Archive By Date | Today's Links to Search By
Activists' News | Nuclear | Depleted Uranium | Military | Police
Alternative Energy Etc. | From Subscribers
NUCLEAR
Losing Ground on Weapons?
BWXT Y-12 fined for explosion, fire
Congolese president survives coup attempt
Iran rejects demand to drop heavy-water reactor
Iran seeks changes to draft N-resolution
Iran Won't Accept New Nuke Obligations
Two Koreas agree measures to avoid accidental armed clashes
Gorbachev: Reagan understood dangers of nuclear war
Loose nukes
Battelle to Bid on Idaho National Laboratory Contract
Agency Is Seen as Unfazed on Atom Waste
Fast facts on Pantex and its operations
MILITARY
Congo 'Coup' Leader in Hiding as Doubts Emerge
Ghana, Nigeria and Pakistan to assure Sierra Leone security come December
Thailand Vows to Launch Offensive in Restive South
Md. Lab Ships Live Anthrax In Error
Blair's Party Takes a Drubbing at Polls
British warships collide off coast during 'Sea Day' show
In Shift, Rebel Iraqi Cleric Backs New Government He Had Once Mocked
U.S. Retools Hussein Pleasure Palace as Camp Victory
Iraqis Put Contempt For Troops On Display
Iraqi Kidnappers Kill Lebanese Hostage
Hamas: Attacks Against Israel to Continue
Al-Qaida Claims U.S. Slaying and Hostage
The Road to Democracy, via Damascus
Pakistani Troops Move Close to al-Qaida
U.S. Plans to Release 650 From Abu Ghraib
Spacecraft Nears End of 7-Year Trip to Saturn
Cassini spacecraft flys by Saturn's largest outer moon
Army Policy Bars Interrogations by Private Contractors
General Granted Latitude At Prison Abu Ghraib Used Aggressive Tactics
Interrogators Hired for Iraq Despite Ban
Bosnian Serbs Admit Responsibility for the Massacre of 7,000
Bosnian Serbs Admit Massacre of Muslims
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
William Pfaff: When laws get in the way of torture
POLITICS
We all lost the Cold War: Gorbachev
Utility Rejects Pay for Rehnquist Flight
Lies Upon Lies Upon Lies US Military in Crisis
Bush Aide Watches Polls and Public Perceptions
Hypocrisy: The US Government's Biggest Single Problem
OTHER
Developing Nations Discuss Trade Barriers
ACTIVISTS
Whistleblower wins seat in Brussels with Eurocleaner pledge
The Art of War
Group Seeking to Protest War Delays a Meeting With Police
John C. Reilly Speaks Against Logging
-------- NUCLEAR
Losing Ground on Weapons?
Sat, Jun. 12, 2004
Washington Post
Myrtle Beach Online
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/news/opinion/8905843.htm
The Group of Eight industrialized nations took a couple of steps at their summit meeting in Georgia this week to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Urged on by the Bush administration, the leaders of Europe, Japan, Canada and Russia agreed to a one-year moratorium on supplying equipment for producing fissile material to countries that do not already have it. President Bush seeks a permanent ban, which will be discussed in the coming months. The G-8 also announced seven new participants in its program for funding the securing of nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and agreed to press more non-nuclear countries to accept expanded inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The various initiatives followed several recent steps by the Bush administration - including a new $450 million program to collect enriched uranium and plutonium from 40 countries around the world - that have added momentum to its efforts to prevent the spread of nukes to nations or terrorist groups.
This progress nevertheless looks paltry in comparison with recent developments in the opposite direction. Both North Korea and Iran appear to be continuing with nuclear weapons development, overcoming ineffective containment efforts by the Bush administration and oft-divided groups of its allies. Next week the IAEA board will meet to consider a report that a formal Iranian commitment to freeze work on enriching uranium was never honored. It's not clear that all the nuclear equipment secretly produced and traded by the Pakistan-based network of Abdul Qadeer Khan has been tracked down: Some seems to have disappeared. Evidence has emerged, meanwhile, that North Korea has exported nuclear technology, to Libya. Though Libya is dismantling its program, there is an obvious danger that North Korea will sell bombs or the technology for them to others. It's easy to fault the ineffective strategies for these threats pursued by the Bush administration or, in the case of Iran, by European governments. But it's also unclear whether any approach, from negotiation to military action, would succeed - though the containment effort must go on.
What's odd in such circumstances is the relative sluggishness with which the world has attacked the part of the nuclear menace that is relatively easier to deal with, if equally frightening: that of "loose nukes" and the materials needed to make them. All the elements needed to manufacture a nuclear weapon are available in global markets, save the fissile core of highly enriched uranium or plutonium - and hundreds of tons of these materials are stored under insecure conditions in the nations of the former Soviet Union and other countries. A decade-old U.S. program has safeguarded only 20 percent of the material in Russia and less than that elsewhere. According to a recent report by a team of Harvard University researchers, less fissile material was secured in the two years after Sept. 11, 2001, than in the two years before the attacks.
Though it is working harder at securing the loose nukes, the Bush administration is still giving this effort a fraction of the resources it is spending to deploy a missile defense system against a threat - a rogue state with an intercontinental missile - that does not currently exist. At the current rate of work, it will take 13 years to secure the remaining bomb-grade material in the former Soviet Union and more than a decade to collect it from other countries. Bush's challenger, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., has laid out a plan to complete the same job within four years. The president could help his own political cause as well as U.S. security by matching that commitment.
-------- accidents and safety
BWXT Y-12 fined for explosion, fire
Paul Parson
Oak Ridger Staff paul.parson@oakridger.com
June 11, 2004
http://www.oakridger.com/stories/061104/new_20040611076.shtml
The company that manages Oak Ridge's nuclear weapons plant has been fined $82,500 for a small explosion and subsequent fire that happened over a year ago.
Linton Brooks, administrator for the National Nuclear Security Administration, notified Dennis Ruddy, president and general manager of BWXT Y-12, of the fine this week. BWXT Y-12 manages the Y-12 National Security Complex for the NNSA - the quasi-independent agency within the Department of Energy that oversees the nuclear weapons complex.
The fine pertains to a February 2003 incident where workers were conducting the final testing phase of what's being called a "saltless uranium processing system."
An operational emergency, the lowest of emergency level at the plant, was called; the building where the incident occurred was evacuated; and 33 workers were tested for exposure. Two workers had contamination on their clothing and one had contamination on both clothing and hair.
Investigators concluded that the fire was caused by heat and steam generated from unreacted calcium, excess water and depleted uranium in an unvented container. The resulting overpressurization of the container caused the explosion. The shockwave from the explosion broke the seal on a glovebox, which allowed air to enter and the uranium powder - which ignites spontaneously in air - began to burn.
In response to the fine, Y-12 spokesman Bill Wilburn said: "BWXT Y-12 takes all nuclear safety issues very seriously. This incident happened more than one year ago and was the subject of comprehensive internal and external investigations. Based on the analysis and lessons learned from those reviews, BWXT Y-12 has put in place appropriate controls to prevent future incidences such as this."
Brooks noted that the NNSA will continue to closely follow implementation of corrective actions BWXT Y-12 has taken with "the expectation of seeing continuing improvements" in safety-related areas.
-------- africa
Congolese president survives coup attempt while army chases ringleader out of town
By Declan Walsh in Nairobi,
12 June 2004
UK Independent
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=530696
Gunfire and explosions rocked the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kinshasa, yesterday morning, as renegade soldiers made a failed attempt to overthrow the transitional government led by President Joseph Kabila.
Dissident troops from Mr Kabila's presidential guard sparked fighting around the presidential mansion, the state radio station and the main military camp in the early morning hours. Government forces quelled the attempted coup within hours and, by yesterday afternoon, were reportedly chasing the ringleader, Major Eric Lenge, south of the city using soldiers and a helicopter.
President Kabila made a televised address to reassure the nation that he remained in control. "Stay calm, prepare yourself to resist - because I will allow nobody to try a coup d'état or to throw off course our peace process," said the 32-year-old president, dressed in military uniform. "As for me, I'm fine," he added, apparently in reference to speculation that he had been caught up in the gunfire.
The attempted putsch was the second major blow in as many weeks to the authority of the Kabila-led transitional government, which was formed last June to end the DRC's devastating five-year war. Eleven days ago a separate group of renegades seized of Bukavu, more than 1,000 miles to the east, and occupied it for a week. The dissident leader, Brigadier General Laurent Nkunda, withdrew his forces voluntarily last Monday.
Yesterday's attempted coup in Kinshasa suggested the atmosphere of upheaval was spreading across the vast country, Africa's third-largest. There was no indication, however, of any link with the group that seized Bukavu.
The attempted coup started after midnight on Thursday when the dissidents seized control of the national radio station and apparently cut the capital's electricity supply. At about 2.30am Major Lenge appeared on state radio to declare that has forces has "neutralised" the transitional government, and urged the army to join him.
But the speech, which was broadcast when most Congolese were sleeping, went largely unheard and within three hours, government loyalists had forced the rebels into Camp Tshatshi, the city's main military base, close to the Congo River.
At dawn, residents reported heavy gunfire and tank shelling from within the camp; later, the army announced that it had arrested 12 rebels. Gunfire was also reported from around President Kabila's residence, which was unexplained.
United Nations military officials estimated that about 200 soldiers took part in the coup. Antoine Ghonda, the Foreign Minister, admitted that its leaders came from the presidential guard. Diplomats said the renegades may have been angry at the government's failure to pay full wages for several months.
The involvement of the presidential guard yesterday's disturbances has ominous personal resonances for Mr Kabila: three years ago his father, Laurent, was assassinated by a presidential guard soldier in still-murky circumstances.
In March, several hundred soldiers attacked military installations around the city, although it was unclear whether they were attempting a coup or a localised army mutiny. President Kabila blamed the incident on supporters of the former dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko; it remained unclear last night who he blamed for yesterday's botched uprising.
The upheavals in Bukavu and Kinshasa inflicted serious damage on the DRC's fragile peace process, which had been pointed towards elections next year. The brief occupation of Bukavu sparked anti-UN protests across the country; eroded confidence in Mr Kabila; and raised fears of a fresh war, possibly with neighbouring Rwanda.
It also resulted in serious human rights abuses, some of them war crimes, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. Ethnically fuelled murders, rape of girls as young as three and widespread looting accompanied the fighting, said the New York-based lobby group. As many as 80 people were killed.
HRW was "deeply concerned" by the failure of 800-strong UN mission in Bukavu to use its Chapter Seven mandate - which allows for deadly force - to protect civilians in danger, although it commended the peacekeepers for saving some lives.
-------- iran
Iran rejects demand to drop heavy-water reactor
Reuters,
June 12, 2004
http://www.navhindtimes.com/stories.php?part=news&Story_ID=061318
Tehran: Iran today rejected European demands that it freeze additional parts of its atomic programme, saying it would push on with plans to build a heavy-water reactor. "We will not accept any new obligation," the Foreign Minister, Mr Kamal Kharrazi told a news conference. "If anyone asks us to give up Isfahan industries to change yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride gas or to give up heavy-water facilities in Arak, we cannot accept such an extra demand that is contradictory to our legal rights."
Yellowcake is processed uranium ore, mined near the central desert city of Yazd. Uranium hexafluoride gas is pumped into centrifuges that enrich uranium by spinning it.
The United States says Iran is using its programme as a smokescreen for building an atomic bomb, but the Islamic republic insists its scientists are working only on ways to meet booming domestic electricity demand.
Britain, Germany and France penned a tough draft resolution this week deploring Iran's failure to cooperate fully with the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The document, to be debated at an IAEA board meeting starting on Monday, asked Iran to freeze its operation of a uranium conversion facility near Isfahan and reverse its decision to construct a heavy-water reactor near the central industrial city of Arak.
Mr Kharrazi said he hoped IAEA board members would resist US pressure and not only soften the resolution but also drop Iran's case. "It is not fair that Iran's case remains on the agenda for two minor issues," he said.
Iran must explain how traces of bomb-grade uranium came to be found on components, and what it plans to do with advanced uranium-enriching centrifuges it initially failed to declare.
The heavy-water reactor Tehran has decided to build would be capable of producing weapons-usable plutonium. Mr Kharrazi said the reactor was still being designed and he did not know when construction work would start.
Iran promised to suspend its uranium enrichment last year but the three European powers' call to halt work at Isfahan and drop plans for the Arak reactor is new.
The United Nations does not define Isfahan and Arak as enrichment sites, but European diplomats have argued that the gas pumped into centrifuges is integral to the enrichment process.
Low-enriched uranium can be used in nuclear power stations such as the one Iran is building at Bushehr on its south coast, but if enriched further it can be deployed in warheads.
Mr Kharrazi said Iran had the technology to produce fuel for its nuclear programme and wanted a full fuel cycle.
"Iran is powerful and should be regarded as a member of the nuclear club and that is an irreversible step," he said.
Mr Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's former representative to the IAEA, said in a recent newspaper interview that Iran was 10 years away from being able to supply fuel to Bushehr.
If Iran cannot resolve its nuclear wrangle with the IAEA it faces referral to the UN security council, which could impose sanctions on it.
----
Iran seeks changes to draft N-resolution
June 12, 2004
Pakistan Daily Times
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_12-6-2004_pg4_14
VIENNA: Iran wants changes to a tough draft resolution to be put to the UN's nuclear watchdog rebuking Tehran for failing to cooperate fully with the body, diplomats said on Friday.
The United States says Iran's atomic programme is a front to build an atomic bomb, but Tehran denies this. The draft resolution is to be submitted to a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) next week.
The draft deplores Iran's failure to cooperate fully with a UN investigation into suspicions that Tehran might have a covert nuclear weapons programme. The diplomats said Iran wants the word "deplores" removed.
But several diplomats said the Iranians were pleased the text contained no trigger mechanism for the board to report Tehran to the UN Security Council for possible sanctions in the event Iran's cooperation remained sluggish.
Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are limited to generating electricity and wants a softening of the draft, which France, Britain and Germany prepared for next week's board meeting. The draft by the European Union's three biggest states was sent to the 35 nations on the IAEA board earlier this week.
Top Iranian officials in Tehran and Vienna have been publicly silent about the text. The head of Iran's delegation repeatedly declined to comment on the text. Diplomats said Iran also wants to remove a section that calls on Iran to end operation of a uranium conversion facility and reverse its decision to begin construction of a heavy water research reactor that would produce weapons-useable plutonium.
Meanwhile a non-aligned diplomat told Reuters that Iran will have a tough time convincing the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to soften the resolution, given it is based almost verbatim on a report on Iran prepared by IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei.
The diplomats said Washington would probably back the text but disliked the lack of a Security Council trigger or deadlines that would keep up the pressure on Tehran.
Further undermining Iran's support on the board are revelations that Tehran's advanced P-2 centrifuge programme may have been planned on a massive scale and not as a tiny "research and development" project as Iran insists, diplomats said. reuters
----
Iran Won't Accept New Nuke Obligations
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 12, 2004; 9:27 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36497-2004Jun12.html
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran won't accept any new internationally imposed obligations regarding its nuclear program and the world must recognize Iran as a nuclear-capable nation, the foreign minister said Saturday.
The comments suggested a toughening of Iran's position two days before a meeting of the 35-nation board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency to discuss Iran's nuclear program.
"We won't accept any new obligations," Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi told reporters.
"Iran has a high technical capability and has to be recognized by the international community as a member of the nuclear club," Kharrazi said. "This is an irreversible path."
The IAEA, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, has wrestled for more than a year with what to do regarding what the United States and its allies say is a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran has rejected such allegations, saying its nuclear program is geared toward generating electricity, not making a bomb.
Kharrazi insisted Saturday that Iran won't give up its development of the nuclear fuel cycle, the steps for processing and enriching uranium necessary for both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. Iran says it has achieved the full cycle but is not enriching uranium.
"That somebody demands that we give up the nuclear fuel cycle ... is an additional demand," Kharrazi said. He apparently was referring to demands by U.S. and European countries that Iran halt operations of a plant it inaugurated in March in Isfahan, central Iran, that processes uranium into gas and abort plans to build a heavy water reactor in Arak, another city in central Iran.
"We can't accept such an additional demand, which is contrary to our legal and legitimate rights," he said. "No one in Iran can make a decision to deny the nation of something that is a source of pride."
Iran has confirmed it possesses technology to extract uranium ore, processing it into a powder called yellow cake, then converting it into gas. The gas is injected into centrifuges for low-grade enrichment that turns it into fuel for nuclear reactors.
Uranium enriched to low levels has energy uses, while highly enriched uranium can be used in bombs.
Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year under mounting international pressure. In April, it said it had stopped building centrifuges. IAEA inspectors had found traces of highly enriched uranium at two sites, which Iranian officials maintained was due to contaminated imported materials.
Kharrazi also said a draft resolution critical of Iran drawn up by Germany, France and Britain to be presented at the IAEA board meeting Monday was "unacceptable unless changes are made."
The minister said insistence by Europeans on "very tiny issues is contrary to the spirit of cooperation" and accused them of bowing to U.S. pressure and showing "lack of independence."
Washington wants the IAEA to declare Iran in breach of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and refer Iran's case to the U.N. Security Council, which may impose sanctions.
Kharrazi warned that failure in settling the debate over Iran's nuclear dossier will be a "failure for all," including Iran, Europe and the IAEA.
The minister confirmed Iran's efforts to buy 4,000 magnets needed for uranium enrichment equipment, saying the issue was being "unnecessarily" hyped. He did not say where the magnets were bought.
Diplomats told The Associated Press in Vienna 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."
-------- korea
Two Koreas agree measures to avoid accidental armed clashes
SEOUL (AFP)
Jun 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040612051615.ee1xru25.html
North and South Korea on Saturday signed an agreement on concrete measures aimed at avoiding accidental armed clashes along their land and sea borders, the defense ministry here said.
The agreement was signed at the end of three days of marathon talks involving colonel-grade officers from both sides at North Korea's Kaesong city near the inter-Korean border.
The "appendix agreement" was a follow-up to last week's landmark talks, where generals from the two countries struck an agreement to prevent any recurrence of naval clashes in their disputed waters and ease tension along the world's last Cold War frontier.
Bloody naval skirmishes have erupted near a disputed sea border in the rich fishing grounds off the west coast during the May-June crab season, with dozens of casualties reported on both sides since 1999.
The last clash in June 2002 left six South Korean sailors dead.
These clashes and other tense naval operations usually occurred when fishing boats from one side crossed the unmarked maritime border into the other side while chasing fish.
Under the new accord signed on Saturday, the guard posts of both sides on the west coast, their navy vessels and patrol boats will open radio communication networks on Monday and exchange information on poachers.
The two sides also agreed to end propaganda broadcasts along the inter-Korean border from midnight Monday and remove all signboards and other propaganda materials there.
South Korea has 100 propaganda billboards along the land border while the North has 200, Yonhap news agency said. The huge signs and drawings are aimed at enticing opposing soldiers to defect.
When an armistice was signed at the end of the Korean War in 1953, the western sea border was left undefined and the US-led United Nations Command unilaterally drew a temporary border there, called the Northern Limit Line.
North Korea has never recognized it, calling for a new border in line with international laws.
-------- russia
Gorbachev: Reagan understood dangers of nuclear war
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jun 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040612032158.keyyrfbb.html
The last president of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, said Friday that Ronald Reagan came to understand the threat of nuclear war and the trust that developed between them helped curb the arms race.
"At the most difficult time that the world was going through, when it seemed that only a miracle could stop the process of confrontation and of tension, we were able together to stop it," Gorbachev told CNN through a translator.
"Thanks to the fact that the US leadership, particularly the president of the United States, president Reagan, and the Soviet leadership understood where the world was moving and how far the arms race had gone," Gorbachev said.
Reagan once commented that a nuclear war might be winnable and championed treaty-violating research on missile-intercept systems.
Gorbachev, who attended Reagan's funeral service in Washington on Friday as the representative of Russia, said his relationship with Reagan improved at a summit in Geneva.
"After the first meeting in Geneva, we even exchanged some bitter remarks, but in Geneva, two days were enough for us to begin to understand each other and we adopted the statement saying that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," he told CNN.
"It was a very difficult dialogue, but then trust emerged and it became easier to solve problems and he turned out to be a person with whom we were able to get along and then to become friends," said Gorbachev, 73.
--
Reagan and the Russians
The Cold War ended despite President Reagan's arms buildup, not because of it--or so former President Gorbachev told the authors
by Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein
February 1994
Atlantic Monthly (updated 6/2/04)
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/foreign/reagrus.htm
Shortly after the Berlin Wall was torn down, prominent political leaders and commentators concluded that the U.S. military buildup under President Ronald Reagan had won the Cold War. "We were right to increase our defense budget," Vice President Dan Quayle announced. "Had we acted differently, the liberalization that we are seeking today throughout the Soviet bloc would most likely not be taking place." Even Tom Wicker, a New York Times columnist with impeccable liberal credentials, reluctantly conceded that the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and the Reagan buildup "seemed to impress the Soviets as a challenge that they might not be able to meet."
Hanging tough paid off. Forty years of arms competition, so the argument goes, brought the Soviet economy to the brink of collapse. The Vatican's Secretary of State, Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, said, "Ronald Reagan obligated the Soviet Union to increase its military spending to the limits of insupportability." When the Soviet Union could no longer afford the competition, its leaders decided to end the Cold War. A modified version of this argument holds that the American military buildup simply worsened the Soviet economic quandary; it was the straw that broke the camel's back. Neither the strong nor the weak version of the proposition that American defense spending bankrupted the Soviet economy and forced an end to the Cold War is sustained by the evidence.
The Soviet Union's defense spending did not rise or fall in response to American military expenditures. Revised estimates by the Central Intelligence Agency indicate that Soviet expenditures on defense remained more or less constant throughout the 1980s. Neither the military buildup under Jimmy Carter and Reagan nor SDI had any real impact on gross spending levels in the USSR. At most SDI shifted the marginal allocation of defense rubles as some funds were allotted for developing countermeasures to ballistic defense.
If American defense spending had bankrupted the Soviet economy, forcing an end to the Cold War, Soviet defense spending should have declined as East-West relations improved. CIA estimates show that it remained relatively constant as a proportion of the Soviet gross national product during the 1980s, including Gorbachev's first four years in office. Soviet defense spending was not reduced until 1989 and did not decline nearly as rapidly as the overall economy.
To be sure, defense spending was an extraordinary burden on the Soviet economy. As early as the 1970s some officials warned Leonid Brezhnev that the economy would stagnate if the military continued to consume such a disproportionate share of resources. The General Secretary ignored their warnings, in large part because his authority depended on the support of a coalition in which defense and heavy industry were well represented. Brezhnev was also extraordinarily loyal to the Soviet military and fiercely proud of its performance. Soviet defense spending under Brezhnev and Gorbachev was primarily a response to internal political imperatives--to pressures from the Soviet version of the military-industrial complex. The Cold War and the high levels of American defense spending provided at most an opportunity for leaders of the Soviet military-industrial complex to justify their claims to preferential treatment. Even though the Cold War has ended and the United States is no longer considered a threat by the current Russian leadership, Russian defense spending now consumes roughly as great a percentage of GNP as it did in the Brezhnev years.
The Soviet economy was not the only economy burdened by very high levels of defense spending. Israel, Taiwan, and North and South Korea have allocated a disproportionate share of resources to defense without bankrupting their economies. Indeed, some of these economies have grown dramatically. A far more persuasive reason for the Soviet economic decline is the rigid "command economy" imposed by Stalin in the early 1930s. It did not reward individual or collective effort; it absolved Soviet producers from the discipline of the market; and it gave power to officials who could not be held accountable by consumers. Consequently much of the investment that went into the civilian sector of the economy was wasted. The command economy pre-dated the Cold War and was not a response to American military spending. The Soviet Union lost the Cold War, but it was not defeated by American defense spending.
Former Soviet officials insist that Gorbachev's decisions to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan and to end the arms race were made despite the Reagan buildup and SDI. In 1983 Gorbachev, then the youngest member of the politburo, visited Canada and spent long hours in private conversation with Aleksandr Yakovlev, then the ambassador in Ottawa. The two men talked openly for the first time about the deep problems that the Soviet Union faced and the urgent need for change. To their mutual surprise they agreed on the folly of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and the necessity of ending the Cold War before it led to catastrophe for both superpowers. Both men hoped to reduce the burden of military spending in the USSR, and thus free resources for domestic reform and renewal.
By the time Gorbachev became General Secretary, in March of 1985, he was deeply committed to domestic reform and fundamental changes in Soviet foreign policy. "I, like many others," he observed recently, "knew that the USSR needed radical change. If I had not understood this, I would never have accepted the position of General Secretary." Within a month of assuming office he attempted to signal his interest in arms control to the United States by announcing a unilateral freeze on the deployment of Soviet intermediate-range missiles in Europe. The deployment of the SS-20, Yakovlev explains, was a "stupid and strange policy" that defied logical explanation. Yakovlev considered the deployment illogical and self-defeating before President Reagan announced SDI and the buildup of American military forces. He and Gorbachev were "united" on this issue.
Gorbachev felt free to make a series of proposals for deep cuts in his country's nuclear arsenal because he was confident that the United States would not attack the Soviet Union. In conversation with his military advisers he rejected any plans that were premised on war with the West. Since he saw no threat of attack by the United States, Gorbachev was not intimidated by the military programs of the Reagan Administration. "These were unnecessary and wasteful expenditures that we were not going to match," he told us. If both superpowers were to avoid the growing risk of accidental war, they had to make deep cuts in their strategic forces. "This was an imperative of the nuclear age."
Reagan's commitment to SDI made it more difficult for Gorbachev to persuade his officials that arms control was in the Soviet interest. Conservatives, some of the military leadership, and spokesmen for defense-related industries insisted that SDI was proof of America's hostile intentions. In a contentious politburo meeting called to discuss arms control, Soviet armed forces chief of staff Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev angrily warned that the Soviet people would not tolerate any weakening of Soviet defenses, according to Oleg Grinevsky, now Russia's ambassador to Sweden. Yakovlev insists that "Star Wars was exploited by hardliners to complicate Gorbachev's attempt to end the Cold War."
President Reagan continued to regard the Soviet Union as an "evil empire" and remained committed to his quest for a near-perfect ballistic-missile defense. To break the impasse, Gorbachev tried at the two leaders' summit meeting in Reykjavik to convince Reagan of his genuine interest in ending the arms race and restructuring their relationship on a collaborative basis. For the first time, the two men talked seriously about eliminating all their countries' ballistic missiles within ten years and significantly reducing their arsenals of nuclear weapons. Although the summit produced no agreement, Reagan became "human" and "likable" to Gorbachev and his advisers, and the President, convinced of Gorbachev's sincerity, began to modify his assessment of the Soviet Union and gradually became the leading dove of his Administration. The Reykjavik summit, as Gorbachev had hoped, began a process of mutual reassurance and accommodation. That process continued after an initially hesitant George Bush became a full-fledged partner.
The Carter-Reagan military buildup did not defeat the Soviet Union. On the contrary, it prolonged the Cold War. Gorbachev's determination to reform an economy crippled in part by defense spending urged by special interests, but far more by structural rigidities, fueled his persistent search for an accommodation with the West. That persistence, not SDI, ended the Cold War.
-------- treaties
Loose nukes
The Eight spoke loudly, and did little
Graham Allison
IHT
Saturday, June 12, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=524540.html
CAMBRIDGE , Massachusetts The summit meeting of the Group of Eight leaders was declared a success by the White House, as measured by its own yardsticks. In a week that began with a UN Security Council resolution endorsing the transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi leadership, the G-8 meeting gave an impression of solidarity and seriousness as leaders addressed the world's most important challenges.
The image of Ronald Reagan overshadowed the event. As president, Reagan identified his overriding challenge as preventing nuclear war. In his oft-quoted one-liner: "A nuclear war cannot be won and must therefore never be fought." Following that insight, he pursued a strategy for victory in the cold war without the nuclear war of which Americans would have been among the first victims.
At their meeting two years ago in Canada, the G-8 leaders identified the post-cold war equivalent of Reagan's specter, declaring the nexus of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction "the pre-eminent threat to international security." To combat this threat, they established a "Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction." Other G-8 members pledged $1 billion a year over the next decade to match U.S. commitments to secure nuclear weapons and materials in Russia. At their summit meeting last year in France, the G-8 nations reaffirmed this pledge and announced an action plan to move the effort forward.
At Sea Island, Georgia, the leaders unveiled a new initiative to freeze for one year transfers of enrichment and reprocessing technology to Iran, but they ducked the issue of measures of their performance in fulfilling pledges made in the previous two years. The press compliantly accepted its assigned role as Greek chorus, reporting what the leaders said without comparing rhetoric to real action. Had they done so, their report card on the G-8 would show poor performance:
Fewer former Soviet "near-nukes" - lumps of highly enriched uranium and plutonium from which a terrorist could make a nuclear weapon - have been secured in the two years since Sept. 11, 2001, than in the two years before that date.
Only one-fifth of Russia's weapons-usable fissile material has been adequately secured.
Of Russia's fissile material stockpile, 57 percent - enough for more than 20,000 nuclear weapons - has not received the most basic security upgrades.
Hundreds of potential nuclear weapons of highly enriched uranium will remain at risk in developing and transitional countries for the next 10 years.
Responsible leaders who actually believed that a threat was "pre-eminent" would move on the fastest technically feasible timetable to combat it. In contrast, the actions taken by G-8 nations since announcing their global partnership two years ago have been lackadaisical and unfocused.
Two measures of urgency - money and personal presidential attention - demonstrate this worrisome reality. The 2002 global partnership pledged $20 billion over 10 years, one half from the United States, the other half from other members. That amounts to $2 billion per year from countries that produce 70 percent of the world's gross domestic product. Even by that standard, the global partnership has yet to reach its goal of $20 billion in pledges, and has spent less than half a billion, excluding the existing U.S. programs. Compare this with the more than $100 billion that the United States has spent on Iraq in the past year.
The absence of direct personal involvement by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin and other G-8 leaders belies any sense of priority. Not one of these men has sent a lightning bolt through his own bureaucracy or actively engaged his counterparts to resolve bureaucratic logjams.
In 2000, for instance, the United States and Russia signed an agreement to remove the threat of 68 tons of Russian weapons-grade plutonium. In the three years since the agreement, how many tons have been destroyed? Zero. Liability and access disputes continue to hold up the project, and less than half of the $2 billion required to do the job has been pledged.
At the current rate, the global partnership will not secure Russia's loose nukes until 2017. If the material for the terrorist bomb that blows up in Paris or Moscow or New York in 2005 is scheduled to be secured in 2008, voters will look back at the elegant language of multiple G-8 summit meetings and wonder why it was so hard to translate those words into action.
Graham Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- idaho
Battelle to Bid on Idaho National Laboratory Contract
Non-Profit Science and Technology Leader Brings World-Class Team Focused on Simultaneous Excellence in Science and Technology, Laboratory Operations, and Community Service
June 12, 2004
PR Newswire
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/06-10-2004/0002191051&EDATE=
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho, June 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Battelle, one of the world's leading science and technology organizations, announced today that it will pursue the contract to manage and operate the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) in Idaho Falls, Idaho.
Battelle, which has 75 years of experience in operating laboratories and whose core business is science and technology, leads a world-class team to help INL enhance its world-renowned nuclear capabilities and ensure that it becomes the nation's preeminent nuclear research, development, and demonstration laboratory. The Battelle team will also focus on helping INL ensure that it is a center for national security technology development and demonstration.
The Battelle team includes:
- BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT) -- The premier manager of complex, high- consequence nuclear and national security operations. BWXT distinguishes itself with over 50 years as owner/operator of large nuclear development, production and reactor facilities, including 47 years of providing propulsion systems for the U.S. Navy. BWXT brings considerable working knowledge of the Laboratory and its infrastructure, as well as a decade of experience managing nuclear facilities and programs at DOE/NNSA sites.
- Washington Group International -- An Idaho company based in Boise since 1912, Washington Group delivers integrated engineering, construction, and management solutions in such areas as power, infrastructure, and homeland security.
- EPRI -- A non-profit, global electric power research leader with outstanding links to the electric power and nuclear industries. Nuclear R&D programs comprise more than one-third of EPRI's total R&D portfolio.
- A national consortium of universities -- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) -- one of the world's greatest science and technology universities -- will lead a major group of universities, including North Carolina State, Ohio State, and Oregon State, providing national, regionally representative linkage to America's nuclear engineering and research programs. In partnership with Idaho's major educational and research universities (University of Idaho, Idaho State University, and Boise State University), Battelle will not only work to enhance advanced nuclear engineering programs, but will also realize the vision of establishing a Center for Advanced Energy Studies in Idaho Falls. These institutions will bring an additional strong base in science, engineering, and research that will support INL's research agenda. They will also play a leading role in supporting INL's educational vision to facilitate the innovative recruitment and education of the next-generation of scientists, engineers, and supporting technologists.
- Industrial Partnerships -- Battelle, whose industrial R&D network includes numerous technology alliances with leading Fortune 500 companies, intends to establish a strong set of industrial partnerships (including small business and large business joint investment) to realize the nation's and region's vision for INL.
"We are very excited about the opportunity to pursue the contract to manage and operate INL, an outstanding laboratory and tremendous national asset," said Dr. Carl Kohrt, President and CEO, Battelle. "Our team has a strong track record in the effective management of major laboratories, brings an absolutely world-class science and technology record, has considerable experience at INL, and offers a wide array of collaborations with partners in science and technology, nuclear power, universities, and industry."
"Bringing together the outstanding staff and facility capabilities of the INL and ANL-W to create a future INL that is synonymous with International Nuclear Leadership is an exciting opportunity," Kohrt added. "We would be very proud to be the operator at INL."
The non-profit Battelle is one of the world's largest, private, independent research and development organizations. Each year, it assists approximately 1,000 industrial and government clients with more than 3,500 projects -- including a strong focus on science and technology solutions and the development of new technologies. In addition to its own private laboratories in locations such as Columbus, Ohio and Aberdeen, Maryland, Battelle manages or co-manages four National Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy -- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Richland, Washington); the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden Colorado); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (Oak Ridge, Tennessee); and Brookhaven National Laboratory (Upton, New York).
Battelle, with the national labs it manages or co-manages, oversees 16,000 staff members and conducts $3 billion in annual research and development. As a non-profit charitable trust, Battelle distributes 20 percent of its net income back to the communities it serves, with a special emphasis on education, economic development, arts and culture, and human services.
Among Battelle's successes are the development of the office copier machine (Xerox); pioneering work on technology for the compact disc; development of prototypes of fuel elements for the first nuclear submarine (the Nautilus); numerous energy, environmental, and national security innovations; and medical technology advancements.
BWXT manages high-consequence nuclear and national security production facilities and is a principal supplier of nuclear components and advanced energy products. BWXT is recognized as an industry leader in nuclear materials handling, processing, packaging, transportation, and safeguards and security, including physical security, materials accountability and information protection on many levels. BWXT also brings best practice experience from their owner/operator experience in managing one of the nation's largest commercial high-enriched (HEV) processing facilities which include special nuclear materials storage and handling; conversion, recovery and downblending services; operation of licensed radiochemistry/environmental laboratories; production of high- and low-enriched fuel for research test reactors at National Laboratories, colleges and universities; and the manufacture of uranium targets to support the medical isotope industry. BWXT and their affiliates manage over 10,000 employees at facilities that include the U.S. Department of Energy's Y-12 National Security Complex, Pantex Plant, and company-owned nuclear facility operations in Virginia, Ohio, and Indiana. BWXT's involvement at INL dates back over 50 years where BWXT was involved with design activities for the Navy's Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) facility. Since 1991, BWXT has successfully managed and operated the Specific Manufacturing Capability facility which produces armor for the U.S. Army Abrams Tank Program, earning plaudits from the Army project manager, who called SMC his "best facility." BWXT is a major operating unit of McDermott International, Inc., a leading worldwide energy services company.
Washington Group International -- based in Boise, Idaho -- delivers integrated engineering construction and management solutions to business and governments in six primary markets worldwide: power, energy and environment, industrial process, infrastructure, defense, and mining. Since the 1940s, when they first helped establish the Naval Proving Ground and later the National Reactor Testing Station on the current Idaho laboratory site, Washington Group engineers and constructors have been active in supporting numerous site projects. Those projects have included design and construction of many of the reactors on site, operation of the Chemical Processing Plant from 1984 to 1994, and serving as site-wide construction manager from 1979 to 1993. Most recently, Washington Group supported construction of the Advanced Mixed Waste Treatment Facility.
Today, Washington Group provides engineering, construction, and operational services to more than a dozen U.S. Department of Energy facilities, including prime contracts at the Savannah River Site and Savannah River National Laboratory (Aiken, South Carolina); Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (Carlsbad, New Mexico); and West Valley Demonstration Project (Buffalo, New York). With approximately 26,000 employees at work in over 40 states and more than 30 countries, the company provides professional, scientific, management, and development services in more than two dozen major markets.
EPRI, established by the U.S. electric utilities in 1973, is an independent, non-profit research consortium that manages a broad collaborative research program for the benefit of the electric utility industry, their customers, and society. It has more than 700 domestic members who represent 90 percent of the electricity generated and sold in the United States. In addition, there are 130 international electricity enterprise organizations participating in EPRI's research and development program. Its technical program is unique in its breadth, spanning virtually every aspect of electricity generation, environmental protection, power delivery, retail use, and power markets. EPRI has more than 800 patents to its credit and world- class staff whose expertise spans a broad range of technologies.
EPRI's Nuclear R&D programs comprise over one-third of EPRI's total R&D portfolio. 100 percent of U.S. plants and 45 percent of all reactor units world-wide are full members of the EPRI Nuclear Program with another 30 percent participating in portions of the program. The EPRI Nuclear Power Program mission is to develop cost effective technology for safe and environmentally friendly electricity generation.
Battelle's university collaborators include nationally recognized leaders in nuclear engineering, and, across the board, represent highly-respected research and educational programs that can and will support the Idaho site, the region, and the nation.
For more information, visit http://www.battelle.org or contact Media Relations Manager Katy Delaney at (614) 424-5544 or at delaneyk@battelle.org.
SOURCE Battelle Web Site: http://www.battelle.org
-------- nevada
Agency Is Seen as Unfazed on Atom Waste
By MATTHEW L. WALD
NY TIMES
June 12, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/politics/12waste.html
WASHINGTON, June 11 - The plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain may need major revisions, but the Energy Department is pressing ahead with the project, according to some independent scientists appointed by President Bush to review the project.
The Yucca repository, near Las Vegas, is years behind schedule and the Energy Department is facing financial penalties for its failure to begin accepting waste from civilian reactor operators in 1998, as mandated under contracts the department signed with utility companies two decades ago. Many of those reactor operators are incurring substantial extra costs as they run out of storage space.
The Energy Department acknowledges some uncertainty about the design, but is promising to apply by the end of this year for a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the repository.
Supporters argue that if the repository turned out not to work as expected during its first few decades of operation, physical changes could be made and that, for now, the plan should proceed.
But the design concept is vulnerable to corrosion, according to the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, a panel of scientists appointed to review work of the Energy Department.
Last year the board warned that humidity in Yucca Mountain's tunnels could dissolve salt from the rock there, which could then corrode "drip shields," metal tents made of a sophisticated alloy that are meant to keep the containers that would hold the waste dry.
The idea that the drip shields will protect the containers "is based mostly on assumptions that could be unrealistic and overly optimistic," the board said, and the Energy Department's predictions of how the drip shields would perform for thousands of years "are speculative."
After months of criticizing the design, the board on Tuesday issued a report that spoke highly favorably of the way Belgium was planning its own nuclear repository.
There, the report said, pressure to build a repository is not strong, and thus when changes are made in the design, "the changes do not appear to be viewed as a failure of or a roadblock to the program."
"Rather, the changes seem to be part of an incremental learning process of developing a design that is both safe and implementable."
Norman L. Christensen Jr., a professor at Duke who is on the board, said that the Energy Department was far more "schedule driven" than nuclear waste agencies in other countries, largely because of the pressure from Congress and the nuclear industry to get the job done.
Professor Christensen said the observation about Belgium was not meant to be critical of the Energy Department, but the schedule "certainly makes it more difficult" to pick the best approach. "They don't have the luxury of saying, golly, maybe we need to go back and revisit some of these basic ideas about design," he said.
Another scientist, Paul P. Craig, who served on the board from 1996 until January of this year, wrote in an article to be published in a few days in the newsletter of an environmental group that "the Department of Energy is rushing ahead with a defective Yucca Mountain design."
He predicted that the containers would leak their radioactive materials into the rock, where it would be carried by underground water flows to wells used for drinking water and irrigation.
"What's needed now is a presidential decision instructing the D.O.E. to slow down the Yucca Mountain program and to get the science right," he wrote in the newsletter, Science for Democratic Action, published by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a nonprofit group based here.
The geology of the mountain, a volcanic structure 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, is more complicated than anticipated, he said, and the chemical reactions that would occur in the repository are not clear. But since Congress chose the site and the department has spent billions of dollars on the program, finding that it is not suitable "would present an enormous political problem."
The board has been arguing that corrosion might be more likely because of the department's plan to space the waste canisters close together, so that heat given off by the waste would boil water. That would keep the canisters dry in the early years, but scientists disagree about what would happen as the wastes cooled.
But Michael D. Voegele, the chief science officer for the project, said that building a larger repository, so that the wastes could be spaced farther apart, could add $15 billion to the cost, would raise the risk of an accident during construction, and would raise worker exposure to radiation. And a cooler repository would have a different set of risks, he said, no smaller than the current design.
"It's very obvious to ask, is the reason we are staying with the design, we've got the need to meet those schedules," Dr. Voegele said. "The answer is no."
Dr. Craig, the eight-year member of the board, compared the Energy Department to NASA, and said that the flaws in the space agency that came to light after the shuttle crash last year were similar to the Energy Department's. Both agencies, he said, were hard at work on technically complicated, first-of-a-kind projects, with financing problems and high expectations by outsiders for on-time delivery.
But Dr. Voegele rejected the comparison, and he said the nuclear waste repository was mostly a passive structure, and could be changed as time went on. "This isn't something we've shot into space and can't get back," he said.
One supporter, Steven P. Kraft of the Nuclear Energy Institute, the trade association of the nuclear utilities, said that the belief that the design could not change as the years went by, even after the first wastes were loaded into mountain tunnels, was like "suggesting that the automobile you'll drive today is the automobile your kids will drive 50 years from now."
Simple changes like adjusting the ventilation of the tunnel could compensate if problems were found in the first few decades, he said.
"If they were so schedule-driven," he said, "we'd be moving fuel by now, and we're not."
-------- texas
Fast facts on Pantex and its operations
Associated Press
Sat, Jun. 12, 2004
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/news/state/8905737.htm?1c
Here are some important dates in the history of Pantex, the nation's only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant:
1942: Plant built by the Army in Texas Panhandle on 16,000 acres in Amarillo. Initially, its mission was to load and pack conventional artillery shells and bombs for use during World War II.
1945: War ended and plant operations ceased.
1947: Texas Tech University in Lubbock leased half the acreage for agricultural research.
1949: Remaining acreage deeded to Texas Tech.
1951: A clause in the deed allowed the Army to reclaim 10,000 acres. Plant was refurbished and expanded for nuclear weapons, high explosive and non-nuclear component assembly. During the Cold War, Pantex assembled thousands of weapons.
1977: Plant oversight given to Department of Energy.
1989: DOE leases remaining 6,000 acres from Texas Tech as a safety and security buffer.
1991: The last new nuclear weapons assembled.
2001: Plant operations contract awarded to BWX Technologies Inc. in Lynchburg, Va.
General information:
Pantex is the nation's primary assembly and disassembly plant for nuclear warheads and currently repackages old plutonium pits to extend their life and to meet new safety standards. More than 12,000 plutonium pits are stored on the site, though no nuclear weapons have ever been manufactured there.
The plant is one of five locations under consideration for a Modern Pit Facility, which would produce new plutonium weapons cores from recycled plutonium and would employ more than 1,000 workers. The other sites are Savannah River, South Carolina; Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Carlsbad, N.M.; Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, N.M.; and the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas.
Sources: Pantex, BWX Technologies; Department of Energy.
-------- MILITARY
-------- africa
Congo 'Coup' Leader in Hiding as Doubts Emerge
Reuters
Saturday, June 12, 2004; 2:55 PM
By David Lewis
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36845-2004Jun12.html
KINSHASA (Reuters) - The leader of an apparent coup attempt in Congo has fled into a large forest, a spokesman for President Joseph Kabila said on Saturday, as ordinary people expressed skepticism about the official version of events.
Major Eric Lenge, a member of Kabila's personal guard, escaped from the capital Kinshasa on Friday after briefly taking over state radio and declaring himself in control. The incident was the second apparent effort to seize power in three months.
Gunshots and artillery fire were heard on Friday in Kinshasa but life had returned to normal on Saturday.
Officials in the vast central African country of more than 50 million people initially said the army had surrounded Lenge at the airport. But they later said troops were chasing him as he headed southwest into the province of Bas Congo.
"We have not yet got our hands on him. He abandoned his vehicles and he is hiding in a forest in Bas Congo," presidential spokesman Kudura Kasongo said on Saturday.
"If he is there, we will eventually get him as he will have to come out and get something to eat."
The apparent ease with which Lenge and only a small band of followers managed to escape fueled doubts on the streets of Kinshasa about the whole incident.
Some suggested it had been a ploy by Kabila's camp, to give him an excuse to prolong the transition period to elections due next year following the end of a five-year civil war.
COUP OR SETUP?
"If these people were really the enemy, we don't understand how they managed to take a radio station so easily and then run around town for a few hours before escaping to the west of the country," said businessman Emmanuel Nzangi.
"What happened yesterday was not an attempted coup -- it was a setup," said Nancy Mampoya, a 27-year-old sandwich maker on Avenue 30 Juin, Kinshasa's bustling main thoroughfare.
"We heard a lot of shooting, but where are the dead?"
In an television and radio address on Friday night, Kabila praised security forces for swiftly ending the insurrection without loss of life or significant property damage.
"I want to reassure the population, especially the people in the capital, that the situation is under control," he said.
Friday's events added to concerns hanging over the country prompted by recent fighting in the mineral-rich east and uncertainty over the stability of the transitional government.
Kabila, who came to power in 2001 after his father Laurent was shot dead by a bodyguard, established the power-sharing government last year.
But efforts to establish central authority have been stymied by power struggles between former warring factions.
In March, gunmen attacked four military bases and two television stations in Kinshasa in another apparent coup attempt -- the first political violence in the city for five years.
--------
Ghana, Nigeria and Pakistan to assure Sierra Leone security come December
FREETOWN (AFP)
Jun 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040612182733.m3cfe39q.html
The UN mission in Sierra Leone announced plans Saturday for a new, smaller security detail for the west African state as part of the drawdown of troops that at their peak were the largest peacekeeping force in the world.
Nigeria, Ghana and Pakistan will each contribute one infantry battalion from December this year for a total 3,250 troops on the ground in the impoverished country, where a decade of rebel war was officially declared over in January 2002.
Lieutenant Colonel Abu Abubakar, the Nigerian deputy commander of the UNAMSIL troops in the Western district around the capital, made the announcement after a brief visit Friday by Nigeria's Defense Minister Rabieu Wakaso.
UN peacekeepers have been in Sierra Leone since 1999, helping to disarm some 76,000 fighters and rebuild its cratered infrastructure as part of a multi-billion-dollar mission that once numbered more than 17,000 troops.
The mission's mandate has been extended repeatedly, most recently in March when the UN Security Council voted unanimously to continue through June of next year.
UNAMSIL forces currently stand at around 10,500 troops ahead of the departure of contingents from Nigeria and Bangladesh slated for the end of this month, Abubakar said.
Under the terms of the drawdown, the international troop presence will reduce steadily to some 5,000 troops by December before it takes its new shape. UNAMSIL force commander General Sajjad Akram told AFP recently that key priorities will be training of a more robust Sierra Leone national police and armed forces as well as border security.
Though peace has generally returned to Sierra Leone, continued volatility in eastern neighbor Liberia and Ivory Coast, both under UN mandates, and uncertainty in northern neighbor Guinea have the potential to destabilize the fragile state.
Despite a massive outpouring of international aid, Sierra Leone remains among the world's poorest countries, with a majority of its estimated five million people surviving on less than a dollar per day.
The departure of the Bangladeshis could tempt the fate of several agriculture and education projects funded by the south Asian nation and implemented by the peacekeepers.
Using funds provided by UNAMSIL as well as their government, they repaired schools, supplied hospitals with medicine and equipment and set up several religious institutions in the areas under Bangladeshi control, from the southern Bo district to Masingbi and Magburaka in the north.
-------- asia
Thailand Vows to Launch Offensive in Restive South
Reuters
Saturday, June 12, 2004; 10:39 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A34052-2004Jun11.html
BANGKOK - Security forces will go on the offensive in Thailand's restive south where more than 200 people have been killed in five months of violence, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said on Friday.
Thaksin, frustrated at his government's failure to restore peace to the mainly Muslim region and facing complaints of human rights violations by troops, said the military would step up patrols and intensify searches in the three southernmost provinces under martial law since January.
"We have to go on the offensive, otherwise bandits will come out and continue to kill our people one after another," Thaksin told reporters after chairing a meeting of security officials.
"We must utilise martial law, not just to have it there to be criticised. The law authorises soldiers to search and arrest, but we hardly do it. So from now on, we will use it, but judiciously," Thaksin said.
Despite sending thousands of troops to provide security and promising millions of dollars in development aid, Thaksin's government has failed to stop the violence in the Malay-speaking region, which borders Muslim Malaysia.
A Buddhist rubber tapper was beheaded last month and a Buddhist teacher was killed on Monday, raising fears of sectarian strife in a region home to most of predominantly Buddhist Thailand's six million Muslims.
Just before the high-level meeting in Bangkok, gunmen on motorcyles seriously wounded a Muslim policeman while he was driving home from afternoon prayers in Pattani province.
Authorities have blamed Muslim militants for the unrest which has revived memories of a separatist insurgency that convulsed the region in the 1970s and 1980s but almost petered out in the 1990s.
NOT SHY OF CLASHES
Defence Minister Chettha Thanajaro said troops would not shy away from clashes with suspected militants.
"There may be casualties during clashes. That's OK, but from now on we will move quickly and deploy more widely to prevent them from operating freely," Chettha told reporters.
Thai police and troops were accused by rights groups for using excessive force in killing 108 Muslim militants to crush an April 28 uprising. Another 100 people, most of them police and government employees, have been killed in gun and machete attacks since January.
Friday's shooting of a policeman followed a robbery in Pattani on Thursday night when masked gunmen overpowered village defence volunteers guarding a school and walked away with three shotguns and a pistol, police said.
Friday's meeting followed Thaksin's 30-day ultimatum issued to his ministers on Tuesday to restore peace to the area.
Deputy Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, the country's top security minister, said on Wednesday the most important task for security agencies was to prevent daily shootings.
"In 30 days, there will be no motorcycle shootings or killing by terrorists," he told reporters.
-------- biological weapons
Md. Lab Ships Live Anthrax In Error
U.S. Investigating; Calif. Workers Given Antibiotics
By Fredrick Kunkle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 12, 2004; Page B05
Federal authorities said they are investigating an apparent laboratory foul-up in which live anthrax bacteria were shipped from Maryland to California by Federal Express because scientists involved in the transfer thought the bacteria were dead.
The potentially lethal germs were sent by Southern Research Institute, of Frederick County, to a private lab in Oakland about three months ago, officials said. The mistake came to light recently when dozens of laboratory mice died after vaccine researchers in Oakland injected them with anthrax bacteria that supposedly had been chemically deactivated.
Tests by the California Department of Health Services confirmed Wednesday that the germs were alive.
Federal medical officials are now examining what went wrong when the Southern Research Institute shipped 22 cubic centimeters -- or about four teaspoons -- of anthrax bacteria to the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute.
The bacteria were intended for research underway at the Oakland laboratory to develop a children's vaccine for anthrax contamination. The bacteria were kept in storage until late last month. There were no signs of tampering in what was the third shipment from the Maryland laboratory to the Oakland facility in the past year. The two previous shipments of anthrax bacteria had been chemically deactivated.
On May 28, researchers injected 10 mice with the supposedly inert bacteria. All were dead by June 3. Then, researchers injected 40 mice on June 7. They died three days later, and tests proved that the bacteria had been the cause.
"Basically, at this point, we have something that's unexplained," said Michael G. Murray, director of infectious disease at Southern Research Institute. "In fact, it was shown to be dead."
Although tests came back negative yesterday for seven lab workers in Oakland who were possibly exposed to the bacteria, all have started on a 60-day regimen of the antibiotic Cipro as a precautionary measure, lab spokeswoman Beverly Mikalonis said.
Bioterrorism experts in the FBI's San Francisco office assisted in removing the toxins from the California lab, FBI spokesman Bill Carter said. He said there is no indication of criminal activity.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is trying to determine what happened, Carter said.
In an era of heightened security against terrorism, the federal government has tightened regulations on researchers using biological agents and toxins. The CDC is charged with overseeing registration of all such facilities, including government agencies, universities and commercial researchers.
"All I know is that we're working with all the institutes involved to find out what happened and make sure it doesn't happen again," CDC spokeswoman Karen Hunter said.
-------- britain
Blair's Party Takes a Drubbing at Polls
Labor's Third-Place Showing in Local Vote Seen as Disaffection With Iraq War
By Glenn Frankel
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 12, 2004; Page A13
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35288-2004Jun11.html
LONDON, June 11 -- Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party suffered its worst defeat in the modern history of local council elections across Britain in results announced Friday, a performance that analysts and politicians said in large part reflected popular disaffection with his support for the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
As the count continued, the BBC projected that Labor would finish a distant third with 26 percent of the vote nationwide, compared with 38 percent for the opposition Conservatives and 29 percent for the third-party Liberal Democrats. That would be the first time a party in power has finished third in these elections.
The party lost its hold on city councils in two former strongholds, Newcastle and Leeds in northeastern England, Labor's traditional heartland.
British voters traditionally use off-year local elections to send a protest message to the governing party, and Labor loyalists took heart from the fact that although their party was roundly defeated, the Conservative total was not large enough to suggest it would win the next general election, expected to take place in a year.
Paradoxically, some Laborites also took comfort from the fact that Iraq was a key factor, saying they hoped that by next year the issue will have faded.
Still, Labor leaders acknowledged the defeat was larger than they had expected. David Blunkett, one of Blair's senior cabinet ministers, pronounced himself "mortified" by the results and blamed them squarely on Iraq. "Some people felt it was the wrong policy," he told the BBC. "It split families, it split the Labor Party, it split friends."
The result, he said, was "a bad night for us, but not meltdown."
But the Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, said Labor's defeat in the elections, which took place Thursday, reflected an overall loss of public trust in Blair and his government.
The results set off a new round of recriminations within Labor, with some party members calling for Blair to step down and others demanding that he apologize for supporting the war. Blair was attending Ronald Reagan's funeral in Washington and offered no immediate comment.
Peter Kellner, chairman of the London-based YouGov polling group, said the results were a serious blow to Labor. "Losing Newcastle is the equivalent of the Bronx going Republican -- it's almost inconceivable," he said.
But Kellner said that, based on past local election performances, the Conservatives had fallen well short of the total they needed to set themselves up for potential victory in next year's balloting, when voter turnout will be considerably higher. "The main opposition party traditionally needs to be at 45 or 46 percent to have a chance at victory," he said. "The Tories are stuck below 40, and that's not good enough."
Blair's party is widely forecast to suffer major losses in European Parliament elections, which also took place Thursday. Those results will not be announced until Sunday. But the impact is expected to be less clear because the Conservatives may also lose support to a new and virulently anti-European Union one-issue party, the U.K. Independence Party.
Labor's one bright spot was the victory of London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who rejoined the party this year after winning office as an independent in 2000. But the victory was tempered by the fact that Livingstone had expressed vehement opposition to the war in Iraq and may have lost votes by accepting the Labor endorsement.
--------
British warships collide off coast during 'Sea Day' show
LONDON (AFP)
Jun 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040612002356.04xq0a1r.html
The British defense ministry announced Friday that two of its warships had collided off the southwest coast of England, and pledged to investigate the incident that caused no injuries.
The Frigates HMS Argyll and HMS Kent suffered minor damage Thursday when they hit each other off the coastal city of Plymouth during "Sea Day", when the Royal Navy takes visitors aboard its ships.
Members of the Royal College of Defence Studies were aboard the warships, type 23 frigates which are the mainstays of the British fleet.
A defense spokeswoman stressed that it had been a "minor collision" and that both ships were "still seaworthy".
"They are due to be on their way back to their ports, and when they are there they will be fully inspected," she told AFP.
She could not confirm whether any action would be taken against the frigates' commanding officers, Commander Ewan Kelbie of HMS Argyll and Commander Jim Nisbet of HMS Kent.
A Royal Navy source was quoted by the Sun newspaper describing the incident as an embarrassment to the British military.
"There was an almighty bang followed by screeching as the hulls ground along against each other for several seconds," the source said.
"This is extremely embarrassing when you are trying to impress foreign officials as to the efficiency and performance of your service."
The MoD spokeswoman said she was unaware of the presence of any foreigners in Sea Day activities.
-------- iraq
INSURGENCY
In Shift, Rebel Iraqi Cleric Backs New Government He Had Once Mocked
June 12, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/international/middleeast/12iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 11 - The anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr on Friday endorsed the new interim Iraqi government and appeared to urge his followers to honor a week-old cease-fire that has been frayed by continuing violence.
A senior aide to Mr. Sadr, Sheik Jabir al-Khafaji, used a sermon during Friday Prayers in the Sadr stronghold of Kufa, 120 miles south of here, to announce that Mr. Sadr now approved of the interim government he had previously mocked and that he wanted its leaders to set a timetable for the departure of occupation forces.
" 'From now on, I beg you to start afresh for Iraq for the sake of peace and safety,' " Sheik Khafaji quoted Mr. Sadr as saying. " 'We have to avoid pushing humiliation and aggression on others and go forward with the independence of Iraq and not respond to the occupiers.' "
Those words represent a radical reversal of Mr. Sadr's past position. They could also represent an effort by Mr. Sadr to become involved in the politics of the nation, rather than continue as a leader of a 10-week-old insurgent struggle.
Sheik Khafaji also asked Mr. Sadr's followers to "obey the supreme leader's orders" and to "thank God for the triumph he received," an implicit request to members of the Mahdi Army to stop attacks and respect the cease-fire reached with the Americans on June 4.
Another Sadr aide said after the sermon that Mr. Sadr's change of position did not mean that he supported the occupation or American involvement in the new government, but rather that he hoped the new government would work for the interests of Iraqis. Mr. Sadr met last Saturday with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric, but it was unclear whether Ayatollah Sistani had persuaded Mr. Sadr to reverse his opposition to the new government.
At the same time that Mr. Sadr's faction appeared to soften its hard-line position, imams at several Sunni mosques in Baghdad delivered sermons beseeching former officers of the Iraqi Army to join the insurgency and drive out the American-led occupation forces. One such sermon took place at Abu Hanifa mosque in the Sunni-dominated neighborhood of Adhamiya, according to Agence France-Presse.
"Where is the military?" said Sheik Ahmed Hassan al-Taha al-Samarrai. "They have indisputable experience, and their silence means they keep their knowledge to themselves."
"The absence of combat experts from the battlefield is treason in all senses of the word," he added. "It's treason against God, the prophet and the nation the experts belong to."
A resident of the Zaiyuna neighborhood in Baghdad, where many former officers live, reported hearing a similar sermon being broadcast from a Sunni mosque there.
In the south, in the holy city of Najaf where Mr. Sadr lives, many of the young cleric's followers apparently did not hear his message of restraint.
Friday Prayers there were disrupted when violence broke out between his followers and hundreds of supporters of Imam Sadr al-Din al-Kubanchi, one of the leaders of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, an influential Shiite party.
Mr. Kubanchi had called for his followers to stage a peaceful march in support of the cease-fire, but they were met by members of Mr. Sadr's Mahdi Army, who began fighting with the crowd inside the sacred Shrine of Ali. The Sadr militiamen then forced everyone from the shrine, where Mr. Kubanchi preaches every Friday, and barricaded the doors.
In Baghdad, fighting continued between American soldiers and the Mahdi Army. Militiamen fired at soldiers in Sadr City and lobbed grenades at them, prompting the Americans to shoot back and call in helicopters, Reuters reported.
In the town of Yusufiya, on the Euphrates River 10 miles south of Baghdad, insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47's at a police station. The policemen fled, and the insurgents entered the station and wired it with explosives. Video on the Arab satellite television network Al Jazeera showed the stationhouse reduced to rubble shortly afterward.
The police called American forces for help, but soldiers did not show up until five hours later, Lt. Satpar Abdul-Reta told The Associated Press.
Attacks on police stations remain commonplace in Iraq, raising serious doubts about whether the American military is prepared to hand over responsibility for security to Iraqi forces in the months after June 30, when the Iraqi government will assume some form of sovereignty.
On Thursday, members of Mr. Sadr's militia overran a police station in central Najaf after overnight gun battles and freed the prisoners. They then allowed looters to plunder the building. The insurgents set at least eight new squad cars on fire.
Members of the Mahdi Army also shot at and blew up a police station last Sunday in the Shiite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad. A more spectacular attack took place the same day in the town of Musayyib, south of the capital, when about 10 men in police uniforms walked into a stationhouse and forced the local officers into their own cells. The attackers wired the place with explosives and detonated them when others arrived to try and free the policemen.
The explosions killed at least 10 Iraqi policemen and 2 civilians.
It was unclear whether the insurgents who attacked the Ghari police station in central Najaf twice this week were following orders from senior commanders in the Mahdi Army or acting on their own. Those attacks were the most serious infractions of the cease-fire. Adnan Zurfi, the governor of Najaf, said Thursday he was prepared to retaliate in full if the Mahdi Army did not back down.
It has been difficult for truces between the Mahdi Army and the occupation forces to stick. The one announced on June 4 was the second cease-fire in several weeks. American soldiers and insurgents continued fighting after the first one was supposed to have gone into effect on May 27.
Dutch Troops to Withdraw From Iraq
THE HAGUE, June 11 (Agence France-Presse) - Dutch troops will leave Iraq in March 2005 as the Dutch government will not renew their mandate after an eight-month extension, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Friday.
"We are linking our stay to the formation of a new government in Iraq,'' Mr. Balkenende told a news conference. "Eight months and that's that."
Earlier on Friday, the government announced that it would extend the mandate of the some 1,300 Dutch troops stationed in southern Iraq under British command until mid-March in 2005.
"In extraordinary circumstances the mandate could be extended for another 10 days or so after March 15, but in principle the troops will leave on that date," Defense Minister Henk Kamp added.
An Iraqi employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from Najaf and Kufa for this article.
--------
MILITARY BASE
U.S. Retools Hussein Pleasure Palace as Camp Victory
June 12, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/international/middleeast/12camp.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq - At a desert retreat where Saddam Hussein's cronies hunted gazelles and entertained mistresses, the American military is building one of its largest overseas bases since the Vietnam War, a rambling, dusty mix of tents, trailers and villas where sandbags rival chandeliers as the second-most notable architectural feature.
That is because at the renamed Camp Victory, the signature design element is the marble column, many with a swirling stone pattern in sandy hues nearly matching those of desert combat fatigues.
The largest palace, called Qasr al Fao, sits in the middle of a man-made lake stocked with carp and catfish, and is the new headquarters for senior military commanders in Iraq.
A third-story palace wall was hit by an American JDAM (Joint Direct Attack Munition) bomb in the war, but the damaged section has been rebuilt to hold a classified planning room that is so overly air-conditioned that it is known as the Meat Locker.
Twenty-four hours a day, officers and staff members climb and descend spiral staircases that recall headquarters from past wars, a simpler era when logistics were more important than information operations. Eisenhower or Patton can be imagined striding these polished floors, but they would hardly recognize the technology that has been injected throughout the palace.
A Joint Operations Center was imported and fills a wing of the grand palace, as advanced as anything at the Pentagon. More than 150 computers linked to outposts across Iraq feed three theater-size screens with details of combat actions, convoy movements and the weather. The screens can suck down satellite news channels or real-time video feeds from Predator surveillance drones.
"Everybody you need is in one room - all the players," said Brig. Gen. William J. Troy, chief of staff for the new corps headquarters that manages day-to-day military operations in Iraq. "And they can all see the same picture of the battlefield."
The technology also can be called into service as a morale booster for troops assigned to duty in Iraq for a year at a time. Video-teleconference equipment is routinely fired up to link soldiers and their families back home for high school graduations and promotion ceremonies.
Camp Victory, just beyond the Baghdad airport, already holds more than 14,000 troops and is home to the two headquarters responsible for strategic planning and daily military operations here in the Iraqi capital, as well as to the First Cavalry Division, charged with security here.
Black Hawk helicopters own the sky here, but wildlife asserts itself. A 50-foot-high, honeycomb-shaped tower is home to thousands of bats cultivated during the Hussein era to control mosquitoes. Soldiers know which causeways across the lake and lagoons to avoid at dusk, because a battle rages every evening as bats fly at chest level to scoop up mosquitoes.
First Cavalry soldiers routinely spot gazelles, and more than a few troops say an aging lioness prowls the several-thousand-acre camp. But others say that is just an urban legend translated into desert lore.
The main palace was built in honor of Iraqi troops who liberated Al Fao in far southeast Basra Province during the Iran-Iraq war. Arabic script winds across its walls and reads, "Victory and glory to the warriors who freed the city from the enemy, the Persians."
But American military engineers say the palace is a fitting metaphor for the Hussein government: beneath its impressive veneer of gilded opulence, the palace itself has a weak foundation and was poorly designed.
The walls are so fragile that electricians feared drilling through to install phone and power lines, so the palace is filled with modern office cubicles to hide internal wires and cables.
>From a bygone era, an ornate wooden throne in the lobby is a required photo stop for all troops passing through the palace-headquarters.
"It's like a movie set," is a common comment.
Not long after the desert sun drooped below the horizon one evening, the sound of bagpipes soared over the lake, an impromptu serenade by a senior British officer, Maj. Gen. Andrew Graham, relaxing after a long day on duty.
Seconds after the last, plaintive notes vanished into a sky brightened by a full moon, the quiet was refilled with the evening call to prayers from a neighborhood mosque near the guarded outer walls of Camp Victory.
Fade: bagpipes from the palace. Queue: the moon over the mosque. The movie set was complete.
--------
Iraqis Put Contempt For Troops On Display
By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35558-2004Jun11?language=printer
BAGHDAD, June 11 -- A pair of AH-64 Apache helicopter gunships thumped back and forth overhead, scouring residential streets for insurgents. Dun-colored Bradley Fighting Vehicles snorted and wheeled around, their tracks gouging holes in the tarmac. A dozen Humvees stood sentry, closing off the four-lane avenue to Iraqi cars, while nervous American soldiers with M-16 automatic rifles forbade local residents from approaching.
"Look at this," said Ghassan Abu Ahmed, raising his hand in a sweeping gesture toward the tableau of military might. "This is freedom? It is crazy."
A car bomb had just hit a U.S. military convoy passing down the main avenue Friday afternoon in southwest Baghdad's Sayediyeh neighborhood, one of the near-daily attacks on occupation troops across Iraq. By the standards of Iraqi violence over the past two months, it was not particularly bloody. The U.S. military reported no serious casualties. But for what it told about Iraqis' attitudes toward the 13-month-old U.S. occupation, the attack was devastating.
"What Saddam did was awful, but what the Americans are doing is worse," said Abu Ahmed, a laborer who lives with his wife and four sons in a government-built apartment house flanking the road. "They say they are bringing us freedom. But this is what they bring."
Since U.S. forces drove to Baghdad and overthrew President Saddam Hussein in April 2003, the 138,000 American soldiers stationed here have lost their status as liberators in the eyes of most Iraqis. Polling by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority has chronicled a steady souring of opinion, with the most recent surveys showing about 80 percent of Iraqis with an unfavorable opinion of U.S. troops.
They have been encouraged in their views by Muslim preachers, who, judging by their sermons, have concluded that the U.S. occupation should end immediately if peace is to be restored to Iraq. To buttress their arguments, they repeatedly have cited the abuse of Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib prison, which has helped crystallize opinion against the presence of U.S. soldiers.
"It was discovered that the freedom in this land is not ours. It is the freedom of the occupying soldiers in doing what they like, such as arresting, carrying out raids, killing at random or stealing money," Sheik Mohammed Bashir declared in his sermon Friday at Um al-Oura, a Sunni Muslim mosque in the middle-class Ghazaliya neighborhood.
"No one can ask them what they are doing, because they are protected by their freedom," he continued. "No one can punish them, whether in our country or their country. The worst thing is what was discovered in the course of time: abusing women, children, men, and the old men and women whom they arrested randomly and without any guilt. They expressed the freedom of rape, the freedom of nudity and the freedom of humiliation."
Sheik Bagir Saad at the Hikma Mosque in Sadr City, a stronghold of Shiite Muslim militiamen who have confronted the occupation militarily, denounced U.S. and U.N. plans that he said call for increased involvement by the international body and an increased emphasis on military forces from a variety of countries.
"The new U.N. resolution calls for multinational forces, but we want to inform all the countries that we don't want their armies, whether Arab, Islamic or foreign armies, because we will look at any army coming to Iraq as an occupation, and they should not send their children into this trap," he said.
The Baghdad residents who lined up to watch as U.S. soldiers clustered around their wrecked Humvees on Friday were clearly among the majority who have heeded the call of their sheiks. No one was heard expressing concern for the soldiers who were bombed. Judging by their comments, the neighbors of Sayediyeh's middle-class apartments looked at the avenue and saw enemies in desert camouflage.
Mohammed Ali Ahmed, 24, a worker who lives nearby, complained that the wounded U.S. soldiers were picked up and driven away for medical care by an Iraqi civilian ambulance that happened by. Iraqi ambulances are not for occupying troops, he declared.
"They shouldn't have taken them in the ambulance. They should have left them there, left them to die," Ahmed said to a neighbor.
"That's not right," objected Aqil Kitab, 28, another worker who was standing next to him. "Have you ever been in the army? Even your enemy, when he is wounded, you have to treat him. Then you can interrogate him or put him in a prisoner-of-war camp. The ambulance driver did his job. It was the right thing to do."
Ahmed conceded Kitab was probably right. But he predicted that such attacks would continue as long as U.S. forces remained in Iraq.
"I think that when the Americans leave Iraq, these kinds of things will stop, and we will have security again. These guys have a big organization behind them," he said, referring to the insurgents. "That's why they can do this. But I don't think it's right. If the Americans leave, we will start to fight among ourselves."
The solution, he suggested, may be for U.S. and other foreign forces to concentrate at isolated bases, out of sight of Iraqis, and leave the country's security to Iraqi security forces. The foreign troops can be like reserves and come out of their camps only in response to emergencies that Iraqi troops cannot handle, he said.
Ali Samir Salman, 18, who works in the Baghdad University student cafeteria, said U.S. troops frequently have come under attack while driving down the broad avenue. He said he has seen insurgents -- whom he called fedayeen, or those who give themselves for a cause -- gathering by the roadside with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 automatic rifles to launch such attacks.
Neither he nor others have denounced the attackers to Iraqi police or U.S. troops. To the contrary, residents resent the U.S. convoys, he said, because the soldiers frequently shine brilliant lights into windows as they drive by and scan the roadsides for danger.
The attack Friday was carried out by a car rigged with a bomb that swerved sideways and stopped as a convoy of five Humvees drove by, he said. The driver bolted and ran to a waiting car, in which he fled with three other men, Salman said. The fourth U.S. vehicle to pass took the blast directly, he said, and a soldier manning a machine gun mounted on the roof was propelled high into the air.
After crashing to the roadbed, the soldier pushed himself up and tried to stand leaning on his gun, then collapsed again, he said. After that, Salman recounted, the soldier lay still until the Iraqi ambulance crew took charge of him and drove away. Before long, he said, the Bradleys, the Humvees and the helicopters showed up, and other soldiers spilled out to line the roadside.
"Look at that soldier. He is shaking," a boy shouted, pointing at a young U.S. soldier wearing yellow-tinted goggles.
"That's because he was with them in the convoy when the bomb went off," another boy said. "He was frightened. Let's talk to him, cool him down, so he can forget."
The boys joked and tried to attract the soldier's attention with an attempt at English phrases. The soldier smiled faintly and talked back, correcting their pronunciation.
"Stay away from him, and don't point at the Humvees," an adult scolded. "I'm afraid they will not understand and they will think you are talking bad about them and they will get angry. Stop it."
--------
Iraqi Kidnappers Kill Lebanese Hostage
By MARIAM FAM
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 12, 2004; 4:25 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A36966-2004Jun12?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi gunmen kidnapped three Lebanese in Iraq, killing one but releasing another in return for a ransom, Lebanese officials said Saturday.
Hussein Ali Alyan, a Shiite Muslim from southern Lebanon who worked in construction, was shot to death overnight, said Mohammed Issa, the Foreign Ministry secretary-general.
Issa would not give any details but denied reports that Alyan was beheaded.
Elsewhere, seven Turkish contractors taken hostage were released by their kidnappers in Fallujah, their company said Saturday. The kidnappers also announced Saturday suspended an earlier decision to execute an Egyptian and another Turk, and urged the Turkish and Egyptian people to protest against the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
It was not clear from the kidnappers' statement whether the decision to suspend the executions was temporary or indefinite.
A ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Alyan was tortured and killed in "grisly circumstances" and his body dumped on a road near Baghdad.
The official said Alyan, a Shiite Muslim from southern Lebanon who worked in construction and contracting, was killed for "financial reasons" but did not elaborate.
In a separate kidnapping, two other Lebanese identified as Habib Samour and Roger Haddad were snatched, the official said. Haddad was released, but Samour was still held by his kidnappers, the official said.
Haddad was released after his parents negotiated with his captors and paid a ransom, Issa said. The amount of the ransom was not known.
They were the first kidnappings of Lebanese in the rash of abductions in Iraq over the past two months, though other nationalities, some of them Arab, have been targeted. It was not clear when the Lebanese were abducted or whether the same people were behind both incidents.
Issa said there were no plans to call on Lebanese to leave Iraq.
"The unstable security situation in Iraq is targeting everyone living there and not only the Lebanese," he said.
Hassan Hijazi, the Lebanese charge d'affaires in Baghdad, blamed "criminal gangs" for the kidnappings. He told the privately owned Voice of Lebanon radio that gunmen wearing Iraqi police uniforms were kidnapping foreigners for ransom.
In Burj al-Barajneh, a southern suburb of Beirut, Alyan's parents, interviewed by Hezbollah's Al Manar television station, said their son was expected to return for a visit later this month after going to Iraq in January to work for a diesel company.
"He told me, 'I am coming back this month.' So, I started counting the days by minutes," his mother wailed.
Alyan's brother, Ibrahim, said that in their last phone contact his brother said he was happy with his work in Iraq.
Ibrahim Alyan said a lack of jobs in Lebanon led his slain brother to Iraq, where he was paid $1,250 a month.
"Hussein went to Iraq to secure his future," his brother said.
Numerous foreigners have been taken hostage in recent months. While many have been from nations participating in the U.S.-led coalition, Turks, Kuwaitis, Egyptians and Palestinians also have been among the victims. Motives haven't always been clear, though some victims have been ordered to stop working for companies doing business with the coalition.
Lebanon, which opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq, had a growing trade relationship with Iraq in recent years and the two states signed a free-trade agreement in 2002. But the flow of goods - worth several hundred million dollars a year - stopped with the war.
In recent months, hundreds of Lebanese businessmen, mainly contractors and industrialists, have gone to Iraq to explore opportunities in the massive postwar reconstruction.
Associated Press writers Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Hussein Dakroub in Beirut, Lebanon, contributed to this report.
-------- israel / palestine
Hamas: Attacks Against Israel to Continue
By IBRAHIM BARZAK
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 12, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36756-2004Jun12.html
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia made a rare trip Saturday to the Gaza Strip to confer with security officials and political and militant leaders about the future of the volatile region after a planned Israeli withdrawal.
Before the meeting, a top Hamas leader said the militant group would continue attacks on Israelis, despite the withdrawal plans.
The meeting came less than a week after Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet approved a plan to evacuate settlements and soldiers from Gaza, where 1.3 million Palestinians live in crowded poverty, by the end of 2005. Under the plan, Israel would maintain control of Gaza's coast, airspace and border with Egypt.
Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas official, said that the continued Israeli presence was unacceptable.
"We do not trust the Israelis, and we do not trust that the Israelis are going to withdraw from Gaza while they are speaking of controlling the sea and the air. Until the occupation completely ends, our resistance will continue," he said.
Israel has said it would retaliate if attacked from Gaza after a pullout.
Egypt has offered to send security advisers to Gaza to help train and equip Palestinian forces to deal with the aftermath of an Israeli withdrawal.
Qureia said the heads of the various Palestinian security branches and the leaders of Palestinian political and militant groups whom he met with Saturday welcomed the Egyptian efforts and agreed to work together to maintain order here.
"We all...look forward to the day that Israel is going to withdraw from all the Palestinian occupied lands," he said. "Every piece of land from which Israel withdraws...we will take control of, as Palestinians, with a unified effort."
Zahar took a more militant stand, rejecting Egypt's offer of help.
"We are against any sort of commitment to any security steps on any side," Zahar told reporters before the meeting. "We are still in the resistance...to free our land from the occupation."
However, Zahar later said Hamas leaders abroad were expected to begin talks with Egyptian officials within several days.
Zahar also left open the possibility that Hamas, which rejects the existence of Israel and hopes to replace it with an Islamic state, could change its position.
"When we hear something concrete, about full sovereignty, we will think about what is proposed to us," he said. "At this moment, our position stands firm. Our effort is a liberation effort, and if this liberation is not a full and comprehensive one, our efforts will continue."
Zahar's attendance at the meeting was his first public appearance since the funeral of Hamas' Gaza leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi, who was assassinated by Israel in April. Zahar is one of Hamas' top leaders in Gaza, many of whom have gone into hiding.
In addition to sending security advisers to Gaza, Egypt intends to increase the number of troops on its side of the border with Gaza and to help build new police stations and jails in the territory.
Egypt has also demanded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat reorganize the nearly one dozen Palestinian security forces into three branches and give up much of his control over them.
On Friday, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan called Sharon and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to thank them for their joint efforts to prepare security arrangements for Gaza, according to Israeli government sources.
-------- mideast
Al-Qaida Claims U.S. Slaying and Hostage
By DONNA ABU-NASR
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 12, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A37766-2004Jun13?language=printer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Suspected militants killed an American in the Saudi capital on Saturday, shooting him in the back as he parked in his home garage, and the U.S. Embassy said it was searching for an American who was missing.
A purported al-Qaida statement posted on an Islamic Web site late Saturday claimed the terror group had killed one American and kidnapped another in Riyadh. It threatened to treat the captive as U.S. troops treated Iraqi prisoners.
The slaying and apparent abduction were the latest attacks in a campaign of anti-Western violence in the kingdom, believed by many to be aimed at driving out foreigners as a way to sabotage the vital Saudi oil sector.
The U.S. Embassy identified the dead man as Kenneth Scroggs. It did not identify the missing American but said it was working with Saudi officials to find him.
Scroggs was the third Westerner killed in the kingdom in a week. Several Islamic Web sites Saturday carried links to a videotape - also purportedly from al-Qaida - that claims to show the killing of American Robert Jacobs, who was shot at his Riyadh home Tuesday.
In the kidnapping claim, the al-Qaida statement showed a passport-size photo of a brown-haired man and a Lockheed Martin business card bearing the name Paul M. Johnson. It said he was born in 1955.
The mobile phone listed on the card was switched off, and a call to a second phone number was picked up by a voicemail message by a deep-voiced man who identified himself as Paul Johnson.
The statement said the terror group would deal with Johnson just as "the Americans dealt with our brothers in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib" - a reference to sexual and other alleged abuses of Iraqi and Muslim prisoners by U.S. troops.
The statement also said Johnson is one of four experts in Saudi Arabia working on developing Apache helicopter systems and that the American killed worked in the same industry. It did not identify the slain American but said he was killed at his house.
"Everybody knows that these helicopters are used by the Americans, their Zionist allies and the apostates to kill Muslims, terrorizing them and displacing them in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq," said the statement.
It said al-Qaida would release a videotape later to show Johnson's confessions and list its demands.
A Lockheed Martin spokesman confirmed that Johnson was a Lockheed employee but declined to say what his job was. The spokesman also said Lockheed Martin was not aware of any employees who had been killed in Saudi Arabia.
A Saudi security source told The Associated Press that Scroggs worked for Advanced Electronics Co., a Saudi firm whose Web site lists Lockheed Martin among its customers. The office number on Johnson's business card was for Advanced Electronics.
In Scroggs' neighborhood, the Malaz district of Riyadh, witnesses told AP that three militants first shot him in the back as he pulled his car into the garage. The militants then moved closer and fired more shots.
The statement was signed by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, the same group that claimed responsibility for a shooting and hostage-taking spree in the eastern Saudi city of Khobar on May 29-30. The attack at the hub of the Saudi oil industry killed 22 people, mostly foreign workers.
The videotape that claims to show the "beheading of a Jewish American, Robert Jacobs" was attributed to the same group.
Jacobs, 62, of Murphysboro, Ill., worked for U.S. defense contractor Vinnell Corp.
The video, less than two minutes long, does not show any faces. It begins with men running in a garage and a voice yelling in English, "No, no, please!" A shot is fired, and the body of what appears to be a Western man falls to the ground. Two gunmen fire at least 10 more shots at the fallen man, then one kneels by his head and motions as if he is beheading him.
A coworker found Jacobs shot in his home Tuesday, and Jacobs was taken to a hospital. There were no reports at the time that his killers attempted to behead him. There was no way to confirm the authenticity of the statements or the video.
An estimated 8.8 million foreigners work among 17 million Saudis in the kingdom, mostly in the oil sector, banking and other high-level businesses.
Militant attacks against Westerners, government targets and economic interests in the Saudi kingdom have surged in the past two months, despite a high-profile campaign against terrorists the government began after suicide bombings last year.
Crown Prince Abdullah, shown on Saudi television Saturday greeting visitors at a Riyadh palace, urged his guests to "inform me personally of anyone who has deviated from religion, attacked (it) or is an extremist."
"I pledge, God willing, ... that they (militants) will not slip away from the hand of justice," Abdullah said.
U.S. Ambassador James C. Oberwetter, in a statement reacting to Saturday's killing and other recent terrorist attacks, expressed his condolences to victim's families.
"Those Americans who choose to remain here should exercise the utmost caution as they go about their daily life," Oberwetter said.
"I applaud Saudi Arabia's determination to bring an end to terrorism in the kingdom," he added.
Speaking in London, Sheik Saleh bin Abdulaziz Al Sheik, the Saudi minister for Islamic affairs, said Saturday that despite the recent surge of attacks, terrorism in his country had not reached crisis proportions.
"If you look back through the efforts of the Saudi government in tackling terrorism, they have destroyed half of the terrorist force," Al Sheik told journalists at the Saudi embassy in London.
"Our assessment of the situation is that it is controllable, but because there are sleeping cells and because the terrorists live in a crowded area the Saudi forces do not want to hurt any of the local people," he said.
Terror experts have noted that the militants are using several tactics - including shootings and ambushes where the gunmen do not die - rather than limiting themselves to suicide bombings or swift attacks under the cover of darkness.
They are also trying to avoid killing Muslims. The death of several Muslims and Arabs in a November compound attack in Riyadh horrified many Muslims - something that could seriously affect recruiting efforts.
Experts say the terrorists want to create "a psychosis of terror" so foreigners will leave the country, the oil and defense sectors would suffer and the system would weaken.
Last Sunday, an Irish cameraman was killed and a British TV correspondent was critically wounded when fired on while filming in a neighborhood that is home to many Islamic militants.
The United States has urged all its citizens to leave the kingdom, and the British Foreign Office has advised Britons against all nonessential travel to Saudi Arabia.
--------
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Road to Democracy, via Damascus
June 12, 2004
By MICHAEL YOUNG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/opinion/12YOUN.html
BEIRUT - Last month President Bush bowed to Congressional pressure and imposed economic and diplomatic sanctions on Syria. Although the president went beyond what Congress demanded - banning most exports to Syria, prohibiting Syrian commercial flights to America and freezing assets of Syrians with known ties to terrorism - he missed an opportunity to show that the United States is serious about democracy and self-governance in the Middle East.
The sanctions may be helpful, and the United States has long called for an end to the Syrian military presence of Lebanon - just last week President Bush said that "the people of Lebanon should be free to determine their own future, without foreign interference or domination." But the Bush administration, working with the European Union, should be doing more to encourage Syria's withdrawal.
Because Syria is the patron of Lebanon's postwar political elite, this idea provokes official antipathy in Beirut. Recently, President Émile Lahoud of Lebanon declared that Syrian forces would remain in the country until a comprehensive Middle East settlement. Given the deadlock in regional talks, this invited an open-ended stay. Since May 2000, when Israeli forces withdrew from Lebanon (removing a Syrian justification for its troop deployments), the Lebanese authorities have defended the Syrian presence as necessary, legal and temporary.
For decades, Syria has been the unavoidable force in Lebanese politics. Even after 1991, when Arabs and Israelis were negotiating peace, American and European envoys dealt with Lebanon in Damascus. Things have changed in recent years. There is growing boldness by Lebanese opposition figures who are now openly demanding a new relationship with Syria leading to a pullout. The Syrian president, Bashar Assad, has made reform his mantra, though he has not discussed a full pullout from Lebanon except in the most indefinite of terms. For the Lebanese, however, Syrian reform must include reviewing a Syrian military presence in their country that is seldom discussed in Damascus and has never been put to a referendum in Beirut.
American sanctions have heightened pressures on Mr. Assad. Yet by themselves they will not improve Syrian-Lebanese relations. In fact, trying to force a Syrian pullout may be dangerous. It could lead to domestic tension in Lebanon that Syria would highlight, and even encourage, to reaffirm its indispensability to civil peace.
What the United States and the European Union should do is put Lebanese sovereignty at the top of their agenda - even if they have few means of enforcement. And Syria and Lebanon should themselves recast their relationship and set a sensible deadline for a Syrian withdrawal; it need not be immediate, but neither should it be relegated to a distant future. This would help marginalize those who, wrongly, seek a rude divorce between Beirut and Damascus.
What would the advantages be to Syria and Lebanon? It would end a debilitating relationship that benefits neither - so that both can, together, endure the impact of future regional realignments. But it would also acknowledge that Syria's real challenges come not from Lebanon or even from Israel (the Syrian-Israeli border is among the quietest in the region), but from Iraq, where American forces can continue to intimidate Syria.
How can the international community help? First, by calling, after years of indifference, for the peaceful carrying out of United Nations and other resolutions demanding foreign troop withdrawals from Lebanon. This would include a renewed commitment to the 1989 Taif accord that ended the civil war and outlined a Syrian redeployment to the Bekaa Valley in eastern Lebanon within two years. While the wording of the accord is open to interpretation, its spirit is not: the Syrians are asked to move their troops with the implicit promise of a total withdrawal.
Second, the United States and Europe should insert themselves into the Syrian-Lebanese relationship by advising the two states to redefine their rapport and set a framework for a Syrian departure. Both power blocs say they favor democratic self-determination; they can prove it in Lebanon. This might represent interference in the bilateral affairs of foreign states - but sovereignty should not be an excuse to allow the domination of one country by another.
Third, the United States and the European Union should protect and enhance Lebanese liberal institutions - timely and free elections, and respect for the constitution, judicial independence, civic groups and opposition parties. A priority is guaranteeing that Lebanon's presidential election this year and parliamentary elections next year take place and are free and fair. After all, it is Lebanese democracy itself, not Syria's presence, that makes Lebanon stable. Only true democracy will ensure a Syrian pullout goes smoothly and that a durable Syrian-Lebanese bond - one between equals - is built afterward.
President Bush has often spoken of the importance of bringing democracy and freedom to the Middle East. His focus has been on Iraq, but Lebanon provides as good an opportunity to advance such aims. And while the international community should play a role, it is the Lebanese and the Syrians who must take the lead in redefining their relationship.
Michael Young is opinion editor of The Daily Star in Beirut and a contributing editor at Reason magazine.
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistani Troops Move Close to al-Qaida
By RIAZ KHAN
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 12, 2004; 1:18 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36748-2004Jun12.html
PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships and fighter jets searched the mountains, skirmishing with militants Saturday as they closed in on a cluster of suspected al-Qaida hideouts and a training facility near the Afghan border.
A U.S. military official said American forces in Afghanistan were closely following the action in the remote, tribal part of Pakistan and were ready to move against any militants who attempted to flee across the border.
The four-day-old offensive focuses on three al-Qaida-linked compounds - a training facility, a safehouse and the home of an alleged terror financier - near the town of Shakai, about 15 miles west of Wana, the largest town in South Waziristan.
A day earlier, Pakistani forces used artillery and helicopter gunships against rebels near Shakai. Casualties from Friday's fighting were not known, but officials have said 35 insurgents were killed Wednesday and Thursday.
Troops aided by helicopters and fighter jets searched for militants in mountains near Shakai on Saturday, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan told The Associated Press in the capital Islamabad. No arrests were reported.
Sultan said Pakistani troops and the militants exchanged sporadic gun fire throughout the day Saturday. There was no word on new casualties, but a security official said on condition of anonymity that Pakistani forces met little opposition.
Rehmatullah Yargul Khel, a tribal elder living in Wana, told AP by telephone that they see planes and helicopters flying toward Shakai and hear artillery booms coming from the area.
Residents say a number of civilians have been killed, with mud homes leveled and many people forced to flee, but Sultan said he had no information about any civilian casualties.
Skirmishes between Pakistani government soldiers and militants began Wednesday when rebels attacked a checkpoint, killing 15 security personnel.
In Kabul, the Afghan capital, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said American forces were in "very close contact" with their Pakistani counterparts and sharing information.
"We maintain a very robust presence on that portion of the border in anticipation that any anti-coalition militants that might try to escape the Pakistani army across the border," Mansager told reporters, adding that so far there was "no particular increase" in movement across the border.
On Friday, Sultan said Pakistani troops launched the operation in response to "unprovoked firing" by foreign militants.
"Pakistan took a bold decision to fight against terrorism," he told a news conference. "We are ready to pay the price, whatever it may be, and we will take this fight against terrorism to its logical end."
Sultan said one of the targets was the home of a suspected al-Qaida financier, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi.
Pakistan's tribal regions bordering Afghanistan are considered a possible hideout for Osama bin Laden and his chief aide, Ayman al-Zawahri. There was no immediate indication that top al-Qaida figures were among those involved in the latest fighting.
-------- prisoners of war
U.S. Plans to Release 650 From Abu Ghraib
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 12, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36583-2004Jun12.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The U.S. military plans to release another 650 prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison, center of the abuse scandal, next week, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday.
The release will take place Monday, he said.
A week ago, the U.S. Army freed another 320 detainees from Abu Ghraib, the fourth major release since the scandal broke in April, which brought down the number of inmates to about 3,100.
The U.S. military has said it will hand over the prison, which was also notorious for being a torture site during Saddam Hussein's regime, to Iraqi officials in August.
After the revelations of abuse, U.S. officials said they planned to reduce the facility's population by at least half, but the military is still sending so-called "high-risk" detainees considered security risks to the prison.
One American accused in the scandal was sentenced to a year in prison for sexually humiliating detainees and taking a photo of prisoners stacked naked in a human pyramid.
Three others will appear before a military judge June 21 in Baghdad.
-------- space
Spacecraft Nears End of 7-Year Trip to Saturn
The Associated Press
Saturday, June 12, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A33897-2004Jun11?language=printer
LOS ANGELES -- A hulking, 5,384-pound spacecraft is nearing the end of a seven-year voyage to Saturn, where it will begin an intensive study of the solar system's second-largest planet, its rings and the stable of moons that orbit it.
The $3.3 billion Cassini is on schedule to enter orbit around Saturn on June 30, shortly after it makes a dash through a gap in the shimmering rings that encircle a planet second to Jupiter in size.
It was to have its first encounter in the Saturn system Friday, hurtling within 1,240 miles of the outermost moon, Phoebe, at 4:56 p.m. EDT. The tiny moon is just 137 miles across. Saturn, in contrast, is nearly 75,000 miles in diameter.
The joint U.S.-European spacecraft, which also carries a probe to explore the moon Titan, was launched in October 1997. NASA built the plutonium-powered spacecraft; the European Space Agency contributed the Huygens (pronounced Hoy'-genz) probe.
Once at Saturn, Cassini should spend at least four years orbiting the planet, 76 times in all. Cassini's two cameras could take as many as 500,000 pictures.
Scientists hope study of the Saturn system will provide insight to the solar system's evolution.
"Saturn, its ring system, its moons, are a miniature model of a disk of gas and dust that surrounded the early sun as the planets formed in the solar system," said Orlando Figueroa, director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division.
Mission members caution that getting into orbit won't be a cakewalk. Cassini must fire its engine on cue for 96 minutes to slow itself sufficiently and allow Saturn to pull it into orbit. If the maneuver fails, the spacecraft would sail past.
Cassini is set to release Huygens in December. A month later, scientists expect the probe to parachute through the murky atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and land on its surface.
Titan, larger than the planet Mercury, is the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere -- mostly nitrogen and about 6 percent methane. Titan is believed to resemble what the Earth was like several billion years ago.
"Titan may preserve in deep freeze many of the chemical compounds that preceded life on Earth," Figueroa said.
Huygens carries six instruments to gather visible and infrared images, data on the properties of Titan's atmosphere and winds, as well as surface composition if it survives the landing impact.
The wok-shaped probe will enter Titan's atmosphere and deploy parachutes to slow its descent. If it lands on a hard surface it could transmit data for about 30 minutes. A landing on liquid -- liquid ethane rather than water -- would only allow it to float and operate for a few minutes.
Friday's Phoebe flyby is a warmup for what's to come: Mission planners expect Cassini to conduct more than 50 similar flights past other Saturn moons, said Bob Mitchell, the mission's program manager.
Scientists believe Phoebe originated in the outer reaches of the solar system and that it was later flung toward Saturn, which captured it into orbit.
"If it is, this will be our first encounter with something from that far out in the solar system. People are more excited about this object than its size would lead you to believe," said Carolyn Porco, imaging team leader.
NASA this week released three fuzzy images of Phoebe taken by Cassini between June 4 and June 7 as it closed in on the moon. The images showed a great deal of contrast that scientists said likely indicated topography such as sunlit peaks and deep shadowy craters.
Cassini's best possible pictures of Phoebe could show features as small as 66 feet across.
"It's going to be like walking -- like hiking across these obj