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NUCLEAR
UK may need new nuke power plants
Spanish FM warns Britain over nuclear submarine visit to Gibraltar
Spain not planning action against British nuclear submarine in Gibraltar
ElBaradei: Pakistan gave nuclear know-how to at least 20 countries
U.S. Faulted for Leaving Tons of Uranium in Iraq
U.N. Didn't OK Uranium Transfer to U.S.
UK inquiry set to back claim Saddam tried to buy uranium
U.S. Secretly Removed Iraqi Nuclear Material
Iraq Confirms U.S. Has Removed Nuclear Material
IAEA declines Vanunu meeting
ElBaradei says he understands Israel's security concerns
UN nuclear chief fails to swing Israel round to atomic openness
IAEA chief hails Sharon commitment to future nuclear talks
Israel: No nuclear talks now
Israel Links Nuclear-Free Zone to Peace Talks
Israel Links a Nuclear-Free Zone to Regional Peace
In Talks, U.N. Nuclear Chief Says, Israel Turns Focus on Iran
U.S. gets missile-defense partner
New Jersey Residents Meet on Nuclear Emergency Response Plan
NRC to meet on NY Indian Pt nuke fuel storage
S.C. plutonium disposal assailed
Two states to sue for U.S. review of Hanford
Waste being retrieved from third tank
MILITARY
Afghans Seize 4 Men Claiming to Be With U.S. Special Forces
Prisoners hung by feet in private jail, Afghans say
Nigeria seen on brink of violent implosion
China Presses U.S. Security Adviser
Marine move from Okinawa to Japan mainland discussed: general
Kosovo Parliament Challenges U.N. Authority
10 Held Under Antiterror Law Ask British Court to Free Them
Government Clears CACI for Contracts
Intelligence Work Comes to CACI Via Acquisitions
Northrop Grumman Gets $175 Million
Warsaw wants price cut in US warplane deal
Israel's Chemical Weapons
China Presses U.S. Security Adviser
Iraqi Leader Makes Security His Theme
For Iraqis, Patrol Turns Into Combat
5 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq Gunfire
Falluja Pullout Left Haven of Insurgents, Officials Say
Iraqis Defend Power to Declare Martial Law
Israel snubs European mediators
Militants Make Unprecedented Push
7 Palestinians Killed During Gaza Clash With Israeli Troops
World Court to Rule on Legality of Israel Barrier
Next NATO ministers' meeting to take place in Nice: France
Washington wants early NATO decision on Iraq training
Southern Osetia: Start of a War?
Russia silences Free Speech
C.I.A. Chief Bids Colleagues Farewell
Troops in Iraq suffer huge risk of injury
Lawmakers: Troop call-ups pose 'alarm'
No Plans for Military Draft, Official Says
Hostile Mission for Recruiters
State Dept. Announces Missing Marine Is at Embassy in Lebanon
U.S. Starts Drawing Plans to Cut Its Troops in Iraq
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Ridge Says Terror Threat Is Increasing but No Details Yet
Plane That Caused Capitol Evacuation Nearly Shot Down
U.S. to Testify on Air Defense Woes
Officials: Bin Laden guiding plots against U.S.
Election Officials Consider Security Options at Polls
Airport Shop Workers Must Pass Checkpoints
Pentagon Sets Hearings for 595 Detainees
Pentagon Will Permit Captives at Cuba Base to Appeal Status
GTMO prisoners to be told of U.S. rights
Nine more Gitmo inmates picked for military tribunal
Many Youths Reported Held Awaiting Mental Help
US torture on UK territory claim
Pentagon probed on torture memo secrets
POLITICS
Data Nightmare at Pentagon
Senate Iraq Report Said to Skirt White House Use of Intelligence
Pentagon classifying 'impulse' criticized
Russia silences Free Speech
Russian Talk Show Faces Shutdown
Fired FBI Translator's Charges Classified
ENERGY
Wind farm blows new life into Spanish village
Soybean farmers hope to pump up interest in biodiesel
ACTIVISTS
Antiwar protest planned at rotary
Colombia Amendment Tomorrow (July 9th)
Student Protesters Held in Iran
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- britain
UK may need new nuke power plants
REUTERS UK:
July 8, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25914/story.htm
MANCHESTER - Britain may need to build new nuclear power stations if it is to meet its targets on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, although the plants are not currently economic, Energy Minister Stephen Timms has said.
"We may well need new nuclear power stations in the UK," Timms told a wind energy conference yesterday. "(But) I haven't met anyone who wants to invest in nuclear power in the UK," he said.
Poor economics and problems dealing with nuclear waste made the sector unattractive, he said.
Timms' comments came after Prime Minister Tony Blair on Tuesday said he would not close the door to another generation of nuclear power stations in the UK.
"It's not sensible for us to say...we are just shutting the door," Blair said. "You can't remove it from the agenda if you are serious about climate change."
Nuclear power plants do not produce carbon dioxide emissions unlike coal and gas-fired stations. Most of Britain's ageing nuclear power stations are due to close over the next 20 years.
The government, which wants to cut CO2 emissions by 60 percent by 2050, left the option of building new nuclear power stations open in an energy white paper last year.
The problems the nuclear industry faces were highlighted two years ago when British Energy, the country's largest nuclear generator, teetered on the edge of insolvency after a slump in wholesale power prices and had to be rescued in a government bail-out.
Environmentalists argue Britain should invest more in renewable energy to cut its carbon emissions but expansion of the green power sector has been slow and costly.
The UK has a target of providing 10 percent of its power from green sources by 2010, of which between seven and eight percent will come from wind power.
-------- europe
Spanish FM warns Britain over nuclear submarine visit to Gibraltar
Thursday July 8, 2004
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/040707/1/3lk2k.html
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos warned Britain that a planned visit to Gibraltar by a nuclear submarine would have repercussions on relations between the two countries.
Spain has twice summoned the British ambassador to Madrid to lodge a protest against the visit of HMS Tireless, which spent almost a year in dock in Gibraltar in 2000-2001 while the cooling system of its nuclear reactor was repaired.
Moratinos said that in spite of assurances from the British government that "all safety guarantees" would be observed "politically the British admiralty is going ahead with its repeated provocations and we take note of them."
The status of Gibraltar, a British colony occupying a rocky outcrop attached to the tip of southern Spain, has been a subject of contention between the two countries for decades.
The Tireless is due to stop at the Rock on Friday. London turned down appeals from the Spanish government to call off the visit.
A statement from the Spanish foreign ministry said that Stephen Wright, the British ambassador, had been told of the Spanish government's "deep discontent and annoyance in the face of the British government's insensitivity to Spanish public opinion."
Spain had called for the visit to be as short as possible and to be accompanied by "all technical security guarantees."
The statement said that the Madrid government "wants to maintain the best of relations of cooperation with the British government in all fields, but this stopover represents a black mark in these good relations."
The British embassy confirmed the arrival of the Tireless saying it was making a short routine visit and insisting that the boat met all required safety standards.
When the Tireless was in Gibraltar from May 2000 to May 2001 there were fears among local people on the Spanish side of the border that there might be radioactive leaks.
Wright was summoned to the foreign ministry last month to hear a protest against the visit of Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, to Gibraltar to mark the 300th anniversary of British sovereignty over the Rock.
It was ceded by Spain under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht but Spain has long demanded it be returned.
----
Spain not planning action against British nuclear submarine in Gibraltar
MADRID (AFP)
Jul 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040708161652.4zvky5pa.html
Spain said on Thursday it would not take any immediate measures against Britain over a controversial visit to Gibraltar by a British nuclear submarine.
The government "will evaluate the situation but does not envisage for the moment any concrete measures against Gibraltar," Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told a news conference.
Moratinos said London had given assurances that the visit by the HMS Tireless, which is due to arrive on Friday, would be "short and surrounded by the strictest safety measures" and said he hoped it would spend less than a week at the Gibraltar naval base.
But he warned: "We will assess what the impact (of the visit) on our relations with Great Britain will be if the United Kingdom continues not to take into account the requests of a friendly country."
Gibraltar, a British colony on a spit of land attached to southern Spain, has been an issue of contention between Britain and Spain for decades.
The visit by the Tireless to "the Rock" is all the more sensitive in that the vessel spent almost a year moored in Gibraltar in 2000-01 while a fault in the cooling system of its nuclear reactor was repaired. Local Spaniards protested fiercely, fearing there might be leaks of radioactive substances.
Madrid had tried unsuccessfully to get London to scrap this new visit by the nuclear submarine and earlier in the week Moratinos had warned Britain the event would have repercussions on relations between the two countries.
Moratinos said sending the Tireless was an unfriendly" move which displayed "a lack of sensitivity" towards the Spanish people.
The Rock was ceded to Britain by Spain under the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht but Madrid has long demanded it be returned.
-------- india / pakistan
ElBaradei: Pakistan gave nuclear know-how to at least 20 countries
By Ze'ev Schiff
Thu., July 08, 2004
Haaretz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/448752.html
Israel must take the spread of nuclear technology into account and remember that terror is getting more sophisticated: Other countries could get nuclear weapons, and the ordinary deterrence that worked in the past may not be effective any more. Israel must therefore think about a different regional security concept and lend a hand to it. The above was the key message in an interview granted to Haaretz by Mohammed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, during his brief visit to Israel.
He is a practiced diplomat and a top-flight professional, but he does not always get what he wants as the IAEA's top executive - as has been evident in Iran and North Korea. Nevertheless, ElBaradei is very attentive to what is happening.
Summarizing what he no doubt heard in his closed meetings in Israel, he said that there is a very strong sense of existential threat in Israel. ElBaradei, who visited Israel several times in the context of previous positions he held at the IAEA, noted that this strong sense of insecurity has remained unchanged in recent years.
ElBaradei said there are worrying signs that the nonproliferation regime is coming undone, in the Middle East and elsewhere. Israel has to take into account that other countries or, heaven forbid, terrorist organizations could get nuclear weapons, he said. Under those circumstances, nuclear accidents could happen, or wrong assessments could be made in this sphere.
As an example of the spread of nuclear know-how, he used Pakistan. He said that Abdul Kadr Khan, considered the father of the Pakistani bomb, had commercial contacts with at least 20 different countries and large companies. The IAEA only learned about some of it 18 months ago, when Khan's contacts with Libya came to light, but the Americans and others had been tracking the Pakistani's contacts for some time before that. Clearly, this was not the work of Abdul Kadr Khan on his own.
The IAEA's inspection work in Libya is still not over, said ElBaradei. In September, Libya is due to hand over more documentation to IAEA inspectors and to respond to questions and provide various clarifications.
Asked if Muammar Gadhafi's decision to change his policies was the result of the war in Iraq, ElBaradei said that the negotiations with Libya began before the Iraq war and that apparently, it was the economic situation in Iraq caused by sanctions that was most influential.
As for why Egypt, Libya's next-door neighbor, knew nothing of the impending change in Libyan policy, ElBaradei did not hesitate to say that this was apparently an Egyptian intelligence failure.
ElBaradei said that he does not know of any country beside Iran and Libya - such as Syria - with whom the Pakistani nuclear scientist had commercial contacts.
ElBaradei refused to accept the analysis that Iran is inevitably going to get the bomb, so efforts to prevent it are a lost cause. It is true, he said, that Iran is making an effort to acquire nuclear know-how, including the full cycle of nuclear fuel production, but he does not know what Iran's intentions concerning nuclear weapons are.
He did confirm that signs were discovered in Iran of uranium that was 54 percent enriched (the manufacture of uranium-based nuclear weapons requires 90 percent enrichment). But he also said that the Iranians have frozen their uranium enrichment program. He said there is a very complex situation in Iran: It is in dialogue with European countries, but other country also need to join. This month there will be another meeting between the Iranians and Europeans, he said, and ways have to be found to create a package deal with Iran that would grant it various guarantees, and thus persuade it.
Asked why he does not take the Iran issue to the UN Security Council, he said that no smoking gun has been found - and anyway, what could the security council do? Everyone remembers the case of North Korea and its nuclear problems at the Security Council. Moreover, he said, the world should take care not to reach a situation in which extremists in Iran call for the country to abandon the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.
Asked why the IAEA does not reveal the names of those countries that helped Iran in their nuclear acquisition efforts, such as China or Pakistan, ElBaradei said simply that the IAEA will need those countries' cooperation in the future.
As for his hosts, ElBaradei said that it is clear to him that a new dialogue must begin in the Middle East, and he is ready to help. He said he feels that people are listening. A different regional security concept must be developed that would prevent a nuclear arms race, he said. He hoped that a small step has been taken in this direction, and that maybe in the future, a light will appear at the end of this difficult tunnel.
Yossi Melman adds:
Despite government efforts to keep the ElBaradei visit low-key and out of the press, the visitor has held three impromptu press conferences - one at his hotel, one after his Jerusalem meeting with Health Minister Danny Naveh and one after his Ramat Aviv meeting with Gideon Frank, head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission.
Today he is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and to deliver a speech at Hebrew University before leaving the country. He is also slated to meet with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom at the airport, as Shalom returns from the United States and ElBaradei leaves for Vienna, the IAEA headquarters.
-------- iraq
U.S. Faulted for Leaving Tons of Uranium in Iraq
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35404-2004Jul7?language=printer
Nuclear experts yesterday questioned a decision by the Energy Department to leave in Iraq nearly 400 tons of natural uranium that could be enriched for a nuclear weapon or used to build a radioactive "dirty bomb."
On Tuesday, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced that about two tons of low-enriched uranium and about 1,000 radioactive sources had recently been removed from an old Iraqi nuclear facility and brought to the United States for safety reasons.
Although low-enriched uranium can be made usable for a bomb much faster, the "natural uranium is still dangerous and could be used in a nuclear weapons program or sold to somebody that would misuse it," said David Albright, a nuclear analyst and former weapons inspector in Iraq.
Bryan Wilkes, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said yesterday that the natural uranium is not considered an immediate proliferation concern and is being stored under the authority of the interim Iraqi government in a protected location.
The decision to remove the more dangerous materials was made by the National Security Council nearly one year after the invasion. The operation was completed on June 23, several days before the United States transferred political authority to the Iraqis.
"They lost a real opportunity to move the natural uranium, and that's disappointing since they had well over a year to do it when the country was exclusively under American control," Albright said. "We have no idea what Iraq will look like in a year."
The International Atomic Energy Agency kept Iraq's uranium under seal in storage facilities for more than a decade before the U.S. invasion in March 2003, but the storerooms were looted when Baghdad fell several weeks later.
The IAEA was allowed back into Iraq to help clean up the facility, and it urged U.S. officials to protect Iraq's former weapons sites from further looting.
But in recent months, radioactive equipment and Iraqi weapons components have been showing up in scrap yards and ports in Europe and the Middle East.
Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the IAEA, has unsuccessfully lobbied the White House to let international inspectors return to Iraq. He is now discussing the matter with Iraqi authorities. Before the war, ElBaradei reported that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program, despite assertions to the contrary by the Bush administration, which went to war to remove weapons of mass destruction. Such weapons have not been found.
In a letter to the U.N. Security Council yesterday, ElBaradei said the IAEA had been told about the operation to remove the low-grade uranium and radiological sources, but he made it clear that the international nuclear agency -- which has a mandate to oversee Iraq's nuclear materials -- was not consulted or asked to participate.
----
U.N. Didn't OK Uranium Transfer to U.S.
Thursday July 8, 2004
By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press Writer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4287607,00.html
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The United States didn't have authorization from the U.N. nuclear watchdog when it secretly shipped from Iraq uranium and highly radioactive material that could be used in so-called ``dirty bombs,'' U.N. officials said Wednesday.
The nearly 2 tons of low-enriched uranium and approximately 1,000 highly radioactive items transferred from Iraq to the United States last month had been placed under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the sprawling Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 12 miles south of Baghdad, the officials said.
``The American authorities just informed us of their intention to remove the materials, but they never sought authorization from us,'' said Gustavo Zlauvinen, head of the IAEA's New York office.
However, U.S. nuclear authorities said late Wednesday they had Iraqi approval and didn't need U.N. authorization to move the material.
``We are in custody of the material only, and we have the permission of the Iraqi government to take this out of the country,'' said Paul Longsworth, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation in the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham disclosed the secret airlift from Iraq on Tuesday as ``a major achievement'' in an attempt to ``keep potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists.'' The material was taken to an undisclosed U.S. Energy Department laboratory for further analysis.
The airlift ended on June 23, five days before the United States transferred sovereignty to Iraq's new interim government.
IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in a letter to the Security Council circulated Wednesday that Washington informed the agency on June 19, 2003, that ``due to security concerns'' it intended to transfer some nuclear material stored at Tuwaitha to the United States.
At the time, the agency took note of the U.S. intention to remove the nuclear material ``from agency verification ... and only expressed a view on the agency's verification requirements,'' he said.
Longsworth said the U.S. authorities had ``exceptionally good'' relations with the IAEA and ElBaradei didn't raise any objections.
According to the letter, the United States informed the IAEA on June 30 that approximately 1.8 tons of uranium, enriched to a level of 2.6 percent, another 6.6 pounds of low-enriched uranium, and approximately 1,000 highly radioactive sources had been transferred on June 23.
A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was some concern about the legality of the U.S. transfer because the nuclear material belonged to Iraq and was under the control and supervision of the IAEA.
The U.S. Energy Department statement said ``the U.S., consistent with its authorities and relevant United Nations resolutions, took possession of and removed the materials to ensure the safety and security of the Iraqi people.''
Longsworth said the material was now at a facility where it can be examined by the IAEA.
In 1992, after the first Gulf War, all highly enriched uranium - which could be used to make nuclear weapons - was shipped from Iraq to Russia, the IAEA's Zlauvinen said.
After 1992, roughly 2 tons of natural uranium, or yellow cake, some low enriched uranium and some depleted uranium was left at Tuwaitha under IAEA seal and control, he said.
So were radioactive items used for medical, agricultural and industrial purposes, which Iraq was allowed to keep under a 1991 U.N. Security Council resolution, Zlauvinen said.
IAEA inspectors left Iraq just before last year's U.S.-led war. After it ended, Washington barred U.N. weapons inspectors from returning, deploying U.S. teams instead in a so far unsuccessful search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
An exception was made in June 2003 when Washington allowed an IAEA team to go to Tuwaitha to secure uranium after reports of widespread looting when the fighting ended.
The IAEA recovered most missing material and Zlauvinen said the uranium was put in sealed containers and left for the Americans to guard.
But because U.S. authorities restricted inspections of Tuwaitha, the IAEA team was unable to determine whether hundreds of radioactive items used in research and medicine across the country were secure.
ElBaradei's letter said that an unspecified amount of nuclear material still at Tuwaitha consists mainly of natural uranium, some depleted uranium and some low enriched uranium waste, which is subject to IAEA monitoring.
Some radioisotopes are also still in the country and come under the agency's responsibilities, he said.
Tuwaitha is now under the control of Iraq's Ministry of Science and Technology.
(UPDATES with quotes from U.S. nuclear official; corrects in graf 8 that the IAEA was initially advised on June 19, 2003, not 2004; EDITS)
----
UK inquiry set to back claim Saddam tried to buy uranium
By Mark Huband in London
July 8 2004
Financial Times
http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373572105
A UK government inquiry into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq is expected to conclude that Britain's spies were correct to say that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium from Niger.
The inquiry by Lord Butler, which was delivered to the printers yesterday and is expected to be released on July 14, has examined the intelligence that underpinned UK government claims about the threat from Iraq.
The report will say the claim that Mr Hussein could deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes, seized on by UK prime minister Tony Blair to bolster the case for war with Iraq, was inadequately supported by the available intelligence, people familiar with its contents say .
But among Lord Butler's other areas of investigation was the issue of whether Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. People with knowledge of the report said Lord Butler had concluded that this claim was reasonable and consistent with the intelligence.
President George W. Bush referred to the Niger claim in his state of the union address last year. But officials were forced into a climbdown when it was revealed that the only primary material the US possessed was documents later shown to be forgeries.
The Bush administration has since distanced itself from all suggestions that Iraq sought to buy uranium. The UK government has remained adamant that negotiations over sales did take place and that the fake documents were not part of the material it had gathered to underpin its claim.
The Financial Times revealed last week that a key part of the UK's intelligence on the uranium came from a European intelligence service that undertook a three-year surveillance of an alleged clandestine uranium-smuggling operation of which Iraq was a part.
Intelligence officials have now confirmed that the results of this operation formed an important part of the conclusions of British intelligence.
The same information was passed to the US but US officials did not incorporate it in their assessment.
The 45-minute claim appeared four times in a government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) issued in September 2002, including in the foreword by Mr Blair.
Mr Blair admitted to parliamentarians on Tuesday that WMD might never be found in Iraq.
----
U.S. Secretly Removed Iraqi Nuclear Material
July 8, 2004
WASHINGTON, DC, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-08-09.asp#anchor2
The United States has removed 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and some 1,000 highly radioactive sources from Iraq, U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said on Tuesday.
The removal was completed in secret last month.
"This operation was a major achievement for the Bush administration's goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists," Abraham said. "It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons."
The materials could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program.
Twenty experts from the Energy Department's national laboratory complex packaged the materials from the former Iraq nuclear research facility.
The U.S. military airlifted the material to the United States on June 23 and provided security, coordination, planning, ground transportation, and funding for the mission.
The Energy Department also repackaged less sensitive materials that will remain in Iraq. Radiological sources that continue to serve useful medical, agricultural or industrial purposes were not removed from Iraq, officials said.
The low enriched uranium will be stored temporarily at a secure Energy Department facility and the radiological sources will initially be brought to a department laboratory for further characterization and disposition. The Energy Department did not say where it will be located.
Officials said the International Atomic Energy Agency was advised in advance of the U.S. intentions to remove the nuclear materials and Iraqi officials were briefed about the removal of the materials and radioactive sources prior to evacuation.
--------
Iraq Confirms U.S. Has Removed Nuclear Material
July 8, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-nuclear.html
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's interim government confirmed Thursday the United States has removed radioactive material from Iraq, saying ousted dictator Saddam Hussein could have used it to develop nuclear weapons.
U.S. and U.N. officials said Wednesday Washington had transported 1.8 tons of enriched uranium out of Iraq for safekeeping more than a year after looters stole it from a U.N.-sealed facility left unguarded by U.S. troops.
Iraq's interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said the uranium and about 1,000 highly radioactive items from the former Iraqi nuclear research facility had been taken to the United States.
``I can now announce that the United States Department of Defense and Department of Energy have completed a joint operation to secure and remove from Iraq radiological and nuclear materials that the ousted regime could have potentially used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program,'' Allawi said in a statement.
``Iraq has no intention and no will to resume these programs in the future. These materials which are potential weapons of mass murder are not welcome in our country and their production is unacceptable,'' Allawi said.
A ``radiological dispersal device,'' or dirty bomb, uses a conventional explosive to disperse radioactive material over a wide area. U.S. officials said lightly enriched uranium, which could be used in such a bomb, was airlifted to an undisclosed U.S. site after its removal from the Tuwaitha nuclear complex south of Baghdad, a one-time center of Iraq's nuclear weapons programs.
U.S. officials said the move would help keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists.
The Tuwaitha nuclear complex was dismantled in the early 1990s after the first Gulf War.
But tons of nuclear materials remained there under the seal of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency, until last year's U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when it was left unguarded and looted by Iraqi civilians.
The IAEA learned a week ago that the transfer had taken place on June 23, the agency said in a letter to the U.N. Security Council made public Wednesday.
-------- israel
IAEA declines Vanunu meeting
July 08, 2004
By Paul Martin
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040708-121758-7853r.htm
JERUSALEM - The International Atomic Energy Agency said yesterday it would not seek a meeting with whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician who a day earlier asked to speak with the visiting delegation.
In his only published remarks to an American newspaper since being released from prison in April, Mr. Vanunu on Tuesday told The Washington Times he would like to meet IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei during the official's 48-hour visit to Israel.
He also urged the IAEA chief to seek access to the Dimona reactor, the top-secret nuclear facility in Israel's Negev desert, where Mr. Vanunu once worked as a technician.
The conversation with The Times took place in apparent defiance of restrictions placed on Mr. Vanunu by Israeli authorities.
Meanwhile, dozens of Israeli jeeps moved into three cities in the northern West Bank early today, surrounding buildings and searching houses, Palestinian security sources told Agence France-Presse.
Fierce clashes erupted in the northern city of Jenin when about 30 Israeli jeeps pushed into the center and surrounded several buildings, the sources said.
Troops also pushed into the northwestern city of Qalqilya, with about 15 jeeps surrounding a house belonging to a member of the radical Hamas movement, they said.
In Nablus, dozens of soldiers surrounded two buildings at the city's northern entrance.
Mr. Vanunu, denounced as a traitor by many of his countrymen, served more than 17 years in prison after revealing details of the country's nuclear program to a British newspaper.
Mr. Vanunu on Tuesday accused Mr. ElBaradei of kowtowing to Israel.
But the IAEA's director of communications, Mark Gwozdesky, said yesterday: "We are here as guests of our Israeli counterparts and have no intention of busting in on Dimona or on people we were not scheduled to see."
He said the IAEA visitors were dealing with sensitive issues such as regional dialogue on nuclear nonproliferation and did not wish to raise the political temperature unnecessarily.
Israel's chief nuclear spokesman, Gidon Shavit, said the hosts had received no request from the IAEA for a meeting with Mr. Vanunu, either before or after publication of the technician's remarks.
Asked whether Israel would accede to any such request, Mr. Shavit said: "As we still have received no request, we have no need to answer a hypothetical question."
Washington Times reporter Rowan Scarborough, in his book "Rumsfeld's War," disclosed what is thought to be the U.S. government's only estimate of Israel's nuclear arsenal.
The book cited a secret Defense Intelligence Agency report that says Israel has 85 deployed nuclear warheads.
----
ElBaradei says he understands Israel's security concerns
Thu., July 08, 2004
By Haaretz Service and Reuters
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/448622.html
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei said Wednesday he understands Israel's concerns regarding external security threats and its defense strategy. Following a meeting with Health Minister Danny Naveh, ElBaradei said his job is to attempt to bridge the various gaps regarding nuclear-related security issues. Israel, pressed to consider a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, stressed its fear that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons and might use them against it, the visiting head of the UN nuclear supervisory agency said Wednesday.
"They [the Israelis] were expressing concern about Iran," ElBaradei told reporters after meeting in Tel Aviv with Gideon Frank, head of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, commission officials and a former head of the Mossad secret service. ElBaradei has said repeatedly that "the jury is still out" on whether Iran is seeking the bomb.
ElBaradei is on a three-day visit to Israel, which refuses to admit or deny having nuclear weapons under a policy of "strategic ambiguity." International experts believe it has 100-200 warheads, based on estimates of the amount of plutonium its reactors have produced.
ElBaradei said his attempts to promote the idea of a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East ran up against Israeli concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions and about the hostility to Israel of some states in the region.
"The majority of the countries in the Middle East feel that there is this security imbalance in the Middle East, this double standard," ElBaradei said of the assumption that Israel has atomic weapons and other Middle East states do not.
"Here the Israelis are saying you cannot even discuss that because we cannot lower our security threshold before we have a comprehensive peace where we are fully accepted as part and parcel of the region," he said.
ElBaradei said he was trying to find a compromise that would enable the Israelis and their Arab and Muslim neighbors to work out a realistic security arrangement that did not include the bomb as part of any peace process.
Iran, which, unlike Israel, has signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), says it wants nuclear technology solely for the peaceful generation of electricity.
But Washington and Israel accuse Tehran of concealing research that could be related to nuclear arms for nearly two decades until last year.
"I would like to see Israel supporting the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty," ElBaradei said on his arrival in Israel Tuesday, adding that he would like to see Israel sign an additional agreement committing it to disclose information on any potential nuclear-related exports.
But the IAEA director said he did not intend to push the Jewish state on the nuclear issue. "It's not a question of pressure. I have no power to pressure," he said.
Israel strongly objects to any international inspections of its nuclear facility in Dimona, although it does allow IAEA inspections at the small research reactor at Nahal Soreq, near Yavneh.
ElBaradei also met with Health Minister Dan Naveh Wednesday evening, and with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday.
"There are no signs of a policy change in Israel," said a diplomat close to the IAEA.
New nuclear medicine program Israel announced a new national program for nuclear medicine Wednesday that will win financial and technical support from the IAEA.
The announcement came during a meeting in Jerusalem this afternoon between Naveh and ElBaradei. The declaration is meant to emphasize the long-standing cooperation between Israel and the IAEA and to dull the tension that exists between the state and the international agency over Israel's policy of nuclear ambiguity.
Also up for discussion are the various international treaties Israel has signed, such as the treaty for the protection of reactors and disaster prevention programs, as well as programs meant to prevent terrorists from acquiring nuclear weapons or material.
On Thursday, ElBaradei is slated to meet with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the prime minister's bureau. He will also see Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom at Ben-Gurion Airport, where Shalom will be returning from overseas as ElBaradei leaves for his Vienna headquarters. Also Thursday, he is slated to deliver a speech at Hebrew University to a select audience of academics, government officials and press on his view on how to reduce the world's supply of nuclear weapons.
During his talks with the Israeli officials, both sides will raise the issue of Iran's nuclear program and IAEA efforts to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Government sources are emphasizing that the visit is "routine" and no change in policy should be expected. Indeed, the government is making efforts to keep the visit very low-profile.
----
UN nuclear chief fails to swing Israel round to atomic openness
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Jul 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040708173554.u42pbt12.html
UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei made little progress in Israel on his hopes for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons, but analysts saw his visit more as a calculated balancing act amid his agency's investigation of the Jewish state's archfoe Iran.
ElBaradei "wanted to show he hadn't forgotten the other issues in the Middle East," while his International Atomic Energy Agency probes US and Israeli charges that Iran is hiding a nuclear weapons program, Avner Cohen, a US-based analyst who is currently in Jerusalem, told AFP.
Jon Wolfsthal of the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace had told AFP as ElBaradei's visit began Tuesday that the IAEA chief has "been talking a lot about Iran and now he has to work the other side."
He described the mission as a "political balancing" act to convince the Arab world that the IAEA is fair.
The Israelis, who refuse to say whether or not they have nuclear weapons, "want to show they have friendly relations with the agency," Cohen said.
The result is that "it was ceremonial" for ElBaradei to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Thursday, Cohen said. "I don't think there was any substance."
Sharon said he is open to discussions on ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons as part of future peace talks, ElBaradei said Thursday.
Israel had previously said it would not discuss security issues, such as a nuclear-weapons-free zone, until there was a comprehensive peace settlement.
It was not clear how much Sharon's statement Thursday represented a change in policy since the premier set no timeframe for Israel to back off on its refusal to discuss security issues while it faces continuing attacks by Palestinian militant groups and hostility from Iran.
The Middle East peace process remains stalled amid persistent violence.
Most foreign experts believe Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, although it has stuck for the past 40 years to a policy of "strategic ambiguity" of neither confirming nor denying its arsenal.
ElBaradei had come to Israel urging the Jewish state to "clarify" whether it has nuclear weapons and to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treatywhich his agency oversees.
But Israel held fast to its refusal to sign up.
Gerald Steinberg, from the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said there was "no foundation for a change" in Israeli nuclear policy.
He told AFP that "the threat to Israel has not diminished much in the past five decades and hatred of Israel in the Arab and Muslim worlds remains intense."
He said Israel was particularly worried about Iran, a subject which officials here brought up repeatedly with ElBaradei.
Steinberg said Israel's giving up its "nuclear insurance policy ... would actually make the region more unstable" and that Israel would not accept a trade-off "linking Iran's illegal nuclear program with pressure on Israel to abandon its deterrent."
He added that a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East "however distant, will become essentially unfeasible if Iran crosses the point of no return in its development of nuclear weapons."
----
IAEA chief hails Sharon commitment to future nuclear talks
JERUSALEM (AFP)
Jul 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040708170533.1xazpcq7.html
International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei Thursday hailed a commitment from Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to consider discussions on ridding the Middle East of nuclear weapons as part of future peace talks.
The UN nuclear chief said Sharon had told him that "Israel's policy continues to be that, in the context of peace in the Middle East, Israel would be looking favorably to the establishment of a nuclear-weapons-free zone.
"This is not a new policy but affirming that policy at the level of the prime minister," ElBaradei told a press conference after the meeting.
"I find that to be a quite welcome development and a positive development."
Israel had previously said it would not discuss security issues, such as a nuclear-weapons-free zone, until there was a comprehensive peace settlement.
It was not clear how much Sharon's statement represented a change in policy since the premier set no timeframe for Israel to back off on its refusal to discuss such security issues while it is still facing attacks from Palestinian militant groups and hostility from Iran.
ElBaradei said "a dialogue on security issues could be envisaged as part of the roadmap" for regional peace that was drafted by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia last year but has failed to make progress amid persistent violence.
ElBaradei said a phase yet to come of the roadmap included "a discussion of arms control issues in an arms control subcommittee."
The IAEA chief's talks with Sharon came on the final day of his first visit to Israel in six years, on a mission which has seen him campaigning to make the Middle East free of nuclear weapons.
Most foreign experts believe Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads, although it has stuck for the past 40 years to a policy of "strategic ambiguity" of neither confirming nor denying its arsenal.
Israel held fast to that policy during ElBaradei's visit, reiterating its refusal to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which is overseen by his agency.
ElBaradei had come to Israel Tuesday urging the Jewish state to clarify whether it had nuclear weapons and join the NPT regime.
But a senior Israeli nuclear official said Thursday there would be no change in the government's longstanding policy of "strategic ambiguity".
"For now, we see no reason, justification or requirement to change it," the official with Israel's Atomic Energy Commission told reporters.
In another key theme, Israeli officials made clear to ElBaradei their fears about Iran's nuclear programme, which has been under investigation by the IAEA since February 2003.
Iran strongly denies accusations by both Israel and the United States that its atomic energy programme is a front for covert weapons development.
"Israel has its own threat perception which it believes is unique," as the country believes "it is the only state (in the region) that faces an existential threat", IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky told reporters Wednesday after ElBaradei met Israel Atomic Energy Commission chief Gideon Franck.
ElBaradei was taken on a flight over Israel by a senior air force official Wednesday, in which he was told the Jewish state was vulnerable as it had "no defensive depth because a plane can fly from one border to the other in three-and-a-half minutes."
During the flight, the IAEA chief saw from afar the Dimona plant, where Israel is believed to make the material for its nuclear warheads, but Israeli officials said he had made no request to visit it.
ElBaradei said that while Israel rejected joining the NPT, officials had told him it was ready to sign an agreement on export controls on nuclear technology sales.
----
Israel: No nuclear talks now
IAEA chief al-Baradai's pressure on Iran may be undermined
Thursday 08 July 2004,
Reuters
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8E5A4F9E-A511-48D5-A41B-2C12114974FC.htm
Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he would only discuss decommissioning nuclear weapons as part of a broader peace process in the future.
The PM made his remark to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director, Muhammad al-Baradai, on Thurday.
The nuclear watch-dog chief quoted Sharon as saying discussions could be part of the "road map" for regional peace - a plan that has been stalled for months.
Presumed to be the region's only nuclear power, Tel Aviv has long said it is committed to a nuclear weapons-free Middle East, but that peace must be achieved first.
Change of policy?
But it was not clear if Sharon's comments marked a change of policy when al-Baradai said Israel had taken "a good first step" towards disarmament at the end of his three day trip.
"What I've achieved at least is to get the Israeli government at the level of the prime minister to commit himself to work in the future toward a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East," he told academics and reporters.
Analysts were sceptical of any change. "Al-Baradai wanted Israel to give him something, a concession, with which to go to Tehran," said Israeli defence expert Yossi Melman.
Regional super power
International experts calculate Tel Aviv has 100-200 nuclear warheads at its disposal, based on estimates of plutonium reprocessed at the Dimona reactor.
But unlike Iran, Israel has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and does not have to permit IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.
Al-Baradai has warned that there is a "security imbalance" across the Middle East causing "the complete erosion of the legitimacy of the non-proliferation regime".
----
Israel Links Nuclear-Free Zone to Peace Talks
July 8, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Nuclear.html
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is ready to discuss a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East as part of future peace talks, the head of the U.N. atomic watchdog agency said Thursday.
But Mohammed ElBaradei, wrapping up a three-day trip to Israel, failed to make progress in loosening the country's taboo on disclosing its own nuclear-weapons capabilities.
``The prime minister affirmed to me that Israeli policy continues to be that in the context of peace in the Middle East, Israel will be looking forward to the establishment of a nuclear-weapons free zone in the Middle East,'' ElBaradei said after a meeting with Sharon.
Israeli officials stressed that arms-control talks are far off. Sharon linked the talks to progress in the ``road map,'' an internationally backed plan for peace between Israelis and the Palestinians that has been stalled since its inception a year ago.
Nonetheless, ElBaradei said he was pleased by Sharon's comments.
``That's the first time I hear that from the prime minister of Israel,'' he said. ``It's not a new policy, but affirming that policy at the level of prime minister I thought to be quite a welcome development.''
ElBaradei was in Israel to persuade the country to loosen its long-standing policy against discussing its nuclear capabilities. Israel is believed to be the only country in the Middle East to have nuclear missiles ready to launch.
In the face of overwhelming evidence, ElBaradei was keen for at least tacit acknowledgment that Israel has such arms or the means to make them.
But Israel did not budge from its stance of neither confirming nor denying it has such weapons. It says the policy is the best way to keep Islamic foes from attacking it while denying them the rationale for also seeking nuclear weapons.
``Israel has no reason to change its policy which has served it well,'' said a senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In an interview published in Thursday's Haaretz newspaper, ElBaradei said the growing threat of nuclear proliferation has put a new premium on regional security arrangements.
During his visit, ElBaradei said Israel repeatedly raised concerns about archrival Iran's own nuclear ambitions.
IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky described ElBaradei's ``fear for the Middle East'' as an important thread of his visit.
He said ElBaradei, who is Egyptian, would be happy to act as an informal bridge between the Islamic world, which resents what it considers unfair international tolerance of Israel's secret nuclear capacities, and Israel, which sees itself as facing ``an existential threat'' from a far larger enemy.
As part of Israel's pitch for its right to use all means to defend itself, ElBaradei was flown Wednesday over Israel, accompanied by a senior Israeli air force official, said another official familiar with his itinerary.
One point the air force official made was that Israel ``has no defensive depth, because a plane can fly from one border to the other in three and a half minutes,'' said the official, who requested anonymity.
ElBaradei was denied access to Israel's Dimona reactor, said to be the source of plutonium for Israel's alleged weapons program. But the official said the plane flew over the southern Negev Desert within sight of the reactor, describing it as a ``little brown dot'' in the distance.
While declining to go into details about his talks, ElBaradei indicated Wednesday that fear that Tehran was trying to develop nuclear arms was a dominant theme.
ElBaradei's agency is probing nearly two decades of suspect nuclear activities in Iran that the United States, Israel and others say reflect attempts to make such weapons.
Tehran insists it only wants nuclear energy to generate power, but several IAEA reports over the past year have suggested the Islamic Republic has not fully cooperated with agency inspectors.
Israel has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which would force it to declare itself a weapons state and curb its nuclear activities.
Evidence that Israel has nuclear arms is overwhelming, much of it based on details and pictures leaked in 1986 by Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, as well as research and statements made by Israeli leaders.
Experts say it may already have as many as 300 warheads as well as the capability of building more quickly.
On the Net:
Israel Atomic Energy Commission, http://www.iaec.gov.il/
International Atomic Energy Agency, http://www.iaea.org
----
Israel Links a Nuclear-Free Zone to Regional Peace
By GREG MYRE
July 8, 2004
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/international/middleeast/08CND-NUCL.html?ex=1089950400&en=fc26b7505f03ce20&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
JERUSALEM, July 8 - For a country that resists talking about its nuclear capabilities, this week has been a virtual gabfest. Israel has hosted the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog agency, launched a Web site on its atomic program and briefed reporters on its nuclear policies.
But as Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, wrapped up a visit today, Israel said it remained committed to its longstanding policy of "strategic ambiguity" and would not confirm or deny the almost universal belief that it possesses nuclear weapons.
By all accounts, Mr. ElBaradei's discussions with senior Israeli officials were cordial, including a session today with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Mr. ElBaradei wants to open a dialogue on making the Middle East a zone free of weapons of mass destruction, and Mr. Sharon reiterated the Israeli position that it would support an effort once there is regional peace.
"It's not a new policy, but affirming that policy at the level of prime minister I thought to be quite a welcome development," Mr. ElBaradei said during a news conference at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
But Israeli officials, who regard Iran's nuclear program as a potentially serious threat, emphasized that they were not prepared to hold such talks at present, and that Israel's policy had not budged.
"At least for now, we see no reason, justification or requirement to change it," said a senior official with Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, who spoke to reporters.
The official, who spoke on condition that his name not be published, said Israel had not previously held such a briefing on its nuclear policies, and that he considered today's session a "novelty."
The Atomic Energy Commission unveiled a Web site on Sunday, though it offered only general information about the country's nuclear program that is already widely known.
The Israeli official noted that the Mideast peace plan, known as the road map, raises the possibility of regional arms control talks in the plan's second phase. But amid ongoing violence, the plan stalled last summer shortly after it was introduced and neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have met their commitments in the first phase.
Meanwhile, Mr. ElBaradei said he would like Israel, along with India and Pakistan, to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which requires signatories to divulge their nuclear inventories and open up facilities to international inspections. A total of 187 countries have signed the treaty.
But India and Pakistan, which have declared their nuclear capabilities, have always refused, along with Israel. All have cited the need to maintain a strong deterrent.
"We really need to get India, Pakistan and Israel as part of the regime," said Mr. ElBaradei. "I think we should treat them as partners, not pariahs."
During a question-and-answer session, Efraim Halevy, the former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, said the greatest nuclear threat in the short-term would be a terrorist group acquiring a nuclear weapon. Dr. ElBaradei agreed. "This is the number one nightmare," he said. While Israel has always kept its nuclear program shrouded, various monitoring groups have estimated that Israel has enough plutonium to manufacture up to 200 weapons.
During his visit, the Israelis took Mr. ElBaradei on a flight over Israel. His hosts emphasized the country's small size and lack of "defensive depth," saying this showed the need for a powerful deterrent capability.
Israel's long-standing position is that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East. Since Israel is widely assumed to have such weapons, the phrase is generally interpreted as an Israeli pledge that it would not be the first to use a nuclear weapon.
In his remarks today, Mr. ElBaradei noted that elsewhere in the region he encounters an "emotional response" when Israel's nuclear program is raised.
"There is a perception in the region of a security imbalance," and of a double-standard favoring Israel, he said.
----
In Talks, U.N. Nuclear Chief Says, Israel Turns Focus on Iran
July 8, 2004
New York Times
By GREG MYRE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/international/middleeast/08isra.html?pagewanted=all
JERUSALEM, July 7 - The director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said he came to Israel this week looking to open a dialogue on making the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. But senior officials in Israel, the only country in the region believed to have nuclear weapons, sought to put the focus on Iran's nuclear program during talks on Wednesday, he said.
"They're expressing concern about Iran," Dr. ElBaradei told reporters after talks in Tel Aviv with members of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, including the chairman, Gideon Frank.
Israeli security officials often refer to Iran's nuclear program as potentially the most serious threat facing Israel, though Iran asserts that its program is intended solely for peaceful power generation.
Under its policy of "strategic ambiguity," Israel has always refused to say whether it has nuclear weapons, and government officials have made it clear that Dr. ElBaradei's two-day visit will not bring about any change in that policy.
Dr. ElBaradei said he did not have the authority to press Israel on this issue, though he would like to see nuclear issues discussed more openly in the Middle East, with the aim of creating a region free of unconventional weapons.
"I obviously don't have a magic wand," Dr. ElBaradei said. "But I think we need the security dialogue, and the sooner we start this the better."
A spokesman for Israel's Atomic Energy Commission declined to comment on Wednesday's talks.
Israel established its nuclear program in the early 1950's and according to various estimates it has produced enough plutonium to make up to 200 nuclear weapons.
Israel's critics argue that the country has been able to maintain its atomic program for a half-century, with the tacit backing of the United States, while other countries in the region have faced tremendous international pressure to abandon any nuclear aspirations.
In Tehran, the Iranian capital, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said Israel was trying to deflect attention from its nuclear program.
Last month, Dr. ElBaradei and the I.A.E.A. rebuked Iran for its lack of cooperation with inspectors from the United Nations agency.
Israeli officials have said they believe that Iran is committed to seeking nuclear weapons, and they argue that this potential threat requires an Israeli deterrent.
Dr. ElBaradei, who has visited Israel before, is to meet Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and deliver a speech at Hebrew University in Jerusalem before completing his visit on Thursday.
In another development on Wednesday, the international sponsors of a Middle East peace plan, known collectively as the Quartet, met the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, and urged the Palestinians to introduce changes in the security services. The Quartet, which consists of the United States, the United Nations, Russia and the European Union, said Israel's proposal to withdraw soldiers and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip offered a possibility of reviving the peace plan known as the road map. Israeli officials said the government had no plans to meet with the Quartet at present.
In violence on Wednesday, the Israeli military said soldiers shot dead an armed Palestinian in Nablus, a city in the West Bank. Palestinians said the man belonged to Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades.
-------- missile defense
U.S. gets missile-defense partner
July 08, 2004
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040707-100712-5383r.htm
The Bush administration gained another partner in its drive to build a global nuclear-defense shield as U.S. and Australian officials signed a 25-year deal to cooperate on the research and deployment of such a system.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Australian Defense Minister Robert Hill signed the memorandum of understanding at the Department of State, with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer looking on.
The accord makes Australia a "participating country" in the U.S. missile-defense program and foresees joint development and testing programs.
Mr. Hill said yesterday that Australian defense researchers successfully had tested the sophisticated Jindalee over-the-horizon radar system in April, and U.S. military planners say the system eventually could outperform satellites in the early detection of ballistic missiles after launch.
The Australian defense minister said in a joint press conference that his country does not see any immediate ballistic-missile threats to its security, but that working with the U.S. system could pay off in the long run.
"For us, it a long-term investment. We believe that we have a responsibility to address not only the threats of today, but the threats we might face in the future," he said.
U.S. critics say the ballistic-missile shield is expensive and unproven, but the Bush administration has been able to preserve funding for the program in Congress while aggressively trying to enlist international partners for the system.
The Knight-Ridder news service reported last month that U.S. officials were sounding out Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic for a missile-defense station in Eastern Europe designed to counter potential missile attacks from the Middle East.
The missile-shield agreement has become a political issue in Australia, where the opposition Labor Party has argued that signing onto the U.S. network would not make the country safer. Labor party leaders say they will seek to renegotiate or cancel the accord if they win elections that are widely expected this fall.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard dispatched troops to the Iraq war and has been one of Mr. Bush's strongest allies in the war on terrorism.
Mr. Downer said Australia was determined to "stay the course" in aiding Iraq's reconstruction, particularly with a newly sovereign Iraqi government now in place.
"This is not a time for a country like Australia to cut and run," he said.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- new jersey
New Jersey Residents Meet on Nuclear Emergency Response Plan
TRENTON, New Jersey, (ENS)
July 8, 2004
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-08-09.asp#anchor7
On Wednesday, the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) held the first in a series of public hearings and information sessions to discuss the New Jersey Radiological Emergency Response Plan which covers the oldest commercial nuclear power plant in the United States.
The plan was developed by DEP and the New Jersey State Police to coordinate and implement an immediate, comprehensive state, county, and municipal action plan in the event of a nuclear emergency.
The informational sessions and public hearings are being held to increase public awareness and to seek comments regarding the adequacy and effectiveness of the state's response plan.
The first informal session led by DEP staffers was held at the the Salem County Courthouse. It began at 6:00 pm to allow participants to talk directly with individual DEP staff members.
At 7 pm, there was a joint State Police and DEP formal public hearing, a pattern that will be followed during the next two meetings as well.
The second meeting will be held Wednesday, July 14, at the Cumberland County Administration Building, 790 East Commerce Street (Route 49) in Bridgeton.
The third and final meeting will address the emergency response plan for Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Ocean County. This meeting will take place on Wednesday, July 21, at the Ocean County Emergency Operations Center, Route 530 and Mule Road in Berkeley Township.
The Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station, located in Lacey Township near the New Jersey shore, began operations in 1969 as the first large-scale commercial nuclear power plant in the United States. Now owned by Exelon, its single boiling water reactor produces 636 net megawatts.
The NRC's latest annual safety assessment of Oyster Creek found that the plant operated safely and met all objectives on which it was tested during 2003.
A number of safety problems have surfaced at the plant this year. In March, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced it would increase oversight at Oyster Creek because of an incident in May 2003 when workers failed to notice that a power line was damaged while in contact with water. The ensuing electrical failure knocked out power to about half the plant's safety systems, including security cameras, alarms, sensors, pumps and valves.
It was the third time in eight years and second time in two and a half years that a damaged power line went unnoticed by plant workers, NRC officials said.
-------- new york
NRC to meet on NY Indian Pt nuke fuel storage
REUTERS USA
July 8, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/25916/story.htm
NEW YORK - The staff of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will meet with the public on July 15 to discuss a dry cask storage facility for the spent fuel at Entergy Corp. (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) s Indian Point nuclear power station in New York.
Entergy notified the NRC late last year of its intention to build a dry cask storage facility at Indian Point because the stations current storage facility is almost full.
During the meeting, which will be held on July 15 near the plant site in Peekskill, New York, NRC staff members will provide details of the agencys oversight role in reviewing dry cask storage of spent nuclear fuel, the agency said in a statement late Tuesday.
The Indian Point station is located in Buchanan, New York, about 35 miles north of New York City.
Spent nuclear fuel consists of long, thin rods
With the dry cask storage option, fuel is removed from the pool after a sufficient period of cooling time has elapsed and placed inside stainless-steel casks. Those casks are then sealed, filled with an inert gas and placed inside cylindrical vaults made of steel-reinforced concrete capable of resisting floods, tornadoes, projectiles and other unusual scenarios.
The amount of heat given off by spent fuel assemblies loaded into a cask would typically be less than that generated by an average home heating system.
Dry cask storage was supposed to be a temporary solution pending construction of a permanent U.S. repository for high-level radioactive waste now held in hundreds of locations across the United States. But, delays in the construction of the repository, has forced some energy companies to seek short-term alternatives, like dry cask storage.
There are currently about 30 dry cask storage facilities at other nuclear plants across the nation. Other plants are pursuing or considering such facilities.
The Department of Energy, which hopes to open a permanent repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is expected to apply to the NRC later this year for a license to begin construction of that facility.
-------- south carolina
S.C. plutonium disposal assailed
Safety of Dept. of Energy's plans for S.C. site challenged
BRUCE HENDERSON,
Thu, Jul. 08, 2004
Charlotte Observer Staff Writer
http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/local/9103486.htm?1c
A federal oversight agency and a citizens advisory board are challenging the long-term disposal plans for tons of surplus plutonium stored at South Carolina's aging Savannah River Site.
Six tons of the highly radioactive material are stored at SRS in 1950s-era structures not built for that purpose. The Energy Department is considering whether to move all the nation's surplus plutonium, now scattered among four installations, to Savannah River.
The prospect of South Carolina becoming the nation's plutonium dump prompted former Gov. Jim Hodges to threaten to lie down in front of incoming tractor-trailer shipments two years ago. Plutonium retains half its radioactivity after 24,000 years.
"It seems like he was on target with his concerns," said Tom Clements of Greenpeace International this week. "It has implications for bringing more material into the site. If they want to store on-site, do they have the safety and security for that option?"
The Energy Department acknowledged in a June 16 report that it hasn't decided what to do with some of the nation's surplus plutonium, including the material stored at SRS.
But the department insists South Carolina won't be stuck with it.
"We're not going to bring anything into South Carolina for which we don't have a disposition pathway out of South Carolina," said spokesman Joe Davis.
The department plans to recycle 34 metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium by blending it into fuel for nuclear power plants, including Duke Power's two Charlotte-area plants.
That plan has some uncertainties, however.
It's based on a U.S. agreement with Russia that each nation turn surplus plutonium into mixed-oxide, or MOX, nuclear fuel. But the Russians have struggled to keep pace with the United States. Licensing of the United States' MOX fabrication plant at Savannah River has also been delayed.
Even if the plans to make MOX become reality, some leftover plutonium isn't pure enough for that purpose. It will have to be disposed of or stored for years -- and signals point to Savannah River.
An independent agency that oversees the Energy Department's nuclear weapons complex criticized the department's decision, in 2001, to scrap plans for a special plutonium storage facility.
"DOE now proposes to rely on a combination of 50-year-old facilities that currently do not meet modern safety standards," the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board said in a December report. "The lack of careful, consistent planning has forced (SRS) ... to focus on what can be done with existing facilities, foreclosing options that may have been both cost-effective and safety-conscious."
One of the storage structures, a retired reactor, doesn't have fire-protection equipment that could prevent the accidental release of plutonium, the report said. A second major structure also lacks modern safety systems.
The report said plutonium could be safely stored at those facilities for only four to five years. But it said the Energy Department is developing plans to store plutonium there for 20 years or longer.
Since September, Savannah River's Citizen's Advisory Board has also pressed the Energy Department to explain what it will do with its non-MOX plutonium.
"Basically the response we received is very general," said board chair Jean Sulc. "You know as much as we do at this point."
SRS officials have promised an update to the board by July 26.
In a June 16 response to the defense agency's report, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said the DOE is re-evaluating its storage plan "to determine if there are better options." A safety study of SRS storage is due in April.
The response said the Energy Department is also revisiting a disposal plan that the Bush administration ditched two years ago. Under that plan, plutonium not pure enough to make MOX fuel would be encased in glass and buried at a government repository in Yucca Mountain, Nev.
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., says the concern about plutonium at SRS is overblown. As a House member in 2002, Graham helped enact legislation intended to guarantee that plutonium didn't stay forever at SRS.
"If plutonium is coming into the state, the law says they can't just leave it there," said Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop.
The measure was intended to ensure that weapons-grade plutonium entering South Carolina be blended into MOX. It calls for fines of up to $100 million a year if the Energy Department doesn't begin making MOX by 2011. If production doesn't begin by 2017, unprocessed plutonium has to be removed from the state.
"If the idea is to move this material to South Carolina outside the mixed-oxide use, then the governor would obviously expect for a disposition plan to be in place," said Will Folks, spokesman for Gov. Mark Sanford.
-------- washington
Two states to sue for U.S. review of Hanford
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES
Thursday, July 8, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/181225_nwbriefs08.html
YAKIMA -- Washington and Oregon plan to sue the U.S. Department of Energy, demanding that the agency begin assessing what harm 40 years of plutonium production has caused to natural resources at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.
A letter notifying the Energy Department of the states' intent will be filed today, said Elliott Furst, senior counsel for the Washington Attorney General's Office.
"We're not asking for money for damages. It's very focused, asking that the court order the Department of Energy to start studying what injuries there will be to natural resources," he said.
Kevin Neely, a spokesman for Oregon Attorney General Hardy Myers, declined to comment until the letter has been filed, but said the state has been discouraged by the federal government's position and is prepared to take action.
The Energy Department cannot respond until the letter has been received, spokeswoman Colleen Clark said.
----
Waste being retrieved from third tank
Thursday, July 8th, 2004
Tri-City Herald
By Chris Mulick, Herald Olympia bureau
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/5276267p-5213200c.html
The contractor managing Hanford's tank farms has begun retrieving waste from the third of 149 single-shell tanks using a new method for retrieving sludgelike materials.
Under the Tri-Party Agreement -- the legal pact that governs Hanford cleanup -- all must be emptied in 14 years. Hanford's 177 total tanks are home to 53 million gallons of radioactive waste generated from plutonium production during its Cold War nuclear weapons campaign and represent the reservation's greatest environmental challenge.
Work to empty the first underground tank, C-106, finished in December, and CH2M Hill has removed about 90 percent of the waste so far in another -- S-112.
Crews began removing 7,000 gallons of waste from four additional tanks in the C-200 series a week ago and are scheduled to finish by the end of August.
The waste material is different than that removed from the first two tanks, which either dissolved or was suspended when large amounts of water were added using sluicing techniques. That method had the potential to multiply the amount of waste several times over for any one tank.
The new system developed in CH2M Hill's test facility in north Richland uses a rotating high-powered vacuum nozzle with a high-pressure sprayer and is expected to use less than half the water the old method did.
"This system will use considerably less," said Ryan Dodd, CH2M Hill's vice president for the project.
The vacuum then will suck all the waste and added water into a second tank, which ultimately will be emptied into a double-shell tank for safer keeping until the waste can be treated.
"It's basically like sticking a high-powered vacuum down into wet beach sand," said CH2M Hill spokesman Brad Hasty.
Using less water not only cuts the amount of waste that needs to be treated, but also limits the potential for leaks during the removal process, Dodd said.
But with only two shifts having worked to remove waste using the new method, so far it's difficult to say precisely how much water will be added.
"That's still a bit of an unknown," Dodd said. "We're still in the early stages."
Both techniques will be used as the remaining tanks are cleaned out, depending on the composition of the waste they hold.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
IRREGULARS
Afghans Seize 4 Men Claiming to Be With U.S. Special Forces
July 8, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/international/asia/08afgh.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 7 - Four men claiming to be Americans and posing as Special Forces commandos were arrested Monday by Afghan security agents in a raid on a house here, NATO and Afghan officials said Wednesday. At least eight men being held prisoner in the house and four Afghan interpreters were also detained, the officials said.
The four foreign men had sometimes posed as American soldiers and sometimes as peacekeepers for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Kabul, an Afghan police officer said.
A spokesman for the NATO force, Cmdr. Chris Henderson, said that he was aware of the case, and that at least one American was among four foreigners arrested. He said that the men were not connected to United States forces and that he had "no idea" who they were.
The United States Embassy said it was investigating the matter. "We have reports that there are three Americans but we don't have confirmation," an embassy official said. The men did not have documents to prove their identity, he added.
One of the men detained, identified as Jonathan K. Idema, was known to the military and had apparently been under surveillance. He was the subject of a media advisory by the United States military press center several days ago, which warned that he was an imposter pretending to be a member of the American military.
"U.S. citizen Jonathan K. Idema has allegedly represented himself as an American government and/or military official,'' the e-mail notice said. "The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him." A military spokesman, Maj. Jon Siepmann, denied all knowledge of the arrests, but another American official said Mr. Idema was among those arrested.
One foreign military official said the men had tried to pass themselves off as Special Forces troops, or "other agencies," who wear plain clothes and often wear beards and sunglasses. Kabul is brimming with plainclothes agents and former military types working for private security firms. Many drive around in unmarked cars, often armed, and Afghan law enforcement officials usually allow them free passage. United States Special Forces troops also move around unhindered in unmarked cars, sometimes looking like Afghans in Afghan clothes and beards, and sometimes more recognizable as Americans, in uniforms, baseball caps and sunglasses.
But the men detained were being investigated by both the Afghan security forces and the foreign military. Afghan police officers and intelligence agents mounted the raid on Monday, but a foreign military unit had played a part in surveillance, Afghan police officials said. The men lived in a house in central Kabul.
"At least two are saying they are Americans and they give different names each time,'' Commander Henderson said. "There are two other foreigners but it is not clear if they are Americans." he said. The police also found four Kalashnikov rifles and some clothes with blood on them, he said.
All the men are being held by the Afghan intelligence service, the National Security Directorate.
--------
Prisoners hung by feet in private jail, Afghans say
Associated Press
Jul 8, 2004
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040708.wabus0708/BNStory/International/
Kabul - Three Americans arrested in Afghanistan were on a self-appointed counterterrorism mission that included abusing eight inmates in a private jail by hanging them by their feet, Afghan officials said Thursday.
The U.S. embassy identified one of the men detained Monday in a raid in Kabul as Jonathan Idema, a purported former Green Beret who says he has links with Afghan militia forces.
The American military has warned that Mr. Idema had been posing as a U.S. military or government employee.
Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said the three men had, along with four Afghans also arrested Monday, "formed a group and pretended they were fighting terrorism.
"They arrested eight people from across Kabul and put them in their jail."
Another Afghan security official, insisting on speaking anonymity, said intelligence and police officials found the prisoners hanging by their feet.
"They were hanging upside down," the official said on condition of anonymity. The official said reports on the case showed that the men were beaten, although he had no details.
Mr. Jalali said the eight were released. They weren't identified. He described the group as "rebels" with no "legal link" to any Afghan or other authorities.
Still, the intelligence official said the three foreigners were wearing uniforms that appeared to be from the U.S. military and were armed with assault rifles.
Mr. Idema, described in media reports as an ex-special forces soldier in his 40s, cropped up in Afghanistan in the winter of 2001 when U.S. and allied Afghan forces routed the Taliban.
He offered his services to Western TV networks, including a videotape showing a purported al-Qaeda training facility near Kabul, and later featured in a top-selling book called The Hunt for Osama bin Laden.
Afghan police and intelligence officers seized the men Monday in downtown Kabul. Mr. Jalali said the men were operating in Kabul under the guise of working for an export company.
The security official denied reports that shots were fired in the raid. He said security forces had been trailing the men and caught them by surprise.
The U.S. military took the unusual step on Monday - before news of his detention was widely known - of distancing itself from Mr. Idema, who "allegedly represented himself as an American government and/or military official."
"The public should be aware that Idema does not represent the American government and we do not employ him," the statement said.
A spokeswoman would give no details of his activities, insisting that Afghan authorities are leading the investigation.
-------- africa
Nigeria seen on brink of violent implosion
ABEOKUTA, Nigeria
(Reuters)
By Tom Ashby
8 July, 2004
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=543872
- Nigeria is heading for a violent implosion that would dwarf the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region, Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka says.
A wave of mass killings in May this year was just a precursor to the balkanisation of Africa's most populous nation and major oil exporter, he said, as rival ethnic and religious groups vie for dominance.
"I consider that Nigeria is on the verge, on the brink of a massive implosion that will make what's happening in the Sudan child's play," Soyinka said in an interview at his home in a tropical woodland about 50 miles (80 km) north of Lagos.
"We know there are movements for secession in this country. We know that everybody is preparing for the contingency of breaking up. International organisations are also studying the situation," said Africa's first Nobel Prize winner for literature, who will celebrate his 70th birthday next week.
More than 1,000 people were killed in a month of tit-for-tat fighting in central and northern Nigeria in May, heavily armed militia clash frequently in the Niger delta, and a political dispute in central Benue state has killed 150 this year alone.
Analysts say Nigeria's death toll from violence of at least 10,000 since democracy returned in 1999 puts the world's seventh largest oil exporter on a par with high intensity conflicts in Colombia and Chechnya.
But the complexity of Nigeria's wars, each with a unique set of ethnic, religious and political undertones, made them more difficult to understand than the "massive, uni-directional violence" in Sudan, Soyinka said of the crisis in Darfur where more than a million black Africans have been driven from their homes by Arab militias.
The United Nations has called the situation in Darfur the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
VIOLENT MONOLOGUES
The recurring massacres around Nigeria, Soyinka said, were "violent monologues" reflecting a deep imbalance in its make-up that could only be resolved in a fundamental rethink by the country's ethnic groups in a Sovereign National Conference.
This idea first gained currency in Nigeria's south after the annulment of elections in 1993, deemed to be the fairest in Nigeria's history, which southerner Moshood Abiola was on course to win. It has since become a rallying cry nationwide for civil rights groups, which recently joined under an umbrella body called Civic Forum, set up by Soyinka.
"The Sovereign National Conference would throw all the pieces of this country in a basket and try to bring a discernible feature out of it," he said.
Nigeria's 130 million population is roughly equally divided between Muslims and Christians, but most Nigerians define themselves according to their ethnic origin. There are three main groups, each speaking different languages, and hundreds of smaller tribes scattered across the country.
"This nation state was cobbled together by the British. Was it in the interest of the people who inhabited this space, or was it in the British interests?" Soyinka asked.
President Olusegun Obasanjo has opposed the formation of a sovereign conference, arguing that could lead to disintegration.
"We are heading that way already," said Soyinka. "This is already a divided country."
"If it is going to cost millions of lives to keep an entity together, I don't want any part of it. It is better that you break peacefully."
Nigeria's civil war in 1967-1970, over a break-away eastern region known as Biafra, killed at least a million people.
The introduction of Islamic law in 12 northern states, with punishments including stoning for adulterers and amputation for thieves, was already a "defiance of the integrity of this nation", Soyinka said.
Soyinka said he favoured keeping Nigeria intact, but would keep an open mind pending the findings of the conference.
Some analysts have argued that the idea of the sovereign conference is really a way for southern Nigerians, many of whom feel they have been dominated by the mainly Muslim north since independence in 1960, to achieve more power.
Soyinka, who is a member of the Yoruba ethnic group that inhabits the south-west of the country, said this could be true, but the idea was gaining popularity among people in the north.
"The important thing is that people should choose exactly what they want," Soyinka said.
"Let us say now we are inhabiting one geographical space. Let us find reasons to continue to do so and let us find a structure that makes it possible to do so without one section fearing that it is being cheated by another."
-------- arms
China Presses U.S. Security Adviser
Associated Press
By JOE McDONALD
Jul 8, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=731&e=9&u=/ap/20040708/ap_on_re_as/china_us
BEIJING - China's government pressed U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) on Thursday for an end to sales of advanced weapons to Taiwan, highlighting a chronic conflict as Washington looks for Chinese support on Iraq (news - web sites) and other issues.
The appeal was a discordant note in a visit by Rice to discuss efforts to persuade North Korea (news - web sites) to dismantle its nuclear program and nurture ties on what she said was a wide range of issues. Former President Jiang Zemin (news - web sites), who still holds a key military post, expressed Beijing's frustration at U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, state television reported. It said he warned that the self-ruled island is the "most important and sensitive issue" in U.S.-Chinese relations.
"Chinese people are seriously concerned over and dissatisfied about U.S. sales of advanced weapons to Taiwan," the evening news paraphrased Jiang as telling Rice during a 60-minute meeting. Jiang, chairman of the Communist Party commission that runs China's military, called for Washington to abide by a U.S. commitment made in the 1980s to reduce and eventually end weapons sales to Taiwan, the report said.
Chinese leaders regularly raise the issue of U.S. support for Taiwan with American officials. China says Washington might not appreciate the depth of its opposition and could be encouraging activists who want to make the island's de facto independence permanent.
Rice was in the midst of a three-nation Asian tour that began in Tokyo and includes a stop later in Seoul.
Taiwan and the mainland have been ruled separately since 1949, but Beijing claims the island as its territory and has threatened to attack if Taiwan declares independence.
Jiang told Rice that China "will continue to stick to the basic principle of peaceful unification, but we will never tolerate Taiwan independence," state television reported.
A senior official traveling with Rice said he couldn't describe how Rice responded to Jiang's appeal. But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Rice had affirmed the U.S. "one-China policy," which doesn't support Taiwan independence and repeated President Bush (news - web sites)'s opposition to either side changing its status unilaterally.
Washington has no formal relations with Taiwan but is its main arms supplier and military protector.
Rice also met with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and was to meet Friday with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The national security adviser and Chinese officials also discussed Iraq, trade, human rights and religious freedom, the U.S. official said. He declined to give details.
China has arranged three rounds of talks among the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia on Washington's demand that the North give up its nuclear weapons program.
"I expect that we'll have the chance to discuss the six-party talks," Rice told reporters before leaving Japan.
Rice told Jiang at the start of their meeting that she was in China to nurture closer ties.
"I look forward to a chance to talk further about our efforts at cooperation in the interests of peace and security," she said. During the latest round of six-nation talks last month, Washington offered the North energy aid and a security guarantee in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program.
The dispute erupted in 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted running a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 deal under which it received energy aid.
-------- asia
Marine move from Okinawa to Japan mainland discussed: general
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Jul 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040708180914.if0k6i7d.html
US Marines on Okinawa could move to bases on Japan's main islands as part of a realignment of US forces under discussion with Japanese authorities, a top Marine general said Thursday.
The Marine corps commander in the Pacific, Wallace Gregson, told reporters here that no decisions had been made, but such a move was one option under discussion.
"In my view, the best reason to move anyone from Okinawa to Japan is if it enhances our combined training with Japanese forces," the lieutenant general said.
He said the Marines have stepped up training with Japanese self-defense forces amid Tokyo's willingness to give its forces greater latitude under Japan's post-World War II pacifist constitution.
"If we do move anybody to mainland Japan either on a rotational basis or a permanent basis, I would hope we would be able to continue to expand our involvement with the Japanese self-defense forces," Gregson said.
The presence of some 17,000 Marines on Okinawa, which was captured by US forces in 1945 and returned to Japan in 1972, has been a sore point in bilateral relations since three US service members raped a Okinawan schoolgirl by in 1995.
Gregson said the military's relations with Okinawans was better than advertised, however, noting that polls show most locals favor the US military presence. Marines stationed there have the corps' highest retention and re-enlistment rates, he said.
"The general impression outside Okinawa is (that) we're two warring camps separated by a Cyclone fence and at each other's throats all the time," he said. "That could not be further from the truth."
About 3,000 Marines stationed in Okinawa are now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The general said, however, plans were for them to return once the situation in Iraq settles down.
Gregson indicated that moving the Marines to Guam, a US territory in the Pacific, was not an attractive alternative.
"I think moving away from Japan moves us away from where the need is and where most of the problems are likely to occur," he said.
"We are in Guam frequently now, for various training evolutions and things, but basing there would be moving away," he said.
He said the US-Japan alliance was moving toward "more and more combined efforts by both the Japanese and the United States to do those things throughout Southeast Asia and South Asia that we need to do in other places, which is to help the governments down there to extend the instruments of good government over their own territories so we can prevent Asia from developing some of the same problems we see in the Middle East."
-------- balkans
Kosovo Parliament Challenges U.N. Authority
July 8, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-serbiamontenegro-kosovo.html
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro (Reuters) - Kosovo's parliament threw down the gauntlet to the province's U.N. overseers Thursday, adopting constitutional changes including the right to call a referendum on independence from Serbia.
The amendments also included switching control for international relations and public security from the U.N. mission, which has run the majority Albanian province since the 1999 conflict, to local authorities.
But to become law they must be signed by Kosovo's acting U.N. governor, who has already warned that only the United Nations has the authority to make major constitutional changes.
``Any comprehensive review of the Constitutional Framework is outside the competence of the assembly,'' the U.N. mission said ahead of the vote, referring to the 2001 document which set the ground rules for Kosovo's provisional government and parliament.
Kosovo was placed under U.N.-led administration in June 1999 after a 78-day NATO bombing campaign to halt Serb repression of ethnic Albanians. It remains formally part of Serbia and Montenegro, the loose union that replaced Yugoslavia last year.
The province's international administrators, backed by NATO peacekeepers, continue to hold the real power including a veto over parliament. But local Albanian leaders are increasingly impatient for formal independence and control over their own affairs.
``WASTE OF TIME''
One senior international official in Kosovo described parliament's move as a ``non-starter'' and a ``waste of time.''
He accused local politicians of playing to the electorate by making it look as if they were taking on the United Nations.
``They're not even using the powers that they have effectively to run the government and manage affairs,'' he said.
Oliver Ivanovic, a member of the minority Serb coalition which boycotted the parliamentary session, said the action could only ``threaten the already fragile stability and security'' in Kosovo.
Ethnic Albanian discontent erupted in mid-March with a wave of fierce anti-Serb, anti-U.N. violence in which 19 people were killed and hundreds of homes destroyed.
Some Balkan experts have since advocated strengthening the local institutions and scaling down the U.N. presence after parliamentary elections scheduled for October.
Parliament's amendments, adopted by 85 of the 88 deputies present in the 120-seat body, included the right ``to determine Kosovo's final status through a referendum.''
The international community has set out a policy of ``Standards before Status,'' by which Kosovo must prove its credentials in democracy and human rights before discussion of its final status, possibly after mid-2005.
``We believe that setting standards and then implementing standards is the way forward for Kosovo,'' U.S. Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman said late on Wednesday after meeting local leaders in Pristina.
-------- britain
THE COURTS
10 Held Under Antiterror Law Ask British Court to Free Them
July 8, 2004
By ALAN COWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/international/europe/08brit.html?pagewanted=all
LONDON, July 7 - Lawyers for 10 non-British prisoners held without trial under antiterrorism laws filed an appeal on Wednesday against the incarceration, arguing that evidence against the detainees may have been extracted under torture from terror suspects being held in United States prison camps.
The lawyers went before the Court of Appeal in a preliminary case, seeking permission in part to bring evidence of "the commission of torture" in camps controlled by the United States in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere.
"We say that it is an affront to the public conscience for the state to rely in judicial proceedings on evidence obtained by torture," said Ben Emmerson, a lawyer for some of the 17 foreigners who have been declared terrorism suspects in Britain since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
The detention of foreign terror suspects without trial or charges - and in contravention of part of the European Convention on Human Rights - has become a delicate issue for the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair.
In late 2001, Britain adopted emergency laws that permitted, among other things, detention without trial. Human rights advocates have labeled that provision Britain's Guantánamo Bay, a reference to the military base in Cuba where the United States has been holding detainees seized in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Mr. Blair is being pressed by rights advocates and legislators to do more to secure the release of four Britons held at the base in Cuba, and his government is under assault for using emergency powers to detain foreigners.
The foreign detainees may leave Britain if another country says it will accept them. They may also challenge their detention before a secret tribunal called the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, but the tribunal is empowered to hear evidence from the authorities in the absence of the suspects or their lawyers and can order detention if it believes there are "reasonable grounds to suspect" links to international terror networks.
In March, a Libyan detainee, identified publicly only as M, was set free after the tribunal ruled that there were no reasonable grounds to detain him. But it has ruled in the cases of other suspects that the British government has had "sound material" to support the suspects' detention.
Mr. Emmerson, who represents eight of the 10 suspects in the current appeal, said he wished to challenge the tribunal's decisions for a variety of reasons including the question of whether it was legally empowered to consider evidence produced by the ill-treatment of prisoners.
The 10 detainees represented at the hearing on Wednesday are being held at several locations, including two high security prisons and a high security psychiatric hospital. Some of them have been detained since December 2001.
-------- business
Government Clears CACI for Contracts
GSA Decides Not to Bar Firm Over Work for Army in Iraq
By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35432-2004Jul7?language=printer
CACI International Inc. will not be banned from doing business with the federal government, the General Services Administration told the company yesterday.
The GSA told the Arlington defense contractor in a letter that it will not be prohibited from federal contracts for using an information technology contract to provide the Army with interrogators in Iraq, including at the Abu Ghraib prison.
The GSA can bar companies that act unethically or violate federal contracting rules. "I do not feel that, at this time, it is necessary for me to take any formal action to protect the interests of the Federal government," Joseph A. Neurauter, GSA's suspension and debarment official, wrote in the letter.
Neurauter did raise a number of issues, including the role CACI employees played in writing the language used to describe some of the work the company would perform in Iraq.
"I believe that CACI's possible role in preparing Statements of Work continues to be an open issue and potential conflict of interest," Neurauter wrote. He asked the company to respond within two weeks to questions he raised.
"We were very pleased with the outcome," CACI chief executive J.P. "Jack" London said in an interview. "It was an appropriate conclusion to the review, one that we were hopeful for."
The threat of debarment from federal contracts shook investors because the company got 92 percent of its revenue from federal clients last year. Its stock price dropped 12 percent, to $37.48 a share, the day the GSA investigation was announced. It rose $2.04 yesterday to close at $41.40.
The GSA began an inquiry into CACI's procurement procedures in May.
The issue involves a GSA contract awarded in 1998 to Premier Technology Group Inc., a Fairfax firm that CACI acquired last July. The contract, managed by the Interior Department, was designed to allow federal agencies to quickly purchase information technology products and services from the company.
Last year the Army used the contract to hire CACI for interrogation support in Iraq. GSA officials have said the agency's regulations require contractors to notify officials if they are asked to perform services that fall "outside the scope of their contract."
CACI's role in interrogating Iraqi prisoners became known because one of its employees, Steven A. Stefanowicz, was named in an Army report on prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison. The report said Stefanowicz encouraged military police to "set conditions" for interrogations and that he "clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse." A lawyer for Stefanowicz has said his client did nothing wrong.
Neurauter's letter said the GSA investigated because it appeared that CACI had misused the GSA contract. Neurauter recounted a meeting at the agency's office, quoting London as saying the company was being "singled out unfairly" and that it is "unseemly for the Government to shift blame to contractors."
Neurauter maintained that contractors bear responsibility for upholding the agency's regulations and said in his letter to London that he still has "concerns about whether you understand that all parties to a transaction are responsible for ensuring that the rules are followed and the integrity of the system is maintained."
Neurauter also noted that CACI has three separate hotlines for reporting business improprieties. "Multiple hotlines, in contrast to a single unified hotline, is an usual approach in my experience," he wrote. "Has it caused any confusion among employees?"
CACI said yesterday that it will comply with GSA's requests for more information to "clearly convey its commitment to complying with all of the rules governing purchases by the U.S. Government."
The company still faces a number of investigations about its former employee's activities at Abu Ghraib, but GSA spokeswoman Mary Alice Johnson said her agency's focus was narrower.
"Our only goal is to ascertain whether or not the company is a responsible company,'' she said. "What this letter indicates is that this is a responsible company, but there are some areas that the suspension and debarment official would like to explore."
The company also responded yesterday to calls by California state Controller Steve Westly for the state's teachers pension fund to withdraw its investment in CACI.
"As a matter of common sense and common decency, companies looking to profit from the torture of human beings don't belong in our portfolio," Westly, who is on the board of the California State Teachers' Retirement System, said in a written statement Tuesday.
CACI rejected the claims and said in a written statement that Westly "is guilty of political grandstanding with vile and unsubstantiated accusations."
The retirement system's subcommittee on corporate governance discussed Westly's proposal yesterday and agreed to take a vote on it Sept. 1, said Paul Hefner, a spokesman for the controller.
--------
Intelligence Work Comes to CACI Via Acquisitions
By Ellen McCarthy
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page E01
Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35630-2004Jul7?language=printer
In January 1998, CACI International Inc.'s chief financial officer, James Allen, talked about the company's plans for growth. "We're not in the intelligence community right now," Allen told an MSNBC reporter, but he predicted that the sector would eventually be a "great marketplace for us."
One acquisition and 10 months later, the Arlington government contractor put out a press release trumpeting its surge in revenue from its intelligence business. CACI followed up by buying more intelligence companies, hiring intelligence experts as executives and putting them on its board.
Soon CACI became a significant player in the sector, holding among other things a contract to provide interrogators for the military. That contract drew CACI into the Abu Ghraib prison controversy, subjecting the company to intense scrutiny by the government, investors and the media. But CACI says that despite the controversy, it remains committed to the intelligence market, which it expects to grow.
Federal intelligence agencies spend about $32 billion a year on information technology, but to the uninitiated, breaking into the market and establishing a solid presence can seem like the murkiest of endeavors.
"It's such a tight community that it is tough to break in from the outside. It's difficult to get visibility unless you know who to talk to and what their interests are," said Gwyn Whittaker, chief executive of Mosaic Inc., an Oak Hill consulting firm that helps companies develop business with intelligence agencies.
There is no secret code to open the door, Whittaker and others said. Companies like CACI get in by hiring executives, appointing board members and buying smaller companies that already have been inside. CACI's experience, she said, is a classic example of how most companies do it.
In the late 1990s, information technology services and software development were CACI's major offerings to its government clients. In May 1998 the company announced plans to acquire QuesTech Inc., a 700-employee engineering and research firm based in Falls Church. It was a $42 million deal that positioned CACI "for very important information warfare and intelligence markets," chief executive J.P. "Jack" London said in a prepared statement at the time.
"I just wanted to be part of a growing market. I could see there were areas where the intelligence community would have some needs and requirements to augment their staff," London said in a recent interview.
In March 1999, CACI told shareholders it had been awarded intelligence contracts worth $29 million. In November that year, the company said it would acquire XEN Corp., a Fairfax engineering and design firm whose clientele included national intelligence organizations, for an undisclosed price.
"The easiest way for a company to get into this line of work is to buy a company that's already in this line of work," said John E. Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense and intelligence think tank in Alexandria. Acquisitions provide immediate access to intelligence customers and a workforce with experience in the sector, he said.
A string of later purchases, including those of N.E.T. Federal Inc. of Vienna (a subsidiary of Network Equipment Technologies Inc.), Acton Burnell Inc. of Alexandria and the government solutions division of Baltimore-based Condor Technology Solutions Inc., added employees with security clearances to CACI's payroll and expanded its offerings.
In March 2003, CACI bought Applied Technology Solutions Inc., a McLean company focused on the intelligence community, and last July it acquired Premier Technology Group Inc., a Fairfax firm that specialized in intelligence analysis services.
The company also began in the late 1990s to fill its executive offices with seasoned insiders. CACI named Gail E. Phipps, a National Security Agency veteran who worked in the intelligence divisions of Computer Sciences Corp. and TRW Inc., as an executive vice president in June 1999. The following month, Anthony J. Tether, a former director of the strategic technology office of the Defense Advanced Research Planning Agency and director of national intelligence for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, was named CACI's senior technology adviser and charged with guiding the company's growth.
By August of that year CACI had recruited L. Kenneth Johnson, a West Point graduate with two decades of defense contracting experience, to be its new president and soon issued a statement declaring that it had the management team in place to execute its ambitious growth strategy.
The company also began to recruit veterans of intelligence world to its boardroom. Richard L. Armitage was elected a director in 1999 but stepped down in 2001 when he was appointed deputy secretary of state. Over the past five years the company's board has included Barbara A. McNamara, former deputy director of the NSA; Arthur L. Money, former assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence; and former Air Force Gen. Larry D. Welch, a fellow at the Institute for Defense Analysis.
Such board members often act as liaisons between industry and government, said Elizabeth Bancroft, acting executive director of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.
"The assumption is that they can make introductions, that they are arriving with a certain amount of built-in knowledge on projects that are going to be coming in the future," Bancroft said.
CACI's strategy paid off. In December 2000, it won a contract worth as much as $500 million to help modernize the Army intelligence systems. Last September, it won a $154.7 million contract to provide information technology support to the Army Intelligence and Security Command.
And the purchase of Premier Technology gave CACI one of its most high-profile intelligence deals: a large umbrella contract for information technology services. The military asked CACI to use that contract to supply interrogators, which CACI did, employing among others Steven A. Stefanowicz, who was implicated in an Army report on prisoner abuse at the U.S.-run prison near Baghdad. Stefanowicz , who has denied wrongdoing, is under investigation by the government. The General Services Administration also investigated to determine whether CACI should be banned from future government work, but decided that a ban is not warranted.
Despite the scrutiny resulting from intelligence work, London said he has no plans to change the company's strategy. In May it completed a $550 million acquisition of American Management Systems Inc.'s defense and intelligence group.
"I'm still enthusiastic about how well CACI has been able to respond in the intelligence community market and the defense and homeland security arenas," London said. "It seems to me there are a lot of challenges out there and it's a market that we feel we're very attuned to."
Ellen McCarthy writes about the local tech scene every other Thursday. Her e-mail address is mccarthye@washpost.com.
--------
Northrop Grumman Gets $175 Million
Pact Project Is Homeland Security's Personnel System
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35429-2004Jul7.html
The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to pay Northrop Grumman Corp. as much as $175 million over three years to help develop, manage and run the new agency's personnel system.
The deal, reached late last month, requires the defense contractor to provide a wide range of services, including drafting procedures for a new labor relations system, researching pay and performance appraisal systems, training managers and employees and finding ways to consolidate the dozens of computer systems now used to carry out human resources functions at the 180,000-employee department.
Juli Ballesteros, a spokeswoman for Northrop Grumman, said the company has experience in the human resources field, including contracts with the Defense and Treasury departments for $281 million and $114 million, respectively.
"We've been doing human resources systems for quite a number of years," she said.
Ronald J. James, chief human capital officer at Homeland Security, described the arrangement as a partnership in which the agency sets the direction and the contractor taps private sector expertise beyond the government's reach.
"The ultimate test will be, 'Does this help us do our mission better? Does it ultimately end up treating our employees better, more fair?' " James said.
While it is not unusual for federal agencies to hire contractors to help with human resources work, the stakes are higher at Homeland Security, created last year in a merger of 22 agencies, because its new personnel system may serve as a template for change at other departments.
Two years ago, Congress gave the Bush administration freedom from decades-old civil service rules in devising a personnel system that could dramatically change the way Homeland Security employees are paid, deployed and disciplined. Administration officials say the department needs a more flexible workforce to adapt to changing needs and protect the nation.
Federal employee union leaders, already upset by their limited influence on the process, fear that handing design duties over to a contractor will further curtail unions' role in shaping a personnel system that will affect tens of thousands of their members.
Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said that Homeland Security officials are not living up to congressional mandates that unions be consulted in the development of the new system.
"[A]ny new system that excludes in meaningful ways the voices of front-line workers in DHS is doomed to fail," Kelley said in a statement.
James, the Homeland Security official, said the department is committed to involving employees and will be briefing unions on the contract.
Other union officials called the contract a misuse of $175 million, saying the work could be done more cheaply in-house.
"It's amazing," said Mark Roth, general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees. "They combined 22 agencies, each with their own personnel office, and they are going to a defense contractor . . . to create and evaluate their own program. Why don't they just take the money and burn it?"
AFGE President John Gage said awarding such a contract was especially troubling when tight budgets forced the department to impose a temporary hiring freeze at the Border and Transportation Security directorate, which is responsible for maintaining the security of the nation's borders and transportation systems.
"We have real, live homeland security issues that require staff, equipment and materials," Gage said. "I can't understand where the money is coming from."
James said, "If we are serious about our people -- our most important asset at the department -- we need to make sure that we provide the best system, a 21st-century system, not a system that's 50 years old, and that we strike off in a new direction."
The department's proposed personnel rules would replace the 15-grade General Schedule pay system with a new performance-based salary system, restrict union bargaining rights in key areas and streamline the process used by employees facing discipline. Officials have said they hope to issue final rules by year's end and phase in the system over several years.
James said contractors will play a less prominent role in the long run. "Once this is up and running, I see a fairly quick phase-down, phase-out," he said. "If I had a crystal ball, I would envision that this would become primarily an in-house operation."
--------
Warsaw wants price cut in US warplane deal
WARSAW (AFP)
Jul 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040708184808.dgchzb7m.html
Poland hinted Thursday that it expects the price of 48 United States F-16 warplanes it contracted to buy in 2002 for 3.5 billion dollars (2.82 billion euros) to be cut.
"We are due to pay for the planes in 2009 and I really have the impression that after that date the Americans will make a gesture to us and we will not have to pay the full amount," deputy defence minister Janusz Zemke said, quoted by the PAP news agency.
"I am speaking conditionally but I don't rule out the possibility."
Zemke's remarks come weeks after a report criticised progress by the F-16 manufacturer Lockheed Martin in making compensatory offset investments in Poland. It said the planemaker had only achieved 22.6 percent of the pledged level in 2003.
Under the deal if Lockheed Martin does not respect its investment commitment of more than six billion dollars it has to pay Poland the full value.
The F-16 beat out competition from a Swedish-British consortium and a French company.
-------- chemical weapons
Israel's Chemical Weapons
by James Brooks,
July 8, 2004
Antiwar.com
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/brooks.php?articleid=2957
"On June 10th, 2004, the two clinics in Al-Zawiya treated 130 patients for gas inhalation. The patients were children, women, old people and young men. Dr. Abu Madi related that there was a high number of cases of [tetany], spasm in legs and hands, connected to the nervous system. Pupils were dilated. ... Other symptoms included shock, semi-consciousness, hyperventilation, irritation and sweating."
Thus reads a report by medical units serving the West Bank village of Al-Zawiya, where nonviolent resistance to Israel's impending wall has been extraordinarily resolute. According to the medical report (procured by the International Middle East Media Center [IMEMC]), "the gas used against the protestors is not tear gas but possibly a nerve gas."
The following day, Israel's "Peace Bloc," Gush Shalom, began a press release with the following quote from Al-Zawiya:
"What the army used here yesterday was not tear gas. We know what tear gas is, what it feels like. That was something totally different. ... When we were still a long way off from where the bulldozers were working, they started shooting things like this one (holding up a dark green metal tube with the inscription "Hand and rifle grenade no.400" - in English). Black smoke came out. Anyone who breathed it lost consciousness immediately, more than a hundred people. They remained unconscious for nearly 24 hours. One is still unconscious, at Rapidiya Hospital in Nablus. They had high fever and their muscles became rigid. Some needed urgent blood transfusion. Now, is this a way of dispersing a demonstration, or is it chemical warfare?"
The incident in Al-Zawiya appears to be the tenth attack by Israeli soldiers using an "unknown gas" against Palestinian civilians since early 2001. We have photographs of the canisters. We have film of victims suffering in the hospital. We have interviews with Palestinian and European doctors who have treated the victims. And we presumably have hundreds, perhaps thousands, of survivors. But we know nothing of their fate. Despite the evidence, we have not inquired.
Though it is a state secret, Israel's development of chemical and biological weapons has been known and analyzed for decades. From the typhoid poisoning of Palestinian wells and water supplies in 1948 to the conversion of F-16s into nerve gas "crop dusters" in 1998, Israel has always demonstrated a strong interest in developing CBW agents and methods for their dispersal.
In 1992 an El Al 747 flying nerve gas ingredients from the U.S. to Israel crashed into an Amsterdam apartment building. According to Salman Abu-Sitta, president of the Palestine Land Society, the respected Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad followed up the crash with an in-depth investigation of the Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), Israel's CBW complex in Nes Ziona. The paper reportedly found "strong links" with several U.S. CBW and medical research centers, "close cooperation between IIBR and the British-American biological warfare program," and "extensive collaboration on BW research with Germany and Holland."
At IIBR, doctors publish world-class research in acetylcholine, the mother lode of nerve gas design. The Nes Ziona complex is reputed to have invented an "undetectable" poison-needle gun for "clean" assassinations. In September 1997, two days after Jordan's King Hussein told Israeli PM Netanyahu that Hamas was seeking negotiations, Mossad agents in Jordan attempted to kill Hamas leader Khaled Misha'al with a lethal dose of fentanyl.
For years, rumors persisted that Israel was using or testing unknown chemical agents on Palestinian civilians. The rumors began to reveal their substance February 12, 2001, when Israel began a six-week campaign of "novel gas" attacks in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. By chance, American filmmaker James Longley arrived in Khan Younis, Gaza in the middle of the first attack. That afternoon he began filming the victims. His award-winning film, Gaza Strip, documents the naked reality of Israel's chemical weaponry - the canisters, the doctors, the eyewitnesses, and the hideous suffering of the victims, many of whom remained hospitalized for days or weeks.
The February 12 gassing of neighborhoods in Khan Younis presaged the attacks that followed. When the gas canisters landed, they began to billow clouds of either white or black, sooty smoke. The gas was non-irritating and initially odorless, changing to a sweet, minty fragrance after a few minutes. One victim recalled, "the smell was good. You want to breathe more. You feel good when you inhale it." The smoke often shifted to a "rainbow" of changing colors.
From five to thirty minutes after breathing the gas, victims began to feel sick and have difficulty breathing. A searing pain began to wrench their gut, followed by vomiting, sometimes of blood, then complete hysteria and extremely violent convulsions. Many victims suffered a relentless syndrome for days or weeks afterward, alternating between convulsions and periods of conscious, twitching, vomiting agony. Palestinians agreed: "This is like nothing we've ever seen before."
Forty people were admitted to Al-Nasser Hospital "in an odd state of hysteria and nervous breakdown," suffering from "fainting and spasms." Sixteen gas patients had to be transferred to the intensive care unit. Doctors "reported the Israeli use of gas that appeared to cause convulsions."
At the Gharbi refugee camp, thirty-two people "were treated for serious injuries" following exposure to the gas. Dr. Salakh Shami at Al-Amal Hospital reported the hospital receiving "about 130 patients suffering from gas inhalation from February 12."
Bewildered medical personnel had "never seen anything ... like the gas at Tufa." Victims were "jumping up and down, left and right ... thrashing limbs around," suffering "convulsions ... a kind of hysteria. They were all shaking." Others were already unconscious. An hour or two later, they would come to. And the convulsions and the vomiting and disorientation and pain would return.
The following day, February 13, Israeli forces again deployed the strange new gas canisters in Khan Younis. Over forty new gas victims, "including a number of children ... from 1 to 5-years-old," arrived at Al-Nasser Hospital and the hospital of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society.
The news began to trickle out. "Palestinian security services have accused the Israeli army of using nerve gas during a gunbattle yesterday," reported AFX News Limited, noting "the army has strongly denied the charges." The Voice of Palestine reported that "specialists believe that this is an internationally banned nerve gas." Those who inhaled the gas "suffered a nervous breakdown and vomited blood."
The next day, Deutsche Presse-Agentur quoted Dr. Yasser Sheikh Ali from Al-Nasser Hospital: "Israel has been using a powerful type of tear gas against the Palestinians that causes convulsions and spasms." According to DPA, more than 80 Palestinians...reported that Israeli soldiers had used the white smoky gas, but Israel denied doing so."
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) reported that on February 15 three more canisters of the poison gas were fired at houses in the Khan Younis camp, and "another 11 Palestinian civilians, mostly children, suffered from suffocation and spasms due to gas inhalation." British journalist Graham Usher wrote that Khan Younis civilians were "incapacitated" by "a 'new' form of toxic gas."
PA President Yasser Arafat publicly "accused Israel of using poison gas." The IDF issued a second denial. Israeli Communications Minister Ben-Eliezer called reports of gas casualties in Khan Younis "incorrect and false." Senior PA minister Nabil Shaath said that a sample of the gas would be sent to "an international center for analysis." The results, if any, were never divulged.
On February 18, Israeli soldiers near the Neve Dekalim settlement reportedly fired four poison gas canisters at Palestinian houses in Khan Younis. Later that afternoon, more canisters were fired, forcing Palestinians to flee their homes. PCHR reported that "41 Palestinian civilians, mostly children and women, suffered from suffocation and spasms." By PCHR's count, 238 Palestinians were affected by poison gas attacks between February 12 and February 20. Twenty-seven of the victims were still hospitalized on the 22nd.
On March 2, an unknown gas was used against civilians in the West Bank town of Al-Bireh. Israeli soldiers reportedly fired "canisters of a highly effective black gas similar to the one used in Khan Yunis three weeks ago."
Twenty-four days later, Israeli forces east of Gaza City used a gas that "left symptoms different from those of the ... gas used first ... in Khan Yunis starting from February 12," although several similarities also appeared. In this attack the onset of abdominal pain seemed to be delayed.
On March 30, medical professionals in Nablus reported Israeli soldiers using the new poison gas against Palestinian demonstrators.
British journalist Jonathan Cook reported a March gas attack on the schoolyard of Al-Khader village, near Bethlehem. Thirteen year-old Sliman Salah was playing when a gas canister landed next to him, "enveloping him in a cloud of gas described by witnesses as an unfamiliar, yellow colour." Large doses of anti-convulsants were required to control the boy's seizures and maintain consciousness. His symptoms "were finally brought under control five days after his exposure to the gas. But Salah's father says the boy is still suffering from stomach pains, vomiting, dizziness and breathing problems."
In its March, 2003 special report, Israel's Secret Weapon, BBC Television reviewed this series of gas attacks, noting, "The Israeli army has used new unidentified weapons. In February 2001 a new gas was used in Gaza. A hundred and eighty patients were admitted to hospitals with severe convulsions. ... Israel is outside chemical and biological weapons treaties and still refuses to say what the new gas was."
In my amateur analysis of the reported comments of victims, eyewitnesses and medical professionals regarding this series of attacks, I identified thirty-three distinct symptoms attributed to the unidentified gas. All but three of these symptoms appear to be typical of nerve gas poisoning. Tareg Bey, a chemical warfare expert at the University of California-Irvine, told the Chicago Reader that the symptoms described to him "all fit really well to nerve gas," though he was puzzled by the reported fragrance and skin rashes.
In an October 9, 2003, article, Jennifer Loewenstein and Angela Gaff asked, "What gas is Israel using?" They reported the story of Mukhles Burgal, a Palestinian prisoner caught in a brutal attack inside Israel's Ashkelon prison. The "guards forced their way into the crowded cell, spraying two canisters of some type of gas. Some of the 14 prisoners passed out. ... The effects of the gas were severe muscle spasms and an overwhelming sensation of not being able to breathe."
Two days later, Palestine Monitor reported that Israeli forces in Rafah were allegedly "firing gas grenades containing a black gas believed to be adamatite [adamsite?] - the use of which is forbidden according to international law. Medical authorities urged people to avoid the gas at all costs, as it not only causes difficulty in breathing but seriously affects the nervous system." For some reason, PCHR's press release from the same day, an apparent source of these reports, is no longer available. On the 14th, eyewitness Laura Gordon wrote, "The army used some kind of nerve gas for the first time in Rafah, leaving people in convulsions for days."
Following the recent gas attack in Al-Zawiya, town officials reportedly told Al Ayyam newspaper, "the Israeli occupation troops were using an illegal substance that caused nerve spasms and that several cases had been transferred to Nablus hospitals."
The PA's International Press Center reported that "official and public sources in ... Al-Zawya ... asserted that those who have inhaled the tear gas IOF troops fired at them four days ago are still suffering from the effects of the gas ... a number of those citizens have already had amnesias or partial memory loss, in addition to cramps ... in addition to strange cramps every three hours ... those who inhaled the gas are still suffering severe pains in the joints and nausea for four days now. Eyewitnesses recalled that the Israeli soldiers were keen on picking the empty tear gas canisters." Journalists told IPC "that the gas was in different colors they have never seen coming out of a tear gas canister before, and that some gases had an unrecalled smell."
According to IMEMC, "[T]ens of demonstrators who inhaled this gas had partial memory loss. Dr. Bassam Abu Madi told IMEMC that the some of those who inhaled the gas had severe choking and some contraction in their feet and arm muscles. Eyewitnesses said the gas has a strange smell and a reddish-brownish color." In a follow up story, IMEMC concluded that "protesters were attacked with gas that is not like the tear gas. Those who inhaled the gas suffered some memory loss while others had other symptoms of a nerve gas. Yet this was not medically confirmed for lack of laboratories to inspect the gas canisters collected from the scene."
Al-Jazeera reported the opinion of Awni Khatib, a professor of chemistry at Hebron University:
"The new symptoms - particularly the violent convulsions experienced by some Palestinian protesters outside the village of Sawiya [Zawiya], southwest of Nablus - suggest ... that the Israeli army may be using a new class of chemicals that lie somewhere between normal tear gas and chemical weapons."
Israel's repeated use of highly toxic unknown chemicals against Palestinian civilians is now an open secret. We can expect these attacks to continue until a concerted effort is made to determine the facts and hold Israel accountable. So far, the international human rights community has steadfastly ignored the mounting evidence.
When will professional investigators begin to retrieve and test the gas canisters? Why has no one but James Longley bothered to document interviews with victims, doctors, and other eyewitnesses? In a world in which one country's mere possession of chemical weapons can be an excuse for international retribution, how can another country's use of chemical weapons against civilians be dismissed as a "regrettably excessive" tactic of crowd control?
Our silence is poisoning Palestine.
-------- china
China Presses U.S. Security Adviser
July 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-China-US.html?pagewanted=all
BEIJING (AP) -- China's government pressed U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice on Thursday for an end to sales of advanced weapons to Taiwan, highlighting a chronic conflict as Washington looks for Chinese support on Iraq and other issues. The appeal was a discordant note in a visit by Rice to discuss efforts to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear program and nurture ties on what she said was a wide range of issues. Former President Jiang Zemin, who still holds a key military post, expressed Beijing's frustration at U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan, state television reported. It said he warned that the self-ruled island is the ``most important and sensitive issue'' in U.S.-Chinese relations.
``Chinese people are seriously concerned over and dissatisfied about U.S. sales of advanced weapons to Taiwan,'' the evening news paraphrased Jiang as telling Rice during a 60-minute meeting. Jiang, chairman of the Communist Party commission that runs China's military, called for Washington to abide by a U.S. commitment made in the 1980s to reduce and eventually end weapons sales to Taiwan, the report said.
Chinese leaders regularly raise the issue of U.S. support for Taiwan with American officials. China says Washington might not appreciate the depth of its opposition and could be encouraging activists who want to make the island's de facto independence permanent.
Rice was in the midst of a three-nation Asian tour that began in Tokyo and includes a stop later in Seoul.
Taiwan and the mainland have been ruled separately since 1949, but Beijing claims the island as its territory and has threatened to attack if Taiwan declares independence.
Jiang told Rice that China ``will continue to stick to the basic principle of peaceful unification, but we will never tolerate Taiwan independence,'' state television reported.
A senior official traveling with Rice said he couldn't describe how Rice responded to Jiang's appeal. But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Rice had affirmed the U.S. ``one-China policy,'' which doesn't support Taiwan independence and repeated President Bush's opposition to either side changing its status unilaterally.
Washington has no formal relations with Taiwan but is its main arms supplier and military protector.
Rice also met with Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing and was to meet Friday with Chinese President Hu Jintao.
The national security adviser and Chinese officials also discussed Iraq, trade, human rights and religious freedom, the U.S. official said. He declined to give details.
China has arranged three rounds of talks among the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia on Washington's demand that the North give up its nuclear weapons program.
``I expect that we'll have the chance to discuss the six-party talks,'' Rice told reporters before leaving Japan.
Rice told Jiang at the start of their meeting that she was in China to nurture closer ties.
``I look forward to a chance to talk further about our efforts at cooperation in the interests of peace and security,'' she said. During the latest round of six-nation talks last month, Washington offered the North energy aid and a security guarantee in exchange for dismantling its nuclear program.
The dispute erupted in 2002 when Washington said Pyongyang had admitted running a secret nuclear program in violation of a 1994 deal under which it received energy aid.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Leader Makes Security His Theme
Government Details Decree on Emergency Rule
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35439-2004Jul7?language=printer
BAGHDAD, July 7 -- Ten days into his seven-month term as Iraq's interim leader, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi has displayed a single-minded focus on issues of security.
At his first cabinet meeting, Allawi kept the discussion centered on ways to combat a tenacious insurgency that has racked this nation. His first public appearance after his appointment was at a military recruiting center. His first out-of-town trip was to an Iraqi army base. And his first official order, announced Wednesday, was a new national security decree allowing him to exercise broad powers of martial rule in rebel strongholds.
His next major initiative, according to senior Iraqi officials, will be an offer of amnesty to insurgents if they lay down their arms. Those who do not accept could find themselves targeted by new internal security and intelligence forces being assembled with the prime minister's encouragement.
For Allawi, the country's other challenges -- preparing for national elections, resuscitating the economy, rebuilding infrastructure -- have become subordinate to dealing with a persistent insurgency. Without security, Allawi and his advisers contend, none of the other issues can be addressed.
Taking private cues from U.S. officials and heeding public demands for a harder line, Allawi intends to pursue a variety of new security strategies to bring about, as one senior government official called it, "a uniquely Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem."
"He's not going to do things the ways the Americans did," the senior official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He's going to restore security in an Iraqi way."
The first indication of Allawi's approach came on Wednesday when his government unveiled details of a national security decree that grants the prime minister "extraordinary authorities" to declare curfews, tap telephones, seize assets, restrict civic associations and assume direct command of security forces in areas deemed to be emergency zones, giving him effective command of Iraqi military operations. In those places, police and military forces would have the freedom to search and detain people without judicial approval.
Allawi also will have the ability, with the approval of the president and two vice presidents, to immunize people from prosecution and order them released from detention if he deems that doing so could promote stability. He can even name his own civilian or military administrator of each emergency zone, supplanting the authority of local officials.
"The deteriorating security situation requires these laws," Allawi's justice minister, Malik Douhan Hasan, said at a news conference. "The security situation threatens all fields of life."
Some Iraqi human rights activists and political rivals of Allawi have questioned the extent of powers that the prime minister will have in areas under martial law, noting that he will be able to circumvent provisions in the country's interim constitution intended to limit his authority and prevent one man from amassing power in the manner of former president Saddam Hussein.
"The law shouldn't be a tool for the government to limit freedoms," warned Muhammed Mousawi, deputy director of the Human Rights Association of Iraq. He expressed concern that Allawi's order, as written, would give the government "the right to repress the peaceful demonstrations and democratic activities" of Iraqis.
But Allawi said the law was "really designed to protect lives in Iraq, whether these lives are Iraqis or are friends of Iraq who are operating here in Iraq. . . . The law is really designed to be part and parcel of the rule of law, and it respects human rights."
The country's human rights minister, Bakhtyar Amin, insisted that the decree, which was approved by Allawi's 32-member cabinet and signed by the prime minister on Tuesday, was necessary because of the "severe dangers that threaten Iraq."
He compared the decree to the USA Patriot Act, which was enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and increased the authority of law enforcement agencies to conduct surveillance of terrorism suspects and charge them with crimes. "Similar laws have been enacted in a number of countries," Amin said.
Amin said he would closely monitor implementation of the decree and would investigate allegations of human rights violations in conjunction with the Justice Ministry. "We have tried to guarantee justice and human rights," he said.
Declarations of martial law will be valid for 60 days. Any extension will require the written approval of the prime minister and the president.
The country's top court, the Court of Cassation, will have the power to review emergency declarations and rescind them.
Although the law gives Allawi new tools to combat insurgents, the prime minister had sought more aggressive measures, some of which were objected to by other members of the interim government. Instead of granting Allawi sole discretion to decide when and where to declare an emergency, the order restricts the prime minister's power by requiring any declaration of emergency rule to have the consent of the country's president and its two vice presidents.
The ability of Iraq's security forces to actually enforce martial law remains unclear. The Iraqi army had only 4,000 soldiers on duty as of June 15. Of the 89,000 police officers on duty, only 5,700 have been trained in a U.S.-supervised academy. Many of them lack weapons, vehicles, radios and flak vests. Their willingness to fight fellow Iraqis also remains in doubt: In several recent incidents, police officers have either refused to restore order or have deserted their posts.
Allawi and his senior military advisers hope that the attitude of the security forces will change now that an Iraqi interim government is in charge. "They are going to be fighting for Iraq, not the Americans," a senior official in the Defense Ministry said.
In case added firepower is needed, the security order promulgated Wednesday gives Allawi the power to call on U.S.-led multinational forces. There are currently about 160,000 foreign troops in Iraq.
Allawi's intent is for Iraq to be as self-sufficient as possible. A new army unit called the Iraqi Intervention Force, composed of new soldiers who have volunteered for domestic counterinsurgency operations, has started to deploy its first battalion in southern Baghdad's Abu Deshir district. Another battalion is expected to be deployed in the next few weeks. Because the soldiers have volunteered for domestic missions, U.S. and Iraqi military officials hope to avoid a repeat of the near-mutiny that occurred in April when an army battalion refused to flight alongside U.S. Marines in Fallujah.
Allawi also wants to form an Iraqi Special Operations Force, a unit with 760 troops that would function as a counter-terrorist SWAT team. In addition, he wants to create a commando battalion of about 800 Iraqi soldiers that would be similar to the U.S. Army Rangers.
The prime minister has held discussions with U.S. officials about reorganizing the Iraqi National Guard, a 70,000-member paramilitary force formerly known as the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
The new force would have 18 brigades, one for each province, with six divisional headquarters, one for each of the foreign military divisions now serving in Iraq. The division headquarters, Allawi recently told Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, would present "an opportunity to bring back officers from the old Iraqi army who are clean and who are committed to a new Iraq."
Allawi also thought this would reduce "potential sources of dissatisfaction among the former officers that the enemy can feed off of," Wolfowitz said during a June 25 appearance on Capitol Hill. Allawi's recurrent theme, according to Wolfowitz, "was the importance of the Iraqi army as a symbol of national strength" and that it was a mistake to have disbanded the old army. Allawi was not the first choice of Pentagon civilians for the role of running Iraq after the war. Allawi was a CIA client; the Pentagon had until recently supported Ahmed Chalabi, another former exile who served with Allawi on the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council.
The Pentagon was partial to Chalabi's entreaties that the United States had to disband the Baath Party, run by Hussein, and the Iraqi army. That step ran counter to the plans of the CIA, which had used Allawi and his exile group to try to persuade Iraqi generals to keep their troops from fighting when the United States invaded. CIA analysts viewed the Iraqi army as a nationalist force necessary to keep the peace and hold the country together after the war.
Allawi is now using the military as a foundation for establishing security and for strengthening his political base. Allawi's rise to power also means the CIA has returned to a more central role in shaping security policy in Iraq.
The CIA would not comment on whether its past financial support for Allawi's party has continued. A senior intelligence official would say only that "the U.S. is known to support a wide variety of organizations that support democracy."
Pincus reported from Washington.
--------
For Iraqis, Patrol Turns Into Combat
By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35407-2004Jul7?language=printer
BAGHDAD, July 7 -- Members of the new Iraqi National Guard ventured into a tough neighborhood of Baghdad on Wednesday to show that they did not need U.S. troops to keep the peace. Their first test came quickly. Grenades rained down from the roofs of high-rise buildings and automatic gunfire spit at them from every direction, the guardsmen said.
"It was a battlefield," said one of the guardsmen, who was shot in the leg. "Even when the Americans came into Baghdad, there wasn't resistance like this."
The gunfight, which sent booms rattling through downtown streets, killed four people and wounded 27, officials said. Hours earlier, a mortar attack on an exclusive neighborhood in west Baghdad, near a residence of Iraq's interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, wounded six civilians. And in another area downtown, police disarmed a large car bomb.
The mortar attack came just hours before Allawi was scheduled to announce tough new security measures to help battle insurgents. Allawi, whose home was not hit, called the attack "cowardly."
The firefight involving the guardsmen began about 10 a.m. as they were forming patrols to enter the Utafiyah neighborhood, on the west bank of the Tigris River along Haifa Street, a busy commercial area. It is a difficult neighborhood, but the guardsmen said they did not expect violence.
"This was the first time our National Guard unit was going in there to set up checkpoints and guard the neighborhood," Staff Sgt. Jalal Taha, 34, said from a hospital bed where he was recovering from a bullet wound to his foot and smoking a cigarette. "We wanted to go alone, without the Americans. The whole battalion was out today to show people there is security and we can provide it without the Americans.
"My group had about 30 soldiers. At the moment we got in the neighborhood, they attacked us from the roofs" of a cluster of seven-story apartment buildings. "Grenades came down from all four buildings around us. We could see them on the rooftop. We could see them on the balconies, throwing grenades and shooting. We fired back, and then it seemed like all the buildings started to attack us."
"They were hiding in the apartments," Staff Sgt. Abbas Hussein said. "They used small arms, hand grenades and then rockets and mortars."
Another guardsman, Amar Ghassan, 19, said the attackers threw a grenade down the stairwell of a building as he raced up to confront them. He said he ducked into a room for shelter.
"I couldn't go back out the same way, so I had to break a window to get out," Ghassan said. He said he gashed his arm on the glass.
Marwan Ghalib, 38, an architect, drove to the area after the shooting began so he could pick up his mother-in-law from her job as a school administrator. "A policeman warned me not to go there, but I said, 'Let's leave it to God,' " he said. But his mother-in-law had already left. As Ghalib returned to his car to drive away, he said, mortar shells hit 10 yards away, sending shrapnel into one of his legs, his back and his head. He ran to the car, he said, and drove himself to the hospital.
Kamal Ali, an ambulance driver at Khark Hospital, said that when he heard people had been wounded in the fighting, he raced to the nearby neighborhood.
"It looked like a battlefield with explosions and shooting," he said. "I could feel the bullets go near me. I picked up one soldier after another -- six wounded in all. I don't know how I had the strength, but I just piled them in together in my ambulance and raced out."
Ali Saad, 23, a taxi driver, said he saw gunmen pump two bullets into the head of a guardsman lying in the street. The attackers videotaped the scene as the body was dragged through the street, Saad said.
"These were Iraqis," Saad said. "I was close enough. I could hear their dialect."
Hospital officials said four people were killed: a guardsman, a policeman and two civilians. Ten civilians and 17 guardsmen and police officers were injured. Officials said it was unclear whether any of the insurgents were among the injured.
According to a U.S. military spokesman, police called for backup after a station was hit. U.S. armored vehicles entered the neighborhood and helicopters roared overhead.
A U.S. Army rapid response team entered the area on foot and patrolled cautiously as aircraft radioed the position of the gunmen. Several soldiers became ill from dehydration in the 112-degree heat.
The U.S. soldiers came to back up the Iraqis but withdrew when it became clear that "the Iraqi National Guard was handling the situation. The Iraqis had things under control," a top U.S. military officer said on condition of anonymity. "While there still may be casualties and loss of life, the direction we are headed is of having Iraqi security forces take care of security."
A military spokesman said the U.S. soldiers did not fire and had no casualties.
But Sgt. Taha said the situation was not under control.
"We were just trying to withdraw. I ordered my men to stop shooting in hopes that the other side would let us withdraw. We were hiding by the walls and kept backing up until we got out.
"As we were going out, I felt my foot wasn't moving. I looked and saw a hole in my boot and blood coming out. I knew I was shot. Two of my colleagues carried me out."
"I was 17 years in the old army," Taha said. "I never saw anything like this."
Meanwhile, al-Jazeera television broadcast a videotape of armed men holding a Filipino hostage and threatening to kill him if the Philippines does not withdraw its small force from Iraq in three days, the Associated Press reported. The previously unknown group, the Iraqi Islamic Army-Khaled bin al-Waleed Corps, claimed to have already killed an Iraqi security guard who was accompanying the man, the newscaster said.
The videotape displayed a company card identifying the hostage as Hafidh Amer of the Philippines. No details of his capture were given.
Staff photographer Andrea Bruce Woodall contributed to this report.
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5 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq Gunfire
July 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents firing mortar rounds destroyed a headquarters used by U.S. and Iraqi forces in the city of Samarra on Thursday, killing five American soldiers and one Iraqi guardsman, the military said.
The attack, part of a day of violence and street battles in the city, also wounded 20 U.S. soldiers and four Iraqi guardsmen, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, the spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division.
Three civilians also were killed, medical officials said, and U.S. helicopters killed four insurgents, O'Brien said.
Also Thursday, the Philippines barred its contract workers from traveling to Iraq after militants released a videotape threatening to kill a Filipino hostage if the country does not withdraw its troops.
The U.S. and Iraqi troops were killed when insurgents launched 38 mortar rounds about 10:30 a.m. and destroyed the headquarters building in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad in the so-called Sunni Triangle, a hotbed of resistance to the coalition.
Some of the rounds landed in civilian areas, the military said. Dr. Abid Tawfiq, director of the Samarra General Hospital, said three civilians were killed in the violence and 20 others were injured.
About 25 minutes later, when radar determined the source of the shelling, U.S. soldiers responded with four mortar rounds.
U.S. and Iraqi troops fanned out through the city and were fired on by four men who fled into a building, O'Brien said. U.S. helicopters attacked the building with Hellfire missiles, killing the attackers, he said.
U.S. troops secured the area around the collapsed building, and three tanks blocked a bridge that linked the base with the city. Witnesses said fighter jets took part.
Before the mortar attack, a U.S. military convoy in Samarra was targeted by a roadside bomb that wounded a U.S. soldier, O'Brien said. Insurgents have long launched mortar and rocket attacks on U.S. bases, most of which cause no significant damage or casualties.
Also Thursday, gunmen strafed a truck on the road between Samarra and Balad, prompting the vehicle to flip over and killing two Turkish truck drivers, witnesses said. Insurgents have taken many truck drivers hostage in an effort to spread fear and disrupt supply efforts for U.S. forces.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, an explosion ripped through a car outside a textile factory in the Dora neighborhood, killing a former senior Baath Party official, said police Lt. Anmar Yassin. Authorities didn't know the cause of the explosion that killed Ali Abbas Hassan.
Thursday's violence came a day after Iraq unveiled emergency laws giving the government broad powers to fight its enduring insurgency.
The U.S. military, which makes up the bulk of the nearly 160,000 foreign troops, has been gradually handing over security responsibilities to Iraqi security forces, which are ill-equipped and ill-trained to handle such duties alone.
The Philippines, with only 51 troops in Iraq, make up a tiny fraction of the Multinational Force. But the more than 4,000 Filipino civilians work as contractors for the U.S. military, serving food, cleaning toilets and forming the backbone of the support staff for U.S. troops.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Thursday ordered Filipino contract workers not to travel to Iraq, but made no immediate decision on a demand by militants that she withdraw troops within three days or they would kill a Filipino they had taken hostage.
The Filipino was shown on a video broadcast Wednesday by Al-Jazeera. Three armed and masked men -- calling themselves the Iraqi Islamic Army-Khaled bin al-Waleed Corps -- stood behind the seated hostage. It did not give any details of his capture, but the group claimed to have killed an Iraqi guarding him.
The small military contingent's deployment was scheduled to end later this month, and Manila has been considering whether to extend their tour of duty.
Arroyo ``ordered an immediate stop to the deployment of new workers going to Iraq,'' her spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, told The Associated Press. ``And then she is asking for an assessment from our Middle East team.''
The president also offered government help for any workers who wanted to come home.
Those decisions could have far more impact on the multinational force here.
The roughly 4,100 civilian contractors -- drawn by relatively high pay -- take care of virtually every essential low-level job on many U.S. bases, preparing meals and maintaining the vast fields of air conditioned portable buildings that most soldiers call home.
In addition, many with specialized training provide security at important facilities, construct buildings and furniture, and maintain roads. The U.S. military, which has diverted as many soldiers to combat duty as possible, would be hard pressed to operate in Iraq without the extra manpower the Filipinos provide.
The video did not identify the hostage, who wore a bright orange jumpsuit similar to one worn by American Nick Berg when he was beheaded by Iraqi militants led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The Philippine charge d'affaires in Baghdad, Ricardo Endaya, confirmed the hostage was a Filipino abducted near Fallujah. ABS-CBN TV, quoting the Philippine ambassador in Qatar, identified him as Angelo dela Cruz, a truck driver who crossed into Iraq from Saudi Arabia.
With a Muslim extremist threat of its own, the Philippines has been among the biggest supporters of the U.S.-led war on terrorism.
The security laws unveiled Wednesday allow Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to set curfews, impose limited martial law, send security forces on searches and freeze suspects' assets and monitor their communications. He can also assign military leaders to run restive areas.
``Present conditions in Iraq have reached a stage that is impossible to tolerate,'' Justice Minister Malik Dohan al-Hassan said.
Government officials insisted that built-in checks will protect Iraqis' rights and prevent a dictatorship.
Allawi, a secular Shiite with close CIA links, can only invoke his new powers with the unanimous approval of the Presidential Council made up of the president, who is a Sunni Arab, and two vice presidents, a Kurd and a Shiite.
The laws are the first major step by Allawi's government to make good on its promise to end the violence that has killed hundreds of Iraqis in the past 15 months.
Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld backed the new laws. ``In terms of if they will be more effective, I would think so,'' he said, but he would not say if U.S. troops would help enforce them.
Senior Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman said emergency powers by themselves would not solve security woes.
``Force alone does not solve security problems,'' he said. ``Efforts must be made to achieve national reconciliation and grant amnesty to those who fought the occupiers,'' he said from London. Allawi's government is considering such an amnesty.
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INSURGENTS
Falluja Pullout Left Haven of Insurgents, Officials Say
July 8, 2004
By DEXTER FILKINS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/international/middleeast/08fall.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq, July 6 - American and Iraqi officials say that a decision in April to pull back American forces from Falluja inadvertently created a safe haven for terrorists and insurgents there. But officials are reluctant to send American troops back into the city for fear of touching off another uprising.
The officials say they are unsure how to proceed, but agree they merely postponed the problem when the Americans halted an attack in April, brokering a deal to keep Americans out of Falluja and allow local Iraqis to police the city instead.
Iraqi and American officials say they would prefer to re-enter the city with a sizable force of Iraqi soldiers, perhaps backed up by Americans. But they concede that an Iraqi force capable of mounting an effective assault on Falluja, a city of 250,000 people, is months or even years away.
As a result, the Americans and the new Iraqi government are faced with a growing danger that - as long as they adhere to the agreement to stay out of the city - they are nearly powerless to confront.
"There is no question that Falluja is a safe haven," said Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, until last week the head of all military forces in the country. "At some point it is going to have to be dealt with."
American and Iraqi intelligence reports suggest that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian believed to be responsible for scores of attacks here, is using Falluja as a base for operations. He is thought to be working with dozens of hard-core Islamist fighters, many of them from outside the country, and former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
Iraqi officials say the terrorists are using the city to assemble car bombs and other such weapons before sending them to Baghdad and other cities.
The Iraqi officials say the security force formed to police the city, called the Falluja Brigade, has had little or no effect in breaking up the terrorist networks inside the city. The brigade is made up largely of former Baathists and some insurgents.
Senior Iraqi officials say the government in Falluja has been effectively replaced by a group of insurgent leaders, many of them Islamist extremists, who dominate most decisions affecting the city. Former members of the Baath Party are using the city as a base to regroup, and recently held a meeting to plot a strategy to return to power, the Iraqi officials said.
The Americans say they could regain control of Falluja by military means, but likely at a cost of hundreds of Iraqi lives. They fear that significant bloodshed could spark the same sort of backlash as in April, when reports of as many as 600 people being killed inside the city became a rallying cry around Iraq and the Middle East and seriously strained relations with the Iraqi government.
For now, the Americans are effectively at an impasse. American officers say that, under the terms of the agreement, they cannot even return fire when insurgents fire mortars and rockets at their troops from inside the city. Instead, the Americans have limited themselves almost exclusively to airstrikes, which are having uncertain effects. In recent weeks, American forces have mounted at least four air strikes on buildings inside Falluja that they say killed dozens of terrorists associated with Mr. Zarqawi's network. The claims are impossible to verify.
Western reporters have been able to move into the city only at the greatest risk, since one of Falluja's most powerful clerics, as well as the chief insurgent leader there, last month publicly banned reporters from the city.
Iraqi officials say they vehemently opposed the agreement that turned over Falluja to the insurgents, yet concede that they lack the resources to take control of the city on their own. Late last month, Mr. Zarqawi issued a statement in which he said he would try to kill Iyad Allawi, the prime minister.
"Our intelligence says that Zarqawi is in Falluja," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser. "Our intelligence also says they are constructing bombs in the city and sending them into Baghdad. There is a regular traffic. We are going to have to go back in."
There are other indications that Mr. Zarqawi's group, called Unity and Holy War, is operating near or inside Falluja.
For example, the group's flag was found after an attack last February against the main police station, in which at least 25 people were killed. The body of Kim Sun Il, a Korean truck driver who was beheaded last month, appeared in a video in front of a banner for Mr. Zarqawi's group.
The decision to turn over control of the city to the all-Iraqi Falluja Brigade came after the assault by American marines had sparked an uproar across the country. The American attack was launched after the killing and mutilation of four American contractors in March.
The backlash was fueled by reports that many civilians were among those killed in the fighting. Those reports, broadcast by Arabic television seen throughout the region, inflamed Iraqi opinion and drew Sunnis and Shiites together to oppose the Americans.
The claims of widespread civilian casualties were impossible to verify. But American officials suggested that the decision to attack Falluja, as well as the decision to halt the offensive, were made by civilian leaders, not by military leaders here.
"We are a civilian-controlled military, and it is our business to stay out of politics," General Sanchez said.
Mr. Rubaie said the decision to set up the Falluja Brigade was made without any consultation with Iraqi authorities. He said he learned of it after reading an American newspaper article and protested to General Sanchez and to L. Paul Bremer III, then the chief American administrator in Iraq.
"We told them that no Iraqi official supported the creation of the Falluja Brigade," he said.
One measure of how little control the Iraqi government has over Falluja came last month, during a meeting between Mr. Bremer and Abu Karim Barias, the governor of Anbar Province, which includes Falluja. Mr. Barias had driven through Falluja to meet Mr. Bremer at an American base. His convoy was ambushed on the way.
"There is no government there," Mr. Barias told Mr. Bremer. "They will not allow any person in there who is associated with the government. It's the mujahedeen shura that is in control of that city," a reference to a council of militants.
Mr. Barias went on to say that his entire administration, which is based in nearby Ramadi, was penetrated by double agents working for the insurgents.
"We don't know our friends from our enemies, in fact," Mr. Barias said. "Any discussion we have with them is immediately relayed to the mujahedeen."
Afterward, as Mr. Barias prepared to leave, he was asked to describe the situation in Falluja.
"It's simple," he said. "It's a terrorist hotbed."
American commanders say they are wary of reigniting another revolt in Falluja. As the battle ground on in April, they said, more and more Iraqis who had been neutral towards the Americans took up arms against them. Soon, they said, much of the town was fighting.
Mohammed Abdullah Shahwani, Iraq's director of national intelligence, said that the Americans and the Iraqis could defeat the insurgents in Falluja but that the cost would be great indeed.
"We could take the city," he said, "but we would have to kill everyone in it."
Some American officers expressed frustration at the start-stop nature of the military campaign last April. First came the decision to attack Falluja after a relatively small group of men had mutilated the four American contractors. Then, with the marines prevailing militarily but still not in control of the city, they were told to halt.
"We didn't ask to go into the city, and we didn't ask to stop offensive operations," said a senior American officer involved in the campaign. "If we had not been told to stop, in three to five days we would have owned the city."
Both decisions were made by the political leadership in the United States, he said, but "you tell your force to do one thing, and then another - it has a cost."
Some American officers say they are getting a measure of cooperation from the Falluja Brigade, which they say may ultimately split the insurgency between moderates and hard-core extremists.
Mr. Allawi, the prime minister, has suggested that the former members of the Baath Party could be co-opted, thus isolating Islamist extremists.
Colonel Coleman, of the Marine Expeditionary Force, said the Falluja Brigade had succeeded in causing divisions between the factions that had opposed the Americans.
"Instead of having all those eyeballs arrayed against us, they have turned inward, and have begun to look at each other," he said. "People have begun pointing fingers at one another, they have begun pointing guns."
Colonel Coleman said results of those new tensions would become evident in the days and weeks to come. Yet he conceded that there were many foreign fighters inside the city and that Mr. Zarqawi's network was using the city as a base.
"Falluja is moving ever so slowly in the right direction," he said.
No such optimism is evident in the villages around Falluja, where the marines are greeted with unrelenting hostility.
For most of the month of April, Gunnery Sgt. Mark Kline, 42, and his unit formed a cordon outside of the city, stopping hundreds of refugees who were leaving and hundreds more who were trying get inside to join the fight.
Like most of his comrades, Sergeant Kline said he was convinced that the quiet in Falluja is a fake peace that will have to be dealt with soon enough.
"The 10 marines that died - those were wasted lives, because we didn't finish the job," he said. "Falluja is a time bomb."
As Sergeant Kline spoke, his patrol moved through Zaydon, a village just south of Falluja, near the place where three marines were killed earlier this week.
As the marines rumbled through, many of them waved to residents who stood silently in the scorching afternoon heat.
No one waved back.
John F. Burns contributed reporting from Anbar Province for this article.
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PRIME MINISTER
Iraqis Defend Power to Declare Martial Law
July 8, 2004
By EDWARD WONG
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/international/middleeast/08mart.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 7 - Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and other government ministers formally unveiled a sweeping law on Wednesday that would allow them to declare martial law to curb unrest.
"We will use this law and the items in the law whenever it is necessary to defeat our enemies," Mr. Allawi told reporters. "The law is really designed to be part and parcel of the rule of law and it respects human rights."
Under the rules, Iraqi and American officials say, the Iraqi government can call on the United States military for assistance - something American military officials said they would be willing to provide as long it does not violate their own rules for the use of force.
Under the final wording of the law, a draft version of which was obtained by The New York Times on Tuesday, there are some checks on the use of the powers, which permit the prime minister to order the detention of people deemed to be security risks, impose curfews and order house-to-house searches.
Under its provisions, the prime minister can only declare emergency rule with the approval of the president and both vice presidents. The state of emergency can only be declared initially for 60 days, though that can be extended every 30 days "as needed."
A high court in the Arab-dominated part of Iraq and two courts in the Kurdish region can review and reject any emergency decisions or procedures exercised by the prime minister in their areas.
"The government should not apply any specific laws to derail or restrain any liberties," Malik al-Hassan, the justice minister, said at a news conference. "We have been forced to issue this law because we could not find any alternative to deal with the current situation."
Human rights and civil liberties advocates have raised concerns about the prospect of martial law. Some question whether the new law would allow postponement of elections scheduled for January 2005. Others question what legal protections will be accorded to detainees.
Bekhtiar Amin, the minister of human rights, defended the law by saying it was "very similar to the Patriot Act of the United States and there are very few differences between them."
The Patriot Act, drawn up by the Bush administration after the Sept. 11 attacks, has come under intense debate in the United States over whether it limits civil liberties too severely.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel snubs European mediators
Israeli officials say they do not want to work with Europeans
Thursday 08 July 2004
Aljazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/29C6F493-3D79-403A-ADCB-E8BE6714C2D5.htm
Israel has refused to meet a European group of mediators that had come to discuss Israel's planned unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
Representatives of the so-called Quartet - comprising the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia - arrived in the region earlier in the week to promote Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from Gaza by the end of 2005.
The Quartet wants the withdrawal to be part of the "road map", its broader peace plan that envisions an independent Palestinian state by 2005.
Israeli officials, however, decided not to confer with the diplomats during a stop in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the latest sign that the Jewish state is attempting to exclude Europeans from peacemaking.
Preferred partner
"We do not work with the Europeans on security issues. We don't want to work with the Europeans on security issues," said Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman, Asaf Shariv.
"We do not work with the Europeans on security issues. We don't want to work with the Europeans on security issues"
Asaf Shariv, Israeli prime minister's spokesman
"We work with the Americans on these issues. There are a lot of other issues, like economic, that we would be happy to work on with the Europeans," Shariv said.
Shariv denied Israel had refused to meet the Quartet. He said Israel first wants to talk to a White House delegation arriving later this week before discussing the withdrawal plan with others.
The United States is Israel's staunchest ally.
Israel has often accused Europe of favouring the Palestinian cause, and prefers to deal directly with the United States.
Message to EU
The Sharon government has progressively distanced itself from the road map, which calls for a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, since it signed on to the plan a year ago.
Sharon is more comfortable in the company of US officials
The Israeli prime minister has refused to talk with the Palestinians as he prepares the Gaza pullout. Instead, he has asked Egypt, which borders Gaza, to help retrain Palestinian security forces and to ensure calm.
A diplomatic source expressed surprise at the Israeli snub. He said the EU has held a series of "very constructive" meetings with Israel on the Gaza plan.
"The message from the Israelis is that European contributions that help to make Gaza withdrawal a success will be very welcome," he said.
The Quartet envoys met on Wednesday with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Quraya in the West Bank city of Ram Allah. Later, Quraya met with David Satterfield, the American representative at the talks.
"If it is true that Israeli officials would not meet with the Quartet, it means that Israel is turning its back to the entire world," Quraya said.
--------
Militants Make Unprecedented Push To Gain a Voice in Palestinian Affairs
By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35426-2004Jul7?language=printer
JERUSALEM, July 7 -- The armed wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah political movement has called for a comprehensive campaign against corruption in the Palestinian Authority, recommending that Arafat relinquish some of his powers and that militant groups -- including Islamic organizations -- be granted a formal governing voice, according to a report obtained by The Washington Post.
The proposal presented to senior Palestinian officials by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is the first formal attempt by an armed resistance group to seek a political role in the Palestinian Authority since the current uprising against Israel began nearly four years ago.
The 10-page document calls for the expulsion and prosecution of government officials involved in corruption, a wholesale purge of relatives and cronies of senior officials from government payrolls and a halt to the practice of government officials monopolizing sectors of the Palestinian economy to line "their private pockets."
The paper lashes out at "wives and sons and daughters of officials who are registered as employees and receive high salaries from the Palestinian Authority and are either at home or abroad." It attacks bureaucrats who "hold official titles and government jobs . . . when in fact they have no role other than the salary and position." It demands "eradication of the corruption in most of the PLO embassies and representatives" overseas.
Some Palestinian officials described the appeal as a major shift in the strategy of militant fighters and one of the most blistering internal criticisms yet of corruption in the Palestinian government.
"The impact of this initiative is that for the first time, something is coming from the ground up. It has credibility," said Ahmad Ghunaim, a member of Fatah's most influential governing councils and a representative of the movement's wing of young reformers.
In addition, Ghunaim said, "this is the first time the military part of Fatah is trying to force reforms."
Established by Arafat in 1959, Fatah became the most influential faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization and now dominates the 10-year-old Palestinian Authority. Fatah created the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades as its armed wing at the start of the current uprising to compete with, and stem the growing popularity of, other armed organizations -- principally the Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, and Islamic Jihad -- that waged campaigns of violence against Israeli soldiers and civilians.
According to Zakaria Zbeida, who heads the al-Aqsa group in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, al-Aqsa leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip crafted the proposal partially in response to Israel's announced plan to withdraw soldiers and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip within the next few years.
"We want to take part in this stage and not have the political process bypass us," Zbeida said in an interview at a rundown hideout in the Jenin refugee camp, as an armed assistant kept watch over a nearby street and an unmanned Israeli surveillance drone circled overhead. "We come with this initiative to prove we are not just a group of fighters throwing bullets here and there. . . . We are ready to sit and talk."
The al-Aqsa document urges a separation of powers between the Palestinian Authority and the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, saying "it is inconceivable" that both organizations can be headed by the same person. Arafat is chairman of the PLO executive committee and president of the Palestinian Authority.
"There's no doubt what it's calling for is significant," said Khalil Shikaki, a Palestinian pollster and political analyst. "This is a way of saying to Arafat that 'It's time for you to step down as head of the Palestinian Authority.' . . . That's a direct assault on Arafat. It's a clear indictment of the whole old guard."
Some Palestinian officials said the entrenched Palestinian leadership was unlikely to accept al-Aqsa's demands, which are far more detailed and wider in scope than reforms of the Palestinian Authority currently being sought by the United States, Israel and other outside governments and institutions.
Spokesmen for Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed the document. Arafat's spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, said it did not sound "serious."
Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon, said the proposal represented a power struggle between Arafat loyalists and younger Palestinian leaders. Al-Aqsa, Gissin added, "will replace one regime of intimidation with another. . . . Those who are with them will benefit, and those who are against them will be shot in the street."
However, Hassan Abu Libdeh, chief of staff for Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, said the document was important because "it shows al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades are very much willing to be integrated into the political team."
Although militant organizations in the Gaza Strip have begun discussions with the Palestinian Authority over shared control of Gaza if Israel completes its proposed withdrawal, the al-Aqsa document is the first formal proposal by a militant group outlining its demands and recommendations for participation in the government.
The report has been widely circulated among senior politicians and officials within the Palestinian Authority but has not been made public, according to al-Aqsa representatives and numerous Palestinian officials. Zbeida and Palestinian officials who have studied the document said the Palestinian government has offered no official response.
The proposals have been made at a time when the Israeli military has increased its assassinations of militant leaders in the West Bank and armed resistance groups have not conducted a suicide bombing inside Israel in nearly four months. Israeli officials say their military operations and the construction of a barrier separating the West Bank from Israel have diminished the ability of the militant groups to attack inside Israel.
The criticisms of the Palestinian Authority echo public sentiments. In an opinion poll released Sunday by Shikaki's Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 87 percent of Palestinians questioned said they believed institutions throughout the Palestinian Authority were corrupt.
The document recommends that the Palestinian government "open the doors to the absorption of the new generation" of leaders and government officials, a demand that has been sought for years by younger leaders and thwarted by Arafat and his associates. It recommends creation of a professional civil service, a strong and impartial judiciary, freedom of the press and a democratic society.
"There is a generational difference . . . different backgrounds and conditions and privileges," Ziad Abu Amr, an independent, reformist member of the Palestinian legislature and part of that younger generation, said in an interview in Gaza City.
Al-Aqsa also asks the Palestine Liberation Organization -- which has a strong history of secularism and separation from Islamic movements -- to integrate "all the national and Islamic forces." In the Palestinian territories, as across the Arab world, Islamic groups have grown in popularity, partially as a result of the conflict with Israel and the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.
In Shikaki's poll, a greater percentage of those surveyed said they would vote for Islamic candidates (28 percent) than would vote for Fatah candidates (26 percent) if local elections were held soon.
Researcher Samuel Sockol contributed to this report.
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7 Palestinians Killed During Gaza Clash With Israeli Troops
July 8, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/international/middleeast/08CND-MIDE.html
JERUSALEM, July 8 - Israeli troops killed at least seven Palestinians, most of them militants, during intense gunbattles early today in the northern Gaza Strip, where soldiers have been trying to halt Palestinian rocket attacks.
A 35-year-old Palestinian woman, Jamilia Hamad, was also among those killed in the town of Beit Hanun. She was shot in the abdomen while guiding her seven children through the streets in an effort to escape the fighting, according to relatives and hospital doctors.
Ten days ago, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles sealed off the town, in the northeast corner of Gaza, in response to Palestinian rocket fire that killed two Israelis just outside Gaza's boundary fence. The main Israeli positions have been on the fringes of the town, though soldiers and the Palestinian gunmen have waged several gun fights, resulting in several Palestinian deaths.
Despite the Israeli presence, the Palestinians have unleashed additional rocket salvos in recent days. Before dawn today, Israeli forces, supported by helicopters, pushed deeper into the town and immediately encountered heavy fire from Palestinian militants, the military said.
The Israelis also employed bulldozers to tear down olive and orange groves, Palestinian residents said. Israel says that Palestinians use the groves for cover when shooting rockets.
In firefights that lasted several hours, Israeli forces killed the seven Palestinians, according to doctors at the Kamal Adwan hospital nearby. Six belonged to armed factions, including Nahed Abu Oudeh, a local leader of the Islamic movement Hamas, the group responsible for most of the rocket fire coming from Gaza.
Mr. Oudeh's brother, Munir, said he had heard the Israeli troops approaching the family house from the back.
"I told him the forces were behind the house, but he said he didn't want to leave, he wanted to die as a martyr," Munir Oudeh said in an interview at the hospital, where his brother's body was taken.
Clutching an automatic rifle, Nahed Abu Oudeh went out the back of the house and battled the Israeli forces for about 10 minutes before he was killed, his brother said.
Nahed Abu Oudeh had been a member of Hamas since the late 1980's, and thousands of Hamas supporters attended his funeral this afternoon in Gaza City.
Meanwhile, as a gunbattle neared the Hamad family home, Mrs. Hamad woke her seven children at 6:30 a.m. and directed them toward the home of a relative, believing it would be safer, said Wafa'a Hamad, the 12-year-old daughter of Mrs. Hamad.
As the family took to the streets, Mrs. Hamad was shot and died of her wounds, hospital doctors said. Wafa'a was hospitalized with bullet wounds to the leg and the shoulder. She was among several Palestinians wounded in Beit Hanun.
On the Israeli side, one officer was shot and critically wounded during the initial stages of the fighting, the military said.
In southern Gaza, seven soldiers were wounded in clashes, five of them when their jeep was hit by an antitank missile, the army said. In the southern town of Khan Yunis, the military said, soldiers destroyed partly built and abandoned structures that Palestinians had used for cover when firing on Israeli forces.
Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, says he plans to withdraw Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers from Gaza by the end of next year. However, the coastal territory has been the scene of the worst Israeli-Palestinian violence in recent months.
Israel says it will continue to strike at armed Palestinian groups, and does not want a withdrawal interpreted as a sign of weakness. Hamas and other factions say they will continue to attack Israeli targets because there is no guarantee that the Israelis will withdraw.
The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, speaking from the West Bank city of Ramallah, condemned the latest Israeli operation. This "happens at a time when they are talking about the withdrawal - the fake withdrawal," he said.
--------
World Court to Rule on Legality of Israel Barrier
July 8, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-barrier.html
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The World Court rules on Friday on the legality of Israel's West Bank barrier, in a case that has underlined the paralysis of Middle East peacemaking after years of violence.
Israel has said it will not accept what is expected to be among the most watched rulings in the 58 years of the World Court. Israel says the network of fences, ditches and walls has already improved security, but Palestinians call it a land grab.
Shi Jiuyong of China, the head of the court's panel of 15 judges, will start reading the ruling at 9 a.m. EDT. Likely to run to many pages and possibly including dissenting opinions, the ruling could take as long as three hours to read.
Palestinians hope the International Court of Justice or World Court, the United Nations' highest legal authority, will say it is illegal for Israel to build on land that it captured in a 1967 war. They hope this might in turn trigger a campaign for sanctions against Israel.
``We put tremendous faith in this court,'' Palestinian President Yasser Arafat told reporters on Thursday.
The U.N. General Assembly, where pro-Palestinian sentiment is strong, requested an urgent advisory opinion in December, and the court in The Hague held hearings in February. The ruling is non-binding.
Israel has already completed 125 miles of fences and walls that should eventually stretch for 730 km.
The barrier has cut off thousands of Palestinians from farms, schools, relatives and jobs, but Israelis credit it with stopping suicide bombings and shooting attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis during nearly four years of conflict.
BOYCOTT CAMPAIGN?
Amaani al-Alami, who lives at Ar-Ram in the West Bank, said she might have to shut her kindergarten when 20-foot slabs of concrete are lifted into place for the latest section, stopping children getting to her school.
``I hope that the World Court will help us,'' she said.
If Friday's ruling favors the Palestinians, they might lobby in the General Assembly for sanctions against Israel -- similar to the move to ostracize apartheid South Africa after the World Court ruled its occupation of Namibia illegal in 1971.
``We hope we will have the tools for a 'Boycott Israel' campaign. We see great similarities with the condemnation of apartheid South Africa,'' said Wim Lankamp, chairman of a Dutch group that will protest against the barrier at the court.
Israeli officials are relying on the veto of their ally, the United States, in the U.N. Security Council to defeat any attempt to push through punitive measures if the ruling goes against them.
Ron Kehrmann, an Israeli from Haifa whose 18-year-old daughter was killed in a suicide bombing last year, said his daughter would still be alive if the barrier had gone up sooner, and that a World Court ruling could exacerbate tensions.
``I hope they will not interfere too much between us and the Palestinians,'' he told reporters outside the court. ``I really hope this fence will be legalized and the Court will let the Israeli government finish the job so we will have some peace.''
Last week, Israel's High Court ruled that sections of the barrier should be moved to ease Palestinian hardship and ensure access to farmland, schools and cities, but it also recognized Israel's security need to build inside the West Bank.
-------- nato
Next NATO ministers' meeting to take place in Nice: France
PARIS (AFP)
Jul 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040708130830.nf9ts37z.html
The next meeting of defence ministers from NATO members states is to take place in the French Riviera city of Nice on February 9-11 next year, the French defence ministry said Thursday.
The last such gathering was held in February this year in the German city of Munich.
-----
Washington wants early NATO decision on Iraq training
BRUSSELS (AFP)
Jul 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040708173618.hei62toc.html
The United States is hoping for an early decision on what form NATO training for Iraqi armed forces will take and has in mind for instructors to be on the ground from this summer on, US NATO envoy Nicholas Burns said Thursday.
"Our expectation is that NATO will see its way to do that this summer," he told journalists.
NATO heads of state and government agreed in Istanbul on June 28 that the North Atlantic Alliance should help with training Iraqi forces.
But the US and France differ on the exact role to be played by the Alliance on the ground in Iraq. France is a member of NATO's political council but not of its integrated military command structure.
Burns said there was no doubt that NATO leaders had already taken the decision "that there is going be a NATO mission in Iraq."
NATO sent a fact-finding team to Iraq on Monday. Its leader US Admiral Gregory Johnson has returned but left a small team in Baghdad for some days.
-------- russia / georgia
Southern Osetia: Start of a War?
From: "Michael Kerjman" <mkwrk2@yahoo.com>
Date: Thu Jul 8, 2004 5:22am
Source: http://www.polit.ru/publicism/world/2004/07/08/war.html
Yesterday, Georgian army confiscated Russian-made ammunition delivered into Sth.Osetia.
A non-recognized Republic of Sth.Osetia's president, Mr. Eduard Kokoity had announced that all military contingents not being a part of a peacekeeping force will be treated as bandits' units.
Weapons have been handed in to the Osetins.
Georgian population of Vanity leaves homes and relocates in a Shita- Katlsky region of Georgia, since Osetins had this morning disarmed a Georgian military unit-a part of a peacekeeping force and taken a control over Tkviavi, a Vanity's checkpoint. Forty Georgian troopers are held hostage. The Adjarians come to support Georgian population of Sth. Osetia.
Georgian Minister for Conflicts Stabilization, Mr. Georgy Haindrava, rejected explanations of a Commander of Russian Peacekeeping Contigent, Mr. Svyatoslav Nabzdorov, that the ammunition was transported in Georgian region of Sth. Osetia in accordance with agreement of 02 June, 2004.
Georgian government investigates voluntary decision of own military staff to allow helicopters for peacekeeping. However, no permit for missiles was issued.
Russia's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. S. Lavrov, had "expressed a deep concern" and told that Georgia's actions could initiate an adequate response.
(Non-authorized translation from Russian
NOTE: A North Caucasian region of Osetia is divided between Russia and Georgia. Its southern part seeks more autonomy from a central government in Tbilisi, Georgia. Population: Georgians, Osetins and Russians predominantly.)
--------
Russia silences Free Speech
Last televised forum for open debate of political issues taken off the air
theglobeandmail.com
By MARK MacKINNON
July 8, 2004
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040708/RUSSIA08/TPInternational/TopStories
MOSCOW -- On another day, the symbolism of having a show titled Free Speech censored might have been enough to make Savik Shuster laugh. But yesterday was not the time for appreciating ironies. These are serious days for anyone attempting to do independent journalism in Russia.
Free Speech, which was taken off the air yesterday by Russia's NTV channel, was seen as the last televised forum in the country for open debate of political issues. A talk show with an edge, it drew a highly intelligent audience and Mr. Shuster and his guests were remarkable on the increasingly bland Russian television dial for their willingness to question and criticize the Kremlin.
But in Vladimir Putin's Russia, there are lines you don't cross. The outspoken Mr. Shuster, a Lithuanian-born Canadian citizen and graduate of McGill University's medical school, has had so many clashes with the Kremlin and its allies that he isn't sure when or where he overstepped the bounds.
It might have been his last program, on July 1, when he slammed the pro-Putin United Russia party for refusing to send a guest to debate an unpopular government plan that would see social benefits for retirees and veterans replaced with cash payouts.
"United Russia's argument was that it was 'inexpedient' -- that's how freedom of speech is in the country today," the bespectacled 51-year-old said on the air, a comment sure to anger some powerful figures.
Or it could have been last month, when he used his show to question why Moscow was bidding for the 2012 Olympic Games when money is desperately needed for health care and pension reform. After that, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov asked aloud why a "citizen of a foreign state" was allowed to host such a prominent television show.
Or it could have been two years ago, when Mr. Putin himself criticized Free Speech for its coverage of a hostage-taking by Chechen gunmen at a Moscow theatre. After Mr. Shuster interviewed the angry relatives of those who died in the special-forces raid that ended the standoff, the Kremlin ensured that his next show was taped, rather than live to air as usual.
"It's very difficult for me to say why this happened," Mr. Shuster said yesterday in a brief telephone interview, his voice low and strained. "It seems to me that this is political."
Mr. Shuster had to be coy. He said he is still considering another job he's been offered at NTV. While several sources confirmed yesterday that the show has been taken off the air, the station, which is owned by the state-controlled Gazprom energy company, said that no official decision had been made and that it was "just rumours" so far.
News of the shuffle came just two days after the NTV appointed Kremlin loyalist Vladimir Kulistikov to run the station. The network is one of three that broadcast across all 11 of Russia's time zones. The other two are directly state-owned.
Since Mr. Putin came to power in 2000, all independent Russian television networks have been taken over by Kremlin-aligned companies. With few exceptions, the rest of the media use careful self-censorship to avoid angering the authorities.
For Mr. Shuster, who fled the Soviet Union with his family in 1971 only to be drawn back to Russia in the late 1980s by the promise of a free society inherent in Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost, the cancellation of his program had to be a body blow.
"It's very sad news as it was the last live political talk show on Russian TV," said his colleague, former NTV host Leonid Parfyonov.
Mr. Parfyonov's own popular show, Namedni, was taken off the air last month after he broadcast an interview with the widow of an assassinated Chechen separatist leader.
"The appointment of a new general director wasn't expected to bring such radical moves; I really didn't expect this," he said.
Nikolai Petrov, a media expert with the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, said the sudden cancellation of Mr. Shuster's show shows that the Kremlin is no longer concerned with the impression it gives while it moves to silence its critics.
"It's a rather symbolic gesture. Until now, in all discussions about mass media and freedom of speech, the Kremlin would point to this program as evidence of the absence of any censorship or pressure on big media," he said. "Now it's gone."
-------- spies
C.I.A. Chief Bids Colleagues Farewell
July 8, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08CND-TENE.html?hp
WASHINGTON, July 8 - Seven years to the week after he took over as intelligence chief, George J. Tenet bid farewell today in a bittersweet ceremony at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters.
Mr. Tenet has been a hero to many intelligence officials, who credit him with restoring budgets and morale, but he leaves at a time when the C.I.A. and other agencies are facing more fire than at any time in nearly three decades.
The 10 a.m. departure ceremony for Mr. Tenet, in an outdoor courtyard, was closed to the press. But C.I.A. officials were planning later in the day to release a transcript and videotape of his remarks, along with at least a partial guest list.
With the Senate Intelligence Committee preparing to issue a report harshly critical of the agency's performance in providing prewar intelligence on Iraq, Mr. Tenet's speech may be seen as serving as a pre-emptive response.
In recent weeks, Mr. Tenet and top deputies, including John McLaughlin, who will take over as the acting intelligence chief, have also sought to call attention to what they regard as the agency's recent successes, including progress in winnowing the ranks of Al Qaeda's senior leadership since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Still, the Senate report, to be issued on Friday, is just the first of three reports to be issued in coming weeks that will focus on intelligence failures under Mr. Tenet. The Senate report and another later this summer by the top weapons hunter in Iraq, Charles A. Duelfer, will focus on the gap between prewar assessments that said Iraq possessed illicit weapons and the fact that no such weapons have been found since the war.
The third report, by the presidential commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, will focus on the failure of intelligence agencies to anticipate and pre-empt the strikes, including what intelligence officials have acknowledged were mistakes and missteps.
Mr. McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, is to take over as acting director on July 11, the day that Mr. Tenet's resignation takes effect. That day is the seventh anniversary of his confirmation to the post, marking a tenure as intelligence chief that is now second in length to only Allen Dulles, who held the job under Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy.
Mr. Tenet has said that he is stepping down for personal reasons, and in particular to spend more time with his family and his only son, who will be a high-school senior next year, and who was in second grade when his father began work at the C.I.A., in 1995, as deputy director of central intelligence.
But Mr. Tenet's friends acknowledge that the burdens of the criticisms that have been directed at the agency since Sept. 11 have also taken a toll. In a recent speech, Mr. McLaughlin compared the environment with the one of 1975, when several panels and commissions, including a Congressional committee headed by Senator Frank Church, were uncovering what proved to have been serious abuses by the C.I.A. and its officers.
"The question to ask is not why an entire system broke down - it did not, and it has not - but rather why it did not perform in every instance as well as it might have," Mr. McLaughlin said in the June 24 speech. "And whether we, in the intelligence community, are learning from the experience."
-------- us
Troops in Iraq suffer huge risk of injury
Deaths hold steady, but rate of postwar wounded soaring
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER NEWS SERVICES
Thursday, January 8, 2004
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/155731_iraq08.html
WASHINGTON -- Nearly as many U.S. soldiers were wounded in Iraq last month as during the entire six-week period of major combat operations, according to Defense Department statistics tracked by a leading research organization.
The figures illustrate the ongoing danger faced by U.S. forces, even as the frequency of insurgent attacks appears to be declining and the number of soldiers killed has mostly held steady.
"That's a lot of pain," said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a defense-focused think tank that compiled the figures. "It suggests that the level of intensity of operations over there is a lot higher than would be suggested by the 'killed in action' numbers. ... The 'killed in action' numbers suggest that we're winning the war, and the wounded in action numbers suggest that we're losing."
Last night, in a more vivid reminder of the dangers facing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, anti-American insurgents fired mortar rounds at a military camp, wounding 35, the U.S. command said.
Six mortar rounds exploded about 6:45 p.m. at Logistical Base Seitz west of Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman said in a statement. The camp is in the so-called Sunni Muslim triangle that is a stronghold of resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
"The wounded soldiers were given first aid and have been evacuated from the site for further medical treatment," the statement said. The Pentagon added the soldiers were from the Army's 541st Maintenance Battalion, based in Fort Riley, Kan., and part of the 3rd Corps Support Command.
A Pentagon spokesman said some of those wounded returned to duty shortly after the attack, while others were hospitalized. The spokesman, Lt. Col. James Cassella, said he did not know how many were seriously or slightly wounded.
According to the Defense Department figures that Pike's group compiled, 530 U.S. troops were wounded in December, only slightly fewer than the 550 wounded during combat operations last spring.
It was impossible to track month-by-month wounded statistics before December, Pike said, because the Pentagon only started releasing daily tabulations of them in late November.
But he said that according to previous news reports of Pentagon figures, 570 U.S. troops were wounded in combat from May through August, while from September through November, 1,052 soldiers were wounded.
The number of U.S. troops killed in action has held fairly steady each month since the end of major combat was declared on May 1, varying from 29 to 46.
The exception came in November when successful attacks on U.S. forces, especially on helicopters, resulted in 81 deaths.
U.S. military officials and national security specialists said the high number of injuries could reflect December's stepped-up anti-guerrilla activities.
Military specialists said that explanation seemed plausible given the lack of a corresponding rise in the number of troops killed, as insurgents would be more deadly in ambushes prepared against U.S. troops than if they were caught by surprise.
"There is some intuitive logic to the idea that if they're ambushing us, they're going to be more apt to kill us," said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.
O'Hanlon also said that the number of daily attacks against U.S. forces declined in the last few months of 2003, from 30 to 35 in October to 22 per day in November to fewer than 20 daily in December.
Major General Charles Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, which is responsible for western Iraq, said there has been a 60 percent decrease in attacks on U.S. forces over the past month and that the attacks that have occurred are "less effective."
Most attacks have come in the Sunni-dominated region north of Baghdad.
But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was more cautious. "I see numbers that drop down, and the question is, when is it a trend and when might it turn and go up again?" he told reporters Tuesday. "It's different in different parts of that country. It's not a uniform pattern in that country. It may be down in one region and up in another."
Jack Spencer, a defense analyst with the Heritage Foundation, said the figures showed the importance of U.S. forces transferring security duties to Iraqis.
"At the end of the day, that's the only way Iraq will be stabilized and pacified in the long term."
Meanwhile, at a checkpoint on the barren plain east of Baqouba, word of a new Army plan to pay soldiers up to $10,000 to re-enlist evoked laughter from a few bored-looking troops.
"Man, they can't pay me enough to stay here," said a 23-year-old specialist from the Army's 4th Infantry Division as he manned the checkpoint with Iraqi police outside this city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad.
His comments reflect a sentiment not uncommon among the nearly two dozen soldiers in Iraq who have spoken with The Associated Press since the Army announced the increased re-enlistment bonuses for soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait on Monday.
Other soldiers at home were divided about the offer.
Those in Iraq who spoke about the bonuses were serving in a range of assignments, from training the new Iraqi army at a base east of Baqouba to patrolling some of the most dangerous roads in the country, such as those leading north from Baghdad.
Some cited the monotonous routine of a lonely life spent thousands of miles from loved ones. Others, like the young specialist who didn't want to be identified, offered simpler reasons -- such as the fear of an early death.
----
Lawmakers: Troop call-ups pose 'alarm'
USA TODAY
By Tom Squitieri and Dave Moniz,
Jul 8, 2004
The open-ended demand for large numbers of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is pushing the National Guard and reserves to the breaking point and jeopardizing the long-term health of the U.S. military, senior Republican and Democratic House members warned Wednesday.
Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives' Armed Services Committee, said the Pentagon (news - web sites) is "wearing our people out" and threatening to break the force by activating more and more reserve and National Guard units and stopping soldiers whose enlistments have expired from leaving the service.
"Each of these is a concern. But taken together, they pose for me a serious alarm," Skelton said. "They are stop-gap measures as if the end (of the fighting) is near. At what point do we stop pretending this year will be the last the demand is so high?"
Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., said the Pentagon has forced deployment of Army and Marine Corps troops without sufficient time to rest between missions.
"I am also concerned that insufficient force structure and manpower are leading the service to ... do things that mortgage the future," Hunter said. As an example, he cited recent decisions to deploy to Iraq elite units that are usually used to train other troops for combat.
The extended war-zone tours for part-time soldiers may be hurting the effort to find new volunteers for the nation's largest force of part-time troops. Two-thirds of the way through its October-September fiscal year, the Army National Guard is thousands of soldiers short of its 2004 recruiting goal, according to the Guard's interim numbers.
The active-duty Army and the Army Reserve are close to their recruiting targets, according to Army statistics and testimony at Wednesday's hearing. But as of May 31, the Army National Guard was about 14% short of its eight-month target for 2004. At the end of May, the Guard had signed up 32,052 enlistees, 5,434 volunteers short of its target of 37,486 recruits. The Army Guard began the year planning to recruit about 56,000 soldiers in 2004, but achieving that figure could now be in jeopardy.
Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a military and national security policy group in Arlington, Va., said long deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are the chief reason fewer people are joining the National Guard.
"The Guard used to be weekend duty and a couple of weeks of duty a year, and nobody going in the Guard looked at 12 to 15 months in Iraq," Thompson said. "If you go into the Army, you have made a choice to be a war-fighting professional. So if they go to Afghanistan or Iraq, that enhances their prospects for promotion. People in the Guard have other careers and (a long assignment) could hurt their private sector careers."
At Wednesday's House committee hearing, top civilian and uniformed military officials acknowledged that the demand for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan is putting an unusual strain on the military. There are 141,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and 17,900 in Afghanistan. National Guard and Reserve soldiers make up nearly 40% of the troops in Iraq.
In a rare public acknowledgement that the forces are thinly stretched, Gen. Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, said the U.S. military currently is not able to "surge" - meaning to send an overwhelming force to fight a major war. "We are rapidly trying to rebuild the surge capacity," he said. "We are concerned about it."
Committee members questioned officials closely about recent Pentagon moves, particularly one last week to activate more than 5,600 members of the Army's Individual Ready Reserve, a rarely used group of soldiers who have been discharged after finishing their voluntary active-duty tours, but not the full, eight-year commitments they make when they enlist. The Ready Reserve was last called up in significant numbers during the Persian Gulf War (news - web sites) in 1991.
"The fact that (the Ready Reserve call-up) is rare does not mean it is inappropriate," said David Chu, the undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness.
Chu said that the recent steps taken by the military are not "measures of last resort" but made "to ensure the burden of service is shared equally.
"This is the way we would sustain this (high deployment level) over the long-term future if that is the requirement," he said.
------
No Plans for Military Draft, Official Says
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A10
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35283-2004Jul7.html
There are no plans to reinstate a military draft and the Bush administration does not support conscription, the Pentagon's top official for personnel and readiness told Congress yesterday.
Trying to counter recent Internet rumors that the military and the Selective Service System are girding for a potential draft to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Undersecretary of Defense David S.C. Chu said there is no reason to bring back the draft. He fielded questions at a House Armed Services Committee hearing that focused on the strains on military personnel as officials plan to rotate more troops into the conflicts in coming months.
"The administration does not support resumption of the draft," Chu said, responding to a question from Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.). "There is no secret plan on this front."
Members of the committee bemoaned the rising stress on the Army and the increasing use of the National Guard and Reserves. Chu and top military officials said that there is definitely a strain, but that the Army can handle its current operations while relying on reserve forces to share "the burden of service" throughout the all-volunteer military.
There are 18 brigades with more than 140,000 troops in Iraq, and officials said yesterday that the next rotation will keep about 135,000 troops there in 17 brigades. The U.S military is expected to have a presence in Iraq for several years, but Pentagon officials yesterday declined to speak to the committee publicly about future rotations, saying only that they will be "different."
Last week, the Army announced it is dipping into a pool of soldiers who have left active duty, calling up 5,600 this week who are in the Individual Ready Reserve. While the IRR has more than 111,000 members, the Army's Human Resources Command has identified more than 22,000 it could call into service if needed. Pentagon officials have said they probably will tap into some of that pool.
A recent "stop-loss" order kept thousands of soldiers in the military despite their plans to leave active duty, and it followed a Pentagon decision to move thousands of troops from South Korea into western Iraq by early next year. The Army is also sending its elite training forces overseas.
As of the next rotation into Iraq, reserve components are slated to make up 43 percent of the forces there, said Air Force Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Gen. Richard A. Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, said forces are "absolutely" stretched thin. He also said the entire force is doing a job it was not necessarily trained for, arguing that the Army needs to reconfigure from a Cold War stance to a more versatile force for the global war on terrorism. "This is a different war," he said.
Some lawmakers said yesterday that they fear the military is dangerously close to being broken. Rep. Ike Skelton (Mo.), the committee's ranking Democrat, said he believes that the military is wearing its soldiers out. Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said he believes the military is "using people pretty hard right now" and needs to consider expanding, an idea the Pentagon has resisted because it would raise the military's budget.
"We are also concerned that insufficient force structure and manpower are leaving the services to make a decision that I liken to eating the seed corn," committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) said.
--------
Hostile Mission for Recruiters
Prison Scandal Discourages Enlistment in 372nd MP Unit
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35400-2004Jul7?language=printer
KEYSER, W.Va. -- In an oil-stained gas station parking lot, Army recruiter Justin Broadwater drinks iced tea and waits, paperwork ready, for an 18-year-old he says is "hard-core ready to go."
Sgt. Broadwater hopes so, anyway. His wedding plans give him only two weeks to meet his monthly quota of three new soldiers. One is already in hand. He's hoping that this will be No. 2.
His cell phone rings. "Yeah, buddy, I'm down here. . . . Yeah? Ah. That's bad," then a quick sign off and a sigh. The candidate's mother is sick. He'll reschedule soon; he's not sure when.
Broadwater's smile slips, rights itself. "It's a good sign, calling like that," he says. "Most of them, if they don't want to join, they'll just no-show you."
A military recruiter's job is rarely easy, but few have it harder than Broadwater, who's drawn what might be the toughest task in the stateside military: trying to fill openings in the notorious 372nd Military Police Company, in Cresaptown, Md., seven members of which are charged with abusing Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Across a swath of Appalachian Maryland and West Virginia, Broadwater works 12-hour days, hunting for volunteers on increasingly hostile terrain.
The Army says it is recruiting enough soldiers nationwide, but here, in the epicenter of the scandal, it's falling short. Last year, Broadwater, 24, signed up more reservists for the 372nd and other units than anyone else in his battalion. This year, he struggles to find one in a month.
"Tough or easy, it's what you make it," Broadwater says of his job. For him, "it's a privilege."
Broadwater and three other Army recruiters work in LaVale, Md., in a strip mall office next to a bridal shop. When the phone rings, they all lunge for it. Each must find one to four new soldiers a month, and it takes nearly every waking moment to do it.
To reach his goal, Broadwater drives nearly 5,000 miles and makes 2,000 phone calls a month, getting, if he's lucky, one appointment for every 65 calls. He has signed kids up at football practices and on basketball courts, in cars and in one-room houses crowded with extended family. He chauffeurs the recruits to Pittsburgh for their physicals, coaches them for their aptitude tests and calls them every few days to ward off cold feet. Despite all that, he's missed his monthly target several times recently, including a couple of months when he went without a single recruit.
By the end of May, the battalion was more than 500 soldiers short of its year-to-date goal of 1,574. Last fall, LaVale was the most successful station among 34 in the battalion, which covers the Maryland and West Virginia panhandles and western Pennsylvania. But by spring, 11 recruits had backed out of their commitments, a rate "at least double" the rate last fall, said Sgt. 1st Class John Summerfield, the LaVale station commander. Iraq, he says, "is a big part of it."
Poor and patriotic regions like this one are the lifeblood of America's volunteer military. Kids join as soon as they leave high school, for the college money, the job training, the opportunities so scarce at home. They join because they're proud of their country and they want to help. But during the past three years, they've been seeing more combat and less college. Every reserve unit in this area has been called to the Middle East at least once. Two active duty soldiers died, one with young kids, the other a kid himself. Then came Abu Ghraib and the photos that disgusted the world. Now, pride comes mixed with anger and growing doubts about the war.
"It's the parents holding me back," Broadwater says. When he calls, they hang up the phone, refuse to put their children on the line, tell him off. They try to talk their sons and daughters out of joining, and, more often now, they succeed.
Broadwater pushes the numbers hard: Serve one weekend a month for six years and earn thousands in college money, bonuses and pay. He tells the mothers, "If the Lord's going to take you, he'll take you sitting right there in your chair." They remind him that an Iraqi bomb took Pvt. Brandon L. Davis, 20, this spring. The parts of his body that could be identified were buried near his home in Cumberland, Md., and the rest, weeks later, in Arlington. It was a mortar attack that took Sgt. George A. Mitchell of Antioch, W.Va., a soldier's soldier who used to take his toddlers to church on Sundays so his wife could get some sleep.
This is what Laura Anderson thinks about when her daughter Cecelia Haslicker -- blonde and athletic, bubbly and accident-prone -- says she wants to be an Army truck driver. "Are you sure this is what you want to do? Are you sure?'" the Winchester, Va., mother asks. Anderson's 21-year-old son just came home from Iraq, his back injured from dodging an ambush. "Does anyone listen to their parents?" she wonders.
"I don't want to just sit around this town," says Haslicker, 18, of Cumberland, who ships out to basic training later this month. "I'm up for adventure. I want to make something of myself."
Broadwater helped sell Brandon Davis on the Army and says he's "up there" -- pointing heavenward -- "proud." Like Davis, Broadwater was a combat engineer, but in the reserves, which he joined at 17. Broadwater's family members were shocked two years ago when he left a good-paying construction job for active duty in the LaVale recruiting station.
"After September 11th, one weekend a month in uniform wasn't enough," he explains. He grew up in this region, too, in Meyersdale, Pa. In high school, he wrestled against Joseph Darby, the 372nd MP who slipped a note under a superior's door describing the prisoner abuse by his comrades-in-arms. Broadwater has put three recruits into the 372nd this year, he says. "Are they going to be good soldiers? Yeah, they will be."
"I love the Army," he says a half-dozen times in a day. It's given him a career path, and, certainly in this job, firm goals. He's had Army logos and colors stitched onto his new leather jacket and painted on his motorcycle. Broadwater would go to Iraq "right now," he says.
Instead, he is headed to Frostburg, his wheeled suitcase filled with brochures and key chains for the freshmen at Frostburg State University.
Broadwater strides across the campus, his crew-cut head swiveling. "Some days I'll walk along . . . and the kids are all like this," he demonstrates, hiding his face and turning away. A week ago, Broadwater was at another college when an administrator tried to run him off. She knew Davis, the dead soldier from Cumberland, and she told Broadwater that she'd tear down his recruiting posters. Broadwater lost his temper. "He died for your right for complain!" he shouted at her.
The campus is empty. Broadwater gives his business card to an administrator whose foster son "needs the military" and suggests a basketball game with a muscular senior who's favoring the Air Force.
"Where're the kids today?" Broadwater keeps asking. They tell him to come back tonight for the freshman barbecue.
Back in LaVale, Broadwater calls Joshua Hickey, his first recruit this month, who says he wants to serve "to do my part, and earn bonuses for college." Hickey has a friend who might want to join. Broadwater sets up a meeting at the Keyser gas station. "You really need to push him for me," he tells Hickey. Three times, he says, "If there's a problem, call."
Dale Terry, the battalion's advertising and public relations chief, bustles around the office. He has come from Pittsburgh to find ways to stem the losses. He might order a larger sign for the center. He is thinking about sponsoring a local running race. He's checked into doing more TV ads. He has wandered through the Wal-Mart, asking local people how they feel about the Army. "Ninety percent positive," he says, riffling through a stack of questionnaires, quoting from a few. "Good job!" writes Ruth, 45. "When they abuse people there's no excuse for it," writes Stacey, 33.
"We are a nation at war," Terry says. "The moms and dads are hearing conflicting stories from the media. But the Army drives on."
The four recruiters look at him, then go back to their phones. They remember the surge of walk-ins after Sept. 11, when the war on terrorism began. These days, hardly anybody walks through the door and into the Army. Candidates with a felony or a drug or weapons charge on their records won't do. Some flunk their aptitude tests. In the past few days, three LaVale recruits failed their physicals: one for a wart, one for a bunion and one because he'd been poked in the eye a day before. The men call the Army doctor "the anti-recruiter."
Broadwater shrugs into his leather jacket with Army logos and mounts the motorcycle painted Army colors. His feet barely touch the ground as he revs up, then zips through the foothills to Frostburg.
Peach-fuzzed kids in shorts reflect off his mirrored sunglasses as Broadwater scans the crowd. He's looking for Steven McKelvey, a reservist from Bel Air, Md., who wants to transfer to a unit closer to campus. When the recruiter finds him, the pre-law freshman says he'd like to be a military policeman.
Broadwater brightens. An MP for the 372nd.
"Awesome unit," he says. "Awesome."
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State Dept. Announces Missing Marine Is at Embassy in Lebanon
July 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Lebanon-US-Marine.html?hp
BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) -- A U.S. Marine who was reported missing in Iraq more than two weeks ago is alive and at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, where American officials are meeting with him, authorities said Thursday.
Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun is safe and appears to be in good health, said a Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
In making the announcement about Hassoun, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington: ``We were able to go get him.''
Boucher said Hassoun arrived at the embassy around 6 p.m. (11 a.m. EDT,) but he had no other details and no information on Hassoun's immediate plans. As for his military status, Boucher said that would be up to the Defense Department.
When reached at his West Jordan, Utah, home Thursday morning, Hassoun's brother, Mohamad, said he had no comment.
Contradictory reports have surrounded the fate of the 24-year-old Lebanese native since his disappearance June 20.
On Saturday, a statement posted on a Web site known for extremist Muslim comment said Hassoun had been beheaded. A day later, another Web statement declared he had not been killed.
An Iraqi militant group said Monday it was holding him in a safe place but hadn't killed him. Al-Jazeera television broadcast the statement from ``Islamic Response,'' which claimed responsibility June 27 for Hassoun's kidnapping.
NBC reported the Navy was investigating whether his disappearance may be part of a kidnapping hoax. A Marine spokesman confirmed the Navy investigation remains open.
``I don't think they're ruling that out. It would be fair to say they're not ruling that out,'' Maj. Nat Fahy said earlier Thursday.
A spokesman for the Bahrain-based U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet said the ``matter is under investigation by Naval Criminal Investigative Service'' and referred further questions to the service in Washington. A call to the service seeking comment was not immediately returned.
Reports emerged he might have been freed after his family in Utah said Tuesday they had word that he had been released and was safe, but they didn't know where.
Earlier, a Lebanese Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hassoun ``is with his parents'' in northern Lebanon. But journalists gathered outside the family's Tripoli home saw no sign of Hassoun.
Hassoun's brother, Sami, refused to confirm or deny the information when reached by the AP for comment.
On Tuesday, he said someone had visited the family in northern Lebanon and told them his brother was free and well. A Lebanese government official said Wednesday the kidnappers released Hassoun after he pledged he would not return to the U.S. military.
Two FBI agents met with the Hassoun family in Utah for about 20 minutes Wednesday. The agents were not there to deliver any news to the family, but instead were sent to determine where the family was getting its information about Hassoun's whereabouts, agent Kelly Kleinvachter said.
The Marines said Hassoun disappeared on ``unauthorized leave,'' but changed his status to ``captured'' after he turned up June 27 on television blindfolded with a sword hanging over his head.
Some of those claiming to be the captors have said he was romantically involved with an Arab woman and was lured away from his Marine base and captured. There also were reports that Hassoun, who was educated at American schools in Lebanon before moving to Utah and joining the Marines, might have been trying to get to Lebanon when he was captured.
Some reports also have said Hassoun fled his camp near the restive Iraqi city of Fallujah after seeing one of his colleagues killed by a mortar shell; others indicated he was lured out and captured.
Earlier Thursday, no overt signs of joy or preparations to welcome Hassoun could be seen at the family residence in Tripoli, an apartment on the second floor of a six-story building in the low-income Abu Samra district of Lebanon's second-largest city.
For Hassoun to make his way to Lebanon from Iraq, about 500 miles away, he would have to travel through Syria, which borders Iraq's western Anbar province, where his unit, the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, is based. Hassoun worked as a translator.
The United States has accused Syria of not doing enough to prevent militants from infiltrating its border to Iraq to fight U.S. and allied forces.
Syria is the main power broker in Lebanon, where it keeps thousands of troops. There are no direct flights from Iraq, and another possible route, through U.S.-allied Jordan, is unlikely because he could end up with the Americans.
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MILITARY
U.S. Starts Drawing Plans to Cut Its Troops in Iraq
July 8, 2004
By ERIC SCHMITT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08mili.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, July 7 - With an interim Iraqi government now in place, the Pentagon is beginning long-range planning on how to reduce the number of American troops in Iraq, senior military officials said Wednesday.
Pentagon officials have previously said that about 135,000 troops would stay in Iraq through 2005. But the military's Joint Staff is working on detailed plans to reduce that number by 2006, on the assumption that Iraqi Army and other security forces will be ready to take on more responsibility by then, officials said.
At a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday, the top operations officer for the Joint Staff, Lt. Gen. Norton A. Schwartz of the Air Force, signaled that this thinking was well under way. When asked about planning for the size of an American force that could move into Iraq for yearlong assignments beginning in early 2006, he declined to give specific figures but said, "The bottom line is, it is different than what we anticipate" for 2005. He added, "There is a significant planning effort that will wrap up later this summer.''
A senior defense official said later that the Joint Staff was developing options for a smaller force in Iraq, proposals that would be consistent with the goal of Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top American commander in the Middle East, to reduce the American military presence in Iraq over time. Some officials said those options revolved around 100,000 troops, or fewer, but troop levels could increase if security in Iraq worsened.
Reducing American forces in Iraq has been a consistent goal of the Bush administration. While any reduction would almost certainly occur after the November elections, the prospects could blunt Democrats' contentions that the administration planned poorly for the period after the fall of Saddam Hussein's government.
The continued American presence is also a sore spot for the new Iraqi government as it seeks to establish credibility with the Iraqi people. And reducing it would lessen the strains placed on the United States Army by troop commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.
Democrats and Republicans voiced concern at Wednesday's hearing that the Army was wearing out its active duty and reserve forces, a worry that even a top Army officer said he shared. "Are we stretched thin with our active and reserve component forces right now?'' said Gen. Richard A. Cody, the new Army vice chief of staff. "Absolutely.''
But General Cody, along with the Pentagon's top personnel official, David S. C. Chu, said the Army was meeting its commitments, and recruitment and retention remained generally strong.
For the first time, General Schwartz outlined the Pentagon's strategy for how Iraqi national guard and army forces could gradually replace American troops around the country, starting in the relatively stable north where he said security patrols would soon be conducted exclusively by Iraqi forces. In parts of the country where the insurgency is still fierce, American forces will remain in strength and conduct patrols on their own or with Iraqi troops.
"The bottom line is, is that this will be done incrementally and it will be done in locations around Iraq where transitions can occur and the Iraqi security forces can be successful," said General Schwartz, who said that as Iraqi forces proved they could secure a region, American forces there would move to more restive areas.
"We will cascade American forces from those locations to places where they can be better utilized," General Schwartz said. "And ultimately, naturally, we'll reduce the force structure in Iraq."
How long American forces stay in Iraq and in what numbers will be driven by security conditions and how quickly Iraqi security forces establish themselves, senior military officers here and in Iraq said. The United States Army, which is providing the bulk of the troops in Iraq, is preparing worst-case contingency plans to keep troop numbers at their current levels of 135,000 to 140,000 for the next several years, if necessary.
"We've got plans to do that for as long as it takes because this will be event-driven, not time-driven," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on "The Newshour With Jim Lehrer'' on PBS on July 1. General Schwartz said Wednesday that, based on the experience of training indigenous forces in Afghanistan, it would be "several years" before Iraq would develop a full complement of security forces.
But with one of the Army's most highly regarded officers, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, now overseeing the training and equipping of Iraqi forces, and a new four-star American commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., on the ground, military officials are expressing guarded confidence that American troop levels in Iraq may actually begin to decline rather than increase, as they have steadily over the last year.
General Abizaid is expected to wait until at least September to give his assessment on whether troop levels can be adjusted up or down.
Even as tensions flared in Sunni strongholds like Falluja and Baquba, American military officials pointed to encouraging signs elsewhere in Iraq. Last week in Mosul, for instance, Iraqi security forces conducted two operations that seized weapons, ammunition and people suspected of being insurgents, all with very little help from American troops, officials said.
"There were, not unexpectedly, a few minor hiccups," Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham, the top American commander in northern Iraq, said via e-mail. "But every day we are closer to the day when Iraqi security forces will have the capability to manage their own security matters."
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- homeland security
Ridge Says Terror Threat Is Increasing but No Details Yet
July 8, 2004
By DAVID STOUT
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08CND-TERR.html
WASHINGTON, July 8 - American intelligence analysts have credible information that Al Qaeda terrorists are planning another attack in the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said today. But he said that the chances of heading off an attack were better than ever, and that there was no reason to raise the terrorist-threat level for now.
Mr. Ridge said reliable information pointed to an attack in which terrorists would try to "disrupt our democratic process." He added that extra protective measures would be in place at the political conventions, even though there was no specific indication that they were targets.
"We lack precise knowledge about time, place and method of attack, but along with the C.I.A., F.B.I. and other agencies, we are actively working to gain that knowledge," Mr. Ridge said.
Mr. Ridge delivered his assessment at a briefing in which he again seeemed to be walking a tightrope: urging people to be alert but conceding that he could not advise them on what exactly to look for. And he held out the hope that American intelligence and law-enforcement agencies would yet be able to pin down details.
Mr. Ridge brushed aside any suggestion that the administration was trying to create a widespread sense of unease that might work to President Bush's advantage less than four months before the election.
"It's a wrong interpretation," he said. "We are basically laying out before the general public the kind of information that we're received." And despite the dearth of hard, specific intelligence, Mr. Ridge said, "These are not conjectures or statements we are making, these are pieces of information that we can trace comfortably to sources that we deem to be credible."
Mr. Ridge said he and others in the intelligence field were evaluating information daily, that security had been enhanced at every level in recent months, and that he would personally inspect the sites of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, where the Secret Service will be the lead agency overseeing security measures. (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.)
Mr. Ridge's remarks today were not surprising, since federal officials have been saying for many months that terrorists would like to repeat, or even surpass, their assaults of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Al Qaeda has unambiguous plans to hit the homeland again," James L. Pavitt, the Central Intelligence Agency's outgoing head of clandestine operations, said in a recent speech in New York, "and New York City, I am certain, remains a prime target."
Mr. Ridge declined to discuss in detail what would impel the administration to raise the terror-alert level to the penultimate orange, or high, from the present yellow, or elevated. "We wouldn't want to necessarily broadcast to the terrorists what it would take for us to raise it to orange," he said. "But we know internally that there are a couple of tripwires that might cause us to pull everybody together to begin that whole process."
New York City, the site of the Republican convention, has been on high alert since the system was developed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Before his public briefing, Mr. Ridge and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller, briefed senators privately. Afterward, Senator Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the majority leader, indicated that nothing startling had emerged in the closed session.
"The essence of the briefing is that during this period of elections, this campaign season, that there is increased risk of a terrorist attack in the United States of America," Mr. Frist said. "The nature of that risk is very non-specific."
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Plane That Caused Capitol Evacuation Nearly Shot Down
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35440-2004Jul7?language=printer
The top general at the North American Aerospace Defense Command was on the telephone and prepared to order an F-16 fighter to shoot down an unidentified plane that turned out to be carrying the governor of Kentucky to former president Ronald Reagan's funeral last month, according to two federal security officials briefed separately about the incident.
The tense incident June 9 ended after the twin-engine Beechcraft King Air carrying Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R) turned to land at Reagan National Airport. But the close call caused officials to reassess safeguards for the airspace around Washington and prompted calls to expand the no-fly zone beyond its current 16-mile radius.
Although many planes have violated restrictions imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the June 9 episode was extraordinary because the aircraft penetrated so deeply into the no-fly zone during a high-security event and remained unidentified to air defense officials for several critical minutes. Current and former homeland security officials said the incident was a significant security breakdown.
The episode, described by some officials as the closest the government has come to downing a civilian plane over Washington since Sept. 11, 2001, will be the subject of two hearings on Capitol Hill today. Civil aviation officials will testify before a House subcommittee on aviation, and military officials have been invited to a classified briefing before the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees.
"Even without the communications breakdowns involved in Governor Fletcher's flight, serious questions remain about the adequacy of our air defense system," said Rep. Jim Turner (Tex.), ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security. "Does the existing no-fly zone around our nation's capital give sufficient time to intercept a terrorist controlled flight?"
A spokesman for the commander of NORAD, Air Force Gen. Ralph E. "Ed" Eberhart, would not comment on the handling of the incident, saying that rules of engagement are classified. But he and others pointed out that protocols were followed and that the air defense system as a whole is providing unprecedented security.
"The fact that the plane landed without incident June 9 indicates that interagency coordination procedures developed since 9/11 work," said the spokesman, Michael Kucharek.
A reconstruction, based in part on interviews with officials who spoke on condition they not be named, has revealed new details. Senior officials at two federal agencies who are familiar with how the air defense system worked that day said a fighter plane sent to intercept Fletcher's plane initially could not make visual contact because of cloud cover.
As a result, Eberhart did not issue the order to shoot down Fletcher's plane, according to the two officials, as well as a third government official who was briefed later on the incident. Interviews and a timeline prepared by congressional investigators also show that Fletcher's plane turned to land before it was identified.
"They had the general on the phone, and he was in position to make the call. . . . This was the closest we have come to making that difficult decision, triggering a chain of events that could be pretty horrific," one official said.
The air defense system for Washington is unique, and many of its operations are classified. Unveiled in January 2003, the system was created to track all flights and to intercept aircraft that do not follow strict protocols. It replaced the fighter patrols that guarded the nation's capital beginning Sept. 11, 2001, a defense that was costly and did not provide federal authorities with the tools to investigate whether there were patterns in the violations.
The defense system includes a no-fly zone that bars most air traffic from a ring that extends 16 miles from the Washington Monument -- the major exception being commercial flights to and from National Airport. A larger restricted zone, the D.C. Air Defense Identification Zone, extends to about 50 miles from Washington and requires pilots to identify their aircraft, activate identification beacons and stay in two-way radio contact with air controllers.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement helicopters and Cessna jets patrol the zone unarmed, while air defense artillery on the ground and fighter jets on alert or on irregular air patrols are poised to intercept an intruder.
On June 9, the Beechcraft King Air was flying with a broken transponder, a device that transmits an identifying signal picked up by ground controllers. After takeoff, the pilot, as required, notified Federal Aviation Administration officials in Ohio about the problem at 2:56 p.m.
But the FAA failed to notify military and homeland security officials, who monitored separate radar displays, about the broken transponder. To everyone but the FAA, radar showed an unidentified intruder entering restricted Washington airspace at 4:24 p.m.
At 4:31, with the plane a minute or two from downtown Washington, officials ordered the evacuation of the U.S. Capitol, where thousands had gathered to await the arrival of Reagan's coffin. The FAA reported to air defense authorities that it was in contact with the plane three minutes later, as the aircraft made the final approach to National Airport.
The Beechcraft was traveling at roughly 240 miles per hour, or four miles a minute. At that speed, it could have reached the center of the no-fly zone in four minutes.
Customs officials said it took their Black Hawk helicopter four minutes to launch that afternoon, quicker than the designated scramble time. Military fighters happened to be on intermittent air patrols that day, but their standard scramble time from the ground is 15 minutes.
For security officials, a key factor is how little time they had to identify Fletcher's aircraft and make critical decisions. One senior federal security official who has studied the incident said the chances of shooting down the plane would have been "50-50" given the time sequence.
The official said the current system is prepared to stop a second assault, as was the case Sept. 11, not a first attack. Expanding the restricted flight zone -- or a more radical move, such as closing National Airport -- would be required to provide a greater level of security, he said.
Some House investigators are pushing the Transportation Security Administration to improve coordination between a half-dozen agencies. Officials at the TSA and the Pentagon have revived calls for the FAA to expand the restricted flight zones, which would build in more time to make and execute decisions.
Close calls in the past have prompted changes. On June 19, 2002, a Cessna flew over the capital area before it could be intercepted, prompting the evacuation of Vice President Cheney from the White House. Military officials at the time acknowledged that aircraft could reach targets in Washington before they were intercepted by fighters on ground alert.
Authority for air patrols to shoot down a civilian aircraft, once limited to the president, has been delegated to the secretary of defense and his deputy; to Eberhart, as NORAD commander; and to the commander of NORAD's continental U.S. region in Florida, Air Force Maj. Gen. Craig R. McKinley. McKinley has said orders to shoot down aircraft are practiced "probably eight to 15 times a week."
A senior federal security official said the process involved in firing ground-based air defenses operated by the Army or Army National Guard is more complex and needs refinement. Some military officials initially questioned the value of installing short-range missile systems, saying the range and reaction time made their use unlikely.
Customs agents with submachine guns are trained to shoot from the Black Hawks and have authority to use lethal force if their lives or the lives of others are endangered, said Charles E. Stallworth II, director of air and marine operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Homeland security officials, although aware of limitations, say the system in place is working well and has added layers of protection unavailable on Sept. 11, 2001.
Randy Beardsworth, head of the Department of Homeland Security directorate that includes the TSA and customs enforcement, said advanced radar, computer databases and other tools used by the multi-agency system provide an unprecedented early warning system.
More than 2,000 aircraft "of interest" have been detected over Washington airspace since January 2003, Beardsworth said. The number of aircraft violating the no-fly zone fell from 164 in the six months before Jan. 20, 2003, to 30 after that date through May, 14, 2004.
All 30 intruders were successfully identified, Beardsworth said. By comparison, another federal official said that two years ago, military jets could identify and intercept only about 40 percent of intruders in training drills.
Beardsworth, however, said he does not disagree with those who say the system may not be geared to stop a determined attacker. Like other security officials, he noted that the system's limits are forced by political compromises between security and civilian aviation interests.
Beardsworth said that shooting down hostile aircraft is the responsibility of the Defense Department, not his agency.
"Our role is to help them by having a clear picture when they have to make that tough decision," he said. "Can you imagine how much tougher the decision would be if you didn't have the ability to deter small craft from coming in, if you didn't have the ability to fly out there, detect, identify and deter?"
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U.S. to Testify on Air Defense Woes
Associated Press Writer
By JOHN SOLOMON
Thursday July 8, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4287754,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - Even though they were airborne, military jets were unable to get into position where they could have shot down a suspicious plane over Washington last month, and miscommunication among key figures in America's air defenses transformed a routine flight by Kentucky's governor into a dramatic evacuation of the Capitol, officials say.
Bush administration officials are to testify before Congress on Thursday about the problems encountered June 9, when a flight by Gov. Ernie Fletcher caused a breathless evacuation of the Capitol building on the day Ronald Reagan's body was brought to lie in state.
Officials said the real-life drama proved what security experts have been saying since Sept. 11, 2001 - prevention of an aerial attack depends on measures taken well before a plane enters the restricted air space in Washington.
The Federal Aviation Administration, NORAD and other security agencies have made significant changes since the episode to address shortcomings exposed that day, officials said.
``The purpose of the hearing is find out what went wrong, and have they fixed it,'' said House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica, R-Fla.
``The good news is we evacuated the Capitol in record time. The bad news was it was a false alarm and it appears there was a lack of coordination between FAA and Homeland Security, and we can't afford that kind of a gap in the future,'' he said.
NORAD confirmed it scrambled two jets during the incident, but declined to be more specific because of the classified nature of its engagement rules. The fact that ``the plane landed without incident June 9 indicates that the procedures developed since Sept. 11 work,'' it said.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Katy Mynster said: ``We believe appropriate security measures were put in place based on the information we had at the time. ... Of course, we continue to look for ways to improve communications.''
Members of Congress whose staffs have looked into the episode said the incident exposed flaws two years after the Sept. 11 attacks led to a major upgrade of America's security net.
``The incident raises the question: Does the existing no-fly zone around our nation's capital give sufficient time to intercept a terrorist-controlled flight?'' said Rep. Jim Turner, D-Texas, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee. ``Further it appears that the FAA miscommunicated with other agencies responsible for the protection of Washington. This failure led to the evacuation of the Capitol Building and surrounding office buildings when, in fact, there was no threat.''
Government, military and congressional officials said two F-15 fighter planes were already patrolling on June 9 in anticipation of the Reagan funeral and were diverted when security monitors saw the governor's plane as an unidentified and potentially hostile aircraft.
However, under the Pentagon's rules of engagement, the jets could not get close enough to be in position to shoot the plane down if it was indeed heading toward the Capitol, according to officials outside NORAD.
The officials declined to further describe the rules of engagement, except to say they are different for fighter jets in wide open areas than in urban areas and that they require several conditions to be met before a shootdown is considered possible.
The officials said the government has additional layered defense in Washington, such as ground missiles, that could be deployed if jets aren't in a position to intercept.
The entire scrambling of the jets, however, was unnecessary, caused by miscommunications between the FAA, which directs air traffic, NORAD, which protect America's air space from impending threats, and the National Capital Region Coordination Center (NCRCC), which coordinates air security in the nation's capital.
Officials divulged that:
-The FAA originally misdiagnosed the Kentucky plane as having a transponder that was functioning properly except for a failure to transmit its altitude. In fact, the plane did not have a functioning transponder, and such planes are supposed to be barred from Washington airspace.
-When FAA recognized the plane did not have a transponder, it disregarded its rules and allowed the plane to proceed, putting the identification into its radar system manually.
-Because the Washington coordination center used a different radar system than FAA, it was unaware of the special exemption and believed the plane was an unidentified and potentially hostile aircraft, causing NORAD to scramble its jets.
Officials said several lessons have been learned from the episode and several new precautions have been taken. One FAA contract employee involved in the episode has been removed from a post.
The NCRCC and FAA now can view the same radar system, and both FAA controllers and civilian pilots have been re-warned that planes without fully functioning transponders will not be allowed into Washington airspace at any time.
The June 9 episode followed secret drills last December in which Homeland Security planes posing as terrorists were able to penetrate Washington airspace in several tests.
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Officials: Bin Laden guiding plots against U.S.
Ridge: Terrorists' aim is to influence presidential vote
WASHINGTON (CNN)
July 8, 2004
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/07/08/ridge.alqaeda/index.html
-- A plot to carry out a large-scale terror attack against the United States in the near future is being directed by Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda members, senior intelligence officials said Thursday.
Bin Laden and his top lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are overseeing the attack plans from their remote hideouts somewhere along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, according to senior intelligence officials.
"This type of plotting, this type of operational activity, is being done with the direct direction and authorization of that senior leadership," said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Democratic senator who attended Thursday's CIA and FBI briefing said, "It is the most worrisome situation since 9/11" without elaborating specifically.
Arrests of terror suspects in Europe and the Middle East resulted in the new warning, said Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge.
"We lack precise knowledge about time, place and method of attack," he said. "But along with the CIA, FBI and other agencies, we are actively working to gain that knowledge."
A senior U.S. intelligence official said the warning was based on "a very strong body of intelligence."
The planned attack is "an effort to disrupt the democratic process" before November's elections, Ridge said.
Ridge said he had no specific or credible information about threats to the upcoming political conventions. The four-day Democratic convention kicks off July 26 in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Republican National Convention begins August 30 in New York City.
He also said the nation's color-coded terrorist threat level will remain at yellow, or elevated, he said.
"We have more protective measures in place at yellow today than we did six months or a year ago," Ridge said. "And there will be more put in place on a day-to-day basis every single day, for as long as the department exists."
"We know they have the capability to succeed and they also hold the mistaken belief that their attacks will have an impact on America's resolve," Ridge said. Possible Madrid model of attack
Sources said al Qaeda is plotting an attack similar to the Madrid train bombings, which killed nearly 200 people just days before Spain's elections in March.
Spain's elections resulted in the ouster of a conservative government that had joined the United States in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The opposition Socialists had campaigned on a pledge to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq.
"They are focusing on what they perceive to have been successful attacks in Madrid as far as the impact on the electoral process there and the outcome of that election," the official said. "The reporting that we are seeing, the information that we have, is tied to the different types of democratic processes here."
Another senior intelligence official said authorities are concerned about polling places being targeted during the elections, and they are trying to come up with a protection plan.
A third intelligence official said there is particular concern about possible attacks using backpack explosives -- as were used in Madrid -- or car or truck bombs to destroy bridges, tunnels or other targets.
In April, arrests were made in Canada and Pakistan in connection with an alleged plot to set off a large bomb in London, the official said. The first official said al Qaeda also remains interested in targeting locations it has struck in the past.
"There are strong indications that al Qaeda will continue to try to revisit past targets, those that they were able to attack as well as those they were unable to attack," he said. "In addition, there is intelligence that indicates that they are looking at various transportation systems."
Al Qaeda remains "very interested" in using aviation, he added.
"We know that it is a consistent focus of their efforts as we saw in 9/11 and despite the numerous security enhancements that have been made, al Qaeda continues to pursue capabilities that can use aircraft either as weapon or as targets," the official said.
Anti-terrorism efforts have degraded al Qaeda's abilities, but the organization remains strong because of its flexibility and adaptability, one official said. Accusations of scaremongering
Senators received a closed-door briefing on the threat Thursday morning from CIA and FBI officials.
Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, said the intelligence was "very non-specific" and there was was "no reason for panic, no reason for paralysis."
But he told reporters that there has been "general intelligence that there may be an attempt to disrupt elections."
"This is not a major announcement, it's just a fact," Frist told reporters. "The reality is of increased risk here in the homeland over the next several weeks, the next several months."
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, called the information "troubling" and "worrisome."
But with no plan to raise the threat level and only general information, some other Democrats privately have questioned whether the timing of Thursday's briefing -- two days after President Bush's presumptive challenger, Sen. John Kerry, announced his running mate -- was politically motivated.
Ridge said any such suggestion was the "wrong interpretation." "We are basically laying out before the general public the kind of information that we have received, and these are not conjectures or mythical statements we are making," he said. "These are pieces of information that we could trace comfortably to sources we deem to be credible."
Another senior administration official said accusations of scaremongering are to be expected. But the official added, "This is one of those damned if you do and damned if you don'ts, and our default is 'do.' "
Kerry has accused the Bush administration of shortchanging homeland security since al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
Kerry foreign policy adviser Randy Beers said the administration has been "unable to set the most elementary requirements for protection."
"Our crucial intelligence and military resources are overstretched abroad, and our homeland security effort at home is under-funded and poorly managed," Beer said in a written statement.
Schumer said Ridge's announcement shows the need for the Senate to move quickly on the $33 billion Homeland Security appropriations bill, which he and other senators said is being delayed by the Senate leadership in favor of a bill that would limit jury awards in state courts.
"We need that bill passed," Schumer said. "New York City is doing a great job on homeland security, but their resources are stretched as far as they can be stretched, and we're not getting the help from Washington that we need."
New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the police department has been aware of a potential threat to the Republican National Convention and continues to take precautions.
"There is no new information," Kelly said. He explained that Ridge was acting in his role to raise public awareness of potential attacks.
"We do not think another attack is inevitable. But we do think that they will try. Our job is to stop them," Kelly said. Operations center opens
Also Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security officially opened its state-of-the-art operations center, which will monitor real-time threat information and disseminate it to government agencies as well as state and local governments.
The Homeland Security Operations Center will operate 24 hours every day of the year in Washington, to monitor threats, share information and coordinate responses to incidents.
All 50 states are connected to the center through a secure, Web-based Homeland Security Information Network.
The center was scheduled to open in five months, but its opening was expedited because of general concerns about terrorism, a Homeland Security official said.
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Election Officials Consider Security Options at Polls
Possibility of Attack in November Raises Worry
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35284-2004Jul7.html
U.S. officials are expressing concern that terrorists will try to disrupt the presidential election in November by launching an attack around Election Day, but they are only now planning to raise the subject with local election officials.
Meanwhile, the chairman of a federal voting commission said the government has been negligent in not moving faster.
"Nothing has been done," said DeForest B. Soaries, chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, which Congress created to help localities improve their voting systems. "It's embarrassing that the federal government hasn't taken this more seriously. . . . I won't be silent."
Election officials around the country say they are eager for advice on how to address security worries but say they are baffled at the idea of securing the nation's 193,000 polling places.
Election administrators also express worry that posting police officers near or in polling sites might discourage some people, especially immigrants and members of minority groups, from voting.
The concern about election security stems from the terrorist bombing of trains on March 11 in Madrid in which 190 people and a fetus were killed. The attack helped bring down the government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, and shortly thereafter U.S. intelligence warned that terrorists have been emboldened by it to want to derail American elections, possibly by launching attacks at the political conventions or around Election Day.
U.S. officials point out that if attacks follow the model in Spain, they would come in the days before the voting and be against civilian targets, rather than on Election Day against polling places.
"One of our top priorities is to ensure that our election process, which is one of our most important freedoms, won't become a target for terrorists," said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "While we don't have any specific intelligence that al Qaeda will attack our Election Day activities, we'll continue to assess this potential threat, and put in place targeted security measures as necessary."
Homeland Security officials who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject said it would be almost impossible to try to secure all polling places with guards. The officials said they plan to communicate with election administrators in the coming months, possibly through security bulletins issued through local governments, to help them think about election security.
"There hasn't been a lot of discussion about the security questions yet" either with U.S. officials or without them, said Denise Lamb, New Mexico's chief election officer and president of the National Association of State Election Directors.
"This is going to be a huge issue for us, and we've got to get it on our radar screen," said R. Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, a nonpartisan group that trains and certifies election administrators.
Soaries, a Baptist minister who was New Jersey's secretary of state from 1999 to 2002, said he wrote two letters to Homeland Security, in April and last month, but received no reply. The letters urged the agency to start discussing security concerns with local officials, and also said the government should consider changing the date of the November election in the event of a terrorist strike, he said.
The country needs a mechanism to change the date of federal elections in a given state not only after a terrorist attack, but also in the event of, say, a California earthquake or a Florida hurricane, Soaries said. He pointed out that New York City scheduled a mayoral primary election on Sept. 11, 2001, that had to be delayed, even though officials had no explicit authority to do that. The voting was held on Sept. 25.
Changing the date of a federal election would require congressional action, at the least, because laws established that federal elections are to be held on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November on even-numbered years.
Roehrkasse said the Homeland Security Department is still reviewing Soaries's letter of last month, adding that it has no record of receiving an earlier note from him.
Lewis said many election officials will be wary of having armed guards near polling places, for fear of intimidating voters.
"We have to be exceedingly careful that in protecting voters' safety, we don't deny democracy," he said. "We want voters to be comfortable in polling places."
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Airport Shop Workers Must Pass Checkpoints
TSA Orders Security Expansion
By Greg Schneider
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page E02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35436-2004Jul7.html
The Transportation Security Administration has ordered airports to send all vendor employees through security checkpoints before letting them go to work in restaurants or shops in the secure areas of terminals.
The agency had resisted congressional calls for such a requirement, with TSA acting administrator David M. Stone arguing as recently as March that extensive background checks were sufficient to catch untrustworthy employees.
Many airports already screen some workers but complain that requiring the practice could cause further delays at crowded checkpoints and interfere with each airport's managing of its own resources.
But the TSA issued three security directives Tuesday evening that require airports to come up with a plan to screen all employees going into secure areas and to limit the number of doorways that provide access to "sterile" zones. The plans must be submitted to the TSA for approval within 30 days, airport officials said.
A TSA spokesman declined to comment on the specific directives, which are considered sensitive and not for public release. But agency spokesman Mark Hatfield Jr. said in an e-mailed statement that the agency "continually analyzes threat information and evaluates the system of security layers we have placed at our nation's airports. . . . As part of these newly issued security directives, the TSA will require enhanced background checks and improved access control for airport employees working in restricted areas."
Rep. Peter A. DeFazio (D-Ore.), who has pushed the TSA to take such action, said yesterday he was pleased with the directives.
"It's a good step," said DeFazio, who raised the issue 16 months ago after visiting a Detroit airport and witnessing vendor employees going in and out of the sterile zone without passing through security checkpoints. Even though all such workers are required to pass criminal background checks, DeFazio worries that they could be bribed to carry weapons into terminals and slip them to passengers who have already gone through airport metal detectors.
"There's not a downside to adding this level of security, except some possible delays or inconvenience until they get the screener workforce level sorted out," DeFazio said.
TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said passenger delays should be minimal because airports have already designed their work schedules so that worker shift changes occur at off-peak travel times to avoid clogging checkpoints.
Baltimore-Washington International Airport already requires employees to go through checkpoints before entering the secure part of the terminal, a spokesman said. Some workers at Reagan National and Dulles International airports pass through checkpoints on their way into the terminal, but not all, said a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
Some airports are concerned about employees who must go back and forth from secure to non-secure areas several times during the day, and whether they have to stop each time for screening, said Carter Morris, vice president for transportation security policy for the American Association of Airport Executives.
He said that his group has been discussing the issue for several months with the TSA and congressional staffers and that flexibility is key to making the directives work -- especially during the peak summer travel season. "It's something that is going to very definitely need to be worked out on an airport-by-airport basis," Morris said.
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Pentagon Sets Hearings for 595 Detainees
By John Mintz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35423-2004Jul7.html
The Pentagon announced last night it will quickly hold hearings for all 595 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison as it scrambles to respond to the Supreme Court ruling last week that the government was jailing terrorism suspects without due process.
The new hearings are designed to determine whether the 595 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, meet the definition of "enemy combatants," as President Bush and the U.S. military have said for more than two years. The administration has used the enemy combatant designation to argue that the detainees do not warrant some protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.
Since the prison for alleged terrorists opened in early 2002, some human rights activists have said that the government was obligated under international law to hold these hearings. But the government refused, saying the detainees did not deserve such rights because they are terrorists who wore no soldier's uniform and violated the laws of war by killing civilians.
The new hearings -- to be called Combatant Status Review Tribunals -- are separate from the hearings in federal court that the Supreme Court ruled the government must offer to all the inmates to contest their detentions. But administration officials and experts on military law said the new tribunals are designed to buttress the government's case -- that it has been deliberative in its detention decisions and afforded due process -- when it confronts defense attorneys in the federal court hearings.
"The administration is trying to make the best of a bad situation," said Eugene R. Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice. "It's an effort to play catch-up ball, and to blunt the possible impact of the habeas corpus review."
The new tribunals were mandated by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul D. Wolfowitz in an order signed yesterday. It establishes that by July 17, every detainee will be notified that his status as an enemy combatant will be reviewed in the new hearings, and that he has a right to a habeas corpus hearing in federal court. Each one will receive the help of a non-lawyer military officer acting as a "personal representative," who will assist him in preparing for the combatant status hearing.
Three neutral commissioned military officers -- none involved in the detainee's capture, detention or interrogation -- will hear each case, Wolfowitz ordered. The detainees will be allowed to attend all proceedings except for deliberations, and sessions in which national security could be compromised, the rules said. Detainees are to be given interpreters, and will be allowed to testify, present evidence, call witnesses "if readily available," and to question witnesses.
The three-officer tribunal will decide each detainee's case with "a preponderance of the evidence" required to uphold the military's stance that he is an enemy combatant. "There will be a rebuttable presumption in favor of the government's evidence," meaning that greater deference should be given to the military's claims but the detainee can try to argue against it.
If a prisoner is found not to be an enemy combatant, then he would be handed over to the State Department for transfer to his home country, officials said.
Wendy Patten, a representative of Human Rights Watch, said the rules are biased against detainees. "While the Geneva Conventions start with the presumption of greatest protection for the combatant . . . here it is the reverse -- they presume a detainee is an enemy combatant and expect him to disprove it." The essential function of the new hearings, officials said, is to help government lawyers argue their cases for continued detention in the habeas corpus hearings that eventually will be held for all detainees. U.S. lawyers would be able to argue that there is no reason for a judge to inquire too deeply into a detainee's case because the government has already deliberated on it, legal experts said.
"When and if there are habeas petitions filed challenging their detention, the government will be in a position to say that we fully satisfied our legal obligations," a senior Justice Department official told reporters yesterday at a hastily convened news conference held on the condition that the speakers not be identified by name.
"The government here is reacting very quickly to the Supreme Court's decisions," the Justice Department official added.
The new combatant status tribunals also are not supposed to replace yet another type of hearing being planned for every detainee: an annual review of whether he remains a danger to the United States. These hearings, first planned after the Supreme Court announced it was going to hear the Guantanamo Bay case, are being overseen by Navy Secretary Gordon R. England and are expected to begin in coming months. Inmates found not to be a danger would be sent home.
In addition, six of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are slated to be tried for crimes in front of a military court also called a tribunal. The Pentagon yesterday said nine additional prisoners are eligible for these trials.
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JUSTICE
Pentagon Will Permit Captives at Cuba Base to Appeal Status
July 8, 2004
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08deta.html
WASHINGTON, July 7 - The Defense Department announced a series of steps on Wednesday that would let detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, challenge their status as enemy combatants from the war in Afghanistan and the campaign against terrorism.
The new procedure was hastily devised to head off a possible flood of litigation after a Supreme Court ruling last week requiring that the prisoners be allowed to challenge their legal status before a neutral party, like a federal court. But it was not immediately clear whether the new procedures, which will keep the process in military courts, would satisfy the court's desires in the Rasul decision, and officials who described the new approach conceded that some of the details were likely to end up in litigation.
Under the new review process, the nearly 600 Guantánamo detainees would be provided with personal representatives, but not lawyers, to help them consider their legal options. Detainees would be permitted to challenge their legal standing before a newly created Combatant Status Review Tribunal, a panel of three military officers.
The Pentagon said the officers would be neutral, because they had no stake in the fate of any particular detainee - but officials did not address the possibility that institutional loyalty might influence the tribunal. Legal advocates said the measure would do nothing to bring the continued detention of foreign nationals at Guantánamo Bay into compliance with the Constitution or international law. "The Supreme Court upheld the rule of law over unchecked executive authority,'' said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights. "The review procedures for the detainees set up by the Department of Defense are inadequate and illegal, and they fail to satisfy the court's ruling."
Most problematic, the legal experts said, is that the process does not permit the detainees access to legal counsel. "Without access to a lawyer the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul would be meaningless,'' said Jeffrey E. Fogel, the legal director of the center, in a letter last week to the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld. "The right to habeas corpus has always included the right to legal assistance.''
The move appeared to be a last-ditch effort by the administration to retain control over the handling of the detainees, many of whom have been kept in indefinite detention.
The Supreme Court threatened to undercut the administration's detentions last week, declaring that "a state of war is not a blank check for the president." In separate rulings, the court said the detainees were entitled to rebut the government's charges before "a neutral decision-maker," and that federal judges had jurisdiction to hear petitions for habeas corpus from those who say they have been jailed unlawfully.
Within days of those rulings, lawyers for 13 detainees at Guantánamo said they would travel to the American Navy base there to pursue legal challenges in federal court. In response, the administration announced the new process on Wednesday, which officials said would be under way within days.
A senior defense official portrayed the tribunals as an entirely new process that would grant the detainees most of the legal rights enjoyed by American citizens, including the right to know the case being made against them. The detainees would not, however, receive Fifth Amendment protections, he said.
The tribunal will consist of three military officers. Detainees will be allowed to attend its proceedings, except for the deliberation. They will also be provided interpreters and will have the opportunity to testify.
The personal representatives will be military officers who, while not lawyers, will have access to the Pentagon files on the detainees' backgrounds. The representative will be able to share unclassified information with a detainee and will be given 30 days to file a challenge on his behalf. It was unclear whether the representative's consultations with a detainee would remain confidential. Also unknown was whether there would be public access to the proceedings. Details are still being worked out by the Navy secretary, Gordon R. England, officials said.
In a separate development on Wednesday, the Defense Department slated nine more detainees for trial before an American military commission, the first such proceedings since World War II, the Pentagon said. Those trials did not appear to be affected by the new tribunals, since they grant detainees full legal representation. The announcement brings to 15 the number of terrorism suspects who are scheduled to be tried in the military court. President Bush approved the cases, the Pentagon said.
"The president determined that there is reason to believe that each of these enemy combatants was a member of Al Qaeda or was otherwise involved in terrorism directed against the United States," the Pentagon said in a statement.
Defense officials refused to provide the names of the accused, their alleged crimes or their nationalities, noting that formal charges against the detainees had not yet been made. The suspects - some or all of whom have been held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba - are expected to be charged with war crimes, like aiding the enemy or spying.
The procedure has been harshly denounced by defense lawyers, including those assigned by the military to defend the detainees, as an inherently unfair process that does not allow for review outside the military.
A military commission has been set up to hear the first three cases involving the detainees, whom the government has designated as enemy combatants. Peter E. Brownback III, a retired Army colonel, was named the presiding officer last week; the remaining panel consists of two Marine Corps colonels, an Air Force colonel and an Air Force lieutenant colonel. Administration officials insist that the suspects face a presumption of innocence, and guilt must be established beyond a reasonable doubt. The detainees are offered military defense lawyers at no charge, but may also hire civilian lawyers at their own expense. Two-thirds of the tribunal must approve a conviction; a death sentence requires a unanimous vote of the panel.
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GTMO prisoners to be told of U.S. rights
United Press International
By Pamela Hess
July 08, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040707-064526-5383r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 7 (UPI) -- Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay will be told within 10 days they can challenge their detainment at the island prison camp in U.S. federal court, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
The advisory is part of a new procedure the Pentagon is putting in place to respond to two Supreme Court decisions handed down late last month that called into question the legality of holding the prisoners.
In one of the decisions, the Supreme Court held that prisoners have a right to habeas corpus -- that is, to challenge their detention in federal courts. So far none has had access to the civilian justice system in the United States, in large part because the Defense Department argued Guantanamo Bay was outside the jurisdiction of U.S. courts -- a key reason the island base was chosen to house detainees.
How prisoners will take advantage of their habeas rights is unclear, however, as the prisoners have no contact with the outside world, other than correspondence with their families through representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Nevertheless some prisoners have found a way to contact American lawyers to represent them, a Justice Department official noted.
"Whatever means they've been able to employ, others are able to employ," the official said.
Only prisoners charged with crimes and designated to face military commissions have any access to lawyers. Those prisoners are physically separated from the rest of the prison population so other prisoners cannot benefit from their legal contacts, according to Center for Constitutional Rights spokeswoman Jen Nessel. CCR represents 50 Guantanamo detainees.
The officials said lawyers will have "access" to prisoners at Guantanamo for habeas challenges, but said the terms of that access are going to be subject to negotiation.
There are nearly 600 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, some who have been held for more than two years. The names of only 290 of the prisoners have been released or leaked out through their families or home governments. Justice nor Defense officials would not say whether the names of other prisoners would be released so lawyers could file on their behalf.
"Without access to a lawyer, the Supreme Court's decision ... would be meaningless. The right to habeas corpus has always included the right to legal assistance," CCR's legal director, Jeff Fogel, wrote to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a letter last week.
Habeas challenges have been filed on behalf of at least 23 prisoners at Guantanamo by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, a progressive legal advocacy group. However, the names of only about half of the Guantanamo detainees are known publicly. The government has not released a prisoner list, which Nessel said is necessary if habeas petitions are to be filed on their behalf.
The Supreme Court suggested in a separate decision that an Army procedure used to determine whether someone can be held as a prisoner of war in a conventional conflict could satisfy the court's concerns about habeas corpus for the prisoners.
"When and if there is a habeas challenge, the government will be in a position to say it fully satisfied" habeas requirements, the Justice official said.
Pentagon and Justice Department officials Wednesday unveiled a new procedure based on that Army precedent they believe will head off habeas challenges.
Each prisoner at Guantanamo will be assigned a personal representative -- a military officer who is not a lawyer -- and an interpreter to help them plead their case to a three-member "Combatant Status Review Tribunal."
None of the members of the tribunal will have had anything to do with the Guantanamo prisoners previously, and one will be a judge advocate general -- a military lawyer.
The tribunal will determine whether the preponderance of evidence -- to include witnesses, sworn statements and military documents -- suggests the prisoner is being properly held as an enemy combatant. If the evidence suggests otherwise, the tribunal will advise the secretary of defense, who will in turn advise the secretary of state to make arrangements to return the prisoner to their home country.
The tribunal will take place 30 days after the personal representative has had an opportunity to review the prisoner's case file.
The tribunal is different from the Army procedure used in a conventional war to determine prisoner of war status in that the prisoners get a personal representative to help them through the process. In conventional conflicts, the prisoner is on his or her own, according to the Justice Department official.
The rules and procedures governing the personal representative's relationship with the prisoner have not been set. For instance, it is not clear whether there will be a promise of confidentiality between the two.
The tribunal is separate from two other procedures already announced by the military: military commissions, in which a prisoner will be tried for crimes relating to terrorism and unlawful combat, and an annual status review, which will determine whether a prisoner poses a threat to the United States and has any lingering intelligence value.
That administrative review procedure was revealed just a few weeks before the Supreme Court decisions were handed down, and is meant to reduce the numbers of prisoners held to the minimum, according to the Pentagon.
The officials hinted there may be further changes to the process as more legal challenges to the prisoners' status are mounted.
"What (other) laws apply is probably going to be grist for future litigation," the Justice official said. "It is admittedly uncharged territory."
The Pentagon also announced Wednesday nine more detainees at Guantanamo will face military commissions. It did not release the names of the prisoners, who will be charged with acts of terrorism or being members of al-Qaida. Six others have already been designated to face the commissions. No trial dates have been set.
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Nine more Gitmo inmates picked for military tribunal
ASSOCIATED PRESS
July 08, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040708-121756-1164r.htm
President Bush has named nine more foreign prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba as eligible to be tried by an American military tribunal, the Pentagon said yesterday.
The nine have not been charged and were not identified by military officials, nor have any tribunals been scheduled. They join six others at Guantanamo Bay whom Mr. Bush had previously designated as eligible for military tribunals.
"The president determined that there is reason to believe that each of these enemy combatants was a member of al Qaeda or was otherwise involved in terrorism directed against the United States," Pentagon officials said.
The nine may have attended terrorist training camps, provided financing for al Qaeda, planned maritime terrorist attacks, made explosives or been a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden, the officials said.
Also yesterday, in response to a Supreme Court ruling, the Bush administration announced that the military will review the individual cases of the 595 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to determine whether they are legally held.
The reviews are an attempt to prepare for expected challenges in civilian courts after the Supreme Court last week said those prisoners can go before a federal judge to seek their freedom.
The Bush administration said the military reviews will provide them some grounding when the prisoners head to court. If the review determines a prisoner is not a lawfully held combatant, he will be released to his home country, according to officials with the Justice and Defense departments who announced the reviews.
A panel of three military officers with no previous connection to the prisoner will hear the review. At least one officer will be a military lawyer.
The prisoner can choose if he wants to participate and can present information in his defense, even calling witnesses. He will be assigned a military officer, who is not a lawyer, to act as a personal representative, the officials said.
Within 10 days, the prisoners will be informed of their new rights and the Supreme Court ruling, according to memo signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that was provided to reporters.
The military has yet to work out many of the details about how it will provide detainees access to civilian courts and lawyers once they challenge their detention.
Officials said they expected the review panels to begin meeting soon at Guantanamo. They will be overseen by Navy Secretary Gordon England.
They are the third formal procedure announced by the military to determine the prisoners' fate. Prisoners also will have annual reviews to determine whether they are still a threat. Some prisoners will face military tribunals for crimes the military says they committed.
Many of the Guantanamo detainees were captured on battlefields in Afghanistan in late 2001. Their long detention at the naval base has drawn criticism from human rights groups.
Of the 15 persons now designated for military tribunals, only three have been identified and charged: David Hicks of Australia, Ali Hamza Ahmad Sulayman al Bahlul of Yemen, and Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al Qosi of Sudan.
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Many Youths Reported Held Awaiting Mental Help
July 8, 2004
By ROBERT PEAR
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08mental.html
WASHINGTON, July 7 - Congressional investigators said Wednesday that 15,000 children with psychiatric disorders were improperly incarcerated last year because no mental health services were available.
The figures were compiled by the Democratic staff of the House Committee on Government Reform in the first such nationwide survey of juvenile detention centers.
"The use of juvenile detention facilities to warehouse children with mental disorders is a serious national problem,'' said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, who sought the survey with Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California.
The study, presented at a hearing of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, found that children as young as 7 were incarcerated because of a lack of access to mental health care. More than 340 detention centers, two-thirds of those that responded to the survey, said youths with mental disorders were being locked up because there was no place else for them to go while awaiting treatment. Seventy-one centers in 33 states said they were holding mentally ill youngsters with no charges.
The 15,000 youths awaiting mental health services accounted for 8 percent of all the youngsters in the responding detention centers.
Dr. Ken Martinez of the New Mexico Department of Children, Youth and Families said the data showed "the criminalization of mental illness'' as "juvenile detention centers have become de facto psychiatric hospitals for mentally ill youth.''
Mental health advocates, prison officials and juvenile court judges all testified and recommended three types of solutions: more community mental health services, financed in part by Medicaid; more cooperation between police officials and mental health agencies; and more extensive insurance coverage.
The witnesses included experts on psychiatry and juvenile justice. Judge Ernestine S. Gray of New Orleans Juvenile Court testified that 70 percent to 85 percent of the youngsters who appeared before the court had mental health or drug problems.
"All too often,'' Judge Gray said, "children charged with delinquent behavior are identified early on as needing mental health services. But because the services are not available, the children are sent back home until there is another violation. After several brushes with the law, the children are incarcerated, so they might have a chance at getting mental health services.''
Leonard B. Dixon, director of the Wayne County Juvenile Detention Facility in Detroit, said mentally ill children were "more difficult to manage, more explosive and more easily agitated.'' "Most juvenile detention centers,'' Mr. Dixon said, "do not have the luxury of separating youth with mental health problems from the general population.''
Carol Carothers, executive director of the Maine chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, told of a 13-year-old who was sent to a detention center even though he was suffering depression and had suicidal thoughts. He was held in isolation for 152 of his first 240 days there, Ms. Carothers said. He was sent to the youth center four more times, becoming more depressed and aggressive, and was punished for misbehavior, worsening the symptoms of his mental illness, she added.
Mr. Dixon, who is also president of the National Juvenile Detention Association, a professional organization, described a 16-year-old who was detained after having been accused of stabbing a classmate in the neck with a pencil. The youth was psychotic and severely depressed and had hallucinations, but was held in a detention center for months before going to a psychiatric hospital for treatment, Mr. Dixon said.
Dr. Steven S. Sharfstein, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Association, said: "We are in a much better position to diagnose and treat mental illness in children than we were just 15 years ago. Many kids who get in trouble should be in treatment. But because of the lack of money and the lack of services, they end up in the criminal justice system.''
In an interview, Dr. Sharfstein, who is president of the Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore, said: "It used to be thought that these were bad kids. But many of them are sick and could benefit from treatment such as medications, psychotherapy or therapeutic education - small classes and individualized attention that focuses on learning disabilities.''
In California, 27 centers reported unnecessary incarcerations of youths awaiting mental health services; 19 reported that some of the children had attempted suicide.
Texas had 17 detention centers with children who could have been released if mental health services were available, according to the survey. New Jersey had 13, Florida and Illinois 7 each and New York 4.
-------- torture
US torture on UK territory claim
The UK treatment of the Chagosians remains highly controversial
Wednesday, 7 July, 2004,
BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3873291.stm
The UK's Indian Ocean territory could be being used to interrogate terror suspects in a US facility known as "Camp Justice", MP Tom Brake has said.
The Liberal Democrat frontbencher raised the issue during a Westminster Hall about British treatment of the people of Diego Garcia.
They were forcibly removed in the 1960s to make way for a US military facility.
Mr Brake called for reassurance the base was not being used "to secretly hold and interrogate terror suspects".
He described a satellite photo of the base which included "very large hangers".
Reassurance demand
"There are claims that prisoners are being held there by the Americans for so-called 'rendering' which other people have described as torturing, at least holding and questioning before being transferred to Camp X-Ray," he said.
Earlier in a statement Mr Brake said there was a "huge question mark" over the use of the facility and he called on the government to reassure the public it was not being used for holding and interrogating prisoners.
"The existence of a US airbase on the island of Diego Garcia has consistently brought controversy on the government," he said.
"After the recent prisoner abuse scandals in Iraq and Camp X-Ray, the British people have the right to know whether suspects in Bush's War on Terror are being held on British soil.
"If they are being held, ministers must make clear under what status and conditions this is happening."
'Dumped'
Earlier Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn said the base included two long runway and a base for US troops.
Giving a history of the base and the removal of the islanders to accommodate it, he said it came about as a result of a deal in the 1960s between Labour prime minister Harold Wilson and US president Lyndon Johnson.
The 2,000 people who had lived on the island had been "dumped on the quayside" in Mauritius and had lived in "terrible poverty" ever since despite compensation from the British Government, he said.
Diego Garcia is the biggest of the Chagos group of islands.
Replying to the Westminster Hall debate, Foreign Minister Bill Rammell defended a recent order that denied the islanders a right to return.
Compensation
The order overturned a court ruling in May 2003.
Mr Rammell said he did not want to justify the treatment of the Chagosians by past British governments but argued that substantial compensation had been paid to the islanders.
He also argued that an independent investigation had found that the cost of maintaining "long-term habitation" was prohibitive.
"Is it really realistic and sensible having been presented with that advice to move towards repopulation?" asked the minister.
Mr Corbyn demanded to know why the orders to stop repopulation not put up for debate, to which Mr Rammell said there was always going to be time to discuss them.
--------
Pentagon probed on torture memo secrets
UPI
By Shaun Waterman
July 08, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040707-100658-5228r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 7 (UPI) -- The federal government's secrecy watchdog has asked the Pentagon to explain why parts of a memo about the interrogation of terror detainees were classified, even though they discussed the political fall-out if the use of certain techniques became public.
The memo, declassified and released last month, is the report of a working group on interrogation techniques established in January 2003 by the Defense Department's general counsel.
The relevant passage -- marked "secret" prior to declassification -- is part of a discussion of the consequences for criminal and military prosecutions of detainees and others if the public became aware of the use of so-called "coercive interrogation techniques."
It reads: "Consideration must be given to the public's reaction to methods of interrogation that may affect the military commission process. The more coercive the method, the greater the likelihood that the method will be met with significant domestic and international resistance."
"Looking at that paragraph (of the working group report)," said William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, which enforces government secrecy policy, "it's difficult to see how that information (could) ... damage national security."
The administration's policy regarding secrecy, laid out in a an executive order signed by President Bush in March last year, says that information can lawfully be classified only if its "unauthorized disclosure ... reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security..."
Leonard said the decision to classify that part of the report was part of disturbing trend, what he called a "bureaucratic impulse," a tendency on the part of officials to "almost reflexively reach out to the classification system."
Lawmakers argue that over-classification is rife in the federal government, and critics of the administration have accused it of abusing classification to hide information that would be merely embarrassing or inconvenient, rather than dangerous.
The working group report is what classification specialists call "part marked," meaning that each paragraph has its own code indicating how secret it is. Several paragraphs in the report are marked "U" for unclassified.
"On its face," Leonard said, the classification of that passage "reflects a disturbing lack of understanding of the constraints and limitations (of) the executive order ..."
Leonard said it was especially disturbing because the working group that drew up the report included some of the most senior lawyers in the Department of Defense.
He said the classification decision was doubly inexplicable because there were several other options available to officials.
"I can well understand that people might not want this kind of pre-decisional deliberative type of information" made public, he said.
But he pointed out that there are other ways to protect such information -- exemptions from the Freedom Of Information Act mean such material does not have to be disclosed to the public, and the claim of executive privilege can be used to protect it from congressional investigators.
"The classification system is designed with one specific purpose in mind," said Leonard, "to protect the nation from its enemies. Every time it is used for any other purpose, it is undermined."
Contacted Wednesday, several defense officials told United Press International they could not comment immediately.
But Steven Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists, who campaigns against excessive secrecy in government said that the passage was one of several in the working group report that had only "dubious" claims to be classified.
"That's the most egregious," he said of the passage that drew the attention of the government's watchdog, "because it is so clearly and specifically about the political consequences of the disclosure of government policy."
But he said the document -- and other papers about interrogation techniques recently released by the government -- contained many other examples of secrecy being "used to protect ordinary bureaucratic ruminations on the political consequences of a course of action."
"It's a wholesale abuse of the classification system," he said. "Secrecy authority is being used in a self-serving manner to control public discussion of government policy and that is not acceptable."
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds said officials in the justice department had used their classification powers to suppress evidence in a lawsuit she brought, and she was not surprised at charges of over-classification.
"Sometimes we would get documents which were marked 'Top Secret' even though they hadn't been translated yet," said Edmonds, who worked as a contract translator in the bureau's Washington field office. "Sometimes they would turn out to be utterly innocuous, but rather than go through the procedures for declassification, (FBI managers) would just leave it.
"It would be stored, processed and handled as top secret."
Such over-classification is a persistent problem in the intelligence community, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., told UPI recently.
"The problem is, it's a ratchet," he said. "It only turns one way. There are very serious consequences for failure to classify sensitive information. There tend to be no adverse consequences -- at least not to someone's career -- of classifying something that doesn't need to be classified."
Leonard told UPI that, generally speaking, it was up to the relevant department -- in this case the Pentagon -- to decide what, if any, disciplinary or re-training action to take against an official who had made an inappropriate classification decision.
"I always prefer that the affected department ... come up with their own plan," he said. "Only someone with knowledge of the circumstances under which the judgment (to classify) was made and with insight into the intent (of the official making it) can really decide on the appropriate corrective action or any sanctions."
Aftergood said that part of the problem was that Leonard's own office faced an impossible task in overseeing the classification process.
He pointed out that 14 million pieces of information were classified last year. "That's about a million for each member of (the Information Security Oversight Office) staff.
"I do not know of any government office which is more responsive to issues raised by members of the public," Aftergood concluded, "but structurally their resources are simply not adequate to the task."
-------- POLITICS
-------- budget
Data Nightmare at Pentagon
Wired News
By Noah Shachtman
July 08, 2004
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64134,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_1
They've been trying for more than a decade. They've built more than 2,000 databases to do the job. They're spending nearly $19 billion a year. But, despite all that effort, Defense Department officials still haven't come up with a way to track the Pentagon's supplies, finances or people, according to a new congressional report.
Instead, America's armed forces are using a tangle of duplicative, isolated and often outdated computer systems to keep tabs on their assets. And they're not doing it particularly well. These "fundamentally flawed business systems" are leaving the Pentagon wide open to "fraud, waste and abuse," the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigatory arm, notes in its report (PDF). And they're making soldiers' lives a whole lot more difficult in the process.
Some outside analysts see the inefficiency as an unfortunate but necessary consequence of the Pentagon's enormous commitments and largely successful track record. But others think the Defense Department could handle its operations a whole lot better.
"If you ran your business this way, you'd be in jail," said Christopher Hellman, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.
The Pentagon this year asked Congress for a record budget -- over $400 billion. And that doesn't take into account many of the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the Defense Department's databases are so screwed up, "they can't even tell us how or why our money's being spent," Hellman added.
The Pentagon says it has 2,274 systems for staying on top of everything from its supply of uniforms to its health-care costs. That includes 311 personnel databases in the Army alone and 276 financial systems just for the Navy.
But it's all just a best guess. The Defense Department's comptroller "recently acknowledged that the actual number of business systems could be twice as many as previously reported," the congressional report notes.
The overlap and inefficiency can often have amusing results, the GAO observes. Because the Pentagon couldn't keep track of its equipment, it wound up buying its latest chemical and biological protective suits for $200 each -- and then selling them on the Internet for $3 a pop.
But to National Guardsmen on the front lines, the mix-ups haven't been much to smile about. Out of the 481 mobilized Army National Guard soldiers tracked by the GAO, "450 had at least one pay problem associated with their mobilization," according to the report. The Department of Defense's "inability to provide timely and accurate payments to these soldiers, many of whom risked their lives in recent Iraq or Afghanistan missions, distracted them from their missions, (and) imposed financial hardships on the soldiers and their families."
Meanwhile, defense contractors have used the Pentagon's confusion to get fat. The GAO accused these firms of "abusing the federal tax system with little or no consequence." The Defense Department is supposed to dock companies' pay if they don't give what they owe to the IRS. "However, we found that DOD had collected only $687,000 of unpaid taxes as of September 2003. We estimated that at least $100 million could be collected annually," the report notes.
Pentagon officials say they're making improvements. Under an old inventory system, it took about 12 hours to pass along an order, notes Allan Banghart, director of enterprise transformation for the Defense Logistics Agency. "Today we routinely complete this function in less than 40 minutes."
But Jim Lewis, with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Defense Department shouldn't try to be that lean. Pleasing the bean counters is nice. But the Pentagon's job is to win wars. And it's a whole lot larger than any company.
"The Pentagon is bigger than 90 percent of most countries. So if you compare them to, say, Rwanda or China or Mexico or Peru, this is not a bad record," he notes. "All militaries are inefficient. All governments are inefficient. The question is, 'Who is less inefficient?'"
-------- investigations
INTELLIGENCE
Senate Iraq Report Said to Skirt White House Use of Intelligence
July 8, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/politics/08inte.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, July 7 - A bipartisan Senate report to be issued Friday that is highly critical of prewar intelligence on Iraq will sidestep the question of how the Bush administration used that information to make the case for war, Congressional officials said Wednesday.
But Democrats are maneuvering to raise the issue in separate statements. Under a deal reached this year between Republicans and Democrats, the Bush administration's role will not be addressed until the Senate Intelligence Committee completes a further stage of its inquiry, but probably not until after the November election. As a result, said the officials, both Democratic and Republican, the committee's initial, unanimous report will focus solely on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in the assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that the administration used as a rationale for the war.
The effect may be to provide an opening for President Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what now appear to be exaggerated prewar assessments about the threat posed by Iraq, by portraying them as the fault of the Central Intelligence Agency and its departing chief, George J. Tenet, rather than Mr. Bush and his top aides. Still, Democrats will try to focus attention on the issue by releasing as many as a half-dozen "additional views" to supplement the bipartisan report. "How the administration used the intelligence was very troubling," Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said in an interview this week. "They took a flawed set of intelligence reports and converted it into a rationale for going to war."
The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused criticism on the question of whether the intelligence was misused.
The plan to release the "Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq" on Friday was announced Wednesday by the committee. Congressional officials said the Central Intelligence Agency had agreed that most of the report could be made public.
The public version of the report will include more than 80 percent of a classified, 410-page version approved unanimously by the committee, the officials said. A review by the C.I.A. that was completed last month recommended that nearly half of the report be classified. But the panel's Republican and Democratic leaders objected strongly, and they won concessions during negotiations that were completed over the weekend.
The February agreement to divide the inquiry into two parts reflected what both Republicans and Democrats on the committee portrayed as a grudging compromise. Until then, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, the top Republican on the panel, had insisted that the question of how the administration used the intelligence exceeded the committee's scope. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat, had insisted that the initial inquiry, focusing on the intelligence agencies, be expanded to include the question of whether public statements by government officials had been substantiated by intelligence information.
Both sides say they are committed to completing the second stage of the inquiry as soon as possible. But the committee also plans to begin work on recommendations for broader changes in intelligence agencies to address the shortcomings detailed in the report, leaving little time in an election year to complete an inquiry that would focus on the Bush administration and would almost certainly splinter along party lines.
The Senate report, the result of more than a year's work by the panel's staff, is the first of three to be issued this summer that are expected to be damning of the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies. The presidential commission on the Sept. 11 attacks is expected to release its final report this month, while Charles A. Duelfer, who is heading what has been an unsuccessful effort to find illicit weapons in Iraq, is expected to report in August or September.
Mr. Roberts, the committee chairman, said last week that the 120 conclusions spelled out in the report "literally beg for changes within the intelligence community." He added, "What we had was a worldwide intelligence failure."
In the early months after last year's American invasion of Iraq, Mr. Roberts initially expressed reluctance to proceed at all with an inquiry into prewar intelligence. But the huge disconnect between the C.I.A.'s prewar declarations about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons and the postwar fact that no such weapons have been found has left him and other Republicans increasingly outspoken in their criticism.
"Once we got into this, and the chairman and all of us saw the huge gaps in our intelligence process and in our intelligence-gathering and processing and analysis,'' Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said in an interview on Wednesday, "then it became more and more apparent that we were going to have to continue to bore into it pretty deeply, so we could figure out what went wrong and why."
The release of the report on Friday morning will follow a planned farewell for Mr. Tenet at the C.I.A.'s headquarters on Thursday, his penultimate working day after seven years as director of central intelligence. Mr. Tenet's top deputy, John McLaughlin, is scheduled to take over on July 11 as acting director, but Mr. Bush is moving toward nominating a permanent successor.
The committee had initially planned to release its report on Thursday, setting up what would have been an awkward juxtaposition between its expected criticism of Mr. Tenet and the agency's tribute to him. But the release was postponed at the request of Mr. Rockefeller, who was traveling to a funeral in West Virginia.
In contrast to the House Intelligence Committee, the Senate panel has moved swiftly to produce its report on Iraq intelligence. The House panel, headed by Representative Porter J. Goss, a Florida Republican who is being considered as a possible successor to Mr. Tenet, began its inquiry a year ago, but it is not planning to issue its findings until at least September, Mr. Goss said recently.
In a June 23 speech to business executives, Mr. McLaughlin issued what amounted to a pre-emptive rebuttal to the Senate report.
"What shortcomings there were - and there were shortcomings - were the result of specific, discrete problems that we understand and are well on our way to addressing or have already addressed,'' he said.
-------- propaganda wars
Pentagon classifying 'impulse' criticized
July 08, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040708-121741-2864r.htm
A government watchdog agency has asked the Pentagon to explain why parts of a memo about the interrogation of detainees in the war on terror were once classified.
William Leonard, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, said the classification was part of a disturbing trend, what he called a "bureaucratic impulse" for officials to "almost reflexively reach out to the classification system."
The memo, declassified and released last month, is the report of a working group on interrogation techniques established in January 2003 by the Defense Department's general counsel.
The relevant passage - marked "secret" prior to declassification - is part of a discussion of the consequences for criminal and military prosecutions of detainees and others if the public became aware of the use of so-called "coercive interrogation techniques."
It reads: "Consideration must be given to the public's reaction to methods of interrogation that may affect the military commission process. The more coercive the method, the greater the likelihood that the method will be met with significant domestic and international resistance."
The administration's policy regarding secrecy, laid out in an executive order signed by President Bush in March 2003, says that information can lawfully be classified only if its "unauthorized disclosure ... reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security ... ."
"Looking at that paragraph," Mr. Leonard said, "it's difficult to see how that information [could] ... damage national security."
Lawmakers argue that overclassification is rife in the federal government, and critics of the administration have accused it of abusing classification to hide merely embarrassing or inconvenient information.
The working-group report is what classification specialists call "part marked," meaning that each paragraph has its own code indicating how secret it is. Several paragraphs in the report are marked "U" for unclassified.
"On its face," Mr. Leonard said, the classification of this passage "reflects a disturbing lack of understanding of the constraints and limitations [of] the executive order ... ."
Mr. Leonard said it was especially disturbing because the working group that drew up the report included some of the most senior lawyers in the Defense Department.
----
Russia silences Free Speech
By MARK MacKINNON
Globe and Mail
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040707.wxrussia0708/BNStory/International/
Moscow - On another day, the symbolism of having a show titled Free Speech censored might have been enough to make Savik Shuster laugh. But yesterday was not the time for appreciating ironies. These are serious days for anyone attempting to do independent journalism in Russia.
Free Speech, which was taken off the air yesterday by Russia's NTV channel, was seen as the last televised forum in the country for open debate of political issues. A talk show with an edge, it drew a highly intelligent audience and Mr. Shuster and his guests were remarkable on the increasingly bland Russian television dial for their willingness to question and criticize the Kremlin.
But in Vladimir Putin's Russia, there are lines you don't cross. The outspoken Mr. Shuster, a Lithuanian-born Canadian citizen and graduate of McGill University's medical school, has had so many clashes with the Kremlin and its allies that he isn't sure when or where he overstepped the bounds.
It might have been his last program, on July 1, when he slammed the pro-Putin United Russia party for refusing to send a guest to debate an unpopular government plan that would see social benefits for retirees and veterans replaced with cash payouts.
"United Russia's argument was that it was 'inexpedient' - that's how freedom of speech is in the country today," the bespectacled 51-year-old said on the air, a comment sure to anger some powerful figures.
Or it could have been last month, when he used his show to question why Moscow was bidding for the 2012 Olympic Games when money is desperately needed for health care and pension reform. After that, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov asked aloud why a "citizen of a foreign state" was allowed to host such a prominent television show.
Or it could have been two years ago, when Mr. Putin himself criticized Free Speech for its coverage of a hostage-taking by Chechen gunmen at a Moscow theatre. After Mr. Shuster interviewed the angry relatives of those who died in the special-forces raid that ended the standoff, the Kremlin ensured that his next show was taped, rather than live to air as usual.
"It's very difficult for me to say why this happened," Mr. Shuster said yesterday in a brief telephone interview, his voice low and strained. "It seems to me that this is political."
Mr. Shuster had to be coy. He said he is still considering another job he's been offered at NTV. While several sources confirmed yesterday that the show has been taken off the air, the station, which is owned by the state-controlled Gazprom energy company, said that no official decision had been made and that it was "just rumours" so far.
News of the shuffle came just two days after the NTV appointed Kremlin loyalist Vladimir Kulistikov to run the station. The network is one of three that broadcast across all 11 of Russia's time zones. The other two are directly state-owned.
Since Mr. Putin came to power in 2000, all independent Russian television networks have been taken over by Kremlin-aligned companies. With few exceptions, the rest of the media use careful self-censorship to avoid angering the authorities.
For Mr. Shuster, who fled the Soviet Union with his family in 1971 only to be drawn back to Russia in the late 1980s by the promise of a free society inherent in Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost, the cancellation of his program had to be a body blow.
"It's very sad news as it was the last live political talk show on Russian TV," said his colleague, former NTV host Leonid Parfyonov.
Mr. Parfyonov's own popular show, Namedni, was taken off the air last month after he broadcast an interview with the widow of an assassinated Chechen separatist leader.
"The appointment of a new general director wasn't expected to bring such radical moves; I really didn't expect this," he said.
Nikolai Petrov, a media expert with the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, said the sudden cancellation of Mr. Shuster's show shows that the Kremlin is no longer concerned with the impression it gives while it moves to silence its critics.
"It's a rather symbolic gesture. Until now, in all discussions about mass media and freedom of speech, the Kremlin would point to this program as evidence of the absence of any censorship or pressure on big media," he said. "Now it's gone."
----
Russian Talk Show Faces Shutdown
Move Would Kill Last Independent Political Program
By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 8, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35389-2004Jul7.html
MOSCOW, July 7 -- The Kremlin loyalist appointed this week to run Russia's NTV television network decided to cancel the talk show "Freedom of Speech" in his first full day on the job, a move that would effectively leave the Russian airwaves without a single independent-minded political program.
On Monday, the state-controlled natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which took over NTV in 2001, fired the network's general director and replaced him with Vladimir Kulistikov, head of news programming at the state-run Rossiya channel, known for fawning nightly news coverage of President Vladimir Putin.
On Tuesday, Kulistikov met with "Freedom of Speech" host Savik Shuster and told him that the show would be canceled, according to several sources close to Shuster who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Shuster was told that his last show would probably be on Friday and was offered an off-air post as deputy general director in charge of documentaries, the sources said. Reached Wednesday night, Shuster said, "I'm considering their proposal."
The apparent demise of "Freedom of Speech" would bring to a conclusion what media analysts have called a long government effort to silence critical voices on the once-outspoken network. When Gazprom took over NTV, many of the network's journalists left to protest Kremlin interference.
Shuster, former Moscow bureau chief for U.S.-funded Radio Liberty, chose to start "Freedom of Speech" -- "Svoboda Slova" in Russian -- on NTV anyway, hosting live debates on political topics after the evening news. He clashed with management several times, and last year he was briefly ordered to tape his shows, rather than broadcast live.
"The process of liquidation of nongovernment TV channels that started several years ago has reached its conclusion. The liquidation of 'Freedom of Speech' is the end of this process, full stop," said Igor Yakovenko, head of the Union of Journalists. "The TV screen looks the same now as in the 1970s, except instead of a party general secretary, we have a president."
One month ago, NTV fired its top-rated news anchor, Leonid Parfyonov, and canceled his popular Sunday evening news magazine show, "Namedni," after a dispute in which Parfyonov accused the network of bowing to Kremlin pressure and censoring an item on his program. At the time, Shuster said in an interview that Parfyonov had performed a useful service as a "whistleblower," exposing the Kremlin's heavy-handedness, and that he hoped that, "at least for a short period," his own program might stay on the air.
But Shuster's remaining time to debate issues of the day -- with a studio audience able to speak freely and guests who dared to talk about mostly forbidden subjects such as the war in Chechnya -- turned out to be short.
"In Russia they have now closed the last political talk show that was live on the air," Parfyonov said Wednesday after speaking with Shuster.
"Russia's becoming a very closed society with very little space for public politics," said one of the sources close to Shuster. "They want to have instruments of influence on TV; they don't want to have anything which influences public opinion in an open way."
Kulistikov headed the NTV news department in the 1990s, when NTV was founded as Russia's first independent network. But he left it for state-run news agencies after Putin came to power and seemed to change his philosophy while at the Rossiya channel. "If I were not loyal to Mr. Putin, I would not work here," Kulistikov told the New York Times this winter.
In a statement released by NTV late Wednesday, Kulistikov said that "no final decisions have been made" on canceling any programs and he did not comment specifically on the fate of "Freedom of Speech."
--------
Fired FBI Translator's Charges Classified
Associated Press Writer
By CONNIE CASS
July 8, 2004
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4290829,00.html
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department has completed its investigation of a whistle-blower's allegations that shoddy work and security breaches hampered translation of Sept. 11-related documents. But like the rest of her case, the report is classified as secret.
Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, will ask the department to release an unclassified version of the inspector general's report, Leahy's spokesman, David Carle, said Thursday.
Also, former FBI linguist Sibel Edmonds will go to court seeking the right to read the report written about her, said her lawyer, Mark Zaid.
``I have no problems believing that some of the information in her case could be classified, but to say all of it is classified, it's the breadth of it that's absurd,'' Zaid said.
The inspector general's report looks at Edmonds' allegations of security lapses among FBI translators and her complaint that she was fired for reporting them. The report was completed late last week, deputy inspector general Paul Martin said Thursday.
Copies were sent to the department, the FBI and the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, Martin said.
No copies or summary of findings will go to Edmonds or be released to the public, he said, because ``it's classified at the secret level by the FBI.''
On Tuesday, Edmonds' lawsuit over her dismissal was thrown out by a federal judge to protect government secrecy. She plans to appeal.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton accepted arguments by Attorney General John Ashcroft and the FBI that Edmonds' suit could expose intelligence-gathering methods and disrupt diplomatic relations with foreign governments.
The judge said he could not explain further because of the sensitive nature of the case.
At a news conference Thursday, Edmonds accused the Bush administration of misusing its state secrets privilege to cover up incompetence and wrongdoing at the FBI.
``To them, our Bill of Rights under the Constitution is nothing more than an inconvenient roadblock to overcome,'' she said.
Edmonds, who was hired to help translate Turkish and Farsi just after the 2001 attacks, said she saw documents suggesting that ``semi-legitimate organizations'' with foreign connections and ties to Sept. 11 terrorists were being allowed to operate unfettered.
She alleged in her suit that she was fired in March 2002 after she complained to FBI managers about shoddy wiretap translations and told them an interpreter with a relative at a foreign embassy might have compromised national security.
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
Wind farm blows new life into Spanish village
Thursday, July 08, 2004
By Alejandro Lifschitz,
Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-08/s_25660.asp
HIGUERUELA, Spain - The village of Higueruela is dwarfed by the 15-story high windmills of Europe's largest wind farm, but none of its residents are complaining.
While some might consider the turbines an eyesore, in this farming village in one of Spain's least developed regions, Castille-La Mancha, many are eager to see more of the energy- and cash-generating, 180-foot-high machines.
Two new schools are testament to the improvements the plant has brought the isolated village, where an annual 2,400 hours of wind make it a prime site for generating power. Wind speeds of 10 mph are enough to set the mills in motion, and with 161 megawatts of installed capacity, the complex can meet the electricity needs of around 640,000 people.
"If only there could be more wind parks," said 34-year-old Gabriel Minguez, working behind one of the few bars in the village. "The town hall gets money for the wind park, and it provides work in the village," he added, speaking over the distant murmur of the four-ton spokes of the plant's 244 windmills, which rise from a hill barely 800 yards away.
Green Cash
With traditional economic activity limited largely to growing grapes and grains, some Higueruela residents cashed in by selling their land to power utility Iberdrola, which built the park over four years ago. Some of the windmills also provide the village with an ongoing income because they occupy land still owned by the town hall, which rents it to Iberdrola.
"We earn 450,000 euros a year from the wind park. It provides the largest portion of our income," said Mayor Jose Colmenero, who manages an annual budget of 1.6 million euros.
Some 25 villagers are employed as maintenance workers, stemming a steady population drain afflicting most of rural Spain - although even with these jobs, it is possible to stand for minutes on end in Higueruela's streets without seeing another person.
Thanks to government incentives, Spain is the world's third-largest producer of wind power behind Germany and the United States. It wants 15 percent of installed energy capacity to come from wind power by 2011, to reduce dependence on imported oil and help meet its Kyoto Protocol targets of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental Impact
Not all Spanish villages are as welcoming as Higueruela. Some people deride the turbines as monstrosities, while environmentalists say woodland has to be cleared to make way for them.
In another La Mancha village, Luzaga, the 100-strong population mobilized effectively against Danish company Neg Micon's project to install 33 turbines.
"We have got a delay in the project. The regional government did not include the wind farm in its priorities for 2004 as they had announced," said Celso Hernando, who has been leading the movement against the wind park. "We are not against wind power, but if they build a wind park here it will destroy the ecosystem surrounding the town," he said.
Juan Ignacio Gomez, from the environment department of an Iberdrola unit, said there was no sign of damage in Higueruela, adding that all wind parks have to go through a rigorous environmental impact assessment. The main toll seems to be a few dozen partridges killed each year when they fly into the windmills in foggy weather.
Largely unconcerned by the changes to the landscape, the main concern for Higueruela residents is that the winds keep blowing.
"What matters to me is that before the wind park the village was worse, and there was less work," said Minguez.
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Soybean farmers hope to pump up interest in biodiesel
Friday, July 09, 2004
By Dave Kolpack,
Associated Press
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-09/s_25709.asp
FARGO, North Dakota - Soybean farmers are pumped that a gas station here is selling biodiesel fuel, even though the idea of building a biodiesel plant in North Dakota appears to be stalled.
The farmers have been promoting biodiesel fuel because soybean oil can be used in the mix. North Dakota produces about 3.5 million acres of soybeans.
A blend of biodiesel called B20 is being sold this summer at the Stamart station store, at a busy intersection off Interstate 29. It's the first time the blend of 20 percent biodiesel fuel and 80 percent petroleum has been offered at the pump in North Dakota.
"We've always supported anything that's an alternative fuel," said Dirk Lenthe, the Stamart owner. "But biodiesel is also a good thing to add to diesel fuel because it's something we produce around here."
Producers were disappointed when a study showed the state could not support a biodiesel plant.
"It just isn't the right time to do it," said Terry Goerger, a soybean farmer and member of the North Dakota Biodeisel Steering Committee, which ordered the study. "The energy bill hasn't passed ... and there just aren't enough incentives to produce biodiesel."
One problem is the price. The biodiesel blend sells for about 25 cents more per gallon because of a higher cost of production, and it would need to be subsidized to be more attractive, Lenthe said.
The state is helping finance the current project, which Lenthe said is allowing him to sell the fuel at close to the same price as regular diesel. The B20 was selling for $1.67 per gallon early this week, compared with $1.65 for No. 2 diesel fuel, Lenthe said.
About 1,800 gallons of B20 have been sold since the pump opened on June 15, Lenthe said.
"We really haven't pushed it real hard with advertising," he said. "Right now we would just like to have people try it."
Lenthe is using the B20 in his 2002 Volkswagen Jetta. His fuel efficiency has increased from about 42 miles to the gallon to about 45 miles.
"I think it's kind of nice stuff," Lenthe said. "I haven't heard anything negative associated with it."
Farmers are sold on the economic and environmental benefits of biodiesel, but offering it at the pump will help them gauge interest among other consumers, said Joel Thorsrud, a farmer and representative on the National Biodiesel Board.
"From my perspective, it's encouraging to see our own product used by our neighbors," he said. "It does cost a little bit more, so it might be prohibitive for truckers to use it."
-------- ACTIVISTS
Antiwar protest planned at rotary
By GARY REMAL Staff Writer
Thursday, July 08, 2004
Blethen Maine Morning Sentinel
http://kennebecjournal.mainetoday.com/news/local/801724.shtml
AUGUSTA -- Antiwar protesters who have become a fixture on the state capital's Memorial Circle traffic rotary on Thursday evenings the past three months say they will be back tonight despite police warnings last week.
Led by a Pittston couple whose son is a U.S. soldier serving in Iraq, group leaders say they are willing to work with police to minimize safety concerns.
But Rita Clement, who has led the demonstrations along with her husband, Richard, said the protesters will not allow their opposition to the war to be silenced.
"We want to be safe. We don't want to be confrontational. But we want to be able to speak our minds and be there and express our feelings," Rita Clement said.
Clement said that last week was the first time police had spoken to them since they returned to protest the Iraqi conflict on the traffic circle on April 15. It also was the first time counterprotesters, with Bush-Cheney signs, showed up on the opposite side of the traffic rotary, she said.
"One time, a year ago, a police officer asked us to move back because there were too many of us and people couldn't see as they entered the rotary. So we moved back," Clement recalled.
But police last week told the group they would not be allowed anywhere around the traffic circle, including on adjacent sidewalks, she said.
Augusta police Deputy Chief Robert C. Gregoire said Wednesday his officers would ask the protesters to move -- from the southside State Street traffic island they have occupied on and off for two years, to the sidewalks surrounding the rotary.
Gregoire refused to say what action police would take if the demonstrators refused the request.
He said he hoped his officers would not have to force the protesters to move or make arrests. But he said the actions of the police would be dictated by the situation, the level of safety concerns, the size of the group and its effect on drivers' visibility.
"You have to look at the totality of the circumstances," Gregoire said. "And it all depends on what they are doing to distract traffic."
Clement said police last week did not give them the option to use the rotary sidewalks.
Demonstrators protesting the Iraq war have appeared on the circle from time to time since the war began, Clement said. She and her husband joined in February 2003 until the gatherings ended about April of that year, when it appeared the war was ending.
The Clements led a renewal of the protests beginning April 15, always appearing from 5 to 6 p.m. on Thursdays.
Gregoire said police took action last week when they received complaints from drivers. He said he wasn't sure which group caused the problems.
"They can stand and protest, but they can't yell at drivers individually. That's harassment," the deputy police chief said. "We have asked people to leave the traffic island and the traffic circle in particular (in the past). This isn't the first time."
Clement said her son, Brian, joined the Army after graduating from high school in 2001. She said he was unsure what he wanted to do and hoped to take advantage of Army college tuition benefits.
"We're not anti-military. My husband was in the military. (Brian) decided to join the Army to buy some time and earn some money for college," Clement said. "We don't oppose the military men and women over there, we oppose this war. This is something they shouldn't have to do."
Police last week said they received a complaint about the Bush demonstrators from a motorist, a woman who said she had a Democratic bumper sticker on her car that they had criticized. Later, police received a complaint from one of the Bush supporters complaining of jeers aimed their way by occupants of a van.
Gregoire said police are concerned about the safety of the demonstrators as well. He said accidents often cause vehicles to be thrown over curbs onto grassy areas such as the one used by the demonstrators.
Gary Remal -- 623-3811, Ext. 518
gremal@centralmaine.com
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Colombia Amendment Tomorrow (July 9th)
From: Gerald Rudolph, Carolina Peace - gerald@carolinapeace.org
Date: July 8, 2004
The House Appropriations Committee will be debating the 2005 foreign aid bill tomorrow, which contains most of the aid Colombia, South America, receives from the US each year, this Friday (July 9th). Rep. Sam Farr, a Democrat from California, will offer an amendment to keep US troop presence in Colombia limited. Your help is needed to ensure that this amendment passes!
What the amendment does: Rep. Farr's amendment limits the number of US troops and contractors in Colombia to 500 troops and 400 contractors. The Bush Administration is trying to increase US military involvement in Colombia by upping troop presence to 800 troops and 600 contractors. The House rejected the administration's plan when the Defense Authorization Bill was debated a few weeks back. But the Senate accepted it. The House is now trying to ensure that Bush doesn't win on this one by writing the cap into not one, but two bills.
What we need you to do:
We need to flood their offices with phone calls and faxes asking them to support it. This is our chance to show Bush and his allies in Congress that we will not rest, and push Congress further toward a Colombia policy that reflects our values of justice, peace, and respect for human rights.
Here's how to do it:
Representative Clyburn is on the House Appropriations Committee. Please call his office (connect through the capitol switchboard, 202-224-3121). Tell the receptionist that you are a constituent, and ask to speak with the foreign policy aide. Even a voice mail message is fine-- here's a sample message:
"My name is _____ and I am a constituent from ____ (if leaving a message, leave phone number). I would like Representative_____ to support the Farr amendment to the foreign aid bill, which limits US troop presence in Colombia to 500 troops and 400 contractors. I don't think the US should get more deeply involved in another foreign conflict, and I have serious concerns about the human rights record of the Colombian military and its relationship with brutal paramilitary groups. I hope you will help put the brakes on US military involvement in Colombia by supporting the Farr amendment."
(If leaving message: "Please call me back and let me know how Representative ____ will vote on this issue.").
Again, you can reach their offices by calling the congressional switchboard (202-224-3121) and asking to be connected. I know we do not have much time, and that each of you leads busy lives. I hope that you can take five minutes on Thursday to make this important phone call. With each small step, we are turning back the tide of US military policy and making space for a US-Colombia policy-- and a Congress-- that reflects and supports our values and our hopes for the future.
Is Clyburn your representative? If you are not sure go to http://www.house.gov/writerep/ and enter your zip code to find your representative.
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Student Protesters Held in Iran
Middle East - AP
Jul 8, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=736&e=10&u=/ap/20040708/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_student_detainees
CAIRO, Egypt - Iranian authorities should release student protesters detained in violent demonstrations at Tehran University that began five years ago Thursday, a New York-based human rights group said.
Human Rights Watch said that an unknown number of students remained in custody out of the thousands it claimed were initially arrested. One student died during the demonstrations.
"Five years after the Tehran University protests, it's time for the Iranian government to release the peaceful protesters," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa Division, said in a statement.
"The government also needs to hold plainclothes militia accountable for the attacks on students that year."
Security forces raided a student dormitory following a peaceful demonstration, the statement said, beating students and trapping many in their rooms. The demonstrations lasted for a week, involving more than 25,000 people.
Human Rights Watch said several students had been sentenced to death, but authorities later commuted their punishments to time in prison. It also accused Iranian security authorities of torturing many imprisoned students and preventing them from seeing their lawyers.
"While many of those initially detained were released, an unknown number of student protesters remain in prison," the group alleged.
The anniversary of the beginning of the 1999 protests is usually accompanied by student demonstrations against the country's hard-line authorities, which are controlled by ruling conservative Shiite Muslim clerics.
Subsequent protests marking the 1999 demonstrations, which were the biggest and most violent anti-government action since the 1979 Islamic revolution that installed the Islamic regime, have been met by crackdowns by Iranian authorities.
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