The administration, bent on linking Iraq and Afghanistan as co-equal fronts in the war on terror, still maintains that al-Qaeda and other terrorists are in Iraq. Last year, U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer claimed "we have almost two dozen al-Qaeda in detention now," only to find out later that none of them in fact were al-Qaeda.
And listen to this little-noticed exchange on May 11 between a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation into Abu Ghraib prison abuses.
Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.: Did we have terrorists in the population at this prison?
Taguba: Sir, none that we were made aware of.
In fact, Taguba said in his investigative report that three in five Iraqi detainees were innocent of any crime, and should have been immediately released.
Yet Iraqi detainees were subjected to the same harsh interrogation techniques as al-Qaeda detainees at Gitmo.
Here is a list of so-called Category II and Category III interrogation techniques authorized for use at Gitmo early last year, according to a Jan. 8, 2003, memo written by a JAG officer and circulated among Army intelligence officials at Gitmo, the Bagram base in Afghanistan, and U.S. Central Command in Tampa. I obtained a copy of the two-page memo, which permits (and I quote):
- Use of stress positions (like standing) for a maximum of four hours;
- Use of falsified documents or reports;
- Use of isolation facility for up to 30 days unless CG [commanding general] approves extension;
- Use of environment other than standard interrogation booth;
- Deprivation of light and sound;
- Use of hood as long as it does not restrict breathing and under direct observation;
- Use of 20-hour interrogations;
- Removal of comfort items, including religious items;
- Switching from hot rations to MREs [meals ready to eat];
- Removal of clothing;
- Forced grooming (i.e., shaving of facial hair);
- Using individual phobias (e.g., fear of dogs) to induce stress;
- Use of mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing.
The methods mirror ones posted on a wall at Abu Ghraib by military intelligence on Oct. 18, 2003, about the time much of the more serious abuses at the prison began. The document, titled "Interrogation Rules of Engagement," was posted by Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, the officer in charge of the interrogation center at Abu Ghraib.
It turns out she was also the officer in charge of interrogations at the no-holds-barred Bagram detention facility, where at least two inmates were murdered.
Her wall posting was adapted from recommendations made by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who headed interrogations at Gitmo until Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Richard Myers and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sent him to Abu Ghraib in August 2003 to overhaul interrogation procedures in Iraq.
The harsher techniques he imported from Gitmo were codified in a Sept. 14 memo signed by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq at the time.
From all accounts, that Sept. 14 memo basically authorized doing whatever interrogators wanted to do to Iraqi detainees to not only find Saddam Hussein, but also the alleged weapons of mass destruction the White House claimed he had before it ordered its invasion.
That Sept. 14 memo is still classified, however, and the administration won't let Congress see it, just like it won't let it see the rest of the draft of the Pentagon torture paper, which reportedly includes an attachment listing specific interrogation techniques authorized by Rumsfeld himself on April 16, 2003, as U.S. troops started locking up Iraqis en masse.
It looks more and more as if the administration doesn't want Congress and the public to see the documents for sinister reasons. They may be the smoking guns that prove Pentagon brass illegally Gitmo-ized interrogations in Iraq, thereby setting the conditions for the systemic abuse of prisoners covered by the Geneva Conventions there. That would make civilian leaders liable for war crimes, and not just "a few bad apples" among low-ranking reservists who carried out their orders.
--------
Rumsfeld 'told officers to take gloves off with Lindh'
Independent
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Anne Penketh
10 June 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=529921
John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, was stripped naked and tied to a stretcher during interrogation after the office of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered intelligence officers to "take the gloves off" when questioning him.
Mr Rumsfeld's legal counsel instructed the officers to push the limits when questioning Lindh, captured in Afghanistan with Taliban and al-Qa'ida forces in late 2001. The treatment of Lindh appears to foreshadow the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
The details of Lindh's interrogation confirm claims made by his lawyer, Tony West, that when he was captured by Northern Alliance forces and handed to CIA operatives near the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif, he asked for a lawyer. Not only was he refused a lawyer and not advised of his rights, but his interrogators were told to get tough to obtain "actionable" intelligence in the pursuit of Osama bin Laden.
Documents seen by the Los Angeles Times, show that when an US Army intelligence officer started to question Lindh he was given instructions that the "Secretary of Defence's counsel has authorised him to 'take the gloves off' and asked whatever he wanted". The documents show that in the early stages, Lindh's responses were cabled to Washington every hour.
Though Lindh initially pleaded not guilty, he later admitted reduced charges and was sentenced to 20 years. He and his lawyers also agreed to drop claims that he had been tortured by US personnel.
A Defence Department spokesperson said the Pentagon "refused to speculate on the exact intent of the statement" from Mr Rumsfeld's office. "Department officials stress that all interrogation policies and procedures demand humane treatment of personnel in their custody," said the spokesperson.
The documents are the latest evidence to emerge revealing the efforts of the Bush administration to sidestep international laws and treaties when dealing with prisoners after the 11 September attacks. Critics say they show the abuses at Abu Ghraib were part of a deliberately pursued and systematic approach for dealing with prisoners without affording them their rights contained within the Geneva Conventions.
A memo this week revealed that in March 2003, administration lawyers concluded that President George Bush had the authority under executive privilege to order any sort of torture or interrogation of prisoners.
Yesterday, Congresswoman Jane Harman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the views the memo contained were "antithetical to American laws and values". She added: "This memo argues that the President is not bound by criminal laws in the context of his role as Commander-in-Chief during war; that the President may be above the law. This is a concept of executive authority that was discarded at Runnymede in the 13th century and has absolutely no place in our constitutional system."
The Attorney General, John Ashcroft, has refused to provide copies of the internal memos on the questioning of prisoners. "This administration rejects torture," Mr Ashcroft said. "I don't think it's productive, let alone justified."
And despite the international outcry over the prisoner abuse cases, US forces will continue to be responsible for running two Iraqi prisons where "security detainees" are held, after the handover to a "sovereign" Iraqi government.
A senior British official said in London that the US military would continue to be responsible for up to 2,000 "fairly hard-core" prisoners at Abu Ghraib and at another jail in southern Iraq. The exact number of such prisoners, deemed a threat to Iraqi safety and security, is not known because although the Americans let many inmates out of Abu Ghraib, many others have been arrested.
Britain is pressing for Iraqis to help run the top-security prisons, but details are still to be worked out. The US military is also holding Saddam Hussein, and other former regime members inside Iraq. They are to be tried by a special Iraqi tribunal starting in the autumn.
A Jordanian lawyer who claims that he is acting for Saddam says that the former Iraqi leader was also tortured during interrogation.
-------- POLITICS
The u-turn that saved the Gipper
After Iran-contra, Reagan ditched the right and embraced Gorbachev
Sidney Blumenthal
The Guardian
June 10, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1235360,00.html
Ronald Reagan's presidency collapsed at the precise moment on November 25 1986 when he appeared without notice in the White House briefing room, introduced his attorney general, Edwin Meese, and instantly departed from the stage. Meese announced that funds raised by members of the national security council and others by selling arms to Iran had been used to aid the Nicaraguan contras. Anti-terrorism laws and congressional resolutions had been wilfully violated. Eventually 11 people were convicted of felonies. In less than a week, Reagan's approval rating plunged from 67% to 46%, the greatest and quickest decline ever for a president.
On December 17 1986, William Casey, the director of the CIA, was scheduled to testify before the Senate intelligence committee. But he collapsed into a coma, suffering from brain cancer, never to recover. Lt Col Oliver North, Casey's action officer on the NSC, explained to a select congressional investigation that Casey had been the mastermind in creating an "overseas entity ... self-financing, independent", that would conduct "US foreign policy" as a "stand-alone". Called "the Enterprise", it was the apotheosis of the Reagan doctrine, the waging of a global war for the rollback of communism.
The hardline secretary of defence, Caspar Weinberger, and his neoconservative underlings were summarily dismissed, the NSC purged. "Let Reagan be Reagan," had long been the cry of conservatives. Now they screamed that Reagan was either being held prisoner or had sold out.
In interviews with investigators, Reagan said he couldn't recall what had happened. But he retained his utopianism and idealism that had propelled him from leftwing liberal in Hollywood to rightwing man on horseback, switching ideologies but never his temperament.
At his first meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985, Reagan had perplexed him by talking about how they might work together if there were an invasion of aliens from outer space. Reagan had got his idea from a 1951 science fiction movie in which an alien warns of earth's destruction if nuclear weapons are not abolished.
At the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, Reagan had agreed to eliminate all nuclear weapons (to the consternation of his advisers) until Gorbachev insisted that testing for the Star Wars missile defence shield be suspended. Two of Reagan's utopian dreams collided. But after the exposure of the Iran-contra scandal, Gorbachev dropped the objection to Star Wars. Instead, he crafted a practical arms reduction agreement, the intermediate nuclear forces treaty. And, despite opposition from conservatives, Reagan seized upon it.
With script in hand, Reagan was Reagan again. In September 1987, he addressed the United Nations general assembly: "I occasionally think how our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world." That December, Gorbachev came to the White House to sign the treaty. Then, in June 1988, Reagan went to Moscow, where he declared that "of course" the cold war was over and that his famous reference to the "evil empire" was from "another time."
Reagan did not bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union. But he lent support to the liberalising reform that hastened the end. In reaching out to Gorbachev, Reagan blithely discarded the rightwing faith that totalitarian communism was unchangeable and that only rollback, not containment and negotiation, would lead to its demise.
Reagan was acutely self-conscious about his about-face and on his trip to Moscow he explained it. "In the movie business actors often get what we call typecast," he said. "Well, politics is a little like that too. So I've had a lot of time and reason to think about my role."
Reagan's embrace of Gorbachev rescued his own political standing. His rise in popularity to the mid-50s was essential in lifting his vice-president's presidential ambition, for the elder Bush was moon to Reagan's sun. Yet Bush distanced himself, adopting the "realist" view that Reagan suffered from "euphoria" and that nothing fundamental in the world was changing.
Now, George W Bush eulogises Reagan as his example. Bush has his own doctrine, a Manichean battle with evildoers, and an army of neoconservatives to lend complex rationalisations to his simplifications. Yet Reagan was saved by the wholesale firing of the neoconservatives, the rejection of conservative dogma and a deliberate strategy to transcend his old typecasting. It is why he rose above his ruin, and rides, even in death, into the sunset of a happy Hollywood ending.
· Sidney Blumenthal is former senior adviser to President Clinton and Washington bureau chief of Salon.com
Sidney_Blumenthal @yahoo.com
-------- investigations
Higher-Ranking Officer Is Sought to Lead the Abu Ghraib Inquiry
June 10, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/politics/10ABUS.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 9 - The commander of American forces in the Middle East asked Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld this week to replace the general investigating suspected abuses by military intelligence soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison with a more senior officer, a step that would allow the inquiry to reach into the military's highest ranks in Iraq, Pentagon officials said Wednesday.
The request by the commander, Gen. John P. Abizaid, comes amid increasing criticism from lawmakers and some military officers that the half dozen investigations into detainee abuse at the prison may end up scapegoating a handful of enlisted soldiers and leaving many senior officers unaccountable.
General Abizaid's request, which defense officials said Mr. Rumsfeld would most likely approve, was set in motion in the last week when the current investigating officer, Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, told his superiors that he could not complete his inquiry without interviewing more senior-ranking officers, including Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the ground commander in Iraq.
But Army regulations prevent General Fay, a two-star general, from interviewing higher-ranking officers. So General Sanchez took the unusual step of asking to be removed as the reviewing authority for General Fay's report, and requesting that higher-ranking officers be appointed to conduct and review the investigation.
"General Sanchez did this to ensure that there was a complete, thorough and transparent investigation that leaves no doubt as to the veracity of its findings," said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman.
Mr. Rumsfeld was expected to act on General Abizaid's request soon, Mr. Whitman said. It was unclear Wednesday night who would replace General Fay, who would almost certainly remain an important part of the inquiry that he has headed since his appointment on April 15. One possible candidate is Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the vice chief of staff of the Army, who is expected to replace General Sanchez in Iraq soon after the transfer of authority on June 30 to the new interim Iraqi government.
It was unclear whether how this change might delay the delivery of the final report, which had been expected in early July. Some lawmakers have said they would delay their calls for an independent congressional investigation or one modeled after the inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks, until General Fay's report was completed.
The sudden turn of events in the investigation came as new details emerged about why General Fay in the last week or so requested and received a 30-day extension to complete his report.
Within the last several days, an important figure in the inquiry who had previously refused to cooperate with Army investigators suddenly reversed his position and agreed to work much more closely with investigators, a senior Senate aide and a senior Pentagon official said.
That important development prompted General Fay to send some of his 29-person team back into the field to conduct more interviews, the officials said. "A key witness, a key person who'd pled the military equivalent of the Fifth has changed his attitude, and Fay is reopening the investigation," the Senate official said.
The officials said they did not know the identity of the witness.
Mr. Rumsfeld's anticipated approval of General Abizaid's request would open the way for a new, senior Army investigator to question General Sanchez and other senior generals as part of a broad inquiry into questionable intelligence-gathering practices and procedures at the prison that may have contributed to the prisoner abuses.
Senior Army officials insisted Wednesday night that General Sanchez was not a target of the investigation, and that he decided to recuse himself to dispel any perceptions of a conflict of interest. General Sanchez ordered the investigation that General Fay was eventually appointed to conduct.
Among the biggest questions for General Sanchez will no doubt be his order last Nov. 19 that, according to another senior Army investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, put the military police at the prison effectively under the control of the military intelligence soldiers.
As a result, military police officers have said they were encouraged by military intelligence soldiers to soften up detainees before the interrogations to elicit more information from them during the formal questioning.
General Sanchez has said he only intended for his order to put the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade in charge of the physical security of the prison, and other logistical responsibilities. It was not his intent, he said, to put the military police inside the prison under the operational control of military intelligence soldiers, a practice General Taguba said would violate Army rules.
General Sanchez has acknowledged that he visited Abu Ghraib several times last fall, but said he did not witness any prisoner abuses. A spokesman for General Sanchez has said the general "stands by his testimony before Congressional committees" that he did not learn of the abuses until January, months after they began.
Army investigators will also likely question General Sanchez on how he and his staff incorporated recommendations to improve detention and interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib that were offered last fall by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who at the time headed detention operations at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
In addition, General Sanchez will likely be asked about interrogation policies that he issued last year.
U.S. to Permit Red Cross Visit
KABUL, Afghanistan, June 9 - American military officials said Thursday that they would allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to resume visits to a prisoner detention facility on the Kandahar air base in southern Afghanistan.
Since 2002, the military has allowed the Red Cross to visit only the main detention center in Bagram, just north of Kabul, and said the Kandahar center was a prisoner transit point.
The change comes after complaints from Afghan detainees of sleep deprivation, beatings and sexual abuse prompted the military to launch a countrywide review of its detention system last month.
-------- propaganda wars
State Dept. Concedes Errors in Terror Data
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29664-2004Jun9.html
Two months ago, the Bush administration released its annual report card on counterterrorism and gave itself an A. The number of terrorist attacks around the globe, according to the State Department report called "Patterns of Global Terrorism," was at the lowest ebb in the past 34 years.
Ambassador at Large for Counterterrorism J. Cofer Black, citing the existence of only 190 acts of terrorism in 2003, called it "good news" attributable in part to unprecedented U.S. collaboration with foreign partners. He predicted the trend would continue in 2004. Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage cited the data as "clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight."
Not long afterward, however, the report was pilloried by academics, a lawmaker and others. They said its math defied the reality of a steady growth in the number and significance of terrorist attacks in 2003, as well as the worst type of attacks spreading from just a few countries to at least 10.
The Congressional Research Service cited the complaints in a June 1 report urging a review of the report's "structure and content." Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, said in a May 17 letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that "it is deplorable that the . . . report would claim that terrorism attacks are decreasing when in fact significant terrorist activity is at a 20-year high."
Yesterday, after reviewing the matter more carefully, the department formally conceded it made a few mistakes.
"At our request, the Terrorist Threat and Integration Center is reviewing and revising the statistics for 2003," spokesman Adam Ereli said. "We anticipate that a correction to the 'Patterns of Global Terrorism' will be publicly issued as soon as possible."
Officials declined to detail the errors to be corrected by the center. It was created last year from elements of the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the Defense Department, with the goal of becoming the authoritative administration voice on terrorism.
But one senior official, speaking on the condition that he not be cited by name, said the corrections could fill eight pages, including a revised chronology of events, "a list of some things that should have been put in or left out," and various explanatory notes. Word of the State Department's decision was first reported yesterday by the Los Angeles Times.
Larry C. Johnson, a former CIA analyst and former deputy director of State's counterterrorism office, is among those who have urged a wide-ranging correction. He said that even using the report's own data, as presented in its statistical tables, the total number of terrorist incidents in 2003 rose, not fell, compared with 2002.
The number of deaths in the tables was 390, not 307 as department officials asserted in public comments; the number of wounded was 1,895, not 1,593, Johnson said. He said the number of significant incidents -- involving victims who were killed, injured or kidnapped -- rose from 60 percent of incidents in 2002 to 89 percent in 2003.
He also noted, as did Waxman and scholars at Princeton and Stanford universities, that the report omitted acts of terrorism after Nov. 11, 2003. The department attributed this to a cutoff date for printing the report in time for its release on April 29. At a result, a Nov. 15 suicide bombing in Istanbul that killed 61 people and injured more than 300 was omitted.
Johnson said the report also omitted from the list of significant acts of terrorism, for unknown reasons, the 13 terrorist attacks in Russia attributed to Chechens in 2003, which he said caused the deaths of 244 people. Although most significant attacks occurred in just two countries in 2002 -- Israel and India -- they occurred in 10 in 2003, Johnson said: Afghanistan, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Israel, Morocco, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey.
"When you read the report, TTIC did not add [the data] properly. Even a third-grader could have found this," Johnson said. "The body counts in 2002 and 2003 were at the highest levels in history."
--------
Powell blames terror error on new system
WASHINGTON (AP)
6/10/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-06-10-powell-terror_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - The State Department acknowledged Thursday it was wrong in reporting terrorism declined worldwide last year, a finding that was used to boost one of President Bush's top foreign policy claims - success in countering terror.
Instead, both the number of incidents and the toll in victims increased sharply, the department said. Statements by senior administration officials claiming success were based "on the facts as we had them at the time; the facts that we had were wrong," department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
The report, issued in April, said attacks had declined last year to 190, the lowest level in 34 years, and dropped 45% since 2001, Bush's first year as president. The State Department is now working to determine the correct figures.
Among the mistakes, Boucher said, was that only part of 2003 was taken into account.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday the errors were partly the result of new data collection procedures. "I can assure you it had nothing to do with putting out anything but the most honest, accurate information we can," he said.
"Errors crept in that frankly we did not catch here," Powell said of the report, which showed a falloff in the number of attacks worldwide in 2003 and the virtual disappearance of incidents in which no one died.
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said this week the administration had refused to address his contention that the findings were manipulated for political purposes. Waxman had written Powell asking for an explanation.
Boucher said a reply to Waxman was in preparation. "We wanted to make sure that we give the congressman the best and most accurate picture of what we know and what's going on as we can," he said.
He said the errors began to become apparent in early May. "We got phone calls from people who were going through our report and who said to themselves, as we should have said to ourselves: 'This doesn't feel right. This doesn't look right.' And who started asking us questions," he said.
One of Bush's major foreign policy claims is that his post-Sept. 11 strategy to counter terror was showing success.
Ken Mehlman, the president's campaign manager, said in April, "Ultimately the most important thing that people want to see on the war on terror is, what is your vision for dealing with it and what is your record."
"Obviously one of the most important issues in this election is the question of how do we continue to fight and win the war on terror so we keep our homeland safe," Mehlman said.
At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney and Mehlman have questioned whether Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry was qualified to conduct a war against terrorism.
When the annual report was issued April 29, senior administration officials used it as evidence the war was being won under Bush.
J. Cofer Black, who heads the State Department's counterterrorism office, cited the existence of only 190 acts of terrorism in 2003 as "good news" and predicted the trend would continue this year.
Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said at the time, "Indeed, you will find in these pages clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight."
His office did not respond Thursday to a request for a statement in light of disclosures some of the findings in "Patterns of Global Terrorism" were inaccurate and understated.
"When we are sure we have the new facts, the right facts, we will prepare an appropriate analysis and give you our assessment at that moment," Boucher said.
--------
A New Action Hero
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 8:54 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30771-2004Jun10.html
George W. Bush has apparently decided to wrap himself in the Reagan legacy.
I've now obtained, exclusively, from a super-secret source who refused to be identified for fear of looking dumb, a classified strategy memo advising the president on how he can morph himself into a modern-day Reagan.
"Sir," writes Deep Cowboy, "you asked us to devise a plan that would enable you to seize the moment with respect to RR and subtly persuade the electorate that you are the 21st-century embodiment of the Gipper. Some of our finest political minds have been tasked with this sensitive assignment and, in coordination with Karl and B/C '04, have honed the following action agenda:
"--Your ranch visits aren't producing enough photo ops. We suggest you start clearing brush and riding a horse, but only after we've notified the AP photographer.
"--Our research indicates that Reagan was an actor in his younger days. We suggest you find an appropriate theatrical vehicle in order to show that you, too, have some show-business flair. Perhaps you can consult Arnold on Hollywood contacts for a Clint Eastwood-type film. Avoid anything with chimpanzees.
"--Wear a cowboy hat to all state dinners.
"--Invite Sam Donaldson to future news conferences and call on him repeatedly. Note: When the copter lands on the South Lawn after a trip, cup your hand and pretend to be unable to hear Sam.
"--Rather than stop with the small-minded proposal that Reagan replace Hamilton on the 10-dollar bill, you should issue an executive order that Reagan's image be printed on all United States currency. Denominations could be distinguished by a different pastel color for each Reagan bill.
"--Invite Gorbachev to the White House and call it a summit.
"--Invite Carter to the White House for a televised debate.
"--If you must debate Kerry, begin every answer with 'there you go again.' It would be helpful to manage a smile as you say this.
"--Find a group of union employees to fire. Better yet, abolish a government agency that provides little or no benefit to our base. Do we really need a Labor Department?
"--Announce that you are sending John Hinckley to Abu Ghraib.
"--You've already lifted RR's 'evil empire' slogan with your 'axis of evil,' but the time has come to extend the brand. Find new targets to declare evil. Suggested evildoers: Michael Moore, Jacques Chirac, ACLU, Ted Kennedy.
"--Have Scott tell press on background that there was a mixup on your birth certificate and you're actually 77.
"--If the polls continue to slip, tell Cheney to bow out gracefully and announce your new running mate at Madison Square Garden: George H.W. Bush. If he was good enough to be Reagan's vice president, he's ready for an encore. Bonus: He can turn to Kerry's veep pick and say, "I knew Ronald Reagan, and you're no Ronald Reagan." Will also save money on shorter bumper stickers."
Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum tackles the Bush/Reagan nexus: (http://washingtonmonthly.com)
"The problem with comparing Bush to Reagan is that Bush comes off as a mediocre painter trying to emulate Picasso. He sees the brushstrokes on the surface and knows how to copy them, but because he doesn't understand their underlying purpose he ends up being only a clumsy and ultimately damaging imitation when he tries to craft a painting of his own.
"No analogy is perfect, but in a lot of ways Bush strikes me as being to Reagan what LBJ was to Roosevelt. It's true that LBJ made some powerful and original contributions to the country, particularly in the area of civil rights, but in the end his legacy has been overshadowed by a pair of signature failures. The Great Society and the Vietnam War, consciously modeled on FDR's New Deal and his leadership during World War II, adopted the surface characteristics of FDR's great achievements but ended up as failures because LBJ didn't have Roosevelt's instinctive feel for public opinion or his grasp of why some things worked and some didn't.
"Much the same can be said of George Bush. He learned Reagan's lesson that tax cuts could be powerful political symbols, but then turned that lesson into a blind rule that tax cuts are the answer to every economic problem. Likewise, on foreign policy he saw that Reagan was admired for his steadfast anticommunism, but failed to learn when and where to turn down the volume. As a result, he's a man with only one gear, overreliant on military solutions whether they're appropriate or not.
"Like LBJ, Bush is a man who knows the notes but not the song. He learned the surface lessons of Reagan's presidency -- tax cuts, hawkishness, unyielding rhetoric -- but because he doesn't have the political sensitivity to understand what to do with them he has no choice except to simply offer more tax cuts and more hawkishness, whatever the problem. As a result, he overreaches in a way Reagan never did and will likely be the prime cause of the one thing he most fears: a liberal backlash."
Was Reagan an ideologue? Jonah Goldberg says yes: (http://nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200406090918.asp)
"For many in the press, Reagan's decency was a sort of hypocrisy -- since conservatism and decency are supposed to be contradictory terms. But rather than speak ill of the dead and condemn him for it, they call this perceived hypocrisy 'pragmatism.'
"After all, when the very liberal Senator Paul Wellstone died tragically in a plane crash in 2002, the nearly universal consensus among the same journalists was that what made him a great man was his refusal to compromise his ideological agenda. With Reagan, it's the reverse.
"But for the record: Reagan was no pragmatist, at least not in the way so many claim. Richard Nixon, the first President Bush, Bill Clinton: These men were pragmatists. Ronald Reagan, on the other hand, was an ideologue. Proudly so. And that's why conservatives loved him."
The New Republic's Jonathan Chait says no way: (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=chait060904)
"What's most interesting about Reagan-worship is not so much that it overlooks his flaws but that it specifically overlooks his departures from conservative orthodoxy . . .
"Conservatives likewise hail Reagan as an uber-supply sider. In a lengthy obituary, The Washington Times recalled, 'Mr. Reagan resisted congressional attempts to raise taxes, despite a deficit exceeding $200 billion by 1986. "Go ahead, make my day," the president baited Congress.' Curiously absent from this and other hagiographic accounts is the fact that Reagan signed two large tax increases in 1982 and 1983 (the former, it should be noted, in the midst of a severe recession).
"Conservatives hail as Reagan's crowning achievement the tax reform he signed in 1986. Today, conservatives remember it as one sweeping movement. 'He pushed down incomes taxes, too, from a high of 70% when he entered the White House to a new low of 28%,' wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. In fact, tax reform was a deliberate effort by the Reagan administration to scale back some of the abuses of its original 1981 tax cut, which allowed many businesses and wealthy individuals to escape taxation completely . . .
"It's also inconceivable that moderates like Donald Regan--or Howard Baker, Richard Darman, David Stockman, or James Baker--could be given decision-making authority over domestic policy in George W. Bush's Republican Party . . .
"The reality of Reagan differed from the memory of Reagan is precisely the point: Myths are created in order to teach certain lessons. "
The Washington Times sculpts Bush in the Reaganite mold: (http://washingtontimes.com/national/20040610-122510-9761r.htm)
"America's affectionate farewell to Ronald Reagan has focused attention on the similarities between the 40th president and President Bush, whose policies of tax cuts and a stronger defense parallel his Republican forefather.
"'Whether it was economic policies, national security policies, like national missile defense, or reforming Social Security, everything Bush talks about was something Ronald Reagan had tried to do,' said Martin Anderson, who was chief domestic adviser in the Reagan White House.
"But some of Mr. Bush's conservative supporters also point to key differences between the two men, especially noting the president's expansion of the Department of Education -- which Mr. Reagan sought to shrink -- and the creation of a new Medicare prescription-drug benefit for the elderly...
"Raising similarities between the two presidents is a sensitive subject for the White House and the president's re-election campaign right now, although Republican officials say it is likely that the Republican National Convention in New York from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, where Mr. Bush will be nominated for a second term, will include a major tribute to Mr. Reagan in prime time. Mr. Bush's senior aides and his campaign advisers are uncomfortable making any comparisons at a time of national mourning for the late president."
The Philadelphia Inquirer is turned off by the TV coverage: (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/8884534.htm?ERIGHTS=8755286009050303370philly::kurtzh@washpost.com&KRD_RM=8ooxoovrwquwrwtrpqrooooooo)
"Reagan is rising in the public regard to Diana's beatific level, not because of his policies but because we long for optimism and a strong friend, who could identify the enemy and defeat it, at the top.
"The TV news folks haven't been about to thwart that desire or disappoint viewers, constantly harping on Reagan's international successes, ignoring critics who decry what they see as the abandonment of suffering citizens, particularly AIDS victims and African Americans, under his watch.
"But last evening the TV people should have just shut up completely. This was a national moment of emotion, not a news event, and television handled it poorly. Garish graphics and logos, particularly on CBS and NBC, destroyed the power of the images. Punditry and blather intruded on the feelings of the national community.
"'Stop me ... when you want to talk,' ABC's Barbara Walters told colleague Peter Jennings. How about when you just want to sit silently in a solemn experience?
"NBC's Tom Brokaw was worse. 'Let's just watch this for just a moment, absorb the majesty of it all,' he said. But he couldn't keep quiet even for 30 seconds.
"CBS's Dan Rather and Co. were generally more respectful, though they did digress into a discussion of cicadas."
As for the current presidential campaign, the Los Angeles Times has good news for Kerry, sort of: (http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/timespoll/la-na-poll10jun10,1,1874410.story?coll=la-home-headlines)
"Widespread unease over the country's direction and doubts about President Bush's policies on Iraq and the economy helped propel Sen. John F. Kerry to a solid lead among voters nationwide, according to a new Times Poll.
"Yet in a measure of the race's tenuous balance, Times' polling in three of the most fiercely contested states found that Bush has a clear advantage over Kerry in Missouri and runs even with the presumed Democratic rival in Ohio and Wisconsin . . .
"More than one-third of those polled in the nationwide poll said they don't know enough about Kerry to decide whether he would be a better president than Bush. And when asked which candidate was more likely to flip-flop on issues, almost twice as many named Kerry than Bush. Yet Kerry led Bush by 51% to 44% nationally in a two-way match up, and by 48% to 42% in a three-way race, with independent Ralph Nader drawing 4%."
Maybe flip-flopping has its advantages.
"Lifting Kerry is a powerful tailwind of dissatisfaction with the nation's course and Bush's answers for challenges at home and abroad. Nearly three-fifths believe the nation is on the wrong track, the highest level a Times poll has recorded during Bush's presidency."
The Wall Street Journal sees the news cycle breaking Bush's way:
"A little more than a week ago, President Bush did something that surprised White House aides: He went out of his way to take questions from reporters in the Rose Garden.
"Mr. Bush made his appearance to hail the formation of a new Iraqi government. He came with a prepared statement, and aides told reporters he would take one question, maybe two.
"Instead, an animated and clearly buoyed president answered reporters' questions for half an hour. As that suggests, after a grim spring of bad news on several fronts, Mr. Bush finally has good things to talk about as the crucial summer of his re-election campaign arrives. And he seems to realize it.
"An Iraqi government is ready to take power in less than a month, and the world has just blessed it with a resolution at the United Nations. The U.S. economy is starting to hum, producing 248,000 jobs last month, the second straight month of good job production . . .
"The combined effect of the aligning diplomatic and economic forces underscores the fact that, for all of Mr. Bush's perceived weaknesses, he still has institutional advantages that will serve him well as the campaign unfolds this summer."
Online political ads are all the rage, reports Salon's Farhad Manjoo: (http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/06/09/blog_ads/index.html)
"Jim Newberry, a Democrat who's trying to unseat Blunt in November, has flooded the blogs with a slew of anti-Blunt ads. In Newberry's ads, [Missouri Rep. Roy] Blunt is no semi-anonymous cog in the Republican machine -- he is the epitome of conservative iniquity.
"Between massive tax breaks, and slipping tobacco company favors into the Homeland Security Bill, Roy Blunt has proven he's the best man that money can rent," reads the copy on one of Newberry's ads. It ends with a tagline that has become a Newberry rallying cry: 'Boot Blunt.' . . .
"Everywhere you look, aspiring politicians are hawking their platforms, or more likely, they're urging you to stick it to their opponents, who are often portrayed as the cause of all our nation's ills. Almost without exception, the blog-based ads for local candidates pursue Newberry's strategy, demonizing under-the-radar opponents by tying their actions to national problems.
" 'Now, anyone can be Jesse Helms,' notes Glenn Reynolds, who runs the popular conservative blog Instapundit, which has published ads for Republicans and Democrats. 'In the old days, you could take somebody like Jesse Helms or maybe Ted Kennedy and you could demonize them in order to raise money. With the Internet, you can hit any candidate and raise money by turning him into Jesse Helms for a small demographic.'
"It's easy to see why so many candidates are hoisting their billboards on blogs: Blog ads seem to offer office-seekers an easy tap into the vein of partisan discontent that (at least at first) worked so well for Howard Dean. The ads hold the promise of donations and, even more important, a community ready to support the candidate on Election Day.
"But are they working? Reports from the candidates are mixed. Some campaigns have used ads on blogs to bring money and national attention to their candidates, though many of these people are running in races that were likely to attract attention anyway. Other campaigns report barely breaking even with blog ads."
I still think Tom Vilsack is a long shot as veep, but the Kerry camp has asked for hundreds of newspaper columns written by the Iowa governor.
And if you want to read how security lunkheads treated a visiting British reporter in this age of terror, check out this piece in the Guardian. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1231089,00.html)
-------- us politics
The Capital Pays Homage to 'a Graceful and a Gallant Man'
June 10, 2004
By TODD S. PURDUM
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/politics/10reagan.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, June 9 - To the thrum of muffled drums, the strains of solemn music and eulogies from the leaders of the Republican-run Congress he helped to create, the body of Ronald Wilson Reagan returned Wednesday evening to the capital he campaigned against so often, then did so much to reshape through two terms as president.
"While others worried, President Reagan persevered," Speaker J. Dennis Hastert of Illinois told members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the diplomatic corps and invited guests in the Rotunda. "When others weakened, President Reagan stood tall. When others stepped back, President Reagan stepped forward. And he did it all with great humility, with great charm and with great humor."
Vice President Dick Cheney recalled that Mr. Reagan had once said, "There is no question I am an idealist, which is another way of saying I am an American." Mr. Cheney called Mr. Reagan "a providential man who came along just when our nation and the world most needed him," adding, "Fellow Americans, here lies a graceful and a gallant man."
At the end of the 45-minute service, as the Army's Brass Quintet played "God Bless America," Mr. Reagan's widow, Nancy, ran her hand up and down the length of the coffin, then bent down toward it as if reluctant to leave, shaking her head sadly as Mr. Cheney approached to comfort her.
Unlike John F. Kennedy, who was struck down in office, or Lyndon B. Johnson, whose body reposed in the Rotunda while the wounds of the Vietnam War were still raw, Mr. Reagan died at 93 after a decade with Alzheimer's disease and a rich life long enough to see the fruits of his dreams and policies, good or bad.
But the highly formal state funeral had all the same rituals of official mourning made so famous after Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Of the capital's top officials, only President Bush was absent, attending the economic summit of industrialized nations in Sea Island, Ga. Mr. Bush is scheduled to deliver a eulogy at the funeral service for Mr. Reagan in the National Cathedral on Friday.
Mr. Reagan's body arrived at Andrews Air Force Base right on schedule at 5 p.m., and by just after 6 p.m., the hearse carrying his coffin pulled up at the south end of the Ellipse between the White House and the Washington Monument. There, the coffin was transferred to a vintage 1918 horse-drawn caisson, accompanied by a riderless horse named Sergeant York, for the Tennessee pacifist who became one of the greatest heroes of World War I, with Mr. Reagan's own soft brown riding boots reversed in the stirrups in a sign of military mourning.
Mrs. Reagan, looking tired and frail and holding oversized eyeglasses, briefly emerged from the motorcade to watch the transfer. The gathered crowd of spectators greeted her with cheers and applause, and she mouthed silent thanks in return.
Pallbearers representing all the military services carried the coffin onto the caisson with quiet precision, sliding it onto the wagon-bed a single, side-stepping pace at a time.
Then the procession rolled slowly down Constitution Avenue past the Smithsonian museums and the National Archives, finally ascending Capitol Hill to the grand West Front of the building facing the Mall, where Mr. Reagan first took the oath of office 23 years ago, breaking with long tradition that had placed such ceremonies on the East Front. The plaza facing the East Front is now inaccessible because of the construction of an underground visitors center.
As the cortege approached the Capitol, 21 F-15 Eagle fighters - led by a lone jet, then flights of four, the last of them with a man missing - roared overhead. Then, as the caisson paused at the foot of the steps leading up the West Front, three howitzers thudded out a 21-gun salute as the band played "Ruffles and Flourishes" and "Hail to the Chief," and finally a mournful rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."
In all, the journey to the Rotunda was 116 steps, and the pallbearers switched out every two flights to share the coffin's 700-pound weight. Mrs. Reagan stood atop the stairs, gazing down with a sorrowful version of the loving look she so often gave her husband in life, then followed the coffin inside. There it was placed on the simple, velvet-covered wood catafalque first used at Abraham Lincoln's funeral in 1865, 180 feet below the concave ceiling of the Capitol's cast-iron dome.
In a vivid sign of the intense anxiety over security, a little more than two hours before the service was to begin the entire Capitol and adjoining offices were hastily evacuated in what turned out to be a false alarm. The Federal Aviation Administration said a radio transmitter had malfunctioned on a Beech King aircraft belonging to the Kentucky State Police as it neared Washington airspace. The device is supposed to identify the craft to air controllers, but it failed intermittently, prompting a heightened alert.
Capitol police officers, shouting "Airborne threat, four minutes out!" ordered an evacuation as loud alarms sounded, and dozens of dignitaries and former Reagan aides gathered in a reception room near the Senate floor went running down the north steps of the Senate wing. In dark suits and black dresses, mourners including former Attorney General Edwin Meese III, former Vice President Dan Quayle and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the former ambassador to the United Nations, hustled into the muggy late afternoon sunshine, with men shucking their jackets and women under orders to remove high heels if they could not run in them.
"They came in screaming at us like you can't believe," said Margaret D. Tutwiler, the former State Department spokeswoman, who with the others returned to the building when the alert was lifted after several minutes. "They said, 'you can't walk, you have to run.' "
Before Mr. Reagan's body left California, more than 100,000 mourners filed past his coffin at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley. Mrs. Reagan and her children arrived at the library on Wednesday morning to begin a journey that took them from the rolling hills north of Los Angeles to the windy tarmac of the Naval Air Station at Point Mugu, and then aboard one of the blue-and-white Boeing 747's that normally serves President Bush as Air Force One for the flight to Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland.
Along the Mall, from the Washington Monument to the West Front of the Capitol, crowds lined the street despite intense heat and humidity.
Carol Williams, 49, a professor at Strayer University from Chesterfield, Va., was first in the line of would-be mourners, waiting for the Rotunda to open after the evening's formal services. Ms. Williams arrived at the foot of the hill on the West Front at 5 a.m. Wednesday with her daughter, Melanie, 16, and her niece, Jessica, 18.
"I expected to be the 1,001st person in line if I was lucky," said Ms. Williams, who expressed relief that Mr. Reagan's death had diminished political bickering for at least a moment. "They've put aside the rhetoric for two or three days," she said, adding, "Ronald Reagan would want to remind the world - Americans - can we be Americans?"
Mr. Reagan never served in Congress, of course, and his most frequent trips to the Capitol were to deliver his annual State of the Union Message in the House Chamber. But in 1985, after the outdoor ceremonies for his second inauguration were canceled in the face of a wind-chill factor of 50-degrees below zero, he took the public oath of office in the Rotunda, a day after being privately sworn in at the White House because Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, fell on a Sunday.
"We must act now," Mr. Reagan said then, "to protect future generations from government's desire to spend its citizens' money and tax them into servitude when the bills come due. Let us make it unconstitutional for the federal government to spend more than the federal government takes in."
Congress never did pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, but by the late 1990's, a soaring economy and efforts at fiscal discipline by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, produced a brief run of budget surpluses.
It was in the Rotunda, too, where Mr. Reagan, in that same second Inauguration, spoke of American history, from Valley Forge to the Alamo to a settler who "pushes west and sings a song."
"It is the American sound," Mr. Reagan said in words recalled by Mr. Cheney on Wednesday night. "It is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent and fair. That's our heritage, that's our song. We sing it still. For all our problems, our differences, we are together as of old."
This day, at the heart of the government he once denounced as "the problem" in American life, Mr. Reagan was together with his friends and adversaries once more.
Ted Stevens of Alaska, the Senate's senior Republican and third in the line of presidential succession, choked up as he evoked Mr. Reagan's farewell address on leaving office in 1989, declaring: "As we say farewell, his last words as president echo across this great nation. If we listen, we will hear him whisper the humble words he used to sum up his revolution: 'All in all, not bad, not bad at all.' "
--------
Economy Provides No Boost for Bush
Foreign Policy Concerns Hurt Approval Ratings
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A29652-2004Jun9?language=printer
The nation's economy is growing smartly, wages have begun to rise, and employers have added more than 1.4 million jobs to their payrolls in the past nine months. Yet voters continue to give President Bush poor ratings on his handling of the economy.
It may sound baffling, but interviews with voters, pollsters and economists suggest Bush's stubborn difficulties on domestic policy boil down to an obvious problem abroad.
"It all goes back to Iraq," said Steven Valerga, 50, a Republican in Martinez, Calif., who voted for Bush in 2000 but plans to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in November. "It's a drain on the economy, when there's so much needed elsewhere. My gosh, we didn't need to be there."
War has usually been good for the economy in the short run, and this one appears no different. In the first three months of this year, defense work accounted for nearly 16 percent of the nation's economic growth, according to the Commerce Department.
But amid the car bombings, assassinations and continuing casualties, voters are generally pessimistic about the direction the nation is taking. Bush's negative ratings are rising not just on the economy but also on energy policy, foreign affairs and his handling of the prescription drug issue. Voters fixated on Iraq so far are not willing to see the improving economy through a positive prism, according to pollsters and Bush campaign aides.
"There's a general anxiety that is at heart about security," said Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt, "and that's why security is so central to the campaign. Security underlies our feelings about prosperity."
Bush's ratings have not just been impervious to good economic news; they have fallen with it. In April 2003, 52 percent of voters approved of his handling of the economy, although at that time payrolls had not pulled out of a skid that began in March 2001.
By late May, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, the president's approval rating on the economy had slipped to 44 percent, with 54 percent disapproving. By then, virtually every economic indicator was heading skyward.
Conversations about the economy gravitate to foreign policy, and voters find the corrosive influence of war in the most unlikely places.
To Valerga, the fighting has driven up the cost of the plywood he needed to redo his roof. Clint Doherty, a small-business man in Clarkston, Wash., sees the war in stainless-steel bolts, which have risen in price by more than 120 percent in a month and a half. To Jeremy Tuck, 31, a Republican in Hamilton, Ala., standing by Bush, it has sucked taxpayer dollars away from where it is needed: "We're spending $150 billion on the war. That's what's hurting us."
For numerous voters, it is the nagging sense that a president consumed with foreign affairs no longer cares about the plight of citizens at home. Jodie Flickinger, 52, a lifelong Republican in Columbia, S.C., recalled being taken aback by economic conditions during a Memorial Day weekend trip to her native Youngstown, Ohio.
"I think he gets more joy, he gets a bigger rush, out of doing world war," she said of Bush. "The United States economy just bores him or confuses him, I guess."
Patricia Smith, 70, a Republican in Newport News, sensed the same problem: "He's gotten so overwhelmed with these other things that he's forgotten what he promised he would do for us."
Bush is not the first president to suffer from a disconnect between objective economic indicators and voter perceptions on the economy. The economy began growing steadily in March 1991, when President George H.W. Bush registered a 49 percent approval rating on his handling of the economy. But by July of 1992, those approval ratings had slid to an abysmal 25 percent, presaging his electoral defeat three months later.
By October 1994, economic growth had climbed to a healthy 4 percent, and unemployment had slid from 7.5 percent in 1992 to 6.1 percent. Yet President Bill Clinton's economic job approval ratings were stuck at 43 percent, with 52 percent disapproving. The GOP swept into power on Capitol Hill the next month. It was not until June 1996, more than five years into the longest peacetime economic expansion in history, that Clinton's approval ratings on the economy turned solidly positive.
"Americans are a show-me people," said Karlyn Bowman, a public opinion expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "They need to be shown that things have actually been changed, and I think in an economic recovery, this means seeing the guy down the street getting his job back rather than good jobs numbers."
For President Bush, the disconnect has been far more pronounced. Over the course of this year, according to Gallup polling, disapproval of Bush's handling of the economy has risen in lock step with the economy's performance, from 43 percent in early January to 58 percent. "It may be hard to evince positive responses to anything we ask them," conceded Frank Newport, Gallup's polling director.
For Republicans, frustration is beginning to show. Last week, when the Labor Department announced that an additional 248,000 jobs had been created in May, House Ways and Means Committee Republicans e-mailed reporters, blaring, "It's a Booming Economy, Stupid."
But John R. Zaller, a political scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, suggested that voters may not be stupid. They just may have considerably sharper antennae than economists.
In the fall of 2000, when most economic indicators continued to surge, anxiety among voters began to take a toll on Democrat Al Gore's White House bid, Zaller said. That anxiety proved to be prescient: By the spring of 2001, the economy had slipped into recession.
This go-round, jobs are coming back, but Americans may sense that those jobs are not of the same quality as the work that was lost, Newport said. Any good economic news is being tempered by high gasoline prices, and a generally sour mood has made voters skeptical.
"My dad told me when I was growing up that figures lie and liars figure," Flickinger scoffed.
For Bush, that sensitivity is compounded by the war in Iraq, Zaller said. Most economists and political scientists look to the economy to determine an election's outcome, but foreign policy events can knock or add as much 3 percentage points to an incumbent's vote. President Jimmy Carter may have been sunk in 1980 by the disastrous, failed rescue attempt of U.S. hostages in Iran.
For Bush, that sensitivity to foreign affairs is not all bad. Maria Sandoval, an elderly Democrat in Colorado Springs, has had a rough time of it in the past few years, living solely on Social Security and relying on the county clinic for her health care. On the economy, Bush "hasn't done very good," she allowed. He could have offered more help, she said, and his prescription drug law does not promise her much, either.
But Bush has her vote, she said firmly. "I guess he hasn't put too much into [the economy], but he's busy with a lot of other things. He's on top of everything. That's what I like about him."
During the Clinton years, Jeremy Tuck said he had been selling mobile homes in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, at $45,000 a year, making good money. Last year, he was assembling mobile homes, earning $15,000 and living hand-to-mouth. But Bush has his vote this November. Had Gore been elected in 2000, Tuck said, "we would've been taken over by Saddam Hussein or [Osama] bin Laden."
"You make more money in plain terms when Democrats are in office," Tuck said with a shrug, "but Republicans are stronger on the military, and that's why I'm voting for President Bush."
--------
On foreign policy, Bush follows the Reagan model
SOME OF THE SAME NEOCON IDEOLOGUES HAVE WORKED FOR BOTH PRESIDENTS
The Mercury News
By Daniel Sneider
Thu, Jun. 10, 2004
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/8887413.htm
When George W. Bush came to the White House more than three years ago, conventional wisdom was that he would hew closely to the classic Republican realism of his father. But when it comes to foreign policy, Ronald Reagan is his true father.
And in the warm glow of remembrances of Reagan, it is easy to forget that his harshest criticism of foreign policy was aimed at fellow Republicans. In Reagan's view, the policies of containment and detente pursued by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, under the influence of Henry Kissinger, allowed the Soviet Union to surpass the United States -- both militarily and in its global reach. Reagan saw the emphasis on balance of power, epitomized by the embrace of communist China to counter Moscow, as immoral.
When Reagan challenged Ford for the Republican nomination in 1976, he hammered the administration for refusing to meet Russian dissident author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ``Liberty'' should be the aim of American foreign policy, he insisted.
The Reagan forces also challenged intelligence assessments of the Soviet Union, claiming the CIA was underestimating the Soviet threat to give support to Kissinger's detente policies. Under that pressure, the CIA director -- Bush senior -- appointed an outside group of experts, called Team B, to review the data. Its report drew a dark picture of Soviet intentions. It criticized the CIA for failing to see ``an intense military buildup'' by the Soviets in pursuit of world domination.
When Reagan took office in 1980, he used his first press conference to assail the Soviet Union for using detente as a ``one-way street . . . to pursue its own aims.'' From the beginning, he depicted the conflict with the Soviets in starkly moralistic terms, as a battle with what he famously termed ``the evil empire.''
Reagan embarked on a massive arms buildup and halted all arms control talks with the Soviets. At the same time, the Reagan administration moved to counter the Soviets by arming the mujahedeen resistance in Afghanistan, the Contras in Nicaragua and other anti-Soviet movements around the globe.
As James Mann recounts in his brilliant book on Bush's foreign policy, ``Rise of the Vulcans,'' many of the key players who mounted the assault on Republican realism and who shaped the Reagan administration's policy turn up later in the Bush administration.
Men like Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fought Kissinger's detente from within the Ford administration. The neoconservative ideologues who authored Bush's depiction of his policy as a battle against an ``axis of evil'' and defined American policy as a crusade to bring democracy to the Middle East also served Reagan.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, for example, was an author of the Team B report -- previewing, as Mann writes, his creation of special teams to challenge the intelligence community's analyses of Iraq.
Wolfowitz's track record in both cases is consistent. The Soviets had actually cut back their military spending in 1976 and would not increase it until 1985, more than halfway into the Reagan years. A later CIA review found that virtually all of the Team B criticisms of their assessments ``proved to be wrong.''
Of course, carrying out policy in the real world is always more complicated than rhetoric implies. Reagan may have promoted human rights in the Soviet empire, but he backed the death squads in El Salvador. The Islamists the U.S. armed and funded in Afghanistan later established the Taliban regime and formed the Al-Qaida terrorist network.
In late 1984, amid an election campaign and under public pressure to freeze the deployment of nuclear weapons, the Reagan administration reopened arms control talks with the Soviets. When Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev emerged the next year, a series of summits led to arms treaties and a warming of ties. The more hard-line voices in the Reagan administration were superseded by men such as George Shultz and Colin Powell, who harkened more from the realist camp.
Bush seems ready to follow Reagan down this road as well. The embrace of the United Nations to gain an exit from Iraq is the most visible sign that for Bush, as for Reagan, reality eventually prevails.
DANIEL SNEIDER is foreign affairs columnist for the Mercury News. His column appears on Sunday and Thursday. You can contact him at dsneider@mercurynews.com
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Fuel Cell Maker Scraps IPO
REUTERS UK:
June 10, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25462/story.htm
LONDON - Fuel cell maker Intelligent Energy has become the latest European firm to suffer from weak demand for new share issues after it cancelled a planned stock market listing.
"We have concluded that our shareholder interests would not be best served by proceeding with flotation in current market conditions," Chief Executive Harry Bradbury said in a statement on Tuesday.
Intelligent Energy had planned to raise up to 60 million pounds from the sale of new and existing shares in an initial public offering (IPO) on London's junior AIM market this month, valuing the firm at about 200 million pounds.
Intelligent Energy's decision to postpone -- confirming a Reuters report on Monday that it may back out -- follows several other cancelled European IPOs in recent months, including those of Germany's Siltronic and ATU. Other firms, such as UK sportswear supplier Umbro, have reduced the amount they raised.
The market for new issues has picked up this year after a three-year downturn, but geopolitical risks, rising interest rates and high oil prices have tempered investors' appetite for new stock.
Bradbury said Intelligent Energy had financing in place to sustain its business and that further funds could be raised through private placement.
He said the company, which began life in August 2001, would reconsider a flotation in London or New York in due course.
Fuel cells use hydrogen for a chemical reaction that produces electricity. The basic technology is old, but increasing concerns about the pollutants in other fuels have led inventors back to the use of hydrogen as a fuel of the future in both static power generation and transport applications.
JP Morgan was nominated adviser for the offer and was to be joint broker with Evolution Beeson Gregory.
-------- energy
Energy Watchdog Forecasts More Oil Demand
By BRUCE STANLEY
The Associated Press
Thursday, June 10, 2004; 10:15 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A32917-2004Jun10?language=printer
LONDON - Global demand for oil will grow this year at its fastest rate since 1980, but the producer group OPEC's pledge to pump more crude should help ease the pressure on prices, the International Energy Agency said Thursday.
U.S. crude prices peaked this month at more than $42 per barrel, driven by fears about security in Saudi Arabia and uncertainty about whether major producers would provide more crude. The IEA, which has often urged the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to augment supplies, welcomed OPEC's decision last week to raise its output ceiling and boost production.
"We take the commitments of these producers seriously," the IEA said in its monthly oil report. "All things being equal, this should moderate prices by allowing stocks to build."
The IEA is the energy watchdog for wealthy oil-importing countries. Although it analyzes the supply and demand for crude, it avoids trying to predict price levels.
Oil inventories held by importing countries grew modestly in April, but strong demand for gasoline precluded much improvement in gas inventories, the IEA reported.
U.S. oil prices peaked June 1 at $42.33 per barrel for light crude for July delivery. They've fallen 9 percent since then as July contracts of light crude rose 91 cents Thursday to settle at $38.45 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gasoline prices have not followed crude downward, due to refining constraints, environmental standards for reformulated gasoline and other unique factors.
Falah Aljibury, an independent energy analyst, said the only way to reduce U.S. gas prices would be for the United States to import more gas.
"And the only way we can import more is by relaxing temporarily the environmental standards we set for gasoline until we see ... a drop in gasoline prices like we're seeing in crude," he said by telephone from his office in Alamo, Calif.
The IEA revised its annual outlook for oil demand upward by 360,000 barrels a day, due largely to brisk growth in India, Brazil and China. The IEA now predicts that demand will grow by 2.3 million barrels, or 2.9 percent, over last year's level. The agency said that will be the fastest rate of increase since 1980 but didn't cite a 1980 figure for comparison. Demand grew 2.3 percent in 2003 over 2002.
This is the eighth consecutive month in which the IEA has made an upward revision in demand. John Waterlow, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie Consultants in Edinburgh, Scotland, suggested that one reason for these revisions is the scarcity of timely statistics for many less-developed countries.
"You've got huge chunks of the world that are completely uncatalogued in the short term," he said.
Average demand for 2004 will total 81.1 million barrels a day, up from 78.8 million barrels in 2003. Much of this growth stems from "a number of one-off factors," including low interest rate policies and tax cuts in some importing nations, large infrastructure projects in China, depleted oil inventories and spending in the war on terrorism, the IEA said.
"This cannot last, and the move to add physical barrels constitutes a responsible action on the part of producers to help stabilize the market," the report said.
OPEC, which supplies more than a third of the world's crude, announced on June 3 that it would raise its output target by 2 million barrels starting July 1 and, if necessary, by an additional 500,000 barrels on Aug. 1. In addition, it urged its members to do as much as they could to help stabilize the market.
Saudi Arabia, OPEC's biggest member, has said it will boost its actual production by as much as 2 million barrels if crude prices stay too high. Saudi Arabia is the only OPEC member with significant spare capacity to produce more crude. It has said it will pump fresh barrels regardless of what its OPEC partners do.
OPEC's 11 members hiked their actual daily production in May by 470,000 barrels over April, accounting for all of last month's net increase in global supplies. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates accounted for most of this increase, the IEA said.
However, Iraq, which has the second-largest proven reserves after Saudi Arabia, suffered sabotage of its pipeline flows and saw production and exports decline for the second month in a row. Iraq doesn't participate in OPEC's output agreements.
OPEC's other members pumped 2.6 million barrels, or 11 percent, above last month's ceiling of 23.5 million barrels.
"Further supply increases are expected for June," the IEA said.
Wood Mackenzie's Waterlow said the IEA was probably correct in assuming that OPEC's members would fulfill their pledges to boost output.
"We know now that the Saudis are pretty much going to pump as much as they can," as are the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, he said.
Russia, currently the No. 1 producer, also raised production in April and, according to provisional IEA estimates, in May. Russia doesn't belong to OPEC.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
The dimming of the light
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Adapted by Maria Pegoraro and Kathleen M. Wong,
California Academy of Sciences
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-06-10/s_24207.asp
Since the 1950s Earth has become a darker place. Sunlight levels have dropped by up to 3 percent per decade, reports Atsumu Ohmura of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
For more than 50 years, hundreds of instruments placed around the globe have monitored the level of sunlight reaching the Earth's surface. Ohumura's analysis of the records has revealed an incredible 10 percent reduction in light levels between 1950 and 1990. Satellite measurements have confirmed that the Sun remains just as bright, so less light must be filtering through the atmosphere to the ground.
The culprit is pollution. Scientists have long known that soot particles reflect light back into space. Pollution also encourages the formation of thicker, darker clouds, which subsequently block more light. On the bright side, these particles could slow the pace of global warming. Research on global dimming and its implications for global weather, water supplies, and agriculture are being presented this week at the Assembly of the American and Canadian Geophysical Unions in Montreal, Canada.
Volcano Eruptions Coincide with Weather
The world's volcanoes are more likely to erupt during the Northern Hemisphere's winter, according to a new study. The findings, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, imply that weather may affect the planet's underground plumbing.
Researchers led by David Pyle of Cambridge University, England, analyzed the timing of more than 3,2000 eruptions recorded between 1700 and 1999. They found that around the Pacific, eruptions were 18 percent more likely between November and March. More precipitation occurs during those months in the Northern Hemisphere. At the same time, the rate of marine evaporation rises in the southern hemisphere, which contains a higher percentage of ocean.
These surface water movements change the very shape of Earth from season to season, according to satellite measurements. All this underground pushing and pulling might be sufficient to push volcanoes into eruption mode, the researchers suggest.
--------
Five Word Definition Could Keep Oil Out of U.S. Waters
June 10, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2004/2004-06-10-09.asp#anchor1
Attorneys for the oil industry filed a motion Wednesday seeking to narrow the scope of the federal Clean Water Act as it applies to preventing oil spills in many streams, ponds, wetlands and other waters.
At issue is the definition of the words "waters of the United States" under the Clean Water Act.
In two related lawsuits against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the American Petroleum Institute and Marathon Oil are challenging revisions to the spill prevention rules for large oil storage facilities imposed by the EPA in July 2002.
The revisions - the first significant change to the rule since it was adopted in 1973 - updated the definition of "waters of the United States" to match the definition the EPA had adopted for other rules under the Clean Water Act decades ago.
Conservation groups that have intervened in the litigation warned that more than half the nation's waters - from neighborhood creeks and fishing holes to drinking water supplies - could lose federal protection if the oil industry's argument is successful.
At the center of the lawsuits is the EPA's oil spill prevention program, which is designed to prevent discharges of oil into the waters of the United States, and to contain those discharges if they occur.
The oil industry claims that it should only have to take steps to prevent oil spills in certain waters that meet a narrow, 100 year old concept of navigability. The industry argues that it can legally spill oil into many of the nation's streams, creeks, and wetlands.
Earthjustice, on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Sierra Club, has intervened in American Petroleum Institute (API) v. EPA and Marathon Oil v. EPA, the two related lawsuits.
"The stakes are very high," said Jennifer Kefer, an Earthjustice attorney representing the groups. "If the oil industry gets its way, more than half the places where we fish and swim could be fair game for anyone who doesn't want to take basic steps to prevent oil spills."
If this industry motion is successful, it could have an immediate effect on the implementation of the spill prevention program nationwide, Kefer warned.
The EPA estimates that 24,000 oil spills occur each year in the United States. More than 70 spills are recorded on an average day, according to the agency. Even though oil spills into the ocean are more publicized, freshwater spills are more frequent and often more destructive to the environment.
In 2000, the EPA estimated in testimony before Congress that "On average, one spill of greater than 100,000 gallons occurs every month from oil storage facilities and the entire transportation network."
"This administration has repeatedly weakened federal water quality protections," said NRDC attorney Daniel Rosenberg. "Now, it has an opportunity to defend the Clean Water Act for a change."
If the industry cases are successful, the damage could extend beyond the oil spill program, the conservationist attorneys warn. The EPA could be required to cut back the scope of the Clean Water Act's protections in other Clean Water Act programs as well, to reach only "traditionally navigable waters" and their adjacent wetlands.
Such a result could leave most of the nation's creeks, wetlands, streams, lakes and ponds without protection under the federal Clean Water Act.
"For 30 years, the Clean Water Act has provided the foundation for cleaning up pollution in the streams, ponds, lakes and wetlands that nourish our river systems," said Robin Mann, chair of Sierra Club's Clean Water Campaign Committee. "The oil industry's effort is a serious threat to the progress that has been achieved under the Clean Water Act, and an insult to all Americans."
-------- ACTIVISTS
At G-8, a Kinder, Gentler Age of Protesting
By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 10, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29701-2004Jun9.html
BRUNSWICK, Ga., June 9 -- Bread-a Claus, a sensationally bearded college art major from northern Georgia, thought hard about his game plan for protesting the Group of Eight summit. With his trusty pal Cue Ball by his side, he would plumb the depths of supermarket Dumpsters across Georgia, salvaging piles of day-old bagels and sourdough loaves, bundles of yellow crookneck squash and scads of cabbage. He would feed the poor with his "Dumpster diving." He would make a statement about corporate waste. He would make the world a better place.
And, most definitely, he would try like heck not to get arrested.
"It puts drains on the community," said Bread-a Claus, whose actual name is Matt Jones. "It costs a lot of money to get out. We can do a lot of other things with that money."
The roughest time-honored rites of American protest -- break some stuff, burn some stuff, duke it out with the cops -- feel a little dated, a little passé to Bread-a Claus's amiable circle of Dumpster-diving friends from the group Food Not Bombs. The few protesters who have come to this frayed industrial city, across the marshes from the G-8 meeting on swanky Sea Island that ends Thursday, have talked of building a new -- decidedly tamer -- protest ethos focused on community projects, rather than insurrection. While reserving "revolutionary vandalism" as an option, many protesters are saying their anti-globalization, anti-capitalism arguments get lost when demonstrations turn violent.
So instead, demonstrators are collecting samples of contaminated soil, hoping to draw attention to the Brunswick area's 16 toxic sites. Others are distributing clothes. Anarchists are fixing up an abandoned house for use by needy young mothers. The Pagan Cluster is calling on witches to cast spells that drive out toxic waste.
The Southeast Anarchist Network's "call to action" reads a bit like a new-era manifesto, an antidote to the explosive clashes between demonstrators and police at previous gatherings of international leaders in Seattle; Genoa, Italy; and, most recently, at the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference last year in Miami: "To arm ourselves with hammers instead of bricks. To count our victories in the relationships we build, rather than what we tear down."
Embracing this approach has taken a bit of an adjustment in Brunswick, where locals have listened for months to dire predictions about hordes of violent protesters. Congress approved $25 million to reimburse Georgia law enforcement agencies for summit security, and federal agencies are spending millions more. The streets are lined with police, National Guard members, state troopers, Secret Service agents -- most of whom appear to have little to do. More than 10,000 law enforcement officers have blanketed the region, but the biggest events they have encountered have drawn only a couple hundred protesters. The rest of the time, small bands of protesters have fanned out in poor neighborhoods.
It all seemed so curious, so hard to comprehend to the crowd outside the Family Grocery, across from the McIntyre public housing development, where a sign declares: "Now Accepting Food Stamps." Jonathon Ramsey pedaled up on his bicycle and breathlessly announced, "The protesters are coming!"
Everyone leaned forward, and there, coming into view and coming right for them, were about a dozen young men and women with bandannas on their faces.
"Don't be coming down here and blowing up nothing," Jamal Griffin called out, sticking out his chest. "You know, Bush ain't coming through here, boy."
Griffin had no idea that the anarchists would drop off a few leaflets and sweep right past him on their way to a scruffy house on Martin Luther King Boulevard. As the G-8 meeting has progressed, the pile of garbage outside the house, with its big wraparound porch and its sloping tin roof, has grown. Teenagers from Massachusetts and out-of-work teachers from Atlanta hauled rotting carpeting, burned-up toasters and unimaginably awful mattresses out of the old house. Neighbors have known about the place for years; it was a house where drunks would crash for a few nights before moving on. It was a mess.
Jamie, a 19-year-old from Marietta, Ga., who like many demonstrators would not give his full name, dragged debris past a sign that read "Resistance through Constructive Action."
"Most people's view of me is the bomb-throwing anarchist -- the terrorist," he said matter-of-factly. "We want to show people that we want to help people out."
There is a "time and a place to break store windows," he said, but there was no point in cracking glass on this day. Unlike some previous summits, when demonstrators squeezed within blocks of the meetings, the Sea Island event is geographically isolated. Summit protesters are separated from the leaders they hope to influence by impassable marshes, a heavily patrolled river and the ocean; even the media, except for a few pool reporters, have been kept at a distance -- a considerable distance -- with official briefings in Savannah, 90 miles away.
In Brunswick, there have been scenes of dueling cameras throughout the G-8. Police videotape the protesters; the protesters videotape the police videotaping protesters.
Down the street, at the main demonstration site on a swath of ant-infested lawn at Coastal Georgia Community College, a hip-hop band plays to an audience of two sunburned girls and a dozen or so vendors at the "Fair World Fair" tent. Nathaniel Wood, a 19-year-old primatology student from Hampshire College in Massachusetts, has surveyed the paltry turnout and is feeling deflated.
"It makes me not want to come to these things," he says.
He sighs and sets off for a place in the shade. For now, fantasy sounds better than reality, and he pulls out his copy of a "Harry Potter" book.
-------
------- 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.