Nuclear weapons occupy the highest rung on the ladder of military cowardice. They are long-distance devices of mass annihilation. They destroy indiscriminately - men, women and children. They draw no lines between soldiers and civilians. Those who make the weapons, who deploy them, who order their use and who press the buttons to send the missiles on their way have virtually no connection with the victims. They are simply human instruments in a chain of activities leading to massive devastation.
The only arguably sane use of nuclear weapons is deterrence, and deterrence is largely an unproven theory. General George Lee Butler, a former commander-in-chief of the United States Strategic Command, who was in charge of all US nuclear weapons, has expressed his deep concerns about deterrence. "Nuclear deterrence," he wrote, "was and remains a slippery intellectual construct that translates very poorly into the real world of spontaneous crises, inexplicable motivations, incomplete intelligence and fragile human relationships." When one examines carefully the shortcomings of nuclear deterrence - its requirements of near-perfect communications, rational behavior in a time of crisis and willingness to commit mass murder - it is reasonable to conclude that reliance on nuclear deterrence for security is as insane as the threat to destroy civilization with nuclear weapons.
In recent times, there has been a high degree of concern for nuclear terrorism, but nuclear terrorism has been practiced by the nuclear weapons states for decades. If terrorism is the threat or use of violence to achieve political goals - especially if it results in injuring or killing innocent people - then the nuclear weapons states are by definition terrorists. It is ironic that nuclear weapons are more potent tools in the hands of non-state actors than in the hands of powerful countries. Non-state actors in possession of a nuclear weapon would not be constrained by threats of retaliation. If terrorists are suicidal and cannot be located anyway, they certainly cannot be deterred from initiating a nuclear attack. In this sense, nuclear weapons are a great equalizer in the hands of extremists, and for this reason it is clear that the nuclear weapons states must do everything in their power to prevent these weapons, or the materials to make them, from falling into the hands of such extremists. The nuclear weapons states, however, appear more committed to maintaining their own nuclear arsenals than to assuring that nuclear weapons do not proliferate to non-state terrorist groups that could cause them irreparable harm.
The only way to assure that nuclear weapons do not fall into the hands of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda is to take dramatic steps to reduce nuclear arsenals, dismantle the nuclear weapons, and place the remaining weapons and weapons-grade fissile materials under strict and effective international controls. The nuclear weapons states have not been bold in attempting to control the spread of nuclear weapons; they have acted as though time is on their side rather than on the side of those committed to waging war against them. The irony of this is that the nuclear weapons states, even with arsenals of nuclear weapons that number in the thousands, cannot deter a group such as Al Qaeda from using nuclear weapons against them. Their only hope is to prevent such groups from obtaining these most destructive of all weapons.
Nuclearism and Globalization
Nuclearism is one of the early manifestations of globalization. The United States went global with its nuclear threat almost from the day it first created nuclear weapons. Within three weeks of testing the first nuclear weapon on July 16, 1945, the US used nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It did so not only to destroy those cities and punish Japan, but also to send a message to the world and particularly to the Soviet Union. The message was, "This is what we are capable of doing and willing to do with our devastating new weapons; don't cross us or we could use them on you." It was a powerful message, and also an incentive to nuclear proliferation. It would take the Soviet Union just four years to test its first nuclear device.
Very early in the Nuclear Age, the US began testing nuclear weapons in the South Pacific, including in the Trust Territories that had been assigned to it by the United Nations. In doing so, it continued the pre-war pattern of colonial dominance. Over the decades of the Nuclear Age, all of the nuclear weapons states have performed their nuclear testing on the lands of indigenous peoples, leaving the hazardous radioactive residue of testing in their backyards.
Another dimension to the globalization of the nuclear threat was the development of inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), allowing for the destruction of nearly any place on the globe in 30 minutes or many places simultaneously. Even today, the US and Russia each still have some 6,000 deployed strategic nuclear weapons. Of these, some 2,250 each are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be fired in moments.
The US and USSR, now Russia, as well as other nuclear weapons states, also appropriated the global commons for their nuclear forces. The nuclear weapons states continue to use the oceans, humankind's great common heritage, for their submarine-launched nuclear forces. They agreed not to place nuclear weapons on the ocean floor, but with the availability of submarines, the ocean floor is clearly not a necessary or even useful option for them.
Another aspect of the globalization of nuclearism is the spread of the US nuclear umbrella to its allies throughout the world, particularly in Europe, Asia and the Pacific. By extending its nuclear umbrella, the US has made many more countries complicit in relying upon nuclear weapons for their security, albeit reliant upon US nuclear weapons rather than developing their own.
Nuclear Proliferation
Nuclear proliferation is the flip-side of nuclear disarmament. It is also the globalization of nuclear arsenals. The existing nuclear weapons states have nearly all justified their development of nuclear weapons on the basis of nuclear deterrence. The US created nuclear weapons because it was concerned about deterring a possible Nazi nuclear bomb. The Soviet Union developed its nuclear arsenal to deter the US. The UK and France developed their nuclear arsenals to have independent deterrent forces against the Soviet Union. China sought to deter both the Soviet Union and the US. India sought to deter China, and Pakistan sought to deter India. North Korea would undoubtedly justify its nuclear weapons, if indeed it has them, as being necessary to deter the US. South Africa, which faced global hostility due to its policies of Apartheid, developed a nuclear arsenal to deter the US and Russia. It subsequently gave up its nuclear weapons. Israel, which continues to face both regional and global hostility, developed a nuclear arsenal to give it greater degrees of freedom in relation to the US and Russia and well as to deter hostilities by non-nuclear weapons states in its region.
The US-led war against Iraq was justified initially on the basis that Iraq might be developing a nuclear arsenal and could potentially transfer nuclear weapons to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda. Although it turned out not to be true that Iraq was developing a nuclear arsenal or even that it had links to Al Qaeda, this fear provided the justification for the first counter-proliferation war in history.
US Double Standards Have Stimulated Proliferation
From the outset of the Nuclear Age, the US has had a double standard when it comes to nuclear weapons. It has always relied on these weapons for its own security, yet sought to deny these weapons to other states except when it suited its purposes. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Israel developed a nuclear arsenal. At best it can be said that the US turned a blind eye to this development. In sharp contrast to the US attacking and invading Iraq because it might have nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, the US, in line with its geopolitical strategies, has never even criticized Israel for its nuclear proliferation. This double standard has created an impetus to the proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction in the volatile Middle East.
India's position, for decades, was that it would not develop nuclear weapons if the nuclear weapons states fulfilled their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to achieve nuclear disarmament. India made clear pronouncements that it was not willing to live without nuclear weapons in a world of nuclear "haves" and "have-nots". Three years after the NPT was extended indefinitely in 1995 and there was still no significant breakthrough by the nuclear weapons states toward achieving nuclear disarmament, India conducted a series of nuclear weapons tests and announced that it was developing a nuclear arsenal. Pakistan followed immediately in doing the same.
When Mr. Bush named Iraq, Iran and North Korea as part of an Axis of Evil, he put these states on notice that they were in the sights of the US. When he then went on to attack and invade Iraq to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, Bush's actions sent a message to Iran and North Korea, among others, that they had better consider developing a nuclear deterrent force against the US. They may have already had such thoughts before the Axis of Evil speech, but there can be no doubt that such provocative language, coupled with military action, can only act as a stimulant to develop a strong deterrent force. The Bush posture toward the states designated as an Axis of Evil stands in strong contrast to the manner in which his administration virtually ignored the nuclear proliferation activities of Pakistani nuclear physicist A.Q. Khan. Khan, whose activities have been described as a nuclear Walmart, received only a slap on the wrist from the Pakistani government, allied with the US in the so-called war against terrorism.
Nuclear Disarmament
In the post-Cold War period, there has been some progress toward nuclear disarmament, but it has been excruciatingly slow as measured by the need, obligation and opportunity. Current global nuclear stocks are down from a Cold War high of some 70,000 nuclear weapons to approximately 30,000. The vast majority of these, some 97 percent, are in the arsenals of the US and Russia.
The need to dramatically reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons lies in the danger of these weapons proliferating to other states or falling into the hands of non-state extremist actors. The enormous danger of these weapons in the hands of groups like Al Qaeda should be sufficient to motivate serious efforts to achieve nuclear disarmament. So far it has not done so. The need does not exist to maintain large nuclear arsenals or, for that matter, any nuclear weapons in a world where nuclear weapons states are trading with each other rather than threatening war.
The obligation of the nuclear weapons states to achieve nuclear disarmament is set forth in Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. At the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, when the treaty was extended indefinitely, the parties agreed to "systematic and progressive efforts to reduce nuclear weapons globally, with the ultimate goal of eliminating those weapons." Five years later, at the 2000 NPT Review Conference, the parties agreed on 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament. These steps included ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, preserving and strengthening the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, making disarmament measures irreversible, and an "unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI."
The opportunity to achieve nuclear disarmament in the post-Cold War world has been largely squandered. Bill Clinton was presented with the greatest opportunity of any leader in the post-World War II period to put an end to the dangers of the Nuclear Age. Clinton didn't seem to grasp the opportunity that had been laid at his feet. He was largely indifferent to the issue, and this resulted in only minimal progress during his eight years in office. He did, however, support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and did hold negotiations with Russia on START III, but these negotiations did not result in a new treaty.
If the Clinton approach to nuclear disarmament can be described as benign indifference, the US under the Bush administration can be thought of obstructionist in its approach to nuclear disarmament. It has been an obstacle to virtually all of the 13 Practical Steps agreed to at the 2000 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. The Bush administration has opposed ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, put up barriers to negotiations for a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (in order to pursue missile defenses and space weaponization), and entered into an agreement with the Russians that makes nuclear reductions completely reversible. This agreement, the Strategic Offensive Reductions Agreement (SORT), specifies reductions of the US and Russian deployed strategic arsenals from levels of about 6,000 each to between 1,700 and 2,200 each by the year 2012. However, the treaty doesn't require that the weapons taken off deployed status be irreversibly dismantled. As a result, many US weapons will go into storage and be available for redeployment in the future. It is likely that the Russians will do the same, and these weapons will also be available for possible theft by terrorist groups. The reductions do not have a timeline and only need to be completed by 2012. After that year, the treaty will no longer be in effect. So far as it impacts nuclear disarmament, the treaty is largely fraudulent. It gives the appearance of disarmament, but the substance isn't there.
In addition, the Bush administration has been pressing for research on new nuclear weapons that will be more usable, a new bunker busting nuclear weapon (the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator) and mini-nukes (low-yield nuclear weapons) that are about one-third the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. They have also begun deployment of missile defenses that have led Russia to pull out of the START II agreement. Despite their funding of research on new nuclear weapons and their opposition to the 13 Practical Steps, a US delegate to the 2004 Preparatory Committee meeting for the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference, John Bolton, told the assembled parties to the treaty that they shouldn't focus their attention on Article VI of the treaty with its nuclear disarmament provisions. "We cannot divert attention from the violations we face," he said, "by focusing on Article VI violations that do not exist."
Need for US Leadership
The world currently faces a tragic dilemma: preventing nuclear terrorism requires significant nuclear disarmament and international control of nuclear weapons and materials, but to achieve this will require US leadership, which is currently non-existent. Since the US continues to rely upon its own arsenal of nuclear weapons for security, it cannot effectively provide leadership toward nuclear disarmament. In the Bush administration's secret, but leaked, 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, they stated: "Nuclear weapons play a critical role in the defense capabilities of the United States, its allies and friends. They provide credible options to deter a wide range of threats, including WMD [weapons of mass destruction] and large-scale conventional force. These nuclear capabilities possess unique properties that give the United States options to hold at risk classes of targets [that are] important to achieve strategic and political objectives."
Initiatives for Nuclear Disarmament
At the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, we are initiating a campaign to chart a new course in US nuclear policy that we call Turn the Tide. It is an Internet-based campaign that seeks to awaken US citizens to the need to change US nuclear policy and spur them to communicate with their Congressional representatives and candidates as well as the president and presidential candidates and to cast their ballots based on positions on nuclear disarmament issues. The campaign is based on the following call to action:
1. Stop all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
2. Maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
3. Cancel plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants, and close and clean up the toxic contamination at existing plants.
4. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No Use of nuclear weapons against any nation or group that does not have nuclear weapons.
5. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nations possessing nuclear weapons.
6. Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile "defense" systems which would ignite a dangerous arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.
7. In order to significantly decrease the threat of accidental launch, together with Russia, take nuclear weapons off high-alert status and do away with the strategy of launch-on-warning.
8. Together with Russia, implement permanent and verifiable dismantlement of nuclear weapons taken off deployed status through the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
9. Demonstrate to other countries US commitment to reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons by removing all US nuclear weapons from foreign soil.
10. To prevent future proliferation or theft, create and maintain a global inventory of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials and place these weapons and materials under strict international safeguards.
11. Initiate international negotiations to fulfill existing treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the phased and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
12. Redirect funding from nuclear weapons programs to dismantling nuclear weapons, safeguarding nuclear materials, cleaning up the toxic legacy of the Nuclear Age and meeting more pressing social needs such as education, health care and social services. While this campaign is essential, it is a strategy from within the country. It is also necessary to bring pressure to bear on the US and other nuclear weapons states from the international community. The countries of the New Agenda Coalition (Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa and Sweden) have been doing admirable work on this at the United Nations and at the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conferences and Preparatory Committee meetings. These countries were largely responsible for putting forward the 13 Practical Steps for Nuclear Disarmament agreed to at the 2000 NPT Review Conference. I should also mention the Middle Powers Initiative, a coalition of eight international non-governmental organizations, which has provided strong support and encouragement to the New Agenda countries.
Another important new initiative to move forward the nuclear disarmament agenda is the Emergency Campaign of the Mayors for Peace. Under the leadership of the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this campaign has set forth a Vision 2020, calling for the initiation of negotiations for complete nuclear disarmament in 2005, the completion of these negotiations in 2010 and the elimination of nuclear weapons by the year 2020.
Breaking the Silence
Nuclear weapons pose a threat to humanity's future, and yet most of us are silent in the face of this danger. It would not be possible to research, develop, deploy, threaten and use nuclear weapons if so many were not silent. The threat of nuclear genocide, even omnicide, has become global. Before the spread of the weapons themselves becomes global, we must break the culture of silence and conformity that allows the continuation of the nuclear threat to all humanity.
In some ways, we have attributed god-like characteristics to nuclear weapons. Their power far exceeds that of ordinary weapons. They are credited in the US with bringing World War II to an end. It is hard to forget the emotional celebrations that took place in the streets in India and Pakistan when they tested nuclear weapons in 1998. Here is a poem in which I have tried to capture the sense of the godliness that has been ascribed to nuclear weapons by many people in the nuclear weapons states.
WHEN THE BOMB BECAME OUR GOD
When the bomb became our god We loved it far too much, Worshipping no other gods before it.
We thought ourselves great And powerful, creators of worlds.
We turned toward infinity, Giving the bomb our very souls.
We looked to it for comfort, To its smooth metallic grace.
When the bomb became our god We lived in a constant state of war That we called peace.
But nuclear weapons certainly are not gods, nor are their possessors. These weapons are false idols, and they threaten their possessors as well as their targets. They may be powerful, but their power is only that of destruction. They have neither the power of creativity nor of construction. They threaten the future of humanity, and they corrode the souls of their possessors.
We are approaching the 60th anniversary of the creation and first use of nuclear weapons. Time is not on our side, and we can take little comfort in the fact that nuclear weapons have not been dropped on other cities since they were used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this era of globalization, the threat of nuclear annihilation is itself global. To counter this threat, we must globalize prohibitions in law and morality to the possession, threat and use of the nuclear weapons. We must end the double standards that suggest that some may have nuclear weapons while others may not. There are no safe hands in which nuclear weapons may be placed.
The singular threat that nuclear weapons pose can only be ended by people everywhere breaking the silence and demanding that the nuclear weapons states fulfill their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty for the total elimination of these weapons, and persisting in their demands until the goal is achieved.
David Krieger is the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of many books and articles on peace in the Nuclear Age.
-------- accidents and safety
Radiological incidents reported
Monday, July 5, 2004
By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com
The Amarillo Globe-News
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/070504/new_reported.shtml
A radiological investigation report released to the Environmental Protection Agency reveals details about some little-known radiological incidents at the Pantex Plant.
The following is a synopsis of some incidents reported in the Pantex Plant Radiological Investigation Report completed in January and recently released to the public:
# In 1961, plutonium was released inside a "Gravel Gertie" assembly cell during an unspecified manufacturing incident. No fire or explosion was reported, but plutonium was spread within the assembly room by airflow from the scene of the incident. The finely divided powder was pulled into the air-conditioning system and spread throughout the structure.
Personnel involved in the incident were decontaminated and studied via urinalysis, but they showed no traces of plutonium intake. Low-level plutonium contamination was found near the incident scene and in the passageway of the assembly cell.
No plutonium was discovered outside the structure. The structure was decontaminated and refinished at the cost of $26,000. All known radioactive material was collected and properly disposed of. The report says there has been no known long-range environmental impact.
# In 1979, rainwater collected in an unsealed underground concrete storage container in the Nuclear Weapons Accident Residue site. The site, on the northeastern section of Zone 4, was used as a retrievable storage site that included radioactive debris from five separate military craft accidents, residue from Pantex firing site test shots and low-level radioactive waste from Pantex operations.
The site's contents were moved to Magazine 4-75, where a container leak was discovered. The leak caused plutonium contamination within Magazine 4-75, which was decontaminated. According to a 1984 report, a concrete storage container was contaminated with plutonium oxide.
The concrete was decontaminated by surface grinding. Workers performing the decontamination work reportedly did not use proper protective equipment and could have possibly carried contamination off-site. Their homes were surveyed with radiation detection devices, and no plutonium contamination was detected.
Decontamination of the NWAR site began in 1980 and was completed in mid-1986. Further review has been recommended to determine the nature and extent of contamination.
# On Jan. 10 1986, depleted uranium was released when exhaust fans were turned on and off several times following a test detonation at Firing Site 23. The incident potentially released a small amount of particulate material containing depleted uranium, a low-level radioactive material used in tanks and weapons projectiles. All personnel were upwind of the site. Based on test shot data and prevailing wind conditions, the event was determined to have negligible effects on surrounding sites.
# On May 17, 1989, a valve malfunction in a tritium gas container released the container's contents inside a weapons assembly cell. Tritium is a radioactive gas used to boost the power of modern nuclear weapons. A portion of the tritium gas was vented immediately from the area into the atmosphere. About two hours after the incident, Pantex officials decided to vent the remaining tritium to prevent buildup in remaining buildings. Most of the tritium released was dispersed into the atmosphere.
Of five people in the facility, four received "negligible" doses of radiation and a fifth received "less than the annual regulatory dose limit."
Estimates made on the day of the event using computer models indicated "that even under these conditions the maximum allowable dose off-site was within allowed limits."
The facility remains closed due to tritium contamination, but radiation readings show residual contamination continues to decrease over time.
Compiled by Jim McBride, jim.mcbride@amarillo.com
----
Pantex report: No problem for public
Materials from past pose no significant threat, analysis says
By JIM McBRIDE jim.mcbride@amarillo.com
The Amarillo Globe-News
Monday, July 5, 2004
http://www.amarillonet.com/stories/070504/new_pntex.shtml
Radioactive materials from past Pantex operations pose no significant threat to public health, a Pantex report concludes, but an environmental group's review says the Pantex analysis is scientifically flawed and should be redone.
The report was prepared by contractor BWXT Pantex and reviews the radiological history of Pantex operations.
A "screening level" risk assessment indicates most Pantex site concentrations are below conservative screening criteria and pose no unacceptable risk to site workers and the environment, the report says.
Such an assessment identifies potential contaminants and determines whether contaminant levels exceed threshold criteria to protect human health and the environment.
"This Radiological Investigation Report demonstrates that radiological constituents in the environmental media at Pantex pose no significant threat to the public health, welfare or the environment," the report says.
Groundwater monitoring also indicates "no measurable site-relevant contaminant impacts" to the Ogallala Aquifer or the perched aquifer, a smaller, upper-level aquifer that sits above the Ogallala.
The report also cites data from a 1998 Pantex health study by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.
"According to the ATSDR report, off-site radiation exposures to the public living near the Pantex Plant were well below levels that would cause adverse health effects and no adverse health effects are expected from radiological contamination."
The report says, however, burning grounds soils and the Nuclear Weapons Accident Residue site, may need more assessment. Depleted uranium has been discovered in burning grounds soils and traces of plutonium have been found at the weapons accident residue site.
The Nuclear Weapons Accident Residue site is a Pantex location where radioactive debris from several U.S. nuclear weapons accidents was stored.
Brice Smith and Arjun Mahkijani, environmental experts from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, a Maryland-based environmental group, reviewed the radiological report and issued a stinging criticism.
Their review cited "fundamental deficiencies" in the document and said "the final product is not scientifically sound in many essential aspects."
"The RI report screening levels imply that dumping vast amounts (millions or billions of tons) of pure plutonium, uranium or tritium on the site would not threaten the groundwater. We find that the contractor and the DOE have failed to provide credible data or a credible analysis," Smith and Mahkijani said in a June 7 report prepared for Sustainability in Technologies, Agriculture and Nature's Diversity, an Amarillo-based environmental grop.
The IEER report recommends that the Pantex report be redone with new field data based on samples that are properly analyzed by certified laboratories.
Camille Hueni, an EPA official overseeing Pantex, said her office has sent Pantex a series of questions about the report. But she said a preliminary review of the report indicates that most contaminant levels are low - at or near what are dubbed "background" levels.
According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, background levels are defined as "an average or expected amount of a substance or radioactive material in a specific environment or typical amounts of substances that occur naturally in an environment."
"From what we're seeing it looks like the concentrations are pretty low. They are kind of hovering sort of around what would be called background, but most importantly they are well below what we would consider to be the PRG (preliminary remediation goal), the health screening number," Hueni said.
"When you have concentrations that float primarily around background, you're really not having that much of an issue because you're well below the human health screening number anyway."
Hueni noted that EPA's review is at a preliminary stage and said she anticipates Pantex will review comments from citizens groups.
"They are trying to be real conservative, I think, in their approach," she said.
BWXT Pantex Environmental Restoration Manager Dennis Huddleston said in a statement that EPA officials visited Pantex in February to gain an understanding of the site and past operations.
"Comments were received from EPA and are currently under review by BWXT Pantex. We will work closely with the EPA to address any questions raised by regulatory agencies," Huddleston said. "Also we have informally received comments from a local citizens organization, and we are reviewing them for relevance to the quality of our report."
Pantex plans to have a public meeting to discuss the report, Huddleston said.
-------- depleted uranium
NEW DATA AND PROJECTIONS ON URANIUM JUST RELEASED
NUCLEAR ENERGY AGENCY (FRANCE)
PRESS COMMUNIQUÉ Paris,
5 July 2004
http://www.nea.fr/html/general/press/2004/2004-06.html
In the just-published Uranium 2003: Resources, Production and Demand (also known as the "Red Book"), the world uranium resource base is found to be adequate to meet future projected requirements. Questions remain however, as to whether new production capacity can be developed within the time frame required to meet future uranium demand. The Red Book, jointly prepared by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is the foremost reference on uranium. It is based on official information from 43 countries and includes statistics on resources, exploration, production and demand as of the beginning of 2003.
Other key findings are:
- Figures : By the end of 2002, world uranium demand amounted to 67,000 tonnes, a slight decrease from the previous year. Production totalled 36,000 tonnes, nearly 55% of world reactor requirement, while secondary resources made up the rest. Resource totals, on balance, remained little changed between 2001 and 2003 (known conventional resources amount to 4.6 million tonnes whereas undiscovered conventional resources amount to 10 million tonnes).
- Currently envisaged production capabilities through 2020 cannot by themselves satisfy projected world uranium requirements in either the low or high demand scenarios.
- Secondary sources - including those from civilian and military stockpiles, uranium reprocessing and the re-enrichment of depleted uranium - have so far been sufficient to make up any shortfall.
Given that secondary sources are likely to decline, particularly after 2020, reactor requirements may have to be increasingly met by the expansion of existing production capacity, together with the development of additional production centres or the introduction of alternative fuel cycles.
The 2004 edition of the Red Book also offers:
- a new analysis of the potential longevity of uranium resources;
- substantial new information from all major uranium-producing centres in Africa, Asia, Australia, Central Asia, Eastern and Western Europe, North America and China. The Chinese data is provided for the first time in accordance with the NEA/IAEA reporting scheme. Expanded information on secondary sources of uranium in the new edition includes, also for the first time, official government information on the production and use of mixed-oxide fuels.
Uranium 2003: Resources, Production and Demand A Joint Report by the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency
-------- india / pakistan
India and Pakistan Leaders Want Peace - Musharraf
July 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-pakistan-musharraf.html
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - India's premier and opposition leader want peace with South Asian arch foe and fellow nuclear arms power Pakistan, whose leaders also seek an end to the long conflict, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan said on Monday.
Manmohan Singh of India's Congress party took over as prime minister from Atal Behari Vajpayee after elections in May. Hindu nationalist Vajpayee last year started peace talks with largely Muslim Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.
``I spoke to (former) Prime Minister Vajpayee and I gave him all the credit for initiating the peace process,'' said Musharraf, who took charge in a bloodless military coup in 1999.
``I rang him up (after India's elections) to remind him of this and tell him now that he is in opposition not to oppose the move but to keep backing the move and may I say, he was gracious enough to accept that he will back the peace initiative.
``We also know that the present government, especially Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is very keen on resolving our differences in a peaceful manner,'' he told Reuters in an interview.
``We want peace in the region ... There is a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan ... A process has started now and we hope that this continues. On our side both the prime ministers are very clear and they will pursue the peace track,'' he said.
NO PUPPETS
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain was sworn in last week as Pakistan's new prime minister but is widely expected to hand over in less than two months to Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz -- a technocrat who analysts say has been handpicked by Musharraf.
But the president, who spoke on the first day of a two-day visit to Sweden, dismissed any such allegations.
``They are not (my) puppets,'' he said.
Musharraf declined to say whether he intends to stand by an agreement to step down as commander of the military by the end of this year -- a move some say could be interpreted as a sign of weakness in a nation that has lived under military rule for more than half of its existence since independence in 1947.
``I keep saying I'll cross the bridge when I reach the bridge,'' he said.
Asked if he believed he would have arrived at the bridge at the end of this year, he said: ``I'll be at the bridge but I don't know whether I'll cross it or decide not to cross it.''
ROAD MAP
Top foreign ministry officials of Pakistan and India met for peace talks late in June and their foreign ministers are due to meet in August.
``We are very glad at these developments,'' Musharraf said, adding, however, a note of caution:
``There's no such road map that has been identified, leading to an ultimate solution. But I really hope that we reach some kind of a road map when the foreign ministers meet.
``Both sides will need to be flexible,'' he said, pointing in particular to the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, over which India and Pakistan have fought two wars since 1947.
``We both need to decide to move away from stated positions,'' Musharraf said. ``You can't clap with one hand, you have to clap with both hands.''
He declined to say what concessions Pakistan might make, aware that any such signal could undermine his authority which is under fire from Muslim hard-liners, who see his fight to purge Pakistan of militant extremists as kowtowing to U.S. interests.
-------- iran
Iran in bombsights?
July 05, 2004
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20040704-111252-6746r.htm
As the Bush administration concludes it cannot risk Iranian retaliation against a fragile Iraq under U.S. occupation, Israel is dusting off contingency plans to take out Iran's nuclear installations.
On June 24, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to former President George H.W. Bush (41), asked the key question: "Are we serious in our efforts to prevent [Iranian] nuclear proliferation, or will we watch the world descend into a maelstrom where weapons-grade nuclear material is plentiful, and unimaginable destructive capability is available to any country or group with a grudge against society?"
It did not require an overwhelming effort of imagination for Israel's national security establishment to conclude the Jewish state would be the first threatened by Iranian nukes.
One scenario now bruited would involve a joint U.S.-Israel precision-guided strike against the Bushehr, Natanz and Arak nuclear projects in Iran. But the Bush administration has concluded a U.S. air attack against Iran would trigger a major Iranian campaign to destabilize Iraq. The two countries share a 1,458-kilometer (906-mile) border stretching from Turkey to the Shatt al Arab terminal on the Gulf. Iran also enjoys wide grass-roots support among Iraq's dominant Shi'ite population.
A U.S. House of Representatives resolution last May 6 authorized "all appropriate means" to end Iranian nuclear weapons development. The Senate is yet to vote on the resolution. But it leaves no doubt it is a green light for offensive military strikes against Iran's three nuclear facilities.
The worldwide reaction against a U.S. attack on Iran's theocratic regime would almost certainly put an end to growing moderate dissent. Rival Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain (headquarters for the U.S. 5th Fleet) would close ranks against U.S. interests. America's allies would denounce a return to dangerous U.S. unilateralism after President Bush's recent moves back to multilateral diplomacy.
While an "October surprise" of U.S. air strikes to rid the world of Iran's looming nuclear threat might help President Bush Nov. 2, the blowback of unintended consequences would further destabilize the world's most volatile region - the Middle East.
U.S. air strikes at this juncture would quickly be equated with the CIA-engineered coup that overthrew Iran's socialist leader Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, which many Iranians say led to the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 that overthrew the monarchy, forced the late shah into exile, and allowed obscurantist mullahs to rule the country. The mullahs made the excesses of the shah's Savak secret police seem like child's play compared to the tens of thousands executed by the religious extremists and their Revolutionary Guards.
Israeli leaders concluded years ago that A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb and the world's biggest nuclear proliferator, had sold bomb-making wherewithal to Iran and nothing would reverse this capability short of air strikes, similar to the one Israeli fighter-bombers conducted in 1981 against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad. It had been built with French assistance, including 27.5 pounds of 93 percent weapons-grade uranium.
When Israeli intelligence confirmed Iraq's intention of producing weapons at Osirak, Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided military action was the only remedy. Elections then and now were a consideration. Mr. Begin feared his party would lose the next election, and the opposition Labor Party would fail to pre-empt prior to production of the first Iraqi nuclear bomb. Iraq was believed to be two years from its first nuclear weapon.
So Israel had to strike before the Iraqi reactor went critical, before the first fuel was poured into the reactor, lest the surrounding community fall victim to radiation.
The target was 1,100 kilometers (660 miles) from Israel. Target mock-ups were part of a full-scale dress rehearsal. Briefing the cream of Israeli Air Force pilots, Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Gen. Rafael Eitan said, "The alternative is our destruction." The surprise attack by F-15s and F-16s vaporized Osirak in 80 seconds, too fast for Iraqi anti-aircraft gunners to get off their first salvo.
Similar preparations to take out Iran's capabilities - also judged to be two years from nuclear fruition - have been completed. Standoff, precision-guided munitions will have to be used to avoid Iran's thick air defenses, including missiles purchased from Russia.
Under an $800 million contract, Russia began building Iran's Bushehr reactor in May 1995 with 150 technicians at the site. The Russian contract called for 3,000 Russian engineers and construction workers. By 1999, some 300 Russians were among the 900 workers there.
After several years of denial about an Iranian bomb-making potential, President Putin of late has sided with the International Atomic Energy Agency's chief Mohamed el Baradei's strong criticism of Iran's bad faith in its refusal to comply with the international inspection regime. Mr. Putin presumably realizes a nuclear-armed Iran ruled by religious fanatics would probably be tempted to pass on dangerous stuff to Islamist guerrillas in Chechnya.
Originally started during the shah's reign in a deal with Siemens, some 2,100 German and 7,000 Iranian workers completed 85 percent of the work before the 1979 revolution. The ayatollahs then decided to drop the entire project as "anti-Islamic," before changing their minds in favor of construction in the early 1990s. Fearful anxiety prevailed among the clerics after they watched in awe the deployment of half a million American soldiers and the five weeks of saturation U.S. bombing that preceded Operation Desert Storm - and the collapse of the Iraqi army. They watched a rerun of another U.S. military spectacular in 2003 - with yet another collapse of the Iraqi military.
The Europeans still believe political, economic and trade sanctions will eventually bring Iran into compliance. The Bush administration is on the horns of a painful dilemma. How can it claim Iran has no right to nuclear weapons when Israel not only possesses both strategic and tactical nuclear weapons, but has several hundred in its arsenal? Pre-empting Iran would also undermine the administration's last shred of credibility as an honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians.
After all the blue-smoke-and-mirrors "intelligence" that justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq 15 months ago, CIA evidence of an Iranian nuclear bomb would have to be incontrovertible. This sets the bar impossibly high. Hence Israel's conclusion it is on its own. Bombs away? Not yet, but they've rehearsed it.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press International.
-------- israel
Come clean on nukes
By Reuven Pedatzur
Mon., July 05, 2004
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/447251.html
Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei will visit Israel tomorrow, six years after his previous visit when he met with then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu "to discuss the nuclear issue."
ElBaradei is the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and his visit here is viewed largely as ceremonial, with Israel politely fulfilling its role as a member of the IAEA since its inception in 1957. And just as Netanyahu had no intention of infusing real content into his "talks" with ElBaradei in 1998, so Ariel Sharon and the heads of the nuclear establishment now do not intend to seriously deliberate with him Israel's nuclear policy. On the face of it, ElBaradei's mandate is clear: he will try to set up a nuclear-free region in the Middle East. He is, however, well aware that he has no chance of promoting this concept. Israel's official position is that the area can be denuclearized only after all the countries of the region sign peace treaties with it. The IAEA chief is also well aware that so long as Iran is secretly working toward the development of nuclear weapons, Israel does not have any reason to examine the idea of denuclearization seriously.
As a matter of course, ElBaradei will, during his talks, raise the question of Israel's joining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) even though he is aware that there is also no chance to get Israel to change its traditional stance on this.
Since 1987, the UN General Assembly has 13 times adopted resolutions calling on Israel to sign the treaty; but ElBaradei is also aware of the understanding reached in September 1969 between then Israeli premier Golda Meir and then U.S. president Richard Nixon, which said that Washington will refrain from pressing Israel to sign the NPT. This agreement has since been put to the test several times, and ElBaradei is aware that here too there is no chance for change.
ElBaradei takes a sober approach to Israel's nuclear potential. With this in mind, he clarifies that while no one doubts that Israel has nuclear weapons, "the decision whether to make a public declaration or to maintain an air of ambiguity is that of Israel," as he phrased it last week in Moscow.
During an April conference in Cairo, ElBaradei made a number of interesting remarks which indicate a need to come to terms with the fact that Israel is a nuclear power de facto. ElBaradei, who was born in Egypt, expressed strong criticism of the "emotional and unrealistic approach" of Arab countries to the issue of disarming Israel's nuclear arsenal. He went so far as to make it clear that he accepted the Israeli claim, as he put it, that it "cannot forgo weapons of mass destruction in its possession so long as there is no comprehensive peace in the region."
Israel's nuclear policy-makers will grant ElBaradei a great deal of respect; they will hold talks with him that are lacking in all practical significance, and will even organize a tour for him of the nuclear facility at Nahal Soreq. Those who make the decisions about Israel's nuclear policy are of the opinion that there is no need to alter the traditional, and successful, policy of vagueness.
Undoubtedly, this Israeli nuclear policy is one of the most impressive successes of national security, but it is possible that the time has come to refresh it and to grant international affirmation to Israel's nuclear status. The visit of the IAEA chief could be exploited as a first step in this direction.
Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi's announcement that he plans to dismantle his country's WMD programs, and Iran's agreement to abandon the uranium enrichment program, will naturally lead to focusing international attention on Israel's nuclear potential, and ElBaradei's visit here is evidence of this trend. Israel should take advantage of the far-reaching changes that have taken place in the region recently, and bring about a revision that will ultimately include abandoning its policy of ambiguity. The process of change should be a gradual one, and the sine qua non for its success has to be in full coordination with the U.S.
Nevertheless, in view of ElBaradei's pronouncements, it is possible that new ideas should be be examined with him on a preliminary basis. Clearly one cannot expect him to support changing Israel's status into that of a declared nuclear power. If, however, at the end of his visit he will again repeat some of the pronouncements he made in Cairo, this will be an important step in the right direction.
--------
Israeli Web Site on Nuclear Programs Offers Little That Is New
July 5, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/international/middleeast/05mide.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, July 4 - Israel's Atomic Energy Commission posted a Web site on Sunday about the country's nuclear program, which has always been highly secretive, though the new site is limited to the most basic information and a few long-distance photos.
The introduction of the site came just two days before a visit by the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, who last week called for talks on a nuclear-free Middle East.
As noted on the new Web site (www.iaec.gov.il), Israel's Atomic Energy Commission was established in 1952 by the prime minister at the time, David Ben-Gurion. Since then, Israel has tried to say as little as possible about its nuclear program. It has always refused to confirm or deny whether it possesses nuclear weapons, though various estimates have said the country has enough plutonium to make about 200 such weapons.
In an interview last December with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Dr. ElBaradei said he presumed that Israel had a nuclear arsenal.
The Web site notes that Israel has two nuclear research centers, including a nuclear reactor in the Negev Desert, outside the southern town of Dimona. There is no reference to nuclear weapons on the Web posting, which says the Dimona facility is for "expanding and deepening basic knowledge of nuclear science and related fields and providing an infrastructure for the practical and economic utilization of atomic energy."
Several photos are of nondescript buildings, with bright flowers in the foreground. One shows what appears to be the silhouette of the dome-shaped Dimona reactor at sunset, from a great distance.
The Web site, in English and Hebrew, offers just a few pages of general information that is already common knowledge. In May, Israel's equally secretive intelligence service, Mossad, posted its own Web site, which advertises for recruits.
While Dr. ElBaradei's two-day visit will focus attention on Israel's nuclear program, Israeli analysts say they see no possibility that it will lead Israel to change its policy of "strategic ambiguity."
"These policies have been followed by all prime ministers; they enjoy wide support in the Israeli body politic, and are well understood by Israel's allies," said Uzi Arad, director of the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, outside Tel Aviv.
Dr. ElBaradei's visit is likely to cover a variety of civilian nuclear issues, like nuclear medicine and safety regulations, Mr. Arad said.
Israel is a longstanding member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but the country has never signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and has not allowed international inspectors to visit the Dimona reactor. Israel contends that its shrouded nuclear program serves as an effective deterrent in a region where several of its enemies have sought nuclear weapons.
It points to past nuclear projects in Iraq and Libya and contends that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons.
Dr. ElBaradei said a week ago that he would like all unconventional weapons removed from the Middle East. "Israel agrees with that, but they say it has to be after peace agreements," Dr. ElBaradei said. "My proposal is maybe we need to start to have a parallel dialogue on security at the same time when we're working on the peace process."
Israel's critics contend that Israel is able to maintain its clandestine program with the blessing of the United States.
To date, the most detailed description of Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor has come from Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at the plant. Mr. Vanunu was released from prison in April after serving almost 18 years for describing his work at the reactor and for smuggling out dozens of photos. His story was published in 1986 in The Sunday Times of London.
Meanwhile, there was more violence on Sunday. Palestinian gunmen shot and killed a Jewish settler when they riddled his car with bullets in the northern West Bank, Israeli authorities said. Israeli security forces shot and killed three Palestinians. One was a gunman trying to reach a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, the military said.
In the Gaza Strip, a young man was killed after being hit by Israeli fire while taking part in a stone-throwing clash with troops, Palestinian security officials said.
Also, the Israeli police shot dead a Palestinian man in Jerusalem after he drove a van at an officer and tried to run him over, the police said. The man then tried to flee on foot, and was shot after he refused warnings to stop, the police said.
Late Sunday night, Israel carried out two airstrikes against Palestinian metal workshops in Gaza City, according to the military and to Palestinian security officials. Several Palestinians were hurt. Israel said the workshops were used to make weapons, including rockets.
--------
ElBaradei Wants Israel to Discuss Scrapping Nukes
July 4, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-israel.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, Mohamed ElBaradei, goes to Israel on Tuesday to try to persuade the Jewish state to open up its nuclear program, but officials said Israel was not ready to scrap its atomic arsenal.
Under its policy of ``strategic ambiguity,'' Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear weapons. But it is assumed to have up to 200 warheads, based on estimates of the amount of plutonium Israeli reactors have produced.
While no breakthroughs are expected, one Western diplomat close to the IAEA said ElBaradei would meet senior Israeli officials, possibly including Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said it would be partly a ``routine visit,'' but added that ElBaradei intended ``to promote the concept of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East'' -- clearly the central point of his talks.
Israel welcomes the idea of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction but says disarmament has to come after peace has been achieved in the region, which has been plagued by violence and conflict for decades.
``We need ... to rid the Middle East of all weapons of mass destruction,'' ElBaradei said recently. ``Israel agrees with that, but they say it has to be after peace agreements. My proposal is maybe we need to start to have a parallel dialogue on security at the same time when we're working on the peace process.''
A diplomat close to the IAEA went even further: ``No Middle East peace process can work until we deal with the issue of weapons of mass destruction.''
Until recently, diplomats in Vienna said ElBaradei might try to persuade Israel to acknowledge it has nuclear weapons as a first step toward disarmament. But Israeli officials and diplomats in Vienna now say this will not happen.
THREATS TO ISRAEL MUST END FIRST
Asked if Israel was ready to abandon its strategic ambiguity policy, a senior Israeli official told Reuters:
``Absolutely not. The policy has served the country well for decades against very hostile Middle East neighbors. Only when that regional situation improves can we seriously consider a change of policy.''
Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told BBC Radio Four that a nuclear weapons-free Middle East would only be possible when the Arab and Islamic countries' threat to Israel was gone.
``Then we can put a great deal more pressure on Israel to abandon its undoubted nuclear weapons program, which has been there ... for defensive purposes,'' Straw said in comments published on the BBC Web site.
Analysts said the timing of the trip was significant. First of all, the Middle East peace process has stalled. Secondly, the international community is increasingly suspicious of the atomic program of Iran, a declared enemy of Israel, and other Middle East states have demanded that the IAEA put pressure on Israel.
Analysts cited fears in the Middle East that Israel has been given special treatment by its ally the United States. Tehran insists its nuclear program is peaceful but has been subjected to intense IAEA scrutiny because of U.S.-led allegations that it is secretly pursuing the bomb in breach of NPT obligations.
``ElBaradei may feel it's necessary to take a more balanced position and to focus some negative attention on Israel for remaining outside the (Nuclear Non-Proliferation) Treaty and for not opening up its nuclear facilities to inspections,'' said Valerie Lincy, an analyst at the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.
Israel, like Indian and Pakistan, has never signed the NPT and is the only Middle Eastern state that is not a signatory.
-------- japan
Scandal hits Japan's nuclear program
ALLEGATIONS: Officials face accusations that they suppressed a crucial study showing that recycling nuclear waste would cost twice as much as conventional disposal methods
AP, TOKYO
Monday, Jul 05, 2004
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/07/05/2003177768
It was supposed to help revive Japan's troubled nuclear program -- and curb the country's heavy reliance on energy imports. But as Tokyo considers long-term plans to switch to an experimental, recycled nuclear fuel, it is also facing new allegations that officials misled the public in the past about less pricey alternatives.
The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry acknowledged on Saturday that a study it conducted in 1994 showed that reprocessing radioactive waste into a plutonium-uranium fuel would cost twice as much as burying it at a disposal site.
The study wasn't publicly released until after reports about it surfaced Saturday in the national Asahi and Mainichi newspapers.
"It was originally for internal decision-making purposes only," ministry official Tadao Yanase said.
Yanase said the ministry wasn't even considering directly disposing of nuclear waste from commercial reactors a decade ago.
The allegations that policy-makers concealed data about reprocessing fuel costs marked the latest setback for the nation's nuclear program, which has been plagued by recent safety violations, reactor malfunctions and accidents.
They come as the Atomic Energy Commission, which draws up energy policy, prepares to meet in coming weeks to discuss scaling back plans to use reprocessed fuel -- known as mixed oxide, or MOX -- for reactors in the face of opposition from local residents and criticism from nuclear experts.
Japan's 52 nuclear plants account for nearly 35 percent of its energy supply. Officials say future expansion of the nuclear grid is crucial: It would lower resource-poor Japan's dependence on oil, natural gas and coal imports, they say.
A policy blueprint calls for building 11 new plants and raising electricity output to nearly 40 percent of the national supply by 2010. As many as 18 electricity-generating reactors would use MOX as a transition to more advanced fast-breeder reactors, which run on plutonium and can also generate extra plutonium fuel.
"MOX is more efficient than current technology. We could recycle spent uranium fuel, not just burn through it once like we do now," said Osamu Goto, a Cabinet Office energy policy official.
Experts say the MOX program would solve another problem: a shortage of nuclear waste-storage space.
With no permanent nuclear waste disposal site in Japan, domestic nuclear plants are forced to hold onto spent fuel rods, said Tatsujiro Suzuki, a nuclear researcher at the Central Research Institute of the Electric Power Industry.
Media reports say those waste-storage pools will be full within a decade.
"If nuclear plants can't send their waste to a repository, they will have to shut down once their pools are filled," Suzuki said.
But a string of safety problems since the country's worst nuclear accident in 1999 has left the program in a shambles and undermined public faith in nuclear energy.
Japan's only plant designed to run on MOX, the Fugen reactor, has been permanently shuttered since March last year due to high operating costs.
-------- korea
Russia Says It Ready to Bring Koreas Together
July 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-russia.html
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has told North Korea's Kim Jong-il it is ready to bring the two Koreas together for talks to help settle their differences, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
Lavrov met the reclusive leader in Pyongyang at the weekend after a third round of six-way negotiations on North Korea's nuclear programs involving the two Koreas, Russia, the United States, China and Japan.
The talks seek to defuse a standoff that began in October 2002, when U.S. officials said North Korea had admitted to running secret nuclear weapons programs in violation of international non-proliferation agreements.
Itar-Tass news agency quoted Lavrov as saying his talks with Kim had focused on ways of reaching a peaceful settlement between North and South Korea.
``We considered questions of a three-sided settlement on the Korean peninsula with the participation of Russia and the two Koreas,'' Tass quoted him as saying in a report from Pyongyang.
It was not clear if he was proposing separate three-way talks, with Russia as mediator, and how this would tie in with broader international efforts. He later said Moscow backed Pyongyang's call for compensation in exchange for freezing its nuclear programs as a first stage for negotiations.
At the latest six-way talks in Beijing, North Korea said proposals from Washington, which offered security guarantees and South Korean aid in return for a freeze, showed little new.
It has demanded energy assistance equivalent to two million kilowatts of electricity and a U.S. pledge on non-aggression.
Russia has a small land border with the North and is one of only a handful of states that has diplomatic relations with both North and South Korea.
Lavrov, who handed Kim a message from Russian President Vladimir Putin, made his comments amid reports of a possible bold diplomatic move by Russia to help end the crisis.
Some reports have said Moscow is planning to host a summit between the two Koreas in its far east during a visit by South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, expected in September.
Others said Putin would meet Kim in the Russian port city of Vladivostok -- a report flatly denied by Lavrov. ``Such a meeting is not planned at all,'' Tass quoted him as saying.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said little about Putin's message to Kim, except that it concerned bilateral cooperation and regional security.
Lavrov said he had assured North Korea it had the right to nuclear-generated power if it rejoined the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and took part in activities of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.
North Korea expelled all IAEA inspectors 18 months ago and has refused to let them return. Last year it withdrew from NPT.
-------- missile defense
US MISSILE DEFENCE -
SON OF STAR WARS over sexed-up, over priced, over here?
5 July 2004
Medical Association for Prevention of War
http://www.mapw.org.au/missiledefence/5july04_md_Briefing_Paper.html
The Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia) provides this briefing on missile defence for the use of media and political advisers.
INTRODUCTION:
The Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia) is strongly opposed to any Australian involvement in the proposed US missile defence system.
On 19 June 2004, Defence Minister, Senator Hill announced plans to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Australia and the United States (US) in July 2004 that will outline how we will be involved in US missile defence for the next 25 years.
The US has worked to develop an effective form of missile defence for decades. "Star Wars" as it was envisaged by President Reagan, and "National Missile Defence" as proposed in the Clinton era, are now known just as "Missile Defence" and are being far more aggressively pursued under the Bush administration.
Within missile defence there are two main systems: · theatre missile defence is proposed to intercept short- to medium-range ballistic missiles. Theatre missile defence is mobile and is designed to protect forward-deployed military forces, population centres and civilian assets from short- and medium-range ballistic missile attack.
· strategic or global missile defence is proposed to intercept long-range or intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The stated justification for strategic missile defence is to protect the United States from a limited strike of ICBMs from "rogue" nations, or unauthorised or accidental launches from one of the major nuclear weapons powers.
However, far from reducing the threat of the use of missiles against the US or other nations, missile defence will increase it.
INSTIGATING A RENEWED ARMS RACE:
Missile defence will undermine international security and stability and will potentially lead to a renewed arms race. US adversaries will simply increase their number of missiles to overcome any shield. China, for example (recognised as one of the five nuclear weapons states along with the US, Russia, France and the UK) currently has about 20 ICBMs, but is likely to increase this number in response to the development and deployment of any missile defence technology by the US.
PROLIFERATING MISSILE TECHNOLOGY:
To implement missile defence, participating nations need to align with US missile delivery technology. For Australia this will mean making changes to our existing defence capability, with possible implications for our compliance with the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTRC), which is an important non-proliferation agreement . President Bush has also indicated that he will share the technology with South Korea, Japan and Israel, thereby aiding the spread of missile technology and undermining the very purpose of the MTCR.
TECHNICALLY and ECONOMICALLY UNFEASIBLE:
The technology does not exist to achieve the aim of shooting down incoming missiles, despite billions of dollars and many decades of misdirected research.
One major area of technical difficulty is the fact that the system is likely to be vulnerable to countermeasures that are easier to build than the long-range missiles they target.
Conservative estimates of the cost of pursuing the missile defence idea since the early 1980's are US$130 billion. Some $53 billion is programmed into the US budget for the next five years, with much more to follow. The final cost to Australians has not yet been announced.
Technological problems with missile defence may be insurmountable, and to the extent that the system gives only the illusion of protection, this in itself is profoundly dangerous.
HEALTH and ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS:
Even if MD does work, the likely health and environmental consequences of the fallout from an intercepted missile (potentially with a nuclear, biological or chemical warhead) being dispersed over populated areas render the system unacceptable. Even those developing missile defence have recognised the difficulties of the system in this regard, as outlined in the 2002 report from the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation programs with the US Department of Defence: "Lethality has long been defined at intercept. Kill criteria have been based on deploying the lethal payload, dismembering the warhead or rendering the payload inert, or damaging the aeroshell sufficiently to prevent the threat missile from hitting its intended target. When the intended target of the threat missile is in an area populated with allied soldiers or civilians, the suitability of these criteria is questionable, since they do not address residual effects on the ground due to an intercept. The technical challenges to estimating these effects are substantial, and are proving difficult."
AUSTRALIA IMPLICATED THROUGH US BASES:
The US base at Pine Gap in Central Australia is an integral part of the United States war fighting capability system. Thus its presence on Australian soil implicates Australia in preparations for nuclear strikes, whether pre-emptive or retaliatory. Pine Gap will play an important role in missile defence, as a relay ground station. Therefore Australia shares responsibility for the far-reaching political, strategic and arms control effects which missile defence is likely to produce. The effects could include an adverse impact on our relationship with China. Targeting of Australia is also possible.
The Jindalee over-the-horizon radar (JORN) in northern Australia has already been the subject of joint tests between the Australian Science and Technology Organisation and the US Missile Defence Agency. A key initial project for Australia's role in missile defence is expected to be investigating a role for the over-the-horizon radar systems.
NOT ADDRESSING THE REAL THREATS:
In March 2004, President Bush received a letter signed by 49 US Generals and Admirals recommending that he "postpone operational deployment of the expensive and untested GMD system and transfer the associated funding to accelerated programs to secure the multitude of facilities containing nuclear weapons and materials and to protect our ports and borders against terrorists who may attempt to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States."
Similarly, here in Australia we must make a sound assessment of the threat posed by ballistic missile proliferation, including the likelihood of any attack on Australia, and examine what effective measures may be put in place to address this threat. Diplomacy within our region and globally, commitment to international efforts to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and processes designed to address the root causes of terrorism are all far more worthwhile investments in our security both long- and short-term.
A TEST FOR AUSTRALIAN DEMOCRACY AND SOVEREIGNTY:
Despite the far-reaching consequences for Australians and for global security from missile defence, this issue, and in particular our role in it, has received little debate in our parliament, and no consultation whatsoever with the Australian people. These grave omissions reflect poorly on the current health of democratic process in this country.
MAPW calls on the Australian government not to sign the missile defence agreement with the United States, but instead to ensure that a full and proper debate on the issue takes place in Parliament, including an opportunity for public input.
MAPW urges the Australian government to join those nations that are striving for the elimination of all nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, and reaffirms its view that Australia should not be involved in or support missile defence research, development, trials or operations.
CONCLUSION:
Real security lies in diplomacy, not in developing new weapons systems. Australia's involvement in missile defence would lead to greater vulnerability within our region, as well as implicating us in a scheme that will lead to the further proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the missiles for their delivery. This will undermine international security and stability.
For further comment on missile defence or the proposed US-Australian agreement, contact:
Dr Bill Williams MAPW Vice-President 0419 327 251 or (work) 03 5261 3001
Dr Sue Wareham MAPW President 02 6241 6161 (work) or 02 6259 6062 (after hours)
Dimity Hawkins MAPW Executive Officer 03 8344 1637 or 0431 475 465
References:
FY2002 Annual Report to the Pentagon from the Director, Operational Test and Evaluation Programs for the DoD in the United States http://www.armscontrol.org/pdf/missiledef2002.pdf
Missile Technology Control Regime information http://www.mtcr.info/english/
letter to President Bush from 49 Generals and Admirals http://www.mapw.org.au/missiledefence/USMilitary-letter-Bush_March2004.html
Media Release from Senator Hill 19 June 2004: Missile Defence agreement to be signed in US next month http://www.minister.defence.gov.au/Hilltpl.cfm?CurrentId=3925
-------- russia
Price talk holds up deal for uranium
July 5, 2004
(AP)
http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/midsouth_news/article/0,1426,MCA_1497_3012746,00.html
OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - Money is the main sticking point in a precedent-setting deal that would bring weapons-grade uranium from Russia to the Y-12 National Security Complex, a government official says.
"Right now there's a difference between the U.S. government and what it's willing to pay and the Russian government and what they want to charge," said Bill Brumley, who heads National Nuclear Security Administration's Oak Ridge office.
The deal has been in negotiations for a couple of years. If approved, officials say it would mark the first time Russia has shipped uranium to the United States in a highly enriched form.
In previous agreements designed to reduce inventories of bomb materials in the former Soviet Union, uranium has been down-blended before shipment to reduce its weapons capability.
The latest plan calls for nearly pure U-235 to be sent to U.S. research reactors that require highly enriched uranium for fuel, including the High Flux Isotope Reactor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Under the agreement, the United States would purchase 250 kilograms (about 550 pounds) each year for up to 10 years. The U.S. government has offered approximately $30,000 a kilogram, Brumley said.
The Russian uranium would be shipped to the Y-12 National Security Complex here where it would be stored until needed for reactor fuel.
Y-12, a warhead manufacturing facility, is the nation's principal storehouse for highly enriched uranium.
Oak Ridge officials have been involved in the talks, agreeing on technical specifications for the nuclear material and making preparations for the shipments.
"At this point, Y-12 has done all it can do," Brumley said. "Fundamentally, we are ready to execute the agreement."
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Nuke Nightmare - Bush's Drive to Armageddon
by Joel Wendland,
July 05, 2004
Z Magazine
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=11&ItemID=5824
"It's a fairly radical new way of thinking," declared Linton Brooks of the National Nuclear Security Administration after the passage of most of the Bush administration's proposed new nuclear policy and funding agenda in the 2003 Energy Bill. "We essentially got what we wanted," the Bush appointee chortled. Brooks described the Republican-controlled Congress' acceptance of the Bush nuclear doctrine as a "fundamental shift" in nuclear policy. Brooks lauded the move from test bans and non-proliferation to the development of a new generation of weapons and planning for the preemptive use of nuclear weapons.
Included in the funding package, according to Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (CACN), was $49.3 million for "mini-nukes" and testing programs: $7.5 million was earmarked for development of the "bunker buster," $6 million for studying other "low-yield" weapons, $10.8 million for "modern pit" manufacturing facilities, and about $25 million for testing preparations. (A "modern pit" is the basic nuclear core material of an atomic weapon in storage.) Another $700 million was allocated for manufacturing new pits, storing tritium, and updating nuclear production and maintenance facilities
On the heels of this success the Bush administration proposed additional funding increases in its 2005 budget, more than doubling the spending on a "mini-nuke" program. Additionally, the administration called for $4 billion for building a new "modern pit" production facility "able to produce 125 - 450 plutonium pits per year," says the CACN. Sources also say that Bush will be asking for almost $500 million, over five years, for research on its "bunker buster" bombs. While these proposals have currently bogged down, if Bush administration and a Republican dominated Congress maintain power after the November election, we can expect to see a renewed blitz to pass them.
Linton Brooks was correct. Bush's nuclear policy represented a qualitative shift from how past administrations regarded the use of the nuclear arsenal. While Bush claims an expanded nuclear policy is necessary to conduct a "war on terrorism," it is clear that this line is only a cover for a policy the far right has pursued openly since the 1990s. As early as 1990, then Pentagon chief Dick Cheney sought to skirt test bans and "to integrate the possible use of nuclear weapons to respond to biological or chemical attacks." George H.W. Bush hinted his support for a new policy by openly opposing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) on his last day in office in 1993. In 1999 Senate Republicans rejected the CTBT signed by Clinton in 1996. Throughout this period, the Republicans' rejection of the CTBT was linked to a perceived need to reconstitute the "star wars" missile defense program as exemplified by the exaggerated nuclear hysteria generated by the 1998 (Donald) Rumsfeld Commission report.
By 2000, however, Republican Senators John Warner and Wayne Allard pushed a "provision to allow initial development studies on a nuclear weapon with an explosive yield of less than five kilotons," according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Warner-Allard initiative overturned a 1994 law banning "undertaking research and development that could lead to a precision nuclear weapon" or "mini-nuke." Even then, Republicans sought the development of nuclear weapons "intended not to deter a potential enemy but for use in small, regional wars."
Production for use was now on the agenda. With Bush's selection as president in 2000, this nuclear agenda moved from doctored commission reports and Senate hearings to the Pentagon and the White House. While many Democrats, including Clinton and Gore, ill advisedly supported "star wars," they did not want to move away from non-proliferation, the CTBT, nor did they push "mini-nukes." In his January 2001 report to the president, Clinton's Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili warned against expanding the role of nuclear weapons and making them more useable. Echoing critics of "mini-nukes," Shalikashvili remarked that "if the world's strongest conventional power needed new types of nuclear weapons, other nations would have even more incentive to acquire them."
In the early months of his administration, Bush took steps to separate the U.S. from its CTBT obligations (along with other arms control agreements such as the 1972 Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty). In July 2001, the Bush administration announced it would not seek Senate approval of the CTBT, and he asked State Department officials to search for a legal way to "bury" the treaty, according to the New York Times. By September 6, 2001, Bush still only openly linked his position on the CTBT to his view of the need for "star wars," prompting a former Canadian foreign minister to angrily remark, "This is a government that has retreated so far back into the dark ages that there isn't even a candle lit any more."
Within two months after September 11th, the Bush administration signaled a shift in its rationale for opposing the CTBT. The administration boycotted a UN conference that November promoting the treaty, saying that banning testing would undermine "the safety and reliability of U.S. nuclear arms," reported Reuters. The "star wars" mantra was not cited.
Under this public shift in policy rationale, a more closely guarded policy was being developed in the bowels of the Pentagon and the White House. While usable nuclear weapons as Bush administration policy predated September 11th, the terrorist attacks temporarily gave the concept a much-needed boost. The Bush administration's nuclear policy first received concrete expression in an initially secret document called the Nuclear Posture Review (not released until January 2002). The NPR was developed in the first year of Bush term - not just in the weeks after September 11th. The administration's NPR relied heavily on a report originally published in January of 2001 by the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), whose board of advisors includes former advisers to the Reagan administration and a Boeing officer whose specialty is missile defense. NIPP's reports are published in such far-right periodicals as National Review and the Washington Times.
Low-yield nukes, bunker busters, the administration's problems with testing bans and other non-proliferation treaties, expanded research and production facilities, citation of Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, China, and Russia as potential nuclear targets and expanding the "scale, scope, and purpose" of nuclear strike capabilities were hot topics. Most significant was that the NPR lumped conventional and nuclear weapons together in potential first-strike scenarios. One report produced for the Congressional Research Service said that the administration's NPR "has grouped nuclear weapons and conventional weapons together as 'offensive strike weapons.' It argues that the ability to use conventional weapons would reduce reliance on nuclear weapons. But by grouping the two together, in one interpretation, the Administration's policy could begin to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons and increase the likelihood of nuclear use." Further the NPR opened the possibility of using nuclear weapons against countries that did not possess nuclear weapons.
The administration broadened the list of potential country targets to include those which might use and weapons of mass destruction later in 2002 with its National Security Presidential Directive-17 (NSPD-17). Geared specifically toward mobilizing the military and public opinion for the "war on terror," a potential permanent war with the "axis of evil," and the ultimate goal of an invasion of Iraq, this document expanded the administration's policy of nuclear weapons usage. Later in 2002 the president's Nuclear Weapons Council directly recommended "a return to nuclear testing" and breaking with international treaties that banned testing. By early 2003 a Department of Energy memo urged some of its offices to "take advantage of the repeal of the ban on testing." Recommending even further expansion of potential nuclear usage, the Pentagon's Defense Science Board early 2004 called for the construction of "mini-nukes" usable against terrorist organizations and lamented the "political constraints" that prevent more aggressive pursuit of such a policy.
His call for developing new weapons and new production facilities for new and old weapons contradict Bush's claim that the main goal is non-proliferation and reduction of the arsenal. Currently, according to the NPR and other sources, the U.S. possesses close to 8,000 deployed strategic nuclear warheads and an estimated additional 3,000 to 5,000 non-deployed reserve or inactive stockpiles.
The international community is deeply concerned with or opposed to the Bush administration's new nuclear policy. Certainly countries that have been named as immediate potential targets have few reasons to disarm or avoid developing stockpiles. In addition to objections from expected quarters, however, friendly countries have raised serious concerns and criticisms. Beijing's China Daily described the nuclear policy as having "reduced the trustworthiness of the United States" for which it will pay a "high diplomatic price." The Moscow Times predicted that the policy "may drastically lower the nuclear threshold and trigger numerous local and regional nuclear wars." Australia's Sydney Morning Herald opined that the Bush administration's plan scorned multilateralism and signaled its intention "to pursue a strategic and diplomatic agenda shaped by self-interest." The Oslo Dagsavisen suggested Bush's policy would kill the Non-Proliferation Treaty leading to "greater vulnerability and increased insecurity for everyone." In its response to the NPR, Le Monde characterized the plan as "irresponsible" worthy of "a nation in panic." The Rotterdam NRC Handelsblad predicted the collapse of the coalition in the "war on terror" as now seems taking place.
From right to left politically, expert opinion has highlighted the danger of Bush's nuclear policy. While Republicans expressed little or no opposition to the NPR after the September 11th attacks, more recently dissent has appeared in their ranks. After the passage of the 2003 Energy bill that included funding for new nuclear testing and research, some congressional Republicans expressed concern about the U.S. image on the non-proliferation issue. How could we claim to support non-proliferation while building our own arsenal and developing plans for testing it? Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) expressed criticism from within the president's party. He declared the administration to be "out of bounds" on this issue and said that the Energy bill would result in a "major national scandal."
In his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in May 2002, Carnegie Non-Proliferation Project Director Joseph Cirincione called the NPR a "deeply flawed document" that "could cause irreparable harm to the national security of the United States." Adoption of NPR's recommendations as policy, he said, "could be construed as a material breach of United States obligations under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty." Cirincione said the NPR "sees nuclear weapons as simply another weapon." The NPR's program would encourage other countries to also back out of the NPT and escalate the proliferation of nuclear and other WMD. Cirincione's fears expressed in 2002 came to pass in the 2003 Energy bill.
A report by the Center for Defense Information forcefully pointed out major contradictions. The administration's 2005 budget proposal, it said, would massively underfund international non-proliferation programs by about $2 billion while calling for huge increases in new nuclear programs here. The spending on non-proliferation programs that Bush did propose "is mitigated," the report continued, "by funding put into new nuclear weapons programs, as other countries will be less likely to cooperate with the United States on non-proliferation projects if we act to counter those objectives." Other countries, the CDI concluded, "will see [Bush funding proposals] as an indication that the United States is not serious about cooperating on non-proliferation programs since it continues to augment its own nuclear weapons program." Analysis conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) suggested that stated plans for arsenal reduction is contradicted by the administration's own projections of the number of warheads over the next few years. "The total number of warheads remains essentially the same," said the NRDC.
Since Iraq's nuclear threat was proven to be phony, the Bush administration has single-handedly returned the threat of global nuclear war to the table. The Global Security Institute as argued that "The NPR reflects a major shift in the military and ethical rationale for nuclear weapons, no longer defining them as devices of deterrence, but as weapons of war." While Bush claimed that "mini-nukes" would reduce collateral damage, experts at the CACN argued that radioactive fallout from low-yield nuclear weapons can't be contained. In fact, wrote Robert W. Nelson in the Journal of the Federation of American Scientists, a strike using "low-yield" weapons "does not appear possible without causing massive radioactive contamination." Further, the use of such nuclear weapons against military or terrorist forces that have or may use chemical or biological weapons may release rather than destroy deadly chemical or biological agents.
After winning funding for its new nuclear policy, the next obstacles are the international treaties that restrain full-scale launching of the new program. Withdrawing from the ABM treaty and boycotting the conference on the CTBT and refusing to seek its ratification were politically easy enough. Next is the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Clinton emphatically supported the NPT at its 2000 international review conference, calling for "universal adherence to the NPT and of strict compliance with its terms" and noting "the crucial role of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) safeguards in enforcing the Treaty's undertakings." While Bush's State Department recently expressed similar sentiments, Bush's open contempt for the IAEA during its drive to invade Iraq and the development of this new nuclear policy suggests otherwise. As indicated by polls, overwhelmingly Americans support non-proliferation and major reductions in the arsenal, so weakening or withdrawing from the NPT may prove politically trickier.
The Bush administration's policy may have already wrecked the NPT in effect. In 2002 CACN echoed other critics saying that the NPR "undermined" the NPT and countries that have agreed to NPT's restrictions may feel obliged to "abandon the treaty in the face of a U.S. buildup."
In fact, last May a preparatory meeting (called PrepCom) for the NPT's routine five-year conference ended in "dissension...dimming hopes" for continued "international consensus" on the treaty's future, according to a report by the Arms Control Association (ACA). At this meeting, U.S. representatives tried to focus the meeting's attention on their claim that Iran had tried to acquire nuclear weapons. They demanded that the treaty's signatories punish Iran by refusing "all nuclear cooperation." U.S. officials also expressed their frustration with the IAEA for refusing "to conclude that [Iran's] activities were intended to build nuclear weapons." U.S. officials even suggested that the IAEA didn't need conclusive evidence to impose sanctions on Iran. In a replay of the hype surrounding the drive for war on Iraq that included erroneous claims about "mushroom clouds over American cities," U.S. representatives pushed hard to focus on Iran.
The U.S. obsession with Iran was countered by the "[non-aligned movement] states and other delegations, such as the seven members of the New Agenda Coalition - Brazil, Egypt, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, and Mexico." According to the ACA report, "These states made clear their belief that the slow pace of disarmament by the five nuclear-weapon states, most pointedly the United States, and the continued possession of nuclear weapons by India, Israel, and Pakistan outside the treaty pose equal or more serious threats to the NPT's continued vitality." Aside from the fact that many countries may no longer be prepared to believe uncritically U.S. claims regarding the possession of WMD by other countries, many countries seem to regard the Bush administration's nuclear buildup as hypocritical and cynical.
Notwithstanding the State Department supportive pronouncements, the Bush administration's commitment to the NPT is waning (if it even exists). While it seeks to use the treaty to enforce inspections in and disarmament of states like Iran and North Korea, it rejects calls for its own compliance with the treaty, especially where it contradicts the new nuclear policy formulated in the NPR. "The Bush administration," says the ACA report, "also has already acted contrary to several of the 13 [NPT disarmament] steps by, among other things, withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to pursue strategic missile defense systems and declaring that it will not ask the Senate to reconsider its 1999 rejection of the CTBT. In fact, U.S. officials insisted at the PrepCom that those commitments no longer be formally referenced." In other words, the Bush administration unilaterally rejected basic measures of the NPT and says, "Let's forget about that."
A reelected Bush administration will try to push the NPT into extinction. The only feasible alternative scenario is replacing the Bush administration with an administration that is committed to NPT's original goals. Without "regime change," aggressive confrontations with nuclear and non-nuclear powers that object to the U.S. running roughshod over its treaty commitments to disarmament and non-proliferation will intensify. It is not impossible to envision the actual unfolding of events outlined in Bush's NPR: first-strike use of nuclear weapons leading to an extended and destructive period of global warfare.
Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs magazine -http://www.politicalaffairs.net - and writes ClassWarNotes - http://classwarnotes.blogspot.com
-------- us nuc waste
Roads bill adds new level of secrecy
Small clause would keep nuclear waste routes under wraps
By Douglas Fischer, STAFF WRITER
Monday, July 05, 2004
Oakland Tribune
http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~1865~2254156,00.html
Deep in a 1,381-page highway spending bill now before Congress are two sentences that would override state open-records laws and let federal authorities seal now-public information about the nation's rail and highway systems -- including records relating to the transport of hazardous waste through communities.
The language, requested by the Bush administration, would give the U.S. Department of Transportation and state and local governments power to determine what information about the nation's transportation grid should be kept secret.
The broadly written clause allows the department -- and local governments -- to prohibit the release of any information deemed "detrimental to the safety of passengers in transportation."
Depending on how the administration interprets such concern, critics say, that could be everything from reports detailing poor railroad track maintenance in a particular com-
munity -- thereby raising the risk of derailments -- to the customary disclosure of rail and road routes used to ship nuclear waste.
Government watchdog groups call the language part of a continued erosion of open-records laws occurring under President George Bush's watch that, in this case, could put communities at risk.
"There's a danger ... that in-formation of importance to communities will become unavailable -- so that 'national security' will trump community safety," said Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs, a nonprofit group monitoring activities at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The exact timing of a nuclear materials shipment, for instance, is already a secret, she said. Keeping the route secret would give the public no say in a decision that has a potentially huge effect on their neighborhood.
"That's going to have a negative impact on democracy and on community safety," Kelley said.
The sentences are tucked in the Senate version of a highway spending bill authorizing billions of dollars in roadway projects across the country. The House version lacks the language, and lawmakers from the Senate and House are to meet after the July 4 holiday recess to hammer out the differences.
The Senate bill's secrecy clause was requested by the Bush administration to protect information that could aid terrorists, said Virginia Davis, an aide to Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.
The Transportation Security Administration already has authority to seal sensitive information related to airports. This language, Davis said, is intended to extend that protection to state and local governments.
But Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists, sees it going deeper. Until now, information subject to secrecy has largely dealt with airline transportation -- flight safety, airline and airport security and so forth.
This would extend that scope throughout the nation's transportation network -- to every street, road and railway in the country.
"Who knows -- maybe they would do the right thing and say all this information should be in the public domain," he said. "But if they didn't want to, this law would say they wouldn't have to."
Some state regulators say the open flow of information is crucial when making decisions. The state Energy Commission, for instance, is one of several agencies overseeing the transport of nuclear fuels through the state. The selection of those routes traditionally undergoes a vigorous public airing. "You will always need to discuss, in my opinion, these routes with local governments," said commission spokeswoman Claudia Chandler. "You have to have the local government's input -- your local fire department, your sheriffs."
The change could be far-reaching, critics add. Current law, for example, requires the Department of Transportation to publish annual reports on hazardous materials incidents. The new law could trump that requirement.
Similarly, someone researching how many drivers of Bay Area school buses or hazardous material trucks have been convicted of drug or alcohol violations could find that information blocked, since the law extends the cloak of secrecy to "transportation employees."
"This administration's penchant for secrecy has gone beyond the need for medication," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Alamo. "There are very benign ways (to deal with the security risk). You don't have to have a red alert whenever you truck something through town."
It was a Freedom of Information Act request that alerted CAREs to a federal plan to ship plutonium pellets from the former Rocky Flats weapons lab in Colorado to the Lawrence Livermore lab, Kelley said.
To make the job easier, the government planned to transport the nuclear cargo in lightweight containers that could be crushed in an accident, she said. The group successfully sued to stop the shipments.
The public really is the entity that stops a lot of stupid government ideas, Kelley said.
Contact Douglas Fischer at dfischer@angnewspapers.com .
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
MILITARY Afghan Man's Death at U.S. Outpost Is Investigated
July 5, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/international/asia/05AFGH.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GERESHK, Afghanistan - The American military is investigating the death in November of an Afghan man held in detention at an American military outpost here in southern Afghanistan.
There are now five deaths of Afghans in American detention that the military is investigating.
The family of the dead man, Abdul Wahed, 28, charge that the Afghan commander of security at the base was responsible for his torture and death, and various local authorities back that account.
The Americans do not say whether their investigation is focusing on the Afghan commander, Daoud Muhammad Khan, who is a figure about town and can be seen leading operations from the base.
American military spokesmen confirm that Mr. Wahed died on Nov. 6 at the base here. Some 70 American Special Forces soldiers at the base live within a perimeter of six bunkerlike positions maintained by an Afghan militia force, who serve under murky lines of authority.
The American military has given few other details of the death.
A spokeswoman at United States military headquarters in Kabul, Master Sgt. Cindy Beam, said Mr. Wahed was "almost dead" when he reached the care of American soldiers. Christopher Grey, a spokesman at the United States Army Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, confirmed that an autopsy was performed at the Bagram base outside Kabul.
Mr. Wahed's cousin, who was detained at the same time, and other family members charge that the Afghan commander in charge of security for the American base, Mr. Daoud, known as Commander Daoud, was responsible for Mr. Wahed's torture and death.
During a reporter's visit to the base, Mr. Daoud was not available for comment. Mr. Daoud's former commander, the Defense Ministry corps commander in Gereshk, Haji Mir Wali, defended Mr. Daoud, saying Mr. Wahed was in fact a member of the Taliban and may have been behind attacks against Mr. Daoud.
Last Nov. 3, the ninth day of the fasting month of Ramadan, members of the Afghan militia from the base arrived at Mr. Wahed's house, just half a mile downhill from the base, and arrested Mr. Wahed, said his father, Haji Aminullah.
"It was Ramadan, so we were still up and we were saying prayers," he said. "I asked: `What did he do wrong?' And they said: `He laid a mine against us.' "
"My son had been away in Nadali district for three days, and said he did not know anything about it," Mr. Aminullah said.
Mr. Aminullah said that was the last time he saw his son alive. He said he believed he died two or three days later. "My heart is telling me the Afghans did it," he said. "It hurts me very much, my son's death."
But he did not learn of the death for two more months, until the same Afghan soldiers dumped his body outside his house, saying it had come from Bagram, the American air base north of the capital, Kabul.
The Afghans relayed a message from the American military, he said. "They told me: `The Americans said he is innocent and we are sorry. We did not find anything against him,' " Mr. Aminullah recalled. He said he was given no further explanation.
All he has now is two luggage tags that were attached to the body bag. They bear Abdul Wahed's name written in English, and a series of numbers and letters on the back, 4803/AR54QM/CP-1 and 84-03/AR54th QM/TM-4.
The body looked as if it had undergone an operation, probably the autopsy. "They had cut him open," Mr. Aminullah said. "They had operated on his head, and his stomach. There was paper stuffed inside his stomach." The body was well preserved, he said, and it was possible to see signs of beating and burning.
"All of his body was injured, not a space on his body was not injured," he said. "On his back the skin was shredded, and there were burns on his stomach."
Mr. Wahed's cousin, Abdul Halim, 25, said he was also arrested on the same evening at his home on the other side of the town by the same Afghan militia unit.
Mr. Halim said he was taken to one of the Afghan checkpoints on the perimeter of the base. He said he was questioned there by Mr. Daoud, who sat in a chair while two soldiers beat Mr. Halim with a wooden stick and rubber straps, and others held down his head, arms and legs. Mr. Halim said they then twisted a plastic bag and set fire to it, dropping melting plastic onto his bare stomach.
Mr. Halim pulled up his shirt to show burn marks across his stomach, and a long scar from an operation, as he described his ordeal in an interview at his brother's home in Shurakai village, an hour's drive from Gereshk.
"They kept saying: `You laid mines on the road,' " he said. "They were trying to force me to say yes. I was screaming and fainting."
Later, he said, the militia soldiers threw water over him and left him without clothes all night in the bare room. The next day, he said, they took him outside to the yard, held a gun to his head, fired bullets into the ground around him, and put him down a well where he sat shivering in a foot of water for hours. "The whole day they just kept saying: `We are going to kill you,' " he said.
On the third morning, he said, two American soldiers came by the post. When they saw Mr. Halim lying in the yard, they asked who he was. The militia soldiers had thrown an old blanket over him and said he was a sick friend. "They did not understand what was going on," he said of the Americans. They left, and Mr. Halim lay semicomatose all that day in the yard, and then on the fourth day, the soldiers took him back home, he said.
"They threw me out of the car," he said. "It was late afternoon. I could not walk and people brought a vegetable barrow to take me to the house."
His lower back and the backs of his thighs were so badly beaten that the skin was raw and bleeding, he said. The burns on his stomach were so severe that he spent two months in a hospital in Pakistan, where doctors operated on him and told him internal membranes had been perforated.
In detention, he said, he did not see his cousin, who was arrested just an hour and a half later. But on his third morning of detention, Mr. Halim said, the soldiers told him, " `Your friend died.' "
"I did not know what they meant," he said. Later, he said, he realized they had been talking about Mr. Wahed.
Mr. Halim said he was never a member of the Taliban. His brother, Abdul Aziz, said the family did not at first worry about his detention. "When they took him we were not worried," he said. "We thought this is the government, if they are suspicious, they will just question him."
Unlike Mr. Halim, Mr. Wahed was once a member of the Taliban, according to Mr. Aziz, but after the Taliban fell two years ago, Mr. Wahed came home to help his father build their house.
"O.K., if Abdul Wahed was guilty, then take him in and question him," Mr. Aziz said. "But that doesn't mean you can beat him and burn him. That's not right."
The military corps commander in Gereshk, Mr. Wali, dismissed the family's assertions about Mr. Wahed and said he was still active in the Taliban and was behind a number of local attacks, and the shooting of an engineer and a driver from the aid organization, Voluntary Association for the Rehabilitation of Afghanistan, in September last year.
Mr. Wali said he had detained two accomplices of Mr. Wahed's who said he had led the attack on the association. The district is better off with him dead, Mr. Wali said in an interview. "If they had not killed him, then I would have," he said.
The military commander also explained that feelings were running high when Mr. Wahed was arrested.
The security commander said Mr. Daoud had just lost his brother, a commander called Idris, in factional fighting in the town a few days before. At the funeral, Mr. Daoud's men discovered explosives left in his house and mines on the road. He accused Mr. Wahed and his cousin of laying the mines.
Mr. Daoud himself was a member of the opposition that helped American forces defeat the Taliban government and was then absorbed into the Defense Ministry. He later went to work with the American Special Forces at the base in Gereshk.
The governor of Helmand Province, Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, said he had warned President Hamid Karzai and the Americans of the ill-feeling that Mr. Daoud's alliance with the American forces was creating. The treatment of Mr. Wahed, he said, "is bad for me, bad for Karzai, and bad for the Americans," he said.
American forces all over the south and east of the country have hired members of local militias to provide security and local intelligence and accompany them on combat operations. They have given some training that, according to one American commander, includes discussion of human rights.
But the Afghans, former mujahedeen, have been blamed for excesses on joint operations, including looting houses and mistreating villagers. It is not clear who controls the militia forces hired by the Americans.
Mr. Daoud's former commander, Mr. Wali, said Mr. Daoud served under American command and was answerable to the Americans.
The chief United States military spokesman, Maj. Jon Siepmann, said that the militias come under the control of the Afghan Defense Ministry and that any suggestion of impropriety would be passed on to the ministry.
The chief spokesman for the Defense Ministry, Gen. Zaher Azimi, said the ministry was not responsible for the militia forces working with the Americans. He said he was not aware of the death of Mr. Wahed and said the matter was not under investigation by the Defense Ministry.
The military spokesman, Maj. Siepmann, would not comment on why a man with such a reputation continued to serve with the American forces, but said that if there were any formal charges the Afghans would deal with him, not the United States.
Woman Dies of Bomb Wounds
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 4 - An Afghan election worker, wounded in a bus bombing June 16 in the eastern town of Jalalabad, has died, bringing to three the number of women killed in the attack by suspected Taliban fighters.
In Kabul on Sunday, six people were wounded, including three children and two women, in an explosion in a yard where three men were assembling bombs, NATO peacekeepers said.
-------- africa
African Union Readies Troops for Darfur
July 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-africa-darfur.html
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - The African Union is preparing to send hundreds of armed troops to Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region, a senior AU official said Monday.
``The protection force will be deployed as soon as possible,'' AU Director of Peace and Security Sam Ibok told a news conference ahead of the annual AU summit of African leaders, which begins in Addis Ababa Tuesday.
Ibok said he was certain Sudan would not object.
Khartoum is under heavy pressure from African countries, the United States and the United Nations to restore security in Darfur, described as the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
-------- arms
Pakistan buys 50 Mirage jets, spares from Libya
By Muhammad Saleh Zaafir
Monday July 05, 2004
News International, Pakistan
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/jul2004-daily/05-07-2004/main/main11.htm
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has purchased 50 Mirage planes, 150 sealed pack engines of these planes and huge quantity of spare parts for the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) from Libya.
The spares will cater to the needs of these fighters for the next seven to ten years. High government sources told The News on condition of anonymity that the supply of these planes, engines and spares has already begun. Wide body transport planes are bringing these equipment from Tripoli and unloading them at the PAF bases. The supply is supposed to continue till sometime. Some of the equipment will also be reaching their destination through ships.
Mirage-three and five versions are already flying for the PAF while the Mirages purchased from Libya are in both variations. The Mirages are in excellent condition but the Libyan Air Force was dormant for quite sometime due to sanctions imposed on that country and was thus not flying the planes regularly. It grounded most of these planes and now the United States and other Western countries have started lifting these sanctions. It is expected that Libyan Air Force would be reinvigorated through new type of the most sophisticated multi-role planes soon.
The PAF will examine the used planes purchased by Libya in the first place and decide about their use and air worthiness. The sources said that most of the planes would be scrapped for spare parts for the planes already in use of the PAF. The PAF badly needs spares for its planes including Mirages as they are very expensive.
Pakistan plans to upgrade and refurbish its old Mirages and acquire new radars, avionics and weapon systems for its fleet. This will be done in phases, the sources added. The purchase from Libya has been made on cash payment.
With the induction of Mirages obtained from Libya in the PAF, Pakistan would become a country having the highest number of Mirage planes with its air force even larger than the manufacturer of this type of planes, France, the sources said. Pakistan first purchased Mirage planes in the 1970s from France and then 40 old Mirages were purchased from Australia in the 1990s.
-------- business
US army will not decide on air tankers until 2005: Boeing
Mon Jul 5,
(AFP)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1506&ncid=1506&e=2&u=/afp/20040705/ts_alt_afp/germany_us_air_military_040705180225
FRANKFURT - The US Pentagon will not make any decision regarding a controversial 23-billion-dollar (19-billion-euro) contract for 100 refuelling tanker aircraft until the spring of 2005, the head of the US aircraft maker Boeing said in a German newspaper interview published Monday.
"I think we'll get the contract in late spring or early summer of 2005," Boeing chief Harry Stonecipher told the business daily Handelsblatt in comments reproduced in German.
The Pentagon put the contract on ice last December following a scandal surrounding Boeing's government bidding practices.
The Pentagon is investigating whether or not Boeing received proprietary pricing information about a bid by arch rival Airbus for that same contract.
Stonecipher also told Handelsblatt that Boeing hoped to sell 500 of its new 7E7 "Dreamliner" jets before the model is launched in 2008.
"Around 30 airlines have expressed a serious interest," Stonecipher said.
--------
Contracts Awarded
Washington Technology and States News Service
Monday, July 5, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28200-2004Jul4?language=printer
Anteon International Corp. of Fairfax won a 16-month, $45 million blanket purchase agreement from the Navy to provide systems engineering and program management support to the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Program Directorate.
Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., won a six-year, $146 million contract to provide systems integration, information processing and related services to the Army's PM Transportation Information Systems program.
Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif., won an 11-year, $589 million contract from the Federal Aviation Administration to modernize portions of the National Airspace System.
General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems unit won a five-year, $479 million contract to continue its work with the Joint Forces Command's Joint Experimentation Program and Joint Futures Lab.
General Dynamics Armament and Technical Products of Charlotte, N.C. won an $8 million contract for 9,000 M2HB .50 caliber gun barrels from the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command.
KeyLogic Systems Inc. of Columbia won a three-year, $4.1 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency to support and expand the Budget Automation System. KeyLogic also won a two-year, $2 million contract from the Environmental Protection Agency to support the eFacts Knowledge Management System.
Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda won a $9.6 million contract to train Army convoy drivers using simulators.
Planning Systems Inc. of Reston won a four-year, $9.5 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command to provide Web services to support the Navy's FORCEnet initiative to make the Navy more network centric.
Tier Technologies Inc. of Reston won a $5.8 million contract from the Tennessee Human Services Department to operate its child support customer service unit.
Northrop Grumman Information Technology of Herndon won a $408.3 million contract from the Army for technical simulation training support services.
JIL Information Systems Inc. of Vienna won a contract valued at up to $55 million from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
LPI Technical Services of Chesapeake, Va., won a $52.5 million contract from the Naval Surface Warfare Center for engineering and technical services in support of hull, mechanical and electrical systems on Navy vessels.
Bell-Boeing's joint program office in Patuxent River, Md., won a $39.2 million modified contract to a previously awarded fixed-priced-incentive-fee contract from the Naval Air Systems Command for the incorporation of the Engineering Change Proposal for rework of three Lot IV MV-22 aircraft Low Rate Initial Production of tiltrotor aircraft to a Block A/B configuration.
Coakley & Williams Construction Inc. of Gaithersburg won a $29.9 million fixed-price-incentive contract from the Army for design and construction of the Pentagon Library and Conference Center.
Honeywell Technology Solutions Inc. of Columbia won a maximum $28.2 million cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity completion contract from the Naval Surface Warfare Center for the design, development, installation, operation, modification and modernization of Automatic Identification Technology for the Defense Department, federal agencies and selected foreign governments.
Raytheon Strategic Systems Division of Falls Church won a $16.2 million cost-plus fixed-fee contract modification from the Air Force that will integrate the Air Force Airborne Signals Intelligence Payload tasking, processing, exploitation and dissemination capabilities into the Deployable Ground Intercept Facility element.
Northrop Grumman Corp. of Charlottesville won a $13. 3 million firm-fixed-price letter contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for the procurement of two AN/BPS-16 (V) radar sets and two AN/BPS-15K radar conversion sets, which will provide navigation, surface surveillance and limited detection of low-flying aircraft capabilities for submarines.
Keane Federal Systems of McLean won a $12.9 million contract from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. for an integrating and testing center and independent verification and validation services.
Daston Corp. of McLean won a $9.9 million contract from the Treasury Department for IT support services.
Catapult Technology Ltd. of Bethesda won a $9.9 million contract from the Treasury Department for IT support services.
CSMI of Alexandria won a $9.9 million contract from the Treasury Department for IT support services.
Computer & Hi-Tech Management Inc. of Virginia Beach won an $8.9 million contract from the Navy for information technology services.
Social & Scientific Systems Inc. of Silver Spring won an $8.74 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department to provide administrative resources for biodefense proteomic research centers.
Computer & Hi-tech Management Inc. of Virginia Beach won a $8.8 million performance based, indefinite-delivery/-quantity, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract from the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center for system software and technical support services.
Bell Boeing's joint program office in Patuxent River, Md., won a $8.9 million ceiling-priced order under a previously awarded contract from the Naval Inventory Control Point for procurement of Interface Chancellor and Auxiliary Power Unit spares for the CV 22 Osprey.
Heckler & Koch Defense Inc. of Sterling won a $5.3 million contract from the Army's Tank-automotive and Armaments Command for small-arms manufacturing of guns through 30mm.
Human Solutions Inc. of Washington won a contract valued at up to $5 million from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Noesis Inc. of Manassas won a $3.9 million contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for high performance brushes for trim and drain pump motors.
Environmental Design & Construction LLC of Washington won a contract valued at up to $3.75 million from the General Services Administration for environmental consulting services.
Project Management Services Inc. of Rockville won a contract valued at up to $2.5 million from the General Services Administration for management, organizational and business improvement services.
AMSEC LLC of Virginia Beach won a $1.7 million contract from the Navy for technical and expert support.
ITT Industries Inc. of Roanoke won a $1.6 million contract from the Army's Communications-Electronics Command for manufacturing in the area of communication, detection and coherent radiation equipment.
Aurora Associates International Inc. of Washington won a $1.2 million contract from the General Services Administration's Federal Supply Service for management, organizational and business improvement services.
Amsec LLC of Virginia Beach won a $5 million indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost plus fixed fee pricing contract from the Fleet and Industrial Supply Center for maintenance support centers for engineering and technical services for direct fleet support of Navy aircraft carriers and associated battle group support vessels.
Dominion Virginia Power of Portsmouth, Va., won a $73 million firm fixed price from the Defense Energy Support Center for ownership, operation and maintenance of the electric distribution system for the Army.
General Dynamics Land Systems of Woodbridge, under their operating unit General Dynamics Amphibious Systems (GDAMS), won a $56 million cost-reimbursable contract from the Marine Corps Systems Command for the acquisition of Special Tooling and Special Test Equipment (ST/STE) to support the production phase of the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle (EFV) (formerly known as the Advanced Amphibious Assault Vehicle).
Jahn Corp. of Lexington Park won a $6.7 million modification to a previously awarded indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00421-03-D-0045) from the Naval Air Systems Command Aircraft Division to exercise an option for approximately 146,100 man-hours of advisory and assistance services (A&AS) to the V-22 Program, including management/administrative and resource/operations support; development/production analysis and technical services; and independent analyses, technical studies and management services.
William V. Walsh Construction Co. of Rockville won a $5.6 million firm-fixed-price contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for design, construction and renovation of the Memorial Reception Building.
Radian Inc. of Alexandria won a $25.5 million firm fixed price contract modification from the Air Armament Center to provide for Power Units for the Deployable Power Generator Distribution System.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum won a $7.2 million firm fixed price contract from the Headquarters Electronic Systems Center, Hanscom Air Force Base, to provide for seven sets of Wide-Band Kylstron Power Amplifiers; one main redundant study and one Phase Compensation Calibration Curve set of software.
Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office of Patuxent River won a $66.5 million ceiling priced cost-plus-award-fee delivery order against a previously awarded basic ordering agreement from the Naval Air Systems Command to provide for continued flight test and data integration efforts for the V-22 weapon system.
Digital System Resources Inc. of Fairfax won a $21.6 million cost-plus incentive/award-fee modification to previously awarded contract from the Naval Sea Systems Command for FY04 level-of-effort engineering/technical services in support of the Multi-Purpose Processor (MPP) program.
John C. Grimberg Co. Inc. of Rockville won a $7.8 million firm-fixed-price contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for design, construction, and renovation of the Memorial Reception Building.
Northrop Grumman Systems Corp. of Linthicum Heights won a $2.6 million increment as part of a $32.2 million cost-plus-fixed-fee contract from the Army Robert Morris Acquisition Center for research and development in support of the Affordable Adaptive Conformial Esa Radar Program.
Quantell Inc. of McHenry won a delivery order amount of $1.2 million as part of a $20,000,000 cost-plus-award-fee, cost-plus-incentive-fee, and firm-fixed-price contract from the Army Corps of Engineers for abatement of asbestos, lead, and other hazardous toxic materials throughout the North Atlantic Division.
Amsec LLC of Virginia Beach won a $5 million contract from the Navy to provide award maintenance support.
Information Management Services Inc. of Rockville won a $1.1 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department to provide data management services for cancer diagnosis program activities.
The Henry M. Jackson Foundation of Rockville won a $49.6 million contract from the Health and Human Services Department to provide support for clinical research infrastructure in South Africa.
Marshall Miller & Associates of Ashland won a $5 million contract from the General Services Administration for environmental services.
Electronic Data Systems Inc. of Herndon won a $19 million contract from the Treasury Department for data warehousing.
Creative Associates International Inc. of Washington won a $56.5 million contract from the Agency for International Development for education and training services.
Staff Writer Judith Mbuya contributed to this report.
--------
U.S., India to Sign'Open Skies' Treaty
AP
July 5, 2004
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/INDIA_US_AVIATION?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
NEW DELHI (AP) -- The United States is ready to sign an "open skies" agreement with India that would remove all civil aviation restrictions, such as limits on destinations and government approval for price and service changes, a U.S. aviation official said Monday.
"We stand ready to sign an agreement at any point in time," U.S. Assistant Secretary for Aviation Karan K. Bhatia told Indian business leaders after he met with his Indian counterpart, Praful Patel.
Although Bhatia said neither government wants to continue the restrictions that have made American airline operators nervous about entering the Indian market and limited Indian service to the United States, there has been little progress.
The airline industry is one of many that Indian governments protected from domestic and international competition for years until market opening policies were adopted in the early 1990s. The new Indian government has communist partner parties that object to privatization and any policy that might lead to job losses in state-owned companies.
There is no nonstop service between India and the United States, and more than 60 percent of passengers flying between the two nations use airlines of other countries. The annual two-way passenger traffic is about 1.5 million, Bhatia said, while Saroj K. Datta, Aviation Committee chairman of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry said it is 2.3 million.
The only U.S. airlines operating to India are Delta and Northwest, flying to Bombay, the western financial hub, not the capital, New Delhi.
U.S. airlines have rights under the current agreement to fly to more Indian cities, but are wary, Bhatia said.
"What intimidates American businesses is this perception that India is a highly regulated place; it's very difficult to do business here," he said.
India's government owned Air-India flies five times a week from New Delhi to the United States, and operates daily flights from Bombay to New York, Newark, New Jersey, Chicago and Los Angeles. But the Indian government does not allow the country's private airlines to compete with Air-India by flying to the United States and other major destinations.
-----
Australia set to acquire unmanned surveillance aircraft
CANBERRA (AFP)
Jul 05, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040705045856.9pkjfgxz.html
Australia is set to acquire the latest unmanned aircraft for surveillance and target selection by day and night, the government announced Monday.
Defence Minister Robert Hill said the government would spend 100-million to 150-million Australian dollars (70 million to 105 million US) acquiring a fleet of tactical unmanned surveillance aircraft able to back up land operations.
The new aircraft would be equipped with a sensor system capable of taking video and still images.
"While the aircraft will operate autonomously, it will be remotely commanded and monitored from a ground station where the crew will process the imagery," Hill said in a statement.
He said a trial conducted in the Solomon Islands last year of the small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) made by Aerosonde, a local subsidiary of a US-based firm, had proved the importance of such capabilities for the Australian Defence Force of the future.
The tactical UAV system would be complemented by a larger high-altitude strategic UAV such as the Global Hawk, he said.
The unmanned aircraft will be operated by the army with a new surveillance and target acquisition regiment to be formed and located in Brisbane.
Hill said the project had attracted worldwide interest and suitable systems were currently in service in many countries, including the United States, Israel, Canada and South Africa.
Tactical UAVs are available in both fixed and rotary wing configurations with aircraft wingspans up to 10 metres and payload capacities of up to 150 kilograms (330 pounds).
The request for tender will be issued at the end of July with bids due by November. Selection of the winner is expected by May 2005.
-------- china
Chinese Pressure Dissident Physician
Hero of SARS Crisis Detained Since June 1
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28014-2004Jul4?language=printer
BEIJING -- Chinese military and security officials are forcing the elderly physician who exposed the government's coverup of the SARS epidemic to attend intense indoctrination classes and are interrogating him about a letter he wrote in February denouncing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, according to sources familiar with the situation.
The officials have detained Jiang Yanyong, 72, a semi-retired surgeon in the People's Liberation Army, in a room under 24-hour supervision, and they have threatened to keep him until he "changes his thinking" and "raises his level of understanding" about the Tiananmen crackdown, said one of the sources, who described the classes as "brainwashing sessions."
But Jiang, who became a national hero last year after blowing the whistle on the government's efforts to hide the SARS outbreak, has refused to back down, and said in a recent note to his family that he would continue to "face the problems confronting me with the principle of seeking truth from facts," according to a person close to the family.
The standoff is the culmination of an extraordinary battle of wills that has been quietly unfolding for months between China's ruling Communist Party and an individual who has already challenged the authorities and forced them to back down once.
China's state-controlled media have not reported Jiang's detention, which began June 1. In response to questions submitted by The Washington Post, the government said in a brief statement: "Jiang Yanyong, as a soldier, recently violated the relevant discipline of the military. Based on relevant regulations, the military has been helping and educating him."
Though Chinese police routinely jail dissidents, the decision to detain Jiang appears to have been made by the Central Military Commission, the nation's supreme military body, with the consent of the party's most senior leaders, including President Hu Jintao and his influential predecessor, Jiang Zemin, according to a source familiar with the decision-making process.
The move represents a high-risk gamble by the leadership because of Jiang Yanyong's public stature at home and abroad. Photographs of his wizened face have been displayed on the covers of national magazines, and state newspapers have published articles crediting him with saving lives around the world by forcing government officials to confront the SARS epidemic.
If the leadership succeeds in silencing Jiang, it would send a powerful message to potential critics about its determination to crush dissent. But Jiang's detention could also trigger a backlash against a party already struggling to maintain its monopoly on power as there is rising social discontent. And if Jiang is not released, he would almost certainly become China's most famous political prisoner.
One senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was broad support for Jiang even within the party and that it will be increasingly difficult for the leadership to hold him as news of his detention spreads. "I consider him a man of honesty and courage," he said. "Ninety-nine percent of the people support him."
Different Explanations
While the government indicated Jiang is being held for violating military regulations, military officials at the No. 301 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army, where Jiang works, have shifted responsibility for his detention to party authorities, a person close to the family said.
The officials told the family that Jiang, a longtime party member, was being investigated for breaking party discipline, the source said. When the family pressed officials to name which regulations Jiang had violated, one of the officials was quoted by the source as replying: "Not being consistent with the party's Central Committee."
The different explanations, and the fact that the authorities have not formally arrested Jiang or charged him with any crime, suggest some uncertainty within the leadership.
The first time Jiang risked his freedom by challenging the government, during the SARS crisis, the leadership also hesitated. But two weeks after his letter to the Chinese media exposing the SARS coverup was leaked to Time magazine, the party fired the health minister and the mayor of Beijing, dramatically raised its official count of SARS cases and launched a mass campaign to alert the public of the disease and stop it from spreading.
Jiang was ordered not to speak to foreign reporters and was put under police surveillance. But within a month, state-run media began publishing articles about him, a few carefully worded reports at first, followed by bolder profiles that praised him as the honest doctor who dared tell the truth about the outbreak.
But the surveillance continued, family members said. And at the end of last year, members of the ruling Politburo Standing Committee discussed Jiang's case during a meeting about ensuring political stability and agreed he should be investigated, a source familiar with the party's decision-making process said.
Then, in late February, Jiang sent a letter to the leadership urging them to admit the party's 1989 military assault on student-led, pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square was wrong. While the party has formally acknowledged other errors, including Mao Zedong's destructive Cultural Revolution, it has refused to reevaluate the Tiananmen massacre, in part because doing so might prompt new demands for democratic reform.
In his letter, which was leaked to the foreign press during the March meeting of China's legislature, Jiang recalled what he witnessed on the night of the crackdown, describing how scores of wounded civilians were rushed to the No. 301 Hospital, where he was chief of surgery, and noting that many had been hit by bullets designed to break apart after impact and damage internal organs.
Jiang also said two senior Chinese leaders believed to have played important roles in the crackdown -- the former president, Yang Shangkun, and the party elder Chen Yun -- had suggested in conversations with him or in writing before their deaths in the 1990s that the party would eventually have to admit the massacre was a mistake.
Jiang showed his letter to several friends, and many of them urged him not to send it, arguing it was too dangerous, an associate said. But according to an essay published in Hong Kong by a Beijing dissident who is a friend of Jiang's, the doctor said he wanted to use the political capital he had accumulated during the SARS crisis to speak out on behalf of the victims of the 1989 massacre and their relatives.
Tightened Surveillance
The party's response was immediate. Over the next three months, party and military officials visited Jiang at his home and began summoning him to weekly criticism meetings at the hospital, pressing him to admit making what they called a "serious political mistake" by writing the letter, to explain how it was leaked and to express regret that it was published in the foreign media, sources familiar with the situation said.
Jiang insisted he had followed proper procedures and done nothing wrong. When one of the officials, Zhu Shijun, director of the No. 301 Hospital, challenged Jiang to prove his allegations, the doctor recalled that Zhu had also been in the hospital on the night of the massacre and had witnessed the carnage too, one source said.
The authorities tightened surveillance of Jiang's movements, telephone conversations and e-mail, and required that he seek permission to attend social activities or treat patients at other hospitals, family members said. Security agents questioned all visitors to his home, and when Jiang traveled to western Xinjiang province to treat an old patient, a chaperone was ordered to stay with him at all times.
In May, hospital officials warned Jiang not to go to the U.S. Embassy to apply for a visa to visit his daughter in California until after June 4, the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, a person close to the family said. But Jiang and his wife had an appointment on June 1 at the embassy for fingerprinting, a requirement for visa applicants in China, and requested a car from the hospital.
That morning, the hospital's driver told them the car had broken down and asked them to step into a van with a different driver, the source said. After a short distance, the van stopped. Suddenly, several men surrounded the vehicle, pulled the couple out and shoved them into an armored vehicle with small windows and iron bars, the source said.
On the first day, Jiang and his wife, Hua Zhongwei, were held in different rooms and barred from seeing each other, the source said, but Hua protested by refusing to eat. The next day, security officers moved the couple to another facility and began letting them see each other at least once a day, though always under supervision.
The security officials have forced Jiang to write daily statements and watch videotapes as part of the indoctrination process, sources familiar with the situation said, and they have scrutinized his datebook and other materials for information to use against him. One source described the process as a milder version of the high-pressure, sometimes violent tactics that Chinese security agents have successfully used to force members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement to give up their beliefs.
On June 15, several hours after CNN broadcast a telephone interview with the couple's daughter, Jiang Rui, and the Associated Press moved an interview with their son, Jiang Qing, the authorities released Hua. She immediately urged both children to stop talking to reporters, saying she had been told that Jiang's fate would depend in part on their silence, sources close to the family said.
Hua did not return phone calls to her home. One person close to the family said the 72-year-old retired research doctor is terrified and appears to have been traumatized by her experience. Military officials visit her every day to remind her not to speak to reporters, the person said.
Jiang's daughter, Jiang Rui, declined to discuss her father's detention in detail, saying her mother has refused to tell her what happened to them in custody. "Of course, we're very worried about him," she said. "We hope he'll be released soon."
The authorities have not allowed Jiang's family to visit or speak with him and have not said where he is being held. But officials have shown family members at least two handwritten notes from the doctor. In one, the sources said, Jiang said he was fine, urged the family not to worry about him and made the vow to "seek truth through facts."
In the other note, written on June 17, his son's 45th birthday, the doctor said: "Save me a piece of cake."
-------- iraq
Iraq's ailing health care sector
A nurse works in the emergency room of al-Kindy hospital
By Shaheen Chughtai in Baghdad
Monday 05 July 2004
Aljazeera,
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/755A8483-841A-4257-86B6-3358FD7C2EB1.htm
As hundreds of Iraqis swarm daily through the dusty, drab corridors of Baghdad's Medical City hospital complex, the peeling paint and cracked furniture testify to years of neglect.
The havoc and destruction of war compounded that mismanagement. After the US-led invasion last year, US occupation chief Paul Bremer repeatedly offered a positive prognosis, claiming the health service was "better than before the war".
"Yes, it's better than before," says Dr Hasan Muhammad Abbas, a manager at Medical City's Educational Hospital. "We have the freedom to request what we need from any country, we're getting new equipment and we're paid more."
But many doctors working in Iraq's roughly 240 health centres offer a second opinion: the sector remains in a critical condition.
"Getting better? The situation is getting worse every day," says Dr Ahmad Farooq, a urologist at Medical City. He agrees that corruption and mismanagement in previous decades was damaging.
"Spending was haphazard, yes, but we still had some new equipment and staff coming in. Now, we see nothing being spent in the hospitals; we lack basic equipment."
His observations chime with the findings of an official US report released on 29 June, which says many aspects of Iraqi life are worse now than before the war and blames Bremer's administration for mismanagement.
Slow recovery
The General Accounting Office says only a quarter of the $58 billion of the money donated internationally for the reconstruction of Iraq has been spent. The largest chunk has disappeared into ministry operations.
Iraq spent a reported $20 million on its health service in 2002 - around 68 cents per person. The budget for this year is $900 million - around $40 per person. But many medics see little improvement.
"It's true, salaries have risen," Dr Farooq says, "but I don't know where the rest of the money has gone."
Punitively low monthly salaries under the ousted regime, from around $1.50 in 1995 rising to $3 for a specialist in 2003, caused 9000 doctor to emigrate after the war - worsening the situation, he adds.
Improvements are on their way. Dr Abbas shows me new and refurbished wards with modern devices that are due to open soon. XX-ray equipment lies in storage crates at the hospital. Other items are still with the Health Ministry awaiting distribution, he says.
"It will take about a year for all the rehabilitation to be complete," says Dr Abbas.
Catastrophic consequences
But the failure to improve services quickly is having catastrophic consequences. One in 10 infants will die before they are a year old, according to the Health Ministry, while nearly eight per cent of the survivors will perish before they reach five years of age.
With the supply of basic medicines such as antibiotics still unreliable, Iraqis are dying from easily treatable infections. About three in 1000 mothers die after childbirth, often from preventable infections, the Health Ministry says.
"The situation in the villages is even worse," says Dr Farooq. "There is little sanitation or access to clean water." He says poor sanitation generally has led to a rise in diseases such as tuberculosis, while the war disrupted immunisation programmes.
Some also report abnormally high rates of cancer in younger people, which some blame on US-led forces' use of radioactive ammunition during the invasion. Shells coated with depleted uranium were used because they penetrated armour more easily.
Collapse
Although decades of war, poor management and UN sanctions stunted Iraq's health service, the US-led invasion saw its near total destruction.
Doctors from the Union of Islamic Clinics have joined forces "There was total chaos. People couldn't reach the hospitals because of the fighting," says Dr Farooq.
"But we anticipated the collapse of the system and made an emergency plan. We contacted medical staff across Baghdad and set up small clinics."
He and a few other medics used mosques - seen as relatively safe - to treat residents nearer their homes. The doctors then discovered that other physicians were doing similar work across the city.
"Later, we tried to organise ourselves more, so we invited doctors to come together, discuss and plan a larger administration," he explains. The result was a new non-governmental organisation (NGO) - the Union of Islamic Clinics (UIC).
Serving communities
The UIC now operates six clinics in Baghdad and continues to assist smaller mosque-based programmes in remote areas. The largest clinic, in the district of Aadamiya, occupies an austere two-storey building once owned by the ousted Baath party.
In the first six months of operation, it treated more than 17,000 patients. Staffed by around 25 doctors and 40 support staff, the polyclinic offers a range of services from dentistry to obstetrics and sees about 5600 patients a month.
"All our staff are volunteers," says Dr Alaa Alani, head of the UIC. "We receive our drugs from relief organisations, both Iraqi and international." Patients pay a nominal 50 US cents for treatment, which is invested in related projects and equipment.
UIC doctors also visit the village of Hamidiya, a 30-minute drive east of Baghdad, where a makeshift clinic operates in primitive conditions. Its water supply is drawn from a well and carried indoors by hand.
The long-term aim of groups such as the UIC is to work with the Health Ministry, expand its services and raise professional medical standards. In the meantime, however, doctors continue to face severe obstacles. Urgent needs
"We were forbidden from going abroad by Saddam Hussein, so we lack new information and we need training according to our specialities," says Dr Alani, who is also a senior physician at al-Kindy hospital.
He also complains of chronic drug shortages and an absence of post-graduate study programmes. For the UIC and the similarly new Iraqi League for Medical Professionals, another problem is their lack of organisational experience.
"We're new to this. As an NGO we lack knowledge - how to write a proposal, how to research communities," Dr Farooq says. "We need other NGOs to contact us."
Dr Abbas echoes the need for international help to train and advise Iraqi staff, and calls on hospitals in other countries to "twin" with their Iraqi counterparts.
The Italian Red Cross, among others, has helped upgrade facilities at Medical City, while the Red Crescent in Qatar has provided the UIC with training and education.
But Dr Alani ends with an urgent plea for direct international aid.
"We can't continue unless we are helped from other parts of the world. And if all the money goes to the Health Ministry, not all of it will reach the people it should."
The Union of Islamic Clinics can be contacted at: islamclinics@hotmail.com, alaalani01@yahoo.com and alkaram71@yahoo.com
--------
Fallen Comrade Not Far From Hearts, Minds
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A01
FORWARD OPERATING BASE EAGLE, Iraq, July 4 -- Gathering on a small basketball court outside battalion headquarters, 450 soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division bowed their heads in prayer to begin Independence Day celebrations at this dusty outpost on the edge of Sadr City.
Then, as the morning warmed toward searing midday heat, 11 soldiers stepped forward to receive Purple Hearts for battle wounds suffered in the past few weeks, including the battalion commander. Hundreds more were given Combat Infantryman Badges before Sgt. Eric Bourquin, a lanky 24-year-old from College Station, Tex., stepped forward to accept a Bronze Star for meritorious service decorated with a small "V" pin for valor.
On April 4, Bourquin helped seize and hold a three-story building at a moment when it appeared his platoon would be overwhelmed by members of a Shiite militia that had risen on the filthy streets of Sadr City, a Baghdad slum. Nearly a third of Bourquin's 35-member platoon was wounded that day, one of them fatally. Sgt. Yihjyh L. Chen, perched in the gunner's nest of a Humvee, was killed when a bullet passed through his lungs and heart. Six other soldiers from the battalion died in the ensuing battle.
"That's what patriotism is all about," said Bourquin, a member of 1st Platoon, Charlie Company.
In this simmering combat zone, the current demands and fresh memories of war left little room for a traditional Independence Day commemoration. The painful three-month anniversary overshadowed July 4 celebrations for much of a frontline battalion seasoned by street fighting that has killed eight of its soldiers and wounded scores more.
Like troops elsewhere in Iraq only days after the handover of political authority from the occupation, the unit -- the 1st Brigade's 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment -- marked the American holiday in quiet ways to avoid offending Iraqis outside the base boundaries. From the predawn mortar rounds that fell just outside the walled perimeter to buzzing helicopters overhead, the day felt like any other to many soldiers who spent it among the dusty lots, air-conditioned tents and dim barrack rooms across this former prison camp.
The touches of Americana were kept shielded on orders from camp commanders, who feared inflaming a neighborhood calmer than it has been in weeks but uncertain to stay that way. The only U.S. Army patrols that leave the camp now include members of Iraq's National Guard, a more presentable face to the roughly 2 million Iraqis who live in the slum's low concrete houses.
Stands of crossed American flags decorated tables in the tent that serves as the camp chow hall, and red, white and blue ribbons swirled around its posts. "The Patriot," starring Mel Gibson as the heroic anti-British guerrilla leader during the War of Independence, was the matinee on the Armed Forces Network that played to small groups in the command post common room. A dinner of fried chicken, ribs, potato salad and corn on the cob ended with a card-table-size cake depicting the American flag. No barbecue, no beer.
But the grease board at the entrance to the 1st Platoon barracks displayed special July 4 instructions in red marker: "You cannot display an American flag outside the FOB," or forward operating base. A tank commander from another unit failed to follow the order and flew a small flag from his M1 Abrams. He received a sharp chewing out. A makeshift fireworks display, using flares and illumination rounds, was also rejected because, in the words of Lt. Pete East, "we didn't want it to look like we were gloating."
"Unfortunately, it's just kind of another day. There's pride in what we do, but it just kind of rolls into everything else," said East, 27, of Norwich, Conn. "You always remember the Fourth of April, though. Nobody will ever forget that."
At 5:30 p.m. on April 4, officers of the 1st Cavalry and 1st Armored Divisions gathered in the command post here to celebrate the transfer of military responsibility for Sadr City, the neediest of Baghdad's neighborhoods, where the U.S.-financed reconstruction effort had made few inroads over the previous year. A column of four Humvees under Lt. Shane Aguero, the 1st Platoon commander, made its way back to the camp to join the festivities.
Passing the offices of Moqtada Sadr, an anti-American Shiite Muslim cleric who has a large following in the slum, Aguero's soldiers encountered 200 armed men. Upon seeing the Humvees, the crowd divided into three groups and scattered into narrow alleys and behind makeshift barricades.
"We started rolling back and forth trying to figure out what was happening, and boom, we got ambushed," said Staff Sgt. Joshua M. York, a burly 26-year-old from San Marcos, Tex., who received his Purple Heart on Sunday morning.
In Aguero's partially armored Humvee, Chen swiveled behind the .50-caliber machine gun on the roof. From below, Aguero heard what sounded like rocks pelting the Humvee when Chen peered down and said incredulously, "They're shooting at us."
"I told him to shoot back," said Aguero, who like many of his men had been in Iraq for less than a month and was stunned by the ambush in a neighborhood that had largely welcomed U.S. forces. Within minutes, Chen slumped through the roof of the Humvee, blood oozing from his mouth.
"Honestly, when I think of this day, I think of it as a three-month anniversary," said York, who usually spends the Fourth of July on Lake Texoma with his family, which now includes Madison, a 1-month-old daughter he hasn't met. "You think of Sergeant Chen."
Born in China, Chen had become a U.S. citizen only months before he was killed in Sadr City. His family lives in Guam, his fellow soldiers said, and they described him as a man of unfailing generosity and camaraderie whose passion for international politics and debate made long, hot Humvee rides pass more quickly.
"And he was happy," said Aguero, 28, of Temple, Tex., who was awarded a Purple Heart several weeks ago for shrapnel wounds he received April 4. "Even when Sergeant Chen wasn't happy, he pretended to be for everyone else. He'd do anything in the world for you."
Aguero is a common type in the Army: a man who has to think long and hard to name his home town. His father retired from the Army as a command sergeant major after 24 years of hopscotching from post to post. His wife's father also made his career in the Army, and Aguero said that upbringing has brought them a particular understanding of July 4 and other holidays of special significance to the U.S. military, especially those serving in foreign war zones.
"These days are for me," said Aguero, who graduated with a degree in international relations and global economics from St. Edward's University in Austin. "I'm not a big flag-waving patriot, and I don't need it. We celebrate these holidays privately. We know why they exist, as times to remember."
Sadr City quieted in the days leading up to the handover, and two consecutive nights of mortar attacks on this camp are the only signs of potential trouble ahead. Sadr, the Shiite cleric, however, has said in recent days that the occupation is not over because U.S. troops remain in the country. He has called on his followers to resist, although so far there has been little evidence of them doing so.
Aguero's platoon rested for much of the day. Then, near twilight, it pushed past the camp's maze of barriers and checkpoints to escort a military police unit back to camp.
"Every time you roll out of these gates, April 4 is what's on everyone's mind, not the back of it but the front," Aguero said.
Before leaving his room in the dorm-like barracks, Aguero gestured toward the screen of his Dell laptop computer glowing at the foot of his bed. A souvenir portrait of Sadr hung overhead.
He closed the e-mail window, leaving a screen saver depicting a podium and seven pairs of beige army boots. A rifle stood behind each pair, capped with a Kevlar helmet. The scene showed the memorial service for the soldiers killed three months ago.
"Those are Sergeant Chen's," Aguero said, pointing to the empty pair on the far left. "What do you think I'm thinking about today?"
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Iraq Considers Sadr Amnesty
Denouncing Government, Cleric Vows to Continue Resistance
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27934-2004Jul4.html
Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said yesterday that he is negotiating an amnesty with militant Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr and is prepared to offer the same deal to insurgents willing to surrender their arms and end the campaign against the new Iraqi government and U.S.-led multinational force.
Despite Sadr's call Friday for ongoing resistance to U.S. forces, Allawi said he met with a delegation from Sadr's Mahdi Army over the weekend to discuss dismantling the militia as a precondition for Sadr to join the political process taking shape since the U.S.-led occupation ended a week ago. "He is looking for an amnesty. He is looking to be part of the political process," Allawi said on ABC's "This Week."
Offering both carrot and stick, he said his young government will not tolerate ongoing activities by any militia. "Everybody should follow the bounds of the law, whether it's Moqtada Sadr or anybody else," Allawi said.
But he also said the interim government would "welcome" any Iraqi who is willing to respect law and order. "It's for every Iraqi citizen to be part of the new and democratic Iraq. Anybody who respects the rule of law and the human rights is welcome to be part of Iraq," he said.
In Baghdad yesterday, Sadr denounced the new government as "illegitimate and illegal," adding, "We demand complete sovereignty and independence by holding honest elections."
Sadr vowed "to continue resisting oppression and occupation to our last drop of blood," the Associated Press said a statement from his office in Najaf said.
On television, Allawi said the government hopes that showing former president Saddam Hussein in court will make rebels "see daylight" and repent.
Pressed on the biggest change since the occupation ended, Allawi said that the first week of interim Iraqi rule was marked by a drop in insurgents' attacks, though he predicted that terrorist attacks could still increase. Iraq's new national security team is preparing a public safety law, a version of martial law, and other measures to impose if the turmoil escalates, he said.
To deal with the more difficult problem of foreign fighters, Allawi said he has written to neighboring countries, particularly Syria and Iran, for help in cutting off illegal border traffic and aid or arms destined for such forces.
"Governments are trying to help. We want them to help more. We will be shortly negotiating with both governments," said Allawi, a doctor who led the CIA-backed Iraqi National Accord in exile.
The Syrian government of President Bashar Assad has communicated "very positive views," which Allawi said he hopes to develop into "something concrete" for the benefit of both nations. Former U.S. officials in Iraq say the Syrian border has been the most consistent problem and main conduit for hundreds of foreign fighters over the past 15 months. Syria's ruling Baath Party has also provided funds and aid for remnants of Hussein's Baath Party, who make up most of the insurgents, a former senior U.S. official in the Coalition Provisional Authority told journalists in Washington last week.
But Baghdad has not heard from Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. During Hussein's rule, Iraq and Iran fought a war from 1980 to 1988, which was the bloodiest Middle East conflict in the past half-century. If Iraq receives a positive response from Tehran, Allawi said he would be willing to offer "the hand of friendship and peace" to help develop mutual interests.
The Iraqi leader, who said he has not decided whether to run in the first elections, to be held by January 2005, praised Jordan and Yemen for offering troops. "We do want to expand and get troops from various countries, especially Arab and Islamic countries," he told ABC. "We hope that other countries . . . would join in helping Iraq in its hour of need."
L. Paul Bremer, the former U.S. administrator in Iraq, predicted yesterday that Iraq's new democracy will go through many "ups and downs."
"We should not kid ourselves. It will be sloppy and messy at the beginning," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "People forget it took up 12 years to write our own Constitution. It wasn't very pretty around here either between 1776 and 1787."
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INSURGENCY
U.S. Aides Say Kin of Hussein Aid Insurgency
July 5, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/international/middleeast/05INSU.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 4 - A network of Saddam Hussein's cousins, operating in part from Syria and Jordan, is actively involved in the smuggling of guns, people and money into Iraq to support the anti-American insurgency, say American government officials and a prominent Iraqi.
The operations involve at least three cousins from the Majid family who now live in Syria and in Europe, the American officials said. A leading figure among them is Fatiq Suleiman al-Majid, a cousin of Mr. Hussein's and a former officer in Iraq's Special Security Organization who fled from Iraq to Syria last spring and may still be living there.
The view that the cousins are helping finance the insurgency developed fairly recently and is described in intelligence reports, the American officials say. They said the conclusion was based in part on suspicious recent movements of money and goods, including the transfer of cash into Syria, that were detected by American intelligence.
Still, the military and intelligence officials have acknowledged that a significant component of the resistance, including some of its foot soldiers, comes from Iraqis without ties to Mr. Hussein's government.
Mr. Hussein's family has a history of intermarriage with the Majid clan; his own full name is Saddam Hussein al-Majid al-Tikriti.
Under his government, the Majid family was a particularly feared branch of the ruling Tikriti tribe. Its members played prominent roles in the day-to-day operations of the country's state security apparatus, as bodyguards, enforcers and secret-police chiefs, and the cousins who now live outside Iraq have access to tens of millions of dollars, much of it derived from smuggling oil, military equipment and other goods in and out of Iraq under Mr. Hussein, the American officials said.
Fatiq al-Majid, said to be in his 30's and described as "a main money man" in the operation, has been living in Syria with the knowledge of the Syrian authorities, American officials said. In addition to being Mr. Hussein's cousin, he was a brother-in-law of Mr. Hussein's son Qusay and is a nephew of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the general who became known as Chemical Ali for gassing thousands of Kurds in the 1980's.
The prominent Iraqi who provided information about the network aiding the insurgency, Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi, was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. He served briefly this spring as interior minister and was responsible for security. He recently described another Majid, Izzadin, as "now financing a lot of the activities of the insurgents."
The statement by Mr. Sumeidi, at an appearance in Washington last month, was the first public reference to the concerns about the role played by the Majid family.
In response to inquiries about Mr. Sumeidi's statement and about other information provided by former intelligence officials, American officials confirmed that intelligence reports had provided information linking Izzadin al-Majid, Fatiq al-Majid and at least one other member of the family, along with some associates, to operations in support of the Iraqi insurgency.
The American officials declined to speak publicly about the information because the intelligence reports in which it is spelled out are classified.
In 1995, Izzadin al-Majid, then a major in the Republican Guard, fled Iraq with a group that included his cousin Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Mr. Hussein's. Hussein Kamel and a brother who had also fled returned to Iraq in 1996, and were killed there, leaving Izzadin al-Majid in control of a large portion of the family's assets, the American officials said. He was granted asylum in Britain in 2000, and has since maintained a home in Leeds.
His involvement after leaving Iraq in smuggling operations that involved members of Mr. Hussein's government suggest that he maintained close ties there, a former intelligence official said.
American officials say Izzadin al-Majid now travels frequently between Europe, Jordan and Iraq. In a brief telephone conversation from Europe, he dismissed the accusations of involvement in the insurgency as groundless and said he had last seen his cousin Fatiq in 1994, though he had spoken to him last year by phone.
The American officials identified the third family member as Ezz al-Dain al-Majidi al-Tikriti, another cousin of Hussein Kamel, who they said owned a printing plant and had access to black-market wealth.
The indication that exiles linked to the former Iraqi government are helping to finance, recruit and organize the insurgency adds a new dimension to a picture that has been sketched in recent months by a broad range of military and intelligence officers.
In recent days, several senior military and diplomatic officials have said there is limited intelligence on the command and control - the "central nervous system," as some called it - of the Iraqi resistance.
According to the general understanding, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant, and his followers are now regarded as the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq, and have been blamed for most major bombings. But the larger core of the insurgency, involving as many as 5,000 fighters and responsible for many more attacks, is seen as being organized and directed by former Iraqi officials and those they can enlist to carry out attacks, who may sometimes include foreign fighters.
In Congressional testimony last month, the deputy defense secretary, Paul D. Wolfowitz, described former associates of Mr. Hussein's as "as a significant part of the enemy that we're facing, and they're still out there." Among those still at large, he identified Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top deputy to Mr. Hussein, as someone who who is "probably funding terrorism."
Untangling the question of who has been financing the insurgency has been an "extremely important" priority for American military and intelligence officials, and the indication of the exiles' role is among several pieces of information pointing to flows of financing, manpower and weapons that begin outside Iraq, according to a senior military officer serving in Iraq. The officer said the effort to uncover that trial had already "led us to and through several countries, and several individuals, who are funding parts of the current insurgency in several organizations."
The importance of the financing, the officer said, is that it provides the money that makes possible the movement of militants; their support mechanisms, including housing, food and pay; their infrastructure, including communications and transportation; and their ordnance, including car bombs, explosives and other weapons.
In addition to the Majid cousins, some business associates and trusted friends also appeared to be involved in the financing operation, the American officials said. Ties to Hussein Kamel appeared to be a common link. He married Mr. Hussein's daughter Raghad in 1985, and by the mid-1990's, was seen as the second-most-powerful figure in Iraq, having been put in charge of reconstruction after the Persian Gulf war of 1991 and of Iraq's illicit weapons programs.
After fleeing with his brother, Saddam, to Jordan in August 1995, Hussein Kamel provided the Jordanian authorities and Western intelligence services with new information about Mr. Hussein's efforts to hide illicit weapons from United Nations inspectors. But within six months, he and Saddam were persuaded to return to Iraq; after their return, they, their children and other members of their families were killed.
Neither Mr. Sumeidi or the American officials have tried to offer an explanation for why people linked to Hussein Kamel would now be working to support insurgents affiliated with other former members of Mr. Hussein's government.
As is the case with Iran, the question of the degree to which Syria is being used as a base for the insurgency in Iraq has never been clear. But American officials described evidence last spring that Syria was being used as a transit point for militants, money and weapons being brought into Iraq for use in attacks against American forces.
In addition to Fatiq al-Majid, who has never been on any public American wanted list, more prominent members of the former Iraqi government have been described by American intelligence officials as having spent time in Syria after the major combat phase of the war in Iraq ended in May 2003. Defense Department officials have said they believe that the two Hussein sons, Uday and Qusay, spent time in Syria before they returned to Iraq and were killed by American forces last July, Pentagon officials said.
The American officials said new information about the activities of the Majid cousins had added to their concerns. They said Fatiq al-Majid appeared to have transferred large amounts of money into Syria to aid the insurgency, and might have been involved in buying weapons and assisting fighters who sought to enter Iraq.
Mr. Sumeidi is a highly regarded Sunni who is seen in Iraq as a rival of Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress. Mr. Sumeidi, who was replaced by the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, made his public remarks in a June 24 appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization in Washington.
Mr. Sumeidi identified Izzadin al-Majid only by his first name and his biography, and he declined to identify any countries that were the source of his concern about support for the insurgency, saying that "it doesn't help to name specific countries."
Still, he went on, "let's look at the situation around Iraq."
"Not every country adjacent to Iraq feels entirely happy with the demise of Saddam Hussein and the potential for building up a modern democratic system. It is understandable that some of them will feel threatened. I will not go into any more details on this."
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THE FIGHTING
Blast Leaves 2 Bystanders Dead in Baquba as Iraqi Troops Kill Would-Be Car Bomber
July 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/international/middleeast/05IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 4 - Iraqi troops thwarted an attempted car bombing on Sunday outside a regional headquarters northeast of this capital, killing an attacker before he could detonate his vehicle, but then two bystanders also died as the shooting caused the car to explode.
The fate of a kidnapped American marine remained unclear after a militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, denied a statement attributed to it and posted Saturday on an Islamic Web site..
The statement claimed that Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, a marine of Lebanese origin, had been killed. However, a statement on Ansar al-Sunna's own site on Sunday said the earlier declaration was false.
A senior official of the state-run South Oil Company told Dow Jones Newswires on Sunday that Iraq had shut down an important oil export pipeline near Basra after attacks on two major pipelines. The official said the shutdown had reduced exports by 10 percent.
Insurgents also fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at an American convoy of 20 gasoline tankers between Baghdad and the restive city of Falluja. There were no reports of casualties.
In Kirkuk, American and Iraqi forces detained six members of a militant group suspected of a string of assassinations in the north. The men were believed to be members of Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish group believed to be linked to Al Qaeda, said Col. Sarhat Qader of the Iraqi police.
The thwarted car bombing occurred in Baquba, the scene of fierce fighting last week between American soldiers and insurgents who tried to seize government buildings and police stations.
The Iraqi police said the would-be attacker was stopped for a routine search at an Iraqi National Guard checkpoint near the unit's headquarters. The driver jumped from the vehicle, they said, and shouted "God is great" and "I'm going to kill you."
Guardsmen opened fire, killing him and setting off the explosives in the car, said the police chief, Waleed al-Azawi. The two bystanders were killed in the explosion, hospital officials said.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi of Iraq politely but firmly rejected offers on Sunday from King Abdullah II of Jordan to send troops, telling ABC's "This Week" that "We are not asking" for additional soldiers.
Dr. Allawi's government is expected to announce a package of initiatives to combat the insurgency, including limited emergency rule and an offer of amnesty to some of those who fought the American-led occupation.
Dr. Allawi's spokesman, Georges Sada, suggested Saturday that guerrillas who fought the Americans before the transfer of formal sovereignty could be eligible because their actions were legitimate acts of resistance.
But the Iraqi deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, took issue with that statement, saying he found the comment "very surprising to have come from a spokesman for the prime minister."
The confusion over the fate of Corporal Hassoun, who was kidnapped last month, continued after the contradictory Web site claims. His abduction was first reported June 27, when the Arab television network Al Jazeera broadcast a videotape showing Corporal Hassoun blindfolded, along with a statement from militants threatening to kill him unless the United States released all Iraqis in "occupation jails."
The abduction was claimed by a group calling itself Islamic Response, the security wing of the National Islamic Resistance - 1920 Revolution Brigades.
In West Jordan, Utah, Corporal Hassoun's family waited anxiously for any official word on his fate. Friends and family members gathered at their home on Saturday as word of the Web site posting spread, said Tarek Nossier, a family spokesman. Neighbors and other supporters decorated the family's home with a holiday display of red, white and blue flowers on Sunday.
Melissa Sanford contributed reporting from West Jordan, Utah, for this article.
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U.S. Airstrike Hits House in Iraq's Falluja - Residents
July 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-airstrike.html
FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A U.S. plane fired a missile at a house in the Iraqi town of Falluja on Monday, killing five people, residents said.
Residents said the dead were members of an Iraqi family living in the northwest of the town. U.S. forces have launched a series of airstrikes on what they describe as safe houses of the network of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Falluja.
The U.S. military had no immediate comment on the report.
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Allawi Backs Autonomy of Saddam Tribunal
Iraq's Leader Says He Won't Interfere in Tribunal's Decision on Whether to Execute Saddam
The Associated Press
July 5, 2004
http://www.abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040705_438.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The interim prime minister said Monday he would not interfere with an Iraqi tribunal's right to decide whether Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants should be executed on war crimes charges, the Arab language television station Al-Arabiya reported.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said he was willing to abide by whatever the court decides in the trial, which is not expected to begin for months. Iraq assumed legal custody of Saddam from the United States last week and reinstated the death penalty, which had been suspended by U.S. occupation authorities.
"As for the execution, that is for the court to decide so long as a decision is reached impartially and fairly," he said.
Saddam's first court appearance Thursday dominated the media across Iraq. The broadly outlined charges include the slaughter of Shiites during a 1991 uprising and a chemical weapons attack against Kurds in the northern city of Halabja.
Thousands of Kurds demonstrated Monday in Halabja, demanding that Saddam and one of his key lieutenants Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as "Chemical Ali" be put to death for the gas attack that killed 5,000 people on March 16, 1988. Carrying photos of their slain loved ones, the marchers said they want Saddam to be tried and executed in their town.
"Every family in this city lost no less than five of its dear sons," said demonstrator Sabiha Ali, 50. "Therefore, we want to execute Saddam on the soil of the land."
Iraq has been wracked by lawlessness and violence since the fall of Saddam's regime 14 months ago.
Also Monday, the spokesman for militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr tempered threats to continue fighting, saying his movement only planned to wage "peaceful resistance" against the interim government.
Iraq's oil exports were cut nearly in half as workers struggled Monday to repair a key pipeline shut down after looters sabotaged the line, according to officials with the South Oil Co. and traders.
The looters, trying to steal crude oil for sale on the black market, breached one of the country's two key southern pipelines, said an SOC official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A land mine Monday detonated along the main route to the southern city of Samawah, where Japanese troops are based, police said. There were no reports of injuries. The route is frequented by coalition forces.
In southern Iraq, insurgents fired rockets at a government building early Monday, but instead struck nearby homes, killing one person and wounding eight, police said. The attack targeted the province's main offices near the center of the Basra.
Interior Ministry officials also said two Iranians suspected of trying to detonate a car bomb were captured, but gave no details.
Iraqi officials have blamed foreign fighters and religious extremists for a wave of recent vehicle bombings. The attacks have led to fears that religious fanatics and Saddam loyalists may be joining forces to fight both the multinational force and the new Iraqi government.
Iraqi troops thwarted a car bombing outside their regional headquarters northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing an attacker before could detonate his vehicle. Two bystanders also died in the assault in Baqouba, the scene of fierce fighting last week between American soldiers and insurgents who tried to seize government buildings and police stations.
Also in Baqouba, gunmen fired at a building belonging to a city council official in the town of Khalis on Sunday, killing two people and wounding two, said Salih Mahdi, the spokesman for the Diyala province.
Iraqi government officials have suggested that tough moves will soon be taken to combat the violence, but canceled a news conference Monday where they had been expected to announce a limited amnesty for insurgents and martial law in parts of the country.
The news conference with Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan and Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin was postponed indefinitely just as it was scheduled to begin. The government had canceled a previous news conference on the same topic.
Britain and Australia offered support Monday for the proposed amnesty offer. Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer agreed the interim Iraqi government was entitled to make such decisions.
Al-Sadr issued a statement Sunday from his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf calling the new interim Iraqi government "illegitimate" and pledging "to continue resisting oppression and occupation to our last drop of blood."
But al-Sadr's spokesman in Baghdad, Mahmoud al-Soudani, called a news conference Monday to clarify that the statement was not a call to arms. He said that many of al-Sadr's supporters in Baghdad had begun taking up arms again and he needed to correct their misperceptions.
"We are still committed to the cease-fire," al-Soudani said.
Al-Sadr previously had made conciliatory statements to the new government of Allawi, a fellow Shiite, and members of his movement had suggested they might transform the al-Mahdi Army into a political party. Al-Mahdi fighters accepted cease-fires in most Shiite areas after suffering huge losses at the hands of the Americans from an uprising in April.
Al-Sadr has made contradictory statements in the past.
In his statement Sunday, the young cleric said, "There is no truce with the occupier and those who cooperate with it."
"We announce that the current government is illegitimate and illegal," he said. "It's generally following the occupation. We demand complete sovereignty and independence by holding honest elections."
Earlier Sunday, Allawi told ABC News that he had met with al-Sadr representatives "who want to try and mediate."
"The position of the government is very clear," Allawi said. "There is no room for any militias to operate inside Iraq. Anything outside law and order is not tolerated, cannot be tolerated. The rule of law should prevail."
Al-Sadr's harsh statement suggested the government may be taking a hard line, insisting he abolish his militia and submit to the warrant.
Although Iraq regained sovereignty June 28, about 160,000 foreign troops, most of them Americans, remain under a U.N. resolution to help the new government restore security.
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3 cousins of Saddam said to aid insurgents
NYT Douglas Jehl
Monday, July 5, 2004
http://www.iht.com/articles/527862.html
WASHINGTON A network of Saddam Hussein's cousins is actively involved in the smuggling of guns, people and money into Iraq to support the anti-American insurgency, say U.S. officials and a prominent Iraqi.
The operations, from staging areas in Syria and Jordan, involve at least three cousins from the Majid family who now live in Syria and in Europe, the U.S. officials said.
A leading figure among them is Fatiq Suleiman al-Majid, a cousin of Saddam's and a former officer in Iraq's Special Security Organization who fled from Iraq to Syria last spring and may still be living there. The view that the cousins are helping to finance the insurgency developed fairly recently and is described in intelligence reports, the U.S. officials say. They said the conclusion was based in part on suspicious, recent movements of money and goods, including the transfer of cash into Syria, that were detected by U.S. intelligence.
Saddam's family has a history of intermarriage with the Majid clan; his own full name is Saddam Hussein al-Majid.
Under his regime, the Majid family was a particularly feared branch of the ruling al-Tikriti tribe. Its members played prominent roles in the day-to-day operations of the country's state security apparatus, as bodyguards, enforcers and secret police chiefs, and the cousins who now live outside Iraq have access to tens of millions of dollars, much of it derived from smuggling oil, military equipment and other goods in and out of Iraq under Saddam, the American officials said. Fatiq al-Majid, said to be in his thirties and described as "a main money man" in the operation, has been living in Syria with the knowledge of Syrian authorities, U.S. officials said. In addition to being Saddam's cousin, he was a brother-in-law of Saddam's son Qusay and is a nephew of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the general who became known as Chemical Ali for gassing thousands of Kurds in the 1980's. The prominent Iraqi, Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi, was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. He served briefly this spring as interior minister and was responsible for security. He recently described another Majid, Izzadin, as "now financing a lot of the activities of the insurgents."
The statement by Sumeidi, at an appearance in Washington last month, was the first public reference to the concerns about the role played by the Majid family. In response to inquiries about Sumeidi's statement and about other information provided by former intelligence officials, U.S. officials confirmed that intelligence reports had provided information linking Izzadin al-Majid, Fatiq al-Majid and at least one other member of the family, along with some associates, to operations in support of the Iraqi insurgency. The American officials declined to speak publicly about the information because the intelligence reports in which it is spelled out are classified. In 1995, Izzadin al-Majid, then a major in the Republican Guard, fled Iraq with a group that included his cousin Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Saddam. Hussein Kamel and a brother who had also fled returned to Iraq in 1996, and were killed there, leaving Izzadin al-Majid in control of a large portion of the family's assets, the U.S. officials said. He was granted asylum in Britain in 2000, and has maintained a home since in Leeds.
His involvement after leaving Iraq in smuggling operations that involved members of Saddam's government suggest that he maintained close ties there, a former intelligence official said.
American officials say Izzadin al-Majid now travels frequently between Europe, Jordan and Iraq. In a brief telephone conversation from Europe, he dismissed the accusations of involvement in the insurgency as groundless and said that he had last seen his cousin Fatiq in 1994, though he had spoken to him last year by phone. The U.S. officials identified the third family member as Ezz al-Dain al-Majidi al-Tikriti, another cousin of Hussein Kamel, who they said owns a printing plant and has access to black market wealth. The indication that exiles linked to the former Iraqi regime are helping to fund, recruit and organize the insurgency adds a new dimension to a picture that has been sketched in recent months by a U.S. officers.
In recent days, several senior military and diplomatic officials have said there is limited intelligence on the command and control - the "central nervous system," as some called it - of the Iraqi resistance. According to the general understanding, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant, and his followers are now regarded as the most dangerous terrorists in Iraq, and have been blamed for most major bombings. But the larger core of the insurgency, involving as many as 5,000 fighters and responsible for many more attacks on U.S. forces, is seen as being organized and directed by former Iraqi officials and those they can enlist to carry out attacks, who may include foreign fighters. In congressional testimony last month, the deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, described former associates of Saddam as "as a significant part of the enemy that we're facing, and they're still out there." Among those still at large, Wolfowitz identified Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, a former top deputy to Saddam, as someone who is "probably funding terrorism."
Still, the military and intelligence officials have acknowledged that a significant component of the resistance, including some of its foot soldiers, comes from ordinary Iraqis without ties to Saddam's regime. Untangling the question of who has been funding the insurgency has been an "extremely important" priority for military and intelligence officials, and the indication of the exiles' role is among several pieces of information pointing to flows of funding, manpower and weapons that begin outside Iraq, according to a senior military officer serving in Iraq. The officer said the effort to uncover that trail had already "led us to and through several countries, and several individuals, who are funding parts of the current insurgency in several organizations." The importance of the financing, the officer said, is that it provides the funding that makes possible the movement of extremists; their support mechanisms, including housing, food and pay; their infrastructure, including communications and transportation; and their ordnance, including car bombs, explosives, and other weapons. In addition to the Majid cousins, some business associates and trusted friends also appeared to be involved in the financing operation, the American officials said. Ties to Hussein Kamel appeared to be a common link. He married Saddam's daughter Raghad in 1985, and by the mid-1990's, was seen as the second-most-powerful figure in Iraq, having been put in charge of Iraq's reconstruction after the Gulf war and of its illicit weapons programs. After fleeing with his brother, Saddam, to Jordan in August 1995, Hussein Kamel provided Jordanian authorities and Western intelligence services with new information about Saddam's efforts to hide illicit weapons from UN inspectors. But within six months, he and Saddam were persuaded to return to Iraq; but they, their children and other members of their families were killed. Neither Sumeidi or the American officials have attempted to offer an explanation for why people linked to Hussein Kamel would now be working to support insurgents affiliated with other former members of the regime.
As is the case with Iran, the question of the degree to which Syria is being used as a base for the insurgency in Iraq has never been clear. But American officials described evidence last spring that it was being used as a transit point for militants, money and weapons being brought into Iraq for use in attacks against U.S. forces. In addition to Fatiq al-Majid, who has never been on any public American wanted list, more prominent members of the former Iraqi government have been described by American intelligence officials as having spent time in Syria after the major combat phase of the war in Iraq ended last April. Defense Department officials have said they believed the two Saddam sons, Uday and Qusay, spent time in Syria before they returned to Iraq and were killed by U.S. forces last July, according to Defense Department officials.
The American officials said new information about the activities of the al-Majid cousins have added to their concerns. They said that Fatiq al-Majid appeared to have transferred large amounts of money into Syria for use in support of the insurgency, and may have been involved in purchasing weapons and assisting fighters who sought to enter Iraq.
Sumeidi is a highly regarded Sunni who is seen in Iraq as a rival of Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress. Sumeidi, who was replaced by the new prime minister, Iyad Allawi, made his public remarks in a June 24 appearance at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research organization in Washington.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel Unleashed
The real reason for the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history
by Justin Raimondo,
July 5, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2933
The Israelis just had to get in on the fun. But then the stories of torture - of hooded, humiliated inmates at Abu Ghraib and other facilities - did have a familiar air, as if the Israelis were tutoring their American sock-puppets in the finer points of squeezing those ragheads until they squealed. Torture - of the "mild" variety - has the official imprimatur of Israel's high court, and it makes perfect sense that the Israelis would be called in as "experts" in the art (science?) of corralling and controlling crowds of irksome Arabs, but this testimony from General Janis Karpinski, former commander at Abu Ghraib, explicitly fingers the Israelis:
"I was visiting an interrogation facility one time - not under my control, but I was escorting a four-star. And he wanted to go back and observe an interrogation that was taking place. They asked me if I wanted to go and I said no. So I was standing there and, you know, the usual conversation, just kind of chit-chat, there (were) three individuals there and two of them had DCU pants on, one had a pair of blue jeans on, but they all had T-shirts on. They did not appear to be military people. And I said to one of the - one of them asked me, 'So what's new?' Or, 'What's challenging about being a female general officer over here?' And I said, 'Oh! Too long a story, but it's all fun.' And I said to this guy who was sitting up on the counter, I said to him, 'Are you local?' Because he looked like he was Kuwaiti. I said, 'Are you an interpreter?' He said, 'No, I'm an interrogator.' And I said, 'Oh, are you from here?' And he said, 'No, actually, I'm from Israel.' And I was kind of shocked. And I think I laughed. And I said, 'No, really?' And he said, 'No, really, I am.' And - but it was - I didn't pursue it, I just said, 'Oh, I visited your country a couple of years ago and I was amazed that there's so little difference between the appearance of Israelis and Americans,' and - I really was just kind of making chit-chat at that point.
"But it didn't strike me as unusual, I guess, until after the fact. And I remember making a comment to him, I said, 'Wow, that's kind of unusual.' And he said, 'No, not really.' Like that. So - I do know for a fact that at least in that one case - now, I didn't ask him for identity papers or anything. It was none of my business. But that's what he said."
Busy, busy, busy - that certainly describes the Israelis in the bloody aftermath of our Pyrrhic victory in Iraq. Oh, they deny it, of course, but that's boilerplate. After all, Karpinski saw and spoke to one of their interrogators, who was sitting there right in front of her. The truth is they're swarming all over Kurdistan, fomenting trouble, siccing the Bush administration on Iran and - most importantly - Syria. Good lord they're even in New Zealand, of all places, stealing passports from bedridden paraplegics. Talk about bad public relations! But do they even care?
Not too much. Now that they've maneuvered the clueless Bush into Iraq, and forever changed the face of the Middle East, Ariel Sharon and his amen corner in this country are getting bolder, openly flying their own flag over what were previously touted as exclusively American initiatives. So their Kurdish allies are bellicose about the Israeli connection in speaking to Ha'aretz:
"'The Kurdish public is not ready to take any more humiliation. As long as we thought we could persuade the Americans to support our positions, our leaders were supported by the public,' he said. 'The Kurdish public is disappointed and angry, it wants results. You in Israel talk of the greater Eretz Yisrael and here we talk of greater Kurdistan. Today our political war begins.'"
Our war - against whom?
In the guise of Israeli entrepreneurs, Mossad agents, according to Seymour Hersh, have infiltrated the Kurdish territories for the purpose of creating a buffer - Kurdistan - between Israel and the emerging Shi'ite-dominated Iraqi state, which is heavily influenced by the Iranians. The entire "handover" process, while not signaling American withdrawal, nevertheless indicates nervousness in Washington over being too closely identified with the unfolding disaster, and the Israelis see this as a bad sign. Is Uncle Sam going wobbly? That question has worried the neoconservative faction of the Right - which effectively functions as Israel's fifth column in the U.S. - and rightly so, from their perspective. That's what motivates all this activity in Kurdistan, and elsewhere. The idea is to spread the chaos, escalate the war, and make it impossible for George W. Bush to somehow pull us out the Iraqi quagmire.
In an effort at damage control, the Israel lobby is making a concerted effort to smear whomever states the obvious: a great deal of the "intelligence" used to lie us into war came directly from Tel Aviv and was "stovepiped" into the White House by neocon White House advisors, and that, in retrospect, this war has been to the strategic advantage of one and only one nation on earth: Israel. Writing in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, one James D. Besser attacks "conspiracy theories" of "the fruitcake left and loony right" that "converge around theories blaming Jewish neoconservatives for an Iraq War they despise." He goes after that well-known left-wing extremist, Senator Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), who "erupted" recently by daring to name Israel as the chief factor motivating key war proponents, and then turns to ... us:
"On the other side of the partisan divide, check out antiwar.com, a web site for - among others - disgruntled Republicans and libertarians like former GOP presidential contender Pat Buchanan. Here, too, a common theme is the neocon cabal that tricked the nation into a catastrophic conflict."
The idea that Antiwar.com is on one or another side of the "partisan divide" is ridiculous, and as the author of "Go F
He rails against the "far left," which supposedly hates Israel because it is "colonialist," and the "far right" - where anti-Semitism, he smugly assures his readers, "has never gone out of style." He doesn't cite any specific statements from the "far right" to back up his statement - and, naturally, there is no link to material that might explain, if not justify his stance, even though Besser's piece was published online. Liars take refuge in vagueness, while they hurl libels at anyone who speaks truth to power: "Fruitcakes! Loonies!" That's about the best Besser & Co. can do, but he also makes a series of even weaker arguments, including the howler that Bush came into office with a war agenda in plain sight:
"Everything we know about President Bush suggests that he came into office determined to complete the work his father left unfinished in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush ended the Gulf War without removing Saddam Hussein from power. Ditto Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld."
Both presidential candidates in 2000 pledged to get rid of Saddam, but projected this as a long-term project rather than the first item on their respective agendas. Furthermore, Bush campaigned on the platform of a "more humble" foreign policy. The neocons, at first, were a small if well-connected factor in the administration's foreign policy deliberations: they were horrified, and, it seemed, relatively powerless, when, for example, the President came out for a Palestinian state. It was only after 9/11 that the neocons became the dominant tendency.
"Their motives were varied," avers Besser, "ranging from family duty to protecting vital oil interests to a frantic concern about weapons of mass destruction in the aftermath of Sept. 11, but Israel was never near the top of the list." Besser may be a mind-reader, but this writer certainly lacks that talent. However, you don't have to be telepathic to understand that the various other motives Besser ascribes to the War Party have all turned out to be empty of any content.
The "vital oil interests" we are supposed to be protecting have been further endangered, rather than secured. As energy prices of skyrocket due to the regional destabilization caused by the war, Iraqi oil isn't getting to Western consumers. This, of course, was an entirely predictable result of the invasion, and I find it difficult if not impossible to believe that U.S. government analysts failed to foresee it.
The fabled "weapons of mass destruction" didn't turn up, either, and there is no reason to believe that anyone in the administration ever expected them to - after all, they were so busy fabricating and cherry-picking raw (and, often, ersatz) "intelligence," that they surely didn't have time or inclination to examine any real evidence.
If "Israel was never near the top of the list" when it comes to motives for this war, then how is it that Tel Aviv turns out to be the chief beneficiary in so many ways? As the Mossad infiltrates Kurdistan, demands recognition from the Iraqi "government," and even sends its skilled torturers to help the American occupiers subjugate and degrade their Arab charges more effectively, the demonstrable evidence that Israel's most loyal supporters led the way to war is not so easily brushed aside.
The smear tactic isn't going to work, not this time. Not when prominent former government officials and military leaders, such as General Anthony Zinni, are saying what we at Antiwar.com have been saying since long before the invasion of Iraq:
"I think it's the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody - everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do.
"And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that's the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn't criticize who they were. I certainly don't know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I'm not interested.
"I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don't believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn't know where it came from."
A new book by intelligence expert James Bamford draws the same conclusions about the origins of the Iraq war, and this analysis of how we came to be embroiled in the Iraqi disaster - trenchantly summarized in an excellent piece by Jeffrey Blankfort in Left Curve - is fast becoming the conventional wisdom. Is Bamford a "fruitcake" of the "far left"? General Zinni may be a registered Republican, but is he really nothing short of a neo-Nazi, as neocon smear artist Joel Mowbray would have it?
At this point, I would direct Besser's attention to a recent editorial in The Forward, a Jewish newspaper based in New York, which has a lot of years on the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, and also, it seems, a greater store of wisdom:
"As recently as a week ago, reasonable people still could dismiss as antisemitic conspiracy mongering the claim that Israel's security was the real motive behind the invasion of Iraq. No longer. The allegation has now moved from the fringes into the mainstream. Its advocates can no longer simply be shushed or dismissed as bigots. Those who disagree must now argue the case on the merits."
As I said at the time:
"Arguing for or against anything strictly on the merits is going to be a whole new experience for the neocons. Smearing their enemies and lying is, for them, a matter of course - it isn't just a matter of tactics, it's part of who and what they are."
I wouldn't identify Besser as a neocon, or the Jewish Journal as a neoconservative publication: a neocon would never point the finger at Bush, as Besser does. He writes that marshalling pro-Israel arguments on behalf of the war was just an "excuse" - just "politics" - a ruse to lure Democrats into supporting the invasion. But Besser should ask himself why, after all, this argument had such resonance with the Democrats - and why John Kerry is hurrying to prove himself more abjectly loyal to the American Likudniks than even this neocon-dominated administration.
Oh, but Besser doesn't want to go there, I imagine. He might turn into a "far left fruitcake," or, worse yet, a "far right loony." Far better to let certain realities go unacknowledged, and unanalyzed, than to have to give up name-calling and smearing as a substitute for arguing a case on its merits.
Ralph Nader has it exactly right:
"What has been happening over the years is a predictable routine of foreign visitation from the head of the Israeli government. The Israeli puppeteer travels to Washington. The Israeli puppeteer meets with the puppet in the White House, and then moves down Pennsylvania Avenue, and meets with the puppets in Congress. And then takes back billions of taxpayer dollars. It is time for the Washington puppet show to be replaced by the Washington peace show."
All the usual suspects are clamoring for Nader's head these days, including some of his fellow "Greens," but Ralphie has the enemy in his sights and more power to him. The time is past when a powerful lobbying group can claim special exemptions and considerations because any criticism of their activities is automatically ascribed to "bias" and "bigotry." American soldiers are dying every day in Iraq, while Israel annexes Kurdistan and their torturers get their jollies in American-run prisons.
What in the name of all that's holy is going on here? That's a question the American people are beginning to ask, and Antiwar.com is going to continue to provide them with some answers. If Besser, and others, don't like it, that's just tough: facts, as the late President Reagan once put it, are stubborn things, and can't be erased or banished from polite discussion on account of political correctness - or, at least, not for very long. The truth is coming out: better late than never.
----
Israel Braces for Defeat Over Wall
Hisham Abu Taha,
Arab News,
5 July 2004
http://www.aljazeerah.info/News%20archives/2004%20News%20archives/July/5n/Israel%20Braces%20for%20Defeat%20Over%20Wall.htm
JERUSALEM - Israel braced itself for a defeat yesterday as the world court was likely to rule against it on the legality of its West Bank wall, while a Jewish squatter and three civilians Palestinians were shot dead.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom both pointed to last week's Israeli Supreme Court ruling, which ordered the government to reroute parts of the wall near Jerusalem, as proof there is no need for the International Court of Justice to get involved. The ICJ is due to issue a non-binding verdict on the legality of the barrier on Friday, although it could also decide that the issue is beyond its competence.
"After the ruling of the Israeli high court, it is obvious to everyone that our judicial system can provide an appropriate response to all Palestinian claims and complaints," Shalom told army radio.
Sharon was quoted as telling yesterday's Cabinet meeting that the Supreme Court ruling should be used "as a juridical answer to the web of lies being woven against Israel" at the ICJ.
Meanwhile, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Mohammed El-Baradei, goes to Israel tomorrow to try to persuade the Jewish state to open up its nuclear program, but officials said Israel was not ready to scrap its atomic arsenal.
Under its policy of "strategic ambiguity", Israel neither admits nor denies having nuclear weapons. But it is assumed to have up to 200 warheads, based on estimates of the amount of plutonium Israeli reactors have produced.
While no breakthroughs are expected, one Western diplomat close to the IAEA said El-Baradei would meet senior Israeli officials, possibly including Sharon.
A Jewish squatter and a Palestinian were shot dead in separate incidents in the northern West Bank early yesterday.
The suatter was killed in an ambush as he drove past Kfar Yabed village, which is close to the Jewish settlements of Mevo Dotan and Shaked, an army spokesman said.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack in a call to a news agency. The army also said an armed Palestinian had been shot dead while "trying to infiltrate" the Braha settlement near Nablus.
--------
Factional Fighting Clouds Gaza's Future
Security Agencies, Armed Groups Vie for Dominance as Negotiators Seek Unity
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A27984-2004Jul4?language=printer
GAZA CITY -- Dozens of security men filed into the garage, Kalashnikovs slapping at their thighs. Over steaming platters of lamb and rice, members of the Palestinian Authority's military intelligence and armed forces gathered to reconcile after a traffic dispute had escalated into an hour-long shootout in the street.
"We are brothers," said Maj. Gen. Moussa Arafat, head of the authority's military intelligence agency in the Gaza Strip, who called the meeting at his house June 14. "When such small issues come up, I implore you to resolve them through dialogue."
Despite the welcoming words, his men ate standing up, and many rested one hand on their weapons. Reconciliation is routinely brokered here, and just as routinely broken.
Since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, a handful of armed groups fighting Israel have also fought one another for dominance in the 138-square-mile Gaza Strip. The Palestinian Authority, given responsibility for governing Gaza a decade ago, runs a dozen security agencies whose members shoot at rivals -- and each other -- every few weeks. The armed branches of organizations such as the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, and Islamic Jihad assert their power and increasingly are beyond the Palestinian Authority's control. Independent armed gangs also roam the streets, imposing their will.
At the same time, the deadlocked Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the strong military measures Israel has taken in the occupied territories have eroded the power of political institutions, Palestinian legislators say. In the resulting vacuum, "the military wings of all these political parties decide what they're going to do vis-a-vis political decisions," said Marwan Kanafani, a Gaza representative to the Palestinian Legislative Council.
The most powerful force in Gaza has been the Israeli army, which has thousands of troops stationed here. But as Israel contemplates a unilateral withdrawal of troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip, Palestinians, Israelis and foreign observers have voiced fears that such a move would spark a civil war among Palestinians, permit a takeover by Islamic militia forces or simply dissolve into total chaos.
"When the Israelis leave Gaza it is going to cause us a very, very, very big problem," said Sami Abu Samhadaneh, who is head of the Special Office of the Palestinian Authority's security services, a branch charged with gathering intelligence on the other security agencies. He is also connected to a militia made up of defectors from some of the dominant Palestinian factions.
Efforts to avoid upheaval have focused on stabilizing the security situation and forging some sort of accord among factions that would bring about cooperation rather than chaos. Egypt has offered to take a leading role in the effort; Israel, the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations have expressed support.
To succeed, however, Egyptian negotiators must engineer compromises among armed groups that have been empowered by the volatile security situation; some of the groups may see more benefit than risk in greater chaos, observers say.
"Hamas and the warlords are the ones who will decide what will happen," said Palestinian pollster and analyst Khalil Shikaki.
In Gaza City, armed men sit on stoops and lean in doorways, surveying, smoking, telling jokes. Many of them work for the Palestinian Authority's security services, which combined are the largest employer in Gaza, providing 30,000 jobs, according to security agency chiefs. A search is underway to find a new structure to organize the often-chaotic forces.
Under the Oslo peace accords, the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 to create interim security forces that were expected to suppress militant groups and provide internal policing. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose Fatah movement dominates the authority's legislature and ministries, set up a complex, overlapping and shifting system of eight to 12 agencies. Each had separate chiefs in the West Bank and Gaza, and all the chiefs were directly responsible to Arafat, who personally oversaw security for both places. The idea was to stop any individual from rising to prominence and threatening Arafat's power. Often, analysts said, Arafat would issue conflicting orders to different agencies.
During the Palestinian uprising, or intifada, some members of the authority's forces fought Israeli soldiers, and Israel struck back at most of the agencies in the West Bank and Gaza. In a recent interview, Samir Mashrawi, a Fatah member and negotiator in talks among agencies and factions, listed each Palestinian Authority security branch whose Gaza office was hit by Israeli forces: intelligence, preventive security, police, navy, the presidential guard, military intelligence and the border forces.
Isolated in his crumbling compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah since early 2002, Arafat seemed to lose control of the security situation in Gaza. Subordinates turned against chiefs, and agencies turned against one another. Some even dared to defy Arafat.
Mohammed Dahlan, a native of Gaza's Khan Younis refugee camp, emerged as a powerful figure as the Palestinian Authority's chief of preventive security in Gaza. Dahlan resigned in 2002 during tensions over the perceived threat he posed to Arafat. When the Palestinians' first prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, appointed Dahlan security minister, Arafat refused to give up control of most of the security agencies. Abbas quit after four months, and Dahlan again found himself out of an official job.
Yet Dahlan remains a major figure among Gaza's various bosses. He has many supporters in the U.S. and British governments, and Israel considers him a plausible future leader in Gaza.
"He's very charismatic. . . . From our perspective he's a good candidate to take control. I don't see any other guy on the Palestinian side who can take control," said David Hacham, a colonel in the Israeli army reserves who is Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's adviser on Arab affairs. "But he can't do it alone. The key to reforming the security bodies is the will and agreement of Arafat."
In an interview in his villa office, Dahlan called for "total change" in the security apparatus. The eight to 12 security agencies should be streamlined into three, he said, a formula that is also part of Egyptian-Israeli-American plans for security in Gaza after an Israeli pullout.
Rashid Abu Shbak, Dahlan's successor as chief of preventive security, talked about similar changes. In his office, Abu Shbak got out a square of paper and sketched a plan for security restructuring. He wrote "army," "intelligence" and "police" at the top of the page. Under each, he listed the security forces that could be brought under those branches.
In fact, said Abu Shbak, this was similar to the official structure of the current system. But he conceded that the Palestinian Authority hierarchy was influenced more by Fatah loyalty, family ties and shared prison terms in Israel than by official positions.
Egypt wants restructuring to bring the chain of command closer to Abu Shbak's sketch and put the whole apparatus under the power of an interior minister. As an incentive to Arafat, the Egyptians also are offering help in guaranteeing stability in Gaza after an Israeli withdrawal. Egypt has volunteered to train and advise the Palestinian security agencies, partly by sending 200 consultants to Gaza, and has invited the various Palestinian factions and security leaders to Cairo for a "national dialogue." The condition is Arafat's commitment to security reform.
But Arafat has answered with his own reform plan, insisting that he remain in control while appointing a longtime loyalist, Maj. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaida, to a new post as security chief. And last month, Hamas and nine other Palestinian factions united to issue a statement opposing Egyptian intervention in Palestinian affairs.
Shifting Loyalties
On a quiet day in Gaza, nothing is quite so palpable as where one cannot go. Intercity roads are blocked by Israeli military checkpoints or piles of rubble dumped to prevent vehicles from passing. Tanks are parked by the side of the road and occasionally shoot at targets that do not always seem clear. The borders with Egypt and Israel are closed.
The restrictions on movement have intensified over more than 3 1/2 years of armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Gaza residents hold Israel directly responsible for their plight, but many also blame the Palestinian Authority for failing to provide basic peace and security.
According to a poll conducted by the Gaza-based General Institute for Information, 94 percent of Palestinians questioned say they live in lawlessness and chaos. A January report by the political committee of the Palestinian Legislative Council, describing a recent deterioration in security, noted a "lack of activity of policemen and security forces that has created a security vacuum that causes citizens to be terrorized by murder, theft, assaults and general lawlessness." The report used a phrase that has come into popular use among Palestinians to sum up the situation: a "chaos of weapons."
"This phenomenon cannot be controlled," said Abu Shbak, the preventive security chief in Gaza, unless Israeli forces withdraw and Gazans no longer bear arms.
But Hacham, the Israeli adviser, said Palestinian passivity is fueling the chaos. "The basic problem is that the Palestinians are not ready to take the necessary actions, taking into consideration that these actions are bringing about rifts in Palestinian society and organizations," he said.
Among Gazans, popular support has shifted toward other organizations eager to fill the vacuum.
The charities of Hamas have long provided medical care for the sick, food for the hungry and homes for the homeless. Its armed wing has bolstered the group's popularity with attacks on Israeli targets. And Hamas appears to be more cohesive than Arafat's Fatah movement and more attractive to some Palestinians because its leaders seem to eschew corruption while pressing the fight against Israel.
Polls show support for Hamas growing from 15 percent to 25 percent of Gazans surveyed in the past four years, placing it ahead of any other group, including Fatah.
"Hamas delivered what the public wanted: violence," said Shikaki, the Palestinian pollster. "Every time the Israelis attacked, with every checkpoint, every incidence of humiliation and injury, the control shifted to Hamas."
At times, tensions among rival factions have seemed to threaten civil war. But Mashrawi, the Fatah member who has also been a key negotiator among factions, said many Palestinian leaders have a long history of working together, such as when they shared Israeli prison cells and negotiated to keep order. They are also capable of negotiating some form of shared governance, he said.
But unity has yet to be achieved. Hamas says it will continue to fight Israel until Israeli forces have withdrawn completely from Gaza, a stance other Palestinian leaders warn could lead to a further swing into chaos during early phases of any withdrawal. And even if Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were to agree jointly to a cease-fire with Israel, as many as 20 percent of the factional fighters in Gaza would be unlikely to abide by it, Mashrawi estimated.
The factional talks that were cut off in the spring resumed June 13 with four Hamas members and four representatives of Fatah, according to Mashrawi, who attended. By the end of that week, Hamas had publicly demanded a share in the government. In the past, the group, which opposed the Oslo peace accords, rejected all participation in the authority.
But in a year when overtures to peace have shown halting progress, the violence they are intended to overcome has scarcely paused. Palestinian armed groups have attacked one another with such frequency that the incidents rarely make headlines. One exception was in February, when five men shot their way out of police headquarters in Gaza City, killing one policeman and injuring 10. The attackers were members of a preventive security squad formed in the 1990s to pursue militants fighting Israel.
Abu Samhadaneh, the Palestinian Special Office chief, said too many institutions were created because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have thrived during the current uprising. As useful as they have been in the fight against Israeli occupation, he said, their continued existence helps keep the Gaza Strip volatile.
"We need an enemy to fight against," he said. "Struggle is something clean. Politics is dirty."
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Gaza Plan Stirs Fears of Internal Israeli Violence
July 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-security.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A rise in Jewish radicalism over Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza pullout plan has stirred fears of ultranationalist violence and possibly even an attempt to kill him, security sources said on Monday.
The always steely bodyguard around Sharon has been further toughened in recent months to stop any assassin, such as the one who shot dead premier Yitzhak Rabin nine years ago in an attempt to halt peace talks with the Palestinians, they said.
But, the sources said, there has been no specific information pointing to any attempt against Sharon's life.
Senior officials are to meet this week to look at legal means to curb potentially inflammatory statements from ultranationalists.
``It starts with incitement and then it moves on to threats. With Rabin it started in the same way and you never know how it will end,'' said one security source.
Once the settlers' champion, Sharon aims to uproot all 21 Jewish communities from Gaza by the end of next year and four of 120 settlements in the West Bank as part of a plan to ``disengage'' from years of conflict with the Palestinians.
Polls show most Israelis back the initiative to shift the 7,500 Jews who live in Gaza alongside 1.3 million Palestinians.
But settlers and religious radicals oppose ceding any land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, seeing it as part of a heritage bestowed by God. They also reject Sharon's plan, arguing that it is a reward for ``Palestinian terror.''
SECURITY WARNING
The head of the Shin Bet internal security agency, Avi Dichter, told a cabinet meeting on Sunday he was concerned at rising right-wing extremism and worried about prospects of an escalation in violence.
The Shin Bet has warned of the danger from Jewish militants on several occasions since Rabin's assassination, but it has scored few successes in uncovering underground groups.
``As a result of our unfortunate experience, it would be worth taking precautions,'' cabinet member Gideon Ezra, a former deputy chief of the Shin Bet, told Israel Radio.
He said that even if there was ``some exaggeration'' of the risks, Israelis ``should be cautious and alert others.''
Pro-settler rabbis, though, called on the Shin Bet to show solid evidence for its warning.
Israel's attorney-general is due to meet Dichter and other security officials this week to discuss legal ways to prevent incitement.
A Jerusalem rabbi drew criticism last week for saying that anyone handing over part of Israel to a non-Jew could be killed under a historic law of ``Rodef'' -- a license to kill someone who intends to kill someone else.
Last month, a settler leader also stated that violence -- though not the use of firearms -- was a legitimate form of resistance against forced evacuation.
``We will not support any violence, but we'll understand because the way that Sharon acts is a way that encourages violence,'' said Eran Sternberg, a spokesman for the Gaza settlers.
--------
Israeli army dynamites family home of Palestinian suicide attacker
(AFP)
5 July 2004
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/displayArticle.asp?col=%A7ion=middleeast&xfile=data/middleeast/2004/July/middleeast_July131.xml
NABLUS, West Bank - The Israeli army on Monday destroyed the family home of a Palestinian militant killed in an abortive suicide attack on a Jewish settlement over the weekend, military sources and witnesses said.
The two-storey home of Taer Ramadan in the northern West Bank village of Til was destroyed in a controlled explosion at dawn, they said.
Ramadan, a member of the radical Islamic Jihad organisation, was shot dead by Israeli troops as he tried to infiltrate the Jewish settlement of Braha near Nablus.
An army spokesman said the demolition of houses "serves as a message to terrorists and their accomplices that there is a price to pay for their acts".
Several hundred houses have been destroyed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since the Israeli army began its policy of demolishing the homes of Palestinian militants in August 2002.
The policy has been widely condemned by human rights organisations as amounting to collective punishment.
-----
Palestinian Renounces Ties to Community
Associated Press Writer
By ALI DARAGHMEH,
Mon Jul 5, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=1312&e=7&u=/ap/20040705/ap_on_re_mi_ea/palestinians_armed_samaritan_1
NABLUS, West Bank - He grew up in a tiny tribe tracing its roots back to the Bible, but when Nader Sadakah decided to take up arms against Israeli soldiers, he was expelled by his community.
The Samaritans, just 660 strong, have been caught between warring Israelis and Palestinians, not picking sides during nearly four years of Mideast fighting. Sadakah's choice undermined their survival strategy.
Samaritans descended from the ancient Israelite tribes of Menashe and Efraim but broke away from mainstream Judaism 2,800 years ago. Today, they live in the Palestinian city of Nablus in the West Bank and the Israeli seaside town of Holon, south of Tel Aviv. Many Samaritans have both Israeli and Palestinian ID cards. They speak an ancient Hebrew dialect as well as modern Hebrew and Arabic.
Jesus mentioned a Samaritan in a parable as the only traveler who stopped to care for a man who was robbed, beaten and left for dead on the side of a road. The good Samaritan treated the man's wounds with wine and oil and bandaged him (Luke 10:25-37).
Sadakah, 27, spoke about his choice at a coffee shop in Nablus' old city, a dark warren of twisting alleys that is frequently raided by Israeli forces.
Sporting a neatly trimmed short beard, Sadakah glanced around nervously as he spoke and sipped a cup of coffee. A shiny, automatic pistol protruded from his belt.
Sadakah said that since the early 1990s, he has been a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a tiny PLO faction which once had a Marxist bent. Sadakah said he has been on Israel's wanted list for the past three and a half years, a claim the Israeli military would not confirm.
He refused to comment on charges that he was responsible for sending two Palestinian gunmen to kill three Israeli soldiers in the shadow of Mt. Gerizim in 2002. But, he insists, armed resistance is the only way to establish a Palestinian state.
Sadakah said he is no longer a Samaritan despite being raised in a strict Samaritan family in Nablus and on Mt. Gerizim, a local Samaritan stronghold.
"I belong to Palestine," he said.
He said his activism in the Popular Front has estranged him from his father and members of the local community, and has caused him to postpone studies for a master's degree in archaeology and plans of starting a family with his Muslim girlfriend.
But it has also apparently caused problems for the Samaritans.
Hosni Wasif, a Samaritan high priest in Nablus, said Israeli authorities had begun taking a hard line against Samaritans because of Sadakah's activities, subjecting them to new scrutiny at military checkpoints.
"By joining a left-wing faction he left our religion," Wasif said. "The entire sect sees him as an apostate."
Sadakah, a tall, fair man, is a popular figure in Nablus, greeted by passers-by as he wanders through the streets of the Old City. He is known for the paper kites he builds for kids in the black-white-red-green colors of the Palestinian flag.
The gunman said he would not lay down his arms, even though he is cut off from his community. "I will fight them (Israeli soldiers) until they leave my country," he said.
-----
Bedouin Arabs, Israel locked in battle over land rights
70,000 live in unsanctioned tent villages in Negev
Los Angeles Times
By Ken Ellingwood
July 5, 2004
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.bedouins05jul05,0,2721808.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
ARAQIB, Israel - Salim abu Medeghem bent to the parched earth and yanked up a crunchy tuft resembling straw - all that remained of his wheat crop, he said, after Israeli airplanes sprayed herbicide on the contested parcel.
"This is burned," he said. "This is all burned."
Abu Medeghem, 38, vowed to plant again in the fall, even if the Israeli government sends more planes. "This is my land," he said.
The stubbly field is one front in an increasingly tense struggle over land between the Israeli government and thousands of Bedouin Arabs inhabiting a broad desert swath of southern Israel known as the Negev.
The government insists that the Bedouins, who live in dozens of unsanctioned tent villages without running water or electricity, lack legal title to the land and should move to towns it has set up for them. This village, known to its inhabitants as Araqib, is unacknowledged by Israel.
But the Bedouins, their seminomadic ways long behind them, contend that they have occupied the land for decades, since before Israel existed, earning ownership rights that they have no intention of ceding. They accuse the Israelis of trying to push them aside to make room for Jewish settlers.
Intensifying conflict
The tug of war has intensified recently as Israel carries out a year-old initiative that combines tactics of persuasion and tough enforcement - including demolishing houses it says were built illegally and spraying plots it says are being cultivated without permission - to relocate the Bedouins.
An estimated 70,000 Bedouins live in 45 unrecognized villages, which seldom show up on Israeli maps. Some of the communities sit no more than 200 yards from traffic whizzing past on the desert highways, reflecting how life for the contemporary Bedouin is often a blend of dirt-floor tradition and cell phone modernity.
Many Bedouins still make a living by growing crops, herding goats and sheep, and raising camels for milk. But the vast majority work as low-wage laborers and construction workers in the larger Israeli towns and cities, such as Beersheba and Tel Aviv.
The festering land dispute has served to underscore the Bedouins' peculiar position in Israel, where their health and living conditions are among the worst of any group and charges are frequent that they get short shrift from the government.
But the Bedouins, although tradition-minded Arabs, have coexisted with the Jewish state that took root around them. As Israeli citizens, they made a name for themselves in the Israeli military with their tracking skills. Bedouin organizers have sought to capitalize on that record of service in fighting to remain on the disputed land.
Israeli authorities argue that moving the Bedouins into communities sanctioned by the government will bring them into compliance with zoning laws, creating more orderly land use and making it easier for Israel to provide water and electricity, schools and medical clinics.
"It's high time for this to take place. It should have been done ages ago," said Yaakov Katz, who is in charge of administering the Negev Bedouins for the Israel Lands Authority. "The main goal is to make order in this and to make sure the Bedouins get their rights and [fulfill their] duties."
Fighting back
The Bedouins have fought back with a high-profile campaign, accusing Israel of excessively harsh measures to uproot them, including the aerial spraying, which has made some people ill, and demolitions, which have included at least one small mosque.
Bedouin activists say it is the government's duty to bring services to the villages, which they say were left off the grid by a 1965 land-planning law that ignored them. As a result, there are only about eight medical clinics among the 45 far-flung villages. In villages such as Araqib, on the scrubby outskirts of Beersheba, the regional capital, it will be up to the courts to settle who is the rightful landholder.
Resolving ownership in this region is anything but easy.
Some families, including that of abu Medeghem, base their claims on papers they say date to the Ottoman Empire; others rely on tradition alone. Many Bedouins say they ceded their lands to the new Israeli state in the 1950s for military use, but only temporarily.
The current battle is over a shrunken pie. According to the government, nearly three-fourths of the Negev region, or about 2.3 million acres, is set aside for military use. About 35,000 of the remaining acres are leased to Bedouins for farming, including land around the villages. But as much as 125,000 acres is ensnared in court disputes or deemed by Israel to be improperly occupied.
Israel's government considers the Bedouins to be squatters on state land - a status that does not confer legal rights to the property.
The land conflict has simmered for years, but it has flared up since the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced last year a five-year, $250 million effort to resolve the issue. The campaign seeks to relocate Bedouins to seven established towns or to a few of the largest Bedouin villages being improved with schools, health clinics and running water.
"The Bedouins will assume responsibility for their future. They will elect their representatives. They will get all the services that citizens get in the country and be able to take part. They will enjoy much greater equality with the other citizens who live in the area," said Katz of the land authority.
As part of the push, Israeli authorities allotted about $10 million to the court system to help it sort out the land cases and $75 million for compensating families that are uprooted.
The government also has cracked down by sending police and demolition crews to take down dozens of new buildings, in addition to spraying the fields it says should not have been planted.
Others moving in
Israel said it has sprayed about 900 acres this year - a contentious tactic that officials view as less prone to violent confrontation than expulsion.
The Bedouins and their backers charge that the enforcement measures amount to a heavy-handed push to clear them out and make room for an expanded Jewish presence in the Negev. One of the government's newly approved settlements, consisting of mobile homes, appeared overnight in January on property claimed by Araqib.
In addition, Israel has promoted a new real estate development, known as private farms, under which families set up small homesteads on tracts the government supplies with water and other utilities. Bedouin villagers see these as another type of settlement.
Each year, more subdivisions sprout in the Negev, which recently has been mentioned as a possible site for relocating the 7,500 people who would be withdrawn from the Gaza Strip under Sharon's proposal to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements there.
In the meantime, the skirmishing continues.
-------- latin america
Colombia's Paramilitaries to Disarm?
(Inter Press Service)
by Constanza Vieira
July 5, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/vieira.php?articleid=2936
BOGOTA - The Colombian government hopes to demobilize 14,000 right-wing paramilitary fighters by late 2005 - 95 percent of the combatants that the paramilitary leaders sitting down at the negotiating table in a remote village in northwestern Colombia claim to represent.
The government of hard-right President Alvaro Uribe set up a 368-sq-km safe haven for the heads of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the paramilitary umbrella group, in Santa Fe de Ralito in the northwestern department (province) of Córdoba.
The area where the talks were formally launched Thursday is guarded by 400 armed paramilitaries, while Colombian army troops patrol the perimeter. The negotiations will be monitored by the Organization of American States (OAS).
Under the agreement, which paved the way for the negotiations, the paramilitaries must live up to a cease-fire, and their commanders are to remain on farms in the safe haven. In exchange, the government has given them promises of safe-conduct, and they are protected from Colombian arrest warrants as well as U.S. extradition requests.
Several of the AUC commanders who began the negotiations face extradition requests from the United States, where they are wanted on drug trafficking charges, including leading paramilitary spokesman Salvatore Mancuso.
Twenty-two years after the first paramilitary militia was created, ostensibly to fight leftist guerrillas, the outlawed groups have lost relevance and "do not even form part anymore of a counter-insurgency strategy, but respond to legal or illegal private interests like drug trafficking, or to the interests of local politicians," activist Alirio Uribe told IPS.
Uribe (no relation to the president) is the head of the internationally respected José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective, a local human rights group.
Historian Eduardo Medina commented to IPS: "These drug traffickers have accumulated huge amounts of capital. They are enormously powerful men, from an economic point of view as well, and they need to launder that money."
Alirio Uribe said, "The paramilitaries have not attacked the guerrillas. They have killed the civilian population in crimes against humanity, and have committed assassinations of important people, as well as huge massacres."
The leftist guerrillas see the paramilitaries as an illegal branch of the state, protected by sectors of the armed forces.
In the peace talks between the government of President Andrés Pastrana (1998-2002) and the main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the requisites that the insurgents insisted on was progress towards dismantling the paramilitary militias. The talks collapsed, largely over that point, in early 2002.
Meanwhile, the government's High Commissioner for Peace, Luis Carlos Restrepo, applauded the formal start of the talks with the paramilitaries: "The creation of the safe haven and the concentration there of the AUC negotiators is a step towards peace, a step forward in the right direction."
But U.S. Ambassador in Bogota William Wood told the Miami Herald on June 16 that he did not see the start of negotiations as a transition in favor of peace, but as a move in favor of drug trafficking.
The OAS representative monitoring the talks in Santa Fe de Ralito, Sergio Caramagna, played a similar role in the demobilization of the Nicaraguan "contra" fighters, the U.S.-financed group that fought the government of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the 1980s.
No United Nations or European Union delegates accepted invitations to attend the ceremony for the launch of the talks Thursday. The U.S. ambassador sent his military attaché William Greiff.
The United Nations blames the AUC for 80 percent of the crimes against humanity committed in Colombia's civil war, which began over 40 years ago with the appearance of the first leftist insurgent group.
The paramilitaries are widely recognized as the most brutal of the factions involved in the armed conflict, and are known for the torture, forced disappearance and mass killings of civilians, selective assassinations of opposition and community leaders and labor and human rights activists, and theft of land and other property.
In addition, they have forced huge numbers of rural Colombians out of their homes. This country of 44 million now has one of the largest populations of displaced persons in the world, totaling around three million.
The UN, the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights and leading rights watchdogs like Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have documented that many of the gross human rights violations are committed with the tolerance of the armed forces.
A special report published by the New York-based HRW in 2001, titled "The 'Sixth Division': Military-paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia," stated that "the paramilitaries are so fully integrated into the army's battle strategy, coordinated with its soldiers in the field, and linked to government units via intelligence, supplies, radios, weapons, cash, and common purpose that they effectively constitute a sixth division of the army."
"For many Colombians, the existence of a 'sixth division' translates into a daily terror that is impossible to evoke in these pages," said the rights group.
Although AUC declared a unilateral cease-fire in December 2002, human rights organizations say the paramilitary militias are responsible for at least 70 percent of the deaths of the 1,440 people murdered in mass killings since then, and for 80 percent of the 3,313 political assassinations.
"Far from demobilizing, the paramilitaries continue to consolidate their territorial control and the process of legalizing (laundering) the land and capital they have gained through drug trafficking," a group of more than 40 human rights groups and political leaders told Caramagna.
Although Washington has included AUC on its list of international terrorist groups, Caramagna stated in Santa Fe de Ralito that it is clear that "the U.S. government supports the peace process and OAS monitoring mission."
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan pointed out on Thursday that the aim of the negotiations is to put an end to paramilitary activity in Colombia, and that the talks should not give rise to general amnesties or de facto impunity.
He said the victims' right to know the truth, their right to justice, and their right to reparations should be respected.
The EU presidency expressed its support for a "credible and global" peace strategy, and underlined the urgent need to begin to implement such a strategy.
Peace Commissioner Restrepo said Thursday that "effective and real compliance with the cease-fire, as well as the abandonment of drug trafficking-related activities are necessary to give the negotiations legitimacy and credibility."
"AUC has committed itself to abstaining from carrying out illicit activities, recruiting people, exercising pressure or threats on local residents or visitors, carrying out weapons training, or ordering and coordinating illegal activity from the safe zone," he added.
Paramilitary leader Mancuso said that if the Uribe administration's security policy continues to restore "faith in Colombia's institutions," the AUC will have to "recognize ourselves as unnecessary as an armed organization."
He announced a plan to create "a grassroots political movement through which the social base of the Self-Defense Forces can become a democratic alternative that defends, guards and protects the interests, rights and demands of our communities."
-------- nato
NATO's 'Myth' in Afghanistan
washingtonpost.com
By Jackson Diehl
July 5, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28163-2004Jul4?language=printer
A couple of years ago, when the Bush administration's unilateralists were still riding high, a senior official at the Pentagon told me the mocking slogan for the transatlantic alliance then circulating around his building went as follows: "NATO -- keep the myth alive!" No doubt he never imagined that in the run-up to the 2004 election, his boss would be trying to do just that -- only without the sarcasm.
"I don't know when in the history of the alliance we've seen so many successes," a newly enthusiastic Donald Rumsfeld told the press traveling with him last week to the NATO summit in Istanbul. He and other administration officials extolled NATO's decision to help train Iraqi security forces and its commitment of more troops to Afghanistan. They echoed President Bush's claim that the feuding about Iraq that nearly destroyed the alliance last year was over. "We got everything we wanted," one White House official said.
Such rhetoric is a logical response to John F. Kerry's tactic of making Bush's mismanagement of NATO, and its consequences in Iraq, a central part of his argument to voters. It is even partly true -- at least in the sense that the Bush administration is now eager to work with the allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, in contrast to the stiff-arm Rumsfeld delivered to the Europeans hoping to join the first offensive against the Taliban in the fall of 2001.
The sad part is that, behind all the spin, the old Pentagon gibe is looking more and more apt. Having expanded to include most of Central Europe, and resolved to address the threats of the 21st century, America's most important international partnership is on the brink of a crippling failure, one that would leave a President Kerry as well as a second-term Bush with little to work with.
The threat lies not in Iraq -- where continued transatlantic discord in fact makes a full-blown NATO operation impossible -- but in Afghanistan, which NATO long ago adopted as a major ongoing mission. Last year the allies resolved to expand a modest peacekeeping force in Kabul to provincial centers around the country, an operation critical to bolstering the authority of the weak pro-Western government and making possible the national elections planned for this year.
Yet, after months and months of haggling, European governments were only barely able to commit at Istanbul to staffing three new provincial centers, each with a couple of hundred troops. The cup-rattling forced on Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer was humiliating: With 26 nations and 5 million men in arms to draw on, Scheffer struggled to obtain just three helicopters for the Afghan operation.
A desperate appeal for more help by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to the Istanbul summit essentially went unanswered. A promise was made to supply a couple of thousand more troops at the time of the elections, but no one knows where they will come from. At best, NATO will have 8,400 troops under its command in Afghanistan by the fall, or about a fifth of the number it dispatched to tiny Kosovo in 1999. The United States has some 14,000 troops in the country, but none are under NATO's command.
It now looks possible that the Afghan elections will be postponed because of lack of security. If so, NATO will get much of the blame -- and the consequences for the alliance's cohesion may be dire. "Afghanistan is the litmus test for NATO's new mission," says a European ambassador in Washington. "If we fail in Afghanistan we might as well fold up and go home, because no one will take us seriously after that."
The mess points to the realities behind the happy talk from Istanbul. Though it now extols NATO rhetorically, the Pentagon's practical approach to it hasn't changed: No American troops have been pledged to the NATO Afghan mission, and proposals to bring the U.S. forces already there under NATO's umbrella have gone nowhere. European governments, for their part, doubt that Bush's conversion to multilateralism is real -- and consequently have little appetite for an operation that appears thankless as well as dangerous and expensive.
"The allies need more reassurance," the European ambassador told me. "We want to be assured that what we're now seeing is not multilateralism growing out of desperation -- because desperate multilateralism is not effective multilateralism."
Yet, even if the Europeans were more enthusiastic, they might have little to contribute. Germany, the largest country in the European Union, has 270,000 soldiers in its army -- yet its commanders maintain that no more than about 10,000 can be deployed at any one time. No matter the politics, the German Parliament is unlikely to authorize an increase in the current ceiling of 2,300 troops for Afghanistan. And Germany is the largest contributor to the NATO operation -- France, which has never liked the idea of NATO operations outside of Europe, has only 800 soldiers there.
For now, Bush's interest lies in glossing over this trouble. Kerry's pitch is that he can make it go away with a new, alliance-centered foreign policy. Both are, in effect, counting on the myth's staying alive -- at least until November.
-------- philippines
U.S. Special Forces to Train Philippine Troops
July 5, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-philippines-usa-security.html
MANILA (Reuters) - A 20-member team of U.S. special forces will go into the heartland of the Philippines' biggest Muslim rebel group to train Filipino troops in exercises planned this month, defense officials said on Monday.
The deployment, the first time U.S. troops have trained next to areas controlled by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), has raised concerns of a rise in tension between the government and rebels fighting for an Islamic state on southern Mindanao island.
Washington sent 1,000 troops to western Mindanao in 2002 to help the Philippines flush out the Abu Sayyaf, a small but radical militant group with previous links to al Qaeda, but they stayed clear of MILF strongholds in central areas.
``The very reason why this is going to be held in Cotabato is because we would have the real type of environment where the students will be exposed to the real conditions on the ground,'' Edgardo Batenga, a defense undersecretary, told reporters.
U.S. and Philippine officials have said the exercises aim to train Filipino troops to use small, well-equipped teams against militants belonging to the Jemaah Islamiah network believed to use Mindanao as a training base.
The MILF denies allegations it shelters foreign militants and has offered to join forces with the government to capture members of JI as part a peace process being brokered by Malaysia.
A cease-fire in the three-decade-old conflict has broadly held since mid-2003.
Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said an army camp in the central Mindanao town of Carmen would provide the ``perfect'' training ground for small-unit, highly mobile operations.
The U.S. team will train about 160 soldiers from the army and marine corps in north Cotabato province for three weeks from July 26.
A spokesman for MILF, the largest of four homegrown Muslim rebel groups, said the movement was not concerned about the deployment but warned the government to stay off its turf.
``We have no quarrel with the Americans,'' Eid Kabalu told Reuters. ``As long as we are not touched, we are not worried. But we have the right to defend ourselves in case they enter our territories.''
Ermita said the American soldiers would not be allowed to leave camp in North Cotabato province and would not be engaged in any real combat during the training program.
He said the MILF leadership would be informed of the nature of the exercise, its general location and the size of the units involved.
``We will see to it that there would be no involvement of MILF forces on the ground,'' Ermita told reporters.
Carmen, the site of a huge Japanese-funded dam project to irrigate 600,000 farms, became a battleground in 1994 when MILF forces abducted 10 Korean engineers at the dam site.
The drama ended when the Korean contractors agreed to hire some MILF members to work as security guards.
-------- prisoners of war
U.S. authorities to release 300 prisoners from Abu Ghraib
By Associated Press,
7/5/2004
http://www.boston.com/dailynews/187/world/U_S_authorities_to_release_300:.shtml
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) About 300 detainees will be released from Abu Ghraib prison this week, the latest group to be freed from the detention facility west of Baghdad, the U.S. military said Monday.
The detainees will be set free on Monday and Tuesday, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson told The Associated Press.
Some 5,500 other detainees remain in custody, Johnson said. About 2,200 are held at Abu Ghraib, and 2,700 are being held at Camp Bucca near Umm Qasr in the far south of the country, he said.
Others are at smaller facilities around the country where they ''are initially screened to determine whether they should be processed for detention or released,'' Johnson said.
Abu Ghraib was at the center of a scandal over allegations that American prison guards abused Iraqi detainees. The scandal came to light in April when photographs of hooded and naked prisoners were made public, provoking a torrent of international criticism.
U.S. authorities have released more than 2,000 detainees from Abu Ghraib in the last two months.
----
Non-Iraqi captives singled out for harsh treatment, records say
By Peter Eisler,
USA TODAY
7/5/2004
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-05-noniraqi-captives_x.htm
Late last year, U.S. officers at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison sought approval to use extreme interrogation tactics on a captive said to have information that "could potentially save countless lives of American soldiers." The captive wasn't an Iraqi general or an al-Qaeda leader. He was a Syrian implicated in a bombing attempt against U.S. troops.
"Detainee can provide information related to safe houses, facilitators, financing, recruitment and operations of foreign fighter smuggling into Iraq," the top military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib, Col. Thomas Pappas, wrote in a secret memo that sought to exempt the captive from normal interrogation rules.
The memo, obtained by USA TODAY, went to Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. It laid out a plan to "fear up" the Syrian by throwing tables and chairs, yelling at him and interrogating him "continuously" for 72 hours. During that time, he would be stripped, hooded, bound in "stress positions" and permitted only brief intervals of sleep.
Sanchez testified to Congress in May that he never saw the request. But that may not have mattered: The Syrian, identified as Juwad Ali Khalif, 31, is among several non-Iraqi nationals who were allegedly beaten and sexually abused by U.S. soldiers at the prison, according to statements to investigators in a report on Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba.
The Pentagon's investigation of the abuses at the prison documented repeated instances in which suspected foreign fighters were singled out for harsh treatment, according to classified documents from the inquiry. The records show that interrogators and guards at the prison felt extra pressure to get information from the foreigners.
Top U.S. officials believed at the time that foreign fighters posed a substantial threat in Iraq and were heavily involved in the deadly insurgency that continues to grip that country. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lieutenants were calling publicly for Muslims across the Arab world to come and wage jihad, or holy war, against Americans in Iraq. And captured associates of Saddam Hussein were telling U.S. interrogators that the former Iraqi president's loyalists were recruiting foreign fighters to resist the U.S. occupation.
"There's clearly an indication that foreign terrorists are involved in the kind of violence that we see" in the insurgency, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said in a briefing last August, echoing a view expressed by many Defense officials. "And we're going to use all the means at our disposal, all of the national means of power, to counter foreign terrorists."
In recent months, however, it has become clear that the insurgents are overwhelmingly Iraqis. Foreign nationals account for fewer than 100 of the 5,700 prisoners being held by coalition forces in Iraq as security concerns, according to figures supplied by the military.
The military's suspicions about non-Iraqi fighters through the latter half of 2003 and early this year had an effect on the way foreign captives were tracked and treated. This was especially true of Syrians, who have accounted for more than half the foreigners detained in Iraq.
Khalif was beaten repeatedly and handcuffed in stressful positions for hours by military police guards working nights at the hard site, according to sworn witness statements collected by military investigators. He also was stripped, hosed with cold water on consecutive nights and forced to sleep nude on the wet concrete floor of his cell, witnesses said.
Another Syrian, identified as Ameen Sa'eed al-Sheikh, was accused of trying to shoot prison guards with a smuggled pistol. He testified that guards urinated on him and hung him by his arms with a dislocated shoulder until he passed out. They also menaced him with dogs and threatened to rape him, according to his account, parts of which were supported by witnesses.
It is unclear from the Army's investigative reports whether such instructions were given specifically for foreign captives.
Contributing: Tom Squitieri
-------- un
Weapons probers told to move office
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
By Stewart Stogel
July 05, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040704-112847-6762r.htm
NEW YORK - Idled U.N. weapons inspectors are being moved from U.N. headquarters to the former offices of the oil-for-food program several blocks away, prompting complaints that sensitive documents must be stored in a poorly secured building.
Officials with the U.S. Mission to the United Nations said they are looking into the move, a decision taken without notification of the U.N. Security Council, which is responsible for oversight of the program.
The U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) and a predecessor agency, which were charged with finding and destroying then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, have occupied space in the 38-story U.N. Secretariat building since 1991.
But officials close to UNMOVIC say the agency has been ordered by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, through his undersecretary-general for human resources management, Catherine Bertini, to relocate to offices in a nearby commercial building occupied until recently by the scandal-ridden U.N.-Iraq oil-for-food program.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the move was a matter of "routine space management." The world body is obliged by a lease to continue paying rent for the offices even though the oil-for-food program was closed down in November.
UNMOVIC, which was funded by revenue from the sale of Iraqi oil, is well able to pay the rent. It is thought to have as much as $100 million on hand even though its inspectors largely have been idle since leaving Iraq shortly before the outbreak of hostilities early last year.
The inspectors, who were supposed to re-enter Iraq at some unspecified date, were not allowed back by U.S. occupation authorities. In the meantime, the remaining staff of about 50 has spent its time analyzing data from inspections in late 2002 and early 2003 and updating data bases.
UNMOVIC officials said the new offices have not been subjected to security checks and have no secure facilities to store, discuss or transmit sensitive materials.
Those materials include files from the CIA and Britain's MI-6 intelligence agency and Iraqi blueprints for the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. Many of these are now sitting unguarded in cardboard boxes, a U.N. official said.
"It is really serious," said one senior UNMOVIC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "We have a lot of sensitive files, and I don't know how they are going to be protected."
UNMOVIC has hired a private security guard to watch the new facility, one official said, but he is only able to work during weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Officials also complain that Mr. Annan ordered the move without notifying the Security Council, which is responsible for oversight of UNMOVIC.
Rick Grenell, a spokesman for the U.S. Mission in New York, said the State Department was not informed of the move and that the matter "is now being looked into."
Another veteran Security Council ambassador said he planned to question the move when the council convenes tomorrow.
The inspection team, once led by Hans Blix, is now being led by his former deputy Dimitri Perricos of Greece.
-------- us
MAN IN THE NEWS
A Low-Key Commander With 4 Stars to Tame the Iraqi Furies
July 5, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/politics/05CASE.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 4 - Six weeks ago, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. was toiling in relative obscurity at the Pentagon as the Army's vice chief of staff, worried about issues like training and equipping the forces needed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But in a sudden turn of events, General Casey, 55, is now on the receiving end of those troops. In an elaborate ceremony at the American military headquarters outside Baghdad last Thursday, General Casey replaced Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez as the top commander in Iraq, overseeing 140,000 American troops and 25,000 allied forces.
In many ways, General Casey was an accidental choice for one of the most complex and challenging jobs in the military today.
Pentagon officials had initially decided on a different commander in Iraq, but when the political fallout from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal derailed that plan, officials quickly turned to General Casey, a forceful but low-key officer who is highly respected by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
On paper, General Casey was not an obvious candidate. Aside from a year as a United Nations military observer in Cairo in 1981, he has spent little time in the Middle East. He served in a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996. He has no combat experience.
But active-duty and retired officers, as well as senior defense officials, say General Casey brings a keen intellect, a calm demeanor and an ability to handle the bureaucracies of Washington and the Middle East.
"The first thing people notice is that he is quiet, and that when he speaks he knows what he is talking about," said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, whom General Casey accompanied on a trip to Iraq last month. "He has very much the right demeanor for the supporting role we have to be in Iraq."
The general is so self-effacing and uncontroversial that his sparsely covered Senate confirmation hearing on June 24 prompted one senator to comment that he had turned anonymity into a secret weapon.
"Boring is good, General Casey, and I applaud you on that," said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York. "Clearly, you're a master at it. And it goes to the heart of your success."
Not quite sure how to take Senator Clinton's compliment, General Casey responded wryly, "I'm going to have to think about that for a minute."
But in preparing for Iraq, General Casey did not hesitate. He spent long hours consulting experts in the Pentagon, Central Intelligence Agency and State Department, including the new American ambassador to Baghdad, John D. Negroponte.
He bought Arabic tapes to learn the language. His wife, Sheila, gave him a copy of "American Caesar," William Manchester's biography of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. "This came up very fast," Mrs. Casey said. "But he was not rattled by it."
General Casey has been up to stiff challenges before. He was an important participant on the military's Joint Staff in coordinating policy for the Kosovo air war in 1999. As the Joint Staff's director of strategic plans and policy, he was a major intellectual architect of the military's long-term approach toward global terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the months before the Iraq war, he was one of the few senior officers who raised alarms about a lack of postwar planning, and fought with only modest success to improve it. He says he lives by the advice, "Don't promise what you can't deliver."
On Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have severely criticized Pentagon officials over Iraq policy, General Casey's selection was greeted with a bipartisan welcome.
"He understands the importance of coalitions, the nuances of coalition command and coalition-building," said Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. "And he understands the complexity of dealing with the diverse Iraqi factions."
At his hearing, General Casey said his priorities will be to train and equip the new Iraqi security forces, aid the United Nations, prepare for national elections early next year, and work with Iraqis to defeat the insurgency.
"The insurgency is much stronger than I certainly would have anticipated," General Casey told senators. "I don't think there's any question that over time the insurgency has become increasingly sophisticated."
While the American forces will keep a lower profile in the newly sovereign Iraq, General Casey said the counterinsurgency will not slacken. "While we may be less visible with our helicopter flights, or less visible with our patrols, the leaders need to stay focused on the enemy," he said.
General Casey, a specialist in international relations, will report to Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East, and serve as Mr. Negroponte's senior military adviser.
George William Casey Jr. was born on July 22, 1948, in Sendai, Japan, where his father was an Army officer in the American occupation force.
He attended Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service at the height of the Vietnam War in the late 1960's, and figured if he had to go to Southeast Asia, it would be better to go as an officer, Mrs. Casey said. So he joined the campus' R.O.T.C. program.
General Casey had planned to stay only two years in the Army and then attend law school, but he enjoyed the Army life and commanding troops, and made the service his career.
An infantryman, General Casey has served in a variety of field commands and staff positions, including that of special assistant to the Army chief of staff, Gen. Carl E. Vuono, during the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and commander of the First Armored Division in Germany from 1999 to 2001.
General Casey's father was a major general during the Vietnam War, where he was killed in a helicopter crash in 1970. Today in Iraq, a reminder of that service to his country hangs around General Casey's neck: his father's St. Christopher medal.
-------- war crimes
Iraqi Leader Backs Autonomy of Hussein Tribunal
July 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The interim prime minister said Monday he would not interfere with an Iraqi tribunal's right to decide whether Saddam Hussein and his top lieutenants should be executed on war crimes charges, the Arab language television station Al-Arabiya reported.
Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said he was willing to abide by whatever the court decides in the trial, which is not expected to begin for months. Iraq assumed legal custody of Saddam from the United States last week and reinstated the death penalty, which had been suspended by U.S. occupation authorities.
``As for the execution, that is for the court to decide -- so long as a decision is reached impartially and fairly,'' he said.
Saddam's first court appearance Thursday dominated the media across Iraq. The broadly outlined charges include the slaughter of Shiites during a 1991 uprising and a chemical weapons attack against Kurds in the northern city of Halabja.
Thousands of Kurds demonstrated Monday in Halabja, demanding that Saddam and one of his key lieutenants -- Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as ``Chemical Ali'' -- be put to death for the gas attack that killed 5,000 people on March 16, 1988. Carrying photos of their slain loved ones, the marchers said they want Saddam to be tried and executed in their town.
``Every family in this city lost no less than five of its dear sons,'' said demonstrator Sabiha Ali, 50. ``Therefore, we want to execute Saddam on the soil of the land.''
Iraq has been wracked by lawlessness and violence since the fall of Saddam's regime 14 months ago.
Also Monday, the spokesman for militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr tempered threats to continue fighting, saying his movement only planned to wage ``peaceful resistance'' against the interim government.
Iraq's oil exports were cut nearly in half as workers struggled Monday to repair a key pipeline shut down after looters sabotaged the line, according to officials with the South Oil Co. and traders.
The looters, trying to steal crude oil for sale on the black market, breached one of the country's two key southern pipelines, said an SOC official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A land mine Monday detonated along the main route to the southern city of Samawah, where Japanese troops are based, police said. There were no reports of injuries. The route is frequented by coalition forces.
In southern Iraq, insurgents fired rockets at a government building early Monday, but instead struck nearby homes, killing one person and wounding eight, police said. The attack targeted the province's main offices near the center of the Basra.
Interior Ministry officials also said two Iranians suspected of trying to detonate a car bomb were captured, but gave no details.
Iraqi officials have blamed foreign fighters and religious extremists for a wave of recent vehicle bombings. The attacks have led to fears that religious fanatics and Saddam loyalists may be joining forces to fight both the multinational force and the new Iraqi government.
Iraqi troops thwarted a car bombing outside their regional headquarters northeast of Baghdad on Sunday, killing an attacker before could detonate his vehicle. Two bystanders also died in the assault in Baqouba, the scene of fierce fighting last week between American soldiers and insurgents who tried to seize government buildings and police stations.
Also in Baqouba, gunmen fired at a building belonging to a city council official in the town of Khalis on Sunday, killing two people and wounding two, said Salih Mahdi, the spokesman for the Diyala province.
Iraqi government officials have suggested that tough moves will soon be taken to combat the violence, but canceled a news conference Monday where they had been expected to announce a limited amnesty for insurgents and martial law in parts of the country.
The news conference with Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan and Human Rights Minister Bakhtiyar Amin was postponed indefinitely just as it was scheduled to begin. The government had canceled a previous news conference on the same topic.
Britain and Australia offered support Monday for the proposed amnesty offer. Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer agreed the interim Iraqi government was entitled to make such decisions.
Al-Sadr issued a statement Sunday from his office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf calling the new interim Iraqi government ``illegitimate'' and pledging ``to continue resisting oppression and occupation to our last drop of blood.''
But al-Sadr's spokesman in Baghdad, Mahmoud al-Soudani, called a news conference Monday to clarify that the statement was not a call to arms. He said that many of al-Sadr's supporters in Baghdad had begun taking up arms again and he needed to correct their misperceptions.
``We are still committed to the cease-fire,'' al-Soudani said.
Al-Sadr previously had made conciliatory statements to the new government of Allawi, a fellow Shiite, and members of his movement had suggested they might transform the al-Mahdi Army into a political party. Al-Mahdi fighters accepted cease-fires in most Shiite areas after suffering huge losses at the hands of the Americans from an uprising in April.
Al-Sadr has made contradictory statements in the past.
In his statement Sunday, the young cleric said, ``There is no truce with the occupier and those who cooperate with it.''
``We announce that the current government is illegitimate and illegal,'' he said. ``It's generally following the occupation. We demand complete sovereignty and independence by holding honest elections.''
Earlier Sunday, Allawi told ABC News that he had met with al-Sadr representatives ``who want to try and mediate.''
``The position of the government is very clear,'' Allawi said. ``There is no room for any militias to operate inside Iraq. Anything outside law and order is not tolerated, cannot be tolerated. The rule of law should prevail.''
Al-Sadr's harsh statement suggested the government may be taking a hard line, insisting he abolish his militia and submit to the warrant.
Although Iraq regained sovereignty June 28, about 160,000 foreign troops, most of them Americans, remain under a U.N. resolution to help the new government restore security.
--------
Tribunal Delays Milosevic Defense Case
July 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-War-Crimes-Milosevic.html?hp
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) -- A U.N. tribunal delayed the opening of Slobodan Milosevic's defense case Monday due to concerns about his health, and an independent lawyer said he may not be fit to continue his trial.
Judges said doctors for the 62-year-old former Yugoslav president had warned that he urgently needed rest, and said they would review plans on how to continue.
``The trial chamber is clearly of the view that the time has come for a radical review of the trial process and the continuation of the trial is needed in light of the health problems of the accused,'' presiding Judge Patrick Robinson said.
Prosecutors appealed to the court to impose a defense lawyer on Milosevic, who has insisted on representing himself since the trial began in February 2002. Milosevic angrily rejected the proposal.
``It is out of the question as you know, nor will I ever agree to it,'' he said.
Milosevic appeared relaxed, vigorous and fit in the courtroom, and objected when Robinson began discussing his medical file but was overruled.
He nevertheless accused the judges of ordering him to appear, despite a doctor's report earlier Monday that he should remain at the nearby U.N. detention center to rest.
He asked for a further month's delay to make up for time he lost preparing his case due to his health problems. The judges said they would rule later on his request and on the prosecutor's proposal for appointing defense counsel. A tribunal spokesman said the decisions would likely be announced Tuesday.
Reading from a physician's report from Friday, Robinson said Milosevic had suffered ``organ damage'' to his left ventricle due to high blood pressure and that it would not be sensible for him to begin presenting his defense as originally planned.
Steven Kay, one of the independent lawyers assigned to ensure a fair trial for Milosevic, said fresh medical evidence and the steady deterioration of Milosevic's health put the continuation of the case in question.
The judges must consider ``his very fitness to stand trial at all,'' Kay said, but in any case, ``he is plainly not fit enough this week'' to appear in court.
Milosevic had been scheduled to give a four-hour opening statement. during which he had been expected to deny responsibility for atrocities committed during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and the Serbian province of Kosovo, and accuse Western governments of hypocrisy.
``What is happening here is not in the realm of law at all, but in the realm of politics and the media,'' Milosevic said, denouncing the judges for destroying his health.
The trial had been due to resume after a four-month break since the prosecution wrapped up its case. Prosecutors questioned nearly 300 witnesses and introduced reams of documents, videos and other evidence.
Milosevic's courtroom tactics may foreshadow what to expect from former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, the second former national leader to be accused of war crimes. Milosevic has so far used his trial as an opportunity to grandstand for supporters.
He has pleaded innocent to any wrongdoing, and has challenged the authority of the court. His strategy will likely include an attempt to blame the U.N. member states that created the court, especially the United States and its NATO allies, for alleged war crimes of their own.
Milosevic has argued in the past that a 1999 crackdown he ordered on ethnic Albanian Muslims in Kosovo was undertaken to protect the Serb minority there. He claims NATO's 78-day bombing campaign caused civilian deaths.
He also claims that as president of a crumbling Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, he did not have control over ethnic Serb troops in neighboring Croatia and Bosnia. An estimated 200,000 people on all sides died in fighting that came with the disintegration of Yugoslavia.
--------
Court Opens Sierra Leone War - Crimes Cases
July 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Sierra-Leone-War-Crimes.html
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- Calling it a ``tale of horror,'' a U.N.-sponsored war crimes court opened the first trials Monday for rebel military commanders accused in a vicious 10-year campaign for control of diamond-rich Sierra Leone.
Onlookers in the tightly guarded courtroom muttered as the court detailed the allegations in an 18-count joint indictment -- systematic killings, rapes, enslavement of child soldiers and mutilation with machetes.
Prosecutors also described a network of foreign backing for the rebels, including training and forces from Liberia's then-President Charles Taylor and Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
``What took place in Sierra Leone marks the limits of our language to communicate, and falls outside the realm of expression,'' David Crane, the American chief prosecutor for the U.N.-backed court, said in opening statements.
``This is a tale of horror, beyond the gothic into the realm of Dante's Inferno,'' Crane said.
The three former military commanders of the Revolutionary United Front are accused as the primary culprits in their movement's 1991-2002 battle to take control of Sierra Leone and its diamond fields.
Rebels adopted a trademark atrocity that made them notorious: chopping off the hands, legs, lips, ears and breasts of their civilian victims with machetes. Countless maimed survivors struggle to make new livings today or inhabit vocational training camps set up for the mutilated.
The three accused are former rebel battlefield commanders Issa Sesay, Morris Kallon and Augustine Gbao. Sesay was the rebel's last leader before the fighting stopped.
The rebels' founder and longtime leader -- Foday Sankoh, known as 'Pa' to his often drugged and drunk child fighters -- died of natural causes in U.N. custody last year.
Crane made frequent reference Monday to another top indicted figure outside of court custody -- Taylor, who has been living in exile in Nigeria, where he fled on Aug. 11 as rebels laid siege to the Liberian capital of Monrovia.
Sierra Leone's war began with a Feb. 27, 1991, planning session in Gbarnga, Liberia, Taylor's base, Crane alleged.
About 250 Revolutionary United Front fighters launched the invasion from Liberia, supported by Taylor's forces and Libyan special forces, Crane said.
Libya is widely accused of training and supporting both Taylor and Sankoh as Cold War-era guerrillas against U.S. interests in West Africa. Gadhafi was mentioned in the special court's indictments but was not accused of any crime.
All parties were fighting for influence and Sierra Leone's mineral wealth, the prosecutor said.
``Among their goals, the diamond fields of eastern Sierra Leone; and their motive -- power, riches and control in furtherance of a joint criminal enterprise that extended from West Africa north into the Mediterranean region and the Middle East,'' Crane said.
``Blood diamonds are the common thread that bound them together,'' the prosecutor said. ``The rule of the gun was supreme.''
Rebels directed most of their attacks on civilians, aiming to terrorize the population, Crane said.
Relatives of victims were among those in the courtroom Monday. At times, individuals within the gallery would sigh as prosecutors described the alleged atrocities committed.
The rebel commanders listened attentively to prosecutors' outlining of the case against them. Defense lawyers are to speak at subsequent hearings, although two of the rebel leaders are asking to deliver their own opening statements.
Sierra Leone policemen and flak-jacketed U.N. troops armed with AK-47s guarded the courtroom.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Analysis: Iran ignored at Saddam's trial?
United Press International
By Modher Amin
7/5/2004
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040705-050953-4648r
TEHRAN, Iran, July 5 (UPI) -- Iranians are indignant at the Iraqi court's failure to include the 1980 attack on Iran and the use of chemical weapons on its fighters as the charges read out during Saddam's Hussein's court appearance last Thursday.
Tehran said Sunday it was drawing its own list of charges against the ousted leader for crimes relating to the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, during which close to a million people -- mostly Iranians -- were killed.
"One of the crimes of Saddam Hussein is the attack of Iran, the death of Iranians, and the use of chemical weapons in Halabja (within Iraq) and other places (in Iran) during the war," Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, told reporters. "Iran will definitely file a complaint with the Iraqi court."
Preliminary charges against Saddam Hussein cover invasion of Kuwait in 1990, crushing Kurdish and Shiite revolts after the 1991 Persian Gulf war, ethnic cleansing of Kurds in 1987-1988, gassing Kurds in Halabja in 1988, killing religious leaders in 1974 and killing of political activists over three decades.
"We have asked the Iraqis to explain why the attack on Iran did not feature among the charges against him, even though the judge said it would be addressed at a later date," Asefi said.
The trial of the 67-year-old Saddam has provoked anger among other Iranian officials, who described Saddam as a war criminal, having committed atrocities beyond the borders of his country.
The officials also called for the transparency of the trial, with some urging the case to be referred to the Hague, to, apparently, obtain international recognition of the "crimes committed."
Addressing an open session of the new conservative-held parliament on Sunday, Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel denounced the trial as "American."
"The Iraqi attack on Iran was the most important chapter in Saddam's dossier," he said. "The prosecution will have to reveal if they really intend to prosecute him for his crimes or if this will be a show trial."
On Friday, the influential former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, said Saddam's trial should be totally public, accusing, at the same time, the United States of imposing censorship.
"Saddam's extraordinary crimes must be exposed but from the first words pronounced by Saddam, the Americans imposed censorship and broadcast only what they wanted," Rafsanjani told worshippers at the weekly prayers in Tehran.
Rafsanjani called on all Iranian authorities to press charges against Saddam for using chemical weapons on Iranian soldiers and civilians within the country during the eight-year war between the two nations.
"We faced severe chemical attacks at the beginning of the war when world powers were giving Saddam the green light to do anything to prevent Iran from winning," he said.
Rafsanjani, head of Iran's top political arbitration body -- the Expediency Council -- and still one of the clerical regime's most powerful figures, condemned the absence of the Iran-Iraq war from the main charges leveled against the deposed Iraqi dictator.
"Why is the war against Kuwait, which only lasted several months, among the major charges while the war against Iran, which lasted eight years, is omitted?" he asked, casting doubt on the self-reliance of the Iraqi court.
"If the Iraqi court refuses to include (Saddam's responsibility) in the unleashing of the war against Iran, it means it is on an order from the Americans," Said Rafsanjani, adding that 100,000 Iranians suffered from Iraqi chemical weapons. Iranian officials put the annual cost of treatment alone of the chemically injured victims at $20m.
Once the war ended in 1988, peace negotiations between Iran and Iraq got underway in the U.N. premises in Geneva. Iran's attempts, however, to receive compensation for war damages, which Tehran puts at $1,000 billion, has so far failed.
Tehran says its call for reparations was partially approved by the former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar in 1990, who later on December 9, 1991, declared Iraq as the initiator of the war. But, Saddam's Iraq insisted it was Iran that provoked the war with border shelling and skirmishes, as well as by threatening to export the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution of 1979.
A U.N. fact-finding mission confirmed the use of banned weapons by the Iraqi regime against Iranian troops in a trip they made to Iran in March 1984.
"The specialists unanimously concluded that chemical weapons in the form of aerial bombs had been used in the areas they inspected ... and that the type of chemical agents used were ... mustard gas, and ... a nerve agent known as Tabun," read the 1984 U.N. Yearbook.
It remains uncertain, however, if such agents were developed inside the country or supplied to Iraq by external sources. But Iran believes the U.S. and other Western governments provided Saddam with equipment that helped him use chemical weapons against the Islamic republic.
In its Editorial on Monday, the pro-reform English-language Iran News daily, stresses the prosecution of Saddam for what it calls "unspeakable atrocities against Iran," but, at the same time, criticizes Iranian foreign policy for failing to pursue a strong, effective diplomacy in securing war reparations.
"... Not all fault should lay with the new Iraqi government for this gross oversight of justice (absence of Iran-Iraq war from the charges brought against Saddam Hussein)," it said.
"U.N. Resolution 598 (by which Iran agreed to a cease-fire) expressly stated that Iran was entitled to billions of dollars worth of war damages but our foreign ministry officials were indecisive and not as resolute as needed to secure payment."
The paper compared Iranian situation with that of Kuwait, asking: "Notwithstanding that having U.S. support is a plus, why couldn't we get the kind of deal Kuwait secured?"
After the 1991 Persian Gulf war, the Iraqi regime was ordered to pay $48 billion worth of war reparations. Reports say that Kuwait has already received $18 billion of that money and the U.N. has obtained a guarantee from Iraq's new interim government whereby 5 percent of all Iraqi oil proceeds would be set aside for Kuwait.
"It is high time for Iran's foreign ministry to once again get the ball rolling on Resolution 598," the paper concluded. "In fact, the first step should be a thorough review of the Resolution by our seasoned diplomats and legal experts toward reviving and recovering our long-overdue rights."
-----
Seasoned Saddam browbeats young judge
The Telegraph
July 05, 2004
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040705/asp/foreign/story_3454963.asp
Baghdad, July 4 (Agencies): Ousted President and former law student Saddam Hussein proved more than a match for the Iraqi Special Tribunal in round one of what is expected to be a long legal battle as he fights for his life.
"Saddam Hussein's attitude could have a major impact on the image of the Americans who set up the tribunal," Badie Arif Ezzat, a lawyer approached by the families of several former top officials also in the dock, said.
Chief US administrator Paul Bremer, who stepped down last week, established the tribunal by decree on December 10 to try the former leadership on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
"You have on one side a President of the republic who signed laws for more than 20 years, and who knows the law, and on the other a very young magistrate who completed his studies in 1999," noted Ezzat.
From the 25-minute pre-trial hearing on Thursday, only the first 12 minutes of the proceedings were audible in the video released by the US military.
A combative and confident Saddam, stroking his beard and repeatedly gesticulating to make a point, appeared to prove more than a match for the magistrate.
He turned the tables on the judge, whom he politely challenged and put on the defensive by presenting himself as the Iraqi people's head of state while the magistrate was serving the "forces occupying" Iraq.
The strategy was simple: to interrupt the judge and barrage him with a stream of questions, some of them embarrassing.
When asked to introduce himself, the magistrate, whose identity and face were concealed for security reasons, said he was "the investigating judge of the central Iraqi court". The former President made the judge repeat himself before setting the trap with the question: "it (the court) was created according to what decree?" It was established by "the coalition authorities," the judge admitted. "This means then that you are an Iraqi representing the forces occupying your country," came the reply.
The judge managed to add that he was appointed under the former regime, before a satisfied but ever polite Saddam said, "Ok, we are in agreement."
Reaffirming his credentials as a former law student and that he knew the law, Saddam lectured the judge and added: "Just from the legal aspect of things, I imagine that you were made aware of the fact that I have lawyers."
While refusing to sign any papers in the absence of counsel, Saddam also raised a key point of law on which his defence may rest. "Is it permissible to summon a President elected by the people and to judge him according to a law issued by his will and the will of his comrades?" the 67-year-old former strongman asked. "There is a contradiction here."
A senior official of the tribunal, declining to be named, said the fallen President had exploited the presence of the cameras in the courtroom set up at one of his former presidential palaces.
Saddam heart disease
One of the few people to see Saddam before he appeared before the Iraqi judge, a young American doctor had a rare but brief glimpse of a toppled dictator who sent thousands of people to mass graves and defied the West for years.
"Saddam has heart disease. But it's not unusual for someone who is 68," said the doctor at a military hospital which handles US troop casualties and Iraqis who are at risk of dying, losing a limb or sight.
After his handcuffed patient stepped out of a helicopter in a helmet, flak jacket and black goggles, the American doctor was eager to ask many questions. But CIA agents cautioned him to ask Saddam Hussein only about his health after months in US detention. "We were told to stick to the medical check-up, not to ask too many questions. I couldn't really discuss anything else. He was surrounded by CIA people," the physician said.
Like millions of television viewers who watched Saddam in court last week, the doctor immediately noticed that the former dictator who used to swim across the Tigris river to boast of his fitness had shed significant weight behind bars. "They have got him on a diet of just vegetables and rice," said the doctor.
-----
Scalia scores court activism
ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Gina Holland
July 05, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040705-012426-5169r.htm
Justice Antonin Scalia ended the Supreme Court term with some harsh words for his colleagues.
"This court seems incapable of admitting that some matters - any matters - are none of its business," he wrote on the court's final day.
Only fellow conservative Clarence Thomas wrote more dissents than Justice Scalia in the nine-month term that ended last week. In the final days, Justice Scalia complained about a misguided court that "seems to view it as its mission to Make Everything Come Out Right," even with wrong rulings.
In some of his sharpest criticism, Justice Scalia called the court irresponsible in ruling that foreign terror suspects held in Cuba may challenge their treatment in U.S. courts.
It was one in a line of decisions by the justices this year that found American courts open to lawsuits over such things as international human rights abuses, on-the-job sexual harassment, World War II-era disputes over looted property, claims that states aren't accommodating disabled residents and accusations of unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering in legislative-boundary drawing.
Justices also said that U.S. courts and their protections were available to Americans accused by the president of being enemy combatants, another defeat for the Bush administration.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has generally steered a conservative course for the court, settled for a more moderate year.
"I can't think of a major conservative victory," said John McGinnis, a conservative law professor at Northwestern University. "They may be running out of steam."
The terrorism ruling that Justice Scalia criticized as irresponsible, clumsy and strange was written by John Paul Stevens, the court's oldest justice and its longest-serving liberal.
Usually known as the maverick for his dissents, Justice Stevens showed his ability to form alliances and was on the winning side in 16 of the court's 20 most significant cases. When he was on the losing side, he wrote to explain why.
He said that a Nevada cattle rancher "acted well within his rights when he opted to stand mute" when a police officer asked his name. The court, however, ruled that police can demand the names of people they suspect of wrongdoing and arrest those who don't comply.
Justice Stevens, 84, a veteran of World War II, filed a dissent when the court said that a U.S. terrorism suspect arrested and detained in America without legal rights would have refile his lawsuit in a different court. He said that even at war a country cannot "be justified by the naked interest in using unlawful procedures to extract information."
Several potential blockbuster cases sputtered. Justices ruled narrowly that states don't have to underwrite the religious training of students planning careers in the ministry. Justice Stevens crafted a ruling that dodged a decision on whether the Pledge of Allegiance and its reference to God in public schools is constitutional. The court found that a California atheist could not challenge the oath because he did not have legal authority to speak for his daughter.
The justices backed off another case about White House secrecy, leaving for another day the question of whether Vice President Dick Cheney must reveal the inner workings of his energy task force.
In some instances, the court showed it does not have all the answers. In others, it seemed to say the court will get back to us later, said Washington lawyer Thomas Goldstein.
In the terrorism cases, "what they said is significant, but it's not the whole story. It's like giving people one chapter of a book at a time," Mr. Goldstein said.
Erwin Chemerinsky, a law professor at University of Southern California, said that the surprise ruling of the year was a victory for criminal defendants written by Justice Scalia. The complicated 5-4 decision called into doubt the legality of federal and state sentencing systems.
But even that ruling left questions about what it means for other cases.
"This term, things were left open and unresolved," Mr. Chemerinsky said. "There are going to be major issues litigated for years."
-------- homeland security
Fears of Attack at Conventions Drive New Plans
July 5, 2004
By DAVID JOHNSTON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/05/politics/05SECU.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 4 - The federal authorities, concerned about a terror attack during this summer's national political conventions, have begun a new effort to identify potential extremists inside the United States, including conducting interviews in communities where terrorists might seek refuge, government officials said.
The fears about an incident during the conventions or later in the year have also led state and local officials to impose extraordinary security precautions. Persistent if indistinct intelligence reports, based on electronic intercepts and live sources, indicate that Al Qaeda is determined to strike in the United States some time this year, the officials said in interviews last week.
Almost half the budgets in each convention city will be spent on security, local officials said. The Democratic National Convention will be held in Boston at the Fleet Center from July 26 to 29. The Republican National Convention will be held in New York at Madison Square Garden from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.
New York is regarded as a higher risk than Boston by counterterrorism officials because President Bush is a Republican and because of consistent intelligence.
"Al Qaeda has unambiguous plans to hit the homeland again," James L. Pavitt, the C.I.A.'s outgoing head of clandestine operations, said in a speech in New York last week, "and New York City, I am certain, remains a prime target."
Pasquale J. D'Amuro, the head of the New York F.B.I. office, said in an interview that nearly all of the more than 1,100 agents in the office, the bureau's largest field division, will be involved in collecting intelligence and other security tasks before the convention.
Convention planners expanded their security requirements, at the urging of federal officials, after the March 11 commuter train attacks in Madrid that killed 191 people.
While the intelligence is not yet clear or specific enough to justify increasing the country's color-coded alert level, the officials said, there are signs of rising concern in the government. On Friday, cabinet members were briefed on the latest intelligence, which, administration officials said, indicates Al Qaeda's intention to strike in the United States, but does not suggest when or where an attack might occur or who might be behind it.
Recent intelligence reports have hinted that an attack might involve relatively crude materials in an uncomplicated operation, the officials said, suggesting the possibility of a car or truck bomb rather than a plot relying on sophisticated weapons or training like the commercial aviation studies undertaken by the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Some of the information has indicated that potential attackers might not be young Arab men, but religious extremists from other countries, possibly in Africa. For that reason investigators have begun to more closely examine visa holders already in the United States from countries like Somalia, Kenya and Nigeria.
Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are also starting to conduct interviews in communities where potential terrorists might seek to blend in with local populations. The officials said that the interviews were based on intelligence about who might pose a threat, but would also be patterned on the informational interviews conducted in Arab-American neighborhoods after the Sept. 11 attacks and in Iraqi-American communities at the start of the American-led invasion in 2003.
At the bureau's headquarters in Washington, officials have organized the '04 Task Force, a team of analysts and investigators at the bureau's strategic command center there who are seeking out investigative avenues that could reveal vulnerabilities or signs of preparation for an attack. The team was formed in response to criticism by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks and from others that the bureau had failed to think imaginatively about how an attack might be carried out.
In New York, Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican, has called on a 10-state consortium of law enforcement agencies, from Maine to Delaware, to share intelligence about warning signs of terrorist planning.
"We think we know the targets that might have great economic impact or cause large loss of life," said James K. Kallstrom, a senior terrorism adviser to Mr. Pataki. "But we know terrorists might not be in proximity to those targets, so we have put a series of tripwires in place throughout New England."
In New York, the cost of security is expected to exceed $75 million, of the total convention cost of about $166 million, as concerns have broadened to include not only the week of the convention, but also the weeks before and after it.
The Police Department will increase uniformed and plainclothes patrols in many parts of the city, focusing on landmarks, tourist sites, sites related to the convention, bridges and tunnels, airports and simply places where people gather. Much of the focus will be on the subway system.
For Boston, the security bill is now estimated to reach $50 million, twice the original estimate and more than half the roughly $95 million overall convention cost.
The Secret Service has ordered some 40 miles of roads closed around the Fleet Center, where the Democrats will meet, including Interstate 93, a section of which runs above ground just 40 feet from the arena. The shutdown of major roads near the convention site is the central and most controversial part of a complex security plan. The plan involves multiple police agencies and includes random checks of handbags and packages on buses and subways by police and bomb-sniffing dogs, as well as closed security zones.
New York is considered to be a more likely target, but security planners in Boston said that area had many potential targets of its own, including a complex infrastructure, prestigious universities and, perhaps most of all, symbolic sites.
"This is the seat of liberty," said Carlo A. Boccia, the city's director of homeland security, gesturing from the window of his City Hall office toward Faneuil Hall and the Old State House. "You attack that, it's the very heart of America."
The Boston Police Department estimated that the security measures ordered by the Secret Service added about $9.5 million in police, firefighter and medical worker overtime for a total of $32.5 million, the largest portion of the security cost.
At first, the authorities seemed likely to order closings only during the evening hours of the convention. But it quickly became apparent that because of the complex nature of the roads that feed into downtown Boston, it would take hours to clear the backed-up traffic. So the ban has been extended from roughly 4 p.m. to midnight.
Some 200,000 vehicles travel on I-93 on a weekday, and 24,000 people use the commuter rail line from the north. But because of congestion on alternate routes, the ban is likely to affect tens of thousands more.
The traffic ban has outraged commuters as well as business owners who fear the city will be nearly deserted except for the 36,000 visitors expected for the convention. State employees have been encouraged to take the days of the convention off, and many businesses have told their employees to do the same.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino bristles at criticism.
"This convention will be good for Boston," Mayor Menino said in an interview. He added, "Since 9/11, our whole world has changed drastically. The Secret Service is really dictating the conditions. It's remarkable how many public safety agencies have been working together."
As in Boston, security concerns in New York will focus on a fairly broad time frame. Raymond W. Kelly, the city police commissioner, said the heightened measures would be in place weeks before Aug. 30, when the Republican National Convention opens, and will continue after the event ends Sept. 2.
"The lead-up, the run-up to the convention is an area that certainly requires additional attention," Mr. Kelly said, "because anything that happens in that period could be just as disruptive as something that happens during convention week."
The Madrid bombing has also led to stepped-up security plans in New York. About 10,000 officers will be deployed, up from 6,500, to provide security at Madison Square Garden, city hotels, bridges and tunnels, demonstration areas, landmarks and other sites, according to a previously undisclosed May 10 memorandum prepared by the city's Washington lobbying office in an effort to obtain more federal money for security.
Securing the city's transportation system is a complex task. About seven million people a day ride the subway system. The Long Island Rail Road carries about 270,000 riders each day on 730 trains, while the Metro-North Railroad carries about 250,000 people daily.
In addition to increased subway patrols, the memorandum said, the department's efforts include deploying officers to Pennsylvania Station, beneath Madison Square Garden, as well as other transit, and an inspection plan for each commuter rail line that enters Penn Station.
The security around Madison Square Garden will include shutting down major Midtown streets for several hours each day, ringing the arena with concrete barriers and allowing demonstrators to gather only at one corner of the site, measures that officials acknowledge will disrupt large swaths of Manhattan.
But Madison Square Garden is not the only concern. Because any attack in the city would probably cause the disruption sought by extremists, Mr. Kelly said, the department will also focus on other events that week, including the U.S. Open tennis tournament and New York Yankees and Mets games.
Mr. D'Amuro, of the F.B.I., also expressed concern about the periods before and after the convention.
"We know one of the things that Al Qaeda looks at is security measures in place and whether they think they could be successful in carrying out an attack," he said. "And if they don't believe they will, they'll postpone it, they'll put it off to another time."
--------
FBI tries new ways to find terror threats
Heightened concern centers on upcoming political conventions
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By DAVID JOHNSTON
July 5, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/180778_terror05.html
WASHINGTON -- The federal authorities, concerned about a terror attack during this summer's national political conventions, have begun a new effort to identify potential extremists inside the United States, including interviews in communities where terrorists might seek refuge, government officials said.
The fears about an incident during the conventions or later in the year have also led state and local officials to impose extraordinary security precautions. Persistent if indistinct intelligence reports, based on electronic intercepts and live sources, indicate that al-Qaida is determined to strike in the United States some time this year, the officials said in interviews last week.
Almost half the budgets in each convention city will be spent on security, local officials said. The Democratic National Convention will be held in Boston at the Fleet Center from July 26 to 29. The Republican National Convention will be held in New York at Madison Square Garden from Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.
New York is regarded as a higher risk than Boston by counterterrorism officials because President Bush is a Republican and because of consistent intelligence.
"Al-Qaida has unambiguous plans to hit the homeland again," James Pavitt, the CIA's outgoing head of clandestine operations, said in a speech in New York last week. "And New York City, I am certain, remains a prime target."
Pasquale D'Amuro, the head of the New York FBI office, said that nearly all the more than 1,100 agents in the office, the bureau's largest field division, will be involved in collecting intelligence and other security tasks before the convention.
Although the intelligence is not yet clear or specific enough to justify increasing the country's color-coded alert level, the officials said, there are signs of rising concern in the government. On Friday, Cabinet members were briefed on the latest intelligence, which, administration officials said, indicates al-Qaida's intention to strike in the United States, but does not suggest when or where an attack might occur or who might be behind it.
Recent intelligence reports have hinted that an attack might involve relatively crude materials in an uncomplicated operation, the officials said, suggesting the possibility of a car or truck bomb rather than a plot relying on sophisticated weapons or training like the commercial aviation studies undertaken by the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Some of the information has indicated that potential attackers might not be young Arab men, but religious extremists from other countries, possibly in Africa. For that reason, investigators have begun to more closely examine visa holders already in the United States from countries such as Somalia, Kenya and Nigeria.
Agents from the FBI also are starting to conduct interviews in communities where potential terrorists might seek to blend in with local populations. The officials said the interviews are based on intelligence about who might pose a threat, but will also be patterned on the informational interviews conducted in Arab American neighborhoods after the Sept. 11 attacks and in Iraqi American communities at the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
At FBI headquarters in Washington, officials have organized the '04 Task Force, a team of analysts and investigators at the bureau's strategic command center there who are seeking out investigative avenues that could reveal vulnerabilities or signs of preparation for an attack. The team was formed in response to criticism by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks and from others that the FBI had failed to think imaginatively about how an attack might be carried out.
In New York, the cost of security is expected to exceed $75 million, of the total convention cost of about $166 million, as concerns have broadened to include not only the week of the convention, but also the weeks before and after it.
The New York Police Department will increase uniformed and plainclothes patrols in many parts of the city, focusing on landmarks, tourist sites, sites related to the convention, bridges and tunnels, airports and other places where people gather. Much of the focus will be on the subway system.
For Boston, the security bill is now estimated to reach $50 million, twice the original estimate and more than half the roughly $95 million overall convention cost.
-------- prisons / prisoners
Abu Ghraib hits home
Monday, July 05, 2004
Seattle Times
Neal Peirce / Syndicated columnist
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2001971935_peirce05.html
Are Americans finally seeing the connections - that the incidents of U.S. soldiers beating and humiliating detainees at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison have direct parallels in patterns of inmate abuse reported in our own state and local prison systems?
For some of us, the answer is yes. The Abu Ghraib news has triggered the biggest wave of interest in U.S. penal conditions in many years, says Kara Gotsch, spokesperson and trend-watcher for the American Civil Liberties Union's National Prison Project.
Careful media watchers can hardly miss the direct Iraqi-U.S. penal connections, highlighted by The New York Times' Fox Butterfield, The Washington Post's David Finkel and others.
Lane McCotter, selected by Attorney General John Ashcroft to head a team of Americans to reopen Iraq's prisons, was forced in 1997 to resign as director of Utah's prisons after a case in which a mentally ill inmate died after guards left him shackled naked to a restraining chair for 16 hours. McCotter is the official who suggested that Abu Ghraib be used as the main U.S. prison in Iraq, and directed training of the guards there.
Charles Graner, called the ringleader of the guards who assaulted and abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib, was formerly a guard at State Correctional Institution - in southwestern Pennsylvania. An inmate accused Graner of slipping a razor blade into his food, then joining with other guards in punching, kicking and slamming him to the floor. When the inmate yelled "Stop, stop," one of the guards said: "Shut up ... before we kill you." Among other allegations made at the same facility: guards beat prisoners, spit in their food, wrote "KKK" in one beaten prisoner's blood.
Are such incidents highly isolated in American prisons? Not likely. More than 40 state prison systems have been under court order in recent decades to remedy conditions of overcrowding, poor food or lack of care, according to Marc Mauer of the Washington-based Sentencing Project.
During much of the time George W. Bush was governor of Texas, state prisons there were under a federal consent decree. U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice wrote in a 1999 opinion: "Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system."
Mauer cautions that while there have been "horrendous abuses" in American prisons, torture-like practices are far from the norm. The character of a prison's leadership is critical; even an overcrowded prison that sets clear rules and treats prisoners with respect can avoid abusive situations.
But there's an inherent problem, Mauer insists: "Prison is a degrading, humiliating, negative experience. Prisons keep people in cages against their will. Prisons are inherently tension-laden places."
And then factor in the pressures of rising inmate numbers and budgets. The United States now incarcerates a stunning 2.1 million people, one of every 143 residents. Facilities, notes the ACLU's Gotsch, are increasingly overcrowded, staffs stretched to the limit, training spotty, recruitment tough. Young guard recruits, just out of high school, may be paid as little as $16,000 to $18,000 a year while working in violent and hostile environments.
Then there's race. In 2002, 10 percent of black males age 20 to 39 (prime developmental and production years) were in prison, but only 2.4 percent of Hispanic males and 1.2 percent of white males the same age.
Increasingly, prisons aren't close to inmates' homes and relatives, but in distant rural areas. Prisons are a big growth industry in rural America - about 350 new ones since 1980, representing more than half of all new prison construction.
So what do we get? Overwhelmingly white, rural guards using state-sanctioned lethal force to imprison a heavily black inmate population. The result is a huge cultural chasm. And as it has been through American history, whites are in control - as they were during our long national history with slavery, as they were from the 1870s to the 1920s, when lynchings of African Americans were widely tolerated in the Deep South and some Northern states too.
As for Muslim inmates, American guards rubbing pork on their dishes didn't just occur in Abu Ghraib; it has happened in U.S. prisons too.
It's clear we Americans have a huge problem on our hands. We passed and maintain harsh sentencing policies that reach far beyond the truly dangerous criminals who clearly need to be kept locked up. We consistently ignore the tensions, the brutality, the racism engendered in our prisons. We fail to pursue alternatives to incarceration very seriously. No national leaders step forward with a clear, effective reform strategy.
Abu Ghraib blew the whistle on us - the whole world knows what can happen in an American-run prison. But are we listening ourselves? Will we change?
Neal Peirce's column appears alternate Mondays on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com
--------
AP Tours Guantanamo Bay Detention Center
July 5, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Inside-Guantanamo.html?pagewanted=all&position=
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) -- Sliding a knight into attack mode with a meaty hand, a terrorism suspect teaches his unarmed interrogator chess, grinning at his opponent and pausing briefly to look at a manual that U.S. officials believe holds key intelligence.
Next door, another prisoner in an orange jumpsuit pours tea from a thermos, fingers a Snickers candy wrapper and takes a drag on a cigarette as he laughs with a female interrogator and squints at a mug shot she hands him of a man with piercing ebony eyes.
A two-day tour of Guantanamo Bay afforded The Associated Press the most extensive access ever allowed independent journalists, giving them views of some 50 detainees, including some in a new maximum-security prison. One detainee said he, too, was a reporter.
Watching through mirrored glass, and with the sound turned off, the AP also witnessed three interrogations, including one in the part of the camp reserved for problem detainees and prisoners believed to hold information important to the fight against international terrorist groups.
No armed guards were present at the interrogations, and officers said armed guards were never used during these sessions. They said each detainee is generally questioned twice a week, with sessions usually lasting two to four hours, with a maximum of 15 hours a day.
The scenes shown to an AP writer and photographer were a far cry from those at Abu Ghraib, the U.S.-run prison in Iraq where some troops are accused of abusing detainees. But interrogation techniques used here were recommended for Abu Ghraib by the Guantanamo center's former commander, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, and critics have questioned whether that is an indication abuses happened here, too.
Miller and other officials have denied that any Guantanamo detainee has been mistreated.
``This is a wholly different environment,'' said Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, who succeeded Miller. ``We are not being shot at every day.''
Two of the interrogations sessions watched by AP were at Camp Delta's normal detention center. The sessions were viewed from behind mirrored glass, and officers turned off the audio feed, which is used for analysts to crosscheck information.
The other session viewed was at Camp 5, where alleged leaders, problem detainees and prisoners believed to have high intelligence value are held. It was the first time a journalist was allowed to witness an interrogation there since that jail opened in May.
A problem detainee -- a young man held since the beginning of the mission -- had asked to see his interrogator, having clammed up in their last session. Although the detainee appeared silent much of the time, the interrogator viewed the session as a success, saying the man finally talked.
After the interrogator and linguist left the room, the bearded detainee began smiling, laughing and talking to what could have been another detainee, next door in the shower.
``Sometimes this detainee is very funny; other times he is not funny at all,'' said a female interrogator who often brings the prisoners mint tea and Fig Newton cookies. ``Sometimes they are very pleasant at one moment, and then they tell you calmly and proudly about how they killed someone.''
Officers said the primary focus of the prison always has been intelligence gathering.
``We've learned about recruiting, how terror cells are financed, their capabilities and plans that have been sitting on the table for attacks,'' said the senior interrogator, who along with other interrogators spoke on condition of anonymity.
In late June, one prisoner who had been unwilling to talk for more than a year opened up, the interrogator said. Another, the burly chess player, has been steadily cooperative.
``He often tells his chess opponents, 'Attack, attack, attack!' You learn an awful lot about some of these people from very simple methods,'' said the interrogator, who has brought the prisoner McDonald's hot fudge sundaes on occasion.
The manual near the board was thought to contain prime intelligence information that officials want the suspects to help interpret. Interrogators refused to say how they took possession of it or describe it further other than to say it could play a key role in the fight against terror.
The first detainees arrived strapped into a cargo plane 2 1/2 years ago, shackled, bound and blindfolded. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan, accused of links to the fallen Taliban regime or al-Qaida.
Ringed by turquoise waters where American troops snorkel, fish and lounge on pontoon boats on days off, this arid outpost on Cuba's eastern tip has been leased as a U.S. Navy base since 1903.
Officials thought its remote location on foreign soil would put prisoners outside the reach of U.S. constitutional protections, but the Supreme Court ruled last week that the 595 prisoners from 42 countries -- all but three held without charge and denied lawyers -- have the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts.
Most detainees have not yet been told of their newly won right. Nor were they told about the Abu Ghraib scandal, officials said.
Military lawyers are struggling to determine just how the ruling could affect operations here as well as a panel reviewing individual detentions and future tribunals.
Three prisoners -- an Australian, a Sudanese and a Yemeni -- have been charged with crimes ranging from conspiracy to commit war crimes to aiding the enemy, and have been selected to be tried by military tribunals that officials hope will begin in Guantanamo before the end of the year.
But the Supreme Court ruling could create delays and lawyers plan a flurry of challenges.
Questions about the fairness of tribunals and the treatment of detainees have multiplied since photographs were published of U.S. troops taunting hooded, naked prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Hood said nothing like that has occurred in Guantanamo. Two guards, however, were disciplined after one hit a detainee with a radio and another sprayed one with a hose. A third was investigated and cleared of wrongdoing.
``The photos that came out of Abu Ghraib were so terrible that I think it causes people to stop and wonder,'' said Hood, who assumed command in March. ``It's a challenge every day ... the only way to overcome it is to invite people here and to have them look for themselves.''
Criticism of the Guantanamo camp started when it opened, with the first pictures of shackled prisoners being locked into hastily constructed metal enclosures that rights activists compared to animal cages.
Twenty-one detainees have tried to kill themselves 34 times, the most recent attempt coming last January.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only independent group allowed to visit the detainees, issued a rare public rebuke of conditions in October. It and other groups contend the prolonged detention has harmed detainees' mental health. Some critics, however, charge that is the result of harsh interrogation techniques.
No detainees are currently on suicide watch and most are in good health, said Cmdr. Tom Delaney, in charge of the detainees' hospital.
Disputing reports that few detainees here still retain any value as sources of intelligence about terrorist activities, two interrogators said most prisoners have either killed someone or helped in an operational capacity.
They said about 20 percent are college educated and most know some counter-interrogation techniques, making it more tedious to extract information. Despite that, they don't mistreat the detainees, said the interrogators.
``It's counterproductive,'' said the senior interrogator, who has worked at the camp for nearly two years. ``You don't end up getting what you want that way.''
Before moving to the Abu Ghraib prison this spring, Miller instituted a system of rewards to encourage more cooperation from detainees.
One is a field trip for cooperative prisoners held in medium-security Camp 4, where detainees wear white uniforms, are allowed to exercise every day and get to keep more items such as letters and books in their cells.
Four or five of the 100 prisoners at Camp 4 are taken out about twice a week. Interrogators say the trips build trust with the men and prompt them to divulge more information.
In an unprecedented opportunity, the AP journalists were allowed inside a room with four of the prisoners during a four-hour field trip to a part of the detention center known as Camp Iguana. The big lizards it's named for amble around a complex of trailers and buildings that housed a handful of juvenile prisoners before their release last year.
The area is screened from view by green netting, and the detainees are allowed to sit on a hilltop and look at the Caribbean or play soccer. Most opt for air conditioning against the 100-degree (37-degree Celsius) heat and watch movies in a trailer that also has a pingpong table. This day the movie was ``The Color of Paradise,'' an Iranian film about a father learning to accept his blind son.
One prisoner asked a commander in perfect English if the visitors were journalists and if he could speak to them. When told the visitors were journalists but he could not talk to them, he smiled and said that he and his friend were journalists. The Arab satellite TV station al-Jazeera has said that one of its cameramen is wrongfully detained at Guantanamo.
Detainees are allowed to sit in the trailer unshackled. Guards stand outside.
The mood was less relaxed in the other camps, where open-air cell blocks made of chain-link fences allow detainees to see each other and chat. Most prisoners turned their backs to avoid being photographed. Some looked curious or nodded in greeting.
When a prisoner began criticizing American journalism, an officer hurried the visitors away from the cells, where angry detainees have been known to throw feces at guards.
Detainees in Camp 5 -- which holds about 50 of 100 detainees considered uncooperative or high-intelligence value -- stay in an air-conditioned concrete building in cells closed with metal doors and a strip covering an internal window.
A commander peeled back the tape to give a glimpse. In one cell, a man was curled up asleep, a prosthetic leg lying below his mattress.
The commander said the men -- many with unkempt black beards -- have developed their own cell routines. Some clean their cells and wash their jumpsuits each day. Many read and reread letters from home or study the Quran, Islam's holy book. Most observe the call to prayer that crackles over the loudspeaker the ritual five times daily.
A few look at the sunlight shining into cell windows, reaching their arms up and looping their fingers around the metal mesh.
One such photograph was censored by military officers who reviewed the AP's portfolio. They also would not allow publication of others they said might reveal the identities of detainees.
``The mission is, of course, more sensitive because we are under a microscope,'' said Army 1st Lt. Romel Santos, a 25-year-old guard from San Jose, Calif. ``But as long as we keep doing the right thing, we're good to go. I think we're doing that already.''
-------- POLITICS
-------- propaganda wars
Wars Bring Security At Home, Bush Says
By Vanessa Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27971-2004Jul4.html
CHARLESTON, W. Va., July 4 -- President Bush returned to the Mountain State to celebrate Independence Day, telling a spirited crowd Sunday that on its 228th birthday the nation is "moving forward with confidence and strength."
The president's 24-minute speech under the golden dome of the state Capitol focused heavily on the war on terrorism and the administration's push for democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. He repeatedly praised U.S. troops' efforts to secure those countries, which he said was necessary to America's security.
"On this Fourth of July, we confirm our love of freedom," Bush said. "But we also understand that freedom is not America's gift to the world; freedom is the Almighty God's gift to each man and woman in this world.
"And by serving that ideal, by never forgetting the values and the principles that have made this country so strong 228 years after our founding, we will bring hope to others and, at the same time, make America more secure," the president said, to loud applause.
Two years ago, in the first Independence Day observance after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Bush visited Ripley, W. Va. Although West Virginia has only five electoral votes, it is considered a swing state in this fall's presidential election, and Sunday's visit was Bush's third since April.
He carried West Virginia in 2000 by 6 percentage points, but job losses by steel workers -- which some blame on Bush's decision to lift tariffs on imported steel two years ago -- have cost him support. As Bush's motorcade approached the Capitol, dozens of supporters of Democratic challenger John F. Kerry lined the streets, waving campaign posters.
But the crowd of several thousand that greeted Bush in the hot, thick air -- paramedics scrambled to rescue a few people who passed out -- enthusiastically chanted, "Four more years!" and wildly waved tiny replicas of Old Glory as he took the stage on the steps of the Capitol shortly before 1 p.m. They especially cheered when Bush spoke of the U.S. resolve to stare down terrorists.
"We made a decision, you see: We will engage these enemies in these countries and around the world so we do not have to face them here at home," Bush said, drawing applause, and prompting the audience to join in his speech.
"You can't talk sense to them," Bush said, referring to terrorists.
"Nooooo!" the audience roared.
"You can't negotiate with them."
"Nooooo!"
"We must be relentless and determined to do our duty," he concluded to sustained applause.
Bush's visit to Charleston was cut short by a mechanical glitch with Air Force One. The plane was flown to Hagerstown, Md., to pick up the president, who was at nearby Camp David. But after Bush arrived about 9:45 a.m., the crew discovered a malfunctioning starter valve in the left engine. Bush waited an hour until a backup plane arrived. He did not leave Hagerstown until 11, when he was to have been at the Bible Center's morning services.
Bush told the crowd at the Capitol that he had assured the church's pastor, Shawn Thornton, "that I was looking forward to his sermon. . . . I missed it because the plane broke down." The audience laughed.
After Bush's speech, Bill Greaver, 51, an operating-room nurse who works for the Veterans Affairs Department, said he agrees that the United States has a duty to help the Iraqi people.
"Look at what he's done to free the Iraqi people. The oppression that these people were under over there for so long, and now they have just the simple things in life that they didn't have before -- food, water, medicine -- the things we take for granted every day," said Greaver, who lives in nearby Clarksburg. Bush touched only briefly on domestic issues, noting, "Our economy is healthy. . . . People are finding work every single day."
Buck Flynn, a retired Verizon Communications worker who lives in Charleston, said Bush gave a "good speech and I think he's done well. It's a tough job."
But Flynn, 66, a Democrat, said he will more likely vote for Kerry. "I think he will take the country in a different direction and I think the economy will be better under the Democrats," he said.
If Flynn had his druthers, though, his candidate would be Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. "I would have been out there beating the bushes, with flags and everything!" he said, his face lighting up.
--------
Group Gives Liberty Medal To Leader of Afghanistan
NATION IN BRIEF
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A18
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28142-2004Jul4.html
PHILADELPHIA -- Hamid Karzai, the U.S.-backed leader of Afghanistan who took over after the Taliban government was ousted in 2001, accepted the Philadelphia Liberty Medal on Sunday at a ceremony at Independence Hall.
Karzai broke with the Taliban in 1995 and was appointed to lead his country after the U.S.-led invasion aimed at evicting the Taliban and tracking down Osama bin Laden.
The medal's $100,000 prize will go to support Afghan orphans, he said.
The award, first presented in 1989, is given each July 4 by the nonprofit, nonpolitical Philadelphia Foundation to recognize leadership in the pursuit of freedom.
-------- us politics
Kerry And Electoral Illusions
by John Steppling
Swans Commentary,
July 5, 2004
http://www.swans.com/library/art10/johns01.html
(Swans - July 5, 2004) I sympathize with the "anyone but Bush" sentiment, I really do. To imagine another four years of Ashcroft press conferences or Rumsfeld (who increasingly appears as a bipolar Hannibal Lector) briefings is almost enough to make me push that Diebold screen where the name John Kerry appears. Almost. I will not dispute the absolute absence of integrity this administration exhibits, nor its embarrassing stupidity, nor its open criminality; such observations are pretty obvious. However, to use a simple if reductive analogy, if a train is speeding toward a cliff and you had a choice of applying badly designed brakes that will slow it down a few miles per hour, or applying no brakes whatsoever...does it matter which choice you make? The train will go off the cliff anyway. Is John Kerry preferable to George Bush? My liberal friends insist, of course he is. They point to all kinds of issues that usually include abortion rights, Health and Human Services appointments, Supreme Court nominees and the environment. Perhaps he is better on some small level...perhaps. However, the entire discussion now obscures and mystifies deeper issues about electoral politics in general. John Kerry wants to end the Castro "regime," wants to get rid of Chávez, and wants more troops in Iraq. He supports Israel's right wing government and has indicated little interest in reforming the hegemony of the IFIs. He is part of the Imperialist ruling class and is, like 90% of American national office holders, a millionaire. However, whatever I think, the truth is that John Kerry matters very little, and George Bush matters very little; they are simply the branding for this fall's political discourse collection. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will continue to loanshark their way through the developing world (more accurately, the not-developing world) and structural readjustment will keep small and desperately poor nations under the thumb of the big rich ones. The WTO will continue to force the small and impoverished to bow to their wishes, and the corporate West will continue to squash anyone who wishes to in any way modify those earnings curves. The charade of democracy is in serious need of examination and a strategic vote for John Kerry is starting to seem, to me at least, a way of avoiding this examination. The hyper-militarization of the U.S. is what keeps its waste economy afloat. Over a billion dollars a day for the defense budget is a figure one ought to contemplate for a while. All the wringing of hands about the starvation in the Sudan or the various genocides (a popular word with liberals) around the planet seems to neglect just how easy it would be to fix such catastrophes....not to mention prevent them...and that to use a week's worth of defense spending on clean water and food for the planet's poor would yield dramatic improvements. It's of course not possible to convert such money, since money doesn't work that way...but the scale of military spending is the point here. The somnambulant populace, however, prefers to focus on bromides or jingoism, (and that Calvinist/Puritan attachment to punishment continues to keep prison construction the only other growth industry. Four times the number of inmates in the US are serving life sentences than in 1984. The U.S. executes children, the poor, and the mentally challenged, as well as, judging from Illinois, the innocent, at an accelerating pace) and to accept colonial occupations and support for dictators like Karamov in Uzbekistan and monarchies like the House of Saud. How much of this would change under John Kerry? The answer is exactly none of it.
I will grant you that losing the Christian right would be nice... Fewer faith-based rehab programs would be good, and Kerry's at least nominal opposition to the death penalty (and nominal is the operative word) is a positive. Yet, if one steps back and looks at the big picture, I would submit that such improvements are pretty thin gruel and that the aforementioned train will continue to hurtle toward oblivion. That only half the population bothers to vote is less about apathy than it is about an inability to face the utter powerlessness and futility of one's life if one really must work for a living. Better to take handfuls of anti-depressants, drink oneself numb, and watch American Idol, than to have to soberly face the madness of a marketed unreality that serves only to intensify the delirious compulsions of consumption. Those who must support families are usually so exhausted by the underpaid and unprotected work they have to endure, that to accuse them of apathy is actually rather insulting. There is a question that surrounds this issue regarding low voter turnout. Does a 35% turnout help the far right, or does it begin a slow and gradual coalescing of the majority? I can't say, but I do know that until people stop getting their "news" from network and cable TV, the stultifying ignorance Americans demonstrate about the wider world will continue, genuine informed analysis will be rare, and political consciousness will remain in a kind of coma. The corporate media, owned by the same people (Viacom, Disney, etc.) who own John Kerry and who own the DNC and RNC and who market the spectacle of American politics, are so morally compromised that one should, rationally, consider them the enemy of truth. When one considers the questions that might and should be asked of ghouls like Rumsfeld and Richard Meyers by the mainstream press corps, and what actually is asked, then one can readily see the total ethical bankruptcy of this quisling press. The liberal belief in farcical institutions like the UN is another example of popular delusion. That anybody can take the UN seriously at this point is proof of either senility, crack habituation, or just a willful refusal to see the obvious. Just go look up the US record for using its veto at the UN and then tell me the UN has any importance. John Kerry wants the UN involved in Iraq, and he says he can do Iraq better than Shrub. He also said nothing about John Negroponte's nomination as Colonial administrator of Iraq, and actually most democrats praised Negroponte as a dedicated civil servant. Such hypocrisy hardly needs comment, but in the toxic afterglow of the Reagan eulogies one might point out just how many hundreds of thousands died in central America at the hands of US trained death squads while Negroponte was "our" man in the region. Kerry also praised Ronald Reagan (speaking of Central America and massacres), issuing an obit so nauseating in its obsequiousness that one shouldn't read it on an empty stomach.
So if voting makes one feel better, and if one thinks the neo-cons are out to start a nuclear war, with, I don't know, Iran, then sure, vote for Kerry. As I say, I sympathize and my refusal to vote for this toadying and servile front man for big business and the merchants of death may well come back to haunt me. I doubt, however, that it will, if only because the neo-con fanatics and Christian right are bad for business. And business, even the business of death, matters a lot more than Karl Rove's election strategies, and his currying of favor with the Christian fundamentalists (and let's not forget that the Pope is every bit as fucking nuts as Jerry Falwell). The selling of war and of patriotism has been going on for a quite a while, and from Woodrow Wilson to John Kennedy and Dick Nixon, the empire has continued to make the world a better place for profits. The poor and those without visibility continue to die; small dirt-floored structures continue to get bombed, and children are incinerated or blinded. Communities are poisoned by depleted uranium (check the carcinoma clusters appearing in the former Yugoslavia.... left behind by that "humanitarian" mission of NATO and the U.S. under democrat Bill Clinton) and families displaced and starved. Such collateral damage is just a by-product, and an acceptable one, given the spreadsheet reasoning of folks like Bush and Kerry, for the business of business.
The truth is that I might vote for Kerry if he showed just ONE small moment of honesty or took a position of integrity on just a single issue...but he doesn't and hasn't. Is he better than Bush? I increasingly feel the question meaningless. Electoral politics is suffocating beneath a corrupt top-heavy bureaucracy designed to work in the interests of those with great wealth; and when both parties are bought by the same transnational corporations, then it seems silly to argue over small distinctions. Some will say the differences are not small, and that this is the only choice we have, so better to vote for someone who will destroy things at a slower pace and with less arrogance. If that is indeed the choice, then I am going to be too busy fighting off my own psychic meltdown to go to the polls. The reality though, again, is that it doesn't really matter.
The US Empire lurches forward blindly and with ever less coherence, and Kerry may want to implement a few token reforms, but token is all they will be. The cosmetic quality of American political life has reached a cartoon-like character, an infantility of discourse that is equally evident in popular culture as a whole. The ruling class defines the parameters of discourse and helps with the degrading of language and the pollution of image. The values, as Marx pointed out, of a given society are the values of those at the top. The "lesser of two evils" mindset seems a symptom of a greater psychological unease; and that is a forgetting of compassion and a forgetting of humility. Such interior aspects of consciousness are not good for a consumer society, and not good for a system that needs to keep the populace brainwashed. The assumptions behind politicians like Kerry are really no different from those behind George Bush, Teddy Roosevelt, or even Lord Kitchner, and that is that we are special and our ability to make money (or create surplus value at any rate) is an indicator of our specialness. This has come to be called, in these days of the US Empire, American Exceptionalism, and it's really the same engine that drove European colonialism for a couple hundred years. Kerry's plan for Iraq is just the 21st Century version of the white man's burden, and in this role Kerry emerges as a nicer plantation owner than Bush -- but a plantation owner all the same. The other pole of the lesser of two evils argument leads to the sanctioning of these assumptions. A friend asked me if I thought Gore (and by extension Kerry) would have led us into Iraq. I said probably not, but he no doubt would have dropped those DU tipped bombs somewhere (the economy depends on such things). He then said "but you can't tell me it would have been as bad." I admitted it wouldn't have been as bad...or at least as extreme as Iraq. So I take from this line of reasoning that if Kerry bombs, say, Venezuela or Zimbabwe, for oh, a week tops, the liberals will say, well, see, it certainly isn't as bad as four more years of Bush. This becomes an acceptance, then, of smaller atrocities, of more caring colonialism. The media would no doubt help assuage any residual guilt by trotting out some poor suffering victims of Chávez's "reign of terror," or Mugabe's, and a dozen different NGO's would be videoed for the evening news to help explain how a "humanitarian crisis" had been averted...by killing a few thousand civilians. The tried and true sales pitch for what Ed Herman has labeled the Cruise Missile Left is to show orphaned children or refugees in tents...never mind how they actually got there or why. The goal is to show western superiority and to justify that billion a day defense budget.
Gandhi was once asked by a reporter why, when he traveled by train across India, he traveled third class. Gandhi replied, because there is no fourth class. Bush and Kerry don't travel third class. They've never even been in third class. Our culture needs to examine how it is that the menu has shrunk so far that our choices can be reduced to a visibly cretinous and, probably, neurologically damaged son of a political and banking dynasty, and an only marginally more intelligent corporate errand boy who had the stunted wisdom to marry well. The real sacrifice of men like Mandela or Martin Luther King are only materials for marketing, and Kerry might well not get my vote just for his use of a Langston Hughes poem in his promotional ad copy. Kerry and Bush and all the rest of the insiders who cash those big checks (CEOs now make around 475 times what the average worker in their company makes) have no clue what it's like to get up early and take the bus to work after not sleeping because of worry about how to pay for your child's medicine, or what it's like to be so desperate to pay the rent that one starts to consider some dire choices, including suicide, to stop the anguish. They have little grasp of the humiliation one feels when having to accept charity or the pain of watching a brother or sister go off to prison because they halted their own suffering through illegal self-medication. A vote for Kerry means another vote for tolerating this diseased and draconian system of inequality and abuse. The symbolism of the all-powerful father, the President, is just that -- symbolism. Such political theatre only obscures more important and more complex issues. A discussion of those is probably long overdue, but American liberals and progressives seem addicted to this particular spectacle -- for reasons I don't completely understand -- but if we accept a man like Kerry and expect real change, then we have already lost.
John Steppling is an LA playwright (Rockefeller fellow, NEA recipient, and PEN-West winner) and screenwriter (most recent was Animal Factory directed by Steve Buscemi). He is currently living in Poland where he teaches at the National Film School in Lodz.
--------
Cheney May Be a Mixed Blessing for Bush Team
He Rallies Base but Can Alienate Others
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28013-2004Jul4?language=printer
ALTOONA, Pa., July 4 -- Rumbling across the Rust Belt in a red, white and blue luxury bus, Vice President Cheney began his remarks at a series of Fourth of July rallies with a recitation of President Bush's record, then turned to bashing Sen. John F. Kerry as a slippery liberal.
"This is the good part of the speech," Cheney told a sweltering, blue-collar crowd Saturday in Parma, Ohio. At two stops in a row, Cheney accused Kerry of "amnesia" about his own record and described him as being "on the left, out of the mainstream, and out of touch with the conservative values of the heartland."
Cheney's relish for the attack makes him an effective tool for the campaign, allowing Bush's team to level tough charges that will get wide attention, while allowing the president to keep his distance. But Cheney is a blunt instrument in an age when politics is delicately choreographed. His willingness to speak his mind has continued to provoke controversies, strategists on both sides said.
At a time when Republicans are unified on nearly every other question, a number of well-known party members continue to talk privately about the possibility that Cheney will be replaced before the party's convention at the end of August. White House officials said there was no possibility that would occur. But one GOP official, exasperated with Cheney's continued talk about Iraq's supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, compared him to the Japanese guerrillas who filtered out of the jungle in the 1950s, not realizing World War II was over.
The three-state bus trip, Cheney's first major swing of this campaign, was a crucial chance for him to prove to Republicans that he is still an asset to the ticket, as he was in 2000 by lending experience and gravitas when Bush was a rookie on the national stage, and not the liability that Democrats and some pollsters say he has become because of diminished appeal and credibility.
White House officials said the trip was a signal that the question has been settled: Cheney is staying, and will be deployed not just to conservative strongholds, but to swing states as well -- to do what he does best, which is attack the opposition and talk tough about protecting the United States.
In the calculations that go with a presidential campaign, Bush's advisers have concluded that although Cheney's most important contribution is revving up conservative voters, he will not hurt Bush's effort to appeal to independents and could even help in reaching out to swing voters .
"Dick Cheney was made for this campaign," Bush-Cheney campaign manager Ken Mehlman said, saying the vice president has longtime credibility on the central issues of national security and the economy.
A White House aide said that independent voters in places such as Pennsylvania want "strong, serious, experienced people defending them from terrorist attacks around the world, and they know he is that."
"Suburban moms like that strong tough guy protecting their kids," the aide said. "The blue-collar worker who hears Dick Cheney give a straightforward, between-the-eyes answer says, 'Damn right,' whether it's [Cheney] sticking it to the enemy or it's him being honest about some foreign leaders and some international institutions not doing as much as they could."
A Cheney adviser who insisted on anonymity said the vice president's appeal to conservatives, along with the fact he has no intention of seeking the presidency in four years, has given him permanent job security with Bush.
"He is extraordinarily important to the base, and the base is extraordinarily important in this election," the adviser said. A White House official said Bush's aides are always worried about the right wing because of President George H.W. Bush's experience, and that with conservatives, replacing Cheney would be "worse than raising taxes" -- the mistake made by the elder Bush.
Republican frustration with Cheney increased recently when a White House effort to raise his profile, after years of near-invisibility, produced mixed results. Most notably, he used a four-letter word to insult Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) on the Senate floor on June 22. Cheney felt the senator had attacked his integrity. The vice president later expressed no regret, and told an interviewer that he "felt better afterwards."
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a conservative group that is a crucial White House ally, said in a telephone interview that Cheney's outburst contributed to the coarsening of politics. Perkins said that the decision not to apologize is "telling of who he is as an individual -- if he's fine with it, that's who he is."
About the same time, Cheney drew the president back into broad claims about links between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, the day before the Sept. 11 commission announced its conclusion that there was no "collaborative relationship" between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
Some Republican officials also said they are concerned about the renewed scrutiny Cheney will receive when Kerry names his running mate. Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, said the risk of Cheney's campaign appearances in swing states is that he "will raise the profile of the things that people don't like about Bush," including secrecy and the administration's case for invading Iraq.
A CBS News/New York Times poll last month put Cheney's favorable rating at 22 percent, compared with 39 percent for Bush. Cheney's unfavorable rating was 31 percent -- nearly tripled from 11 percent early in 2002. Bush had a 79 percent approval rating among Republicans; Cheney's was 48 percent.
Democrats contend that Cheney helps do their work for them, by symbolizing their charges that the White House is too secretive and more concerned about energy companies than average workers.
Cheney's defense of his ties to Halliburton Co., the Texas-based energy firm that he headed and that is the biggest beneficiary of U.S.-funded contracts in Iraq, gets a close-up in Michael Moore's film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Comedian Jon Stewart has made repeated use of a clip of Cheney denying to an interviewer last month that he had made a statement connecting Iraq to the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, followed by a clip of Cheney making the statement on NBC's "Meet the Press" two months after the attacks.
Kerry pollster Mark Mellman called Cheney "a ball and chain that Bush is carrying around." Tad Devine, a Kerry strategist, said Cheney "embodies a lot of the negative traits" about Bush, including that he is "stubborn and ideological."
Cheney's main political function has been as minister to the right wing, but the trip aboard the campaign's armored "Yes, America Can'' bus took him to Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania -- all toss-up states. Suburban voters are critical in Pennsylvania, which some Bush aides say is the big state they have the best chance of adding this time to their tally from 2000. Bush on Friday will make his 30th visit to Pennsylvania, his fourth most-visited state after Texas, Maryland and Virginia.
Cheney, over shouts of "U.S.A.!" and "Four more years," told an indoor Independence Day rally in Pittsburgh, at the Soldiers and Sailors National Military Museum and Memorial: "We'll see you again many times in this campaign."
Cheney -- who appeared at every stop with his wife, Lynne, and their 10-year-old granddaughter, Kate -- also made remarks from the back of a classic convertible in Lisbon, Ohio; toured the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio; and threw out the first pitch for the minor-league Altoona Curve team.
Under a gazebo in the town square of Ligonier, Pa., Cheney joked, "We do have an opponent out there." Stroking the back of his head, he said, "I'm trying to remember now," until the crowd shouted Kerry's name.
Mary Matalin, who is Cheney's former counselor and plans to travel with him on some key campaign trips, vowed that he will become "the king of swing," referring to plans for Cheney to campaign in battleground states.
"Talking about image makeovers misunderstands this campaign," Matalin said. "This campaign is about substance, and that's what he does best."
Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, said the use of the obscenity may have hurt Cheney with the white Protestant voters that Bush's aides consider their most crucial voting bloc. But a Cheney aide said the rebuke was the most popular statement the vice president had made in months, aside from his eulogy of former president Ronald Reagan at the Capitol. The aide said Cheney has received hundreds of e-mails and calls complimenting him.
"It was a give-'em-hell-Harry moment," the aide said. "It's been huge."
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
New stock fund to eye alternative energy sources
REUTERS USA:
July 5, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25852/newsDate/5-Jul-2004/story.htm
NEW YORK - Guinness Atkinson Asset Management LLC said it has started a Global Energy Fund which will invest in traditional fossil fuel companies and also look for investments in alternative energy sources.
"In the early days virtually all of it is going to be in the traditional fossil fuels," Jim Atkinson, chief executive of Woodland Hills, California-based Guinness Atkinson, said in a telephone interview. "Over time it is going to move into alternative energy."
Guinness Atkinson said in a research report that it expects the price of oil to top $100 per barrel at some point in the next 15 years.
Atkinson said alternative energy sources are currently prohibitively expensive.
The report said that alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass now account for less than 1 percent of world energy consumption, but over the next 10 years some alternative forms will become economically viable and offer investment opportunities.
The Global Energy Fund will be a concentrated portfolio of 20 to 35 stocks. It will be managed by Tim Guinness, the London-based chairman and chief investment officer of Guinness Atkinson, and by Edmund Harriss.
The fund will have the symbol GAGEX.
-------- OTHER
-------- poverty
Bank of Israel calls for defense budget cut to fight poverty
Haaretz
By Moti Bassok
July 05, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/447238.html
A new NIS 1.1 billion a year Bank of Israel plan for fighting poverty in Israel calls for cutting the defense budget, channeling funds to social needs, expanding the job base and implementing changes in the welfare system.
The first such social plan ever presented by a Bank of Israel governor was announced yesterday by Governor David Klein at a special news conference in Jerusalem. The plan will be presented to the government in advance of discussions of the 2005 budget.
The Bank of Israel plan is in opposition to Finance Ministry policy in recent years. In the past, the governor and the bank had almost wholeheartedly supported the Treasury's policies, which included drastic cuts in National Security payments and budgets to all the social ministries. Klein said yesterday that the cabinet should conduct a discussion of social issues once a year, just as it conducts a yearly discussion of the budget, and that this discussion should result in a setting of new priorities, including methods for following up on the implementation of government decisions.
Klein said that it would be possible to cut the defense budget because geopolitical changes in the region had reduced threats against Israel. He noted that poverty had deepened in Israel in recent years, and that it was the task of the government to do all it could to reduce poverty, which should be done by reprioritizing social issues.
Among the measures he recommended was to do away with automatic linkages among various elements in the budget, for example National Insurance payments and public sector wages, which result in large unnecessary budgetary outlays each year.
Dr. Karnit Flug, director of the Bank of Israel research department, who also took part in the news conference along with Dr. Danny Gottleib, said that in 2002, 18.1 percent of Israeli families were poor, or approximately 339,000 families, as opposed to 17.7 percent in 1997.
Some 29.6 percent of all the children in Israel, approximately 618,000, were living below the poverty line, and the average income of a poor family in 2002 was 30 percent below the poverty line.
The plan recommends closing the income gap by 4 percentage points over the next 10 years, with particular emphasis on bringing up the income of the poorest in the population. One specific goal should be to increase by 10 percent the number of employed persons between the ages of 15 and 64, to a level similar to other developed nations. That would mean adding some 90,000 people to the work force every year for the next 10 years, a step that entails drastically reducing in three years the number of foreign workers in the country to a number not to exceed 4 percent of the work force.
The bank also recommended instituting a "negative income tax" for the lowest wage earners, according to family size and the number of breadwinners among other factors. In families where the breadwinner is of working age and able to work, the bank recommends tax breaks that will increase the more the breadwinner works, and the larger the family. The plan also recommends that subsidies be awarded to businesses that increase the number of people on their work force.
The Bank of Israel plan also envisions changes in National Security benefits, which would take into consideration the recipient's other sources of income. This would mean improving information systems of the National Insurance Institute.
Families whose breadwinner is of an age to work but unable to earn a living wage should receive welfare, but welfare payments should be increased only in particularly large families. However payments for each additional child should be gradually lowered.
Income supplements should be given to the elderly poor, so that their total income will answer minimal needs.
The Bank of Israel sent its recommendations to President Moshe Katzav, who welcomed the report. "A condition for economic recovery is to take the poorest sectors into consideration," Katzav said.
A copy of the report was also sent to Trade and Industry Minister Ehud Olmert, Labor and Social Affairs Minister Zevulun Orlev, and to Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"There is in fact nothing new in the report issued by the Bank of Israel governor," the treasury said in a statement. "A large number of the steps recommended are already being implemented by the government, for example, limiting the numbers of foreign workers. Only recently a joint Finance Ministry-Bank of Israel team completed a report and recommendations to deal with poverty, large parts of which will be applied in the budget of 2005."
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