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NUCLEAR
U.S. nuclear inquiry finds China-Iran link
China Helping Iran, North Korea on Weapons-Panel
China to Hold Talks on North Korea Nukes
Suspected Assassin of Serb Leader Pleads Not Guilty
Colorado and Oregon pass resolutions
Nuclear power gets a surge of political energy
Nuclear Argument Threatens Bulgaria's EU Plans
Europeans urge swift conclusion of Iran nuclear probe
Iran's President Warns Europeans on Nuclear Criticism
Agency Presses Iran to Disclose Nuclear Activities
Iran Threatens to Rethink Cooperation with UN
Europeans Refuse to Soften Iran Nuclear Resolution
U.S. Trucks Carrying Radioactive Materials Intercepted
China to hold talks on North Korea nukes
N.Korea Says Nuclear Talks Hinge on U.S. Role
Man allegedly in al-Qaida plot to bomb Ohio shopping mall
Senate Votes to Continue Arms Research
Lab tries to assure council on safety
TN: Oliver Springs officials concerned over DOE waste transport
State threatens action against DOE for waste shipments
Hanford reactor named to endangered historic property list
Shipments to Hanford may violate court order
Preservation efforts for Hanford nuclear reactor
Area properties make endangered list
DOE Official in Charge of Cleanup Resigns
MILITARY
Afghanistan's Karzai Presses U.S. Congress for Help
Bush outlines initiatives to help Afghanistan
Bush Outlines New Afghanistan Initiatives
Bush Touts Afghanistan as Model for Iraq
Zimbabwe stocks up on jets, arms
Maoist Attack in Nepal Kills 21 Policemen
Boeing Wins Navy Contract to Replace Sub Chasers
Commission Urges NASA to Widen Role for Businesses
Colombia to Deepen Talks with Paramilitaries
A Godless continent?
Iran massing troops on Iraq border
Violence Engulfing Iraq
General Casey named to head Iraq command
US Army launches 445 million dollar campaign to win
US Army chief: Iraq "cannot be won militarily"
21 Killed in Iraq and Dozens Hurt in Bomb Attacks
Bush Plans to Transfer Hussein to Iraqis, but No Timetable Yet
A Nightmare Come True
Israel confiscates Palestinian land to build settlement barrier
Israel Weighs Major W. Bank Construction
Israelis to Extend Barrier Deeper Into West Bank
Bolivians Burn Alive Mayor Accused of Corruption
Qaeda Escalates Battle in Saudi with U.S. Death Threat
Islamic Group Shows Tape of U.S. Hostage
Iraq Prison Abuse Copied Guantanamo, Karpinski Says
Saddam was tortured, says lawyer
U.S. military makes changes in jails
For Freed Iraqis, Mixed Emotions
Panel Suggests Changes at NASA Report Encourages Some Privatization
Spying in America
Iran hits out at European trio
US will reduce number of divisions in Germany:
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judge Rebukes Gov't Over No-Fly List
Feds Call Threat to Ohio Malls 'Thwarted'
Refugees Flee Into Burundi from Eastern Congo
Immigration Raids, Far From Border, Draw Criticism
A Canadian Gate Where Illegal Immigrants Knock
Travesty of Justice
Ashcroft may face prison over 9/11 cover-up, says Daniel Ellsberg
Somali Is Accused of Planning a Terror Attack at a Shopping Center in Ohio
Al Qaeda May Have Delayed 9/11 Attack
Torture, War, and Presidential Powers
Accused contractor: Guards told to keep prisoners awake
Torture claims: Egypt bars prison visit
Vatican releases new data on Inquisition
POLITICS
Senators Complain Iraq Material Withheld
Could Fighter Jets Have Stopped 9/11?
New objections to 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
John Kerry, Political Placebo
ENERGY
Palo Verde Nuclear Plant shutdown has utilities scrambling
Records Show Enron Manipulation, Washington State Utility Says
OTHER
Silva Renews Call for Fund to End Hunger
ACTIVISTS
Iraqi artists depict anger over Abu Ghraib
Kerry's campaign has shut out the anti-war movement
Classes Train GOP Convention Protesters
NY Convention Protesters Say Rights Threatened
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china
U.S. nuclear inquiry finds China-Iran link
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/524983.html
WASHINGTON China is sending nuclear technology to Iran in exchange for oil and allowing North Korea to use Chinese air, rail and seaports to ship missiles and other weapons, congressional investigators reported Tuesday.
Although the Bush administration has emphasized a growing convergence with Beijing on halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction and countering terrorism, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission took a much harder line.
"China's continued failure to adequately curb its proliferation practices poses significant national security concerns to the United States," the commission said in its annual report.
It also raised the possibility that the Bush administration was using "inducements," such as not being tough enough with Beijing on trade infractions, to reward China for its cooperation on the North Korea nuclear crisis.
The commission, established by Congress in 2000, tends to be skeptical of Beijing.
"China's assistance to weapons of mass destruction-related programs in countries of concern continues, despite repeated promises to end such activities and the repeated imposition of U.S. sanctions," the commission said.
This "calls into question the effectiveness" of Washington's partnership with Beijing, the panel said.
Unlike the 1990s, it said, "Chinese transfers have evolved from sales of complete missile systems to exports of largely dual-use nuclear, chemical, and missile components and technologies; qualitatively, these transfers are equally worrisome."
Dual-use refers to items that could be used for either weapons-related or peaceful pursuits.
"Continuing intelligence reports indicate that Chinese cooperation with Pakistan and Iran remains an integral element of China's foreign policy," the commission reported.
It said cooperation on North Korea was a "critical test" of U.S.-China relations, but that Beijing was not using its substantial leverage to force Pyongyang to end its nuclear programs.
While making much of acting as host of six-country talks aimed at resolving the nuclear crisis, Beijing "continues to permit North Korea to use its air, rail and seaports to transship ballistic missiles and WMD-related materials," the commission said. American officials, in recent public testimony and interviews, underscored continuing differences between China and the United States over proliferation.
Chinese leaders have told the Americans that any nuclear-related trafficking is done without the government's knowledge.
The State Department recently sanctioned five Chinese companies for trading with Iran, but the commission criticized this focus. The commission said that many Chinese companies have direct ties to top-level government and military officials.
The commission said China's growing energy needs were "driving it into bilateral arrangements" that may involve "dangerous weapons transfers." Iran is a key oil-producing country.
"This need for energy security may help explain Beijing's history of assistance to terrorist-sponsoring states, with various forms of WMD-related items and technical assistance, even in the face of U.S. sanctions," the commission said.
Turning to Taiwan, the study said that the United States would face an increasingly lethal Chinese army modernized by Washington's friends and allies if it had to defend Taiwan in a war with China.
--------
China Helping Iran, North Korea on Weapons-Panel
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43247-2004Jun15.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China is sending nuclear technology to Iran in exchange for oil and allowing North Korea to use Chinese air, rail and seaports to ship missiles and other weapons, congressional investigators reported on Tuesday.
Although the Bush administration has emphasized a growing convergence with Beijing on halting the spread of weapons of mass destruction and countering terrorism, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission took a much harder line.
"China's continued failure to adequately curb its proliferation practices poses significant national security concerns to the United States," the commission said in its annual report.
It also raised the possibility the administration is using "inducements" -- such as not being tough enough with Beijing on trade infractions -- to reward China for its cooperation on the North Korea nuclear crisis.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, established by Congress in 2000, tends to be skeptical of Beijing, and its conclusions are often controversial.
"China's assistance to weapons of mass destruction-related programs in countries of concern continues, despite repeated promises to end such activities and the repeated imposition of U.S. sanctions," the commission concluded.
This "calls into question the effectiveness" of Washington's partnership with Beijing, the panel said.
Unlike the 1990s, "Chinese transfers have evolved from sales of complete missile systems to exports of largely dual-use nuclear, chemical, and missile components and technologies; qualitatively, these transfers are equally worrisome," it said.
DEBATE CONTINUES
Dual-use refers to items that could be used for either weapons-related or peaceful pursuits.
"Continuing intelligence reports indicate that Chinese cooperation with Pakistan and Iran remains an integral element of China's foreign policy," the commission reported.
It said cooperation on North Korea is a "critical test" of U.S.-China relations, but Beijing is not using its substantial leverage to force Pyongyang to end its nuclear programs.
While making made much of hosting six-party talks aimed at resolving the nuclear crisis, Beijing "continues to permit North Korea to use its air, rail and seaports to trans-ship ballistic missiles and WMD-related materials," the commission reported.
U.S. officials, in recent public testimony and interviews with Reuters, put different emphases on China's behavior, underscoring continued differences over proliferation issues.
Chinese leaders have told the Americans any nuclear-related trafficking is done without the government's knowledge.
The State Department recently sanctioned five Chinese companies for trading with Iran, but the commission faulted this focus, saying many companies have direct ties to top level government and military officials.
The commission said China's growing energy needs are "driving it into bilateral arrangements ... that may involve dangerous weapons transfers." Iran is a key oil producing country.
"This need for energy security may help explain Beijing's history of assistance to terrorist-sponsoring states, with various forms of WMD-related items and technical assistance, even in the face of U.S. sanctions," it said.
--------
China to Hold Talks on North Korea Nukes
By AUDRA ANG
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 3:30 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43844-2004Jun15?language=printer
BEIJING - China said Tuesday a new round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program will be held in Beijing on June 23-26.
In Seoul, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun said his nation will provide huge infusions of economic assistance to North Korea if the nuclear weapons dispute is resolved peacefully.
"Inter-Korean cooperation will be accelerated if the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved, and we are preparing comprehensive and concrete plans for that," Roh said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said lower-level meetings will be held June 21-22 to set the agenda for the talks.
"China hopes that the parties concerned will show their utmost sincerity and flexibility for cooperation ... so as to make headway in the third round of talks," she said at a briefing.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher stressed that the talks' aim "is to find a diplomatic resolution to the threat that's posed by North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons."
"That's a threat to the security and stability in Northeast Asia and to global nonproliferation efforts," he said.
The standoff with Pyongyang began in October 2002, when the United States said North Korea admitted operating a nuclear weapons program in violation of a 1994 agreement. Two previous rounds of discussions involving China, the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia ended without settlement.
Zhang said that the new talks would be a chance for the parties "to build on consensus achieved before and go deeper into the issues."
The contentious issue of whether North Korea has a secret uranium-based project would be discussed, she said.
The South Korean president's comments came in a speech marking the anniversary of a 2000 summit that launched a reconciliation process.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency quoted Roh as saying that Seoul would cooperate closely with the North to help it "build infrastructure and enhance industrial production capacity, which will develop North Korea's economy in an epochal manner."
"We will also cooperate with neighboring countries to help the international community enhance economic cooperation with North Korea," he said. South Korea already has economic contacts with the communist North.
Washington has demanded a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling" of North Korea's nuclear weapons facilities.
North Korea says it is willing to freeze its nuclear program in return for economic aid and will only dismantle it if the United States promises not to invade.
The North staked out its negotiating position with tough rhetoric Tuesday - a common maneuver for the isolated Stalinist regime - saying that the talks will be fruitless if Washington insists on a complete dismantling of the North's nuclear program.
Such a demand "can be forced on a defeated country only," North Korea said on its official KCNA news agency.
North Korea denies U.S. claims that Pakistan provided it with uranium enrichment technology. It has said it has only one nuclear weapons program based on plutonium.
Zhang also said reports that Beijing was sending nuclear technology to Iran in exchange for fuel and allowing North Korea to ship missiles and other weapons through China were untrue and "full of Cold War mentality."
The reports on Beijing's dealings with Iran and North Korea were based on findings by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which advises the U.S. Congress.
The commission accused China of continuing to help "weapons of mass destruction-related programs in countries of concern ... despite repeated promises to end such activities and the repeated imposition of U.S. sanctions," the reports said.
The commission also questioned the effectiveness of China-U.S. relations.
Zhang, who said she hadn't seen the news reports, nevertheless stressed that "China has always attached great importance to the issue and firmly opposes the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
In recent years, China has enacted "comprehensive laws and regulations" controlling the export of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, Zhang said.
"We have taken effective measures," she said. "If we find that any departments or organizations violated those laws and regulations, China's government will punish them in accordance to law."
"China-U.S. relations have witnessed great improvement and U.S. leaders have stressed the importance of developing China-U.S. relations on many occasions," Zhang said. "I hope people drafting that report will make clear the U.S. government's position on developing relations with China."
-------- depleted uranium
Suspected Assassin of Serb Leader Pleads Not Guilty
"Lukovic argued in court that NATO had given Serbia bombs and depleted uranium during the 1999 war in Kosovo, so why not pay them back in hard drugs?"
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A41797-2004Jun14?language=printer
The prime suspect in the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic appeared on Monday in a Belgrade court and denied involvement in the March 12, 2003, killing.
The suspect, Milorad "Legija" Lukovic, also alleged on Monday that former members of Djindjic's government had sanctioned heroin sales in Western Europe.
Djindjic's supporters rejected Lukovic's charge of the alleged sale of more than 1,500 pounds of heroin from police vaults to drug dealers, according to Serbia's Beta news agency. Lukovic presented no evidence to support the claim, the Reuters news agency reported from Belgrade.
Lukovic, who had been on the run until May 2, surrendered shortly after Djindjic's party lost power to a coalition led by more conservative Serbian officials.
He made the allegations two weeks before Tomislav Nikolic, a radical nationalist, and Boris Tadic, a former member of Djindjic's cabinet, are to face each other in a runoff for the presidential post. Djindjic's supporters alleged that Lukovic's aim was to tarnish the party's legacy and help Nikolic win the election. Several of Djindjic's former aides told local journalists that the story was a fabrication and that the drugs had been destroyed.
The cache of heroin first surfaced six months after the government of Slobodan Milosevic was swept from power by a September 2000 election and subsequent violent street demonstrations. Newly appointed Interior Ministry officials announced they had found the drugs in a deposit box at a Belgrade bank that was registered to the police.
At the time, the police said the heroin -- which was displayed for the media -- had been seized at a border crossing. No detailed explanation was given for it being stored at the bank, and the matter dropped from public attention.
Lukovic said top Djindjic aides told him in April 2001 that it would be silly to throw away something worth hundreds of millions of dollars that could be sold for the profit of the impoverished state. Lukovic argued in court that NATO had given Serbia bombs and depleted uranium during the 1999 war in Kosovo, so why not pay them back in hard drugs?
"To tell you the truth, I rather liked it. It could be a little bit of revenge of us ordinary people, who were bombed for 78 days" by NATO, Reuters quoted Lukovic as saying in court. "And if that is the will of the state, then I accept," he said. Lukovic said he smuggled the heroin with three of his men across the Danube and Drina rivers and into neighboring Bosnia, Croatia and Romania for later sale in Western Europe.
Djindjic, a pro-Western reformer backed by the United States, was shot and killed by a sniper outside government headquarters. Prosecutors say crime bosses linked to the unit headed by Lukovic, which had enjoyed the protection of the Milosevic regime, were bent on toppling Djindjic because he had planned a major government crackdown on organized crime.
Lukovic, a former police official, is charged with planning the assassination. Some of his co-defendants are members of the same police group, and some are members of a criminal group that had formed an alliance with the police. "With regard to the murder of Zoran Djindjic . . . I had absolutely nothing to do with this event," Lukovic told the court, Reuters reported.
----
Colorado and Oregon pass resolutions for the elimination of the use of depleted uranium in the U.S. arsenal
From: Scott Hinchee,
Kucinich for President
http://www.kucinich.us
Kucinich progressive values being widely embraced Recognizing Campaign achievements
The Dennis Kucinich presidential campaign has changed the American political landscape. Even though the Democratic Party appears headed to selecting its presumptive nominee, Dennis Kucinich, with the help of dedicated and determined supporters, has kept the debate on the issues alive long after others bowed out. And if you look closely at platform resolutions adopted at state conventions currently underway across the country, the progressive values of the Kucinich campaign are loudly and clearly being embraced and advanced by Democrats around the nation. The resolutions are essentially endorsements by the state Democratic parties of specific ideas and policies. With the primary season coming to an end, let's take a moment to acknowledge the hard work of our grassroots in getting these resolutions passed.
Thank you to:
Colorado Democrats:
a.. stronger regulation and labeling of organic and genetically modified organisms
b.. LGBT civil marriage rights
c.. universal pre-kindergarten care
d.. the use of medical cannabis as prescribed by a doctor
e.. U.N. in, U.S. out of Iraq
f.. universal single-payer healthcare
g.. a cabinet-level Department of Peace
h.. the elimination of the use of depleted uranium in the U.S. arsenal
i.. and the repeal of sections of the Patriot Act
Massachusetts Democrats:
a.. clean and publicly funded elections
b.. universal pre-kindergarten care
c.. and universal single-payer healthcare!
Oregon Democrats:
a.. canceling NAFTA and the WTO
b.. repealing segments of the Patriot Act
c.. universal single-payer healthcare
d.. U.N. in, U.S. out
e.. stronger regulation and labeling of organic and genetically modified organisms
f.. LGBT civil marriage rights
g.. the creation of a Department of Peace
h.. publicly financing political campaigns
i.. the elimination of the use of depleted uranium in the U.S. arsenal
j.. and opposition to a military draft
Washington Democrats:
a.. canceling NAFTA and the WTO
b.. repealing sections of the Patriot Act
c.. universal single-payer healthcare
d.. U.N. in, U.S. out
e.. stronger regulation and labeling of organic and genetically modified organisms
f.. the use of medical cannabis as prescribed by a doctor
g.. affirming a minimum living-wage
h.. LGBT civil marriage rights
i.. a Department of Peace
j.. and publicly financed political campaigns
Maine Democrats:
a.. instant runoff voting
b.. affirming a minimum living wage
c.. universal single-payer healthcare
d.. repeal of the Patriot Act
e.. universal pre-kindergarten care
f.. U.N. in, U.S. out
g.. and canceling NAFTA and the WTO!
Minnesota Democrats:
a.. U.N. in, U.S. out
b.. repeal of the Patriot Act
c.. LGBT civil marriage rights
d.. universal single-payer healthcare
e.. and opposition to a military draft!
We expect similar measures from Texas and North Carolina soon. Stay tuned.
We've had a strong and positive impact on the policies of the Democratic Party at the local and state levels, and now it is time to take it to the national level. With the June 8th end to the primary season behind us, the focus and energy of the Kucinich Campaign is turning towards Boston and the Democratic Convention. We are currently the only organized group lobbying the DNC on platform issues. There is much that you can do to help.
1.. Please sign, download, and distribute our petitions. Take them to events or send them out by email. Our petitions can be found at www.kucinich.us/petitions. This is an opportunity to lobby the Democratic Party on issues you care about.
2.. You can also give testimony directly to the platform committee by visiting this site: http://democrats.org/platform/index.html. For more details about our efforts in this regard, check out "Pushing the Democrats on Peace and Social Justice" by our Movements Coordinator, Charles Lenchner.
3.. Throw a house party to help raise money to support our convention efforts. See http://www.kucinich.us/houseparties.
4.. Join Dennis in Boston. Click here to make your reservation . We have a full week of teach-ins, rallies, and marches planned around the same issues that we hope to bring to the Democratic Party platform. Your presence will make a difference. For more information, see our convention narrative . Spread the word to all of your friends and neighbors. We will stand together and be heard in Boston!
So, thanks to everyone for all of their hard work and passionate energy over the past year. We have made so much progress, but that is only the beginning. Our long-shot campaign has evolved into a powerful movement! Please join us during this exciting phase of our work together.
Scott Hinchee Convention Field Coordinator Kucinich for President
Please forward this Email quickly and widely.
If you received this Email from a friend and would like to receive them directly, click here: http://kucinich.us/alerts-signup.htm
Contact us: Kucinich for President 11808 Lorain Avenue - Cleveland, OH 44111 216-889-2004 / 866-413-3664 (toll-free) http://www.kucinich.us
-------- europe
Nuclear power gets a surge of political energy
15.06.2004
By CATHERINE FIELD,
New Zealand Herald correspondent
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3572545&thesection=news&thesubsection=world
PARIS - Nuclear power, its image darkened by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, appears to be making a comeback of sorts in Europe as the Continent struggles to meet energy needs, faces higher bills for imported oil and honours its pledge to cut carbon pollution.
The industry may still be eyed with suspicion in the world's most environmentally conscious region, but today it is confidently presenting itself as a cheap, clean and reliable provider of energy.
Little more than a year ago, that argument that would have raised guffaws in Europe.
But things have changed, thanks to continuing unrest in oil-producing countries in the Middle East and the rise in the cost of a barrel of oil.
France is the most conspicuous example. Its two houses of parliament have just approved the first reading of a law that shapes the country's future energy supplies.
It says the nation must retain self-sufficiency and nuclear should retain a "significant share" of the energy mix.
How big is not spelt out, but - to the damnation of Green groups - it will clearly account for a majority share over the next 20 years or so.
The bill incorporates measures for extending by 10 years the 30-year operating life for existing reactors and for building an experimental pressurised water reactor by 2015 that will be the test-bed for the next generation.
"The brand-new orientation law on energy, drawn up without any democratic debate, continues to push France down a [nuclear] one-way street," said the French branch of Friends of the Earth, bitterly.
"The argument put forward that nuclear helps offset the greenhouse gas emissions is just bogus. The industry's enormous overcapacity is a complete discouragement to energy savings."
France is more nuclear-dependent than any country in the world: three-quarters of its electricity needs are met by its array of 59 nuclear reactors, a programme launched during the first oil shock 30 years ago, and which has cost some $160 billion.
Adding to the pressure on oil is France's undertakings to reduced greenhouse gas emissions in accord with the Kyoto Protocol.
To that end, the energy law offers major incentives to promote solar, wind, biomass and other renewable energy sources. France aims to derive at least 20 per cent of its national electricity needs from "Green" sources by 2010.
Ever since the 1974 oil shock, France has had a "nuclear consensus," where the public acquiesced in the huge dependence on nuclear power, provided it was safe and cheap.
Until the 2002 change of government, in which conservatives replaced a left-wing coalition, the future of the nuclear industry was in doubt.
The present generation of nuclear reactors was heading towards the end of its designed life, and environmentalists were confident they could put the atom on the run.
But then nagging questions began to be asked. If nuclear were phased out, wouldn't that mean a bigger dependence on dirty fossil fuels? And how could renewables quickly deliver the raw megawatts needed for a large, modern economy and energy-gobbling homes?
Then the latest oil crisis erupted. Oil prices surged in response to the Iraq war and terrorism in Saudi Arabia, a reminder that crude is an unreliable and volatile source.
France is not alone in this shift of opinion. Sweden, Belgium and Germany - countries where there is a ferocious Green lobby - have either abandoned plans to scrap their nuclear plants or delayed phasing them out.
Germany's plants are scheduled to close by 2020. But the nuclear industry, for years a favoured target of young Germans, is now lobbying hard for a postponement of up to 2038, thanks to technical updates.
"We are making ourselves economically dependent on a few oil-exporting countries and that could threaten the long-term security of supplies," says Ralf Gueldner, who heads the German subsidiary of French nuclear-plant maker Framatome.
More dismaying to diehard environmentalists is that part of the Green movement is now toying with the idea of living with nuclear.
In this minority view, nuclear is indeed dangerous, but probably a less-immediate peril than global warming. It could be a useful bridging source until renewables become cheaper and more energy efficient.
"Only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy," says James Lovelock, the British scientist who became a Green icon for developing the "Gaia Hypothesis" in the mid-1960s, which sees the Earth as a living thing that retaliates against those who wound and threaten it.
"We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources. Civilisation is in imminent danger. Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media."
Power plays
- France says nuclear power should retain a "significant share" of the country's energy mix.
- Sweden, Belgium and Germany have either abandoned plans to scrap their nuclear plants, or delayed their phase-out.
----
Nuclear Argument Threatens Bulgaria's EU Plans
By Albena Shkodrova
June 15, 2004
SOFIA, Bulgaria, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2004/2004-06-15-01.asp
Fears are growing that a political struggle in Bulgaria over the decommissioning of aging reactors at the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant on the Danube River may delay or derail Bulgaria's European Union accession.
Over the past year, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), a civic group claiming it has garnered 518,000 signatures to protest against the decommissioning, and a powerful nuclear engineering lobby have united to put pressure on the government to drop its commitment to the EU to decommission four reactors.
While pro-nuclear groups say the commitment to close the reactors was made under duress, few analysts doubt that attempts to renege on the deal would damage Sofia's accession negotiations.
In an opinion poll in February 2004, 46 percent of respondents said keeping the reactors was more important than joining Europe, while only 30 percent took the opposite view.
At the same time, the BSP; President Georgi Purvanov, who is a former BSP leader; the Civic Committee in Defense of the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant; and the nuclear lobby have continued a campaign against what was agreed with Brussels.
The Kozloduy nuclear power plant in Bulgaria (Photo courtesy U.S. Energy Department) The Soviet designed Kozloduy plant has six reactors. The two oldest VVER-440s went into operation between 1974 and 1982. Two newer ones, the VVER-1,000s, have been operational since the late 1980s.
The conflict over their future started more than 10 years ago when, in 1992, the G7 declared four of them "non-upgradeable at a reasonable cost" due to structural defects and recommended closure. The EU took up this position.
Bulgaria resisted closure until 1999 when it had to shift its stance to start accession talks with Brussels. The last two governments agreed to shut down the four reactors in pairs, in 2002 and 2006.
But the decision has always been unpopular. A pro-nuclear lobby has successfully identified its own interests with the Bulgarian national interest, and resistance to decommissioning has become a tool for the opposition parties in their struggle against the government.
The BSP - the successor to the old Communist Party, which ruled Bulgaria for more than four decades after the Second World War - remains the largest political party in the country and may well win the 2005 general election, partly thanks to the nuclear issue.
The nuclear power plant was built under communist auspices as a symbol of the "fraternal" relationship they cultivated with the Soviet Union.
In recent months, the Socialists have stepped up the campaign to force the government to abandon its EU commitments, threatening street protests to force it to retain the old reactors.
According to the newspaper "Daily Sega" of May 18, BSP leader Sergey Stanishev said his party would increase pressure on the government to revisit the nuclear issue with Bulgaria's EU partners. "The time for renegotiations was running out," it quoted Stanishev as saying.
The paper said the Socialists wanted a referendum over decommissioning the reactors and would keep them going in defiance of the EU deal if it won the next election.
"The left will use all means available not to close reactors as scheduled," Bulgaria's Mediapool news agency quoted Rumen Ovcharov, deputy chair of the BSP, as saying on March 17.
Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov (Photo courtesy Government of Bulgaria) President Purvanov has also put pressure on the government to revisit the agreement with the EU. At an international nuclear conference on the Bulgarian coast on June 2, he complained that Sofia had "acted in a hurry" over the deal to decommission the reactors.
The president said completing the Power Engineering Chapter of the EU accession talks had been a tactical mistake by Bulgaria in pursuit of union membership.
The Nivic Committee to Defend the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant has meanwhile collected several hundred thousand signatures in favor of a referendum and called for protests against the decommissioning.
Atanas Semov, the committee's legal counsel, says the group wants to see the energy chapter in the EU reviewed and a popular vote on the plant.
The nuclear power lobby has publicly questioned the EU's opinion on the safety of the plant and presented its own opposing hypotheses.
The lobby links the Civic Committee in Defense of Kozloduy with a range of professional and scientific organizations, such as the Bulgarian Atomic Association, the Bulgarian Atomic Forum and the Bulgarian Power Engineering Forum.
The success of their campaign has dismayed supporters of the reactors' closure. "Their exemplary PR act has turned a national disaster into a national treasure," said Aleksandur Bozhkov, a former industry minister and now co-chaiman of the Centre for Economic Development, a right wing think tank.
"The Kozloduy issue epitomizes the fears of many people about the little known EU," added Svetlozar Kovachev, an analyst with the Euro-Atlantic Civic Foundation.
Kovachev said although the pro-nuclear groups "would not say it in the open," their campaign "has an obvious anti-European connotation."
Ognyan Minchev of the Institute for Regional and International Analyses, another right-of-center think tank, said the BSP campaign contained a large element of bluff, however. "The BSP and the pro-nuclear lobby will not dare to stand up to the EU over the long term," he said.
Minchev said even those working in the nuclear power industry would find they had an interest in the decommissioning process, as the long and expensive task would provide them with a great deal of work. Plans to build a new nuclear plant at Belene will satisfy their long term professional interests, Minchev added.
Though closure is unpopular, public opinion may be more confused than some believe, for while polls say 64 percent oppose shutting the Kozloduy reactors "whatever the price," the same polls say 88 percent still back EU membership.
Bulgarians are divided over the Kozloduy nuclear power plant. (Photo courtesy U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria) According to the Alpha Research polling agency, the Kozloduy power plant is thought of in emotional terms as a symbol of national sovereignty, rather than pragmatically as an economic asset.
The polling agency said it found 66 percent of the plant's supporters believed preserving it would keep electricity prices low and 53 percent felt the reactors would ensure Bulgaria remained strong in the international energy market. Some 41 percent opposed foreign experts making any decisions on the country's national interests.
Such convictions reflect the information put forward by the plant's champions. Opponents dispute it has much economic value. They point out that throughout the 1990s the plant operated at less 60 percent of capacity, and that a state monopoly on electricity distribution mandated other energy producers to generate less power, simply to provide work for Kozloduy.
Krasen Stanchev, of the Institute for Market Economy, maintains that Kozloduy served Russia's economic interests over those of Bulgaria.
It was, he said, built "because the Soviet Union wanted to use Bulgaria as a middleman for its raw materials en route to the western markets. Petrol, coal, steel, and zinc had to be processed in Bulgaria, and a lot of electricity was needed for that."
EU representatives continue to warn Bulgaria that it must fulfill the deal to close the reactors if it wants to accede to the union in 2007.
On a visit to Bulgaria on June 7, Enlargement Commissioner Guenther Verheugen's spelled this out, "The only consequence of Bulgaria reopening the energy chapter would be delayed accession to the EU," he said.
{Published in cooperation with the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.}
http://www.iwpr.net
-------- iran
Europeans urge swift conclusion of Iran nuclear probe
VIENNA (AFP)
Jun 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040615161650.nku2ydr7.html
Britain, France and Germany proposed a draft resolution to the UN atomic agency Tuesday calling for a probe into Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program to be toughened and wrapped up within months, despite new Iranian threats to break off cooperation.
The draft picked up on UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei's hardening the tone of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) investigation into Iran's nuclear program, which is now more than a year old.
ElBaradei told the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors Monday: "It is essential for the integrity and credibility of the inspection process that we are able to bring these issues to a close within the next few months and provide the international community with the assurances it urgently seeks regarding Iran's nuclear activities."
Intense talks were underway at IAEA headquarters in Vienna Tuesday, with Iran pressing for a softening of the text after leaders in Tehran reacted angrily to the fresh pressure from the UN nuclear watchdog by threatening to reconsider cooperation with inspectors.
The new conservative speaker of parliament, Gholam Ali Hadad-Adel, warned that the assembly may not ratify Iran's signature of the additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) allowing tougher UN inspections.
"The three European countries are demanding parliament adopt the protocol, but I say to France, Germany and Britain not to tell the Iranian parliament what to do," Ali Hadad-Adel told deputies.
President Mohammad Khatami has meanwhile told Britain, France and Germany in writing to ease the pressure, or risk pushing Iran to consider "other alternatives," according to press reports.
Khatami also reportedly accused the so-called Euro-3 of aligning themselves with Iran's arch-enemy, the United States.
The United States is pressing for Iran to be hauled up before the UN Security Council for allegedly developing nuclear weapons in secret, but has not won support for this yet at the IAEA. Tehran has consistently denied the allegations.
A diplomat in Vienna close to negotiations on the draft resolution told AFP that the three big European powers, helped by the United States and other members of the 35-nation IAEA board of governors, had revised their original text after ElBaradei's speech.
Calls to resolve the probe in a few months and echoes of ElBaradei's criticism of Iran's lack of cooperation had now been incorporated into the draft, according to a copy made available to AFP.
The draft "deplores... that overall Iran's cooperation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been" and "underlines that with the passage of time, it is becoming ever more important that Iran work proactively with the agency."
The text was softened in one point, however, backing off from a demand that Iran halt uranium conversion operations and construction of a heavy water research reactor that are a key part of the nuclear fuel cycle. The draft now merely asks Iran to "reconsider" these decisions.
Iran is pressing for this clause to be dropped entirely, an Asian diplomat told AFP.
Meanwhile, a US demand to give Iran a deadline in the revised text for compliance had been rejected since it was better to give "a sense of urgency at this stage (to resolve the issue) but avoid any idea of deadlines," which could incite a confrontation with Iran, another diplomat said.
Elbaradei told the IAEA board that the UN agency had been aware of "Iran's undeclared nuclear program" for almost two years but had been kept from getting to the bottom of it due to "less than satisfactory" cooperation from Iran.
On Monday the United States called on Iran to come clean on the extent of its nuclear ambitions and demanded that the UN nuclear watchdog press Tehran this week to cooperate with inspectors.
The IAEA board is not expected to debate the draft resolution in plenary session until later in the week, possibly Thursday or Friday, diplomats said.
----
Iran's President Warns Europeans on Nuclear Criticism
VOA
15/06/2004
http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=9446
Iranian president Mohammad Khatami is strongly objecting to criticism of Tehran's nuclear program by Britain, France and Germany.
President Khatami has sent a letter to the three European powers, reportedly warning that Iran's cooperation with U.N. nuclear inspectors could be jeopardized if such criticism continues. The letter accuses the three countries of working with the United States to pressure Iran.
The warning comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency board meets in Vienna to consider a draft resolution proposed by Britain, France and Germany. The resolution calls on Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment program and to stop work on a reactor capable of producing bomb-grade plutonium. Iran insists its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.
Some information for this report provided by Reuters and AP
----
Agency Presses Iran to Disclose Nuclear Activities
June 15, 2004
By MARK LANDLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/international/middleeast/15nuke.html
FRANKFURT, June 14 - Frustrated with Iran's "changing and at times contradictory" stories about its nuclear program, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency demanded Monday that Tehran provide a full accounting "within the next few months."
The remarks by the director, Mohamed ElBaradei, were uncharacteristically blunt, according to diplomats meeting in Vienna this week to review Iran's compliance with the United Nations watchdog agency.
Iran is likely to be sharply criticized in a resolution that the United States and other members of the agency's board are scheduled to vote on later this week.
The White House said it shared Dr. ElBaradei's "serious concerns," and urged Iran to "come clean and abide by its international agreements."
The American ambassador to the agency, Kenneth C. Brill, said Dr. ElBaradei's statement "showed how clear the contrast is between what the Iranians say and what the I.A.E.A. finds the reality is."
The Bush administration welcomed the director general's statement, and officials expressed hope that it would add to pressure from Europe and Russia - as well as the United States - to force Iran to disclose its nuclear activities. They said they would leave open the possibility of seeking action at the United Nations Security Council if current efforts failed.
"Our view is that the I.A.E.A. has documented already 18 years of clandestine nuclear activities in Iran," said Richard A. Boucher, the State Department spokesman. "Tehran has repeatedly failed to declare significant troubling aspects of its nuclear program. It's interfered with and suspended inspections, and it's failed to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency in resolving outstanding issues related to its program.''
Much of the debate in Vienna has centered on whether the agency should impose a deadline for Iran to cooperate - something the United States has sought. Dr. ElBaradei has not called for a deadline, though his statement to the agency's board suggested he was running short of patience.
Nor is it considered likely that the resolution, which is being drafted by Britain, France and Germany, will set a deadline, a diplomat involved in the deliberations said.
Iran says it has cooperated with the agency and is trying to soften the resolution.
It insists its activities are geared toward producing commercial nuclear energy. But feelings toward Tehran have soured in the wake of fresh disclosures, according to diplomats.
The agency said in a recent report that Iran was continuing to produce parts for centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium to a grade suitable for weapons. It is also preparing to make uranium hexafluoride, the material that is fed into centrifuges to produce enriched uranium.
Dr. ElBaradei said it was "premature to make a judgment" about whether Iran's program was military. But the agency has been in an increasingly tense standoff with the Iranians in the two years since it began investigating a program that Iran covered up for nearly two decades.
--------
Iran Threatens to Rethink Cooperation with UN
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
By Louis Charbonneau and Mark Trevelyan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43334-2004Jun15.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran threatened to review its cooperation with the U.N. atomic watchdog as France, Britain and Germany refused to soften a resolution that sharply rebukes Tehran for sluggish cooperation with the U.N.
In a letter to the leaders of France, Britain and Germany, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami accused Europe's three big powers of working with Tehran's arch-foe Washington to pile pressure on the Islamic Republic, which the United States says is trying to develop nuclear weapons.
"Continuation of this behavior under the pressure of America will seriously harm mutual trust and Iran's cooperation with the international community on Iran's use of peaceful nuclear technology," Khatami warned in the letter to Europe's big three, extracts of which appeared in the Sharq newspaper.
"Continued unfriendly behavior and ignorance of undertakings, will push Iran to consider its different options."
Some Iranian hard-liners have suggested following North Korea in pulling out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty rather than submitting to U.N. inspections. But Tehran has made no such official threat. Withdrawal could bring international isolation.
After a day of backroom talks on the text, the European trio circulated a revised draft resolution on Iran to members of the International Atomic Energy Agency's Board of Governors that "deplores" Iran's inadequate cooperation with the IAEA, the U.N. body that polices treaties on the use of nuclear technology.
But one diplomat on the board described the changes to the original draft as "cosmetic" and the Iranians were not happy.
"This is not acceptable. It does not meet our expectations for substantial revisions, not at all," Hossein Mousavian, secretary of the foreign policy committee of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, told Reuters.
Diplomats said Washington had wanted the text even harsher, with a deadline for Iran to come clean about its atomic plans. That would keep pressure on Tehran and open the door to a future report to the U.N. Security Council and possible sanctions.
NO DEADLINE
The new draft, obtained by Reuters, was not much softer in tone than the original but still contained no deadline.
The draft said the IAEA board "deplores...the fact that, overall, Iran's cooperation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been."
The original had said the board "deplores...the fact that this cooperation has not been complete, timely and proactive."
The revision, which might be amended further, does contain one accommodation to Iran; the original asked Iran to "reverse its decisions" to begin operating a uranium conversion facility near Isfahan and building a heavy-water reactor that would produce bomb-grade plutonium near the central city of Arak.
The new version only asks Iran to "reconsider" its plans.
As tough as the resolution's language is, if approved by the board, Iran will only get a public scolding this week.
The text contains no threat of a report to the Security Council or sanctions -- which diplomats said is one aspect of the European draft resolution the Iranians sincerely like.
Washington has long accused oil-rich Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic power program. Tehran denies this, insisting its program is designed solely to produce electricity from nuclear reactors.
(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in Tehran)
--------
Europeans Refuse to Soften Iran Nuclear Resolution
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 7:48 AM
By Louis Charbonneau and Mark Trevelyan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42589-2004Jun15?language=printer
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran pressed the United Nations not to punish it for keeping nuclear secrets but diplomats at the U.N. atomic energy watchdog in Vienna proposed a new draft resolution on Tuesday that retained a sharp rebuke to Tehran.
In a letter to the leaders of Britain, Germany and France, Iranian President Mohammad Khatami accused Europe's three big powers of working with Tehran's arch-foe Washington to pile pressure on the Islamic Republic, which the United States says is trying to develop nuclear weapons.
After a day of backroom talks on the text, the trio circulated a revised draft resolution on Iran to members of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) Board of Governors that "deplores" Iran's inadequate cooperation with the IAEA.
But one diplomat on the board described the changes to the original draft as "cosmetic." The IAEA is the U.N. body charged with policing treaties on the use of nuclear technology.
"Continuation of this behavior under the pressure of America will seriously harm mutual trust and Iran's cooperation with the international community on Iran's use of peaceful nuclear technology," Khatami warned in the letter to Europe's big three, extracts of which appeared in the Sharq newspaper.
"Continued unfriendly behavior and ignorance of undertakings, will push Iran to consider its different options."
While Iran had wanted the European trio to soften the draft text, diplomats said Washington wanted it harsher, with a deadline for Iran to come clean about its atomic plans. This would keep the pressure on Tehran and open the door to a future report to the U.N. Security Council for possible sanctions.
NO DEADLINE
The new draft, obtained by Reuters, was not much softer in tone than the original but still contained no deadline.
The draft said the IAEA board "deplores...the fact that, overall, Iran's cooperation has not been as full, timely and proactive as it should have been."
The original had said the board "deplores...the fact that this cooperation has not been complete, timely and proactive."
The new draft "calls on Iran to take all necessary steps to on an urgent basis to help resolve all outstanding questions."
The revised draft, which might be amended further, does contain one accommodation to Iran and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the largest bloc on the 35-nation IAEA board.
The original draft had asked Iran to "reverse its decisions" to begin operation of a uranium conversion facility near Isfahan and to begin construction of a heavy-water reactor that would produce bomb-grade plutonium near the central city of Arak.
The new version only asks Iran to "reconsider" its plans.
As tough as the resolution's language is, if approved by the board, Iran will only get a public scolding this week.
The text contains no threat of a report to the Security Council or sanctions -- which diplomats said is one aspect of the European draft resolution the Iranians sincerely like.
Washington has long accused oil-rich Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian atomic power program. Tehran denies this, insisting its program is designed solely to produce electricity from nuclear reactors.
The Iranian delegation was not immediately available for comment on the new draft. But Iran made it clear earlier on Tuesday that it was very unhappy with the European trio.
Khatami's letter reflected a more aggressive tone from Tehran in recent days in response to what it says are unfair and politically motivated accusations about its atomic ambitions.
(Additional reporting by Francois Murphy and Parisa Hafezi)
-------- iraq
U.S. Trucks Carrying Radioactive Materials Intercepted In Iraq-Kuwait Border
June 15, 2004 (MNA)
Tehran Times
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=6/15/2004&Cat=4&Num=020
TEHRAN -- The UAE-based daily Al-Khaleej reported on Monday that Kuwaiti tariff officials have intercepted a truck loaded with radioactive materials in the Iraq-Kuwait border.
The daily quoted informed sources as saying that the radioactive control team from Kuwait's Health Ministry discovered that one of the trucks belonging to the U.S.-led coalition forces was carrying heavy radioactive materials trucks. The trucks were headed for Iraq.
The daily said that such materials could only enter a country when there is permission from related bodies while the materials were secretly being carried to Iraq.
Security forces stressed that no contamination had been caused by the material.
The MNA reported for the first time the coalition forces' suspicious transfer of WMD parts from Kuwait to Southern Iraq by trucks.
The possible presence of WMD in Iraq and its likely nuclear programs were the main U.S. pretext for attacking the country.
However, their failure to find weapons of mass destruction in the country and the continuing turmoil in Iraq questioned the legitimacy of the U.S. war against Iraq and their presence in the country.
-------- korea
China to hold talks on North Korea nukes
BEIJING (AP)
6/15/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-15-china-nkorea_x.htm
BEIJING (AP) - China said Tuesday that a new round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear program will be held in Beijing on June 23-26.
"China hopes that the parties concerned will show the spirit of flexibility and cooperation," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue said at a briefing.
The talks will be preceded by a working-level session on June 21-22 to set the agenda, she said.
The standoff was sparked in October 2002, when the United States said North Korea admitted operating a nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement.
Two previous rounds of discussions involving China, the two Koreas, the United States, Japan and Russia ended without settlement.
China has said that stark differences remain between the negotiating partners.
Washington demands a "complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling" of Pyongyang's nuclear weapons facilities.
North Korea says it is willing to freeze its nuclear program in return for economic aid and will only dismantle it if the United States promises not to invade.
--------
N.Korea Says Nuclear Talks Hinge on U.S. Role
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 3:59 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42358-2004Jun15.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - The outcome of next week's six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear ambitions depends entirely on the United States, North Korea said on Tuesday.
The official KCNA news agency quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying the U.S. attitude to the North's proposal of a "reward for freeze" -- meaning compensation in return for freezing its nuclear weapons development -- would become the touchstone for gauging U.S. intent at the talks.
The ministry confirmed a third round of talks would start on June 23 in Beijing, venue for two earlier rounds of negotiations involving the two Koreas, China, Russia, Japan and the United States.
"The U.S. attitude toward the DPRK-proposed reward for freeze will become a touchstone discerning the U.S. real intention for the settlement of the nuclear issue. The prospect of the settlement of the issue entirely depends on the U.S.," said the ministry.
DPRK is short for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
"Nothing will be expected from the forthcoming talks if the U.S. persistently insists that the DPRK accept CVID, a demand which can be forced on a defeated country only," the ministry said. "Internal work needed for us will go on well though the talks may prove unsuccessful due to the U.S."
The United States wants complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement -- CVID -- of the North's nuclear capabilities.
The crisis began in October 2002 when U.S. officials said North Korea had said it was working on a secret program to enrich uranium. It subsequently denied this, and China said earlier this month it doubted North Korea had a uranium program.
At the last round of talks, the six countries agreed to meet again before the end of June. Earlier, in Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced the talks would be held from June 23 to 26 with two days of working-level meetings before that.
-------- terrorism
Man allegedly in al-Qaida plot to bomb Ohio shopping mall
Suspect got terror training in Africa before returning to carry out attack, indictment says
NBC News and news services
June 15, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5209103/
WASHINGTON - A Columbus, Ohio, man has been charged with participating in an al-Qaida plot to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Monday.
"The American heartland was targeted for death and destruction by an al-Qaida cell," Ashcroft said at a news conference announcing the four-count indictment against the man, Nuradin Abdi, 32, a cellular telephone business owner in Columbus who is originally from Somalia.
The indictment, which was handed up by a criminal grand jury in Columbus on Thursday and was unsealed Monday, charges that Abdi conspired with admitted al-Qaida member Iyman Faris and others to detonate a bomb at a shopping mall in the Columbus area after he obtained military-style training in Ethiopia.
FBI officials in Columbus said there were no indications which mall was supposed to have been targeted.
Immigration document fraud also alleged Abdi, who has been in custody since November on immigration-related violations, also was charged with fraud and misuse of documents by claiming that he had been granted valid asylum status in the United States. In fact, prosecutors say, he obtained that refugee document under false pretenses.
There also were one count each of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists and conspiracy to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, in this case al-Qaida.
Each count of the terrorism-related charges carries a maximum 30-year sentence, and the immigration charges carry maximum penalties of 25 years, Ashcroft said.
A government motion seeking to keep Abdi in detention says he returned to the United States from Africa in March 2000 and was met at the airport in Columbus by Faris. Those two and other unidentified co-conspirators were involved in the alleged shopping mall plot, prosecutors say.
Columbus is home to more than 30,000 Somalis, the second-largest Somali community in the United States after Minneapolis. Abdi's brother, Mohamed Abdi Karani, 17, said he had been told nothing about the case.
"I just find out whatever you find out," he told a reporter.
Secret travel to Africa charged One of the immigration charges contends that Abdi concealed his true destination when he applied for a U.S. travel document on April 27, 1999. He said he was going to Germany and Saudi Arabia to visit Mecca and relatives.
In fact, "as the defendant well knew, he planned to travel to Ogaden, Ethiopia, for the purpose of obtaining military-style training in preparation for violent Jihad," the indictment says. The training allegedly included use of guns, bombs and guerrilla warfare.
Faris, 34, is serving a 20-year federal sentence after pleading guilty last June to providing material support to al-Qaida. Faris, an Ohio-based truck driver originally from Kashmir, admitted plotting to sever the cables supporting the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and to derail trains in New York or Washington.
Neither of those plots came to fruition.
Faris had received instructions from a top al-Qaida leader, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, for what might have been a second wave of attacks to follow those of Sept. 11, 2001, investigators say. Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the hijackings, is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed overseas location.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Senate Votes to Continue Arms Research
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44416-2004Jun15.html
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's research into new nuclear "bunker buster" and "mini-nuke" nuclear warheads survived a vote Tuesday in the Senate after a House subcommittee refused last week to provide any more money for it.
By a 55-42 vote, the Senate rejected an amendment to a $447 billion defense bill that would cancel further research on the proposed weapons.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., an amendment sponsor, said before the vote that while the United States preaches nonproliferation, development of the weapons would say to the world: "Don't do what we do. Do what we say."
"We are practicing the ultimate hypocrisy," she said.
The nuclear bunker buster would be intended to reach deeply buried targets, such as underground military command centers beyond capability of conventional bombs to penetrate. The mini-nuke warhead of less than 5,000 tons of TNT - one-fourth the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 - would cause less damage and fewer deaths in the area around a target, its advocates say.
Republicans argued that the $37 million the amendment sought to strike is for research, not development, and doesn't pose the risk of an arms race like that with the Soviet Union during the four-decade Cold War.
"This is a feasibility study ... nothing more," said Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. He said going forward with development and production would require approval by the president and Congress later.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said he couldn't "imagine a dumber idea."
"If the Bush administration has its way, the next war could very well be a nuclear war," Kennedy said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Lab tries to assure council on safety
By Bonita Brewer
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Tue, Jun. 15, 2004
http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/politics/8926185.htm?1c
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory officials sought Monday night to ease the jitters of some Livermore City Council members about the lab's preparedness for a terrorist attack.
"We believe we've taken aggressive steps to look at terrorist scenarios," said lab spokeswoman Susan Houghton. "We are here, we are residents and we care as much about Livermore as you do."
The issue was initially raised last month when the council considered its response to environmental studies of plans to expand the lab's use of plutonium and other highly radioactive weapons materials.
Councilman Mark Beeman had questioned the likelihood of someone taking off in a private jet from the Livermore Municipal Airport and deliberately crashing it onto lab property or into lab buildings.
Tom Grim, with the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Safety Administration, had responded that specific information on terrorist threats and the lab's response to them is "classified information" and cannot be publicly disclosed.
But Houghton, while still not revealing specifics, sought Monday to assure the council and public that the lab has a detailed response plan to "a broad range" of various potential threats, including an airplane attack.
"I want to assure you our lab is very interested in sharing as much information as possible," Houghton said, even while stressing some information can be shared only with those local officials with security clearances -- Livermore Police Chief Steve Krull, Livermore-Pleasanton Fire Chief Stewart Gary and, soon, Livermore City Manager Linda Barton.
Houghton noted that since last month's council meeting, lab officials met with Gary, Krull, Barton and a representative of Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo, to tour Superblock, the lab's plutonium area. They discussed in general terms various ways the lab, which among other things receives national intelligence information, analyzes potential threats and responses.
She said even before that, the lab was working closely with city and county officials on various homeland security matters, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.
Last month, the lab participated in an emergency planning exercise called "Silent Thunder" involving federal, state and local agencies reacting to a fictional terrorist attack not specifically against the lab but targeting the valley.
Krull and Gary earlier Monday said they are satisfied the lab has done what it can to address potential scenarios.
"We have a long-standing, very cooperative planning and response relationship," Gary said. "We are briefed at the highest levels."
The Department of Energy has declined requests by U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, and various environmental groups, to extend the public comment period on the sitewide environmental impact statement being done for the lab. The original 90-day comment period ended May 27.
Reach Bonita Brewer at 925-847-2120 or bbrewer@cctimes.com.
-------- tennessee
TN: Oliver Springs officials concerned over DOE waste transport
The route being used is Highway 61 to Clinton to I-75.
June 15, 2004,
By YVONNE NAVA
6 News Anchor/Reporter
http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=1943899
OLIVER SPRINGS (WATE) -- The mayor of Oliver Springs is upset over potentially hazardous cargo being transported through his town by the DOE.
Highway 61 has plenty of traffic recently, including trips by trucks from Oak Ridge carrying shipments of hazardous waste.
Mayor Ed Kelley says, take it somewhere else. "They come through this town several times a day. We've had one involved in an accident, a minor accident, and we didn't know how to handle it."
The trucks passing through Oliver Springs contain cylinders of uranium hexafluoride, a material used to make nuclear bombs.
According to the Depleted Uranium Management Information Network, uranium hexafluoride can be a liquid, solid or a gas.
Uranium hexafluoride doesn't react with oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, or dry air. But it does react with water or water vapor and can form corrosive hydrogen fluoride.
Kelley said the city doesn't have the manpower or the money to handle a possible spill or leak. "My duty is to try and protect the people of this city, as well as the ones who visit here."
Kelley sent a letter to the DOE, expressing his concerns.
DOE representatives declined to go on camera with 6 News, but said they're working on a response to the letter.
Marilyn Newman said she's lived in Oliver Springs for 35 years. "I'd rather they didn't come through here. If that were the only way, it'd be fine. But since there are other alternatives that are closer..."
The route being used is Highway 61 to Clinton to I-75, to a plant in Portsmouth, Ohio.
Kelley said the shorter, more direct route is the Oak Ridge turnpike. He said that weeks ago, waste shipments stopped several times at the crossing in front of Norwood Schools. "I don't think that's right."
Trucks have already shipped more than 700 cylinders, with 5,200 to go. The goal is to have them all out of Oak Ridge sometime in 2005.
The mayor said the city will continue holding Hazmat training sessions with the DOE. The city is also trying to put together a camera system for security in its sewer and water plants.
-------- washington
State threatens action against DOE for waste shipments
06/15/2004
By SHANNON DININNY
Associated Press
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D83768D00.html
Washington state officials threatened enforcement action against the federal government Monday, accusing the Energy Department of illegally shipping waste from another nuclear site to the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The Savannah River nuclear site in South Carolina has been conducting treatment studies on waste from Hanford's 177 underground tanks, which contain 53 million gallons of highly radioactive liquid, sludge and saltcake from World War II and Cold War-era plutonium production.
Federal law allows the waste to be shipped to South Carolina for study and returned to Hanford, exempting it from provisions of state and federal hazardous-waste regulations. A review by the state Department of Ecology review found that 60 drums and more than 800 small containers of tank waste had been appropriately returned to Hanford.
But those exemptions do not apply to waste generated at Savannah River - debris such as equipment, clothing and supplies that may have been contaminated in the testing process, the Ecology Department said.
During an April inspection, Ecology officials located one 55-gallon drum at Hanford that contained debris generated at Savannah River.
A subsequent investigation uncovered at least 83 drums of debris from the Savannah River site had been shipped to Hanford. Not all of the drums have been located, but at least eight exhibited characteristics of transuranic mixed waste, Ecology officials said.
"Ecology is extremely troubled by this abuse of the treatability study sample exclusion in state and federal regulations," Ecology officials wrote in a letter Monday to the Energy Department.
The state supports the study but wants to ensure that open communication is maintained, spokeswoman Sheryl Hutchison said.
"If it's going to be moving across the country it needs to be declared, so we have a real clear idea about what's coming to Hanford," she said.
Enforcement action against the federal government could include an order to stop the shipments, a fine or both, Hutchison said.
Erik Olds, a spokesman for the Energy Department, said the agency had received the letter and was reviewing it.
"We do appreciate their acknowledgment that the studies are important," Olds said. "None of the shipments are in process or will be planned until we can get to the bottom of the state's concerns and get them resolved."
The Ecology Department also raised concerns that some of the shipments may have violated a court order banning out-of-state shipments of waste to Hanford until a lawsuit is resolved.
The lawsuit, filed by the state to stop the import of transuranic waste from other states, demands the Energy Department provide written plans and deadlines for ensuring that both the transuranic waste already buried at Hanford and the imported waste will move on to a repository in New Mexico.
The Energy Department has said it wants to truck transuranic waste from other sites for inspection and repacking at Hanford before shipping the barrels off to New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court.
An initiative to go before voters this fall also would block the federal government from sending radioactive waste from other states to Hanford until all the existing waste at the site is cleaned up. The measure has been endorsed by environmental groups, the state Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters.
----
Hanford reactor named to endangered historic property list
June 15, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=68261
YAKIMA, WASH. - Efforts to preserve the world's first large-scale nuclear reactor at the Hanford nuclear reservation in south-central Washington are expected to get a boost today.
The Washington Trust for Historic Preservation plans to put the so-called "B Reactor" on its Most Endangered Historic Properties list. Supporters want to make it a museum.
The B Reactor was the world's first full-scale plutonium production nuclear reactor. It produced the plutonium for the first man-made nuclear blast, the Trinity test in New Mexico on July 16th of 1945. The reactor also produced the plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War Two just a month later.
It was built as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project, and decommissioned in 1968.
The reactor has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, but its future has remained in doubt as cleanup progresses at the Hanford site.
A final decision on its future isn't due until 2006.
----
Shipments to Hanford may violate court order
June 15th, 2004
By Annette Cary
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5194649p-5127531c.html
The Department of Energy imported at least 83 drums of radioactive waste to Hanford without Washington state's knowledge and in violation of an agreement between DOE and Gov. Gary Locke, state officials charged Monday.
Some of the shipments also may violate a court order halting shipment of transuranic waste to Hanford, said Sheryl Hutchison, spokeswoman for Washington's Department of Ecology.
The state sent a letter to DOE on Monday cautioning it not to accept any more of the waste and warning that the state plans further action. That could mean an order saying how the waste must be handled or a fine.
"No shipments are in process or are planned until we can get to the bottom of the state's concern and get this resolved," said Erik Olds, a DOE spokesman in Richland.
Samples from Hanford's huge tanks of highly radioactive waste have been sent to the Savannah River Technical Center in South Carolina for studies on how to treat waste at the vitrification plant under construction at Hanford.
An exclusion in state and federal law allows waste and any liquid waste residues remaining after a test is completed to be shipped back to Hanford. The waste is not subject to state requirements for tracking or hazardous-waste handling.
Once returned to Hanford, the waste goes back into Hanford's new double-shelled tanks to await treatment at the vitrification plant. The tank waste, left over from the production of plutonium at Hanford during World War II and the Cold War, will be turned into glasslike logs for permanent disposal, likely at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
But the state discovered recently that more than tank waste and test residues were being shipped back from Savannah River. DOE also has been sending back drums of contaminated debris from the treatability studies.
"We sent a little bit of waste out and got a lot of waste back," Hutchison said. "That's not how it's supposed to work."
The waste includes radioactively contaminated gloves, other clothing, equipment and lab supplies used in testing and analyzing the waste samples.
The state believes the debris is not covered by the exemption.
"Ecology is extremely troubled by this abuse of the treatability study sample exclusion in state and federal regulations," wrote Bob Wilson, a state compliance specialist, and Michelle Anderson-Moore, a state compliance inspector, in the letter to DOE.
The shipments have been coming to Hanford since 1997. But state officials did not know they were being sent to Washington until a state inspector spotted a drum in late April at Hanford and learned it contained debris from Savannah River.
Because DOE apparently had considered the shipments as exempt, manifests and other tracking information had not been routinely available to state regulators.
The state is unsure of where most of the drums are or if more than 83 have been sent. It's also not sure how the waste in the drums should be classified, although eight appear to be transuranic waste, which typically is contaminated with plutonium 239 and americium 241.
The drums of transuranic waste are being stored at Hanford for eventual shipment to an underground repository near Carlsbad, N.M.
Ten of the drums have been treated at PEcoS, a Tri-City company, and disposed of at Hanford. The waste that contaminated that equipment was shipped to Savannah River for testing as high-level waste, Hutchison said.
In 2000, DOE told Locke it would not ship radioactive waste mixed with chemicals from other DOE sites to Hanford until a solid-waste environmental study was completed and a record of decision issued.
The state believes that agreement bars shipment of the drums from Savannah River. The study is completed, but a record of decision has not been issued.
The shipment of the eight drums of transuranic waste to Hanford also may have violated a federal court order that stopped shipment of such waste to Hanford after April 2003 until litigation is resolved. The state has not determined when the transuranic shipments were made, but at least some were sent before the injunction was issued.
The state did agree in its letter to DOE that the treatability studies are an important part of work to empty and treat waste in underground tanks.
"We should work together to guarantee that these studies continue," the letter said.
DOE is reviewing the letter, Olds said. It was sent to Keith Klein, manager of the Richland Operations Office, and Roy Schepens, manager of the Office of River Protection.
----
Preservation efforts for Hanford nuclear reactor
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Associated Press
http://www.king5.com/localnews/stories/NW_061504BUBhanford_nuclear_reactor_preservation.263e6b07a.html
YAKIMA, Wash. - Efforts to preserve the world's first large-scale nuclear reactor - at the Hanford nuclear reservation in south-central Washington - are expected to get a boost Tuesday.
The Washington Trust for Historic Preservation plans to put the so-called "B Reactor" on its Most Endangered Historic Properties list. Supporters want to make it a museum.
The B Reactor was the world's first full-scale plutonium production nuclear reactor. It produced the plutonium for the first man-made nuclear blast, the Trinity test in New Mexico on July 16th of 1945. The reactor also produced the plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War Two just a month later.
It was built as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project, and decommissioned in 1968.
The reactor has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places, but its future has remained in doubt as cleanup progresses at the Hanford site.
A final decision on its future isn't due until 2006.
Since 1992, the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation has published a Most Endangered Historic Properties List to bring attention to threatened sites. The sites are nominated by concerned citizens and organizations across the state.
---
Area properties make endangered list
Tuesday, June 15th, 2004
By Annette Cary
Tri-City Herald staff writer
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5194646p-5127524c.html
Examples of beautiful historic architecture often top the annual list prepared by the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation of the state's most endangered historic properties.
But this year an engineering marvel made the roster.
The group will announce today that Hanford's B Reactor is on the list of the eight most endangered properties for 2004.
"From a historical standpoint it's a site that's unparalleled," said Lisbeth Cort, executive director of the Seattle-based, nonprofit trust.
The reactor, a linchpin of the crash program to develop nuclear weapons during World War II, was the world's first full-scale plutonium production reactor.
Also on this year's list is another Mid-Columbia property, the Dorsey Building in Dayton. It's a cornerstone of Dayton's Downtown Historic District.
A spot on the list doesn't necessarily mean funding or that a property will be saved, but past lists have helped raise public awareness of the value of endangered historic locations.
In the Tri-Cities, volunteers have been working since at least 1990 to get the B Reactor turned into a museum. But time is running short.
The Department of Energy faces a legal deadline to begin at least planning the deactivation and decommissioning of the reactor, the first step toward demolishing it.
"We can't allow that to happen," said Michele Gerber, a Richland historian. Portland architect Timothy Cowan drafted the reactor's nomination for the 2004 list with Gerber's help.
Work on the B Reactor started as part of the Manhattan Project in World War II, just months after Enrico Fermi first demonstrated that a controlled nuclear reaction was possible. Eleven months later, the reactor was producing plutonium for the war effort.
It produced plutonium for the world's first nuclear explosion, called the Trinity test, in New Mexico. It also produced plutonium for the "Fat Man" bomb dropped over Nagasaki, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. Within days, the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II.
B Reactor continued to produce plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program until 1968.
"Historians look for something that is completely unique," Gerber said. "In the Tri-Cities we are fortunate to have something completely unique."
B Reactor, which sits near the bank of the Columbia River, looks much like it did when it was last operated. During the past decade, DOE has upgraded its electrical service and building ventilation and has cleaned and fixed industrial and radiological safety concerns.
Photographs and tools are on display, but visitor access is limited, particularly since 9-11.
Its most immediate need is a new roof at a cost of about $500,000, Gerber said.
A proposed study on turning it into a museum also must be both authorized and funded. Washington's congressional delegation has legislation moving through both houses of Congress which would require the National Park Service to conduct the study at a cost of $500,000 to $750,000, but does not appropriate the money.
The trust picked the B Reactor for its endangered list not only for its historical significance, but also to add momentum to the work already started to save the reactor.
The Bush administration has been cool toward the idea of saving the reactor and other nuclear landmarks across the nation as national parks because of their potentially large maintenance costs and possible safety issues. Instead, the administration has mostly focused on reducing the current multibillion-dollar maintenance backlog at existing national parks.
If government money is not found to turn the reactor into a museum, it could be cocooned like the neighboring C Reactor. The reactor building would be demolished down to the 3-foot-thick shield walls surrounding the reactor core, all openings sealed and a new roof installed.
The inclusion of the reactor on the endangered properties list should raise awareness of its historical significance in other parts of the state, Cort said.
Supporters of saving the reactor fall across the spectrum from pronuclear to antinuclear, Gerber said. Preserving it will allow it to be studied and debated, she said.
The other Mid-Columbia property on the list, the Dorsey building, is facing condemnation proceedings.
Originally called the Dantzsher building, it was built about 1895. During the last century, it has housed a tailor and millinery shop, drug store, lounge and lodging.
The tailor shop became Dayton's first local telephone company office.
Lack of maintenance has damaged the blocky, two-story building and the city of Dayton has started condemnation proceedings. The Dayton Historic Preservation Commission, Downtown Dayton Development Task Force, the city of Dayton and Columbia County are trying to save the building.
Other properties on the trust's list include: the Anderson-Bourn Cabin built during the Mt. Baker gold rush years, the Collins Building in Everett, the Ellensburg Depot, the Jefferson County Courthouse, the Scout House in Port Townsend and St. Urban's Church in Winlock.
-------- us nuc waste
DOE Official in Charge of Cleanup Resigns
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 8:27 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44504-2004Jun15.html
WASHINGTON - Assistant Energy Secretary Jessie Roberson, who headed the environmental cleanup program at the department's nuclear weapons sites, resigned Tuesday, citing a desire to spend more time with her family.
Roberson has been at the center of an aggressive plan by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to speed up the massive environmental cleanup the government faces from waste left over from years of nuclear bomb making.
The accelerated cleanup agenda, crafted by Roberson, has been criticized by some state officials and environmentalists as an attempt by the Energy Department to scale back cleanup standards and saddle states with more of the highly radioactive waste.
DOE spokesman Joe Davis said that Roberson's departure would be effective July 15.
"She wanted to spend more time with her family," said Davis. "She wanted to move on. She's done a great job."
Davis said that Abraham told Roberson that in three years at the job she had "fundamentally changed the management" of the waste cleanup effort. Roberson came to the post after working for the Energy Department's office overseeing the cleanup of the Rocky Flats nuclear site in Colorado.
The resignation is the third of a senior Energy Department official closely involved in nuclear waste cleanup or environmental management in just over two months.
Undersecretary Robert Card, the department's No. 3 official who was closely involved in nuclear waste issues, and Assistant Secretary Beverly Cook, who reported to Card and was in charge of environmental and health management at nuclear complex sites, resigned in early April after tangling with members of Congress over a worker health issue. They, too, cited a desire to spend more time with family.
Davis said "it would be wrong to draw any conclusion" that Roberson's resignation was related to those departures or that her decision to leave the department involved an issue of policy.
However, Roberson has been criticized by some lawmakers for threatening to withhold as much as $350 million in nuclear waste cleanup funds unless states with tanks of high-level radioactive waste agree to a reclassification of the waste so it would not have to be transported to Nevada for disposal.
Senators and other officials from Washington, where many of the waste tanks are located, accused the department of trying to "blackmail" the states into agreeing to the cleanup changes. Tank waste also is located at facilities in Idaho and South Carolina.
Officials of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability, an advocacy group opposed to the DOE accelerated cleanup program, said they welcomed Roberson's departure.
Susan Gordon, the group's executive director, said Roberson "failed to adequately involve the public and local stockholders in the planning around accelerated cleanup and consequently put forward plans that continue to face significant opposition."
But other skeptics of the DOE cleanup program, nevertheless, had praise for Roberson.
"We may have had some differences...but I firmly believe she made a positive difference in the difficult and complicated task of cleanup up our nation's nuclear waste sites," said Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. "There is no question that real cleanup progress has been made in the years (she) has served."
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Afghanistan's Karzai Presses U.S. Congress for Help
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 11:55 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43360-2004Jun15.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Afghan President Hamid Karzai asked the U.S. Congress on Tuesday for a long-term commitment to rebuilding his country and to give private companies incentives to invest there.
Receiving several ovations at a joint meeting of the House of Representatives and the Senate, Karzai said the United States and Afghanistan "must enhance our strategic partnership. The security of our two nations are intertwined."
Karzai was due to meet with President Bush later in the day and met with Secretary of State Colin Powell on Monday, as Afghanistan prepared for landmark elections in September.
Karzai, is favored to win the election, but concerns have mounted about worsening provincial violence and threats from the Taliban and allied Islamic militants.
While Karzai lavished praise on the United States for toppling the Taliban government and helping to rebuild the country, he said atrocities against Afghan people under the Taliban "continued for many years and the world remained unengaged" until the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"You came to Afghanistan to defeat terrorism and we Afghans welcomed and embraced you for the liberation of our country," he said of the U.S.-led war to oust the radical Islamic government that sheltered Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Karzai told U.S. lawmakers that enhancing prospects for stability and democracy would require "sustaining and accelerating the reconstruction of Afghanistan through long-term commitment, and providing incentives to the private sector for investing in Afghanistan."
The United States so far has committed about $2.2 billion to rebuild Afghanistan, an amount some lawmakers have criticized as too low and a result of the Bush administration's emphasis on Iraq where $18.6 billion has been committed for reconstruction.
"To succeed, we ask for your continued investment. Afghanistan is open for business and American companies are most welcome," said Karzai, who cited the country's potential to produce hydro-electricity and reserves of minerals, oil, natural gas and coal.
--------
Bush outlines initiatives to help Afghanistan
USA TODAY
By Richard Benedetto
6/15/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-15-us-afghanistan_x.htm
WASHINGTON - President Bush outlined five new initiatives Tuesday to help Afghanistan continue to move toward peace and prosperity so that it never again is a "terrorist factory." "My government reaffirms its ironclad commitment to help Afghanistan succeed and prosper," said Bush, standing in the Rose Garden next to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
President Bush said Tuesday that five new U.S. programs will help convert Afghanistan from a "terrorist factory" to a democratic and stable nation.
"My government reaffirms its ironclad commitment to help Afghanistan succeed and prosper," Bush said at a news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The initiatives include $5 million for start-up grants to small businesses run by women, $4 million to establish a teacher-training institute for women, promotion of a free-trade agreement, help in printing textbooks and building schools, specialized training for elected politicians and expanded cultural exchange programs for young scholars.
Bush said the United States, which in recent months increased its forces in Afghanistan to about 20,000, is helping to build the Afghan national army and train new Afghan police and border patrols.
Karzai, in a speech before Congress earlier in the day and later at the news conference, expressed appreciation for U.S. help. He cited economic and education statistics that showed progress since a U.S.-led coalition ousted the Taliban from the country in 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks. "This could not have been possible without your help," he said.
Missing from the initiatives was any new program designed to eliminate mounting drug production and trafficking, one of Afghanistan's most serious problems. Millions of dollars in drug profits are said to be channeled to terrorists.
"It's a gaping hole," said Bob Weiner, former spokesman for the Office of Drug Control Policy in the Clinton White House.
Weiner said U.S. efforts to discourage opium poppy farming by providing economic alternatives are not working. He urged a massive military/police interdiction effort similar to that being conducted with U.S. help in Colombia.
Karzai acknowledged the drug problem, saying, "The Afghan people are adamant to fight this menace and to end it." He offered no details.
Karzai brushed aside reports that he was seeking the support of powerful regional warlords in his country for the upcoming September elections. He said he has made "no deals" with them and will not do so.
"I will talk to anybody that comes to talk to me about stability and peace, and about movement toward democracy," he said. "We don't call them warlords. Some of those people are respected leaders of the Afghan resistance. Some of them are former presidents. And we respect them in Afghanistan."
Also at the news conference, Bush - pointing out his own record - said he would avoid the fate of his father, who lost the 1992 election largely because he failed to convince most Americans that he could manage the economy.
"When I first came to office, the economy was headed into a recession. And we acted," he said. "We encouraged the entrepreneurial spirit to flourish by letting people keep more of their own money (through tax cuts) ... and the economy is getting better."
--------
Bush Outlines New Afghanistan Initiatives
By DEB RIECHMANN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 11:28 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A45031-2004Jun15?language=printer
WASHINGTON - President Bush on Tuesday called Afghanistan the "first victory in the war on terror," yet both he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the nation remains on a long, rocky path toward peace and economic prosperity.
"Three years ago, the Taliban had granted Osama bin Laden and his terrorist al-Qaida organization a safe refuge," Bush said, standing alongside Karzai in a Rose Garden so humid that the Afghan leader shed his cloak.
"Afghanistan is no longer a terrorist factory sending thousands of killers into the world," Bush said.
The United States, which in recent months has increased its force in Afghanistan to about 20,000 troops, is helping to build the new Afghan national army and train new Afghan police and border patrol. The president, who is using the battle against terrorism as a centerpiece of his re-election campaign, listed five new ways America would help Karzai.
But he added: "The road ahead for Afghanistan is still long and difficult."
Nearly 500 people have died in violence across Afghanistan so far this year. Many are victims of the Taliban-led insurgency; others have died in factional and tribal fighting linked to the country's booming drug trade.
The country's illicit cultivation of opium poppies supplied almost three-fourths of the world's opium last year and helps finance terrorists.
"The Afghan government is adamant, the Afghan people are adamant to fight this menace, to end it in Afghanistan and receive your help in that," Karzai said.
Bush announced that the United States would:
- Launch a training program for newly elected Afghan politicians.
- Help print millions of new textbooks, build schools for girls as well as boys and develop a new $4 million women's teacher training institute in Kabul.
- Set up new cultural exchange programs.
- Pursue a bilateral trade and investment agreement.
- Dedicate $5 million to fund training programs and grants for small business, including those run by women.
Robert Weiner, spokesman for the Office of National Drug Policy from 1995 to 2001, noted that curbing the cultivation of poppies was not on the list of initiatives Bush announced.
"They offered nothing against drugs despite its obvious importance against terror," Weiner said. "We need a real plan - eradication and enforcement with the help of our thousands of troops there, with planes spraying and troops burning and chopping - to get the job done."
Afghanistan's first election since the United States drove out the Taliban rulers in 2002 is on track for September. Security and logistical problems postponed it from June. Karzai, who is president by vote of a grand council, under traditional Afghan practice, is running against a number of challengers.
Karzai denied that he's made any political pacts with former Islamic militant leaders.
"No deals have been made," Karzai said, adding that, as president, he needs to talk with Afghans from all backgrounds to assure peaceful, democratic elections.
Asked who would try fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Omar and bin Laden, whose al-Qaida network is blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Karzai said Afghanistan would consult other nations on how to bring them to justice.
"Osama and Mullah Omar have committed crimes against the Afghan people, against the people in the United States and against the international community," Karzai said.
"They are wanted by the world conscience," he said. "They have to be arrested and tried. And when they are arrested, we will consult the international community and find appropriate mechanism for their trial." Before his meeting with Bush, Karzai made a 20-minute speech to members of the House and Senate. Like Bush, Karzai underscored the end of a long period of oppression and terror, but added that there is "a long road ahead."
--------
Bush Touts Afghanistan as Model for Iraq
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
By Caren Bohan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44469-2004Jun15.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush lauded Afghanistan as a model for Iraq on Tuesday as he tried to paint U.S. involvement in the Central Asian nation as a success in his run-up to the November presidential election.
With Afghan President Hamid Karzai at his side at a White House news conference, Bush cited progress in child health care, women's rights and education as signs Afghanistan had risen "from the ashes of two decades of war and oppression."
He said a new society was growing up in that country since the 2001 U.S. invasion that ousted the Taliban government and the al Qaeda movement it harbored. "And the same thing's going to happen in Iraq. These aren't easy tasks," he said.
In an indication of some of the difficulties Afghanistan still faces, Karzai asked U.S. lawmakers for a multiyear package that would provide funding of $2.2 billion a year, according to a congressional source.
Bush's popularity ratings have fallen because of concerns over instability and killing in Iraq as the United States prepares to hand over control to an Iraqi interim government on June 30.
Karzai is favored to win a September presidential election in Afghanistan but concerns have mounted about worsening provincial violence and threats from the Taliban and allied Islamic militants.
Democrats say Bush's invasion of Iraq last year diverted military and financial resources from Afghanistan and from the global war against terrorism he declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
An international peacekeeping force provides security for Karzai's fragile government in Kabul, but government control outside the capital is limited, with parts of the country in the grip of regional warlords and militant fighters.
During Karzai's visit to Washington, a rocket hit a military base near the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul, wounding an Afghan soldier. A government official was shot to death in a separate incident in Kandahar.
A former Clinton administration official slammed Bush for not proposing new steps to crack down on opium cultivation in Afghanistan, which has grown sharply since the Taliban was ousted. "Heroin is an enormous threat to the national security of this country," said Robert Weiner, who worked in Clinton's office of national drug policy.
ECONOMIC GROWTH
Karzai joined Bush in portraying Afghanistan as a success story, touting economic growth of more than 25 percent last year and projections this year of growth of 20 percent.
"This could not have been possible without your help, without America's assistance," Karzai told Bush.
Karzai also defended his talks with regional leaders referred to as warlords.
"First of all, we don't call them warlords. Some of those people are respected leaders of the Afghan resistance," he said. "It's my job to keep stability and peace in Afghanistan. And I will talk to anybody that comes to talk to me about stability and peace and about movement toward democracy."
Karzai made a plea for more U.S. aid, telling lawmakers democracy would require "sustaining and accelerating the reconstruction of Afghanistan through long-term commitment.
The United States has committed about $2.2 billion to rebuild Afghanistan, an amount some lawmakers have criticized as too low as a result of the emphasis on Iraq, where $18.6 billion has been committed for reconstruction. (Additional reporting by Vicki Allen)
-------- africa
Zimbabwe stocks up on jets, arms
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Tom Carter
June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20040615-121213-9266r.htm
The government of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has ordered more than $240 million worth of jet fighters and other military equipment from China, renewing concerns of a sub-Saharan arms race in a region with no external threats.
The purchase was revealed in a recent parliamentary meeting with Trust Maphosa, the secretary of Zimbabwe's Defense Ministry, the country's opposition said yesterday.
"We believe this is a kind of [intimidation] tactic because we are going towards very crucial elections next year," said opposition spokesman Giles Mutsekwa.
"The idea is that whatever the public does, there is the possibility of it being subverted by the military," he told Agence France-Presse.
The order was for 12 fighter jets and 100 military vehicles, according to the British Broadcasting Corp.
"Who is giving money to the Mugabe regime to allow it to buy $200 million worth of military equipment when the economy has collapsed?" asked Annabel Hughes, executive director of the Zimbabwe Democracy Trust.
"The world turns a blind eye now when he plans on purchasing new fighter jets and military vehicles to support his one-party dictatorship. Who exactly is the Mugabe regime planning on defending itself from?"
The order has irritated the South African government, according to the Virginia-based Armed Forces Journal International (AFJI), which is described as a quasi-official U.S. military publication.
According to AFJI, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the South African foreign affairs minister, has asked China to stop selling weapons to the region. The South African Embassy in Washington yesterday called that report false.
"It is clear that the South African government's position is that Zimbabwe is an independent sovereign nation and any decision to buy arms is a decision for the Zimbabwe people," said Tshepo Mazibuko, an embassy spokesman.
Asked whether the South African government had approached the Chinese government on this issue, as reported in AFJI, Mr. Mazibuko said, "The ministry spokesman does not recall that conversation."
"Hopefully, this might be the jolt that will force [South African President Thabo] Mbeki's failed 'quiet diplomacy' policy to one of engagement with Zimbabwe. Everybody knows that the anarchic Mugabe regime is already a threat to the region without Chinese jets and military vehicles," Miss Hughes said.
In 1998, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked that all the countries in the region cap military spending at 1.5 percent of the gross domestic product, but Zimbabwe is at 3.4 percent, Namibia at 3.6 percent and South Africa at 1.7 percent.
China also is projecting into the region.
"For the last 18 months, China has had a policy to expand its influence in Africa," said John Tkacik, China specialist at the Heritage Foundation. "There is definitely a full-court press by China to engage not just in Asia and Latin America, but also Africa."
He said Chinese "initiatives" are targeting African countries under pressure from the West for human rights problems.
"That makes Zimbabwe pretty attractive," he said.
Zimbabwe is experiencing a food crisis, and the World Food Program is feeding more than 600,000 Zimbabweans. Zimbabwe's government says the country is experiencing a "bumper crop."
-------- asia
Maoist Attack in Nepal Kills 21 Policemen
June 15, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/international/asia/15nepa.html
KATMANDU, Nepal, June 14 - Maoist rebels ambushed two police trucks in Nepal on Monday, killing 21 police officers and wounding 12 in stepped-up violence that analysts said dimmed hopes for early peace talks.
The attack, the biggest since Sher Bahadur Deuba was reappointed prime minister on June 2, took place on a highway in a forest area at Khairikhola, 280 miles west of this capital, said a police spokesman, Ajay Chatkuli.
Surviving police officers said hundreds of rebels surrounded the police convoy and fired from automatic weapons at the first truck. Soon after, there was a blast under the second truck.
One survivor of the attack, Dev Raj Khadka, said the wounded officers fought a 90-minute gun battle with the guerrillas before the rebels fled. "Then I fell unconscious and found myself at the hospital," he said.
Mr. Chatkuli said the trucks were carrying 37 police officers on their way to clear a roadblock put up by the Maoists.
Officials said they had no information about rebel losses because the Maoists usually carry away their fallen comrades.
The Maoists have been fighting since 1996 to overthrow Nepal's constitutional monarchy and set up a Communist republic in the world's only Hindu kingdom.
More than 10,000 people have been killed in the insurgency that has wrecked the economy of this poor Himalayan country, wedged between China and India.
Soon after King Gyanendra reappointed him, Mr. Deuba, the prime minister, appealed to the rebels to resume the talks they abandoned last year.
But the Maoists, who consider Mr. Deuba to be a puppet of the king, rejected his call and said his reappointment would exacerbate the conflict.
Since then, the rebels have set off two powerful bombs at a school outside Katmandu, causing extensive damage but no casualties. They have also forced 6.5 million students home for more than a week by calling an indefinite school strike.
Nepali officials said Monday that India had provided two military attack helicopters to the country's poorly equipped army to help crush the insurgency.
-------- business
Boeing Wins Navy Contract to Replace Sub Chasers
June 15, 2004
By LESLIE WAYNE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/business/15arms.html
The Navy awarded one of the Pentagon's biggest military contracts of the year to the Boeing Company yesterday by instructing it to replace a fleet of submarine-hunting airplanes from the Lockheed Martin Corporation at a potential cost of $23 billion.
Boeing will turn commercial 737 jets into antisubmarine aircraft - what have been called Multimission Maritime Aircraft. The contract is a significant victory for the company, which has stumbled badly in the last year as it attempted to gain more military contracts. In particular, it failed to land a contentious plan to lease 767 jets to the Air Force for use as aerial refueling tankers.
In selecting Boeing over Lockheed, the Navy endorsed an emerging policy, promoted by Boeing, to adapt more commercial products to military use. The new plane will replace the aging P-3 Orion fleet of submarine hunters, now nearly 30 years old. Lockheed, which has had the contract for more than 40 years, proposed updating the P-3, which is a four-engine turboprop.
John Young, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition, said the need to replace the P-3 was urgent. Besides its age, the fleet has been used for long hours of surveillance near Iraq and Afghanistan.
For Boeing, revenues are expected in stages. The contract's first stage is to develop and produce three planes, at an estimated cost of $3.9 billion. The procurement of a fleet of 108 aircraft is valued at $20 billion more, and Mr. Young added that maintenance and support contracts over the life of the program would bring the total program costs to $44 billion. The finished planes are expected to cost an average of $126 million each and go into service in 2013.
"There has been a strong sentiment in the Navy to pick a commercial jet to perform antisubmarine work," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a research group in Arlington, Va. "Boeing's winning this contract confirms that trend."
Jim Albaugh, chief executive of Boeing Integrated Defense System, said he was excited about the contract and acknowledged at a news conference that the company's problems had added to the uncertainty over the contract.
"We've had a lot of issues over the last 12 months," said Mr. Albaugh, who termed the contract a "vote of confidence." He said it would create 1,600 jobs, 200 of them in St. Louis and the rest in Wichita, Kan.; Seattle; and eastern Virginia.
Peter Simmons, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin, said the company was "obviously disappointed."
"We are anxious to get a full debrief to better understand the Navy's decision,'' he added.
Lockheed, the nation's largest military contractor, and Boeing, in second place, have gone head to head in several contests. Lockheed was selected as the prime contactor on the Joint Strike Fighter, a $200 billion project to build the next generation fighter jet, the largest military contract ever.
Meanwhile, Boeing has become enmeshed in one scandal after another as it tried to gain more military business. There were proprietary documents stolen from Lockheed as it bid on a rocket launch program and a job offer made to a top Air Force official while the official was still at the Pentagon overseeing Boeing contracts. The Air Force official, Darleen Druyun, has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy in federal court, and the episode prompted top Boeing executives, including the former chief executive, Philip M. Condit, to leave the company.
Howard Rubel, an analyst with Schwab Soundview Capital Markets, said the contract "is a nice product line extension for Boeing and demonstrates the versatility of their air frames.''
"This is one of the more important decisions the Navy has made in a long time," he said.
At the moment, the Navy has about 180 P-3's. These planes fly a few hundred feet above the ocean and are designed to detect unfriendly submarines and other vessels. The planes can either call for reinforcements or attack from the air.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the government has grown more concerned about protecting United States shorelines. Some critics have questioned the need for a $44 billion program, however, because many of the submarines to be tracked are aging Soviet-era diesel vessels. Mr. Young of the Navy said that there were about 400 submarines in the world today, but that much of the new aircraft's work would be against other water-borne threats.
Mr. Young said Boeing could market its antisubmarine 737 to other countries besides the United States. About 15 nations now own a total of 225 P-3's and may want to replace their fleets. They include Australia, Canada, Greece and South Korea.
One factor that favored Boeing was its ability to deliver a finished plane faster than Lockheed, Mr. Young said. Boeing plans to use an existing airframe rather than design a new craft.
"It's a prestigious contract for the winner and a chink in the armor for the loser," said Paul Nisbet, a military analyst with JSA Research in Newport, R.I. "And it's a bold move for the Navy. It will be the first time the Navy has used a jet for surveillance."
In the competition, Lockheed and Boeing were aggressive in promoting their own features. Lockheed proposed a new version of its four-engine turboprop P-3, which carries a crew of 12 and can fly for 14 hours.
Lockheed had argued that the turboprop was not only more fuel efficient than a jet, but also could fly slower and lower, helpful for submarine surveillance. The company said it had a leg up in understanding marine patrolling needs because it already had the contract.
In its presentations to the Navy, Boeing argued that its 737 jet could get to suspected targets faster, that it had a larger flying range and that it could also fly slowly at low altitudes. Like the Lockheed offering, the Boeing plane could be filled with a variety of weapons, including torpedoes and depth bombs.
Boeing also argued that because its 737 production line was already up and running, the Navy would save money on development costs and would be able to develop the system "without starting from scratch," according to a Boeing document.
Shares of Boeing closed yesterday at $48.83, up 8 cents, while Lockheed's shares fell 50 cents, to $50.45. Partners with Boeing on this project are Northrop Grumman, Smiths Aerospace and CFM International.
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Commission Urges NASA to Widen Role for Businesses
June 15, 2004
By WARREN E. LEARY and JOHN SCHWARTZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/science/15mars.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Correction Appended
WASHINGTON, June 14 - NASA needs to thin out its bureaucracy and turn over many tasks to private industry if the agency is to carry out President Bush's new vision to explore the Moon and Mars, a presidential commission has concluded.
The panel, the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond, which spent months considering how to reach goals outlined by Mr. Bush in a January speech, said the venture would require huge changes within NASA and steady commitment from government.
"The commission unanimously endorses this ambitious yet thoroughly achievable goal of space exploration," the panel said in a report to be issued Wednesday. "Our journey will require the government to embrace fundamental changes in its management and organization."
The panel also recommended restoring an advocate for space programs at the White House by creating a Space Exploration Steering Council. A similar council existed under the first President Bush but disbanded with his administration.
Details of the report were first disclosed by Space.com, an Internet site specializing in space issues; a summary of the report was obtained by The New York Times.
It said NASA should make itself a leaner organization that concentrates on research and developing space technology that is not readily available. Any technology or services useful to the space program that are available from private industry should be contracted out, it said.
The agency should encourage private industry "to assume the primary role of providing services to NASA," the report said - leaving it to industry to launch most payloads into low orbit around the Earth, for instance.
"In NASA decisions, the preferred choice for operational activities must be competitively awarded contracts with private and nonprofit organizations," it said. "NASA's role must be limited to only those areas where there is irrefutable demonstration that only government can perform the proposed activity."
Increased commercialization is crucial, the panel said, "to attainment of exploration objectives within reasonable schedules and affordable costs.''
But while most space launchings should be left to the commercial market, the commission said, launching human crews should continue to be primarily the job of the government, at least in the near future. This recommendation appears to acknowledge criticism by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which laid part of the blame for the loss of the space shuttle and its crew last year to NASA's turning over too much of its safety oversight to private contractors.
The nine-member presidential commission, headed by Edward C. Aldridge, a former secretary of the Air Force, said carrying out the Mars program would require the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to change the way it has done business for more than four decades, ever since it was organized to send men to the Moon with the Apollo program.
The commission, which heard testimony from scores of witnesses at five hearings held around the country, urged that NASA enlist the expertise of other agencies and that the resulting efforts be coordinated by the Space Exploration Steering Council that it recommended for the White House.
The NASA administrator, Sean O'Keefe, has repeatedly suggested that NASA should get out of the business of doing things in low Earth orbit and should be focusing its financing and goals instead on exploration beyond the home planet. Mr. O'Keefe said last week that the agency would take the commission's work seriously and expected to adopt many of its recommendations. NASA is already studying a reorganization, which according to draft documents would combine several departments within the agency and reduce the size of its bureaucracy.
Howard E. McCurdy, a space expert at American University, said that at first blush, the commission might seem to be endorsing what had been happening to a great extent at NASA, with contractors already doing a good deal of the work at the agency. Within the space shuttle program, Professor McCurdy said, the main contractor, United Space Alliance, and other companies "don't sit in the front room at mission control, but they do just about everything else."
Still, if the space program was restructured as the commission suggests, NASA would be looking to entrepreneurs for more innovation and creativity as well, he said.
And that, he said, would mean an utterly transformed space agency.
"It's not going to be some huge Project Apollo that will get us back to the Moon," he said. That program cost an estimated $150 billion in current dollars, he said - a price that America is unlikely to pay.
Instead, Professor McCurdy said, NASA will end up looking to small, highly organized teams like those that put together the Mars rovers.
"They don't look like Project Apollo," he said.
But Professor McCurdy and other outside experts warned of taking privatization too far.
Donald Lamb, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago and chairman of a committee on space science sponsored by the Association of American Universities, said he was encouraged by the committee's charge that the exploration mission be "discovery driven."
But the outsourcing recommendation seems unrealistic, he said.
"Space exploration,'' he added, "particularly manned space exploration, is just too expensive and risky to attract private enterprise, especially venture capitalists.''
In another recommendation, the commission said NASA should reorganize its 10 field centers, which specialize in different types of space technology and missions, like engines or aircraft design, and which often build spacecraft and other equipment. NASA should consider converting most of these centers to research and development institutions run by universities or private concerns, much like the Energy Department's national laboratories, it said.
Under this plan, which the panel said would encourage innovation and more work with industry, most NASA centers would operate more like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which specializes in interplanetary missions and has for decades been managed by Caltech.
Warren E. Leary reported from Washington for this article, and John Schwartz from New York.
Correction: June 16, 2004, Wednesday
A front-page article yesterday about a presidential commission report recommending that NASA turn over many tasks to private industry misidentified the publication that first reported the findings. It was the Web site of Space News (www.space.com/spacenews), not its partner Space.com.
-------- colombia
Colombia to Deepen Talks with Paramilitaries
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 7:31 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44406-2004Jun15.html
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - The commanders of 20,000 far-right Colombian paramilitaries will confine themselves starting July 1 to a small rural area, in a bid to deepen negotiations with the government to disarm their men.
The announcement was made in a joint statement by the Colombian government and leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish initials AUC.
"The first of July 2004, there will be a (ceremony) inaugurating talks in Santa Fe de Ralito," the statement said, referring the small, rural hamlet which will serve as the headquarters for the negotiations.
"The sides call on Colombian society and the international community to support this process and to create all of the conditions to make this step toward peace successful."
The intention of the AUC commanders to gather in the 144 square-mile cattle-ranching and farming zone -- about the size of Toronto -- was announced last month. But no date for the move had previously been set.
Hundreds of paramilitary gunmen have already gathered in the zone to provide security for the 10 AUC commanders, who want protection against extradition to the United States, where some are wanted on cocaine trafficking charges.
The United States calls the AUC "terrorist" but strongly supports Uribe and has backed the talks.
Authorities blame the AUC for some of the worst human rights abuses in Colombia over the past decade and say its fighters have killed thousands of people, mainly poor peasants, they suspected of sympathizing with Marxist rebels.
It has its roots in militias set up by cocaine traffickers and cattle ranchers to fight the rebels and has often worked with sectors of the armed forces. The government says any soldier who cooperates with the paramilitaries will be punished.
-------- europe
A Godless continent?
washingtontimes
By Lukaz Rozynski
June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20040614-090437-3134r.htm
Many great empires in the history of the world have fallen because of internal problems. The Roman empire was dismantled by the decadence within its own population. The leaders of Mongolian-conquered territories would go native and weaken their ties with Mongolia, which eventually resulted in the collapse of the empire. They were too strong to be defeated by their external enemies. Insteadtheydefeated themselves.
Decadence in Europe is reaching new heights. The Europeans currently are writing their first constitution, and during the deliberations they came up with a text that does not include God in the heritage of Europe. This move came after strong pressure from, among others, the French delegation. Many countries, mostly the new members of the European Union, opposed it. Unfortunately, it seems like France will have its way. France is experiencing serious problems with its Muslim population, which does not integrate into the society and is causing internal tensions in the country. For this reason, the French are afraid that even mentioningEurope's Christian heritage in the Europeanconstitution might stir unrest. Some light on this cowardly move may be shed by a short description of the European mindset.
The Europeans have experienced two world wars. Many Europeans still have vivid memories of the atrocities, which took place literally in their backyards. World War II was started by Germany. Hitler came to power on the wave of ideologies that preached the superiority of the Germans over other nations. Communism, which also left its mark on Europeans, followed shortly after the war. These events deeply scared the people on the continent. This is why Europeans are weary of any ideology.
Ironically, this gap left by the ideologies long gone was filled by another ideology, which the western Europeans prefer to call "tolerance." This ideology teaches people that anything that may offend others should not be mentioned - even if it is your deepest belief. Consequently, being tolerant means accepting any misdeeds and not mentioning God in any circumstances, as this may offend those who do not believe in him. It is OK to be morally relaxed, but it is not OK to talk about God.
It is precisely this kind of attitude among the Europeans that resulted in the expelling of God from the constitution. People prefer to play it safe and not mention in official documents anything that even resembles ideology. This kind of approach is not wise, as examples of fallen empires show us. If Europe chooses to deny its own moral heritage, the consequences can be profound.
It is also this unfortunate attitude, combined with the demise of the importance of moral values, that brought to power practical politicians whom some prefer to call political scientists. These people make all their decisions based on polls - they are like a flag in the wind. They say whatever the people want to hear but often do not believe in their own words. These politicians have brought their countries a steady rise in taxes and questionable international policies. The European economy is in a slump, and the welfare state is largely to blame. The welfare state, which now is the biggest problem of Europe, was created by politicians to attract votes of tolerant voters who feared to offend those who did not necessarily feel like working hard.
It is time Europe got over its dislike for ideologies and fear of strong beliefs. Only a morally strong Europe can once again revive its economy and take more responsibility on the international stage, instead of constantly blaming the United States for anything that goes wrong in the world. The Europeans need to reinstate their moral beliefs and not fear the terror of tolerance.
This is a call for Europeans to not forget God - for their own sake and the sake of the future generations.
-------- iran
Iran massing troops on Iraq border
(UPI)
June 15, 2004
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040615-055649-4707r.htm
Beirut, Lebanon, Jun. 15 (UPI) -- Iran reportedly is readying troops to move into Iraq if U.S. troops pull out, leaving a security vacuum.
The Saudi daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat, monitored in Beirut, reports Iran has massed four battalions at the border.
Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted "reliable Iraqi sources" as saying, "Iran moved part of its regular military forces towards the Iraqi border in the southern sector at a time its military intelligence agents were operating inside Iraqi territory."
-------- iraq
Violence Engulfing Iraq
The NewStandard.
by Dahr Jamail
June 15, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/jamail/?articleid=2813
Several of us are sitting in the hotel room having lunch, watching the news trying to keep up with the violence daily engulfing Iraq. Let me give you a quick rundown from the last 24 hours.
Late last night fighting continued in Sadr City between the Mehdi Army and occupation forces ... leaving at least five Iraqis dead, three of them civilians.
This morning the Republican Palace, where Bremer is headquartered, was blasted by a rocket.
Shortly after 9 this morning, a huge blast rocked Baghdad when a car bomb detonated near Camp Cuervo, a U.S. Army Camp in the northern part of the capital. The explosion left 12 Iraqis dead, 4 of whom were policemen.
Another car bomb exploded this evening north of Baghdad in an attack on U.S. troops - killing one soldier and wounding 2.
According to the Washington Post, there have been 16 car bombs this month thus far, and today is June 13th.
Assassinations of government officials continue unabated. Last night in Baquba, an attempt on Majeed Almani Mahal, a senior Iraqi Police official, left him wounded in a local hospital.
Also yesterday, the chief of the border police in Iraq, Major General Hussein Mustafa Abdul-Kareem was wounded when assassins attacked his convoy in Baghdad.
The attempts grew more lethal yesterday when the Iraqi deputy foreign minister, Bassam Kubba was shot dead while driving to work.
Today Kamal al-Jarah, an official from the Education Ministry, was assassinated near his home.
While we were watching all of this news, small, black helicopters of special operations forces and private security contractors buzzed like flies over central Baghdad and sirens blared randomly from the blazingly hot streets.
As footage of cars with broken glass and bullet holes in their frames flashed across the screen of the television, my friend's translator, Hamid, an older man who has grown weary of the violence, said softly: "It has begun. These are only the start, and they will not stop. Even after June 30th."
And the news of more assassinations continues to roll in. Last night Iyad Khorshid, a popular Kurdish cleric in Kirkuk, was killed in the city where tensions between the ethnic groups is rising each day.
All of this atop the ongoing killings of the intelligentsia in Baghdad, where over the last year of occupation there have been a monthly average of 10-15 assassination attempts on Iraqi professors, scientists and academics, about 5 of them successful each month.
Yet another example of this occurred today at Baghdad University, where a geography professor, Sabri al-Bayati, was executed in the streets.
Of course, foreign contractors can't be left out of the slaughter. On this front, today we got the news that the brutally butchered body of a Lebanese construction worker was found yesterday near Fallujah. He had previously been kidnapped.
Nor can we forget about the journalists - two Iraqis working for the U.S.-controlled Al-Iraqia TV station were found dead near the border of Syria. Apparently they were killed yesterday.
Lakhdar Brahimi announced his resignation yesterday from his position of the UN envoy to Iraq due to what he described as great difficulties and frustration from his assignment.
Not long ago Brahimi said: "Bremer is the dictator of Iraq. He has the money. He has the signature. Nothing happens without his agreement in this country."
Presenting what was apparently the U.S. idea of a solution, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said of the military plans in Iraq after the "handover" on June 30th; "We will not be pulling out of the cities. We will not be relocating."
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General Casey named to head Iraq command
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jun 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040615185250.cyaprtva.html
President George W. Bush has nominated Army General George Casey to command the US-led multinational force in Iraq, replacing Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the Pentagon said Tuesday.
Casey is currently vice chief of staff of the army. His nomination headed a list of top appointments which also included a new chief of the US Strategic Command responsible for US strategic missile forces.
Bush nominated "Army Gen George W. Casey, Jr for reappointment to the rank of general and assignment as commander, Multi-National Forces-Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq," the notice said.
Officials have insisted the move is part of the normal rotation of commanders in Iraq, that has been under discussion for a long time, and not a response to the scandal over prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.
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US Army launches 445 million dollar campaign to win Baghdadis' hearts, minds
BAGHDAD (AFP)
Jun 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040615193835.xo5aft4v.html
The US Army kicked off a 445-million-dollar campaign to rebuild the city's electricity, sewage and water infrastructure in some of Baghdad's bleakest neighborhoods, Major General Peter Chiarelli said Tuesday.
The funds, to come on line over the next 90 days for 100 projects, are part of a general strategy to win Iraqis over from a lethal insurgency by demonstrating to them their day-to-day life is getting better, Chiarelli said.
"Every Iraqi that we can put to work is probably an Iraqi that we may not have to worry about fighting the coalition," said Chiarelli, who heads the 1st Cavalry Division, charged with Baghdad.
"In every area that we go into to create these projects, we expect a spike in violence," he said.
Yet he said US soldiers would go out day after day and keep projects alive rather than buckle under.
He acknowledged some of the violence against the coalition was the product of disappointment and anger after the fall of Saddam Hussein, particularily in the mean streets of Sadr City, a bastion of fiery cleric Moqtada Sadr's militia.
"We have to look at some of the reasons why they don't particularly care for the coalition. Some of them believe that there's promises that were made that haven't been fulfilled."
The general said the army had modified its mission on the ground as it sought to avoid enflaming anti-American sentiments. For instance, his men now performed 90 percent "cordon-and-knock" operations, rather than raids where they kicked down doors, he said.
Soldiers no longer immediately order men down on the floor or hand cuff them in front of their families during raids, practices common during raids for most of the past year of the US-led occpation.
The 1st Cavalry is working with funds awarded from the 18.4 billion dollar reconstruction package earmarked last October by the US Congress.
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US Army chief: Iraq "cannot be won militarily"
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jun 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040615170719.ut32ct2e.html
The war in Iraq will be won when Iraqis take ownership of their destiny but it cannot be won militarily by the United States, the chief of staff of the US Army said Tuesday.
General Peter Schoomaker said "the power of information" and how the conflict is portrayed and perceived also has a major impact on the outcome.
"This war that we're in cannot be won militarily," he told defense reporters here.
He said US forces are doing better than media coverage would suggest and they are gaining valuable experience in fighting the kind of asymmetrical adversaries that the United States is likely to face in the future.
But he noted that national power consists of the diplomatic, informational, military and economic.
"Military -- the "m" in the dime -- will not win this," he said. "This will be won at the informational level and at the economic level, with the support of the military for security, and diplomatically."
"This is a tug between whether or not nation states, rule of law, civilization are going to succeed over everything that is the reverse of that. It really is a clash of ideas," he said.
"And this notion of how people are informed, what they think, and how it's described is a very powerful piece of this deal," he said.
"So are we winning? Well, we're not going to win it militarily. We are going to win it when Iraqis take ownership," he said.
How they do that "will not be exactly consistent with Jeffersonian democracy," he said.
But he said it offers "an extraordinary opportunity to have a different Middle East."
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THE INSURGENCY
21 Killed in Iraq and Dozens Hurt in Bomb Attacks
June 15, 2004
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/international/middleeast/15iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 14 - A suicide bomber rammed a truck packed with explosives into a convoy of foreign contractors on Monday, killing at least 13 people in a busy Baghdad neighborhood during the morning rush hour. Around the same time, two more bombs went off, one south of the capital, one north, claiming eight more lives, making it one of the deadliest days in Iraq in the past month.
One American, two Britons, a French citizen and a Filipino were killed in the Baghdad bombing, military officials said. Three were General Electric employees working on power plants in Iraq, and two were their security guards. Iraqi officials said dozens of Iraqis were wounded in the attack, in addition to the eight Iraqi civilians who were killed.
Iyad Allawi, Iraq's designated prime minister, called a news conference to express his outrage at the violence. "These people were helping to rebuild our country," he said.
American officials said the bombings were part of a well-organized campaign to derail the June 30 transfer of authority. The officials have repeatedly warned of major terrorist strikes in the days leading up to June 30, and more than 80 people have been killed in the past two weeks in a rash of bombings and assassinations.
Yet even as the violence is peaking in Iraq, American forces are deferring, more and more each day, to Iraqi security services. Much of the political handover has already happened, and American officials say it is now important to allow Iraqi security services to play a bigger role. As a result, a power vacuum seems to be forming.
On Monday, for example, minutes after the Baghdad bombing, a crowd of young men flooded into the streets and rushed toward the wreckage of the convoy.
As more than 50 Iraqi policemen stood by, the mob stomped on the hoods of the crushed vehicles, doused them with kerosene and set them alight, sparking a huge fireball in the middle of a crowded neighborhood. Even as angry men ran past them, slipping through police lines to hurl bricks at a squad of American soldiers, few of the Iraqi policemen intervened.
"What are we to do?" asked an Iraqi police lieutenant, Wisam Deab. "If we try to stop them, they will think we are helping the Americans. Then they will turn on us."
The crowd became increasingly hostile, with one man shaking a severed finger, apparently from one of the people killed by the bombing, at a British reporter.
Arab news crews broadcast the mayhem, reinforcing the image of Iraq as a country skidding toward chaos. In Baghdad, the rumble of explosions has become almost like a morning alarm clock. Many of the bombs go off between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., during morning rush hour, to inflict the maximum number of casualties.
American and Iraqi officials say they are improving security cooperation in the days before June 30, sharing more intelligence and running more joint operations. But at the Baghdad bombing on Monday, there was very little communication between the sides. As clouds of black smoke boiled up from the street and the mob grew more and more unruly, American soldiers waited in their Humvees 50 yards behind Iraqi policemen, with neither group talking much with the other.
"The Americans say we are working together," said one police colonel who asked not to be identified. "But I am confused. Nobody is in control here."
Gary Sheffer, a spokesman for General Electric, said the company had been operating safely in Iraq for the better part of a year and would continue to do business there. "We have no intention of pulling our people out," he said.
There have been at least 12 car bombings since June 1, and usually both American soldiers and Iraqi policemen respond to the attacks. But a certain pattern is emerging. As soon as the American soldiers roll in, with their armored Humvees and swiveling guns, the crowds scatter. When the troops back off, no matter how many Iraqi policemen are there, the mobs return, in greater numbers.
Brig. General Mark Kimmitt, spokesman for the occupation military forces, said the Iraqi authorities were responsible for day-to-day public security in Baghdad.
"The Iraqi Police Service personnel feel that they have the situation under control," he said. "We remain ready to support if asked."
So far, the American military has fielded a security force of more than 215,000 Iraqis. Advisers have even formed an all-Iraqi counterinsurgency force and trained them in guerrilla tactics like ambushing trucks and camouflaging themselves as trees. But many American commanders, usually in private, concede that the Iraqi forces are not up to scratch.
"I think we've been focused more on quantity than quality," said one high-ranking American officer. "There's a realization out there we still have a long way to go."
According to witnesses, the contractors were driving near Tahrir Square in central Baghdad on a street they often use to commute to work when a truck came zooming up, against traffic, and slammed right into them. The explosion blasted one vehicle off the road and into a garden 30 feet away, where it landed next to a palm tree. The explosion also ripped the facade off a nearby hotel and gutted several photography shops and juice stands.
Hussein Atiha was selling watermelon up the street when his stand was nearly knocked over by the bomb. Like many Iraqis, he seemed divided in his thoughts on the occupation, the future and the rising tide of violence. At one moment, as he watched the mob pound and kick the destroyed vehicles, Mr. Atiha shook his head.
"That is wrong," he said. "That is disrespectful."
But the next moment, Mr. Atiha, 21, said of the foreigners: "We have lost more than them. They deserve this."
Witnesses to the other bombings said that four Iraqi civil defense soldiers were killed at 9:45 a.m. on a busy street in Mosul, in northern Iraq, after their patrol hit a roadside bomb. The Associated Press reported that around the same time four people were killed in Salman Pak, southeast of Baghdad, when a suicide bomber drove between police vehicles and detonated explosives. American and Iraqi officials blamed the attacks on terrorists connected to Al Qaeda, but they did not offer any evidence to back their claim.
There was a hint of good news on Monday, though. Around 9 a.m., a convoy of marines drove into the heart of the troubled city of Falluja, held a three-hour meeting with sheiks and then drove out without a shot being fired. Falluja remains one of the tensest places in Iraq, even after the marines agreed last month to pull out of the city and allow an all-Iraqi security force to patrol the streets. Masked insurgents continue to operate openly, though on Monday they were nowhere to be seen.
"Everybody was calm," said Jasim Muhammad Saleh, a former military officer and respected elder in Falluja. "The marines said many good things. The people here were happy to receive them."
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Bush Plans to Transfer Hussein to Iraqis, but No Timetable Yet
June 15, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/international/middleeast/15CND-PREX.html
WASHINGTON, June 15 - President Bush said today that his administration was making plans to transfer custody of Saddam Hussein to the new Iraqi interim government. But he refused to be pinned down on exactly when the transfer would take place.
"We're working with the Iraqi government on a couple of issues," Mr. Bush said at a news conference in the Rose Garden. One issue is the "appropriate time" for transferring custody of the former Baghdad dictator, he said.
"And secondly, we're working to make sure there's appropriate security," Mr. Bush went on. "I mean, one thing, obviously, is that we don't want, and I know the Iraqi government doesn't want, is there to be lax security and for Saddam Hussein to somehow not stand trial for the horrendous murders and torture that he inflicted upon the Iraqi people. So we're working with them."
The president seemed, by steering clear of a specific timetable, to distance himself from remarks earlier today by the interim Iraqi prime minister, Iyad Allawi, who said that Mr. Hussein and other detainees would be transferred to the custody of the Iraqi authorities in the next two weeks, and that Mr. Hussein would stand trial "as soon as possible."
Bombings and other violence continue in Iraq as the June 30 date for the return of some sovereign powers to Iraqis draws near. Mr. Bush has insisted that the date for returning some powers to Iraqis is ironclad. But he indicated today that a time for turning Mr. Hussein over to the Iraqis was not.
"We want to make sure that he is secure," Mr. Bush said, with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan standing by his side. "He's a killer. He is a thug. He needs to be brought to trial. We want to make sure that the transfer to a sovereign government is done in a timely way and in a secure way. That's what we're discussing with the government."
Senator Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, the minority leader, said today that it was vital that there be adequate security when the Iraqis take custody of Mr. Hussein, who has been held by the United States at an undisclosed location since his capture in December.
Mr. Daschle did not seem optimistic when asked whether he thought the Iraqis would be ready to assume sovereignty by June 30. "Well, I think that only time will tell," he said at a question-and-answer session at the Capitol. "We have to do all we can to see that they have that ability. And I don't think that anyone can say with any certainty just how this will all play out."
At the White House, Mr. Bush used the impending Iraqi sovereignty to deflect a question about Moktada al-Sadr, the militant Shiite cleric who has been disdained by President Bush and whose fighters have been resisting the American-led occupation for 10 weeks. In the past few days, Mr. Sadr has given conditional approval to the new interim government and has given signals that he wants to become involved in the mainstream political process.
But when Mr. Bush was asked today whether he thought the new government should welcome Mr. Sadr into the political process, he said, in effect, that that was the business of the Iraqis. "When we say we transfer full sovereignty, we mean we transfer full sovereignty," Mr. Bush said. "And they will deal with him appropriately."
Mr. Bush and Mr. Karzai praised each other, and each other's countries, for deposing the Taliban government and building a new, democratic Afghanistan. Mr. Bush said the United States was undertaking several new projects to help the Afghans, including a training program for new public officials and the production of several million textbooks for schoolchildren.
Mr. Bush also seized the opportunity to once again cite the military campaign in Iraq, and the effort to impose a peace there, as part of the worldwide war on terrorism.
Nor did Mr. Bush shy away from a statement on Monday night by Vice President Dick Cheney that there were "long-established ties" between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists. To the contrary, Mr. Bush embraced the vice president's remarks.
Asked what he considered the "best evidence" of such a link, Mr. Bush shot back, "Zarqawi."
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant believed by the Central Intelligence Agency to have ties to Al Qaeda, has been named by the C.I.A. as the suspect in the recent videotaped beheading of a kidnapped American contractor.
"Zarqawi's the best evidence of a connection to Al Qaeda affiliates and Al Qaeda," Mr. Bush went on. "He's the person who's still killing."
In recent months, Mr. Bush has repeatedly described the campaign in Iraq as one front in a war against terrorism that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Surveys have shown that many Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks, although that has never been established. But Mr. Bush's critics have accused him of disingenuously implying a link between Mr. Hussein and 9/11, or at least of not discouraging the misperception.
Mr. Bush said today, as he has repeatedly, that "the world is better off" with Mr. Hussein deposed and in custody.
"I look forward to the debates where people are saying, `Oh, gosh, the world would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power,"' Mr. Bush said.
As for Osama bin Laden and his deputy Mullah Omar, President Karzai said in response to a question that Afghanistan would consult "the international community" on how to try them, if and when they were captured.
"They are wanted by the international community," Mr. Karzai said. "They are wanted by the world conscience."
-------- israel / palestine
A Nightmare Come True
Antiwar.com
by Uri Avnery
June 15, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/avnery.php?articleid=2814
I thought it was terrible. I was wrong. It is far, far worse! These words sum up my feelings at that moment.
I was standing on a hill overlooking the infamous Kalandia checkpoint.
Below me was a narrow road, packed with Palestinians in the blazing sun, 30 degrees centigrade (86 F) in the shade (but there was no shade) trudging toward the checkpoint. Very soon this road will be transformed. It will be widened to three lanes and be reserved for Israelis: on both sides of it, 8-meter (25-ft.) high walls will spring up. It will allow the settlers of the Jordan valley to reach Tel-Aviv in about an hour. The Palestinians living on either side will be cut off from each other.
This is a small part of the new reality that is rapidly being created on the West Bank and that is changing the country we knew and loved beyond recognition.
I was standing near the edge of a-Ram. Once this was a small village on the outskirts of Jerusalem , on the road north to Ramallah. Since successive Israeli governments have prevented the Palestinians in East Jerusalem from building new homes, the severe overcrowding has forced a mass exodus to a-Ram, which has grown into a town of 60,000 inhabitants. Most of them are officially still Jerusalem residents, carrying the blue identity cards of inhabitants of Israel. This allows them to come to Jerusalem, a drive of 10 minutes, work there, tend to their businesses, go to the hospitals and the universities there.
This is about to stop. Along the age-old road from Jerusalem to Ramallah (leading on to Nablus, Damascus and beyond) construction of the 8-meter wall is due to start any minute now - not across the road, but along the middle of the road, the full length of it. The inhabitants of a-Ram, east of the wall, will not only be completely cut off from Jerusalem, but also from all the townships and villages to their west - their relatives, the schools which thousands of their children attend, their cemetery and their places of work. A small part of a-Ram remains outside the wall and will be cut off from the main part of the town in which they live.
But this is only part of the story. Because the wall (or in some places a barrier, consisting of a fence, trenches and roads) will completely surround a-Ram from all sides. The sole exit from this walled-in area will be a narrow bridge connecting it with the adjacent area to its east, consisting of several Palestinian villages, which will be surrounded by another barrier. This enclave will have a narrow exit to the Ramallah enclave. Through this it will be possible for a person from a-Ram to reach Ramallah, God willing, by a roundabout route of some 30 kilometers (19 mi.), instead of the ten minutes or so it took before the occupation.
A few kilometers to the west of a-Ram lies a group of villages centered around Bidou (where five Palestinians have been killed so far in protests against the wall). This area is rapidly becoming another enclave, completely surrounded by a separate barrier. The only way out will be a tunnel to be built under road No. 443 - the settlers' road of which the section I mentioned before will become part. All existing roads to Bidou have long since been cut off by trenches or piles of dirt, one can enter only at one spot controlled by a checkpoint. This will cease to exist.
If a villager from Bidou has some business in a-Ram, he will have to go through the tunnel to Ramallah, turn to the enclave east of a-Ram and enter a-Ram by the narrow bridge, a semicircle of about 40 kilometers (25 mi.) instead of a drive of a few minutes.
A-Ram will be especially hard hit. Because of its location, it has developed in the last few years into a kind of transshipment point for goods traveling from Israel to the West Bank and vice versa. Israelis and Palestinians do business there. All this will end with the wall. The means of livelihood for many of its 60,000 inhabitants will disappear.
This is only one example of what is happening now all over the West Bank, turning it into a crazy quilt of walled-in enclaves, "connected" by bridges, tunnels or special roads, which can be cut off at any moment at the whim of the Israeli government or of a local army officer - and, all around them, roads-for-Israelis-only, expanding settlements and military installations. Every Palestinian town - Jenin, Nablus, Tulkarm, Kalkilia, Bethlehem, Hebron and others - will become the "capital" of a tiny enclave, cut off from all the others, from their "hinterland" and villages, except by tortuous roundabout routes. Fifty-five percent of the West Bank will be Israeli, the Palestinian enclaves will amount to 45% (about 10% of historical Palestine).
This is no longer just a nightmarish future prospect - it is happening now, visible to the naked eye, while Sharon babbles about a "disengagement" to happen sometime in the future in one small part of the occupied territories.
Practically no Israeli has any idea about all this. It may be happening one kilometer from his home (in Jerusalem, for example), but it might as well be on the far side of the moon. The media are not interested, nor is the world.
This is the peace Sharon has been dreaming about. This is the "Palestinian State" George Bush promised. This is a cornerstone of the new democratic Middle East.
It will lead, of course, to bloodshed on an unbelievable scale. No people on earth will submit to such a life. For thousands and thousands of young Palestinians, a martyr's death will be preferable.
And sometime in the future, this awful structure will be torn down, like the Berlin wall, which, evil as it was, was much less inhuman. As always, after much suffering, the human spirit will prevail.
-----
Israel confiscates Palestinian land to build settlement barrier
JERUSALEM (AP)
6/15/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-14-mideast_x.htm
Israel has expropriated thousands of acres of Palestinian farmland deep in the West Bank for the most controversial segment of its separation barrier, Palestinian officials said Monday.
The military, meanwhile, said it is taking down a few of the roadblocks that have disrupted West Bank life for more than three years - though the main obstacles to Palestinian travel remain in place.
In violence Monday, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile into a car in the West Bank refugee camp of Balata, killing two Palestinians, including Khalil Marshoud, a local leader of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, a violent group loosely linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction. (Related story: Israeli missile kills militant leader)
Israel began building the barrier last year, to keep out Palestinian militants who have killed hundreds of Israelis since the outbreak of fighting in 2000. In some areas, the trenches, walls and fences run near Israel's old frontier with the West Bank, but elsewhere dip deep into the territory claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
The latest land seizures are part of construction of a barrier segment near the Israeli settlement of Ariel, in the heart of the West Bank.
Palestinians charge that the barrier project is meant to swallow up large parts of the West Bank, pointing to the Ariel sector as a prime example.
If Israel builds the barrier to include Ariel on the "Israeli" side, it would mean cutting a wedge halfway through the northern part of the territory, because Ariel is in the middle.
With 18,000 residents, Ariel is the second-largest West Bank settlement. Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, has 26,000.
The United States is opposed to adding Ariel to Israel by means of the barrier, and Israel has so far avoided making a clear decision.
Asaf Shariv, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman, said that for now only an east-west section of the barrier is being built, leaving the option of encircling Ariel separately - a concept the Americans apparently do not oppose.
A U.S. official said there are ongoing consultations about the Ariel issue.
The Ariel barrier project is already causing hardships for Palestinians.
Residents of the nearby Palestinian village of Azawiya were informed that 4,500 acres of land are being expropriated for a 2-mile stretch of barrier, said Annan Elashkar, a Palestinian liaison officer with Israel.
Azawiya resident Khader Abdel Raouf, 65, said he had his 32 acres of olive groves seized.
Abdel Raouf said his family of 15 lives off the olive oil produced by the trees. "I have been planting and harvesting these olives since I was a small boy," Abdel Raouf said in tears. "This land belongs to me and I belong to it."
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said building a barrier around Ariel would "mean the destruction and devastation of the road map," an internationally backed peace plan for a Palestinian state next year, because of the confiscation of Palestinian land.
For months, Palestinians and their supporters have been demonstrating at many construction sites along the length of the barrier, making similar complaints. Thousands of acres of land have been confiscated for the barrier.
Despite the tension, the military began easing restrictions in the West Bank by starting to remove about 40 ramparts and gates that blocked West Bank roads, a defense official said on condition of anonymity.
The official said obstacles can be lifted in areas where the barrier has been completed. The military released a statement saying the easing is in keeping with its policy to "to make a clear distinction between the terrorists who hide among civilians and those not involved in terror."
Shortly after violence erupted in September 2000, Israeli forces erected dozens of roadblocks in the West Bank, choking travel.
Israel said the restrictions were necessary to stop Palestinian attacks, but Palestinians charged they were part of a plan to ruin their economy and force them to surrender.
In the Israeli parliament, meanwhile, Sharon's government survived three motions of no confidence when the opposition Labor Party abstained.
Sharon lost his parliamentary majority while ramming a plan to pull out of Gaza through his Cabinet. Labor has pledged to give him a "safety net" in parliament votes as a gesture of support for the Gaza plan.
Also Monday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath said Arafat is considering bringing militant groups into the Palestinian Authority's security forces as part of a reform program.
Arafat has offered members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades to join the official forces, while the Islamic militant group Hamas has "asked for a role within the security institutions," Shaath said.
However, a leader of the militant Islamic Jihad on Monday criticized efforts to reform the Palestinian security forces, indicating it would not cooperate.
--------
Israel Weighs Major W. Bank Construction
By MARK LAVIE
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43445-2004Jun15?language=printer
JERUSALEM - Israel is considering building thousands more homes in West Bank settlements, in line with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to keep large chunks of the territory but give up the Gaza Strip, security officials said Tuesday.
In a possible boost for Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan, Israel's attorney general dropped a corruption case against Sharon, ending months of uncertainty over the prime minister's political future.
Attorney General Meni Mazuz told reporters he is not indicting Sharon on bribe-taking charges because the evidence "does not bring us anywhere close to a reasonable chance of conviction."
The decision clears the way for Sharon to court the opposition Labor Party, which supports a Gaza pullback and has said it would only consider joining the government if the prime minister is cleared of corruption allegations.
Sharon needs Labor to restore his parliamentary majority. Several coalition hardliners defected or were dismissed over the Gaza plan, leaving him with a minority government.
In the meantime, Labor has prevented Sharon's government from being toppled, by abstaining from no confidence votes in parliament.
However, Labor leader Shimon Peres warned that his party should not be taken for granted. "We're not in anyone's pocket," Peres told Israel Army Radio.
Media reports said a decision to join the coalition could split Labor and only about 15 of the party's 19 legislators would follow Peres into the government.
Sharon's plan of "unilateral disengagement" calls for a withdrawal from all of Gaza and four West Bank settlements by September 2005. Sharon has said that in exchange, he wants to keep and expand several large settlement blocs in the West Bank - a demand that has won tacit support from President Bush.
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz has asked the military to draw up plans within three months for building thousands of homes in three of the settlement blocs - Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim and Ariel, the Israeli daily Maariv reported Tuesday.
Mofaz met Monday with settler leaders in Gush Etzion, and security officials said he told them he would consider their request to authorize between 1,000 and 2,000 new homes in the area. Mofaz told settlers he would make a decision within three months, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
Shaul Goldstein, the deputy head of the Yesha Council, the settlers' umbrella group, confirmed that he spoke to Mofaz about new building in settlements, but said no specific numbers were discussed.
Maariv reported that new construction is also being considered in Maale Adumim and Ariel, the West Bank's two largest settlements.
The Defense Ministry would say only that Mofaz told settlers he would consider their request to help with some of their problems.
Peres denounced the plans for building up settlements in the West Bank while talking about evacuating Gaza.
Eventually "they will do in the West Bank what they are doing in Gaza, they will accept our position" that settlements must be evacuated, Peres said. "If they build more, annex more, they will waste more money," Peres told a party meeting in Tel Aviv.
Sharon has said he plans to expand settlement blocs Israel intends to keep under a future peace deal.
The Palestinians want all of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War, for their future state. They have been deeply suspicious of the Gaza plan because of the implied tradeoff - Israel giving up Gaza while strengthening its hold on parts of the West Bank.
Israel also hopes withdrawing from Gaza will improve its security.
It was not clear whether Gaza settlers would be moved to the West Bank. Sharon has considered such an option, but it was vetoed by the Bush administration.
"We call on the American administration for direct and immediate intervention to revoke and stop all these plans," Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said.
In violence Tuesday, a Palestinian vehicle apparently rigged with explosives blew up in the Gaza Strip after Israeli soldiers fired on it. No one was hurt, the army and Palestinian witnesses said. Two Palestinian militant groups, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, claimed responsibility for the explosion, saying they detonated the vehicle by remote control.
Two Palestinian militants were killed Monday evening in an Israeli airstrike in the Balata refugee camp, on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Nablus.
The targeted attack killed Khalil Marshoud, local leader of the Al Aqsa militia, a violent offshoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The military said Marshoud was behind a number of attacks against Israelis.
Another Palestinian militant was killed and a third person was seriously wounded, witnesses said.
Israel killed two other Al Aqsa leaders in a missile attack in Nablus on May 2.
Soldiers also shot and killed an 18-year-old Palestinian while firing at stone throwers Tuesday in Balata, witnesses said. The military said soldiers fired at a man armed with an assault rifle.
In Bethlehem, the army demolished the family home of a fugitive activist of the Islamic Jihad movement, the military and the man's relatives said.
Mazuz informed Sharon of the decision to drop the corruption case by phone.
At the center of the corruption case were suspicions that Israeli businessman David Appel paid Sharon's son Gilad hundreds of thousands of dollars to help push through a lucrative real estate deal in Greece, at a time when Sharon was foreign minister in 1999. In the end, the project did not go through.
Appel has been indicted for allegedly paying bribes but under Israeli law, prosecutors must prove that the recipient of a bribe was aware of the improper payments. Sharon denied wrongdoing.
Even with the end of the investigation, Sharon's legal problems may not be over. Israeli prosecutors are also probing Sharon and his sons for allegedly receiving an illegal $1.5 million loan from a South African businessman. Sharon has denied any wrongdoing in the case.
The leftist opposition party Yahad said it plans to appeal Mazuz' decision to the Supreme Court.
--------
Israelis to Extend Barrier Deeper Into West Bank
June 15, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/international/middleeast/15mide.html
JERUSALEM, June 14 - Israel is preparing to build new segments of its separation barrier around Jewish settlements that would mark the deepest penetration yet into the West Bank, a move that drew sharp criticism from Palestinians on Monday.
President Bush has called the fence's route a "problem," and American officials have raised objections in continuing talks with the Israelis. But Israel has insisted that Washington has not opposed the first phase of construction around Ariel and nearby settlements that are more than 10 miles inside the West Bank.
The Israeli plan, approved by the government last fall, calls for building a barrier around three sides of Ariel, which is about 20 miles north of Jerusalem and is one of the largest Jewish settlements, with close to 20,000 residents. This same building pattern would be carried out around several other settlements in the same area.
After this work is completed, Israel would consult with the United States about joining these sections together and linking them with the main barrier, which runs closer to the West Bank boundary, said Asaf Shariv, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"This is exactly what we agreed to with the Americans," he said.
The American Embassy saw the situation somewhat differently.
"We accept Israel's right to build a fence for security, but when the route goes deep into the West Bank, it has political dimensions, and we have concerns about that," said Paul Patin, an embassy spokesman. He declined to comment specifically on the Israeli plan to build around Ariel.
The Bush administration has said that it does not object to the barrier in principle, but believes that it should be on, or very close to, the borders Israel had before the 1967 war in which Israel captured the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli plan to include Ariel inside the barrier is one of the most controversial aspects of the entire project because it would be the most far-reaching intrusion into the West Bank.
"If the Israelis build the wall around Ariel, what is left to negotiate?" said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator. "I think Sharon is doing this now because he realizes President Bush is in the middle of a tough election campaign."
Israel has built about a quarter of the planned barrier, which would eventually put about 15 percent of the West Bank on the western or Israeli side, according to United Nations calculations.
Israel says that the barrier is strictly a security measure, intended to prevent Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks, and that it could be moved or torn down at a later date. Palestinians denounce it as a land confiscation that would greatly disrupt the lives of many Palestinians and complicate efforts to establish a Palestinian state.
The Israeli Defense Ministry, which is in charge of constructing the barrier, has not broken ground in the area around Ariel. But the ministry has informed Palestinian residents in the area that it will be appropriating Palestinian-owned land, according to the newspaper Haaretz. Ron Nachman, the mayor of Ariel, confirmed that the project was moving forward.
The initial phase of the building is to be completed by May 2005, Netzah Mashiah, a Defense Ministry official, told Haaretz. Construction on the parts that would connect the fence to the main West Bank barrier is tentatively planned to begin next year, he told the newspaper.
Palestinians and Israelis opposed to the barrier have filed many lawsuits in the past year that have slowed or suspended work in several areas, particularly around Jerusalem.
Any construction near Ariel is likely to be met with legal challenges, said Marc Luria, spokesman for the Security Fence for Israel, a group that supports the swift construction of the barrier, regardless of the route. Mr. Luria predicted that a new round of lawsuits would delay building in the area for at least six months.
Mr. Sharon's government has approved in principle a plan to evacuate all 7,500 Jewish settlers in Gaza by the end of next year as part of a plan to unilaterally separate from the Palestinians.
However, Mr. Sharon says he is also working to consolidate Israel's hold over the much larger settlements in the West Bank, where the Jewish population totals some 230,000.
The barrier's planned route would put most of the West Bank settlers on the Israeli side of the fence. In most areas, the barrier consists of an electronic fence accompanied by razor wire, trenches and guard towers. Some sections include concrete walls more than 20 feet high.
In another development on Monday, the Israeli military said it had removed 42 of 150 roadblocks and other obstacles in the West Bank. The move would ease Palestinian movements, though Israel still has checkpoints throughout the West Bank.
The Israeli Air Force killed two militants, including a local leader of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Khalil Marshoud, on Monday night in a missile strike on their car in the West Bank city of Nablus, Reuters reported. The Israeli military said the Aksa leader had been involved in numerous attacks against Israeli targets.
Israel also said it had arrested an Arab courier, Husam Nabolsi, 38, who was reportedly planning to plant a bomb either in the prime minister's office or a Jerusalem synagogue.
A statement issued by Mr. Sharon's office said Mr. Nabolsi, a resident of East Jerusalem, worked for an Israeli company and had permission to make deliveries to government buildings, including the prime minister's office.
Mr. Nabolsi was arrested May 16, and under questioning said he was planning to plant a bomb that could be detonated by a cellphone, the statement said. His information helped Israeli authorities track down a bomb hidden in Bir Naballah, an Arab village north of Jerusalem, the statement added.
-------- latin america
Bolivians Burn Alive Mayor Accused of Corruption
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 6:54 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44286-2004Jun15.html
LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivian Indians on Tuesday burned to death a mayor they accused of corruption and dragged his body through the streets in an attack heightening tensions in a nation beset by anti-government protests.
Government officials said residents kidnapped Benjamin Altamirano in La Paz on Monday night and drove him overnight to his home in Ayo Ayo, a town of about 7,000 people 56 miles from the capital.
Officials said he was then burned to death inside his house, with his body later dragged through the streets and dumped in the town square. Witnesses said he was tied up, set aflame in the town square and hung upside down from a lamppost.
Provincial Gov. Nicolas Quenta said: "We will not allow a criminal act such as this. The guilty will be punished according to the law."
Bolivia is engulfed in its biggest anti-government protests since a bloody Indian uprising last year ousted an elected president. Indian leaders say President Carlos Mesa has failed to live up to promises to help the poor, indigenous majority.
Street protests have turned increasingly violent this month. A soldier and a protesting farmer were shot to death in a jungle ambush after the army broke up a road blockade by farmers.
But demonstrations have so far been smaller and less widespread than the nationwide uprising last October that killed dozens and forced the resignation of Mesa's predecessor, President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada.
Indigenous groups have opposed government plans to export natural gas and cut spending, reflecting a growing perception across Andean nations that a decade of free-market reforms has done little to help millions of peasants.
In neighboring Peru, which shares a common Indian heritage with Bolivia, a mayor was also lynched by Indians this year and thousands of farmers and workers have marched to demand better work conditions and to protest against President Alejandro Toledo.
-------- mideast
Qaeda Escalates Battle in Saudi with U.S. Death Threat
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 8:34 PM
By Ghaida Ghantous
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44519-2004Jun15?language=printer
RIYADH (Reuters) - Al Qaeda guerrillas showed images of a blindfolded American hostage and said they would kill him if the Saudi government failed to free jailed militants within 72 hours.
"My name is Paul Marshal Johnson and I am a citizen of the United States," a slurred voice with an American accent said in a recording on an Islamist Web site on Tuesday. "I work for Apache helicopters."
The threat to kill Johnson, which follows a spate of suicide bombings and shootings in the past six weeks, raised the stakes in al Qaeda's war to topple the kingdom's pro-U.S. monarchy and drive out Westerners from the world's largest oil exporter.
"If the tyrants in the Saudi government want to secure the release of the American hostage, they must release our mujahideen held hostage in its jails. They have 72 hours from today or else we will sacrifice him," said an al Qaeda statement carried on Sawt al Jihad Web site.
The statement, dated Tuesday, was signed by the Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula. Sawt al Jihad has carried similar messages in the past.
On Saturday, al Qaeda said it was holding Johnson, a U.S. engineer and the first Westerner to be kidnapped in a wave of militant attacks in the kingdom that began more than a year ago. It also claimed responsibility for killing American Kenneth Scroggs, who was shot dead as he parked his car at his villa.
Saudi government foreign affairs adviser Adel al-Jubeir told CNN that his government was looking into the situation and consulting the United States on what actions to take.
"And then we will make decisions on what the next steps are but our history has been one of not negotiating with terrorists," he said.
De facto Saudi ruler Crown Prince Abdullah said on Wednesday the kingdom would strike against al Qaeda soon.
"We have forces and until now they have not appeared but you will see them in the coming days," he said in remarks on Saudi media. "We can only be patient for so long and from now on you will see things that will reassure you."
Concerns about security in Saudi Arabia had helped push world oil prices to record highs recently before oil producers said they would increase output.
A State Department official said Washington will use every appropriate resource to gain Johnson's safe release in cooperation with the Saudi government.
"Saudi Arabian authorities can count on the United States to give them an assistance they request or need ... The U.S. government makes no concessions to individuals or groups holding our citizens," the State Department official said.
The leader of al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, promised in earlier statements that 2004 would be "bloody and miserable" for the kingdom.
DEADLY CAMPAIGN
The U.S. embassy in Riyadh declined to comment on the latest Internet statement and images of Johnson, blindfolded and wearing an orange uniform, sitting in a chair.
Al Qaeda justified kidnapping Johnson, saying "the gunfire of Apache helicopters was killing Muslims in Afghanistan and Palestine."
"The blood of Muslims is being spilled all over the globe and by the will of God, the blood of this parasite will flow in the rivers of blood of Crusaders that will run this blessed year," the statement said.
"Muslims in the East and the West, we took a vow upon our selves to make you victorious and we will not fail. God has unleashed the mujahideen upon the Crusaders, and they love death as much as you (Westerners) love life," it added.
Saudi Arabia has so far remained silent on how it plans to protect Westerners and thwart further attacks.
Interior Minister Prince Nayef said on Wednesday security forces were capable and "these youths (militants) have been brainwashed and are tools in the hands of the enemies of Islam and the kingdom."
Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, has arrested and killed scores of militants in a crackdown on al Qaeda. Riyadh says the militants are now going after soft targets but analysts said the attacks appeared to be part of an organized campaign.
Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's group, blamed for the September 11, 2001, attacks on U.S. cities, has vowed to destabilize Saudi Arabia and drive Westerners out of the "holy land."
In one of its biggest attacks, 22 civilians were killed when militants went on a May 29 shooting spree and took dozens of foreign hostages in the oil city of Khobar.
--------
Islamic Group Shows Tape of U.S. Hostage
By JASPER MORTIMER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 11:04 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A44915-2004Jun15?language=printer
CAIRO, Egypt - An Islamic Web site showed videotape Tuesday of a blindfolded American hostage in Saudi Arabia and of abductors threatening to kill him unless Saudi authorities free al-Qaida prisoners within three days.
Paul Johnson, 49, of Stafford Township, N.J., was abducted Saturday by a group calling itself al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. The organization is believed to be headed by al-Qaida's chief in the Saudi kingdom, Abdullah-aziz al-Moqrin, who is identified as speaking on the tape.
"My name is Paul Marshall Johnson, Jr.," the hostage says in the tape, seated and with an elaborate tattoo showing on his left shoulder. "I am an American. ... I work on Apache helicopters."
A U.S. official said the threat should be taken "very seriously" because the posting appeared to be credible and militants have used the site before. "It has been a good indicator in the past," the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
The Web site was posted on the same day Saudi Arabia's ruling crown prince warned Islamic militants that the kingdom planned to deploy more security forces than they had ever faced before.
"Be assured that the kingdom has enough men whom you haven't seen so far, but within the coming few days you will see them," Crown Prince Abdullah told the militants, whose attacks have increased during the past three months. His remarks were televised.
The tape on the Web site,http://www.hostinganime.com/sout18/ , showed a hooded man reading a statement and holding an AK-47 rifle. As the man was reading, a subtitle on the screen identified him as al-Moqrin.
His statement was similar to a printed message on the Web site that carried the name of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula. It said the group gave Saudi authorities 72 hours - by Friday - to release "mujahadeen" militants or it would kill the hostage.
Segments of the tape appeared to have been edited together and showed a blindfolded Johnson sitting in a chair with his profile to the camera. In one sequence, Johnson appeared to have a bandage around his neck, or a gag that had been pulled down from his mouth.
The tape also displayed his Lockheed Martin identification card.
Adel al-Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to the Saudi government, told The Associated Press that the kingdom was trying to determine the authenticity of the tape and would consult with the Bush administration about what to do next.
Al-Jubeir also said the current situation with the Islamic militants was not a crisis but a serious issue that the Saudi kingdom will be dealing with for some time.
"Their strategy is to try to sow fear in people's hearts, and to panic, and to cause an exodus of foreign workers from Saudi Arabia, in particular Westerners," he said.
"They are trying to scare foreign workers into leaving Saudi Arabia because they believe it will weaken the Saudi economy and consequently weaken the Saudi government, but they are mistaken."
The statement on the Web site says the holy warriors of the Arabian peninsula's Fallujah Brigade has "hit" the engineering team that "oversees the development of the American Apache helicopter that attacks Muslims in Palestine and Afghanistan."
It says: "The Fallujah Brigade has killed the director of this team and kidnapped one of its engineers, Paul Johnson, and if the tyrannical Saudi government wants their American master to be released, then they have to release our holy warriors that are held in Ha'ir, Ruweis and Alisha prisons within 72 hours of this statement's date or else we will sacrifice his blood to God in revenge for our Muslim brothers who have been liberally killed everywhere."
The statement is dated June 15.
The day Johnson was seized, Islamic militants shot dead Kenneth Scroggs, from Laconia, N.H., in his garage. Scroggs was the third Westerner killed in a week, after the shooting death of an Irish cameraman for the British Broadcasting Corp. on June 6 and another American who was also killed in his garage June 8.
Saudi security forces arrested a militant north of Riyadh on Tuesday as they stepped up presence in and around the city in a hunt for Johnson's kidnappers.
The Web site statement addressed Muslims all over the world, saying: "We have made a promise to ourselves to defend you. We will not let you down, and you should know that the treacherous tyrants who have helped the Americans against you, and shared your blood with them, do not represent the Muslims of Saudi Arabia. They are our enemies as much as they are your enemies. They are the enemies of God and his prophet."
The militants previously threatened to treat Johnson as U.S. troops treated Iraqi detainees, a reference to the month-old controversy over sexual and other abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
Members of Johnson's family, through a police officer stationed outside their home in Little Egg Harbor Township, N.J., declined an offer by CNN to view the video before it was aired. They could not immediately be reached for comment.
On Monday, Johnson's son spoke to reporters about his father's love of Arabic culture. Paul Johnson III said his father once sent a copy of the Quran to his sister, with passages highlighted from the Islamic holy text that he felt were especially important.
"He felt he never had any fear for his safety and respects and honors their traditions and cultures," Johnson III said. "Dad said many times he loved living in Saudi Arabia."
Westerners in Saudi Arabia are responding to the attacks by moving to high-security compounds or even to neighboring Bahrain, and by pushing for the right to armed private guards, according to diplomats and real estate agents.
Western embassies in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, are negotiating with the government for a relaxation of the ban on private security guards carrying firearms, a Western diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
-------- prisoners of war
Iraq Prison Abuse Copied Guantanamo, Karpinski Says
June 15, 2004
(Bloomberg)
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aJ2s2I5LZ690&refer=top_world_news
The abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail came about with the introduction of methods used at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba that treated detainees ``like dogs,'' Brigadier General Janis Karpinski said in an interview with the BBC.
The 51-year-old commander was in charge of the military police that ran the Baghdad prison when the abuse scandal erupted in April with the publication of photographs showing Iraqi detainees stripped naked being humiliated and maltreated.
Karpinski told the British Broadcasting Corp. she knew nothing of the abuse because military intelligence took over part of the Iraqi prison to make the interrogations more like ``Gitmo,'' the nickname for Guantanamo. She cited some comments about how to treat prisoners that she said the current Iraqi prison chief Major General Geoffrey Miller, formerly in charge of Guantanamo, told her.
``He said they are like dogs and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog, then you've lost control of them,'' Karpinski said in the BBC interview.
Karpinski has been suspended from duty but not charged in the prison abuse scandal. She has been giving media interviews claiming she is being made a scapegoat.
So far, one soldier has been sentenced and six others are awaiting courts martial.
A U.S. general investigating the abuse has put the blame on the soldiers and so far has found no evidence of a policy or a direct order given to the soldiers to treat the Iraqi prisoners as they did, the BBC reported on its Web site.
The U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been used as a detention camp for suspected terrorists seized after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington and the overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The U.S. top commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, is being reassigned as part of a normal rotation and it has nothing to do with the prison abuse case or allegations that he may have been aware of the mistreatment, the Pentagon said last month.
----
Saddam was tortured, says lawyer
June 15 2004
IOL: South Africa
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&art_id=qw1087302781554B262&click_id=2813&set_id=1
Amman - Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has been subjected to "physical and moral torture" by the occupying forces, his lawyer alleged on Tuesday.
"We have received a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Crescent (ICRC) that the former Iraqi president was subjected to physical and moral torture on January 21, 2004 and that he suffered wounds as a result," Mohammad Rashdan told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.
He revealed that the ICRC's move to press for Saddam's release or trial after the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30 came after an "acrimonious meeting the defence panel held with head of the ICRC office in Amman on June 9".
"We told him that the ICRC is under obligation to do something in accordance with international law," Rashdan said.
'The former Iraqi president was subjected to physical and moral torture' The ICRC said that its personnel had so far visited Saddam twice at his detention site in Baghdad, and got two messages from him addressed to his family.
"His family has received one letter made up of 17 words after the American occupation troops omitted three quarters of it," Rashdan said.
"The ICRC reportedly got a second letter from him, but the US troops have continued to withhold it," he added.
Rashdan leads a defence panel for the ousted Iraqi president, comprising dozens of renowned Arab and non-Arab lawyers.
He said that about 1 500 Arab lawyers, including 700 hundred from Jordan, had so far volunteered to defend the former Iraqi leader.
--------
U.S. military makes changes in jails
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Stephen Graham
June 15, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040614-095046-9809r.htm
KABUL, Afghanistan - The U.S. military is changing procedures at its jails in Afghanistan after a review prompted by accusations of prisoner abuse, the military said yesterday.
It declined to give details of the changes.
The military is acting on the interim findings of an American general who visited American jails across the country, without waiting for his final report, spokesman Lt. Col. Tucker Mansager said.
"We're taking action on those [findings] as they come forward, evaluating them, implementing some of them, deferring some of them and planning some of the rest of them out," Col. Mansager said at a press conference in Kabul.
He declined to describe the report's suggestions or the changes made.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, ordered the review last month as the scandal over detainee abuse in Iraq drew new attention to possible mistreatment in Afghanistan, including three deaths in custody.
Brig. Gen. Charles Jacoby, Gen. Barno's deputy operational chief, visited all of nearly 20 American holding facilities, most at bases in the south and east where about 20,000 U.S.-led troops are battling Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents.
Gen. Jacoby will give his final report to Gen. Barno soon, and some of the findings will be made public by early July "after a review process," Col. Mansager said.
Two detainees died at the U.S. military's main Bagram base, north of Kabul, in December 2002. Both were ruled homicides after autopsies found the men had died from "blunt-force injuries."
The military says it has made a number of unspecified changes to its prisons as a result of the deaths. But it has yet to release results of its investigations.
The death of another detainee in eastern Afghanistan in June 2003 also is under investigation by the CIA, and the military is probing accusations of mistreatment brought by two former detainees last month - including beatings, the use of hoods and sexual abuse.
One, an Afghan police colonel told the Associated Press that he was beaten, stripped naked and sexually abused and humiliated while in U.S. custody for nearly 40 days last year at three American bases.
The accusations are similar to those made against several U.S. soldiers involving acts of torture and sexual humiliation in Iraq.
--------
For Freed Iraqis, Mixed Emotions
Many Leaving Abu Ghraib Cite Improvements Since Scandal
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41842-2004Jun14.html
ABU GHRAIB, Iraq, June 14 -- Just after sunrise, the detainees began lining up inside the trash-strewn compound where they had spent the night -- their last night -- at this infamous prison west of Baghdad.
Many clutched elaborately woven bags made of the plastic packages of ready-to-eat meals. Some called out farewells to relatives and friends who would remain behind. Military police officers joked with the detainees and shook their hands. One MP gently warned, "I don't want to see you again, brother."
Finally, they walked out of the barbed wire enclosure, dumping weathered blankets and orange-and-rose-colored prison jumpsuits in separate piles and accepting $25 in cash intended to help them get back on their feet. Then they waited for the buses that would take them away from a prison that has become a dark shadow over the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.
Before June 30, when occupation authorities are to transfer limited sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government, the U.S. military plans to drastically cut the number of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, where U.S. soldiers beat and humiliated detainees last year. The prison will remain in operation, primarily as a processing center and short-term security facility for people serving less than six months, and U.S. commanders plan to reduce the prison's population to between 1,500 and 2,000, down from as many as 7,000.
On Monday, about 400 prisoners were set free -- more than half of a planned two-day total of 640 releases, military officials said.
With new regulations in place and new soldiers on guard, many of the detainees said Abu Ghraib was not the same prison it was when reports of abuse by U.S. guards surfaced more than a month ago. Certainly, they said, it bore no resemblance to the institution where thousands of Iraqis were tortured and executed by former president Saddam Hussein's security forces.
"The Army is good now," said Satr Sim Mohammad, 23, who wore a black fez with red stitching. Asked why he had spent time at Abu Ghraib, Mohammad smiled and shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I have a small problem."
As evidenced at the prison during the past two days, detainees and soldiers share something of a kinship, a sense of shared experience conveyed in a crude message on one soldier's T-shirt: "Don't piss me off. I spent time in an Iraqi prison." And it had been a long night for detainees and soldiers alike.
Iraqis who were scheduled to leave Monday had taunted those who were not getting out. When a fight broke out among the detainees who were not going to be released, the others crowded against a fence to watch. A military police officer fired a rubber bullet to scatter the fighters.
Spec. Elizabeth Nierman, 19, strode to the compound of detainees who were to be released. "You want to go home?" she asked. "Get back. Go away."
"Ali," she pleaded with an English-speaking detainee, "please tell these people to back up, to go away."
As a female military police officer, Nierman has not had an easy time in the compounds. Shortly after she arrived in February, she said, she had a piece of brick thrown at her, splitting open her lip. About a week ago, someone hurled a container of urine at her.
Spec. Anthony Marando, 20, of the 391st Military Police Battalion, said detainees were especially excited the night before they were released. But many, he said, were also wistful about relatives left behind.
"They like to talk," he said, gesturing to the compounds where chatter passed back and forth. "There's a lot of passing of notes. Everybody wants to say goodbye. There are people here who have 25 other members of their family here."
In the evening, Marando took a detainee across the pocked, dirt road to the medical compound to see his father. Father and son kissed each other on the cheeks and walked over to benches typically reserved for military police. They sat and talked and embraced each other.
Detainees who are to be released are normally kept away from other prisoners. But with so many scheduled to be released Monday and Tuesday, they were moved instead to Camp Ganci, an empty tent compound in the Abu Ghraib complex that other detainees recently vacated for a newer tent site.
Prison commanders plan to eventually clear the area and put up a new area solely for detainees being released. Instead of barbed wire, it will be surrounded by a chain-link fence.
"I can't wait to bulldoze this place," said Col. David Quantock, commander of the 16th Military Police Brigade.
On Monday, the first five buses carrying detainees rolled out of the prison around 8 a.m., guided by the 1st Infantry Division, which would take the prisoners near the areas where they were detained. A second load of buses left more than four hours later, their 1st Cavalry Division convoys delayed by another mission.
Outside the prison, friends and relatives waited in the dry, unrelenting heat for the detainees.
Kadhim Mohammed, 40, a trader, tried to catch a glimpse of his brother, who Mohammed said was arrested May 12 for carrying a light weapon.
"He told me that it is clear that the U.S. soldiers tried to be nice through their way of treatment," he said.
Others expressed outrage about what happened here, a continued reflection of just how deeply the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal has affected a populace that the occupation authority is still battling to win over in the days leading up to the handover.
"They claim they know humanity, but they don't," Jaber Mansour, 60, a farmer from Diyala, said as he hovered in a crowd outside the prison, where three of his relatives are being detained.
"I used to believe Bush at first when he said he'll make us get rid of the terrible days we went through under Saddam," said Nidhal Sultani, 44, a merchant. "What we face now is worse. I don't trust him, and I'll not anymore."
Special correspondent Bassam Sebti contributed to this report.
-------- space
Panel Suggests Changes at NASA Report Encourages Some Privatization
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; Page A03
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41727-2004Jun14.html
A White House panel has recommended that the government reorganize NASA and refocus space policy to encourage private companies to provide the entrepreneurship and expertise needed to implement President Bush's plan to explore the moon, Mars and the solar system.
The nine-member President's Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy said the human space flight program should remain in government hands for the foreseeable future, but a "commercialized" space industry should take over robotic space ventures and, "most immediately," launches of low-Earth-orbiting satellites.
"Our journey will require the government to embrace fundamental changes in its management and organization," the commission's 60-page report said. "The exploration vision . . . must certainly necessitate placing greater reliance on the private sector."
The report, titled "A Journey to Inspire, Innovate and Discover," is scheduled for release tomorrow. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the report yesterday.
The commission urged the White House to form a Cabinet-level Space Exploration Steering Council to assess progress on achieving the new program's goals. The report also endorsed current NASA initiatives to undertake prize competitions, tax breaks and other incentives to bring innovators into space programs.
Although the commission said "it would be wrong" to view the report as "a vote of 'no confidence' " in NASA, it made several recommendations to create a more supple agency, including transforming its branches into federally funded facilities run by nonprofit organizations or the private sector. This model is used by the Energy Department's National Laboratories and by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, run by the California Institute of Technology.
The White House created the commission on Jan. 27, two weeks after Bush, in a speech, called for "a renewed spirit of discovery" to develop a human space flight program to return to the moon -- last visited in 1972 -- and eventually to travel to Mars.
The commission, chaired by former astronaut Edward C. "Pete" Aldridge Jr., was asked to make recommendations needed to implement the new initiative and report within four months. A commission spokesman said members were unable to comment on the report yesterday because most were traveling to Washington for the formal release ceremony. NASA did not respond to the report because officials said they had not seen it.
Still, decision makers have long been aware that the key focus of the report would be to nurture a space industry that breaks what the commission called NASA's "Apollo-era" model -- initiatives controlled by the government through its private-sector contractors.
But several experts, including Michael Beavin, director of government relations for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, a nonprofit trade organization, noted that the "commercial space industry" does not really exist:
"It's been around for a while, but primarily it's only had only one customer -- the federal government," Beavin said in a telephone interview. "We really are at the beginning, and NASA needs to reach out to the entrepreneurs."
"In areas like developing launch vehicles and spacecraft to dock with the international space station, all industry needs is assurance that if they build, NASA will buy," said Bruce Mahone, director of space policy for the Aerospace Industries Association, a trade group.
But, he added in a telephone interview, other items, such as the immense rockets that may be needed to lift Mars payloads into orbit, or the new multifaceted crew exploration vehicle destined to fly to the moon and eventually, perhaps, to Mars, are one-of-a-kind jobs that "will not be a mass-produced article anytime soon."
-------- spies
Spying in America:
How the Pentagon is Overcoming Privacy Laws to Spy At Home
Tuesday, June 15th, 2004
Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/15/1410250
A new provision buried in an intelligence appropriations bill moving through Congress would exempt Pentagon agencies from the Privacy Act, vastly expanding their ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants. [Includes transcript] We spend the rest of the hour taking a look at government spy operations here in the United States.
In the 1970s, army intelligence agents were caught spying on antiwar protesters and Congress passed the Privacy Act, which requires officials seeking information to disclose who they are and what they want the information for.
Now, a provision buried in an intelligence appropriations bill moving through Congress would exempt Pentagon agencies from the Privacy Act, vastly expanding their ability to conduct domestic spy operations.
But recent events show how domestic military intelligence gathering can lead to a government assault on free speech.
In February, Army intelligence officers visited the University of Texas law school days after a student-organized conference on Islamic Law and Women's Rights. The agents questioned participants and demanded a non-existent roster of attendees. The Army later apologized for acting outside its jurisdiction, but under the new intelligence provision, such investigations may become more common. The intelligence bill is scheduled to go before the House Intelligence Committee tomorrow.
- Michael Isikoff, investigative correspondent for Newsweek who first reported this story in this week's issue.
- Sahar Aziz, Student at University of Texas Law School and organizer of a conference on Islamic Law and Women's Rights held in February 2004, which was visited by an Army intelligence officer, prompting an apology from the Army for operating outside their jurisdiction.
- Kate Martin, Director of the Center for National Security Studies.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge, however donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution. Donate - $25, $50, $100, more...
AMY GOODMAN: We're joined on the phone by Kate Martin, Center for National Securities Study. The student at the University of Texas Law School who organized The Islamic Law and Women's Rights conference, Sahar Aziz and Michael Isikoff, who first reported this story in this week's issue of "Newsweek" magazine. We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Michael, why don't you give us an overlay of exactly what this bill is and the provision that not a lot of people know about.
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, it is not entirely clear because, like so much that the intelligence committees do, this was done behind closed doors, in closed session. No public hearings, no public debate. And apparently not much questioning of the Pentagon about why they wanted this provision in. But if you take a look at it, and you take a look at the report that the senate intelligence committee has since made public about the provision, it does raise a lot of questions. So, what it does, is lists this restriction of The Privacy Act so that Pentagon Intelligence agencies, the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the Separate Service Agency -- Intelligence branches, the Army intelligence, Navy intelligence, can question U.S. citizens, U.S. persons, greencard holder, anybody who is residing in the United States, without identifying who they are and what the Pentagon says it need this is provision for, is so it can recruit sources inside the United States to help the War on Terrorism. Now the main explanation given by D.I.A., and I talked to some of their officials quite a bit about this a week so ago is, they want to be able to question Americans who are traveling abroad, businessmen, college students, who are going into countries where they have a hard time getting access to, where there might be large u.s. Troop concentrations. But when you probe a little deeper beyond that, you find that there are others in the pentagon who have been interested in this provision as well. Stephen Cambone, the Undersecretary For Intelligence, signed off on it. There is this new northern command created by Secretary Rumsfeld two years ago In Colorado Springs, whose assignment is home land defense. They want to -- they're interested in this provision as well and the broad rubric of force protection, which is what military intelligence is assigned to do, would allow it, according to pentagon officials, to conduct intelligence gathering on any suspected terrorist plot to a u.s. Military base or U.S. military contractor. That's a pretty broad mandate in which this provision can be used and it does raise questions, then, certainly about how it will be used.
AMY GOODMAN: Why don't you tell us what happened this past February at your student conference, University of Texas?
SAHAR AZIA: Well, it was actually quite an unexpected event after the fact. The conference was very successful. It was very well attended by Muslims and Non-Muslims, by students and non-students and, you know, we ended the conference feeling very proud of ourselves and having complete add successful one and were congratulated by numerous people. And then a week later suddenly special agent from the Army Intelligence shows up out of nowhere and roamed the campus looking for this nonexistent roster and a video tape of the conference and in order to get that he was asking for me because everyone kept telling him well, she was the one that organized the conference n. The process made many people intimidated and just shocked. I was very shocked because there was nothing at the conference that would have made one even believe that something like this would happen. So, it was definitely a major chill on free speech and on academic freedom. I was very concerned that if something like this happens in the future, at another conference, will anyone show up because people will be scared that they're spied on and won't feel comfortable to speak freely about issues that is are very important because we're very heavily involved and we need to understand the culture and the religion and, you know, the people, etc., of the region.
AMY GOODMAN: How did you end up soliciting an apology from them?
SAHAR AZIA: Well, we held a press conference a few days after he came to campus and made it very clear, you know, through the media that we were not pleased with what happened. We questioned whether they had jurisdiction and we were very concerned about the chilling of academic freedom, etc. And through our press conference, we encouraged actually the journalists to do investigative research and challenged the Army Intelligence and The Intelligence Community to explain, you know, why this happened. Because they didn't have any legal papers, you know, warranting their right to this information. And at the same time there was no one in uniform there. We didn't know that anyone from the intelligence community was at the conference. So, that was the way -- that was our indirect way of asking for an explanation. We were pleased that they gave us an apology. We didn't expect one, to be honest. But at least they did admit that they were out of their jurisdiction and I think the public suddenly realized there were a lot of things going on that they didn't realize was happening about, you know, with regards to domestic surveillance and how they were being impacted, especially Non-Muslims. I think some people think it's not me. It is just this group, this subculture that I don't know anything about that I don't really care about. But it's really expanded. Not to say that that's justified. But even just anyone who associates now with this topic or with this, you know, these people or this group is now, guilty by association based on nothing, you know, based on just wanting to learn.
AMY GOODMAN: Sahar Aziz is a student at University Of Texas Law School that organized the women and Islamic Law Conference this past February. Kate Martin, Director For National Security Studies. Can you give us the history of domestic spying and how this fits in?
KATE MARTIN: Well, this is very troubling because it looks like it's a resurgence of something that we thought had ended. You know, everybody knows or most people know about the history of the C.I.A. And the F.B.I. Spying for the Anti-Vietnam War Movements and on the Civil Rights Movement and on a lot of other groups, including up in through the 1980's perform basically what happened is government agents used undercover agents to go into groups and, in many cases, act as agents provocateurs to encourage illegal acts by the groups, to make the people in the groups feel par noise with lots of justification and turn on each other and then they wrote it all down in files. So, we had this phenomenon of literally hundreds of thousands of files being created on Americans and on their First Amendment protective political activities. There were reforms in the 1970's and 19 90's that were intended to end that -- 80's that were intended to end that and make sure that the agencies doing surveillance inside the U.S. Concentrate on criminal activities and one of the ways that was done was to say the C.I.A. and the defense department have no business spying on Americans. Another way that was done was to say we're going to have public guidelines on how the F.B.I. conducts surveillance. And so while there are a lot of problems with those guidelines, we at least know here's what the F.B.I. is supposed to be doing, for example, when it uses undercover agents. What this -- what's being proposed here is an elimination of one of the key prohibitions that prevented or the defense department from undertaking the kind of surveillance that was just described at the University Of Texas. If this bill were to pass, the next time they show up, they can pretend to be somebody else, like a student from another university organizing a conference, ask for the roster of everyone who attended the conference and then put it in their data bank. Where it will sit forever and then be -- they can data mine it, etc. And no one will even know. You know, this is all part of -- and this is the way it happened the first time is that, you know, they've always had -- the Defense Department's always had military bases, of course, in the U.S. And if the mission of protecting those bases. But now they have this new mission of, quote, "homeland defense". And we really need a lot more public discussion about what that means to have the military inside the u.s. Concentrating on counterterrorism. Because we don't have -- while we have terrible attacks, it is hard to think how the military plays a role in finding the next al-Qaeda terrorist inside the u.s. And instead of having any public explanation from the military about how they might do that, they might have this stealth effort to allow themselves to on an undercover basis both collect information from Americans about themselves and about their neighbors and friends.
AMY GOODMAN: Michael Isikoff, you write about this in this week's "Newsweek" about recruiting citizens to spy on each other. There was a collective revulsion against the total information awareness program in the pentagon and ultimately John Poindexter was forced out. How much of this is a continuation of this and what exactly is laid out there?
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: Well, it is hard to say. As I said before, this was sort of done, you know, in closed session, no public hearings, no explanations. From the republic explanations by the Pentagon. One thing that strikes me about this is you have the 9/11 commission wrapping up its work. It's got its public hearings this week and recommendations next month. One of the principle issues they've been grappling is should we create a domestic intelligence agency, i.e.m.a.-5 in Great Britain and the argument made against that in the debate what are the Civil Liberties implications of creating a is separate agency whose responsibility would be intelligence gathering inside the united states and surveillance. That has been a public debate and there's been a lot written about it. Yeah, here you have the pentagon essentially making a move to sort of do the same thing without anybody paying any attention to it. And, you know, if that happens, what kind of oversight would there be, what precisely would be the mission? None of these questions have been asked today.
AMY GOODMAN: Where does the bill go from here?
MICHAEL ISIKOFF: It has been passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It is coming up, a similar vote is coming up before the house intelligence committee tomorrow. And then it will have to be thrashed out in conference and passed by both houses. But it will be interesting to see first if the house intelligence committee will do this debate, take this up in public session and, secondly, if they will be asking anymore questions than the senators did and, you know, what I'm told, almost no questions were asked
AMY GOODMAN: Well, on that note, we have to leave it there. MICHAEL ISIKOFF, investigative correspondent for "Newsweek," Sahar Aziz, student at the University Of Texas Law School, and Kate Martin for the Center For International Securities Program.
To purchase an audio or video copy of this entire program, click here for our new online ordering or call 1 (800) 881-2359.
-------- un
Iran hits out at European trio
aljazeera
15 June 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E299B9CC-E53B-4CA9-8154-26A7089D8A32.htm
The new speaker of Iran's parliament has objected to international pressure on Tehran to ratify the additional protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Speaking to parliamentary deputies in Tehran on Tuesday, Ghulam Ali Haddad-Adil said it was not for France, Germany or Britain to decide what was in the best interests of Iran.
The additional protocol would allow much tougher UN inspections of nuclear facilities than are currently undertaken.
"I say to France, Germany and Britain not to tell the Iranian parliament what to do."
He was referring to a tough draft resolution put to the board of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency by the European Union's leading three nations, currently under discussion in Vienna.
"The Iranian parliament does not take orders from foreigners, because these orders do not reflect the interests of the Iranian people. If we consider it to be in the interests of the Iranian people we will adopt it, if not we will not," he said.
The parliament speaker also warned the Europeans not to "fall into the trap of the Zionists" by pressuring the Islamic republic over its nuclear programme.
EU resolution considered
The highly critical resolution being debated by the board and drafted by the EU troika of Britain, Germany, and France states that the board "decides to remain seized of the matter".
"The Iranian parliament does not take orders from foreigners, because these orders do not reflect the interests of the Iranian people"
Ghulam Ali Haddad-Adil, Iran parliament speaker But the EU document criticising Iran contains no deadline or trigger for sanctions if Tehran does not meet the demands laid out.
The US is said to be calling for tougher wording and some kind of deadline.
On Monday, the UN's chief nuclear inspector, Muhammad al-Baradai, voiced his exasperation at the slow pace of the international inquiry into Iran's nuclear capabilities.
UN comment
He contradicted Iran's assertions that it was cooperating fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency and declared that the jury was still out on whether Iran was building a nuclear bomb.
He also said Iran had not yet satisfactorily explained traces of enriched uranium found last year on its equipment by the inspectors.
The board meeting, expected to last at least three days, came after the submission of a 21-page report by al-Baradai in which he cited fresh evidence that Iran had embarked on an illicit uranium-enrichment project which could produce bomb-grade nuclear fuel.
-------- us
US will reduce number of divisions in Germany:
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jun 15, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040615160239.nrnrrf86.html
The United States will reduce the number of army divisions in Germany as part of a force redeployment that will free troops for over-stretched combat units, the chief of staff of the US Army said Tuesday.
"As we redistribute our forces globally we will reduce the amount of divisions in Germany," General Peter Schoomaker told defense reporters.
"There is an extraordinary amount of overhead in Germany, of uniformed people that have nothing to do with budget, that have everything to do with running installations, guarding installations, managing housing, and all that stuff that counts against our endstrength," he said.
"I want to convert those people into something that is usable in uniform," he said.
The army's 1st Armored Division and 1st Infantry Division are based in Germany, accounting for about half the 70,000 US troops in the country. Both divisions are currently deployed in Iraq.
The United States has been reported to be considering withdrawing them from Germany and replacing them with a light armored Stryker combat brigade.
But Schoomaker's comment was the first public confirmation by a senior US military official that US plans call for bringing home German-based divisions.
US officials have been briefing governments on specific US proposals that are part of the plan for repositioning US forces around the world to make them able to respond more quickly to unforseen crises in far-flung areas.
Static defenses in places like Germany, where the United States maintained a large garrisoned force through the Cold War, have been key targets of planners devising the new force posture.
Schoomaker is attempting to meet swelling demands for troops in Iraq and elsewhere by reforming the army's divisions into more numerous, more independent and rapidly deployable combat brigade teams.
The reorganization will increase the number of active duty combat brigades from 33 today to between 43 and 48, the general said. The national guard and reserves will have another 34 fully manned brigades, he said.
"With that number of brigades we can sustain the current level of effort indefinitely," he said.
He acknowledged that the continuing violence in Iraq "is stressing the army." But he said it also was creating momentum for changes in the way the US military is structured.
Despite the handover of sovereignty June 30, Schoomaker said, "My view is we are going to have a level of effort that goes well beyond 30 June regardless of what the future will bring."
The army has temporarily increased the size of the army by 30,000 during the transition. But Schoomaker vehemently rejected calls by some in Congress for a permanent increase in the size of the force as too costly.
"Almost 50 percent of our cost right now goes to paying people. It's our most expensive component," he said.
Every additional 10,000 people in uniform costs 3.9 billion dollars a year when pensions and health care costs are factored in, he said.
"Congress can only fund us one year at a time. They can, however, encumber us forever," he said.
The general said he believes the army can make more efficient use of the 1.2 million members of its active and reserve forces, in part through reorganizations that reduce overhead and by taking the military out of jobs that can be performed by civilians.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Judge Rebukes Gov't Over No-Fly List
By DAVID KRAVETS
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44991-2004Jun15.html
SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the government is stonewalling attempts by the American Civil Liberties Union to acquire information about the government's secret no-fly list, which bars potential terrorists from boarding commercial flights.
The FBI, the Transportation Security Administration and other agencies have cited security concerns in not disclosing to the ACLU how two of its clients got on the list.
The ACLU sued on behalf of two peace activists who were wrongly detained at San Francisco International Airport because their names popped up on a secret no-fly database.
U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer has reviewed in private all the data the government has called sensitive and ordered it to further explain why certain documents are being left off the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act request.
"In many instances, the government has not come close to meeting its burden and, in some cases, has made frivolous claims of exemption," Breyer ruled.
TSA spokesman Nico Melendez declined to comment on the judge's ruling, saying the agency does not discuss pending litigation.
The ACLU is asking the court to force the government to disclose how many people are on the list and how names get on or off it.
Breyer said the government has refused to say how many people are on the list and why "that should not be disclosed." Breyer also wondered why the government classified how one gets on the list as "non-disclosable sensitive security information."
The government has even blacked out names of government officials in charge of the list, including the name of an FBI employee who was responsible for responding to inquiries from the public.
"This is no small matter. He's not persuaded by the case the government has put together," said Thomas Burke, an ACLU attorney. "It's in everybody's best interest that they have an accurate list."
The list is meant to prevent potential terrorists from boarding planes. The TSA collects names from law enforcement officials and shares the list with airlines to screen passengers.
The lawsuit was brought by Rebecca Gordon and Janet Adams, two San Francisco peace activists who publish War Times, a nationally distributed newsletter critical of the Bush administration. They were stopped while checking in for a flight to Boston and were detained by authorities until cleared for travel.
With the help of the ACLU, the two invoked the Freedom of Information Act to demand that the FBI, TSA or Justice Department explain why they were stopped.
After their lawsuit was filed last year, the TSA did not respond to their request, and the FBI said no files on the two existed.
-------- homeland security
Feds Call Threat to Ohio Malls 'Thwarted'
By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 12:23 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43453-2004Jun15?language=printer
COLUMBUS, Ohio - U.S. authorities are confident a terrorist plot to bomb a central Ohio shopping mall has been foiled, a top homeland security official said Tuesday.
An indictment has accused Somali native Nuradin Abdi of conspiring with an admitted al-Qaida member and others to bomb the mall in the Columbus area. Abdi has been taken into custody in a federal prison in Columbus.
On Tuesday morning, Homeland Security Department Undersecretary Asa Hutchinson declined to say how far the plot progressed. But he told NBC's "Today" show that "overt steps" were taken to support terrorist activities.
Hutchinson said federal officials believe the plot has been "completely thwarted" and that no threat remains to shopping malls in Ohio.
Like thousands of fellow Somalis who had left behind brutal clan warfare, Abdi decided this Midwestern city was an agreeable place to raise a family and start a small business, friends and family say.
The government, however, says that just months after Abdi was granted asylum, he was plotting to blow up one of the city's shopping malls, exactly the type of target some feared would be next on terrorists' lists.
The government, however, says that just months after Abdi was granted asylum, he was plotting to blow up one of the city's shopping malls, exactly the type of target some feared would be next on terrorists' lists.
Attorney General John Ashcroft said charges revealed Monday against Abdi serve as a reminder that al-Qaida is determined "to hit the United States and hit us hard."
But Abdi's family says he is a man who hates terrorists.
Abdi, who operated a small cell phone business, loved his new freedoms and never spoke out against the U.S. government, said his brother Mohamed AbdiKarani, 17. Abdi has a son and daughter and his wife is pregnant.
"He loved it here. He never had as much freedom. He said it's good to raise his kids here," AbdiKarani said. "He really hated terrorists. You know how (President) Bush hates terrorists? I think he hates them more."
Abdi is accused of conspiring with convicted al-Qaida operative Iyman Faris - a former Columbus truck driver who sought to sabotage the Brooklyn Bridge - to bomb a mall in the area, though the FBI said no specific mall was targeted.
Abdi, 32, was arrested at his apartment Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving when malls across America were crowded with shoppers. He was held at first on immigration violations, authorities said.
Charges in the four-count indictment include providing material support to al-Qaida, conspiracy to provide material support and document fraud. If convicted on all charges, Abdi could be sentenced to up to 80 years in prison and fined $1 million.
The FBI has warned al-Qaida might shift away from trying to hit tightly guarded installations, such as government buildings or nuclear plants, to more vulnerable targets such as malls, apartment buildings or hotels.
Court papers filed by the government allege that a plot dated to March 2000 when Abdi returned from a terrorist training camp in Ethiopia to join Faris in Columbus.
Faris, originally from Kashmir, is serving a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty last June to plotting to sever cables supporting the Brooklyn Bridge and to derail trains in New York or Washington. Neither of those plots came to fruition.
AbdiKarani said Abdi was friends with Faris because they attended the same mosque. Columbus is home to more than 30,000 Somalis, the second-largest Somali community in the United States, after Minneapolis.
Abdi, his feet and hands shackled, appeared distracted during a hearing Monday before a federal magistrate. He alternately twisted around in his chair and smiled at spectators and U.S. marshals, then stared at the table in front of him. He placed his forehead on the table as the magistrate read him his rights.
Abdi's mother, Nadifa Hassan, expressed concern about her son's health, saying he was withdrawn when she visited him in jail about a month ago. She said she heard her son likely would be deported.
"He's very sick," she said through a translator while surrounded by friends at Columbus' Somali Community Association. "When I saw him last time he wasn't talking at all. I feel pain inside, the way he looked like that."
"I know my son, that he's not a terrorist," she said.
According to U.S. immigration records, Abdi first entered the United States in 1995, lived for a time in Canada, and then returned to the United States in August 1997. Abdi was granted asylum in America as a refugee in January 1999 after giving false information to immigration officials, the government charges.
Later that year, he used that refugee status to apply for a travel document by falsely claiming he was planning to visit Germany and the Muslim holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
In fact, prosecutors say, Abdi used the document to travel to Ethiopia to obtain "military-style training in preparation for violent jihad." The training included guns, guerrilla warfare, bombs and radio usage.
Jamilla Hassan, 39, a cousin of Abdi's, said she hopes the charges are a mistake. Abdi was like any immigrant who escaped the clan-based war in Somalia looking for a better life, Hassan said.
"He was another good American," she said.
Associated Press writer Curt Anderson in Washington contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Justice Department:http://www.usdoj.gov
Immigration and Customs Enforcement:http://www.ice.gov
-------- immigration / refugees
Refugees Flee Into Burundi from Eastern Congo
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
By Patrick Nduwimana
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43179-2004Jun15?language=printer
CIBITOKE, Burundi (Reuters) - Thousands of refugees streamed into northern Burundi from the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, saying they were terrified by a rebel threat to renew an assault on the government-held town of Bukavu.
The United Nations refugee agency said up to 17,000 refugees were thought to be in and around UNHCR sites in the border towns of Rugombo, Gatumba and Cibitoke, but it was checking the numbers with government officials.
The refugees started arriving after fighting broke out in Bukavu last month between government troops loyal to the Kinshasa government and former rebel fighters integrated into a new national army.
Congolese government troops retook control of Bukavu from rebels last Wednesday, a week after it was seized in fighting which has revived ethnic tensions.
Rebel leader Laurent Nkunda threatened on Monday to launch a counter-attack against the government for failing to end ethnic assaults on Banyamulenge Tutsis, raising fears of fresh fighting and a refugee crisis.
The exodus prompted U.N. emergency relief coordinator Jan Egeland to say on Monday that eastern Congo was rapidly turning into one of the world's biggest humanitarian disasters, with 3.3 million people, including thousands of malnourished children, cut off from aid.
"More refugees are expected, given the situation is so unstable," UNHCR spokeswoman Jennifer Pagonis said.
Some 5,000 Congolese are at a transit camp in Rwanda, which has now closed its borders, according to UNHCR figures.
DISPOSSESSED
The UNHCR said the fresh wave of refugees included Banyamulenge Tutsis and ethnic Bafulero and Babembe.
In Cibitoke, they gathered in a football stadium, trying to find some shade from the searing sun.
The strong carried mattresses, cooking pots and kitchen utensils. Bundles of clothes made ragged heaps.
Agitated voices rang out across the stadium as hungry and tired refugees scrabbled to register family details with U.N. aid workers -- essential before food distribution.
"We registered 1,223 people in this transit camp on Monday," said UNHCR worker Rose Mede Dusenge. "We didn't finish registering them because others were still coming in."
One of the refugees, Adophe Miyano Risase, said he fled fighting in Rubirizi locality where the Congolese army is battling dissidents led by Jules Mutebutsi, one of the two renegade commanders who seized Bukavu saying they wanted to protect the Banyamulenge from security forces.
"Rubirizi is empty. Only soldiers have stayed on there," the 23-year-old said.
The World Food Program (WFP) said on Tuesday it had dispatched 25 tons of food to 4,930 refugees in Burundi, enough to feed them for eight days. It also plans to distribute 20 tons to 2,300 Congolese refugees who have fled to Rwanda.
Insecurity in eastern Congo deals a double blow to food distribution, already hampered by poor roads and infrastructure.
"You're not dealing with one government in eastern (Congo) and you're having to negotiate your way through. There's the problem of the former Interahamwe, the Mai Mai -- all these different groups," said WFP's Peter Smerdon.
"They obviously want aid for their area and do not want it going to the areas of those they oppose. Crossing that line is a problem."
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva)
-------
Immigration Raids, Far From Border, Draw Criticism
June 15, 2004
By JOHN M. BRODER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/national/15immigration.html
POMONA, Calif., June 14 - Southern California Latino communities far from the Mexican border have been roiled in recent days by a series of sweeps by United States Border Patrol agents that have led to scores of arrests.
Fanned by rumors and dire reports in Spanish-language news media, fear has spread through neighborhoods in areas more than 100 miles from the border and has prompted many people to stay home from work and avoid ethnic markets. Some parents are keeping their children out of school and skipping church services after hearing reports that Border Patrol agents are staking out schoolyards, residential areas and church parking lots.
Latino community and church leaders say the inland raids are sowing fear and anger among Latinos, who they say appear to be singled out because of the color of their skin.
A spokesman for the Border Patrol said the arrests were part of an operation that began 10 days ago with sweeps in the Southern California cities of Ontario and Corona, during which nearly 160 people suspected of being illegal immigrants were arrested, most of them Mexicans, but also a few from Guatemala and El Salvador. Patrols last week in Escondido, in northern San Diego County, brought in 150 more, he said.
The Rev. Arnoldo Abelardo of La Placita Church in Los Angeles said immigration officers were randomly stopping Latinos on the street in their neighborhoods in suburbs east and south of Los Angeles and demanding their immigration papers.
"This is a very big surprise. They haven't done this in years," Father Abelardo said. "They're going to Laundromats and schools and shops, stopping people when they get off the bus. They're not doing this in places that are non-Latino."
He added: "The community is being exploited by fears of immigration raids. It is evil."
Representative Linda T. Sanchez, a Democrat whose district in southern Los Angeles County is roughly 60 percent Latino, called the raids "a blatant abuse of power" aimed at all Latinos in Southern California.
Ms. Sanchez said her office had received dozens of phone calls. She said the agency's actions were diverting resources from "real threats" to American security, like terrorists.
Border Patrol officials said the agency had always had the authority to conduct roving patrols anywhere in the country, although most had been carried out at border crossings and checkpoints.
The Border Patrol, part of the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, has received substantial increases in personnel and money as part of the new Department of Homeland Security, allowing more aggressive patrolling, said Steve McPartland, a senior patrol agent in the San Diego regional office.
Mr. Partland said that he was aware of the concern but that it had been fed by rumors and false reports.
"There has been an incredible amount of misinformation," Mr. McPartland said. "We're not targeting schools and churches and hospitals." He said similar operations had been conducted for months throughout the southwestern United States.
He added that law-abiding citizens had nothing to fear.
"The operation is intelligence-driven," Mr. McPartland said. "We don't just go willy-nilly down the street looking for people."
Yet anxiety is rampant. Patricia Raygoza of Pomona said that despite official assurances that schools and churches were not being singled out, she had seen Border Patrol agents parked two blocks away from them scanning the crowds. She said a co-worker was picked up last week and held until he could prove he had legitimate work papers.
Mrs. Raygoza took her two young children to Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in Pomona on Monday morning for a news briefing by members of the clergy and community leaders on the arrests. "There is fear everywhere," she said. "A lot of people don't show up for work, and the rest of us have to make up for them."
Border Patrol officials have tried to calm fears by explaining the enforcement program to Spanish-languagenews organization and trying to bat away rumors. "There are reports we're picking up people in Las Vegas and Santa Barbara and Van Nuys, and it's just not true," Mr. McPartland said. "We try to tell people that it's routine patrols. It's just that we're in areas where they're not used to seeing us."
Mexicans who are picked up may either return home immediately or face an immigration judge. People of other nationalities are sent to deportation hearings.
--------
A Canadian Gate Where Illegal Immigrants Knock
June 15, 2004
By DAVID STABA
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/nyregion/15border.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BUFFALO, June 14 - Nine people trying to sneak into the United States illegally by way of a moonlit raft ride might not be out of the ordinary if the raft were floating off the coast of Florida or crossing the Rio Grande.
But it was on the shores of the Niagara River, little more than a mile from the world-famous falls, that a small, inflatable, motor-powered raft was captured earlier this month, along with six adults and two children from India and Pakistan and the man accused of trying to smuggle them into this country.
While this locale is definitely not Miami or South Texas, the number of illegal immigrants trying to enter the United States here, by traversing the waterways and railroad bridges that separate much of New York from Canada, is actually growing.
This latest group failed largely because of security enhancements put in place after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, elevating from afterthought to priority the patrolling of a border long considered friendly.
"We treat everybody as a potential terrorist," said Edward Duda, deputy chief of the Buffalo sector of the United States Border Patrol. "Anyone that crosses the border illegally, we treat them all equally."
According to records in federal court in Buffalo, at about 4:15 a.m. on June 5, two Border Patrol agents, James P. Amorelli and Manuel Marquez, were patrolling on foot near a marina on Grand Island, above the falls, when they saw a small raft filled with people land.
The agents captured the driver of the small craft, Nathanael J. Richardson, as he crawled up an embankment, the records show. Hiding in the bushes near where the raft had come ashore, the agents found five adults - one of the women six months pregnant - and two children. Another man was captured an hour later on a Grand Island roadway, his pants wet from the knees down.
The raft also contained two car batteries, as well as the passengers' luggage, meaning that its load was roughly twice the 660 pounds that the raft was meant to carry, the Border Patrol said.
The raft was powered by a small motor, but it contained no oars, anchor or lifejackets. And it landed less than a mile upstream of buoys that mark the spot past which boating is prohibited because of the danger of the churning falls.
"Had that motor quit, the raft would have been pulled out in the main channel and right over the falls," said Stuart C. Woodside, assistant chief of the Border Patrol's Buffalo sector.
According to the court records, the driver of the raft, Mr. Richardson, a Canadian citizen, told the Border Patrol agents, "I have no allegiance to those people and I'll tell you everything."
Explaining how he had wound up on the shores of Grand Island, Mr. Richardson said that the night before, while at a party in Canada, a man he knew only as "Chris" had offered him $300 in United States currency to drive the raft across a narrow channel separating Canada from Grand Island, the records say. Once there, he was to place a rock on a parkway that runs along the river as a signal. After a car arrived to pick up his passengers, he was to guide the raft back to Canada, where he was to be paid.
All nine people from the raft were detained in federal custody. It was later determined that one of the children was an American citizen.
Smuggling humans is a lucrative business, with passage from India or Pakistan into the United States costing as much as $40,000 for each adult, Mr. Woodside said.
"There are very few people who cross on their own," he said. "There's always someone helping them get in the raft or on the train and somebody here waiting for them on the other side."
The narrow widths of the Niagara River between Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and between the falls and Lake Ontario, made the area a prime spot for bootleggers to sneak alcohol into the United States during Prohibition. Today, the same geography entices smugglers of people and drugs.
With security tightened at the three bridges in the area that are open to vehicular traffic, people trying to sneak into the United States and the people helping them have focused on the river and the region's two railroad bridges.
Already this year in the Buffalo sector, agents of the Border Patrol - which became part of the federal Department of Homeland Security after the 2001 terrorist attacks - have charged 65 people with trying to enter the country illegally. Forty-three were found hiding in trains crossing the bridges, and 22 were caught in boats, rafts or the river itself.
That is setting a pace well ahead of last year. For all of 2003, agents caught 98 people, just 14 of them on trains.
Last month, agents arrested six Costa Ricans trying to cross in a small boat below the falls.
In April, an agent on nighttime patrol along the river in Lewiston, below the cataracts, heard a man shouting for help in Spanish while bobbing in icy water. After he was rescued, the man told the authorities that he had tried to back out of his planned deal with two smugglers, Mr. Woodside said.
"They said, 'We're going to keep your money, whether you're going in or you're not,' " Mr. Woodside recounted. "The smugglers handed him a rope and said they'd pull him back in if he got into any trouble, but as soon as he got out there, they threw the rope in the water and took off. He got flipped out of the raft because of the currents and rapids."
The man was hospitalized for hypothermia before being deported to Peru, Mr. Woodside said.
The Border Patrol's numbers do not include those who don't make it across the river. In one case, the body of a Canadian citizen who had been unable to enter the United States legally because he was a convicted criminal was found frozen on the shore of Lake Ontario in April by a woman taking her dog for a morning walk. His boat may have capsized while he was trying to cross the river and washed out into the lake.
The attempted influx comes despite a buildup in resources aimed at preventing it. Three years ago, only 35 agents were guarding more than 450 miles of border between Erie, Pa., and Watertown, N.Y. That number has more than tripled, although the Department of Homeland Security no longer releases exact figures, Mr. Duda said.
Those increased numbers, along with coordination with the United States Coast Guard, allow more thorough patrols along the shoreline near particularly inviting crossing points, like the one that led to the arrests on June 5.
The equipment has also improved as the agency has shifted to year-round patrols of the rivers and lakes separating the United States and Canada.
"We were lucky if we logged a couple of weeks, mostly during the summer," one agent, Alan Marshall, said of his days piloting an antiquated whaling boat on very infrequent cruises. "We just didn't have the manpower. We were lucky if we had a canvas top on the boat. We had no dry suits, no heating system."
Today, Mr. Marshall pilots a year-old 24-foot patrol boat that rarely leaves the water, his route coordinated with Coast Guard vessels to maximize coverage. He also gets help from above.
"We never had air support," Mr. Duda said of the days before Sept. 11. "Now we not only have a helicopter, we have a fixed-wing aircraft and three pilots. We can cover large areas faster and we can see stuff on the shore that we couldn't before.''
Mr. Woodside said the heightened, and highly visible, patrols along the waterway might have persuaded smugglers to devote their efforts to trains earlier this year. The border patrol, though, countered with a gamma-ray machine to inspect trains coming into the United States, making such passage riskier than ever.
"When a train approaches the border, all personnel have to go into the head engine," Mr. Woodside said. "If someone is trying to hide behind an automobile being carried on the train, you can actually see through the motor block. If we see something that doesn't look normal in the cargo, we check it out. You can't beat the machine."
That may force more illegal immigrants yearning to set foot on American soil into the river's rough waters, which Mr. Woodside said are too cold to maintain human life for more than 20 minutes throughout much of the year.
Those willing to risk the elements, and their lives, come from around the world - Asia, Africa and, increasingly, South America - in part because Canada's laws governing immigrant visitor visas are less strict than those of the United States. Though most immigrants are with their families or are trying to join them, agents are particularly vigilant that some may harbor more sinister motives.
"Smugglers don't discriminate," Mr. Woodside said. "They'll take money from people of any nationality, and with any motive, who is willing to pay to get into the states. There's always that fear that terrorists could be brought in with the other groups."
For many who wind up in the custody of the Border Patrol, though, capture is the closest they have come to sympathy since they left home.
"Most of them have been through a hellacious experience," Mr. Woodside said. "They've been abused, robbed, in some cases even raped.
"The vast majority of people we deal with - 95 percent - are good, honest people who just want a better way of life,'' he said. "We don't think of them as criminals. By entering illegally, they're committing a criminal act, but it's not like a heinous felony."
-------- justice
Travesty of Justice
To question: John Ashcroft is the worst attorney general in history.
By PAUL KRUGMAN
June 15, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST, NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/opinion/15KRUG.html
For this column, let's just focus on Mr. Ashcroft's role in the fight against terror. Before 9/11 he was aggressively uninterested in the terrorist threat. He didn't even mention counterterrorism in a May 2001 memo outlining strategic priorities for the Justice Department. When the 9/11 commission asked him why, he responded by blaming the Clinton administration, with a personal attack on one of the commission members thrown in for good measure.
We can't tell directly whether Mr. Ashcroft's post-9/11 policies are protecting the United States from terrorist attacks. But a number of pieces of evidence suggest otherwise.
First, there's the absence of any major successful prosecutions. The one set of convictions that seemed fairly significant - that of the "Detroit 3" - appears to be collapsing over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. (The lead prosecutor has filed a whistle-blower suit against Mr. Ashcroft, accusing him of botching the case. The Justice Department, in turn, has opened investigations against the prosecutor. Payback? I report; you decide.)
Then there is the lack of any major captures. Somewhere, the anthrax terrorist is laughing. But the Justice Department, you'll be happy to know, is trying to determine whether it can file bioterrorism charges against a Buffalo art professor whose work includes harmless bacteria in petri dishes.
Perhaps most telling is the way Mr. Ashcroft responds to criticism of his performance. His first move is always to withhold the evidence. Then he tries to change the subject by making a dramatic announcement of a terrorist threat.
For an example of how Mr. Ashcroft shuts down public examination, consider the case of Sibel Edmonds, a former F.B.I. translator who says that the agency's language division is riddled with incompetence and corruption, and that the bureau missed critical terrorist warnings. In 2002 she gave closed-door Congressional testimony; Senator Charles Grassley described her as "very credible . . . because people within the F.B.I. have corroborated a lot of her story."
But the Justice Department has invoked the rarely used "state secrets privilege" to prevent Ms. Edmonds from providing evidence. And last month the department retroactively classified two-year-old testimony by F.B.I. officials, which was presumably what Mr. Grassley referred to.
For an example of changing the subject, consider the origins of the Jose Padilla case. There was no publicity when Mr. Padilla was arrested in May 2002. But on June 6, 2002, Coleen Rowley gave devastating Congressional testimony about failures at the F.B.I. (which reports to Mr. Ashcroft) before 9/11. Four days later, Mr. Ashcroft held a dramatic press conference and announced that Mr. Padilla was involved in a terrifying plot. Instead of featuring Ms. Rowley, news magazine covers ended up featuring the "dirty bomber" who Mr. Ashcroft said was plotting to kill thousands with deadly radiation.
Since then Mr. Padilla has been held as an "enemy combatant" with no legal rights. But Newsweek reports that "administration officials now concede that the principal claim they have been making about Padilla ever since his detention - that he was dispatched to the United States for the specific purpose of setting off a radiological `dirty bomb' - has turned out to be wrong and most likely can never be used in court."
But most important is the memo. Last week Mr. Ashcroft, apparently in contempt of Congress, refused to release a memo on torture his department prepared for the White House almost two years ago. Fortunately, his stonewalling didn't work: The Washington Post has acquired a copy of the memo and put it on its Web site.
Much of the memo is concerned with defining torture down: if the pain inflicted on a prisoner is less than the pain that accompanies "serious physical injury, such as organ failure," it's not torture. Anyway, the memo declares that the federal law against torture doesn't apply to interrogations of enemy combatants "pursuant to [the president's] commander-in-chief authority." In other words, the president is above the law.
The memo came out late Sunday. Mr. Ashcroft called a press conference yesterday - to announce an indictment against a man accused of plotting to blow up a shopping mall in Ohio. The timing was, I'm sure, purely coincidental.
----
Ashcroft may face prison over 9/11 cover-up, says Daniel Ellsberg
by Fintan Dunne, Editor
BreakForNews.com,
15th June, 2004
http://www.breakfornews.com/Sibel-Edmonds1.htm
Two whistleblowers stood side by side before a courthouse in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Veteran of the Pentagon Papers scandal, Daniel Ellsberg was backing a protest by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, against a court gag order which has silenced her revelations about the September 11th, 2001 attacks.
The whistleblower pair were protesting yet another delay by Judge Reggie Walton of the District Court of Columbia in determining whether Edmonds' closed session testimony to Congressional inquiries can be declared state secrets by U.S. Attorney General, John Ashcroft.
In a statement, Edmonds called Ashcroft's legal moves anti-freedom of speech and anti-due process.
Ellsberg's common cause with Edmonds is founded on his own battle to make public a top secret study of US decision-making in Vietnam, known as the Pentagon Papers.
In an exclusive interview with BreakForNews.com he said that Ashcroft's legal actions against Edmonds were: "clearly intended to keep her from bringing out in public information that could lead.... to criminal indictments and possible convictions of major political figures."
Ellsberg says that if Edmonds' allegations are confirmed, the current Attorney General could be judged obstructive and share the fate of A.G. John Mitchell --who in Ellsberg v. Mitchell famously tried to squelch Ellsberg's 1971 revelations, and served prison time over the affair.
"John Ashcroft may well sleep eventually in the same cell as John Mitchell," Ellsberg said.
In a recent interview with BreakFornews.com, Sibel Edmonds alleged that the US State Department had blocked investigations showing links between criminal drug trafficking networks and the terror attacks on 9/11.
"Certain investigations were being quashed, let's say per State Department's request, because it would have affected certain foreign relations [or] affected certain business relations with foreign organizations," she said. (Interview - 4:00 min.) Edmonds also indicated that the FBI's intelligence translation service had been penetrated by a criminal, semi-legitimate intelligence group --not linked to any government. Her measured words hinted at politically explosive connections between non-terrorist criminal networks and the 9/11 attacks.
Since October, 2002 Edmonds has been bound by provisional gag orders while awaiting an opportunity for a full hearing and a definitive ruling. The recent moves in the case arose from a government bid to exclude her testimony from a class action lawsuit by families of 9/11 victims.
Judge Walton had scheduled Monday as the first ever hearing at which Edmonds was to be allowed counter the state secret privilege assertion by Ashcroft. But after an in camera presentation last week by the government side, he called off the hearing. Unofficial reports say a new date may be set for early July.
Talk of US government interference in 9/11 investigations, and the considerable volume of online analysis discounting the official conspiracy theory, resonate with Ellsberg.
"I'm not an expert on all this," he admits. "But I am increasingly open to the explanation that people in the administration did see this coming... and may have indeed reduced some obstacles.., or opened the door, in effect. I haven't been absolutely convinced on that, but it does seem to me to be an open question that deserves investigation."
"Now beyond that... it seems to me quite plausible that --plausible, that's all I'd say-- that Pakistan was quite involved in this, and that many Saudis were well informed on this," says Ellsberg.
"And to say that. To say Pakistan-- is to me, to say C.I.A. Because I think the relations between the Pakistan I.S.I. [intelligence service] and CIA were very close from the beginning. And it's hard to say that the I.S.I knew something that the CIA had no knowledge of."
"So if you say, do I accept confidently, and do I rely on the official interpretation? Certainly not. But, I wouldn't say that I have been yet been thoroughly convinced by any alternative."
"I can add one thing though -from my own experience, that's relevant."
"Is it possible... that an American president could have... welcomed an attack on America that he would interpret [as] justifying an invasion of another country?"
"Well, that's more than possible, that happened --under a president that I served. Lyndon Johnson did put American destroyers in harms way, deliberately provoking an attack.. in the Tonkin Gulf. Not only in August of '64, but in February of '65. ...There was an attack on August 2nd, and that was not unwelcome to the United States at that point."
Sibel Edmonds has already become somewhat of a flag-bearer for the diverse 9/11 truth movement, which ranges across advocacy groups, families of victims, individual investigators and a host of online web sites --all disputing the official 'Al-Qaida conspiracy' theory.
But an article today by Scott Loughrey on the Baltimore Chronicle online, alleges that Edmonds is offering a limited hangout version of events, and accuses her of "repeating the propaganda of the state."
Loughrey writes that Edmonds blames intelligence failures, rather than more sinister explanations, for the failure to prevent the attacks.
That's misleading and unfair. Yes, the superficial reports of her claims in the mainstream media focus mainly on intelligence failures. Yes, Edmonds was coy in her early public statements --out of defenence to the sensitivity of her information and the gung-ho public sentiment at the time, no doubt.
But in closed session testimony to Congressional inquiries, Edmonds has given a much fuller account of her concerns. So dangerous an account that Ashcroft seeks to retrospectively cloak that testimony with state secret privilege
And as a disillusioned Edmonds has seen her evidence disappear unremarked into the black hole of those inquiries, she has blown the whistle publicly --as unreservedly as the gag order allows:
She says the pre-9/11 US intelligence system had been penetrated by a drug-linked, semi-legitimate criminal intelligence network, operating with seeming impunity inside the FBI.
The post-9/11 intelligence 'failures' included the willful quashing by the government, of investigations tracing those criminal networks.
The 9/11 terror plot itself, intersected with the activities of a drug trafficking network of international scope, in ways that form a "crystal clear" picture of what was going on --to quote Edmonds.
If that's a limited hangout, God help us. The truth must be awful.
If it's true, as Edmonds asserts, the official line is a shallow sham.
Fintan Dunne, Editor BreakForNews.com Contact Me
-
State Dept. Quashed 9/11 Links To Global Drug Trade -FBI Whistleblower
BreakForNews.com,
7th June, 2004
by Fintan Dunne, Editor
Sibel Deniz Edmonds was awaiting a June 14 court hearing to determine if she could publicly tell the full story of intelligence failures over the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. government wants her knowledge to remain a state secret. Judge Reggie Walton has now called off the hearing --no reason cited, and no future date scheduled. The fourth time he's done this in past two years. Sibel Edmonds will held a press conference with Daniel Ellsberg at 3rd & Const. Ave. on Monday, June 14, at 9:30 AM in front of the Court.
LIVE AUDIO INTERVIEW
7th June 9amET
Fintan Dunne live interview with Sibel Edmonds
Listen: mp3 Streaming Audio Win Media Player Duration 30 mins
ARTICLE
No More Fake News
June 9, 2004
by John Rappoport
Things are moving rapidly.
I want to put together, in a brief fashion, information being reported by two investigators I highly respect: Mike Ruppert and Fintan Dunne.
First, a very recent article Fintan posted at his site, Break For News involves an interview he did with Sibel Edmonds, the FBI translator who is being gagged by the US government. Maybe now we know why.
She is talking about cartel-like activity, in which intell groups operate outside of, and penetrate, governments.
I've been reporting this for years.
...READ ON
Even as a judge prepares to permanently silence her, a former FBI translator of intelligence has implicated the US State Department in quashing investigations which had linked the 9/11 terrorist network to a global drug trafficking ring.
Sibel Edmonds, whose closed-door revelations to Congressional inquiries have been declared state secrets, says that as a result, FBI investigations were ordered terminated.
"There are certain points..., where you have your drug related activities combined with money laundering and information laundering, converging with your terrorist activities," Ms. Edmonds told BreakForNews.com. (Interview - 7:00 min.)
"Certain investigations were being quashed, let's say per State Department's request, because it would have affected certain foreign relations [or] affected certain business relations with foreign organizations," she said in an exclusive interview. (Interview - 4:00 min.)
"And, as it has been asserted within the state secret privilege... That was something the State Department did not want to have." (Interview - 15:30 min.)
Edmonds also indicated that the FBI's translation service had been penetrated by an intelligence group not linked to any government.
"Intelligence is also gathered by certain semi-legitimate organizations --to be used for their activities," said Edmonds. "It really does not boil down to countries anymore...[ ] When you have activities involving a lot of money, you have people from different nations involved.... It can be categorized under organized crime, but in a very large scale."
Because of a provisional gag order issued by Judge Reggie B. Walton which prohibits revealing specific details, Edmonds can only paint a picture in the broadest of brush strokes.
But her measured words hint at politically explosive connections between criminal drug/intelligence networks, and the 9/11 attacks.
"You have [a] network of people who obtain certain information and they take it out and sell it to... whomever would be the highest bidder. Then you have people who would be bringing into the country narcotics from the East, and their connections. [It] is only then that you really see the big picture."
"And you see certain semi-legitimate organizations that may very well have a legit front, but with very criminal illegitimate activities --who start coming at you from these investigations."
"And the picture becomes, actually, very clear. Crystal clear."
In December, 2001, a fellow translator with top security clearance tried to recruit Edmonds to a semi-legitimate intelligence network --part of an organization which was itself already a target of FBI investigations.
When Edmonds reported the recruitment approach to her superiors she was fobbed off.
The translator was working on FBI material related to those investigations. Because of that translator's activities, two top targets of FBI investigations left the United States.
That is the type of critical failure undermining any serious investigation of the 9/11 attacks which has emboldened Edmonds to continue to highlight the issues.
Edmonds has testified in closed sessions before the September 11th Commission and both the Judiciary Committee and Select Intelligence Committee of the U.S. Senate. Some lawmakers have huffed and puffed over her revelations, but their rhetoric has proved to be just hot air.
No action has been taken by any of those bodies to substantially address her concerns. Meanwhile the Department of Justice process is stalled by the usual "awaiting a report" tactic.
Despite the disinterest of the FBI or its oversight mechanisms, and the retrospective classification of her testimony to Congressional inquiries as state secrets, Edmonds is resolute --and well past the point of no return in her battle for the truth.
"Over two years have passed," she says. "I'm hoping there will be at least one.. just one Congressman, one Senator, who will be willing to take a stand, and come forward, and put out this information.... And I'm still looking for that one courageous person."
Such a representative will be the exception to the current rule. By way of illustration, Edmonds quotes a recent communication from an unnamed representative:
"Sibel Edmonds will not make any friends in the Congress, if she continues pressuring us and if she continues demanding action. That's not how she will not make friends here -she will make only enemies."
With friends like that --who needs enemies.
"If they don't want to be pressured, then they should not run for office," says Edmonds.
Unsurprisingly, Edmonds' evidence has languished in Congress.
Since October, 2002 the judge in her dismissal suit against the FBI has allowed the government's state secret application to bind her --without ever making his final determination on the issue.
However, as soon as the Motley Rice legal firm subpoenaed her for it's legal suit on behalf of 9/11 victims' families, the government went hotfoot to Bush-appointed Judge Reggie B. Walton, to seek to bar her testimony from the case.
That was a panic move spurred by the prospect of her evidence becoming public, says Edmonds.
Late last week, Judge Walton ordered the Department of Justice to state why "sensitive information cannot be disentangled from nonsensitive information," and why Edmonds cannot proceed with her suit.
If the FBI argues well, Edmond's case could be sunk. On 9th June, the judge will hold an in camera session with government lawyers. He is to announce a final decision on 14th June.
In his latest order, Judge Walton admitted that denying Edmonds her day in court would be "draconian."
Conversely, he also indicated his sympathy with the government's refusal to allow disclosure of any intelligence, by citing a legal precedent:
"...Seemingly innocuous information can be... fitted into place to reveal with starting clarity how the unseen whole must operate."
Perhaps Judge Walton reads the NY Times.
Last month, when an FBI official defended the agency's actions to the NY Times, the terms used were strikingly similar to the words of the judge, last week in his order.
"The problem is that while these pieces of information may look innocuous on their own," the FBI official told the NY Times. "You put them all together and it reveals a picture of sensitive intelligence collection...."
Maybe that coincidence arose because the judge and the FBI read the same newspaper. Perhaps it's that they read the same legal books.
Or sing from the same hymn sheet.
And you thought the various 9/11 inquiries were after the truth?
-------- terrorism
Somali Is Accused of Planning a Terror Attack at a Shopping Center in Ohio
June 15, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/15/national/15terror.html
WASHINGTON, June 14 - A Somali citizen living in Ohio has been charged in an alleged plot by Al Qaeda to bomb an unidentified shopping mall in Columbus, according to an indictment unsealed on Monday by federal prosecutors.
The four-count indictment, brought by a grand jury in Columbus, accused the man, Nuradin M. Abdi, 32, of conspiring, along with a Qaeda member, Iyman Faris, to engage in terrorist acts after traveling to Ethiopia to study what one government document in the case described as "radio usage, guns, guerrilla warfare, bombs and 'anything to damage the enemy.' "
Mr. Abdi, who operated a cellphone business in Columbus, has been in custody since his arrest in November by the immigration authorities. On Monday, prosecutors filed a separate motion asking a federal judge to continue his detention pending his trial on the ground that he is a flight risk.
Law enforcement officials said the plot was still under investigation, but they cautioned that it appeared not to have advanced beyond the discussion stage. The officials expressed doubt that Mr. Abdi had the financial, organizational or technical skills to carry out an attack.
At the center of the government's case against Mr. Abdi is his trip to Ethiopia. The indictment said he concealed his intention to engage in military training by misstating on a government travel application in April 1999 that he planned to travel to Germany and Saudi Arabia for religious and personal reasons.
Instead, prosecutors said, Mr. Abdi made the trip to Ethiopia "to ready himself to participate in violent jihadi conflicts overseas and any activities his Al Qaeda co-conspirators might ask him to perform here in the United States."
Mr. Abdi was also charged with fraud and misuse of documents by claiming that he had been granted valid asylum status in the United States in January 1999, when prosecutors said that he had lied on an asylum application about his past "with the exception of some minor biographical information."
Attorney General John Ashcroft announced the indictment at a Justice Department news conference, repeating his warnings about the threat posed by Al Qaeda. "Current credible intelligence indicates that Al Qaeda wants to hit the United States and to hit us hard," Mr. Ashcroft said. "We know our enemies will go to great lengths to lie in wait and to achieve the death and destruction they desire."
The indictment against Mr. Abdi makes no mention of the alleged plot to blow up a shopping mall. That reference was contained in the motion filed by prosecutors to keep Mr. Abdi in custody. The government's motion said that Mr. Abdi, Mr. Faris and other co-conspirators "initiated a plot to blow up a Columbus area shopping mall, and accepted bomb-making instructions from one of those co-conspirators."
Mr. Abdi was first arrested by the immigration authorities on Nov. 28, and has been held under a deportation order issued by the Department of Homeland Security. An immigration judge revoked his asylum status on Jan. 28. The indictment against him was returned Thursday under seal and made public on Monday.
The indictment said that Mr. Abdi was an associate of Mr. Faris, who is serving a 20-year sentence after pleading guilty last June to providing material support to Al Qaeda. Federal authorities have said that Mr. Faris had been dispatched to the United States by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, an important Qaeda operative and chief organizer of the September 2001 attacks.
Mr. Faris has admitted his involvement in plans to cut the cables supporting the Brooklyn Bridge and another plot that sought to derail trains in New York or Washington.
--------
Al Qaeda May Have Delayed 9/11 Attack
Commission Finds Evidence Pointing To Earlier Date
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41841-2004Jun14.html
The independent commission probing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has found evidence suggesting the attacks were intended to be carried out in May or June of that year, but were postponed by al Qaeda leaders because lead hijacker Mohamed Atta was not ready, according to sources privy to the panel's findings.
New evidence gathered by the commission, including information obtained from U.S.-held detainees, indicates that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, mastermind of the attacks, persuaded al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to postpone the attacks by several months because of the organizational problems, according to the sources, who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the commission's investigation.
That scenario would mark a dramatic revision of the commonly understood narrative of the Sept. 11 attacks and contrasts sharply with prevailing theories of FBI agents investigating the plot. Until now, federal investigators have said the evidence indicates that the attacks were likely planned for a narrow time frame around Sept. 11. If there had been an alternate date, investigators have said, it was probably later in the year.
The possible date postponement is included in a draft report that has been circulated among government and commission officials in recent days, and is expected to be among the topics discussed during a Wednesday hearing focusing on the origins and execution of the Sept. 11 plot. The panel, which is preparing to release its final report in late July, is expected to issue a separate report on Thursday exploring whether U.S. fighter jets may have been able to intercept American Airlines Flight 77 before it struck the Pentagon if they had been dispatched more quickly, according to commission sources.
Commission officials and members declined to discuss publicly the findings or evidence pointing to an earlier date for the hijackings.
Chairman Thomas H. Kean said the timing issue will be addressed, but he declined to comment on any conclusions. He said this week's hearings "will be two of the most interesting hearings that we've had, from the point of view of what we reveal about the plot and plotters and what we reveal about the response. . . . There will be new information."
One official who has seen the findings to be released Wednesday said they are based on "intelligence coming in that they wanted an earlier date. It's something really new."
Another official said the commission's conclusion appeared to be based in part on information gleaned from interrogations of Mohammed, who has been in U.S. custody since March 2003. The new evidence indicates that the original timing of the attacks was postponed for readiness reasons and not in reaction to heightened security in the early summer of 2001, when the CIA, FBI and other agencies were on high alert for a possible al Qaeda strike, several sources said.
Bin Laden had been pushing for the hijackings to be carried out in May or June, but he was persuaded by Mohammed to agree to a delay because Atta and his conspirators were not prepared, one source said. The leading hijackers did not begin making reconnaissance flights for the hijackings until May, when they began flying transcontinental routes passing through Las Vegas, according to evidence compiled by FBI investigators.
The FBI has long believed that the hijackers were flexible about the date of the attack, but has not previously found credible evidence of an earlier date, according to law enforcement officials. Instead, some bureau investigators have focused on clues suggesting that the attack may have been moved up after the August 2001 arrest of alleged al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota, according to these sources, who requested anonymity because the evidence is classified.
"We've never had a theory that September 11 was supposed to occur earlier than September 11," one law enforcement official said. "There is a theory that it was supposed to be later but was moved up because of [Moussaoui's] arrest."
The subject of the date chosen for the largest terrorist attack in U.S. history has been a matter of widespread speculation and investigation since immediately after the strikes, which killed more than 3,000 in New York, Northern Virginia and Pennsylvania. Journalists and terrorism experts speculated widely on the possible significance of the date, noting, among other things, that it is the anniversary of the day Britain took over Palestine in 1922 under a League of Nations mandate and that "911" is the common U.S. emergency response number.
But FBI investigators and others who have examined the plot in depth have concluded that the evidence suggests the date was fluid, and was probably decided just weeks before the attacks were carried out.
For example, one senior law enforcement official said, before the 19 hijackers bought their tickets from Aug. 25 to Aug. 31, 2001, they spent days researching flights and tickets, according to records of e-mails and computer activity. The searches included many dates, not just Sept. 11, and included East Coast airports other than those used on Sept. 11.
The hijackers were looking for Boeing 757 and 767 jetliners, for which the pilots had trained and on which a half-dozen hijackers had flown as passengers in reconnaissance missions earlier in the summer. The only days they avoided in their research were weekends, the official said. Investigators have found no evidence that the hijackers bought tickets for any other planes on Sept. 11, nor have they concluded that other suspicious passengers were ticketed aboard other flights that day.
"You can see them looking for flights, but they're not looking for Sept. 11, and they're not only looking at Boston, Newark and Dulles," the official said. "It's not until they do all their research that they chose a date. They were not set on that Tuesday."
The issue of the date and how it was chosen is particularly important for many family members of the victims. On a different day, the passenger lists of the targeted jets would have been different, and many who were killed on Sept. 11 might not have been in their offices at the World Trade Center or Pentagon.
Kristen Breitweiser, a member of a group called the Family Steering Committee, said in an interview yesterday that evidence of an earlier date "will be a shock" to many relatives of those who were killed Sept. 11.
"This is an example of al Qaeda postponing something and carrying it through with great success," said Breitweiser, whose husband, Ronald, died at the World Trade Center. "This means they follow through, and I hope we learn from that."
Research editor Margot Williams contributed to this report.{grv}
-------- torture
Torture, War, and Presidential Powers
Antiwar.com
by Rep. Ron Paul
June 15, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=2818
A Wall Street Journal article last week detailed a Department of Defense memo that discusses the legality of interrogation and torture methods in the wake of events at Abu Ghraib. The document reportedly advises that the president has authority to order almost any action, including physical or psychological torture, despite federal laws to the contrary. The Pentagon lawyers who drafted the memo were not shy about blatantly asserting that the Commander-in-Chief can break the law when necessary, as evidenced by this quote from the memo: "Sometimes the greater good for society will be accomplished by violating the literal language of the criminal law."
The Justice Department, for its part, is depressingly silent on the issue. Attorney General Ashcroft refuses to release an existing Justice Department memo on the matter to Congress. Why can't the American people, much less Congress, see how the Justice Department interprets presidential powers and federal torture laws? Why the secrecy? The Justice Department is charged with enforcing federal laws, not suspending them or advising federal agencies to ignore them.
Legal issues aside, the American people and government should never abide the use of torture by our military or intelligence agencies. A decent society never accepts or justifies torture. It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence. Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe. God forbid terrorists take American soldiers or travelers hostage and torture them as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Ghraib.
The greater issue presented by the Defense Department memo, however, is the threat posed by unchecked executive power. Defense Department lawyers essentially argue that a president's powers as Commander-in-Chief override federal laws prohibiting torture, and the Justice Department appears to agree. But the argument for extraordinary wartime executive powers has been made time and time again, always with bad results and the loss of our liberties. War has been used by presidents to excuse the imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent, to silence speech, to suspend habeas corpus, and even to control entire private industries.
It is precisely during times of relative crisis that we should adhere most closely to the Constitution, not abandon it. War does not justify the suspension of torture laws any more than it justifies the suspension of murder laws, the suspension of due process, or the suspension of the Second amendment.
We are fighting undeclared wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and an open-ended war against terrorism worldwide. If the president claims extraordinary wartime powers, and we fight undeclared wars with no beginning and no end, when if ever will those extraordinary powers lapse? Since terrorism will never be eliminated completely, should all future presidents be able to act without regard to Congress or the Constitution simply by asserting "We're at war"?
Conservatives should understand that the power given the president today will pass to the president's successors, who may be only too eager to abuse that unbridled power domestically to destroy their political enemies. Remember the anger directed at President Clinton for acting "above the law" when it came to federal perjury charges? An imperial presidency threatens all of us who oppose unlimited state power over our lives.
A strong separation of powers is at the heart of our constitutional liberties. No branch of government should be able to act unilaterally, no matter how cumbersome the legislative process may be. The beauty of the Constitution is that it encourages some degree of gridlock in government, making it harder for any branch to act capriciously or secretly. When we give any president - one man - too much power, we build a foundation for future tyranny.
-----
Accused contractor: Guards told to keep prisoners awake
The Associated Press
6/15/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-06-15-contractor-claims_x.htm
WASHINGTON (AP) - Army guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq kept some prisoners awake for as much as 20 hours a day at the direction of private contractors and military intelligence soldiers, a private interrogator told investigators.
The statement from Steven Stefanowicz conflicts with accounts by some top generals, who contend prison guards were barred from such active participation in interrogations. (Related site: PDF text of Stefanowicz interview)
Stefanowicz also said he may have heard, but did not see, some military police physically abusing a prisoner. Otherwise, he said, he did not see any abuses inside Abu Ghraib like those documented in photos that became public this spring.
Stefanowicz, whose own veracity has been questioned in the official prison investigation, told Army investigators in a sworn statement that Col. Thomas Pappas, the military intelligence chief at Abu Ghraib, personally approved of the sleep deprivation tactics.
Prison guards were given copies of written interrogation plans for each inmate, which were prepared by three-person teams comprised of contractors or military intelligence soldiers, Stefanowicz said in the sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.
Those plans specifically placed one detainee on a "sleep/meal management program" that involved letting the prisoner sleep only in small blocks of time totaling no more than four hours out of every 24, up to a total of three days. The prisoner then would be allowed 12 hours of sleep, Stefanowicz told investigators.
"The MPs are allowed to do what is necessary to keep the detainee awake in the allotted period of time as long as it adheres to approved rules of engagement and proper treatment of the detainee," Stefanowicz said, adding he never ordered MPs to assault a prisoner.
Stefanowicz's statement conflicts with congressional testimony by some top generals and statements by Stefanowicz' employer, CACI International Inc., that private contractors and military intelligence operatives never gave guards orders to take actions that would assist interrogations.
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, now in charge of U.S. prisons in Iraq, and former Iraq commander Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez have said their orders allowed military police to offer information to help interrogators, but they were forbidden to take active roles, such as denying sleep.
CACI President and CEO J.P. "Jack" London has said CACI's contract did not allow its workers to tell MPs or any other soldiers what to do. London has said Army officials have praised Stefanowicz's work and never complained about him.
"In connection with inquiries into our operations in Iraq, we have been assured that our employees had no involvement in any inappropriate activity," CACI said in a news release Sunday.
A Pentagon spokesman did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment Monday night.
Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who oversaw the investigation that documented the abuses at Abu Ghraib, had access to Stefanowicz's statement before writing his report. Taguba agreed with the assertion that military intelligence officials directed the prison guards on activities but disputed Stefanowicz on the issue of whether he saw, engaged in or encouraged abuses. "He clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse," Taguba said of Stefanowicz.
Stefanowicz's lawyer, Henry Hockeimer Jr., said Monday that his client is innocent of wrongdoing and he has gotten no indication his client will face criminal charges.
Six enlisted military police soldiers are facing charges for abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Another has pleaded guilty. Photos from the prison show prisoners being beaten, stripped naked, sexually humiliated and intimidated by dogs.
A 2002 Justice Department memo from Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee told the White House that techniques such as sleep deprivation and isolation "may amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" but don't meet the legal definition of torture.
In his sworn statement to Army investigators, Stefanowicz described one possible instance of abuse on Dec. 20, after he, a military intelligence sergeant and private interpreter John B. Israel interrogated a prisoner in a stairwell. The Taguba report also names Israel, an Iraqi native and naturalized U.S. citizen who worked for a subcontractor to Titan Corp., as possibly being involved in abuses.
Stefanowicz said he walked ahead of two MPs as they took the prisoner back to his isolation cell. When the guards put the prisoner in the "segregation hole," Stefanowicz said, "the sound of the detainee falling or possibly being struck was heard."
Stefanowicz said he and the other interrogation team members confronted the MPs when they returned to an office. One of the MPs was unhappy and agitated when questioned if abuse had occurred, he said.
-----
Torture claims: Egypt bars prison visit
aljazeera
By Asim Khan
Tuesday 15 June 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/33D76ECA-E883-4020-ABE0-B855B810B707.htm
Egypt's Attorney General has cancelled a follow-up visit by members of parliament and the National Security and Defence Committee (NSD) to the Turra prison following allegations of torture and murder.
The cancellation followed an earlier meeting with some detainees, which was prompted by reports of abuse and brutality - including the death of Akram Zuhairi - at the prison.
Zuhairi, a 42-year-old owner of a construction company and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, died on 9 June under dubious circumstances, a Muslim Brotherhood spokesman told Aljazeera.net.
He said that fellow detainees claimed an ''accident'' left Zuhairi with a broken leg while being transferred.
As a diabetic, the injury only worsened Zuhairi's condition.
''We begged them to get x-rays taken or to see a doctor. He was clearly suffering. But they left him for eight days without any medical attention,'' Dr Muhammed Mursi, a MP, quoted the detainess as saying.
Zuhairi was a father of three.
Brotherhood rounded up
The detainees, members of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, were among the 60 rounded up in security sweeps across the country. They were charged with plotting against the state.
''This is a claim the government has used for over 70 years as an excuse to detain people,'' a Brotherhood spokesman said.
''We want this inhuman, illegal treatment of detainees to come to an end. These type of actions are unacceptable and against humanity. They have not even been examined by doctors''
Dr Muhammad Mursi, Member of Parliament
"Many of his [Zuhairi's] colleagues have also been exposed to brutal forms of torture at the hands of the state security in Nasr City," the Committee for Prisoners of Conscience, a human rights body, said in a statement.
The Human Rights Association for the Assistance of Prisoners (HRAAP), another rights group, also voiced concern over increase in complaints of torture by state security officers.
"HRAAP expresses its concern about the continuation of the series of torture and violating the minimum legal rights for prisoners and detainees while calling on the Attorney General to open investigations into the death of Zuhairi,'' a statement said.
Dr Muhammed Mursi, other members of parliament and the NSD were allowed to visit the Turra prison on Wednesday.
They were given permission by the Attorney General to meet nine detainees from the Brotherhood. On Wednesday 9 June ''we met with four out of nine'' detainees and learnt that ''twelve, and not nine had lodged the complaint,'' Dr Mursi said to Aljazeera.net.
He said during their meeting with the detainees they were told that their time had elapsed and were asked to leave.
They were informed that further meetings would be postponed to Saturday 12 June. ''Then it was postponed again to Monday 13 June. But on Sunday all meetings with detainees were cancelled indefinitely,'' Dr Mursi said.
''Strong suspicions that the 15 deaths resulted from torture and abuse at Egyptian Police stations'' Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights
He said the MPs and members of the NSD have ''confirmed the allegations of abuse and torture by interrogators. A comprehensive report will be submitted to parliament within the next few days.''
''We want this inhuman, illegal treatment of detainees to come to an end. These type of actions are unacceptable and against humanity. They have not even been examined by doctors.''
When asked about news reports concerning doctors being allowed to visit detainees, Dr Mursi said, ''That is not true, only MPs and members of the NSD who were allowed to visit them.''
Last week, the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights issued a report charging that at least 15 Egyptians had died while in police custody between April 2003 and 2004.
The organisation said it had ''strong suspicions that the 15 deaths resulted from torture and abuse at Egyptian police stations.''
The figure represented only a fraction of the problem, the statement said, referring to reports of hundreds of other cases of torture across the country.
A spokesman for the Egyptian Interior Ministry, which is responsible for detentions and interrogations, said the ministry had no comment on the allegations.
--------
Vatican releases new data on Inquisition
The Associated Press
6/15/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-15-vatican_x.htm
VATICAN CITY (AP) - Torture, burning at the stake and other punishment for the faithful condemned as witches or heretics by church tribunals during the centuries-long Inquisition was not as widespread as commonly believed, the Vatican said Tuesday.
Research findings into the dark era in church history were praised by Pope John Paul II as part of his efforts to identify wrongs it had committed.
During the Catholic Church's millennium celebrations in 2000, the pope apologized for the sins of Catholics made in the name of their faith throughout the ages, including such abuses as those committed during the Inquisition, a systematic crackdown by Church officials in defense of doctrinal orthodoxy.
The research, presented at a news conference, grew out of a conference of historians and other scholars in 1998 at the Vatican as John Paul sought to objectively assess the Inquisition, which stretched from the 13th to the 19th centuries.
The experts included historians and other scholars, with specialties ranging from the medieval period to more modern times, and included non-Catholics. They came from Europe, including many of the countries involved in the Inquisition such as Spain, Portugal, and Italy, as well as the United States and Canada.
"Before seeking pardon, it is necessary to have a precise knowledge of the facts," John Paul wrote in a letter Tuesday in which he expressed his "strong appreciation" for the research, which is contained in a 783-page book. For the public, "the image of the Inquisition represents almost the symbol ... of scandal," the pope wrote.
At the news conference, Church officials and others involved in the project said statistics and other data demolished long-held beliefs about the Inquisition, including that torture and executions were commonly used.
"For the first time we studied the Inquisition in its entirety, from its beginnings to the 19th century, and it's the first time scholars have met together to try to study" it in its whole, said Agostino Borromeo, a professor of history of Catholic and other Christian Confessions at Rome's Sapienza University.
Borromeo, curator of the work, said, for example, that while there were some 125,000 trials of suspected heretics in Spain, research found that about 1% of the defendants were executed, far fewer than commonly believed. Many of the burnings at the stake which took place during the centuries of the Inquisition actually were carried out by non-church tribunals, experts told reporters.
Cardinal Georges Cottier, a Vatican theologian, stressed the need to have the facts before making judgments about a period of history. "You can't ask pardon for deeds which aren't there," he said.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Senators Complain Iraq Material Withheld
By KATHERINE PFLEGER SHRADER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44702-2004Jun15.html
WASHINGTON - Senate Intelligence Committee members are frustrated with the amount of material the CIA wants to keep secret in a congressional report expected to be highly critical of the intelligence community's assessments of prewar Iraq.
Because of the strict rules governing classified material, the members are limited in how much they can say about even the extent of the material in their 400-page report that has been classified by the CIA. However, through a spokeswoman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the top Democrat on the committee, said the agency has been overly conservative in deciding what could not be released to the public.
When asked about the amount of material withheld, Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, looked over the top of his glasses, furrowed his brow, and asked: "Do I look happy?"
The committee has been working for a year to examine the quality and quantity of prewar intelligence on former President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, his ties to terrorist groups and the threat he posed to the region, among other lines of inquiry. While the bulk of the report is done, the members are still handling disputes over the conclusions. A final vote on the report, which could have come Tuesday, was postponed until at least Thursday.
Speculation has swirled for nearly two weeks about whether the report was a factor in CIA Director George Tenet's decision to resign, despite his public insistence that his upcoming departure is for family reasons. Speaking generally, Roberts said the report is "not flattering" to the intelligence community. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., called it "solid, powerful and very tough stuff."
At least a half dozen committee members interviewed Tuesday were eager to get the report completed.
Heading into a closed committee session on the subject, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said, "The question is, can we get through this redaction process in a way that keeps our report intact? I think that is going to be a concern."
Earlier this week, CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said the agency has been working closely with the committee to declassify the report in a way that protects intelligence sources and methods - "highly sensitive information that if disclosed could be harmful to national security."
The CIA has been conducting a declassification and fact-checking review since May, a process that Mansfield called "painstaking work." The agency declined to comment Tuesday.
Roberts hopes to release a public version of the report shortly after the Fourth of July recess. His spokeswoman, Sarah Ross Little, said the committee intentionally kept sensitive information out of the report, hoping the declassification process would go smoothly.
Now, members are considering their options if a compromise can't be reached with the CIA. For instance, the senators could take a highly unusual step and vote to release the report, called the "nuclear option."
If the agency is trying to bury negative findings under classification, Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said "that is unacceptable."
Added Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.: "This administration has done everything possible to make it hard to find the facts, and certainly it's been the most inventive administration I've seen in terms of coming up with arguments for secrecy."
--------
Could Fighter Jets Have Stopped 9/11?
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42555-2004Jun15?language=printer
WASHINGTON - The nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies did not discover the plot. Airport security screeners did not find the hijackers' weapons.
But could military jet fighters, the final line of defense, have stopped or lessened the destruction on Sept. 11, 2001, by shooting down airliners aimed at some of the nation's best-known buildings?
On Thursday, the Sept. 11 commission will end its series of public hearings by taking up that question. They will examine the performance on that day of the Federal Aviation Administration, which manages the nation's air traffic; and NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which defends U.S. airspace.
Kristen Breitweiser of Monmouth, N.J., whose husband, Ronald, died in the World Trade Center, said a lack of foresight on the part of those agencies was compounded by officials' mistakes on the morning of Sept. 11.
"I think we were ill-prepared, and I think people showed poor judgment," Breitweiser said. The plane that crashed into the Pentagon, in particular, could have been stopped, she contends.
Both NORAD and FAA officials respond to the criticism by describing how they've changed since Sept. 11. They have established chains of communication. Generals have been given authority to order the fighter pilots to shoot down hijacked aircraft. The number of warplanes on alert has been increased, and fighters are put on patrol over U.S. cities and events deemed possible terrorist targets.
When the Sept. 11 terrorists struck, the United States and Canada were defended by 20 fighter aircraft, arrayed in pairs in 10 locations, said Lt. Col. Roberto Garza, a NORAD spokesman. They were kept armed and fueled, with pilots nearby, ready to take off in less than 15 minutes.
The fighter defenses were a remnant of the Cold War, when North America worried more about intercepting Soviet bombers attacking from across the Arctic Circle. Of those pairs, six were on the East Coast, a NORAD spokesman said: two in Massachusetts, two in Virginia and two in Florida. The others were in Canada, Alaska, the West Coast and Texas.
But their focus was directed outward, toward threats that might approach American coastlines. The Florida fighters, for example, had their eyes on Cuba, which maintains an air force of MiG fighters.
Pre-Sept. 11, the view was that terrorist hijackings were essentially political acts, not necessarily destructive. Hijackers were expected to order the plane to fly to a destination, or land it and negotiate for the release of their hostages. Hijackings over the United States were a problem for law enforcement, not a military one.
The best information about the sequence of events on Sept. 11 comes from a timeline provided by NORAD in the months after the attacks. NORAD spokesman Garza said some aspects of the timeline now are considered inaccurate, however, but he refused to specify which ones.
The two Boston flights that hit the World Trade Center, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, were the first to take off and the first to be hijacked. According to the NORAD timeline, the FAA informed NORAD of the hijacks at 8:40 a.m. and 8:43 a.m., respectively. Flight 11 hit the North Tower a few minutes later.
A 8:52 a.m., two F-15 Eagle fighters rocketed into the sky from Otis Air National Guard Base, Mass., too late and too far away to have any hope of reaching Flight 175, which struck the South Tower 10 minutes later.
Around this time, at 8:55 a.m., American Airlines Flight 77, aloft from Washington, broke from its flight path. The hijackers turned off the plane's transponder, and it stopped sending data to air traffic controllers. The FAA lost radar contact with the plane.
It is at this point that relatives of the family members say the FAA and NORAD could have responded differently. They had 45 minutes until the plane would hit the Pentagon.
By then, American skies were in chaos. At one point, the FAA was tracking 11 planes that it feared could have been hijacked, said Laura Brown, a spokeswoman for the agency. Air Force fighters were taking off from bases unarmed, and someone floated the idea of using one of them to ram a hijacked airliner.
Still, two events would have been required for the Pentagon strike to have been averted.
First, President Bush would have had to have ordered that any hijacked airliners be shot down; the military's rules of engagement did not allow for that without such presidential intercession. Bush ultimately did make that call, but only after the Pentagon was hit.
Second, NORAD's F-16 Fighting Falcons at Langley Air Force Base, near Norfolk, Va., would have had to have been launched sooner.
Why they weren't is unclear.
According to NORAD's timeline, those fighters received the scramble order at 9:24 a.m., 30 minutes after Flight 77 made an unauthorized turn. That suggests the FAA took an inexplicably long time to alert NORAD. But Jane Garvey, former head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said it had informed NORAD earlier in a telephone call.
Retired Maj. Gen. Larry K. Arnold, who was in charge of domestic air defenses on the day of the attacks, said it was "physically possible" that fighter jets could have beaten the civilian airliner to the Pentagon had they been activated earlier.
Another decision not made: NORAD did not launch all available fighters even when it became apparent that multiple suicide hijackings had taken place.
"It's inexplicable why they did not get air protection up in time to thwart that crash," Breitweiser said. She also asked why the F-15s sent to New York were not sent after Flight 77.
The three nearest fighters - an extra armed plane happened to have been ready at Langley - took off at 9:30 a.m. At 9:40 a.m., when Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, they were still 100 miles away.
Had they made it, the pilots and their commanders would have to live with the consequences of shooting down a plane filled with mostly innocent people. Some military officials have suggested they probably would be second-guessed for not allowing the passengers more time to try to take the plane back.
In addition, shooting down an airliner over a populated area has the chance of creating even more destruction. The fighter's missiles most likely would have created large pieces of wreckage, or created a single flaming, out-of-control missile careening into the city. The 124 lives lost at the Pentagon would have been spared, but what if the wreckage had hit a nearby apartment tower?
By 10 a.m., the FAA had ordered every nonmilitary plane in the skies to land. NORAD was tracking United Airlines Flight 93, the fourth hijacked plane, and Bush had given permission to shoot down any more hijacked airliners. Fighters over Washington circled, waiting to see where the plane would go.
At 10:03 a.m., it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania after its passengers tried to retake the aircraft.
-------- propaganda wars
New objections to 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
Group asks public to call executives at theaters where film critical of White House will be shown
June 15, 2004
(CNN/Money)
http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/15/news/newsmakers/moore_maf/
NEW YORK - Amid Disney's previous objections, Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" is scheduled for release next week, but the movie that criticizes the Bush administration's policies in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks faces another challenge.
A conservative organization called Move America Forward, formed in May to rally support for U.S. troops and the war on terror, has asked the public to call and e-mail executives at theater chains scheduled to show the film, according to Variety.com.
"Michael Moore has the right to free speech," said MAF Chairman Howard Kaloogian, according to Variety. "But so do millions of Americans who find his anti-military propaganda and attacks on our troops offensive."
The group has supplied phone contacts and e-mail addresses for executives at national and local theaters where Moore's film is scheduled to play.
Despite the calls to pull the film, any attention "Fahrenheit 9/11" receives is likely to boost its already high profile. The film won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival this spring.
"One of the most important lessons everyone can take from 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' whether they support the war in Iraq, oppose the war or are undecided, is that we need less censorship in this country, not more," said Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Releasing, which is distributing the film, according to Variety.
Previously, the movie was scheduled to be released by Disney's Miramax unit, but the entertainment conglomerate balked at the release amid the film's critical content.
The movie will now be released though Lions Gate, IFC Films and the Fellowship Adventure Group, which is run by Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein.
-------- us politics
John Kerry, Political Placebo
"These Colors Don't Run"
By JOHN CHUCKMAN,
June 15, 2004
Counterpunch
http://www.counterpunch.org/chuckman06152004html
Given its strutting brownshirt quality, here is a slogan that might well have been coined by America's most articulate political thug, Pat Buchanan.
But the slogan, with little waving-flag pictures, is being used for bumper stickers selling John Kerry. Good marketers know that you want an offering for every niche, so here's Kerry for the belly-over-the-belt, beer-belching, walrus-mustache set.
Niche marketing also explains goofy pieces about Kerry's military service versus that of Republican chicken hawks (for those unfamiliar, "chicken hawks" is an informal American political term for men who never fought yet advocate sending others off to war, a group largely, but not exclusively, consisting of Republicans). Never mind the moral obtuseness of opposing an armchair-psychopath like Bush with arguments in favor of a man who did his own killing, there's a weird market niche out there to be reached.
They sell everything in America. I recall the many patriotic displays of flags, buttons, and sweats in parking lots, supermarkets, and doughnut shops--all for sale, day and night, right after 9/11. Many claimed to be at reduced prices or even offered at two-for-one in especially touching displays of national feeling.
I recognize that Kerry needs all the advertising and marketing he can get. Every niche counts for one of the most uninspiring candidates in memory, although competition for the distinction of "most uninspiring" is tight in America. The nation's political system seems capable only of advancing con men, bumblers, and paste-board cutouts anymore, although, occasionally, as in the case of the late Great Communicator, a single man combines all three identities. A network of powerful interests much like rivers and tributaries running together to form one roaring cataract sweeps away any candidate in a major party who might actually stand for something other than the imperial ethos.
God knows Kerry has never represented much of substance. Efforts to sell him are likely wasted. Ask any professional marketer whether he or she thinks Bud Lite, even with the best marketing effort, can outsell Bud. If there's a better description of John Kerry than "Bush Lite," it eludes me.
Kerry, the boring, monotone moose of American politics, has hung up his set of Senate-fundraising cummerbunds--or at least restricted photographers access to the galas when he still hitches them up--in favor of casual plaid shirts. Well, he isn't completely consistent about the plaid shirts: it's a matter of which group he's addressing whether he wants to suggest being a regular guy or society swell. When he does wear the plaid--always immaculately pressed to make sure no one mistakes him for someone who actually works for a living--there is more than a passing nod to millionaire, perpetual candidate, Lamar Alexander, who made a hobby of running for the Republican nomination sporting custom-made red lumberjack shirts.
People in struggling or oppressed lands who dream of being able to vote freely will be distressed to learn that America squanders her national elections on such costumed silliness, but it really cannot be otherwise when candidates have almost nothing to say.
Kerry's casual shirts are probably custom-made, too, with enough of them in each of his wardrobes to provide a fresh change three times a day. After all, Kerry is a very wealthy man, coming from a privileged background and having married the fabulously-rich heiress to the Heinz Pickle and Canned Spaghetti fortune (no, she has no connection to the company, now part of a monstrous agglomerate, she just sits on mountains of cash it generated). You can see where Kerry's sympathy and understanding for the little guy might come from.
There are precedents. George Washington inherited wealth and also married a very wealthy lady, Martha Custis, probably the richest widow in the colonies. Washington was famous for his warm qualities, too. The icy, piercing stare given to anyone for so much as touching his sleeve unbidden was legendary. His private characterization of early militiamen in Massachusetts, the men who genuinely had risked everything to start the revolt against Britain that he and other aristocrats then took over, was along the lines of filthy rabble.
Now, Kerry is not built of quite the same stern stuff as the Father of His Country. Washington would never have worn a plaid shirt, but a lot has changed since his day when maybe the wealthiest one-percent of Americans could vote. Now, most Americans can vote, so you can't be standoffish and you must expose yourself to the mob if you want to become President. The wealthiest one-percent now are limited strictly to determining with their campaign contributions which candidates the rabble sees on its ballots.
But Washington did sometimes coyly draw his silk frock coat over his cummerbund for touching moments when he spoke to people who weren't fellow aristocrats: he was skilled at acts like removing his glasses as his eyes went misty addressing the men, whose poor promises for pay he would in some cases later buy up at severe discount. You wouldn't recognize his capacity for empathy with ordinary men, though, from the monstrous bill he submitted to Congress after the Revolution for everything you can imagine including the wagon trains of wine he consumed at table while the rabble often did without a decent meal.
It's true that wealthy people sometimes make inspired leaders--<F.D.R>. comes to mind as does the greatest prince in Europe's history, Elizabeth I--but such people give strong signs of their remarkable talents long before they've reached Kerry's age. You don't hide your light until the near approach of senility. More often than not, you get Bushes or Rockefellers from the likes of Kerry, people with no more motivation for serving than capping their family's list of achievements with the nation's highest office.
Kerry rarely speaks of working people or the poor, rather he speaks of "the middle class," feel-good language adopted by contemporary politicians to cover just about everyone in the country down to McDonald's employees with more than one-month's service. You are not supposed to speak of class differences in America. Everyone there is middle-class, unless extremely wealthy like Mr. Kerry or Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney or Mr. Rumsfeld, something not to be mentioned, or so poor as not to be worth mentioning. Economically-marginal Americans like to be called "middle class," just as they like to brag about their kids "going to college," even when the kids are working towards a degree in playground supervision or fast-food management in one of America's countless sleazy, for-profit diploma mills.
Mr. Kerry, of course, didn't attend a diploma mill. Only the best for him, the Yale of George and Daddy Bush. Incidentally, Bush's graduating Yale is often advanced as an argument for his actual intelligence being higher than the public's perception. But those old schools just love accepting the sons and daughters of rich patrons, and they manage to graduate them virtually always. You don't build fat institutional endowments by flunking guys like Georgie Bush. Even Oxford and Cambridge in England follow the practice, accepting and graduating some of the most mediocre members of the Royal Family.
America's love affair with everyone's being middle class nicely serves the establishment's belligerent foreign policy. It just doesn't count for much when you kill peasants somewhere on the periphery of the empire, it's a bit like stepping on ants while doing your gardening, and Kerry knows, firsthand, about killing peasants. He and his merry band of men buzzed up and down the rivers of Vietnam in a boat shooting people too poor and ignorant to understand the great blessings of liberty being offered them.
That experience may equip Kerry to handle the revolt of Iraqi peasants against American occupation. After all, in Vietnam they didn't bother with stripping prisoners naked and smearing excrement on them. That was a war for real men. They took prisoners up in helicopters and threw them out from several thousand feet if they didn't give the right response, and frequently even when they did give the right response. It just made for one less gook (the affectionate nickname American troops bestowed on the locals). When America's good old boys tired of such vicious games, they just napalmed whole villages instead of bothering to find out what should or should not be attacked. That's how you build a "body count" of about three million.
Kerry's statements on foreign policy indicate, as they are intended to do, that he is ready and willing to kill and maim for whatever are America's interests of the moment abroad. Of course, he doesn't say just those words, but what he does say carries those implications. Never mind any emphasis on diplomacy, international institutions, or cooperation--that's all sissy stuff. On the issue of Israel's bloody occupation of the Palestinians, a dreary, deadening reality at the heart of much of America's current trouble in the world, Kerry sounds even more fanatical than Bush.
Of course, the one comforting thought about an idiotic slogan like "These colors don't run," is that it is so plainly false. The colors ran like a cheap dye in Vietnam and Cambodia, leaving a trail of death, disillusionment, and broken promises. And the colors ran again in Somolia where an arrogant people busied themselves more with trying to shoot-up the bad guys than they did with feeding desperate people.
A stark summary of what actually has occurred over the last few years highlights the slogan's goonish nature. The only attack on America was by nineteen fanatics with virtually no weapons who all died. It is positively inspiring that Old Glory, imperial symbol of the world's mightiest country, didn't run on such a challenging field of battle. Old Glory also withstood the heroic assault and occupation of two pathetically-poor countries whose combined capacity for defense was roughly comparable to the state of Missouri.
How could you lose with cruise missiles, stealth bombers, high-tech fragmentation bombs, the poison of depleted uranium, plus all the money and means imaginable to bribe officials and reward disloyalty? It was indeed a shining achievement, and if you recall John Kerry's voice standing against any of it, you heard something the world missed.
The examples are countless of headstrong people like Americans learning hard lessons only by banging their heads into walls. A second dose of Bush's truly destructive leadership will likely do more for America's ailments than taking a placebo like John Kerry.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Palo Verde Nuclear Plant shutdown has utilities scrambling
65,000 lost power after grid glitch
Max Jarman
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 15, 2004
http://www.azcentral.com/php-bin/clicktrack/print.php?referer=http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0615Power15.html
A power grid malfunction early Monday sparked blackouts in the West Valley, Wickenburg and Tucson and idled three major power plants, including the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station.
The plants shut down automatically when they lost outside power. The shutdowns prevented a chain reaction similar to the one that caused last summer's enormous widespread East Coast blackout.
"The system functioned as it was supposed to," said Jim McDonald, a spokesman for Arizona Public Service Co.
To stabilize the grid after the plant outages, officials at APS and Tucson Electric Power ordered power cut to a combined 65,000 customers at 7:45 a.m.
"Some lost power, and some just saw their lights dim," McDonald said.
Power had been restored to all of the affected customers by 10 a.m.
--------
Records Show Enron Manipulation, Washington State Utility Says
By Peter Behr
The Washington Post
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42009-2004Jun14.html
Confidential Enron Corp. accounting records show that its traders were manipulating electricity prices on nearly every day of the year-long West Coast electricity crisis in 2000-2001, Washington state utility officials said yesterday.
The new trading documents were obtained by lawyers for the Snohomish County Public Utility District, the same small municipal power provider that last month released tapes of profanity-laced conversations by Enron traders bragging about their trading schemes and mocking consumers hit by soaring power prices.
Snohomish, which had to raise its electricity rates by 50 percent when the prices spiked in 2000, signed a $122 million long-term power contract with Enron early in 2001, but canceled it after accounting scandals enveloped the Houston company. Enron's bankruptcy attorneys have sued Snohomish and other utilities that also canceled contracts, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in contract termination penalties.
The new documents allegedly show Enron manipulating the market on more than 400 of 537 days from January 2000 to June 2001, Snohomish said.
The accounting records allow investigators to track Enron behavior, Snohomish assistant general counsel Eric Christensen said. In one example, Enron purchased a block of power from California's power grid operators on May 22, 2000, at the start of the crisis. After selling it to an Oregon utility and buying it back, it sold the power back to California that same day, after the state declared an energy emergency, and made a profit of $222,678, Christensen said.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) castigated the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for not obtaining the accounting records and tape transcripts itself and then for "obstructing" Snohomish's attempts to get the information. "Whose side is FERC really on?" Cantwell asked.
At one point, Cantwell said, FERC attorneys and the Justice Department tried to block Snohomish from obtaining the Enron trader tapes, which were in the custody of prosecutors investigating Enron's trading schemes. Justice Department lawyers had not transcribed the tapes or listened to them, and after a FERC administrative judge intervened, the tapes were turned over to Snohomish.
Four years after the power crisis, legal battles drag on before the commission, in various courts and in the Enron bankruptcy proceeding, over how much Enron and other power marketers owe West Coast consumers.
The utility got one of the accounting reports from an Enron consultant and another from Enron itself a month ago after lengthy wrangling, and delivered them and trader tape transcripts to FERC. "The commission will thoroughly review the material and determine what new information if any it contains," said agency spokesman Bryan Lee, who added that FERC is still considering the final sanctions it will impose on Enron.
Snohomish said that several of the traders' calls document Enron's manipulation of its contract. In one, an Enron vice president advised a company attorney to make negotiations with Snohomish "sound like we're in a competitive process . . . or some [expletive] like that, you know. . . . It's all how well you can weave these lies together."
The lawyer laughed. "I feel like I'm being corrupted now," she said. "No," the executive replied, "this is marketing."
-------- OTHER
-------- poverty
Silva Renews Call for Fund to End Hunger
By ALAN CLENDENNING
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004; 2:49 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A43758-2004Jun15?language=printer
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Brazil's president renewed his call Tuesday for an international fund to eliminate hunger and said a tax should be placed on arms sales and international financial transactions to fund development in the Third World.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, speaking at a U.N. conference of 180 nations, said poor countries won't solve their problems unless they can feed their citizens.
"There are millions of people who will not have their breakfast today, they will not have their lunches and they will not have dinner," Silva said.
"Hunger not only kills, it withdraws the capability to live and to work," added Brazil's first elected leftist president.
After taking office last year, Silva vowed to eliminate hunger in South America's largest country by starting a "Zero Hunger" program aimed at serving 11 million of Brazil's 178 million people at the end of his first four-year term.
The U.N. estimates that there are between 800,000 and 1 billion people in the world who do not eat as much food as they need. One child dies from hunger every five seconds, and lack of food kills around 10 million people annually.
But developing countries also need huge infrastructure improvements to build roads and bridges and improve port facilities, according to delegates at the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development.
Silva said money to fund development needs could be raised through a tax on international financial transactions linked to tax havens that corporations use to avoid levies in the countries where they do business.
He also defended his idea of taxing international arms transactions - a move some humanitarian groups criticized as akin to taking "blood money."
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said poor countries face a critical shortage of funding for development needs that could help lift their populations out of misery.
"The resources we need should not be thought of as charity, as an imposition," Annan said. "They are ultimately an investment in the future well-being and security of the world."
Annan did not directly address Silva's ideas on how to raise development funds, but said world leaders must "come up with ideas that are not only technically feasible but have a chance of broad political support."
The U.N. forum is bringing together ministers of the world's richest and poorest countries in Sao Paulo, Brazil's financial and industrial capital, amid tight security. Thousands of soldiers toting semiautomatic rifles were posted at street corners and on overpasses.
Forum delegates also say poor countries will grab a larger share of world trade if they can find ways to reduce trade barriers among themselves. They could also use advances as a way to put pressure on richer countries to get rid of trade barriers.
Silva announced plans for new talks on tariff reductions among 44 developing countries who signed the Global System of Trade Preferences. He also said he hopes to enlist 40 new member countries from the developing world.
Humanitarian groups welcomed Silva's announcement, but warned that sudden liberalization of free trade between developing countries could hurt the world's poorest nations.
While Brazilian farmers use advanced technology, millions of Indian farmers could be wiped out if Brazilian agricultural products flooded the Indian market, said Katia Maia of Oxfam International.
"Less developed countries must retain the right to protect vulnerable farm sectors and infant industries," she said.
But forum delegates said the elimination of agricultural trade advantages in wealthy countries would translate into a better life for destitute farmers with few other employment possibilities in developing nations.
Their most bitter complaint: Generous subsidies in the United States and the European Union that give farmers a big competitive advantage over producers from poor countries.
UNCTAD held its last forum in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2000 just months after the WTO's attempt to launch a new round of trade negotiations in Seattle collapsed amid violent anti-globalization street protests.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Iraqi artists depict anger over Abu Ghraib
Twenty-five artists are displaying sculptures, paintings, and installations at a Baghdad gallery
By Nicholas Blanford
The Christian Science Monitor
June 15, 2004
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0615/p07s01-woiq.html
BAGHDAD - If one image symbolized the US-led coalition's victory over Saddam Hussein it wasthe toppling of the dictator's statue in central Baghdad last April. Yet that signal moment has been replaced by a simpler motif - a man wearing a ragged cloak, his head covered by a bag and his arms outstretched in an terrible, but unintended, parody of Jesus' suffering on the cross.
That image of a detainee at the US-run prison at Abu Ghraib on the western edge of Baghdad has come to symbolize for many Iraqis how the dream of liberation and self-determination has turned into the nightmare of occupation and violence.
The abuse at Abu Ghraib generated intense rage and calls for revenge throughout Iraq and much of the Arab world. But a handful of Iraqis have forsaken the passion of street protests and demonstrations and instead channeled their anger into producing works of art, a creative protest of the Abu Ghraib scandal.
"It is our duty as artists to feel what our countrymen are feeling and suffering," says Qasim Alsabti, the deputy chairman of the Iraqi Union of Artists.
Mr. Alsabti was one of 25 Iraqi artists who have produced a series of sculptures, paintings, and installations depicting the horrors of Abu Ghraib. The exhibits are being shown at the Hewar Art Gallery in the Wazerieh district of central Baghdad.
He created a life-size figure of a woman wrapped in a bloodstained white shroud. It symbolizes the rape of women detainees in Abu Ghraib, says Alsabti, who heard of allegations of women prisoners being raped at Abu Ghraib five months before the scandal broke.
"There was a letter circulating in Fallujah from a woman inside Abu Ghraib," he says. "She was begging the resistance to bomb Abu Ghraib and bring down the walls on their heads so that their suffering would end. I felt like screaming when I heard this. I wanted to draw the attention of the American people."
The US military is in the process of releasing prisoners from Abu Ghraib in periodic batches with the aim of reducing the number of detainees to 2,000. Another 585 prisoners were released Monday. The inmates were driven out of the prison in three buses through a crowd of waiting relatives.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the number of detainees at the prison had fallen to 3,291 from 6,527 in March.
The US military plans to hold 4,000 to 5,000 detainees by the time sovereignty is transferred from the coalition to an Iraqi interim government on June 30. They will be held at Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in the south and Camp Redemption at Abu Ghraib.
There are no plans by the new government to demolish the facility, despite a pledge by President George W. Bush to tear the prison down. Ghazi al-Yawar, the new president, said that the prison had cost $100 million and should not be wasted.
"We need every single dollar we have in order to rebuild our country instead of demolishing and rebuilding" he said.
But for many Iraqis, including artists like Alsabti, Abu Ghraib has become synonymous with what they see as the injustices of the occupation.
"It's like an adviser from Saddam Hussei's regime has come back to Iraq and is now advising the Americans," he says.
The Hewar gallery is a popular meeting place for artists and intellectuals, a place for them to sit shaded from the fierce noon heat by leafy trees, smoke cigarettes, and sip scalding glasses of tea.
The leitmotif of the Abu Ghraib pieces of art is the hooded detainee. One artistic rendition is a torso and hooded head made of white plaster, splattered with red paint to simulate blood. Another structure of polystyrene and plaster depicts manacled feet and hands. Another is a thin human figure made from a single length of linked chain.
Perhaps the most striking exhibits are the three sculptures by Abdel-Karim Khalil, a professional artist for 22 years. One of them is a foot-high rendition of the classic hooded figure with his arms outstretched. The other two are carved from blocks of yellow-veined marble.
"It took me about 10 days to carve it," Mr. Khalil says.
He says that many artists have found creative inspiration not just in the abuses at Abu Ghraib but also the general rigors of living under military occupation.
"Some artists used to be neutral, but now there are artists, poets, and writers who have all reached the decision that the Americans are destroyers. It has given them a new sense of purpose in art," he says.
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Kerry's campaign has shut out the anti-war movement
By ROBERT KOEHLER
Guest Commentary
June 15, 2004
New Hampshire Union Leader
http://www.theunionleader.com/articles_showfast.html?article=39193
THE ELECTION ceased to be just a vaguely troubling reality TV show for me one day two weeks ago, when a Kerry fund-raiser hung up on me.
Suddenly, ouch. I was left with a dead receiver and a feeling of disconnect I could no longer ignore.
Is the war really off the table in this year's Presidential race? Is the nation's central agony and 50-50 schism a non-issue between the major contenders? Has that venerable verbal team of "participatory" and "democracy" been unyoked, and if so, what are we left with? Spectator democracy?
But they still want your 50 bucks.
All I'd done was push the guy on Iraq. Believe me, I wanted to make a contribution; I just needed to hear a single word of acknowledgment that the senator was against the occupation. One word, and I'd gratefully have bled green for the "Let's Go For It" campaign.
This poor guy. He couldn't lie, so he squirmed as politely as he could, but when I wouldn't shut up about it he finally, desperately, wished me a nice day and improvised an exit strategy.
This encounter was so troubling, I decided to call Kerry's central campaign headquarters, in Washington, D.C., which only confirmed the worst.
The anti-war voice, the soul of John Kerry's support and a prime source of his funding (both moveon.org and the Howard Dean organization have been making all-out e-mail appeals on Kerry's behalf) is totally shut out of this campaign.
The position articulated for me by Kerry media spokesman Bill Burton was Wolfowitz-lite. It wasn't just that the candidate's single departure from administration strategy was to put Iraqis under a NATO/U.N. boot heel rather than a strictly American one; it's that the vision he expounded was unmitigated by the least doubt that bombing is to democracy what April showers are to May flowers.
My first question to Burton was provoked by this line from Kerry's most detailed position statement on the war (posted at www.johnkerry.com): "The hard truth is that we know that more lives will be lost until the mission is truly accomplished."
Exactly what, I asked Burton, is our mission in Iraq? Astonishingly, he refused to evince the least skepticism that ongoing U.S. presence in Iraq - despite Abu Ghraib, 11,000 civilian dead, a wrecked infrastructure, widespread depleted uranium contamination and a united Shiite-Sunni opposition - is anything but beneficial.
For John Kerry, presumptive Democratic nominee for President of the United States, our mission, according to his spokesman, is precisely the same as Bush's backup cover story No. 3: "To create a stable democracy in Iraq." There's no quagmire, no covert agenda to control oil reserves and gain a strategic foothold, only noble purpose and Kerry's promise to be as profligate a spender of the lives of America's youth as Bush.
And then our interview got worse. Kerry, disastrously, is choosing to run as Dukakis-in-a-tank.
How do you deal with terrorists? You crush 'em, said Burton, continually shutting down the conversation when I brought up the wimp concept of "root causes."
There lay only danger and weakness, apparently. The least suggestion that injustice may be a cause of global insecurity "is giving terrorists a cover." End of conversation.
And the insurgency that's now devouring American and Iraqi lives at such a heartbreaking rate? It's the work of extremists, utterly without legitimacy (or "root causes"). No one's fighting back because of dead or disappeared loved ones, middle-of-the-night raids and humiliating checkpoints.
"The U.S. is there to help build a democracy and a peaceful future for Iraq," Burton said. "The folks who are fighting against the U.S. do not have the same goals."
Click, rewind.
This was one of the most frustrating conversations I've ever had in my life - and I was calling as a friend! I want Kerry to win. He's solid on every other issue, sometimes downright visionary, e.g.: "Make the U.S. energy independent of Middle East oil in 10 years - and create 500,000 jobs by investing in energy renewable sources, such as ethanol, solar and wind." We've got five months, folks. As crying as the need is to register voters and speak out against the madness of George Bush, we also need to rescue the Kerry campaign from itself. I urge everyone who opposes this war not to simply hope for the best, but let the candidate know, vehemently, how you feel. Call his campaign office: (202) 712-3000.
By God, we can fight for democracy on our own soil.
Robert Koehler, an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist, is an editor at Tribune Media Services and a nationally syndicated writer. His e-mail address is bkoehler@tribune.com.
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Classes Train GOP Convention Protesters
By SARA KUGLER
The Associated Press
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44446-2004Jun15.html
NEW YORK - Passing up road trips, beach vacations and barbecues, thousands of anti-Bush demonstrators are heading to summer school to learn how to stage successful sit-ins and what to do if pepper spray burns their eyes. Welcome to Convention Protesting 101.
Before the GOP convention begins Aug. 30, veteran activists will train protesters in street tactics, legal issues, public relations and first aid. Their aim: creating a force of demonstrators to carry out safe and organized protests.
"When you're protesting in New York City," said John Sellers, the director of a California-based group that trains activists, "you're definitely in the big leagues."
As city officials weigh which protest groups will get permits for official events, activists are quietly learning how to block doorways or street intersections and when to use passive body language - such as sitting down - to disarm police officers trying to make an arrest.
Trainers say they aren't urging protesters to break the law. But arrests are inevitable, and protesters are also offering legal training.
"The Republicans would love to have images coming out of New York City that make them look like the reasonable ones, like they're about responsibility and law and order and creating a safe society, and that the left was unreasonable and violent," Sellers said. "If we don't recognize that, then we're not being very strategic."
The instruction includes skills for responding to rogue protesters intent on causing lawlessness. Veterans expect thousands of untrained demonstrators to swarm city streets.
Sellers' group, the Ruckus Society, founded in 1995, will hold at least one weekend training camp this summer. Using many of the same principles, local activists are already gathering in churches, homes and public places throughout the city to teach classes, which will increase in frequency as the four-day convention approaches.
"It's not just that we train a few thousand people over the summer," said Jeff Senter, a legal training coordinator. "They go and tell their friends, so the effect is multiplied several times over."
Police spokesman Paul Browne declined to comment on activist training but said the department approves of any methods that teach protesters to be less confrontational. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said recently that he expects about 1,000 arrests per day during the convention - three times the normal daily arrest volume.
Organizers won't publicly disclose their plans for civil disobedience. But activists describe sit-ins and blockades at delegate hotels, pie-throwing at high-level officials, and street theater outside Broadway shows attended by convention-goers. A man who calls himself Jonny America plans to mimic Paul Revere's ride along Lexington Avenue, shouting "the Republicans are coming, the Republicans are coming!"
Classes begin with protest history - from the Boston Tea Party to treetop protests against logging - to give students perspective. "A lot of things that we take for granted these days weren't given to us, they had to be taken," said Tim Doody, 30, who teaches some of the sessions. Then they learn popular street tactics like sit-ins and blockades.
Activists have declared Aug. 31 as an official day of civil disobedience, calling for all protesters to sit down and refuse to move in the streets around convention headquarters at Madison Square Garden and other sites throughout the city.
"We'll take over the streets, transform them into theaters, stages for resistance and forums for debate," says their call to action, read aloud at a recent protester meeting. "We will draw our examples and inspiration from the brave shapers of history who came before us - those who put their bodies on the line to gain independence."
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NY Convention Protesters Say Rights Threatened
Reuters
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
By Christine Kearney
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44267-2004Jun15.html
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York officials are threatening the rights of demonstrators planning to show up at the Republican National Convention by failing to issue a single permit so far, a protest leader said on Tuesday.
Leslie Cagan of protest group United for Peace and Justice said the group applied for a permit more than a year ago but has not yet been granted permission.
The city "has yet to do anything in terms of issuing permits guaranteeing not only that we are able to protest but, more importantly, that we are able to exercise our constitutionally protected right to assemble, to march, to rally, to make our voices heard," Cagan said.
Republicans were set to gather at Madison Square Garden from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 and nominate President Bush to run for re-election in November. Tuesday was the deadline for applying for protest permits.
Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said protesters had failed to engage in serious talks about making arrangements with officials.
Browne said police were concerned "that al Qaeda may want to use a large political event as a target as they did in Madrid ... as a way of infiltrating a political climate and the outcome of the election."
On March 11, bombs on Madrid trains killed 191 people days before a Spanish election.
New York has remained on high alert since the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington, which killed almost 3,000 people.
Some 15 groups have applied for permits to protest Bush administration policies ranging from the war in Iraq to efforts to ban gay marriage.
The city's parks department has denied United for Peace and Justice a permit for a 250,000-person rally on Aug. 29 that would have marched past the convention site to Central Park.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the civil rights group will take New York to court if permits are not issued.
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