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NUCLEAR
Pakistan to build nuclear plant with China's help
Cancer Spreads Like Wildfire In Iraq
Cut-off Date Urged for Gulf War Claims
Time to Compensate 'Gulf War Syndrome' Victims - Expert
Pakistan approves installation of second nuclear plant with China's help
India-Pakistan Hope Gives Way to Uncertainty
Iran Seeks Nuke Bomb 'Booster' from Russia - Report
International pressure must stop Iran's nuclear ambitions: Israeli general
E.U. trio plans high-level nuclear talks with Iran
Germany worried by Iran's nuclear moves
Envoys: Iran May Have Resumed Nuke Program
Tehran breaks U.N. seals on nukes
Effort to Curb Iran's Nuclear Ambitions on Allies' Agenda
MILITARY
Doctors Group to Withdraw From Afghanistan
Villagers burned alive in Sudan atrocity
South Korean president accepts defense minister's resignation
Peacekeepers Criticized in Kosovo Riots
Lockheed Reports 22 Percent Increase in Quarterly Profit
Boeing swings back to profit as defense orders surge
Powell Urges U.S. Allies To Stay Steadfast in Iraq
Baquba blast toll continues to rise
Key Iraqi Conference On Track To Open
Car Bomb Kills Dozens Outside Iraqi Police Station
Road blocks paralyse life in Gaza
Palestinian Premier to Stay On
Arafat Agrees With Premier on Ending Their Standoff
Police discover weapons lab in Kiryat Haim apartment
Iraq War Straining US-Turkey Ties
Defense contractors face Iraq torture suit
U.S. General Witnessed Abuses, Iraqi Says
Annan to Appeal for Aid to Address Sudan Crisis
U.N. and Congress in Dispute Over Iraq Oil-for-Food Inquiries
VA Drops $472 Million Computer System
Court Looks for Ways to Speed Milosevic Trial
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
UN Sub-Commission Hears from Non-Governmental Organizations
4 Frenchmen Freed From Guantanamo
4 Detainees Are Returned to France After 2 Years at Guantánamo
Man Talks of Plans to Attack Calif. Trains
UK troops held torture contests, Iraqi claims
POLITICS
Kerry Calls for Panel's Extension
For Al-Jazeera, Loss of Convention Sign Brings Banner Publicity
Democrats Letting Anti-GOP Train Roll Right Along
Lost Record '02 Florida Vote Raises '04 Concern
ENERGY
National Renewable Energy Lab Breaks Ground on Research Facility
Australian Wind Industry To Prime Minister, Don't Blow It
U.S. to Unveil Plan to Harvest Methane With 7 Countries
OTHER
Lack of Funds Delaying Toxic Waste Cleanups
Panel Sees No Unique Risk From Genetic Engineering
Failure in Cancun Haunts WTO
WTO lets Libya apply to join
ACTIVISTS
Peace activists say cops picking on them
World Bank Challenged: Are Poor Really Helped?
Kucinich blasts holding cage for protests
Medea Benjamin Dragged Off DNC Floor
Behind Barbed Wire, A 'Free Speech' Corral
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- china
Pakistan to build nuclear plant with China's help
Wed Jul 28, 2004
(Reuters)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1965&ncid=731&e=8&u=/nm/20040728/india_nm/india_165389
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has formally approved proposals to build a new nuclear power plant with help from longtime ally China, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Wednesday.
Aziz, who is expected to become prime minister next month, told state-run television the new nuclear plant would cost 51 billion rupees ($874 million).
The 300 megawatt plant will be built at Chashma on the banks of the Indus river, around 280 km (170 miles) south of Islamabad, alongside the first plant that China helped build in 1999.
An official statement said the project also envisaged the transfer of technology from China to enable the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) to run the plant itself.
The project includes a nuclear steam supply system, a turbine generator and related equipment.
The statement said the project will be completed in seven years but did not say when it will be started.
PAEC and China's National Nuclear Corporation signed the deal on the construction of a new nuclear power plant in May.
Pakistan says its new nuclear plant is for peaceful use only.
The country was at the centre of a nuclear proliferation scandal this year after its top nuclear scientist was found to have been involved in an illicit trade in nuclear parts.
Pakistan built its first nuclear power station in 1972 in the port city of Karachi with Canadian help.
But Western countries, under pressure from the United States, later halted nuclear cooperation with Pakistan amid suspicions Islamabad was secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Undeterred, Pakistan ran five nuclear tests in May 1998 in a tit-for-tat response to tests by India.
-------- depleted uranium
Cancer Spreads Like Wildfire In Iraq
Turks.US
July 28 2004
http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=20040728092303616
Cancer and birth defects have been spreading like wildfire in Iraq since the1991 US-led Gulf War, prompting doctors to describe them as the Iraqi version of flu.
Depleted uranium (DU) used by the United States and its allies against Iraq has taken its toll on around120 , 000to140 , 000Iraqis, according to the latest estimates released by the Iraqi health ministry.
With Iraq becoming an almost radioactive toxic wasteland, the number of birth defects and cancer-infected Iraqis is on the rise day in and day out due to the lingering effects of the deadly nuclear substance, the London-based Al-Quds Press news agency reported Tuesday, July27 .
Dr Abdul Kazimi, director of Baghdad only nuclear medicine hospital, said 7500 Iraqis are being infected with cancer ever year.
The substance is also blamed for the so-called Gulf War Syndrome, the still-unexplained malady that has reportedly plagued hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans.
Press reports say about100 , 000tons of DU munitions had been used in the Desert Storm military operation, the first time such a weapon was used in a warfare.
On January16 ,1991 , the US launched its allied Desert Storm military operation to liberate Kuwait.
The unprecedented US-led aerial bombardment and DU armor-piercing shells forced the Iraqi troops to desperately retreat from Kuwait on February 27 .
Aggravated
Abdul Hamid Khalifa, an Iraqi specialist on carcinogens, said the crippling 13 -year-old US sanctions slapped on Iraq after the war have made matters worse.
"It is a disaster in the broad sense of the word that has slipped out of control," he said.
"Cases of cancer-infected Iraqis started emerging following the 1991 Gulf War with most of the cases concentrating in the south and women taking the brunt."
The specialist added that infantry troops were identified as receiving the highest exposures to DU radiation.
He further said that contaminated water, expired imported food stuff and devastated health infrastructure added insult to injury.
Khalifa stressed that environmental pollution is causing 70 percent of cancer cases and food 30 percent.
Farras Abd, an Iraqi citizen whose uncle is a DU victim, said prayers are his one and only option.
"The hospital is running out of medicine and can't cope with the increasing number of cancer patients, who can't afford traveling abroad for treatment," he noted.
Deadly Substance
According to the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), depleted uranium is a highly dense metal that is the byproduct of the process during which fissionable uranium used to manufacture nuclear bombs and reactor fuel is separated from natural uranium.
Uranium, a weakly radioactive element, occurs naturally in soil and water everywhere on Earth, but mainly in trace quantities.
A second, potentially more serious hazard is created when a DU round hits its target.
As much as 70 percent of the projectile can burn up on impact, creating a firestorm of ceramic DU oxide particles.
The residue of this firestorm is an extremely fine ceramic uranium dust that can spread by the wind, inhaled and absorbed into the human body and absorbed by plants and animals, becoming part of the food chain.
Once lodged in the soil, the munitions can pollute the environment and create up to a hundredfold increase in uranium levels in ground water, according to the UNEP.
DU is said to be radioactive for about 4 thousand years.
-----
Cut-off Date Urged for Gulf War Claims
28 Jul 2004
PA News
By Laura Scott
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3264526
Veterans should be given a cut-off date by the Ministry of Defence after which no claim for Gulf Related Illness would be accepted to "close the matter", an inquiry heard today.
Retired Major-General Peter Craig, who is a member of the Royal British Legion's Gulf War Group, also said the cases of 3,000-plus veterans who have claimed but have not yet been compensated should be settled with a one-off payment.
Giving evidence to the independent inquiry in central London, he said: "One possible way of solving this issue would be to have a cut-off date after which no claims for Gulf Related Illness would be accepted and settle those 3,000-plus who have so far claimed and not yet been recompensed.
"To suggest that the condition exists and would automatically result in compensation after this date could possibly result in an avalanche of new claims for symptoms which are now well known and rehearsed.
"It's now 14 years down the line and new cases as far as I can see at that length of time would be very, very hard to accept.
"I am suggesting that after a cut-off date we just say 'Okay, we accept it, but there won't be any more'. I am suggesting a one-off payment to close the matter."
But Mr Craig added that there should be an exception made to the rule for cases where veterans develop cancer which may be as a result of their service in the Gulf because of the length of time the disease can take to strike.
The inquiry also heard another possible option as opposed to a lump sum payment would be to upgrade claimants who receive a full 100% war pension.
At present they receive varying percentages of the war pension depending on how ill they are classed to be by a tribunal.
This assessment process in itself is a minefield, according to Mr Craig, because of the difficulties in judging just how ill veterans really are.
He has witnessed some 500 cases from his time sitting for the Appeals Service and Pensions Appeals Tribunals which decide on such matters and said that in some cases he was convinced veterans' claims of illness were "exaggerated".
Lord Lloyd of Berwick, who was chairing the inquiry, asked him: "Are you suggesting some people may have been claiming because they have read that others are claiming and that that has encouraged veterans to make claims which are false... and, assuming you have come across cases where you feel that the symptoms have been exaggerated, or are possibly non-existent, you are not suggesting that this is true of all of them, are you?"
Mr Craig replied: "No, but I am not absolutely convinced by the veracity of evidence I have heard. In certain cases it has been exaggerated.
"In one case a chap was based in Rijad and he claims that the Scud missile that landed a mile away which they went to see contained depleted uranium, which was abject nonsense."
The three-week probe into the so-called Gulf War Syndrome which is funded by an anonymous donor is in its second week.
It aims to take evidence from 30 ex-servicemen and medical experts in a bid to establish the facts about the Gulf War Illnesses to resolve the long-standing dispute over their causes.
Support groups claim that about 6,000 Gulf War veterans have suffered unexplained ill-health since the 1991 conflict, including kidney pains, memory loss, chronic fatigue, mood swings, aching joints, sensitivity to chemicals and cancerous tumours. More than 600 are said to have died.
The veterans have blamed an "experimental" cocktail of tablets and vaccinations they received to protect them against nerve agents, anthrax and botulism.
Exposure to depleted uranium munitions has also been identified as a possible cause of the illness.
Hundreds of veterans have tried to claim compensation but they were dealt a bitter blow earlier this year when solicitors advised that there was insufficient evidence to prove their cases in court.
The MoD has always denied the existence of a so-called Gulf War Syndrome, insisting there was no single cause of the illnesses suffered.
Today the MoD handed over a batch of hefty files containing background documents to help the three-man inquiry panel of Lord Lloyd, Dr Norman Jones, Treasurer of the Royal College of Physicians, and Sir Michael Davies, formerly Clerk of the Parliaments, understand the "complex issues involved".
--------
Time to Compensate 'Gulf War Syndrome' Victims - Expert
Wed 28 Jul 2004
PA News
By Laura Scott, PA News
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=3265728
Gulf War veterans who claim to be suffering illnesses as a result of their military service should be given "the benefit of the doubt", a vaccine expert told an inquiry today.
Dr Jack Melling, who used to work for the Centre For Applied Microbiology and Research at Porton Down in Hampshire and is now based in the US, said the time has come to resolve the issue as ongoing research may never fully shed light on the exact cause of Gulf War-related Illness.
Giving evidence to the inquiry in London, he said: "Further research may lead to improved treatment but I do suspect it's not gong to be very effective in providing answers into why the illness happens.
"I think we have reached, or are very quickly reaching, the point we say we give the benefit of doubt that this seems to be a very unusual set of events that this group of men and women were exposed to.
"To think that in one year or two we will cross a watershed and suddenly all will be clear, I don't think that is going to happen."
The main problem, according to Dr Melling, lies in pinning down exactly what causes the myriad of Gulf-related illnesses veterans are suffering because of the sheer number of potential hazards they were exposed to during their service.
He said the Ministry of Defence "got some things wrong in the first Gulf war".
The inquiry heard that the bio-defence vaccinations, such as for anthrax and plague, were a particularly grey area because previously they had only been used in a limited way in this country and any adverse long-term side effects were not well known, especially when they were administered to troops at the same time as numerous other vaccinations.
He said: "Troops were given a multiplicity of vaccinations and we really do not know precisely who received what or how many, but people received possibly anywhere between eight and 15 injections.
"Prior to 1990 the anthrax vaccine was used in a very limited way in this country...one consequence of this is there was not an opportunity to observe in a large proportion whether or not the vaccinations produced adverse reactions. When these vaccinations were used in 1991 this was a new situation.
"It's probably not possible to say whether or not an adverse result could be due to the anthrax vaccination itself or to it being one of a set of vaccinations that people were given and so giving a high degree of immunological change."
But the multiple vaccinations were not the only problem in reaching an answer as to what contributed to Gulf related illnesses.
Troops' exposure to depleted uranium, organophosphate pesticides, smoke from burning oil wells, nerve gas, and experiencing the first ever mass use of nap tablets - the nerve agent pre-treatment used as an antidote against chemical weapons, all played a part.
But Dr Melling said it's near impossible to determine how big a part each factor played: "The problem now is that it's virtually impossible to recreate in any experimental form the conditions that people were exposed to in 1990 and 1991."
The three-week probe into the so-called "Gulf War Syndrome", which is funded by an anonymous donor, is in its second week. It aims to take evidence from 30 ex-servicemen and medical experts, in a bid to establish the facts about Gulf War-related illnesses to resolve the long-running dispute over their causes.
Support groups claim around 6,000 veterans have suffered unexplained ill health since the 1991 conflict, including kidney pains, memory loss, chronic fatigue, mood swings, aching joints, sensitivity to chemicals and cancerous tumours.
More than 600 are said to have died.
The veterans have blamed an "experimental" cocktail of tablets and vaccinations they received to protect them against nerve agents, anthrax and botulism.
Exposure to depleted uranium munitions has also been identified as a possible cause of the illness.
Hundreds of veterans have tried to claim compensation but they were dealt a bitter blow earlier this year when solicitors advised that there was insufficient evidence to prove their cases in court.
The Ministry of Defence today provided dossiers of background information to assist the inquiry
No ministers or officials will give evidence. The MoD has always denied the existence of Gulf War Syndrome, insisting there was no single cause of the illnesses.
------- india / pakistan
Pakistan approves installation of second nuclear plant with China's help
Jul 28, 2004
ISLAMABAD (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040728145246.unnzmu2h.html
Pakistan's top economic body has approved the installation of a second nuclear power plant to be supplied by China, prime minister-in-waiting Shaukat Aziz said Wednesday.
The national economic council "has approved phase two of the Chashma Nuclear Power Project which is about 51 billion rupees (about 880 million dollars) in expenditure," Aziz, currently finance minister, told national television.
The plant will generate 300 megawatts of electricity.
A statement issued by the Executive Committee on the National Economic Council said it had approved installation of a nuclear power plant at Chashma, Mianwali, some 280 kilometres (174 miles) south of Islamabad.
It will be constructed next to an existing plant, also supplied by China and operational since 1999.
The second plant will be ready to generate electricity in seven years.
The project comprises a nuclear steam supply system, a turbine generator set and auxiliary equipment including electrical, mechanical and civil work, the statement said.
It also envisages technology transfer, with the ultimate aim that Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission would be self-sufficient in all aspects of designing, installation, construction and operation, it said.
The agreement to set up the plant was signed in May by China National Nuclear Corporation president Kang Rixin and Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission chairman Pervez Butt in Islamabad.
Pakistan has relied heavily on long-time friend and ally China for its defence needs since 1990 when the United States stopped supplying it with military hardware over its nuclear program.
Pakistan confirmed it had nuclear weapons in May 1998 when it matched tests conducted by India.
--------
India-Pakistan Hope Gives Way to Uncertainty
July 28, 2004
(Inter Press Service)
by Praful Bidwai
http://www.antiwar.com/bidwai/?articleid=3192
NEW DELHI - The atmospherics still exude cordiality as India's Foreign Minister Natwar Singh rounded off his numerous meetings in Islamabad with Pakistani policymakers with a one-on-one conversation with Pakistan President Gen. Pervez Musharraf.
But the initial euphoria, optimism and effusiveness of last week are yielding to caution, worry, and fear that the two nations' latest effort at dialogue and peace may not yield results soon.
Going by reports of the discussions Singh has had with his counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and other officials, the exuberance and mutual bonhomie evident in recent months have evaporated.
Put simply, neither government now appears keen to make a bold move forward. There are few signs of a shared high-level political mandate for specific agreements.
If there is no progress in the dialogue before Natwar Singh and Kasuri meet on Sept. 5-6, the entire process could unravel.
That would be an enormous setback. If India and Pakistan were to resume their rivalry - suspended since former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee made an overture to Pakistan by holding out the "hand of friendship" in April last year - it is liable to be far more bitter and vicious than in the past.
To avoid such a terrible setback, it is necessary that the two countries' top leaders take the initiative and make unmistakably positive and generous gestures to each other, while personally owning up to the peace process.
In particular, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must do all he can to prevent an impasse and impart momentum to the dialogue.
This may sound pessimistic. But as things stand today, there is unlikely to be a smooth path to peace, in which confidence-building measures precede, or go simultaneously with, substantive agreements on disputed issues.
The best instance of this is the Indian proposal, first made in October last year, for a bus service across the Line of Control between the capitals of the two divided parts of Kashmir, Srinagar in India, and Muzaffarabad in Pakistan.
The idea has evoked widespread support in both Kashmirs. Pakistan did express some reservations about the nature of documents to be carried by the passengers, which India holds should be normal passports and visas. But it was expected, until earlier this month, that these would be overcome.
But now, the Pakistani stance has hardened. It will not have bus passengers carrying national passports, as distinct from UN documents or special "for-Kashmiris-only" permits. It is even objecting to the inclusion of personnel from the Indian part of Kashmir into the delegation that participates in the "technical discussions" on the bus issue due in September.
No other confidence-building measures are on the fast-track negotiation agenda.
Many Pakistani leaders and officials, including Musharraf, have dropped hints that they want to see some substantive progress toward a resolution of the Kashmir issue before they can take confidence-building measures like the bus service seriously.
Their apprehension is that once the bus starts rolling, its very operation will be seen as a de facto legitimization of the Line of Control more or less as an international border, thus narrowing the range of solutions to Kashmir to "Line of Control-plus" or "soft-border" formulas, which are tilted in India's favor.
India, for its part, has expressed its own concerns about "cross-border terrorism."
The two could not fully reconcile their positions at the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation ministerial meeting last week, for which Natwar Singh went to Islamabad.
What has changed in the very recent past is the Pakistani perception of how far India is willing to go to resolve Kashmir. Many Pakistani policymakers have been uneasy about the change of government in India.
They see Vajpayee as "a tall leader,""a man of peace" uniquely committed to historic reconciliation with Pakistan. Indians who know Vajpayee better consider this view rosy and hyperbolic. He has had a long record of Pakistan-bashing and Islamophobia. But the image nevertheless carries a lot of weight with Pakistanis.
By contrast, Pakistanis think of incumbent Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a "technocrat" or academic, not a politician who can think out of the box and take risks. This, again, may underestimate the man and altogether discount the possibility of evolution. But the perception persists.
Besides, many in Islamabad wonder who exercises real power and authority in today's India and commands foreign policy - Manmohan Singh, Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi, Natwar Singh?
This too may disregard the fairly strong consensus that exists in India on improving relations with Pakistan.
Pakistani officials feel they have received few hopeful signals from New Delhi since Manmohan Singh was sworn in two months ago.
The first signal to come from Natwar Singh was negative: he spoke about finding a Kashmir solution on the basis of the 1972 Shimla Agreement. This, signed immediately after the Bangladesh war, is not popular in Pakistan. Singh soon clarified that he mentioned Shimla in a spirit of friendship and that he was not raking up the past.
In his recent interactions with Pakistan too, Singh has come across as a highly cautious and staid leader averse to risks.
Islamabad also believes that India played up the issue of "dismantling" the support structure for terrorism in Pakistan, especially during the July visit by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. In Islamabad, Armitage refused to retract his statement asking Pakistan to do more to dismantle that structure.
All this has led to creeping suspicions on each side that the other may not be sincere about breaking new ground. If present trends persist, it may not be possible to prevent an impasse even by reiterating the importance of the "composite" nature of the dialogue, including Kashmir and seven other issues.
Musharraf and Manmohan Singh should now set up both formal and informal-level contacts and demonstrate a strong, visible commitment to the peace process, including a willingness to move away from stated positions.
It is imperative that Singh personally takes charge of the peace process and invests in it.
That will help create confidence and a good comfort level in Pakistan. Absent confidence, trust and hope, things could soon spin out of control.
-------- iran
Iran Seeks Nuke Bomb 'Booster' from Russia - Report
July 28, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-nuclear-iran.html
VIENNA (Reuters) - Iranian agents are negotiating with a Russian company to buy a substance that can boost nuclear explosions in atomic weapons, according to an intelligence agency report being circulated by diplomats.
But the Russian government, which monitors nuclear-related exports closely, denied any Russian companies were planning to supply Iran with the substance, known as deuterium gas. The two-page report cited ``knowledgeable Russian sources'' for the information, which Washington will likely point to as more proof that Tehran wants to acquire nuclear weaponry.
``Iranian middlemen ... are in the advanced stages of negotiations in Russia to buy deuterium gas,'' the report said.
Iran denies wanting atomic arms and says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. Deuterium is used as a tracer molecule in medicine and biochemistry and is used in heavy water reactors of the type Iran is building.
But it can also be combined with tritium and used as a ``booster'' in nuclear fusion bombs of the implosion type.
It is not illegal for Iran to purchase deuterium but it should be reported to the IAEA.
Diplomats say the suspicions surrounding Iran's nuclear program are so great that it would be wise for Tehran to exercise maximum transparency on all such ``dual-use'' purchases and declare them ahead of time to the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
``Iran has not declared this to the IAEA. Their cover story is that they want it for civilian purposes,'' said the diplomat who gave Reuters the report.
The report, which did not name the Russian firm, said purchase talks were in the final stages. It added that Iran had tried to produce deuterium-tritium gas -- with the help of Russian scientists -- but had so far failed.
MOSCOW DEFENDS COOPERATION WITH IRAN
Moscow has been criticized by Washington for building the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, despite U.S. concerns that it is a cover for Iran to acquire know-how and import items that can be used for bombs.
Reacting to the report, the Russian Foreign ministry issued a statement saying that in its nuclear cooperation with Iran, Moscow strictly sticks to intergovernmental agreements which do not provide for supplies of the deuterium gas.
``The Russian side is not planning to carry out any such supplies,'' the statement said.
Anything concerning nuclear exports is under tight government control, including details of separate deals. The government has said it keeps the situation in the sector under control and rejected any idea of major nuclear smuggling.
Envoys linked to the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said buying deuterium alone was not evidence of intent to acquire a weapons capability.
They cautioned that the report appeared designed to win over nations who are not convinced Iran wants the atomic bomb.
The United States and others are pushing the IAEA to report Iran to the Security Council for possible punishment with economic sanctions for allegedly seeking nuclear weapons in defiance of its treaty obligations.
``Iran needs to know that they will suffer deeply if they get nuclear weapons,'' said the diplomat who provided the report. France, Germany and Britain have been negotiating with Iran to persuade it to cooperate fully with IAEA inspections to allay Western doubts and are resisting referring Tehran to the U.N.. A high-level meeting is expected in Paris on Thursday.
The U.N. has been investigating Iran's nuclear program for nearly two years to determine whether allegations that it has a secret atomic weapons program are false, as Tehran insists.
While it has found many instances where Iran concealed potentially weapons-related activities, the IAEA says it has no clear evidence that Tehran is trying to build the bomb. The United States and its allies say there is sufficient evidence and the agency is being too cautious.
----
International pressure must stop Iran's nuclear ambitions: Israeli general
Jul 28, 2004
JERUSALEM (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040728024234.3l536348.html
Iran's nuclear ambitions in the military area should be stopped by international pressure, Israeli army chief General Moshe Yaalon said Tuesday.
"A military operation is not absolutely necessary to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear capabilities," Yaalon said on public television. "If we look at Libya we can see that international pressure can be very effective."
Libya, long considered a 'rogue' state by Washington, established diplomatic relations with the United States last month after renouncing its quest for weapons of mass destruction.
Yaalon said that any Iranian nuclear weapons should not only be of concern to Israel but also to the United States, Europe and moderate Arab countries.
Tehran had broken all the rules when it went back on a commitment to suspend its production of nuclear centrifuge equipment which can be used in the production of enriched uranium, which in turn is needed in the production of an atomic bomb, he added.
"Israel is taking the risk that Iran acquires a nuclear capability very seriously," said Yaalon after a spokesman for Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards was quoted as saying Monday that Iran would wipe Israel "off the face of the earth" if it dared to attack the Islamic republic's nuclear facilities.
The public relations head of the Revolutionary Guards, Commander Seyed Masood Jazayeri, asserted that Iran would not initiate a conflict, but in retaliation to any attack has proved itself to be "harsh, assertive, hard-hitting and destructive."
----
E.U. trio plans high-level nuclear talks with Iran
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-07-28/s_26246.asp
LONDON/VIENNA - Britain, Germany, and France will pursue talks with Iran on its controversial nuclear program and a high-level meeting in Europe is penciled in for this week, Western diplomats say.
Despite reports that Iran is close to getting the materials for a nuclear bomb, European sources said the trio was committed to resuming negotiations to achieve their aim of stopping Iran from getting atomic weapons.
"Discussions are ongoing; we still firmly believe that this is the right way to achieve our goal," said a spokesman for the Foreign Office in London, who declined to give further details.
That meshed with comments from Paris earlier this month that it favored dialogue with the Islamic Republic. Berlin agreed.
"The talks continue on the basis of our well-known position," said a German government source, declining to comment on a date or venue for a meeting.
Several Western sources said a meeting of senior officials from Iran and the three EU countries was planned, but not confirmed, for Thursday in a European city, most likely Paris.
Iranian officials could not be reached for comment.
Iran promised France, Germany and Britain in October to suspend all activities related to uranium enrichment, a process of purifying uranium for use as fuel for nuclear power plants or weapons, and allow snap inspections of its nuclear facilities.
But Tehran was angered last month by a tough resolution sponsored by the three E.U. members which rebuked it for poor cooperation with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran accused the E.U. trio of reneging on last October's agreement and said it would resume the manufacture and assembly of uranium enrichment centrifuges.
Tehran, which denies U.S. accusations it is using a civilian atomic program to hide its efforts to develop nuclear arms, said earlier this month it would resume talks with the E.U. trio but gave no details.
Thursday's meeting, if confirmed, would be at a more senior level than negotiations in the last few months, with policy directors from the E.U. nations lined up to attend with the aim of breathing new life into the process, said Western diplomats.
Reports in the last few weeks that Tehran was resuming building centrifuges were no surprise to Western diplomats, who had known of such activities for nearly a month.
"They have resumed production and assembly," said one Vienna-based Western diplomat.
A spokeswoman at the IAEA declined to comment.
The Times newspaper in London said Tuesday Iran was "months away" from having the capability to enrich uranium for a nuclear bomb.
----
Germany worried by Iran's nuclear moves
Jul 28, 2004
BERLIN (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040728135819.fnar2qzm.html
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Wednesday he was worried by Iran's atomic activities, following reports Tehran has gone ahead with a threat to resume production of nuclear centrifuges.
"I hope that Tehran understands that that is not the right way to go," Fischer told rolling news channel NTV.
Under a landmark deal in October with Europe's "Big Three" of Britain, France and Germany, Iran agreed to suspend sensitive uranium enrichment, allow tougher inspections and file a complete declaration of its nuclear activities.
But since then, experts from the UN's nuclear watchdog have discovered omissions in Iran's reporting, inspection visits have been delayed and the regime has backed away from a pledge to stop all enrichment-related efforts.
Fischer said Iran should have an interest "in continuing on the path, through the door that we opened".
Diplomatic sources in Vienna said Wednesday that Iran had removed the seals that the International Atomic Energy Agency had placed on the centrifuges to ensure that Tehran was not using its civilian nuclear program as a cover for a secret weapons program.
Meanwhile in Tehran, the deputy head of the Iranian parliament's foreign policy and security commission, Mohamoud Mohammadi, said the parliament will not ratify an additional security protocol to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
The protocol would give UN inspectors increased powers, including the right to carry out inspections without warning.
----
Envoys: Iran May Have Resumed Nuke Program
Jul 28, 2004
By GEORGE JAHN
Associated Press Writer
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/U/UN_NUCLEAR_AGENCY_IRAN?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME
VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Defying international concerns, Iran has resumed clandestine work linked to uranium enrichment, testing equipment and producing a gas that can be used to make nuclear warheads, diplomats said Wednesday.
The diplomats told The Associated Press that Tehran has restarted equipment used to make uranium hexaflouride gas, which, when injected into centrifuges and spun, can be enriched to a level high enough to make the weapons.
While Iran only appears to be testing the machinery, it has apparently produced some of the gas as a side effect, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity. They did not know how much hexaflouride was made and when the testing resumed.
The move - coupled with revelations Tuesday that Iran had restarted building centrifuges - heightened concern that Iran was moving toward full uranium enrichment, despite pledges not to do so in the interest of building international goodwill.
Iran dismisses accusations it is interested in making nuclear weapons, insisting its main interest in nuclear power is to generate electricity. But one of the diplomats said the news was part of a pattern of recent revelations showing Iran to be more interested in pressing ahead with suspect nuclear activities than working to dispel worldwide concerns.
"The IAEA will be interested in checking this out," said the diplomat, referring to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency's ongoing search for signs of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.
IAEA officials had no comment about the revelations, which came only a day after diplomats disclosed that Tehran had resumed building centrifuges.
That move alarmed France, Germany and Britain, which have been seeking a negotiated resolution with Iran, and was likely to move them closer to the United States, which insists Tehran wants to make nuclear weapons and seeks to haul it before the U.N. Security Council.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer expressed "great concern" Wednesday over the reported restart of centrifuge construction, and cautioned Iran against making a "miscalculation."
Separately, diplomats citing an intelligence report also told AP that Iran is trying to make or buy deuterium gas, a substance that has peaceful uses but can also be used to boost the power of a nuclear explosion. One of the diplomats said Iranian agents were trying to buy the gas on the Russian market and had plans to manufacture it domestically.
Beyond increasing the punch of nuclear warheads, the gas also can be used as a coolant for heavy water nuclear reactors. Iran is building a heavy water facility and one of the diplomats said Iran was likely looking for the substance "to get the reactor going."
Another diplomat familiar with Iran's nuclear activities also suggested Iran's interest was linked to its research reactor. Deuterium can only be used to boost nuclear explosions if combined with tritium, and there was no evidence Iran was trying to acquire that substance, he said.
The reactor itself is one of several projects that have increased suspicions about Tehran's nuclear aims.
Heavy water can be used to make plutonium. Iran says it needs the plutonium from the research reactor for isotopes in medical research but plutonium - like enriched uranium - can also be used to make nuclear warheads.
For the past year, the IAEA has been carrying out stringent inspections of Iranian facilities, raising evidence that strengthened suspicions about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. In June, the IAEA's Board of Governors rebuked Tehran in a sharply phrased resolution indicating it felt too many unanswered questions remained.
British, French and German officials will meet with Iranian representatives in the next few days to try to gain a renewed commitment that Tehran will not enrich uranium - an unlikely prospect, considering the recent developments.
Most of the IAEA's concerns about Islamic Republic's nuclear program focus on traces of highly enriched uranium found at several sites and the extent and nature of work on the advanced P-2 centrifuge.
Iran has grudgingly acknowledged working with the P-2 but said its activities were purely experimental. It says the minute amounts of enriched uranium were from equipment bought on the nuclear black market.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has indirectly questioned such assertions.
On the Net:
International Atomic Energy Agency, http://www.iaea.org
----
Tehran breaks U.N. seals on nukes
July 28, 2004
By David R. Sands
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040727-114212-4401r.htm
Iran has broken seals placed on nuclear centrifuges by U.N. inspectors and resumed work on the equipment, raising fresh fears that a deal to keep Tehran from joining the world's nuclear-armed powers has collapsed.
Diplomats at the Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations' lead agency on nuclear proliferation, confirmed yesterday that Iran had resumed construction of centrifuges, a key part of the nation's nuclear program.
The equipment can be used to produce the material needed for atomic bombs. Iranian officials reportedly broke the IAEA seals on the centrifuge equipment late last month
Diplomats told reporters that Iran has stopped short of using the centrifuges to begin production of enriched uranium for the bombs, a step that clearly would violate Iran's obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said U.S. officials had not confirmed the Iranian move independently but that it fit with what the Bush administration considers a clear pattern of cheating by Iran's Islamic government on its nuclear pledges.
"Iran's commitment to cooperating with the IAEA, to put it kindly, remains an open question," Mr. Ereli said, "given its past failures to follow through on promises made to the [IAEA] board of governors."
Paul Leventhal, president of the Washington-based Nuclear Control Institute, said the Iranian decision was "clearly provocative" and a direct challenge to diplomatic efforts to rein in its nuclear programs.
"The Iranians only confess to what they are caught doing, so we don't know how much more there is to learn," he said. "Iran has been playing a very dangerous cat-and-mouse game, constantly testing how much they can get away with."
The resumption of centrifuge construction also is a direct challenge to the efforts of Britain, France and Germany, which struck a deal with Tehran in October to halt efforts to build the centrifuges or seek to enrich uranium.
The three European powers have resisted a U.S. effort to refer Iranian violations to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions and other punitive measures, arguing that diplomacy is a better path for gaining Iran's cooperation.
Iranian leaders insist that their nuclear programs are intended only for civilian energy purposes, and only grudgingly have conceded to violations uncovered in recent months by IAEA inspectors.
Tehran also has argued that the accord with the three European powers was voided when the IAEA Board of Governors issued another critical report on Iran's nuclear cooperation at the board meeting in June. The construction resumed after the October moratorium expired, Iranian officials said.
Iranian President Mohammed Khatami said earlier this month, "Nothing stands in the way" of renewed centrifuge activity. Iranian officials reportedly informed IAEA officials of their decision to break the seals and said a separate pledge not to produce weapons-grade uranium remained in force.
Despite the disclosures, British diplomats said Iran and the three European powers will hold a previously scheduled meeting later this week at an undisclosed European location.
"We still firmly believe that this is the right way to achieve our goal," a British Foreign Office official told Reuters news agency yesterday.
The prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran could be destabilizing in the region, in particular for Israel, which launched a pre-emptive strike against Iraq's nuclear facilities when Saddam Hussein began efforts to build a nuclear program.
Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Yaalon said on Israeli television yesterday that Iran had "broken the rules of the game."
"This should not only concern Israel, but all the countries of the free world," Gen. Yaalon said.
But Seyed Masood Jazayeri, spokesman for Iran's hard-line Revolutionary Guards, accused Washington of using its "wild dog" - Israel - to go after Iran's nuclear programs.
If Israel tried to disrupt the Iranian program, it "would be wiped off the face of the Earth and U.S. interests would be easily damaged," Mr. Jazayeri warned yesterday, according to the Iranian news reports.
•This article is based in part on wire service reports.
----
Effort to Curb Iran's Nuclear Ambitions on Allies' Agenda
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19143-2004Jul27.html
Senior diplomats from France, Britain and Germany are scheduled to meet with Iranian officials this week in London in an effort to salvage a diplomatic initiative that virtually fell apart last month when Iran announced it would resume building equipment that could be used for making a nuclear bomb, U.S. and European officials said yesterday.
Iran had pledged to halt activities consistent with a weapons program in exchange for trade incentives from the European Union. But it backed out of some terms in June after the Europeans supported a toughly worded rebuke of Iran for failing to cooperate with international inspectors.
It is unclear whether Iran will have anything new to offer at tomorrow's meeting or how the outcome will affect U.S. policy toward the country. The continued standoff and suspicion surrounding Iran's weapons capabilities has embarrassed the European trio, frustrated Washington and worried international nuclear inspectors.
Yesterday, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran is now rebuilding centrifuges and using parts that had been briefly under IAEA seal as part of Iran's private agreement with the Europeans. The work is being monitored by agency inspectors who have been investigating Iran's nuclear efforts.
The Bush administration, convinced the Iranians are concealing a weapons program, is hoping its European allies will take a tough approach at the upcoming meeting and offer Iran a last chance to suspend its nuclear programs or face international condemnation in the U.N. Security Council, a senior administration official said.
But European diplomats said they are committed to finding a diplomatic way out of the stalemate. "We're just going to sit with them and find out where we can go from here," said one European diplomat who agreed, on the condition of anonymity, to discuss strategy before the meeting.
The Europeans are eager to reach a determination about Iran's intentions before the International Atomic Energy Agency meets in Vienna in September to consider Tehran's cooperation with agency inspectors.
Frustrated by Iran's poor performance during the spring, the IAEA's 35-member board condemned Tehran in a June statement largely written by France, Britain and Germany. It also asked Iran to stop all enrichment production and to reconsider plans for a heavy-water nuclear reactor.
But the three European powers were surprised days later when Tehran responded by announcing that it would resume building equipment essential for a nuclear weapons program.
Under international treaties, Tehran is allowed to make centrifuges and other parts for peaceful nuclear energy. But in the past 18 months, inspectors have uncovered an escalating series of contradictions in Iranian statements, along with evidence that nuclear specialists consider strongly suggestive of a clandestine nuclear weapons program, as the United States has asserted.
The European allies do not disagree with the assessments but believe that diplomatic incentives could help persuade Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. Iran was initially responsive to those efforts, and in April it briefly halted centrifuge construction.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Doctors Group to Withdraw From Afghanistan
July 28, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/asia/28CND-AFGH.html?hp
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 28 - The international aid agency Médécins Sans Frontières announced today that it was withdrawing from Afghanistan and closing operations after 24 years, in protest of the government's failure to arrest the culprits in the killing of five of its staff members in June.
The killings and a string of threats from the Taliban directed specifically at the agency led to the decision to leave, Kenny Gluck, operational director of the agency, said at a news conference in Kabul. The risk of further attacks remained too high, he said.
The agency also denounced the United States-led coalition force in Afghanistan for using humanitarian aid to build support for its military and political ambitions, an action it said had fatally blurred the lines between humanitarian and military activity, and endangered the lives of humanitarian aid workers who go unarmed, trusting on the goodwill of the people they assist.
"We are leaving because we feel there is not a framework in which we can put unarmed aid workers who are trying to provide assistance," Mr. Gluck said. "We are scared that the lack of a government credible investigation and credible prosecution, sends a message that it is acceptable to kill aid workers. And I think that is the key undermining of the aid effort."
The move, which has shaken the government and the aid community in Afghanistan, is highly unusual for M.S.F., which is renowned for working in the toughest conditions and conflicts. M.S.F. has very rarely withdrawn completely from a country in its history of operating: only North Korea in recent years and Ethiopia 20 years ago, Mr. Gluck said.
Marine Buissonniere, secretary general of the M.S.F., said the agency had had no intention of withdrawing from Afghanistan before the killing of its staff members and the Taliban threats, because of the very evident need of the population. Infant mortality and maternal mortality remain among the highest in the world, and tuberculosis infection is rampant, Mr. Gluck said.
"It is with outrage and bitterness that we take the decision to abandon them," Ms. Buissonniere said of the most vulnerable people of Afghanistan. "But we simply cannot sacrifice the security of our volunteers while warring parties seek to target and kill humanitarian workers."
Médécins Sans Frontières has been one of the longest serving aid organizations in Afghanistan, sending in doctors and nurses and setting up health clinics in the rural areas during the Soviet occupation. It continued working throughout the heaviest war years of the 1980's and 1990's, often working on both sides of the front lines. It suspended operations for some time when a worker was killed in 1990, but continued working throughout the civil war and the Taliban era.
"We leave Afghanistan with a sense of mourning for the loss of our colleagues, but also with immense sadness for the Afghan people that we leave behind and to whom we are still committed," Ms. Buissonniere said.
Soon after the announcement, a bomb exploded in the town of Ghazni south of Kabul, leaving six dead, including two United Nations election workers.
-------- africa
Villagers burned alive in Sudan atrocity
28/07/2004
Telegraph
By David Blair, Africa Correspondent
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/28/wsudan28.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/07/28/ixportal.html
One of the most savage atrocities yet recorded in Sudan was laid bare yesterday when it was reported that Janjaweed militia shackled villagers and burned them alive during a raid in the Darfur region.
Monitors from the African Union reported that on July 3 the black African village of Suleia was attacked "by militia elements believed to be Janjaweed".
The Arab raiders, mounted on horses and camels, "killed civilians, in some cases by chaining them and burning them alive".
"However, the team could not substantiate the allegation that Sudanese forces fought alongside the Janjaweed," said the report, which was seen by the Reuters news agency.
The document is particularly embarrassing for the Khartoum regime as it has expressed support for earlier findings of the African Union. Mustafa Ismail, Sudan's foreign minister, said at the weekend that a report which concluded that no genocide had taken place in Darfur was "very credible".
The African Union has traditionally turned a blind eye to atrocities committed by member states. Any criticism from that quarter carries far more weight as a result.
Mr Ismail said yesterday that Sudan would not sit by if foreign troops arrived. "If we are attacked we will not sit silent. We will retaliate, but we definitely hope we do not reach that situation."
Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, said talk in Britain and Australia of military intervention was "premature". But he added that support was building for a United Nations Security Council resolution that would impose sanctions on Khartoum if it failed to meet a deadline to halt the campaign of murder and rape prosecuted by the Janjaweed. A vote is expected this week.
The ethnic conflict has seen a million people driven from their homes and about 30,000 killed.
-------- asia
South Korean president accepts defense minister's resignation
Jul 28, 2004
SEOUL (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040728032003.h66wol74.html
President Roh Moo-Hyun has accepted the resignation of South Korea's defense minister following controversy over a naval confrontation with North Korea, the president's office said Wednesday.
Defense Minister Cho Young-Kil announced his resignation Tuesday after apologizing for "causing trouble" to the people and the president.
"Cho's replacement will be announced later in the day," a presidential official told AFP.
Yonhap news agency said Yoon Kwang-Ung, 62, senior presidential aide for defense affairs, was likely to replace Cho.
Yoon, a graduate of the same high school as Roh in the southern port city of Busan, retired from the navy in 1999 after rising to the rank of admiral and serving as deputy chief of naval staff.
Cho has been under pressure to quit since a confrontation between the South Korean and North Korea navies two weeks ago in the Yellow Sea.
A South Korean ship fired warning shots at a North Korean vessel and then the navy filed a misleading report on the incident, according to officials.
A top general was sacked on Monday after admitting to leaking information to the press about the incident.
-------- balkans
Peacekeepers Criticized in Kosovo Riots
July 28, 2004
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/europe/28koso.html?pagewanted=all
LJUBLJANA, Slovenia, July 27 - NATO peacekeeping troops and United Nations police officers in Kosovo have come under heavy criticism for their conduct during interethnic riots last March, in a report issued by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
The 66-page report says that international peacekeeping troops and police "failed catastrophically" to protect minorities on March 17 and 18, when ethnic Albanian mobs rioted across the province, leaving 19 people dead and forcing more than 4,000 Serbs and other minorities to flee their homes.
The report says that in many cases the troops failed to respond to calls for help, standing behind locked gates as nearby villages were burned.
Kosovo, which is administered by the United Nations, is home to NATO's largest peacekeeping operation in the world, with about 19,000 troops there.
Human Rights Watch said that neither the United Nations nor NATO had acknowledged any responsibility for failing to protect the minorities. Instead, it says that United Nations and NATO officials sometimes gave a positive image of their response to the violence, and sometimes blamed each other for the failures.
-------- business
Lockheed Reports 22 Percent Increase in Quarterly Profit
By Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page E05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19408-2004Jul27.html
Lockheed Martin Corp., the Pentagon's largest contractor, reported a 22 percent jump in second-quarter profit yesterday on continued growth in its fighter jet and information technology businesses.
The Bethesda maker of the F-16 fighter and Atlas rocket reported net income of $296 million (66 cents a share) during the quarter compared with $242 million (54 cents) in the same period last year. Revenue jumped 14 percent, to $8.8 billion from $7.7 billion last year.
The growth was linked to "higher military spending as they [the military] gear up and get ready for the wars of the future," said Troy J. Lahr, a defense analyst with investment bank Legg Mason Inc.
Lockheed shares gained 20 cents to close at $52.40 a share on the New York Stock Exchange.
"We had an outstanding quarter, an outstanding six months, and we're very well positioned in this opportunity-rich environment," Christopher E. Kubasik, chief financial officer, said in an interview.
Company officials remained vague about acquisition plans after the collapse of a deal to buy Titan Corp., of San Diego last month. "We don't see any significant acquisitions at the forefront" but will continue to consider deals, Kubasik said.
Lockheed's largest unit, aeronautics, continued to be its fastest-growing and most profitable. The unit's revenue increased 31 percent, to $3.1 billion from $2.4 a year earlier. Its operating profit jumped 48 percent, to $239 million from $162 million.
Lockheed delivered 22 F-16 fighters to foreign customers in the quarter, compared with 12 in the same period last year. Development of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will not be ready until 2008, also boosted revenue, company officials said.
The information and technology services unit reported a 19 percent increase in revenue, to $917 million from $772 million, and a 39 percent increase in operating profit, to $71 million from $51 million. The unit received a boost from the recent acquisition of the government contracting unit of Affiliated Computer Systems Inc. and from contracts to provide information technology services to the Defense Civilian Personnel Data System and technical support to the Army Information Technology Agency.
The space unit reported flat revenue of $1.5 billion during the quarter, but its operating profit surged 28 percent, to $129 million from $101 million. The increase in profit was related to cost cutting, manufacturing efficiencies and downsizing in previous years, company officials said.
"We think the commercial satellite business really hit bottom in 2003; we expect to see a recovery," though not at the level expected during the 1990s telecommunications boom, Kubasik said. Thanks to changes at the unit, "we're getting more value and profit out of the business," he said.
Lockheed reported a $148 million non-cash pension expense during the quarter.
--------
Boeing swings back to profit as defense orders surge
Jul 28, 2004
CHICAGO (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040728155233.z15nt46t.html
Boeing said Wednesday it swung back to the profit column with net earnings of 607 million dollars in the second quarter, compared with a 192-million-dollar loss a year ago, on a rise in defense contract revenues.
The profit for the aerospace and defense giant, excluding one-time items, amounted to 50 cents a share, ahead of the average Wall Street forecast of 47 cents per share.
Revenues increased three percent from the same period last year to 13.088 billion dollars.
"Boeing delivered strong results in the second quarter as we continued to execute well in our core businesses and invest for growth," said Boeing president and chief executive Harry Stonecipher.
A highlight of the April-June period was Boeing's winning of a 3.9 billion-dollar contract to design the US Navy's Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA) and the completion of the design concept review on the Future Combat Systems program.
Its two divisions involved in defense contracts showed improving results. The Aircraft and Weapon Systems unit showed revenues up five percent to 2.7 billion dollars with operating margins of 14.4 percent.
Boeing's Network Systems delivered a 22 percent rise in revenues to 2.7 billion dollars on increased activity in Future Combat Systems, Missile Defense and other programs. The operating margins for the unit were 8.3 percent.
The Boeing Commercial Airplanes division struggled, as revenues fell three percent to 5.7 billion dollars even though deliveries increased to 75 airplanes during the second quarter.
The lower results reflect a higher proportion of deliveries of the lower-price 737s. Operating earnings totaled 382 million dollars and operating margins were 6.7 percent.
The airplane division "continued to aggressively manage for profitability while investing for long-term growth," Boeing said, citing its plans for the new 7E7 Dreamliner aircraft.
Looking ahead, Boeing lifted its earnings outlook for 2004 to reflect the additional tax refund and its forecast for 2005 to show higher deliveries of commercial planes and lower-than-anticipated pension and retiree medical expenses.
-------- europe
Powell Urges U.S. Allies To Stay Steadfast in Iraq
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19142-2004Jul27.html
BUDAPEST, July 27 -- In a bid to shore up support for the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell appealed Tuesday to Hungary and 30 other nations not to "get weak in the knees" because of kidnappings in Iraq or public opinion polls at home that increasingly back withdrawal of troops.
Powell, on the first leg of a week-long tour of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, compared the challenge of creating democracy in Iraq to the transformation of the former Soviet Bloc and urged allies to fulfill their commitments.
"Democracy is hard. Democracy is dangerous. And this is the time for us to be steadfast, not get weak in the knees," Powell said on Hungarian television. "We must not allow insurgents, those who will use bombs and kidnapping and beheadings, to triumph."
Powell's appeal comes with the first signs of the fraying of the coalition. Five nations -- Spain, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and the Philippines -- have pulled out of Iraq since April, and three more have decided not to renew their mandates when they run out early this fall, according to diplomats from coalition countries.
Others, such as Poland, have indicated they do not intend to stay through the full transition period, scheduled to conclude after elections for a permanent government at the end of 2005.
The growing pattern of hostage-taking has increased pressure on coalition members as well as countries with foreign nationals involved in Iraq's massive reconstruction program. Approximately 70 citizens from two dozen countries have been seized this year, with hostages from India, Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan abducted within the last week.
In response to the kidnapping of two employees Monday by a group calling itself the Mujaheddin Corps, a Jordanian company used by the U.S. military said Tuesday that it would stop operating in Iraq. "I am ceasing operations and pulling out from the company's premises in Iraq for humanitarian reasons, and out of my concern for the safety and the lives of my two employees who were kidnapped in Iraq," the head of the company, Rami Ouweiss, told the Associated Press.
In some cases, hostages go free unharmed. Mohamed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb, the third-ranking diplomat at the Egyptian Embassy in Baghdad, reported for work a day after he was freed Monday by the Lions of Allah Brigade. "Thanks to God, we are going to perform our work at the embassy; there is no problem," Qutb told reporters.
Powell's pitch in Hungary was particularly important because some of the most steadfast members of the coalition have been among its 16 former Communist countries, many of which now face a backlash as hostages from the countries are taken or troops are killed.
A public opinion poll conducted in June found that 61 percent of Hungarians surveyed wanted to bring their 350 troops home rather than renew their mandate when it expires at the end of this year. Only 14 percent said they wanted Hungary's force, which in June suffered its first fatality, to remain in Iraq.
Reflecting the growing anti-American sentiment in Europe over Iraq, a recent poll of 34,000 Hungarian young people found greater disdain for President Bush than either former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein or al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
During his visit to Budapest, Powell received the Grand Cross from the government here. In a speech after the ceremony, he invoked Hungary's recent political transformation and called on parliament to renew Hungary's troop mandate, an issue likely to be debated this fall. Defense Minister Ferenc Juhasz said last week that the government's position would hinge on Iraq's internal situation.
Powell acknowledged that the violence in Iraq was more intense than the United States had expected, but he predicted that European attitudes would turn around once the insurgency had been brought under greater control and the political process moved ahead.
Later, in a speech to ambassadors, Powell lauded Bulgaria for reaffirming its commitment to the coalition despite the beheading of two Bulgarian hostages. "It's that kind of courage needed to bring a better life" to people in Iraq, he said.
Powell's appeal for unity came after the Philippines opted to withdraw its contingent of 51 from Iraq to spare the life of a Philippine hostage. The man was subsequently released. En route to Cairo, Powell told reporters that the Bush administration had expressed its disappointment to the Philippine government "very clearly and at very high levels. It has not helped our bilateral relationship."
Powell arrived in Cairo on Tuesday evening to begin a Middle East swing that will also take him to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. In Saudi Arabia, Powell will hold his first meeting with Ayad Allawi since he became Iraq's interim prime minister. At week's end, Powell will return to Eastern Europe for stops in Bosnia and Poland, where he will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw uprising against Nazi rule.
-------- iraq
Baquba blast toll continues to rise
The town has seen frequent car-bombings over the past year
Wednesday 28 July 2004,
Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/2159573B-A138-4342-AE7C-35F7B83C156F.htm
A car packed with explosives has blown up at a marketplace north of Baghdad, killing 68 people and injuring 56.
The bomb exploded shortly after 10am (0600 GMT) on Wednesday close to a police station in the town of Baquba, 65km north of Baghdad.
"The hospital officials have told me that 68 were dead and 56 injured in the blast," said Iraqi interim Health Minister Alaa Abdisahib al-Alwan
Many among those killed were passengers in a minibus which happened to be nearby, our correspondent said.
There were also victims among policemen and new police recruits who had queued up nearby.
Investigation
The police station in the centre of the city had come under a car bomb attack three months ago.
The station building itself, protected by thick blast walls, was not damaged.
Major General Walid Khalid Abd Al-Salam , commander of police of Diyala province told Aljazeera an investigation was on into the blast. "We suspect the Ansar al-Islam and al-Zarqawi's al-Tawhid and al-Jihad group," he said.
Abd Al-Salam said the police had taken precautions against such an attack. But since the number of people seeking recruitment was high, they spilled out into the pavements. This increased the toll, he said.
Victims included civlians, policemen and new recruits
People crowded at the city's hospital to identify relatives. Many were hysterical and asked, "Where is security? Where is the new Iraqi government?"
"The Iraqi police are on the scene and handling the situation, while US forces are providing support," a US military spokesman said.
Baquba, a mixed Sunni and Shia town has experienced frequent car-bombings and attacks over the past year.
Many of the attacks have targeted Iraqi police and National Guard officers regarded by the resistance as collaborators of the occupation force.
Conference
Meanwhile, Iraq has said a major national conference billed as a crucial next step on its road to democracy would begin on Saturday despite violence racking the country.
Organiser Fuad Masum said the conference due to be attended by about 1000 people would take place in Baghdad, even though the United Nations had requested a delay.
"Credibility is essential because any delay would be explained in a negative way," Masum said.
"So it has been decided that the conference will be held on 31 July for one day, or at the maximum for two days."
The United Nations which first proposed the conference in May and said it should be held before the end of July, had pushed in the past week for it to be postponed for several weeks to allow more time to prepare for such a large gathering.
The conference is supposed to bring together representatives from all walks of Iraqi life - religious, ethnic, political and otherwise - to select a 100-member National Council to act as a check on Iraq's interim government until elections in January.
--------
Key Iraqi Conference On Track To Open
Delegates Will Choose Interim Oversight Body
By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17751-2004Jul27.html
BAGHDAD, July 27 -- A national conference viewed as a crucial step in Iraq's postwar democratic development will open on Saturday, two days later than expected, despite a flurry of last-minute problems that could still jeopardize its success.
In the latest threat by Islamic militants, meanwhile, four masked men calling themselves the Group of Death said in a televised videotape that they would cut off the highway to Jordan, Iraq's major trade and supply route, unless Jordan's government stopped cooperating with U.S.-led military forces here.
The warning, broadcast on the al-Arabiya satellite television network, came as a Jordanian company decided to halt construction work at a U.S. military base in Iraq in hopes of saving two kidnapped Jordanian drivers. In the past several weeks, there have been a rash of kidnappings in Iraq, with foreign workers seized and an Egyptian diplomat taken hostage and released.
The national conference chairman, Fuad Masoum, said U.N. officials had asked to delay the gathering, in which 1,000 delegates from a range of political, ethnic and religious groups are scheduled to participate. The delegates are to choose 100 members to form an assembly that will oversee Iraq's interim government until national elections are held next year. Neither the delegate list nor the conference site has been announced.
Masoum said organizers were determined to start the conference by the end of July to comply with the legal framework set up in June by the outgoing U.S. occupation authority. "Any delay would be seen as negative, after living in decades with temporary institutions and constitutions, promises made and never kept, delays and postponements," Masoum told reporters. "We didn't want to leave any doubts."
Still, there were numerous signs that final preparations for the meeting had run into serious difficulties, including the collapse of the formal nominating process for delegates in several provinces and the refusal by important religious groups to participate in what they said was an American-staged sham.
Masoum said that in Kirkuk, a multiethnic city in northern Iraq, "difficulties between different ethnic groups" had forced officials to annul the delegate-selection process this week and that conference officials would now meet with local leaders. Sources in Kirkuk, an oil production hub coveted by ethnic Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens, said the Kurds and Turkmens could not agree on how to divide the delegate seats.
"The Kurds wanted to have 20 people -- five Kurds, five Christians, five Arabs and five Turkmens -- but that's unfair, because Kirkuk is a majority-Turkmen city," complained Songul Chapouk, a Turkmen leader and member of the now-disbanded Iraqi Governing Council, who spoke by telephone from Kirkuk. "They were just trying to make a mess, and now we have to try and solve the problem tomorrow."
Masoum said there had been other disputes over nominations in various parts of the country. But although the nominating committees had to be scrapped in several cases, he said, the "misdeeds" of certain groups had not been serious enough to necessitate new elections for the conference.
A second and potentially more significant snag was the rejection of the conference by several key religious groups. Iraqi officials had intended the gathering to be as representative as possible, extending to groups that oppose the current government and the U.S. presence.
But representatives of Moqtada Sadr, a popular radical Shiite Muslim cleric, said his group refused to take part in conference nominations last weekend in Sadr's home city of Najaf and that it would boycott the meeting because of disagreement with the way delegates were chosen.
At the same time, leaders of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the most prominent organization of Sunni clerics, said they would not participate because they viewed the conference as an American creation. Sheik Abdul Sattar Abdul Jabbar, a council member, said the group had been "invited to participate, but we refused, because we reject anything that is the result of the occupation."
Masoum stressed that conference leaders had extended invitations to groups representing "all major trends," including Sadr's movement. "We have extended invitations, and whoever attends, we welcome them," he said. "If they have other ideas, we respect them. . . . There is no exclusion of anyone."
At a separate appearance in the capital, Iraq's interim president, Ghazi Yawar, said the assembly chosen at the conference would have an important legislative function. "We truly hope it will represent all Iraqi trends and political powers, even if they don't agree with the government," he said. "I hope every Iraqi will be represented."
Yawar, who spoke several hours before Masoum's announcement, said he saw no reason not to delay the conference further if necessary. The July deadline, he said, "is not a holy thing. If we see the benefit to the nation of changing the deadline, we will do it."
Iraqi officials suggested that planning for the conference would have gone more smoothly if the United Nations had been able to play a larger role. In Afghanistan, two national conferences have been held in the past two years with intensive U.N. oversight, but in Iraq, U.N. activities have been severely curtailed by violence, especially the August 2003 bombing of U.N. headquarters here in which 22 people died.
"We can't do this without the U.N. It would be better if they had come before, but they are limited by their conditions," Masoum said.
Correspondent Doug Struck and special correspondent Omar Fekeiki contributed to this report.
--------
Car Bomb Kills Dozens Outside Iraqi Police Station
July 28, 2004
By KHALID AL-ANSARY and IAN FISHER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/middleeast/28CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAQUBA, Iraq, July 28 - As many as 70 people were killed today after a suicide bomber detonated an explosive-packed sedan on a busy street here, in an attack apparently aimed at new police recruits but which took the lives of scores of ordinary Iraqis shopping or waiting in morning traffic. Another 56 people were wounded, the Iraqi ministry of health reported this evening.
It was one of the deadliest single attacks in Iraq and by far the worst since Iraqis took over sovereignty from the American occupation on June 28. Earlier, the American military put the count from the bombing here lower, saying 45 died and an additional 98 were wounded.
Violence, meanwhile, flared around Iraq today: At least 35 insurgents - and 7 Iraqi soldiers - were killed in a joint raid involving Iraqi and foreign troops south of Baghdad, the military reported, while in Ramadi, to the west, insurgents attacked several American bases. Witnesses said several people were killed in downtown Baghdad, after a projectile struck a residential street.
Two American soldiers were also reported killed, one by another car bomb today, the other by a roadside bomb on Tuesday.
Since the handover of sovereignty, insurgents have staged scores of attacks, kidnappings and assassinations against the new interim government, which they do not view as legitimate. But the scale of the bombing today seemed to signal a willingness on the part the insurgents to attack Iraqis with the same ferocity as they have Americans - and it may force the new prime minister, Ayad Allawi, into stiffer and more concrete action against them.
The bomb exploded at about 9:30 a.m. here in this restive city north of Baghdad. Witnesses said a Daewoo sedan pulled up near a crowd of men seeking jobs at the main police station here and exploded. The blast ripped into the line of recruits, shattered windows and crumbled concrete along a row of shops. Television footage showed scores of burning bodies, and a hospital morgue overflowed with corpses, some of them children, covered with blankets cardboard boxes.
Twenty-one people, the police said, were killed in a minivan directly behind the sedan - everyone inside except for Hussein Aziz, who was collecting fares near the bus's open door.
"All of sudden it went off," Mr. Aziz said, lying in a bed at Baquba Hospital, suffering from chest wounds and several broken bones. "I was deadly helpless and tried to save myself by running a few yards away. But I fell on the ground."
In another bed at a hospital overwhelmed with the wounded and families anxious and grieving, Wael Mahmud, 21, said he was among the crowd of men seeking police jobs, with some of them waiting for interviews, others handing in applications.
"I heard a heavy, roaring sound - and then I felt nothing," he said.
Baquba, a mixed city of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, has been the site of repeated bombings in recent months, including one in a simultaneous set of attacks on June 24 in which some 90 people were killed in several Iraqi cities. Like many police stations in Iraq - a favored target of insurgents - the one in Baquba is protected by a huge concrete blast wall. The wall prevented any damage to the police station, even as it tore into shops, cars and ordinary people on the street. No American soldiers were in the area.
Attacks on the police have become so frequent, several residents said, that they were afraid that the line of recruits today might become a target. Walid Khalid, 30, one of the recruits, said that a police officer even warned them about the danger.
"One of the officers came along and advised us not to gather in front of the station because we were an easy target for the terrorists," he said. "And really after a very short time, his prophesy came true."
The bombing came three days before a huge national conference is scheduled to take place in Baghdad, in which 1,000 delegates from Iraq will gather to select a 100-seat interim council - one important step in the development of the new interim government here. Iraqi officials have worried about a rise in violence around the time of the conference, or directly on the delegates themselves, as a way both to wound and to challenge the young and fragile government.
Mr. Allawi, the prime minister, has said that his first order of business is to crack down on insurgents here, and while Iraqi security forces have carried many patrols and raids in recent weeks, he has not yet put into action tougher measures available to him.
Soon after taking power, the government approved a broad emergency security plan allowing for curfews, the banning of groups considered seditious and detentions of suspected insurgents. So far, the act has not been put into effect.
In Baquba today, Kahtan Thaier, 25, urged Mr. Allawi into sterner action.
"The bombings are going to get worse every day," said Mr. Thaier, who said the violence already scared him out of his former job as a police officer and who now drives a taxi. "We ask Ayad Allawi to find us a solution because it is really getting hard to make a living."
And, as always at such attacks, many people expressed despair that so many civilians died at the hands of people who say they are fighting in the names of Iraq and of Islam.
"Can anyone tell me what the terrorist accomplished?" asked Luay Edan, 35, the owners of a restaurant near where the bomb went off. "He killed innocents. He is an infidel."
Mr. Allawi, who is traveling outside of Iraq in the Middle East, did not release a statement on the bombing. In Egypt on a visit, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell denounced the bombing as an attempt "by murderers to deny the Iraqi people their dream of a peaceful country that rests on a solid foundation of freedom."
"We have to condemn it, we have to fight it," Mr. Powell, who is to meet with Mr. Allawi in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, told reporters in Cairo. "We must not let these kinds of tragic incidents deter us from our goal."
About 30 miles southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi, American and Ukrainian troops carried out a raid in the town of As Sawayrah against a group of insurgents that had crossed over the border from Iraq several days ago, said Lt. Col. Artur Domanski, a spokesman for the Polish military, which oversees that area.
At least 35 of the insurgents were killed in a gun battle there, in which 7 Iraqi soldiers were killed and an additional 10 were injured.
-------- israel / palestine
Road blocks paralyse life in Gaza
Road closures have forced Gaza residents to use sandy tracks
By Laila El-Haddad in Gaza
Aljazeera
Wednesday 28 July 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F75E3FB9-C6D0-466A-804B-B3E70568F276.htm
Israeli occupation troops have barricaded off Gaza's main coastal road with large cement blocks, effectively dividing the Gaza Strip into three parts.
The makeshift checkpoint, erected on Wednesday morning, is being monitored by four Israeli army tanks overlooking the road that connects Gaza City to the central and southern Gaza Strip.
Witnesses said even pedestrian traffic on these routes came to a halt after Israeli helicopter gunships fired two rockets at a crowd of Palestnians trying to make their way by foot across the barrier even as Israeli snipers fired randomly in the group's direction.
The rockets landed in the waters off the Gaza coast.
Not far from the site, in Zahra village Israeli bulldozers razed several acres of agricultural land belonging to the Shamalakh family.
Further south, Aljazeera's correspondent reported that Israeli army bulldozers demolished 22 houses in the Khan Yunus refugee camp.
Tulkarm siege
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Muain Shadid, Aljazeera correspondent, reported that the Tulkarm refugee camp was the target of an Israeli search-and-destroy operation on Wednesday.
Homes in Tulkarm are once again being raided and dynamited
The occupation forces, backed by military vehicles, stormed the camp amid heavy firing and explosions.
They have kept the city under a tight siege while isolating the villages and towns of Kafriyat by blocking the Kafriyat crossing.
The soldiers raided several homes in the Madaris and Balawna quarters and dynamited the home of Mohammad Shahada al-Ubbad, field leader of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
Since Tuesday night, Israeli occupation forces have also taken over a four-storey building in the northern quarter overlooking the refugee camp for use as an army barracks but have not allowed occupants to leave their apartments.
Local residents said soldiers were using civilians as human shields and forcing families out of buildings during raids.
All the entrances to the Tulkarm refugee camp have been sealed by Israeli military vehicles.
Unending agony
Palestinian officials say Israel is inflicting collective punishment
Wednesday's incidents occurred against the backdrop of a month-long Israeli siege of the northern Gaza village of Bait Hanun and the closure of the Rafah border crossing - the coastal strip's only route to the outside world - for over 11 days now.
More than 2000 Palestinians, including senior citizens, college students, and patients returning from medical check-ups, are stranded on the Egyptian side of crossing, according to Palestinian security sources.
Palestinian officials have asked aid agencies and the international community to intervene and stop what they call Israel's "discriminatory and humiliating policy of collective punishment" at the Rafah terminal.
--------
Palestinian Premier to Stay On
Qureia Agrees After Arafat Pledges More Control Over Security
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17483-2004Jul27.html
JERUSALEM, July 27 -- Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia withdrew his resignation on Tuesday after the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, pledged to consolidate security forces and give Qureia more authority over police, according to cabinet ministers and other senior officials. It appeared, however, that Arafat would continue to have significant power over the bulk of the Palestinian security apparatus, they said.
In the biggest change, lawmakers said, the Palestinian Authority's 12 security forces would be reorganized into three branches, two of which -- the national security forces, or army, and the intelligence division -- would continue to report directly to the National Security Council, which is chaired by Arafat.
The third branch, the national police, would report to the prime minister and his cabinet through the interior minister. The current interior minister, Hakam Balawi, was handpicked by Arafat over Qureia's objections when Qureia's government was approved last November.
Arafat also promised to order a more rapid review of pending corruption cases by the Palestinian attorney general and to back the implementation of other reforms that have languished since being approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council two years ago.
The changes seemed to fall short of the major reforms demanded of Arafat by increasingly angry citizens and militants from within his own Fatah political movement, who in recent days staged unprecedented protests in the Gaza Strip demanding an end to official corruption. Street battles between Palestinian security forces and militants belonging to the armed wing of Fatah represented one of the most serious internal threats to Arafat's authority in a decade.
While the promise of greater control over police forces was apparently enough for Qureia to withdraw the resignation he submitted 10 days ago, it was unclear whether the moves were a mere stopgap measure to end the current crisis or if they could lead to fundamental change in the Palestinian Authority. Reforms frequently have been announced but not implemented, and there was no timetable for enacting Tuesday's measures.
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who is scheduled to hold talks in Cairo on Wednesday on Egypt's role in helping the Palestinians consolidate and retrain their security forces, said he believed Arafat was merely indulging in a strategy to prevent handing over real power.
"What we are looking for is action, not statements," said Powell, who described Arafat as "a master of the ambiguous statement, or the statement with a yo-yo string on it that gets pulled back."
However, Saeb Erekat, a member of the Palestinian cabinet and the chief negotiator with the Israelis, said that "a very significant step was taken in a long road, and I believe the Palestinian people and the whole world will not judge us by our words, but by our deeds." But the crisis was not over, he said, "because the lawlessness and anarchy are still out there."
The reorganization of the security agencies is particularly important, said Minister of State Qadura Fares, because it will require Palestinian military forces to remain on their bases, except in times of national emergency, and leave law enforcement and crime-fighting to the police. "The problem was that national security forces were interfering in issues they should not interfere in, such as divorce and land ownership," he said.
But Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian political analyst and reform advocate, said the new measures were insufficient. "Nothing has changed -- the problems are not an issue to be resolved between Arafat and Abu Ala, or inside the Fatah for that matter," he said, referring to Qureia by a name used widely among Palestinians. "The change that we need will not occur without free and democratic elections."
Tuesday's announcement seemed to settle a governing crisis that began July 16 when Palestinian militants kidnapped several Palestinians and foreigners in the Gaza Strip to protest corruption in the Palestinian Authority and its security agencies and to demand reforms. The abductions reinforced demands made by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Fatah's armed wing, that Arafat relinquish some of his powers, crack down on corruption and implement reforms.
Calling the situation "a true disaster," Qureia submitted his government's resignation, complaining that he did not have sufficient authority over security agencies to calm what he called the "chaos" in Gaza. Arafat rejected the resignation, but Qureia did not withdraw it until Tuesday, using it as leverage to wrestle concessions from Arafat.
The two men emerged from a meeting at Arafat's West Bank headquarters in Ramallah holding their hands together in the air.
Staff writer Robin Wright in Cairo and special correspondent Samuel Sokol contributed to this report.
--------
Arafat Agrees With Premier on Ending Their Standoff
July 28, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/middleeast/28mide.html?pagewanted=all
RAMALLAH, West Bank, July 27 - The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and his prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, hugged, kissed and publicly settled their political dispute on Tuesday with a pledge to pursue limited reforms that have been tried previously without success.
As the two Palestinian leaders stood outside Mr. Arafat's offices, Mr. Qurei announced that he had withdrawn the resignation he submitted 10 days ago to protest internal Palestinian fighting and rampant lawlessness in the Gaza Strip.
"The president refused the resignation, and I will comply, and we are waiting to see how things will move," he told reporters. "I am satisfied that President Arafat is serious this time, that it is not just words but that this time there will be action."
Under the new arrangement, Mr. Qurei is to gain authority over some parts of the security agencies, including the police. But Mr. Arafat will still control the bulk of the security forces and will remain the dominant figure on all major political and security issues.
Mr. Arafat, who was in a jovial and expansive mood, has made such promises in the past but has not fulfilled them. He granted similar powers to the previous prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, but he lasted only four months in the job, citing differences with Mr. Arafat as one of the reasons he quit in September 2003.
While the immediate political crisis appeared to be resolved, Mr. Arafat's actions fell far short of the sweeping reforms demanded by Palestinian critics to combat widespread corruption in the Palestinian Authority and disarray in the security forces.
In Hungary, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said he was not impressed by the changes announced by the Palestinian leadership.
"We need action, not propositions, not proposals, not commitments," Mr. Powell said during a visit to Budapest, "real action that transfers power to a prime minister of the Palestinian people and Palestinian Authority, and consolidation of security services with those consolidated services being under the direction of the prime minister."
In Ramallah, a grinning Mr. Arafat said the news media had made too much of the squabbling. "You have exhausted us; God should not forgive you for this," he joked.
"The most important thing is that we unified the ranks of the Palestinian people who are facing this aggression," he said in reference to fighting with the Israeli military.
Mr. Qurei's political brinkmanship is not uncommon in Palestinian politics. By submitting his resignation on July 17, he sought to distance himself from the chaos in Gaza. But in the end, he backed down after receiving relatively modest pledges from his boss.
The two leaders conferred in the morning, and then attended a cabinet meeting. The discussions were held in Mr. Arafat's badly damaged compound in Ramallah, where he has been confined for more than two years.
The two pressing issues were corruption in the Palestinian Authority and the unwieldy and ineffective security forces.
Mr. Arafat and the cabinet agreed that the Palestinian judiciary should be more aggressive in pursuing suspected corruption cases. Many Palestinians have complained for years about misappropriation of money, and such accusations are often leveled at the security forces. Until recently, security chiefs received bags of cash from the Palestinian Authority and then doled out salaries, a practice seen as inviting theft.
On security, Mr. Arafat has decreed that the roughly one dozen security agencies will be restructured into three main services: the police, intelligence and general security.
The United States and others have long sought such a move, but it is not clear whether the change is substantive or mostly on paper.
Although Mr. Qurei and his cabinet will be in charge of the police, the minister with direct responsibility, Interior Minister Hakam Balawi, is regarded as a loyalist of Mr. Arafat's and has not introduced any notable changes since taking office last year.
Mr. Arafat will remain in charge of the intelligence and general security agencies, Palestinian officials said. In addition, he still leads the National Security Council, which has overall responsibility for security. He has not ordered the security forces to act against militant Palestinian factions, though that is stipulated in the first phase of the stalled Middle East peace plan, known as the road map.
Israel has also not met its obligations in the initial phase, which require it to take down settlement outposts built in the last three years.
On Tuesday, Israeli troops killed two Palestinians - a militant and a civilian - during an exchange of fire on the edge of Gaza City, Palestinian security officials said. An Israeli military official said soldiers had fired on Palestinians preparing to launch an antitank missile.
--------
Police discover weapons lab in Kiryat Haim apartment
28/07/2004
Haaretz
By Itim
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/456885.html
Police on Tuesday discovered a weapons laboratory, as well as a cache of seven explosive charges connected to cellular phones and ready for operation, in an apartment in Kiryat Haim.
A mother and her two sons, 16 and 19 all residents of the apartment, were detained for questioning. Another 16-year-old boy was also detained in connection with the affair.
Police were searching the apartment for drugs and stolen property when they stumbled upon the laboratory. They cleared the house of its residents and closed the entire street for traffic, to enable sappers to remove the charges.
A police commander said Tuesday that the "policemen that entered the apartment were shocked to discover a weapons lab...with a large amount of equipment to construct charges."
Sappers removed the charges using a cable with one end connected to the apartment, on the top floor of the building, and the other end tied to the police sappers' vehicle down on the street. The charges were later detonated by police.
The main suspect, a 19-year-old electrician, claimed he had built the charges as a hobby. He also said he had successfully detonated a few charges at the Kiryat Haim beach.
The police so far have not been able to find out whether the charges were ordered by a second party. The older brother was remanded in custody for seven days on Tuesday by the Acre Magistrate's Court. The two minors were remanded in custody for three days, while the mother was released subject to constraints.
-------- mideast
Iraq War Straining US-Turkey Ties
(Inter Press Service)
by Jim Lobe
July 28, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3200
While the image of the United States has sunk to an all-time low in the Arab world, the Iraq war has also had a devastating impact on U.S. ties to another predominantly Muslim power and one of Washington's closest and most strategically situated Cold War allies, Turkey, say experts just returned from the region.
Ties between Turkey and Israel - countries that have long considered themselves strategic allies against hostile Arab states - have also become deeply strained as a result of recent events, according to former U.S. ambassador in Ankara, Mark Parris, who also served for several years as the number two in the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv.
"There's been lots of news, and most of it is not good," he told a meeting Tuesday at the Nixon Center here, noting that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has repeatedly referred to Israeli actions in Gaza and the West Bank as "state terrorism," an assessment that is now shared by 82 percent of the Turkish population, according to a recent poll cited by Zeyno Baran, director of the international security and energy program at the center.
While the shifts in Turkish public opinion toward both the United States and Israel are wreaking havoc with political relationships, they have not yet seriously damaged the core strategic relationships, in part because the military in Turkey retains considerable autonomy, but it very easily could over time, according to the analysts. Another survey released in the past week showed that 75 percent of Turks wanted "no" relationship with Israel.
Aside from the Iraq war, which has spurred distrust in Ankara about U.S. aims in the region, the Bush administration appears to have misjudged the impact of the sweeping electoral victory that brought the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) to power in 2002.
"People here didn't fully appreciate how big a difference the AKP is in worldview," according to Parris, who stressed that Erdogan has consulted more closely with Arab governments than previous Turkish leaders and, in a major coup, Turkey last month saw its candidate, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, elected secretary general of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), the global caucus of predominantly Muslim nations.
The other major factor in the growing alienation is rising expectation that Turkey will be given a certain date for joining the European Union (EU) at the body's meeting in December, according to Geoffrey Kemp, a top Middle East aide under former President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) who directs the Nixon Center's regional strategic programs.
"Becoming part of Europe is the overriding strategic objective," said Parris, who served in Ankara in the mid-1990s. On issues regarding the Middle East, Israel and Iran, the views of both religious and secular Turks "are now much closer to mainstream European perceptions than to mainstream American positions," he added.
The growing estrangement between Turkey, on the one hand, and the United States and Israel, on the other, is particularly ironic because Washington's biggest boosters of war in Iraq - mainly neoconservatives who favor Israel's governing Likud Party, such as former Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, who played a key role in promoting trilateral ties - had seen the ouster of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and the installation of a pro-U.S. government there as key to decisively transforming the balance of power in the region in favor of an alliance of secular, relatively democratic states, specifically Israel, Turkey and a new Iraq, backed up by Washington.
"It hasn't turned out to be that way," noted Kemp, who said that, if anything, the war has created unprecedented instability and uncertainty throughout the region in ways that could well bring about a major realignment in the area, but not of the kind desired by the neoconservatives.
Of greatest concern is what is taking place in Iraq itself, particularly in the northern Kurdish region, where 5,000 members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a Turkish insurgency that just ended a five-year unilateral ceasefire, have been based. Despite repeated urgings by Ankara, U.S. occupation forces have not moved to disarm the guerrillas, nor have they asked Iraqi Kurds to do so, despite the fact that the PKK is listed by the State Department as a "terrorist" organization.
"If you make a discrimination among terrorist groups," according to one Turkish diplomat who attended the Nixon Center meeting, "then the war against terrorism will never work."
"The Turks told the U.S.: 'Either do something about it or let us do something about it,'" said Baran, who added that Washington has adamantly opposed any direct Turkish presence in Iraq, in contrast to its attitude during the 1990s when Ankara maintained a virtual continuous presence in the northern part of the country, close to its border.
Turkey is also concerned that Iraqi Kurds may break away from Baghdad, a step that would almost certainly spur direct military intervention by both Turkey and Iran, who worry that an independent Kurdistan would provoke Kurdish uprisings within their borders. Those fears have resulted in Turkey drawing closer to both Syria, which also has a significant Kurdish population, and Iran, where Erdogan himself is being hosted for a two-day summit this week.
"There is a real concern that, regardless of who wins the [U.S.] elections [in November], the United States is not up to fixing Iraq," Baran noted, adding there is also "fear that the U.S. is going to get involved militarily in Syria and Iran" in ways that could further destabilize the region.
These concerns, as well as the sour taste left by U.S. pressure on the Turkish parliament to approve the use of its territory to launch an invasion of Iraq from the north, the occupation and the widespread publicity about abuses by U.S. soldiers against Iraqi detainees, according to Baran, "has led Turkish people to feel closer to their Arab neighbors. Until a few years ago, Turks would feel much closer to Israel."
But Israel's actions - particularly the similarity of the television images of its occupation of Palestinian territories and the U.S. Occupation in Iraq - have also resulted in a dramatic rise in anti-Israeli sentiment, she added.
Among other ominous developments for the relationship, according to Parris, in the past few months Israeli arms sales to Turkey have been canceled.
And two weeks ago, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Ohmert, who said he was bearing a special message from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for Erdogan, was snubbed by the Turkish prime minister. Although Ohmert was warmly received by other senior officials, Parris called it "devastating [that] he couldn't talk to the top guy," given the long-standing close relationship.
Israel's intentions in Iraq have become a subject of growing suspicion, particularly since the publication in the The New Yorker magazine in June of a much-disputed story by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh that asserted Israel had infiltrated scores of "intelligence and military operatives" into Iraqi Kurdistan to train and supply the 50,000-strong peshmerga militias and conduct operations against targets in Kurdish areas of Syria and Iran.
The story, which was leaked in advance to a Turkish opposition newspaper, fueled concerns about Kurdish secession and the possibility of a Kurdish seizure of Iraq's major oil-production center of Kirkuk, where ethnic tensions between Turkmens, Kurds and Arabs have already resulted in fatal clashes.
While the Kurds and Israelis strongly denied Hersh's account, and some independent experts have cast doubt on it, "there is still huge distrust," said Baran. "They simply don't believe [the denials]."
Israeli and Turkish militaries are still carrying out joint exercises and U.S. forces are still using Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey to help supply the occupation in Iraq, but whether the fundamental strategic interests that the three countries share can long endure in the face of growing Turkish anger and distrust remain uncertain.
It will be difficult to reverse current negative trends, according to Baran, so long as Sharon and Bush remain in power, although even their successors may find it difficult to improve ties given Turkey's strategic reorientation toward Europe and the degree of alienation that will need to be overcome.
-------- prisoners of war
Defense contractors face Iraq torture suit
July 28, 2004
By Shaun Waterman
UPI Homeland and National Security Editor
(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040727-072734-7484r.htm
Washington, DC, Jul. 27 (UPI) -- A group of trial lawyers Tuesday filed a lawsuit against two U.S. defense contractors on behalf of five Iraqis who were detained at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.
The suit alleges that four of the Iraqis were "unlawfully tortured by agents or employees" of the two companies working at the jail. The fifth plaintiff is the widow of an Iraqi who is said to have died after maltreatment at their hands.
The two companies -- Arlington, Va.-based CACI Inc. and San Diego-based Titan Inc. -- vigorously deny the charges. A statement from CACI called the suit "ambulance chasing." Titan's Vice President of Corporate Communications Ralph "Wil" Williams told United Press International that the charges were "completely baseless," pointing out that Titan supplied only translators, not interrogators, and that the company "has never had control over prisoners or how they were handled."
The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, cites the Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789, which grants the federal district courts "original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." A tort is a wrong or injustice occasioning damage.
For nearly 200 years the law was more or less in abeyance, Glenn Hendrix, an attorney expert in international litigation, told United Press International. "It was used maybe three times before 1980," he said.
But in that year it was successfully used to sue a Paraguayan police official, and for the next decade and a half the law was regularly used against police and prison officials who had tortured, murdered or otherwise violated international law.
Then in 1995, Hendrix said, the law was used against a high-ranking Bosnian Serb official. Because the Bosnian Serb entity was not a state, the success of that case opened what critics fear will eventually be a floodgate of cases brought against private corporations that allegedly took part in or directed abuse.
In an effort to close that gate, the administration recently argued before the Supreme Court that the law was effectively null and void. The court did not accept its argument, but legal analysts remain divided about the extent to which the ruling put a trammel on the efforts of human-rights lawyers and other activists to use the law against corporations like Unocal in Myanmar or Shell Oil in Nigeria.
"There are about 20 cases out there," said Hendrix. "Some have survived motions to dismiss or motions for summary judgment. None have been successful yet."
The lawyers who filed Tuesday's suit -- including a partner of high-profile criminal defense attorney Johnny Cochran -- also argue that because CACI and Titan conduct lawful business while "engaged in an ongoing, multi-year pattern of criminal conduct," they are liable under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO.
The suit alleges that the Iraqis -- all of whom were eventually released without charge -- were subjected to beatings, starvation, so-called stress positions, prolonged nakedness, exposure to extreme cold and were threatened with dogs. One man says he was urinated on, and another says he witnessed a U.S. soldier raping a female inmate in a neighboring cell.
Michael Hourigan, an Australian lawyer who traveled to Iraq to interview the plaintiffs, told UPI that the four men who had been detained at Abu Ghraib said they regularly heard the cries of women and boys being raped.
"The people I interviewed clearly had symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder," said Hourigan, who worked for the U.N. war-crimes tribunal in Rwanda. "They were struggling to hold back tears. They were broken men."
"One of them said, 'They never asked me a single question' the whole time he was there. They just beat him again and again."
The same Iraqi also says that the general who headed the prison, Janis Karpinski, personally witnessed abuses there.
"I was showing him photographs," said Hourigan, including some from a news magazine, "when he pointed at her picture and said, 'She was there.'"
Karpinski could not be reached for comment.
Titan's Williams told UPI the lawsuit was "riddled with basic inaccuracies" and would be "vigorously defended." The CACI statement said that in light of "the frivolous and malicious nature of this lawsuit," the company was "examining its options for sanctions against the lawyers who participated in the filing."
Critics deride lawsuits like Tuesday's as "fishing expeditions" to get access to company documents and the chance to depose executives in the hope that they will be able to uncover evidence that will discredit the company and help their case.
But Hourigan defended the case he and his colleagues had brought. "There are rich fields of information there to plough," he said.
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U.S. General Witnessed Abuses, Iraqi Says
Associated Press
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19360-2004Jul27.html
The American general who headed the U.S. military prison at Abu Ghraib personally witnessed abuses there, an Iraqi man alleged in a federal lawsuit protesting his treatment.
In a videotaped deposition from Iraq played yesterday, Saddam "Sam" Saleh Aboud said he endured beatings at the prison. During one session, he said, his hood was removed and he saw Army Brig. Gen. Janis L. Karpinski.
Aboud identified Karpinski in a news magazine photograph that his lawyer, Michael Hourigan, showed him.
"He was adamant that there was an occasion when he was being tortured, in Tier 1A, when she was present and watching and laughing as he was being tortured," Hourigan said. He said Aboud did not know Karpinski's identity until he told him.
"He knew she was a supervisor, because she had a star on her hat and she was in an American uniform," Hourigan said. "He said the other soldiers would defer to her."
Neither Karpinski nor her lawyer returned several telephone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph Yoswa, said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on the pending litigation.
Karpinski, who was suspended by the Pentagon in May, has denied knowing about any abuses at the prison until photographs surfaced at the end of April. U.S. investigators have not implicated Karpinski directly in any of the abuses.
Aboud's assertions were presented as supporting evidence in a federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The lawsuit against military contractors Titan Corp. of San Diego and CACI International Inc. of Arlington was filed on behalf of Aboud, three other alleged victims and the family of a fifth man who died at the prison. It seeks unspecified damages.
-------- un
Annan to Appeal for Aid to Address Sudan Crisis
By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19343-2004Jul27.html
UNITED NATIONS, July 27 -- Frustrated by a chronic funding gap for the U.N. relief effort in the Darfur region of Sudan, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will issue an urgent appeal Wednesday to wealthy European, Asian and Middle Eastern governments that he believes have been too stingy in addressing the humanitarian crisis, senior U.N. officials said Tuesday.
The move comes as the United States is pressing the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution this week imposing an arms embargo against rebels in Darfur and demanding that Sudan disarm, arrest and prosecute Arab militias responsible for killing tens of thousands of black Africans and forcing more than 1 million from their homes. Sudan would have 30 days to satisfy the demands or face possible sanctions under the resolution.
The Bush administration presented the 15-nation council with a new version of the proposed resolution Tuesday. It calls on the United Nations and Sudan to "work closely" to support an "independent investigation" into human rights abuses in Darfur. But the latest draft provided no significant concessions to China, Pakistan and other countries that wanted the United States to drop any reference to possible sanctions against Sudan. U.S. officials charge the Sudanese government has supported the militias, known as the Janjaweed, responsible for most of the violence in Dafur.
Sudan, meanwhile, said Tuesday it would fight any foreign troops sent to Darfur to stop the violence. "If we are attacked, we will not sit silent, we will retaliate . . . but we definitely hope we do not reach that situation," Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail told reporters in Turkey, according to Reuters.
Annan's latest appeal for funding reflects growing frustration as the United Nations has failed to collect even half of the $350 million it requested in March to run its relief operation in Darfur, a violence-torn, impoverished province roughly the size of France. In an effort to reach that goal, Annan will send private letters asking Japan, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium -- which have provided a total of just over $11.5 million in contributions since March -- to increase their funding for the United Nations' operations.
A senior U.N. official said that contributions from the four richest Gulf states -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates -- which will also get a plea from Annan, have been "totally insignificant."
"Surprisingly, it's been an uphill struggle to get normally generous donors to wake up to this unfolding catastrophe," said Jan Egeland, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator. "It would be a tragedy if now that we have finally broken down this Berlin Wall created by the Sudanese government around Darfur, we would lack the resources" to address the humanitarian crisis.
Egeland said that the bulk of the U.N. operations have been sustained by the United States, which has underwritten 45 percent of the U.N. budget for the issue, and Britain, the Netherlands and Norway.
U.N. officials have privately voiced exasperation with France and Russia, which rejected a personal request from Egeland for half a dozen helicopters to ferry humanitarian relief supplies to remote parts of Darfur that lack airfields. But they also noted that a group of about 20 traditional donors, including the United States and Japan, failed to respond to a similar request.
European officials called it unfair to accuse them of not giving enough. They say they give generously through private European aid agencies and point out that that the European Union has provided more than $250 million in aid for the Sudan crisis. France's U.N. ambassador, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, said that, in addition to helping to finance E.U. contributions, France has given about $24 million in direct humanitarian assistance for Sudanese civilians. And on Friday, France and Belgium each offered to underwrite the cost of using one private C-130 transport plane.
Envoys from Islamic and Arab governments, meanwhile, said that their countries are committed to addressing the humanitarian crisis in Sudan but added that some are too poor to give much, and some prefer to give funds directly to governments. "In general, when Arab countries give money it is directly and not through the United Nations," said one senior Arab ambassador, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity. "It doesn't mean that they are not generous."
Pakistan's U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram, said: "I can't speak for other Islamic countries, but we are not a very rich country. . . . We will surely do whatever we can. We are considering what to do."
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U.N. and Congress in Dispute Over Iraq Oil-for-Food Inquiries
July 28, 2004
By JUDITH MILLER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/28food.html?pagewanted=all
Congressional committees investigating allegations of corruption and mismanagement in the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq are at odds with the organization's own inquiry over access to records and personnel, legislators and United Nations officials said yesterday.
The officials and diplomats said that in meetings in Washington on July 13, Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve who is leading the United Nations' internal investigation, rejected requests from members of Congress for access to review documents and to interview United Nations officials being scrutinized by his panel.
"He wants us to do nothing now while he does what he can, by persuasion, since his panel can't fire or subpoena anyone," said Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, who attended one of the meetings. "But we will press on."
Meanwhile, the House International Relations Committee stepped up its efforts to obtain documents related to the relief program by issuing a subpoena on Friday for financial records from the French bank BNP Paribas. Two other Congressional committees have issued subpoenas to the bank, which managed billions of dollars in oil revenues intended for relief aid through the program.
Neither Representative Henry J. Hyde, the Illinois Republican who is chairman of the House panel, nor his staff would disclose what the subpoena specifically requests from Paribas. Robert S. Bennett, a lawyer representing the bank, said it was not a target or the focus of the inquiries into the aid program. "We are going to fully cooperate with the committees," Mr. Bennett said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
In addition to Mr. Volcker's panel, which is expected to issue an interim report in August, at least six Congressional panels, the Treasury Department, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Manhattan district attorney are investigating the program. It was established in 1996 to allow Iraq to sell oil and use proceeds to purchase food, medicine and other relief goods, and it became the world's largest relief program. Congressional investigators have concluded that Saddam Hussein skimmed about $10 billion from the oil profits, and there have been allegations of possible misdeeds by United Nations officials.
Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada, said he had met with Mr. Volcker to try to reach an agreement on sharing information, but he said Mr. Volcker was unwilling to do so until his own panel had finished reviewing the information.
"I argued that our inquiry would benefit his, because his panel does not have subpoena power," Senator Ensign said. "But they're completely unwilling to do that."
Mr. Volcker was traveling and could not be reached for comment. But Reid Morden, the executive director of the United Nations panel investigating the program, said the Volcker panel would share information only after its own review was completed. Mr. Morden said that since the investigation "could have a serious impact on both the organization and individuals working there, I think it's very important that the inquiry conduct itself with the utmost respect for due process."
Mr. Volcker's panel is focusing its initial efforts on allegations that United Nations officials benefited illegally from the program. Mr. Morden said there was no timeline for when the United Nations inquiry would be done.
Mr. Hyde said Mr. Volcker's inquiry must determine how the relief program "degenerated into the corrupt morass that it had become by 2003 and learn whether or not that corruption reached into the upper ranks of the U.N. Secretariat." But he said his committee's investigation would "continue to make inquiries" while the United Nations investigation was under way.
Senator Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican who is chairman of the Permanent Investigations subcommittee that issued one of the Paribas subpoenas, said the United Nations would be making "an unfortunate mistake not to cooperate with the U.S. Congress."
"We fund 25 percent of the U.N.'s general operating budget, not counting peacekeeping," Mr. Coleman said.
-------- us
VA Drops $472 Million Computer System
Associated Press
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A17
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19392-2004Jul27.html
TAMPA, July 27 -- The Department of Veterans Affairs said Tuesday that it is scrapping a hospital's troubled new computer system because of problems that have delayed surgeries, prompted congressional investigations and led to the resignation of several top officials.
The system was in use at the hospital as a pilot project and was to be expanded to the rest of the VA system.
The department is phasing out Bay Pines VA Medical Center's use of a computer system called the Core Financial and Logistics System, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony J. Principi said.
Principi said Bay Pines will return to its previous computer system in October. A committee of senior VA officials will make recommendations about the program's future, he said.
An agency spokesman said he could not say whether any money spent on the failed system would be recovered. The total project was to have cost $472 million.
The computer system was installed last fall at Bay Pines. The hospital is the fifth busiest in the VA system, and officials later conceded they never should have tested the system there.
Hospital employees were not fully trained in the system, and difficulty in using it led to suppliers not being paid, a shortage of surgical supplies and delays for some operations.
Five VA officials, including the hospital's chief of staff, have quit or been reassigned since February due to problems at Bay Pines.
Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who held hearings on the system at the hospital in March, was angered by the outcome, the St. Petersburg Times reported Tuesday.
"At a time when VA's health care system is stretched to the limit, it is outrageous -- simply outrageous -- to waste millions upon millions of dollars on a failed computer system," he said.
Congressional investigators discovered that the company awarded the contract for the system, BearingPoint, was paid more than $200,000 as an incentive bonus for keeping the Bay Pines computer project on schedule even though employees were not properly trained to use it. BearingPoint officials declined to comment Tuesday.
-------- war crimes
Court Looks for Ways to Speed Milosevic Trial
July 28, 2004
By MARLISE SIMONS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/europe/28milo.html?pagewanted=all
THE HAGUE, July 24 - Two years into the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic, with the former Yugoslav leader's health problems getting worse, court officials have quietly conceded that the trial is in crisis, and are confronting the growing chance that the process may not be completed without fundamental changes in the rules.
With the trial now at a critical midway juncture as Mr. Milosevic begins his defense, the three-judge panel is considering breaking up the charges faced by Mr. Milosevic into smaller, separate indictments, and providing him with a defense counsel against his will. Both measures are meant to speed up proceedings, regularly stopped by the defendant's poor health.
The judges have asked tribunal officials to come up with names of potential lawyers for Mr. Milosevic, even though he insists on representing himself in court. They envision a standby counsel who can step in when he cannot appear.
The second, more unexpected step - splitting the Milosevic indictment into more manageable portions - is one both the defense and the prosecution object to. The current indictment deals with killing and torture on a huge scale, covering 10 years and listing detailed charges stemming from the conflicts in Croatia in 1991 to 1995, in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992 to 1995 and Kosovo in 1999. Originally, each region was in a separate indictment, but the prosecution pressed to have them joined.
Lawyers said that by breaking out, for example, the Kosovo part of the war anew, the court could presumably reach an early verdict on at least one part of the case.
The court has also called on a new cardiologist, not Mr. Milosevic's regular doctor, to provide an assessment of Mr. Milosevic's fitness to stand trial and to advise on his treatment and work pace.
Much is at stake in this first war crimes trial for a modern former head of state. Legal scholars have called it a defining moment in international law. For the victims of the Yugoslav wars, where more than 200,000 people died and the lives of many more refugees were wrecked, the trial is a crucial chance to see a thorough accounting of crimes linked to conflicts widely seen as being largely instigated by Mr. Milosevic.
But the proposed changes threaten to create new controversy. Branko Rakic, a lawyer on the Milosevic team, which does not appear in court, said breaking up the indictment was unacceptable. "You cannot begin a trial for one set of circumstances and change halfway," he said.
Like the prosecution, the court has so far dealt with the events at issue as part of a single campaign to grab more land for ethnic Serbs, he said, adding, "Now we suddenly may be faced with defending ourselves in three different situations."
But, he said, that "is inadmissible because the prosecution case and the defense case should be symmetric."
Mr. Rakic said that while Mr. Milosevic is likely to object for several reasons, above all, he will fight a court-imposed lawyer. The former Serbian leader has said the trial is his chance to present his version of history and to justify himself before the Serbian people. A lawyer acting on his behalf would deprive him of that platform. While the chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, would not discuss her position in a recent interview, one official in the prosecutor's office said splitting up the trial would be "horrendous."
In the early stages of the case, Ms. Del Ponte fought to mesh the three separate indictments against Mr. Milosevic, arguing that all his activities were part of a "joint criminal enterprise."
When the judges refused and wanted to begin with the Kosovo charges, the prosecution appealed and won. Mr. Milosevic faces 66 charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and in the case of Bosnia, genocide.
Graham Blewitt, newly retired as deputy prosecutor, recently recalled that the prosecution also feared that the United Nations Security Council, which created the court, might not allow the trial to continue once the Kosovo part ended. "This was such an acute danger that we didn't want to take the risk," he said.
Since the beginning, the prosecution has also asked the judges repeatedly to impose a defense counsel to speed the trial in the face of Mr. Milosevic's health complaints.
But Richard May, the presiding judge who recently died, defended Mr. Milosevic's right to represent himself. The British judge, Iain Bonomy, who replaced Mr. May, is believed to have a different opinion.
Medical reports have stressed that Mr. Milosevic suffers from chronic heart disease, aggravated by high blood pressure, and that he is at risk of a heart attack. His work schedule has already been reduced to three court days a week, but sessions have still been called off repeatedly.
Critics have often accused Mr. Milosevic of claiming illness or exhaustion when he wants more time or when a prominent, difficult witness is scheduled, but Mr. Rakic dismissed such criticism. "Blood pressure can be measured, it speaks for itself," he said.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- human rights
UN Sub-Commission Hears from Non-Governmental Organizations on Violations of Human Rights Around the World
2004-07-28
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation
http://www.unpo.org/news_detail.php?arg=02&par=1030
The Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights this afternoon heard from a number of non-governmental organizations alleging human rights violations in countries and regions around the world. Under its agenda item on the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms, including policies of racial discrimination and segregation, in all countries, the Sub-Commission heard about alleged violations in Iraq, Tibet, Sudan, the Moluccas, Sri Lanka, Iran, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Alaska and Jammu and Kashmir among others.
Non-governmental organizations addressing the Sub-Commission were Dominicans for Justice and Peace with the Dominican Leadership Conference, the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic and the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers; Jeunes Médecins Sans Frontières; Europe - Third World Centre; International Union of Socialist Youth; International Commission of Jurists; Association for World Education; World Union for Progressive Judaism; Franciscans International; International Association of Democratic Lawyers; International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations; Interfaith International; Baha'i International Community; International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; Innu Council of Nitassinan; Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action; International Educational Development; Afro-Asian Peoples Solidarity Organization; European Union for Public Relations; Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights; International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples; Asian Legal Resource Center; International Association of American Minorities; and Indigenous World Association; World Federation of Trade Unions.
The Conseil Consultatif des Droits de l'Homme Maroc, an advisory human rights council to the Government of Morocco, also took the floor.
The Sub-Commission will reconvene at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 28 July, to continue its debate on the question of the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms in all countries.
Statements
OLIVIER POQUILLON, of Dominicans for Justice and Peace and Dominican Leadership Conference, the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic and the Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers, said the rights of the people of Iraq were being greatly violated. Various important actions by the United Nations and the international community should take place in order to benefit the people of Iraq and the society, as listed in the report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which Dominicans for Justice and Peace fully supported. There was a need to consider the establishment of a truth and reconciliation body and a restitution entity. The reconstruction of Iraq should be a priority long-term objective. There was great concern for the lack of security and the non-respect for the rule of law. The level of security in Iraq had a major impact on the daily lives of Iraqis. Respect for the right to health was far from being achieved. The restoration of a sovereign Iraqi State lay also in the guarantee of the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. All relevant bodies of the United Nations should take seriously into consideration the report of the High Commissioner and implement its main recommendations as quickly as possible.
ELYES BEN MARZOUK, of Young Doctors without Frontiers Tunisia, said misery was the most flagrant violation of human rights. It affected the totality of human rights. It was by consequence a negation of the human nature, which based the whole fundamental principles of humanity in their social, economic, cultural, spiritual and political aspects. Where the human being was condemned to live in misery, human rights were violated. Civil societies should stimulate the conscience of citizens and incite governments to respect certain international norms. They had a vital role in the building of a culture of peace and tolerance. They could also combat with determination and conviction the systematic violations of human rights and freedoms. They could fight against extremism and discriminatory behaviour and xenophobia, which threatened social cohesion, solidarity between peoples and world peace.
MALIK OZDEN, of Europe Third World Centre, said the hopes for peaceful relations among states under the auspices of the United Nations had proved to be a pipedream, notably in the context of the activities of the United States which had violated the rights of people to self-determination and to security. This was true both for Iraq and for the people of Afghanistan, and had been proved in the past, for example in the case of NATO and the bombing of the former Yugoslavia, which had marked the beginning of unilateral action by the United States without care for the United Nations. The United States had begun an era of preventive war, thus opening the door for all types of abuse. Today, the violations of human rights committed by the occupying forces were clear: they could not assure the security of Iraq, and had even led to a growth of Islamist groups in Iraq. By endorsing the presence of the United States in these lands, the Security Council had contributed to a weakening of its status. It was time for the United Nations to resume its role in a world where human rights were respected, and to oppose the exploitation of the United Nations and its sidelining. All Member States should cooperate peacefully to ensure the upholding of the United Nations Charter.
TSERING JAMPA, of International Union of Socialist Youth, said the group remained gravely concerned about the current state of human rights in Tibet, particularly since the adoption of resolution 1991/10 by the Sub-Commission. The freedom struggle of the Tibetan people was a unique one that had consistently adhered to the principle of non-violence to achieve freedom in their homeland. The Chinese authorities arrested and detained Tibetans as much for their religious beliefs and practices as for so-called political reasons. That was apparent from the fact that almost 90 per cent of currently incarcerated political prisoners were monks and nuns. The large percentage of arrests and detention of clergy occurred because of their expressed allegiance to the Dalai Lama. Simple acts such as possession and display of the Dalai Lama's photo, conducting prayer ceremonies for his long life, and refusing to denounce him during political education sessions led to crackdowns.
NICOLAS HOWEN, of International Commission of Jurists, said last year the Sub-Commission had decided to discuss whether measures to combat terrorism were compatible with human rights. Since September 11, 2001 many States had adopted anti-terrorism measures, and these as well as the rhetoric around them had proved to give legitimacy to violations of human rights. Some measures violated the basic principles of the rule of law, such as the independence of the judiciary. One common practice had been to introduce vague or imprecise definitions of terrorism into national law. There was also a growing tendency to restrict the definition of a political offence, and to consider all violent forms of political opposition as terrorist acts. Political offences and terrorism were different categories, which should be governed by different regimes. Arbitrary detention and illegal restrictions of the right of habeas corpus had also been seen, and this was extended to migrants who were illegally detained and extradited. The need for clear and detailed guidelines from the United Nations was now urgent, as such an instrument would complement the appeal of the General Assembly that States ensure that any measures taken to combat terrorism comply with all their obligations under international law.
RENE WADOW, of Association for World Education, said he would address the grave situation in Darfur, Sudan and its regional implications which fit under the Sub-Commission's mandate to consider urgent matters involving serious violations of human rights in any country. In the three months since the session of the Commission on Human Rights, there had been a good deal of media and international attention given to the Darfur area by the United Nations, the African Union, international non-governmental organizations, and States, including European Union. The Darfur situation was not a sudden happening. For some time, armed bands of pastoral Arab tribes from Darfur and adjacent Kordofarn had been raiding villages in northern Bahr el Ghazal, bringing back loot, including men to work, and women, raped so they would reproduce.
DAVID LITTMAN, of World Union for Progressive Judaism, said it was time to make it crystal clear that the civilized world would never surrender to the vile threats of those Islamist bombers who threatened the entire world with their bloody crimes against humanity. Only an unshakeable determination to achieve total victory over such ignominious, religious depravity and terror would bring salvation to the free world, for free people, and for those still to be freed from bondage. All Muslim leaders, both spiritual and secular, were called upon to speak out unequivocally on the concept of Holy Jihad, and make it crystal clear that extremist Islamist interpretations of Jihad as linked to terrorism were a total denial of world civilization. The competent working groups of the Sub-Commission should raise this matter with the Counter-Terrorism Committee of the Security Council.
ALESSANDRA AULA, of Franciscans International, said the international community had expressed its will to respect and promote human rights since the United Nations Charter was adopted in 1945. At the regional level, a number of instruments had been adopted in that regard. The 1993 Vienna Conference had also reiterated the indivisibility and interdependence of human rights and their relationship with democracy and development. States were responsible for guaranteeing the protection of human rights. They should adopt national legislation in accordance with international norms. Some States such as the United States had not ratified the Convention on the Rights to the Child. Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Cuba had not signed the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social Cultural Rights. The international community should also pay further attention to the situation in Darfur, where human rights violations continued.
PELPINA SAHUREKA, of International Association of Democratic Lawyers, said all peoples wished to live in peace and freedom in their own lands. But the Alifuru people in the Moluccas were still victims of military aggression and occupation by Indonesia. The people of the Moluccas wanted peace. The war was not and had never been an internal religious conflict; it was a war that was imposed by the Indonesian Jihad troops. Peace could not be accomplished if the war continued to rage and the Indonesian military and Jihad forces were allowed to continue to commit horrendous human rights violations without being punished. An international fact-finding mission should be sent for proper investigation of the roots of the war. The enforcement of law against international terrorism should also apply to the Indonesian Jihad forces.
SHAMIM SHAWL, of International Islamic Federation of Student Organizations, said the world witnessed systematic and continuous violations of fundamental rights in the Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Despite the latest improvement of relations between India and Pakistan and exhortations of the present Indian leadership by making the right noise of peace, amity and friendship, one had not witnessed any appreciable letup into violence against the valiant people of Kashmir. On the contrary, one had seen an upsurge in aggression by the Indian forces against unarmed civilians who were being killed everyday in staged encounters. There was a fear that the present Indian leadership was only using the latest thaw with Pakistan as a means to further consolidate its brutal hold over the occupied state.
CHARLES GRAVES, of Interfaith International, said there was concern for the situation in Sri Lanka which appeared to defy all solutions. The Government of Sri Lanka needed international support to develop a realistic strategy to solve the long-standing conflict involving its various communities. It was evident that the internal political battles of the majority groups in Sri Lanka had hindered the peace process. The experts of the Sub-Commission should certainly see the relevance of doing something during the current session like trying to convince Sri Lankan leaders to solve the conflict in the country. Inter-religious suspicion complicated the peace process, but normally the religious communities should be able to come up with peace proposals, and it was hoped they would take a stand along with politicians for conflict-resolution and the peace process.
DIANE ALA I, of Baha'i International Community, said Baha'is continued to be subjected to arbitrary arrest, short-term detention, harassment and discrimination in many different localities in Iran. The officials confiscated Baha'i homes, denied their rightfully earned pensions, barred them from employment and blocked their private businesses. All attempts to obtain redress were systematically denied. The Government persisted in banning the sacred institutions that were responsible, in the Baha'i faith, for most of the functions performed by the clergy in other religions. The community was alarmed by recent developments which indicated that Iranian officials might be carrying out a methodical plan to destroy Baha'i historical and holy places. At the beginning of the Islamic Revolution, the authorities had confiscated all Baha'i cemeteries, sacred sites and centres.
HANAN SHARFELDDIN, of International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, said that for 50 years, people from all corners of the globe had been hearing and watching the same scenes on television of the innocent being assaulted by armed forces. This was a source of anxiety for non-governmental organizations, as these scenes had almost become routine, awakening no pain or outrage. Human society had heard and seen so much of this that it no longer worried about the dramatic scenes and horrors taking place around it, with moral and human values becoming ignored. The most recent of these was the stance of the Israeli and American leaderships when the International Court of Justice condemned the security wall in Israel and called for its removal. It was time that the extremist Zionists realized that the wall would only bring more suffering and hardship to all in the region, including the Jews. The entity that had been implanted in the region was a racist and arrogant entity, and the Experts of the Sub-Commission should remain alert to the dangers posed by the entity, not only to the region, but to the world as a whole. There was a human duty to the Palestinian brothers, whatever their religion, who wished to live a peaceful and lawful life in a State of their own, which would be the foundation for peace in the region.
ARMAND MACKENZIE, of Innu Council of Nitassinan, said that although Canada had a reputation as a country that respected human rights, it had recently intensified its dishonest and widely condemned policy of extinguishment of aboriginal peoples such as the Innu. In response to numerous aboriginal criticisms of that policy, the international outcry over it, and the United Nations Human Rights Committee recommending its abandonment as incompatible with article 1 of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the extinguishment provision was recently amended. In some new land claims treaties, the words 'surrender' and 'extinguishment' were to be deleted, but in return the Aboriginal party would have to agree that the Treaty itself defined the totally of their rights and that they could never assert their rights granted from any previous treaties or from any violations of aboriginal title that might have occurred in the past. Under that agreement, the Canadian Government was indemnified against all violation of Aboriginal or treaty rights in perpetuity.
LES MALEZER, of Foundation for Aboriginal and Islander Research Action, said that with regard to the incompatibility between democracy and racism, this was illustrated by the situation in Australia and New Zealand. These experiences could be merely the forerunners of situations throughout the world where the legal courts, better informed about indigenous peoples and international human rights norms, would understand that indigenous law and title could have status. Governments could risk overwhelming political pressures to extinguish or suppress traditional rights. The United Nations should be able to distinguish and reprimand all States that breached international human rights and showed no compunction or intention to remedy the situation. The international community could not be selective in what it chose to sanction, and the United Nations should ensure that the international human rights stance on the elimination of long-standing, entrenched discrimination against the indigenous peoples of the world was unambiguous, understood, and cautionary. The Sub-Commission should consider how the General Assembly resolution on the Incompatibility between Democracy and Racism could have application to States to prevent neo-colonial abuses of the human rights of indigenous peoples.
KAREN PARKER, of International Educational Development, said the group remained extremely concerned about the situation in Iraq. Inept and dishonest United States leadership, ugly and vicious behaviour of many United States troops and commanders, as well as abject corruption by United States constructors in all areas of reconstruction had severely undermined humanitarian and human rights law and resulted in the wholesale theft of Iraqi resources. The second wartime use in Iraq of weapons containing depleted uranium made the situation all the worse. At present, foreign medical personnel were documenting a medial catastrophe related to low-level radiation and destruction of the Iraqi medical delivery system - already seriously challenged by the long years of economic sanctions. Purposeful killings, maiming, torture and abuse of prisoners of war was a war crime, yet the United States was apparently not to be taken to task by any country for its violations in Iraq, even though all high contracting parties to the Geneva Conventions were under an affirmative duty to seek out alleged violators and bring them to their own national tribunals if the countries involved in a war did not or did so in an inadequate manner. International Educational Development had also long raised the issue of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in the course of the war in Turkey against the Kurdish people.
TAHIR NASEEM MANHAS, of Afro-Asian Peoples' Solidarity Organization, said the tragic plight of millions of innocent victims of violence in places ranging from post-invasion Iraq to Darfur in Sudan had once again highlighted the close nexus between human rights and security; without respect for human rights there could be no real security and without effective security there could be no realization of human rights. Among the situations that clearly established this close nexus was the one prevailing in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which, for several decades now, had borne the brunt of externally inspired violence. Pakistan was urged to give up, once and for all, its support for militancy, work intensively to disband militant groups and recognize that its policy had not only led to intensive suffering for the Kashmiri people but had undermined stability, progress and human rights at home.
NUMTAZ KHAN, of European Union for Public Relations, drew the attention of the Sub-Commission to the reports appearing in the Pakistani press about a recent four-day fact-finding visit to Pakistan-controlled Azad Kashmir by a delegation of the independent non-governmental organization: the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. Commenting on the Commission's visit in its July 21 edition, the reputed Pakistani daily "Dawn" had quoted the Commission's Secretary-General as stating at a press conference held in Islamabad on July 20 that "based on meetings with members of the press, civil society, the judiciary and the general public", the Commission had concluded that the people of Azad Kashmir "toiled in miserable conditions, contrary to the Government claims that the situation was improving". The group strongly urged the Government of Pakistan to pay serious attention to the findings of the Commission and take effective remedial measures if the international community was to take seriously its claims of being genuinely interested in the welfare of the people in Jammu and Kashmir.
PENNY PARKER, of Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights, said there was clear evidence of a decline in item 2 on the violation of human rights in any part of the world since 2000 when the Sub-Commission lost its right to vote on country resolutions. The Sub-Commission should appoint during this session an expert or group of experts to prepare a joint working group on improving the item. There were some interesting phrases in the existing terminology of item 2 which warranted a new look. There were various suggestions, and it was hoped that there would be many more ideas.
VERENA GRAF, of International League for the Rights and Liberation of Peoples, said the situation in Sri Lanka could be characterized as increasingly institutionalised lawlessness. Successive governments had ruled during most of the island's post-independence period with the help of Emergency Regulations and the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979 which replaced the rule of law and due process. A general militarization of society had taken place over the years helped on by the war. The army that had comprised only 12,000 men in the early 1980s had been increased to over 100,000 not counting other para-military units. Instead of eliminating violence as a means of regulating conflict within society, it was being resorted to by the Government itself as well as the political parties in the fight for power. The democratic process in general could not be said to have been strengthened by the introduction of the system of an executive presidency.
ALI SALEEM, of Asian Legal Resource Centre, said that pursuant to its proposal for an item in the provisional agenda, the decision of the Sub-Commission not to discuss this issue was accepted. By submitting the proposal, it had been hoped that an international human rights protection mechanism could become a reality to prove its reliability to victims who were re-victimized merely on the basis that they dared to seek redress for the violations committed against them. It was not the presence or the absence of the rule of law which created a difference in support or delayed implementation of human rights principles. The Sub-Commission should find a way to make it one of its primary concerns to contribute towards the realization of an effective remedy for human rights violations and thus become relevant to those millions who suffered violations of their rights despite the existence of the international human rights protectorate.
RAJA NAJABAT HUSSAIN, of International Human Rights Association of American Minorities, said the people of Jammu and Kashmir had been waging a peaceful struggle for self-determination for more than five decades. The tranquillity and serenity of their homeland had been destroyed by the atrocities committed by the Indian occupation forces. Instead of fulfilling its promises made to the people of Kashmir, the Indian Government had unleashed a saga of repression to suppress the people's peaceful movement for their right to self-determination. It had not only resorted to physical torture, rape, custodial killings and fake encounters but had also enacted a number of draconian laws to perpetuate its illegal occupation in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. The stories of human rights violations in the Indian-occupied Kashmir were barbaric as well as unprecedented. More than 700,000 Indian troops had been deployed in Indian-occupied Kashmir, making it the most heavily militarized area in the world.
RONALD BARNES, of Indigenous World Association, said the intervention served as yet another diplomatic protest on the subjugation, domination and exploitation of the indigenous peoples of Alaska. There was a black hole for peoples that were denied the right to self-determination, thus the conflict between States and peoples continued, because the politically oppressed carried the indelible knowledge that they had yet to exercise the right to self-determination under the Charter of the United Nations and international law. The Sub-Commission was called upon to adopt a resolution for a thematic study on flagrant violations of the right to self-determination under the Charter of the United Nations.
AMIR SHAH, of World Federation of Trade Unions, urged the Government of Pakistan to take genuine and independently verifiable steps to improve the human rights situation in Gilgit-Baltistan. Measures should be taken to enter into a dialogue with Jammu and Kashmir, including Gilgit-Baltistan; reduce the presence of Pakistan's army in Gilgit-Baltistan, making civilian agencies responsible for the maintenance of law and order and ending the excessive interference by Pakistani security agencies in the politics and governance; curtail the power of the Pakistani Federal Minister for Kashmir Affairs; clamp down on sectarian violence, and particularly on Sunni extremists; reverse the manipulation of the educational curriculum; end the expropriation of land that had made the indigenous people of Balawaristan a minority at the expense of Punjabi and Pashtun settlers; and remove travel restrictions on Kashmiris.
HAMMOU OUHELLI of Conseil Consultatif des Droits de l'Homme Maroc, said it was an advisory human rights council to the Government of Morocco, established in 1990 as a pluralist independent national institution to advise His Majesty on human rights issues. King Mohammed VI was committed to the promotion of human rights, and had stated that the struggle against terrorism should be waged transparently and in the context of human rights, as was fitting for a country in which human rights prevailed. In a new law, the Council had had its prerogatives expanded, and was now required to submit an annual report on the situation of human rights in Morocco. The first report had been submitted, along with a report on prisons and prisoners, and another on progress made on human rights, including information on violations of human rights reported in the context of the anti-terrorism struggle. Less than two months later, the Government had reacted by taking various measures, including the holding of inquiries into matters reported by the Council. The defense and promotion of human rights was a difficult task globally, requiring the cooperation and participation of all concerned. The Council in Morocco worked to these ends. The major advantage lay in the existence of the King, who was personally involved in protecting and promoting the human rights of all in the country.
Source: United Nations Office at Geneva
-------- prisons / prisoners
4 Frenchmen Freed From Guantanamo
By Pierre-Antoine Souchard
Associated Press
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A11
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19140-2004Jul27.html
PARIS, July 27 -- The first French prisoners to be released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, returned to France on Tuesday, as officials continued negotiating for the release of three others, the Foreign Ministry said.
The four prisoners arrived at a military base in Normandy and were to be questioned by counterintelligence agents and appear before anti-terrorism Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, French officials said.
Officials in Washington and Paris accelerated talks in recent weeks to allow some of the French detainees at Guantanamo to return home.
"It's the result of long efforts," President Jacques Chirac told reporters during a visit to Madagascar. "We will naturally continue the discussions with American authorities to obtain the handover of the two or three other detainees."
The men were to be investigated for criminal association with a terrorist enterprise, the officials said.
After months of international criticism for holding hundreds of suspects at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base without charge, the United States has been gradually releasing some prisoners to their home countries.
"The decision to transfer or release a detainee is based on many factors, including whether the detainee is of further intelligence value to the United States and whether he is believed to pose a threat to the United States if released," the Pentagon said.
The four handed over were Mourad Benchellali, Imad Kanouni, Nizar Sassi and Brahim Yadel, judicial officials said.
Defense lawyer Jacques Debray, expressed "great satisfaction" that his two clients were among the four returning to France. He represents Benchellali, 24, and Sassi, 22, who come from a working-class suburb of the southeastern city of Lyon.
France has long sought the return. Yadel was wanted in an investigation into a training camp set up by Islamic militants in the late 1990s south of Paris. Benchellali is the son of an imam who was arrested in connection with a suspected terrorist network.
--------
4 Detainees Are Returned to France After 2 Years at Guantánamo
July 28, 2004
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/europe/28fran.html
PARIS, July 27 - Four French citizens held without trial for more than two years at the American prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, arrived in France on Tuesday and were immediately detained by the French authorities under the country's tough antiterrorism laws.
The four men, who were captured during the American-led war in Afghanistan on suspicion of serving as fighters for the Taliban, were repatriated after what President Jacques Chirac of France called "long and intense negotiations" with the Bush administration.
Speaking to journalists during a visit to Madagascar, Mr. Chirac also thanked "all those who contributed to their return," particularly the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Mr. Chirac said the four men would be dealt with under France's judicial system. "Justice will be done," he said.
Under French law, the men can be kept under investigation for 96 hours on suspicion of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."
The continued detention of hundreds of foreign suspects arrested in Afghanistan and imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay without charge has sparked a huge outcry in France and around the world.
An editorial in Le Monde on Tuesday said, "If the prisoners are cleared of all charges, this will be a hard new blow for the credibility of the 'war against terrorism' waged by President Bush regardless of either national or international law or morality."
France is still pressuring the United States to repatriate three other Frenchmen still at Guantánamo.
The Bush administration has taken the position that the prisoners are "enemy combatants" with no right to contest their detention in American civilian courts. But the Supreme Court rejected that argument last month, affirming the prisoners' right to challenge their detention in court.
Even before the ruling, the administration began to release some of the suspects. Before Tuesday, 135 prisoners had been repatriated and released, and another 12 who had been repatriated were still in detention in their home countries, according to the Pentagon. The camp at Guantánamo still has nearly 600 prisoners.
The four Frenchmen - Mourad Benchellali, Brahim Yadel, Imad Kanouni and Nizar Sassi - were flown to a military base in Normandy in a chartered French military plane, and they were turned over for questioning to France's counterintelligence agency, the Directorate for Territorial Surveillance. They will also appear before France's most prominent antiterrorism investigating magistrate, Jean-Louis Bruguière.
The men's lawyers and families have not yet been allowed access to them.
Mr. Benchellali, 24, was arrested by American troops in Afghanistan in February 2002. He is the brother of Menad Benchellali, who is under arrest on suspicion of planning to bomb Russian targets, including the Russian Embassy in Paris, in 2002 after Russia's crackdown in the Russian Muslim region of Chechnya.
Their father, Chellali Benchellali, a Muslim cleric from the Lyon suburb of Vénissieux, as well as their mother and another brother are also under arrest in connection with the plot.
Mr. Yadel was wanted in France in an investigation into a training camp set up by Islamic militants in the late 1990's in the Fontainebleau forest near Paris.
Jacques Debray, a lawyer who represents Mr. Benchellali and Mr. Sassi, said Tuesday that "their families are tremendously happy" about their repatriation.
-------- terrorism
Man Talks of Plans to Attack Calif. Trains
Associated Press
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20064-2004Jul28.html
DES MOINES, July 27 -- A motorist stopped on an Iowa highway this month was found with flight-training manuals, Arabic documents and night-vision goggles, and he told troopers he knew of terrorist plans to shoot up trains in San Diego, according to court papers.
Michael Wagner, 44, of San Diego said he had knowledge of terrorist activities and people and groups tied to al Qaeda and the Taliban. Wagner also said that he knew about things in the Muslim communities in San Diego that would interest federal authorities.
Federal prosecutors declined to comment on the case, and it was not immediately known whether they were able to corroborate his assertions or determine his motivation for carrying the manuals.
Wagner pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court on Tuesday to being a felon in possession of body armor and weapons.
A state trooper called a canine unit to search Wagner's SUV and found flight-training manuals, flight-training software, three bulletproof vests, night-vision goggles, a night-vision scope for a rifle, a telescope, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a bag of ammunition and documents with Arabic printing, court papers said.
-------- torture
UK troops held torture contests, Iraqi claims
28 Jul 2004
Scotsman.com
KAREN MCVEIGH
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=862202004
A HOTEL worker who says he witnessed British troops beating his friend to death in Iraq spoke yesterday of being subjected to "torture competitions" at the hands of the army.
Kifah Taha al-Mutari, from Basra, was speaking on the eve of a High Court challenge to the government over allegations surrounding the role of British troops in the deaths of six Iraqis.
Mr Mutari, who flew to Britain for the hearing, said British soldiers arrested him and a fellow hotel worker, Baha Mousa, 26, on suspicion of terrorism. Mr Mousa later died, allegedly after being beaten by soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment in September.
Mr Mutari, speaking through an interpreter, said they were tortured for three days.
"They had competitions among themselves to see who could kick and beat us the most. They were enjoying it. We were screaming and crying for help and the higher we screamed the more they liked it," he said.
He said that the soldiers gave them degrading nicknames, such as "pig" or obscene words. "They would ask us our 'names' and we would have to answer to our name or we would be beaten more."
The beatings ruptured one of his kidneys and he nearly died, he said. According to a medical report by a consultant, Mr al-Mutari suffered acute kidney failure of "life-threatening proportions" - almost certainly as a result of deliberate injury.
The death of Baha Mousa is one of six test cases due to go before the High Court in London today. In a three-day hearing, lawyers for the families will ask two judges to rule that the Human Rights Act applies to British soldiers occupying Iraq and that independent inquiries should be held.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said all allegations of death and mistreatment at the hands of British forces were investigated by the military. He said the government would argue that human rights legislation did not apply.
-------- POLITICS
------- investigations
9/11 Commission
Kerry Calls for Panel's Extension
Report Is 'A Blueprint for Action,' He Says
By Jim VandeHei and Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19393-2004Jul27.html
NORFOLK, July 27 -- The election-season fight over confronting terrorism escalated Tuesday, as John F. Kerry called for the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission to be extended by 18 months to help implement its proposed intelligence reforms and pressure the White House and Congress for fast action.
President Bush did not respond to Kerry's suggestion, but congressional Democrats and Republicans quickened their pace of reacting to the five-day-old report. A Senate committee scheduled a hearing for Friday rather than next week, and House Democrats announced plans to gather Aug. 10 -- ordinarily the heart of summer vacation -- to discuss the report.
Although some leaders of both parties cautioned against rushing to implement recommendations, others said the public demands prompt response to recommendations intended to avert terrorist attacks.
The 567-page report, which tops bestseller lists and soon will come out in hardcover, continues to reshape the political debate 14 weeks before the Nov. 2 election.
Many Democrats believe Bush and congressional Republicans erred by initially seeming reluctant to embrace its recommendations. Within two days, Bush suggested he would enact by executive order some of the recommendations, but Kerry upped the ante on Tuesday by calling for keeping the commission alive.
Two days before he accepts the Democratic presidential nomination, Kerry changed a campaign speech here to propose expanding the life and mandate of the commission, which is scheduled to dissolve Aug. 26. He said the commission should issue a report every six months detailing whether federal officials are moving swiftly enough to tighten homeland security, reorganize intelligence agencies and reshape the global alliance to fight terrorists.
"We understand the threat," Kerry told supporters. "We have a blueprint for action. We have the strength as a nation to do what must be done. The only thing we don't have is time."
Kerry previously endorsed the commission's long list of proposed changes, including the creation of a department-level intelligence director and a reorganization of the terrorism-fighting apparatus. "I hope the president will now take the necessary steps," he said.
Bush, who originally opposed creating the commission, has not embraced the full set of recommendations. Vacationing at his Texas ranch while Democrats are convening in Boston, Bush met Monday by videoconference with his national security advisers to determine which recommendations could and should be made by executive order or similar means that do not require congressional approval.
Administration officials said Tuesday that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft is postponing a trip to Mexico to work on the commission's recommendations.
The White House did not offer any public reaction to Kerry's proposal, but privately an official indicated Bush would not accept the idea. In two appearances Tuesday in Southern California, Vice President Cheney played up the commission's warnings about continued terrorist threats and said this is a bad time to change the nation's leadership.
Cheney, speaking at a luncheon for a congressional candidate in Bakersfield, said that the terrorist enemy "in the words of the 9/11 commission report, issued just last week, is 'sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal.' "
The panel's boldest recommendations -- creating a national director of intelligence and establishing a national counterterrorism center -- would require congressional action, as would the call to revamp Congress's oversight of intelligence gathering. Extending the commission's life presumably would require congressional and presidential approval.
The commission's leaders, former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean (R) and former representative Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), have advocated keeping the panel active and vowed to lobby to have its recommendations enacted.
Congress, as is customary, was scheduled to be in recess for all of August. But the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee will start hearings Friday, featuring Kean and Hamilton. The House's homeland security committee will hold hearings Aug. 16.
For the rest of this year, Congress is scheduled to be in full session for only four weeks in September. Lawmakers said Tuesday it is unclear whether they will try to enact major recommendations during that month or during a session that might extend into October.
Democrats, while sensing a chance to gain political ground on the issue of national security, do not agree on how rapidly to proceed. Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.) said Congress should act on the panel's suggestions before the election. But Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) urged more caution. "The report shouldn't be used as a political instrument," he told Washington Post reporters and editors Tuesday. As for passing legislation before the election, he said, "My sense is that might be a bit ambitious."
In a conference call organized Tuesday by the Kerry campaign, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.) -- the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence panel -- said Bush is "beginning to act," but not quickly enough.
Just before the report was issued Thursday, Kerry held a news conference to announce his support for a Cabinet-level intelligence chief and many other reforms the commission had signaled it would propose. Rockefeller said Kerry's plan to empower the commission to effectively lobby for its recommendations would make sure "pressure is kept as high intensity of heat as possible" on Bush and Congress.
At Tuesday's event in Norfolk, with the USS Wisconsin docked behind him, Kerry said, "Backpedaling is not something America can afford."
Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, helped Kerry devise the new proposal, said David Wade, a Kerry spokesman. Harman flew into Norfolk to introduce Kerry.
To implement the proposed changes, Harman said, GOP congressional leaders "need the call from the White House, and that call has not come. If it doesn't come, this election, I predict will be a referendum on the administration's failure to admit mistakes, failure to fix these mistakes or step aside."
In discussing security issues with Post editors and reporters Tuesday, Kerry campaign adviser Rand Beers took issue with the way the Bush administration has defined the effort to root out Islamic terrorists.
"The war is not against terrorism, which is a tactic, but in fact what we are talking about is a struggle against fundamentalist, Islamic jihahidists . . . who are bent on destroying the United States," he said.
Beers, former counterterrorism director in the Bush White House, said the administration has overemphasized military action at the expense of economic, diplomatic, political and other efforts in going after jihadists.
"That's why I chose to use the word 'struggle' instead of 'war' to actually define how I personally view this particular problem," he added. As part of the Republican argument that Kerry cannot be trusted to handle intelligence or terrorism, the party on Wednesday will e-mail 8 million supporters a 12-minute video compiling clips from debates and interviews showing Kerry's evolving rhetoric on Iraq. The video uses squares on a calendar to frame the clips of Kerry's varying arguments, portraying him as becoming less hawkish as the antiwar stance of former Vermont governor Howard Dean helped him gain momentum for the Democratic nomination last year.
Babington reported from Boston. Staff writers Mike Allen in Crawford, Tex.; Dan Eggen in Washington; and Lois Romano in Boston contributed to this report.
-------- propaganda wars
For Al-Jazeera, Loss of Convention Sign Brings Banner Publicity
By Nora Boustany
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19359-2004Jul27.html
Reporters and crew for al-Jazeera, the Arab world's most popular news network, are among the thousands of journalists covering the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Staff members of the Qatar-based Arabic-language channel, operating out of their own skybox but relying on ABC News for production and technical services, arrived at the FleetCenter a week ahead of time to plan coverage.
One of the first things they did was string a banner emblazoned with al-Jazeera's name and logo across their skybox. They said they had received e-mailed approvals for the banner from convention organizers early in July and had complied with placement, design and dimension requirements for the 12-by-4-foot sign.
But when Nader Abed, al-Jazeera's operations chief, was on the floor July 19 coordinating his team, he looked up and saw that the sign was gone.
"For 24 hours, there was confusion, outrage and real disappointment," said Stephanie Thomas, the Washington bureau manager.
By July 20, ABC was trying to mediate, she said. Only on Friday did Thomas get an answer from a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee's host committee. The al-Jazeera banner, she was told, would have been seen in every wide-angle cutaway shot to the audience. It was removed, even though no other banners in the same sightline were taken down, Thomas said. Meanwhile, no one could locate the al-Jazeera banner.
"At first we were very upset," Hafez Mirazi, al-Jazeera's Washington bureau chief, said in a telephone interview from Boston. "But people from the DNC we dealt with were very embarrassed and, I believe, very sincere." The sign was finally found in a storage area in Burlington, Mass., 15 miles away, he said, but the circumstances of its removal are still a mystery.
In the past, top U.S. officials have complained about al-Jazeera's commentary and its handling of gruesome footage from Iraq. The network counters that it carries interviews with U.S. military and civilian officials as well as their news conferences.
Even though the sign is still down, the al-Jazeera staff is enjoying the publicity surrounding what happened.
"American journalists have expressed so much solidarity with us. Whoever wanted us to be less visible has really promoted us by pulling the sign down," Mirazi said. "There is no news so far, and everyone is busy covering me. Wolf Blitzer interviewed me over the weekend, I am about to be interviewed by ABC's Peter Jennings, and a Christian Science Monitor columnist is here covering the coverage of the coverage," Mirazi joked.
Mirazi said he has 16 staff members covering the convention. The network has scheduled 12 hours of coverage through tomorrow, more than the time allotted to the convention by major U.S. networks, he said he was told by ABC's Ted Koppel.
Most of al-Jazeera's intensive coverage, Mirazi explained, falls into prime-time viewing for Arab Americans in the United States. But the live coverage is late for viewers in the Middle East because of the difference in time zones. In the Arab world, people can catch the beginning of the coverage before going to bed and some of the late coverage the next morning, he added.
-------- us politics
Democrats Letting Anti-GOP Train Roll Right Along
By Charles Babington and Brian Faler
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19395-2004Jul27.html
Democratic congressional candidates seem to be embracing the political adage: If your opponent is self-destructing, don't get in the way.
Buoyed by polls showing that most Americans feel the nation is on the wrong track (with Republicans controlling the House, Senate and White House), Democratic campaign leaders seem largely content to let anti-GOP sentiment run its course and, ideally, carry their party back to control of the House after a decade in the minority. As for crafting their own agenda and positive message, well, there's plenty of time for that.
Briefing reporters, Rep. Robert T. Matsui (D-Calif.) said he and other Democratic campaign strategists feel they have an almost 50-50 chance of gaining the 11 seats they need to claim the House majority on Nov. 2. Matsui, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, cited a recent poll showing 56 percent of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track (while 41 percent answered "right track").
Pressed on whether Democrats need a sharper, clearer campaign message, Matsui said: "It would not be in anyone's interest in our party to present a message or a theme in June, July or even August. We want to wait a while."
A party aide later said House Democrats in September will roll out a message and agenda focusing on familiar themes: economic opportunity, better treatment of veterans, improved health care (especially for the elderly), environmental protection and so on. In 1994, when Republicans reclaimed the House majority after four decades in the minority, they waited until Sept. 27 to unfold their celebrated "Contract With America."
Hot Seats for Swingers
Swing states have been getting all the attention this year. But this week, they're also getting the best seats in the house. The Democratic Party has given most of the prime real estate at its presidential convention to delegates from the 16 states that are expected to be closely contested in this year's election.
The Massachusetts crowd, one of the few exceptions to the rule, gets the best seats of all -- front and center at FleetCenter, where the four-day convention is being held. But immediately to its left, right and rear is a veritable gantlet of swing states. There is the Iowa delegation, which also snagged front-row seats. Behind the Iowans are the Oregon Democrats. Just behind them, Florida. On the other side of the floor are Maine, New Mexico and, in a sign, perhaps, of the party's aspirations, the usually Republican North Carolina. Behind the Bay State crowd are New Hampshire and Florida.
A bit farther out, to the left of someone addressing the convention from the podium, are Ohio, Washington, Michigan and Tennessee. On the other side of the floor are Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin and, oddly, perhaps, South Dakota. Arizona, New Jersey, Delaware and Colorado are a bit higher up in the arena, but still in the middle sections. California and New York, both reliably Democratic states, are also in the middle, getting better seats than delegates from Nevada and West Virginia (also a sign of the party's reading of the electoral scene?). Meanwhile, most of those poor Democrats from states that aren't considered competitive get the cheap seats, including those from Idaho, Nebraska and Alabama.
Pass the Remote
It's official: The Democratic National Convention is not a reality-show hit.
Just-released Nielsen numbers show that television ratings for Monday night, despite the heavily touted Bill Clinton speech, were down 10 percent from the first night of the Democratic gathering in Los Angeles four years ago.
The combined audience for CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC was 18.4 million, compared with 20.4 million four years ago.
All the broadcast networks, which have been criticized for devoting only three hours each to live convention coverage, took a hit. Ratings numbers for ABC dropped from 4.8 to 3.1, for NBC from 4.8 to 3.3, and for CBS from 3.8 to 3.2. (One ratings point is equal to 1.08 million households.)
This will give a boost to those who say the broadcast networks have made a rational decision in the face of convention ratings that have been declining for decades.
Staff writer Howard Kurtz contributed to this report.
---------
Lost Record '02 Florida Vote Raises '04 Concern
July 28, 2004
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/campaign/28vote.final.html?pagewanted=all&position=
MIAMI, July 27 - Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
A county official said a new backup system would prevent electronic voting data from being lost in the future. But members of the citizens group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, said the malfunction underscored the vulnerability of electronic voting records and wiped out data that might have shed light on what problems, if any, still existed with touch-screen machines here. The group supplied the results of its request to The New York Times.
"This shows that unless we do something now - or it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, a lawyer who is the chairwoman of the coalition.
After the disputed 2000 presidential election eroded confidence in voting machines nationwide, and in South Florida in particular, the state moved quickly to adopt new technology, and in many places touch-screen machines. Voters in 15 Florida counties - covering more than half the state's electorate - will use the machines in November, but reports of mishaps and lost votes in smaller elections over the last two years have cast doubt on their reliability.
Like "black boxes" on airplanes, the electronic voting records on touch-screen machines list everything that happens from boot-up to shutdown, documenting in an "event log" when every ballot was cast. The records also include "vote image reports" that show for whom each ballot was cast. Elections officials have said that using this data for recounts is unnecessary because touch-screen machines do not allow human error. But several studies have suggested the machines themselves might err - for instance, by failing to record some votes.
After the 2002 primary, between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida conducted a study that found that 8 percent of votes, or 1,544, were lost on touch-screen machines in 31 precincts in Miami-Dade County. The group considered that rate of what it called "lost votes" unusually high.
Voting problems plagued Miami-Dade and Broward Counties on that day, when touch-screen machines took much longer than expected to boot up, dozens of polling places opened late and poorly trained poll workers turned on and shut down the machines incorrectly. A final vote tally - which narrowed the margin first reported between the two candidates by more than 3,000 votes - was delayed for a week.
Ms. Reno, who ultimately lost to Mr. McBride by just 4,794 votes statewide, considered requesting a recount at the time but decided against it.
Seth Kaplan, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade elections division, said on Tuesday that the office had put in place a daily backup procedure so that computer crashes would not wipe out audit records in the future.
The news of the lost data comes two months after Miami-Dade elections officials acknowledged a malfunction in the audit logs of touch-screen machines. The elections office first noticed the problem in spring 2003, but did not publicly discuss it until this past May.
The company that makes Miami-Dade's machines, Election Systems and Software of Omaha, Neb., has provided corrective software to all nine Florida counties that use its machines. One flaw occurred when the machines' batteries ran low and an error in the program that reported the problem caused corruption in the machine's event log, said Douglas W. Jones, a computer science professor at the University of Iowa whom Miami-Dade County hired to help solve the problem.
In a second flaw, the county's election system software was misreading the serial numbers of the voting machines whose batteries had run low, he said.
The flaws would not have affected vote counts, he said - only the backup data used for audits after an election. And because a new state rule prohibits manual recounts in counties that use touch-screen voting machines except in the event of a natural disaster, there would likely be no use for the data anyway.
State officials have said that they created the rule because under state law, the only reason for a manual recount is to determine "voter intent" in close races when, for example, a voter appears to choose two presidential candidates or none.
Touch-screen machines, officials say, are programmed not to record two votes, and if no vote is recorded, they say, it means the voter did not cast one.
But The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, in a recent analysis of the March presidential primary, reported that voters in counties using touch-screen machines were six times as likely to record no vote as were voters in counties using optical-scan machines, which read markings on paper ballots.
The A.C.L.U. of Florida and several other voting rights groups have sued to overturn the recount rule, saying it creates unequal treatment of voters. Counties that use optical-scan machines can conduct recounts, though only in extremely close races.
Mr. Kaplan says that the system crashes had erased data from other elections besides Ms. Reno's, the most recent being municipal elections in November 2003. Under Florida law, ballot records from elections for state and local office need be kept for only a year. For federal races, the records must be kept for 22 months after an election is certified. It was not immediately clear what the consequences might be of breaching that law.
Mr. Kaplan said the backup system was added last December.
An August 2002 report from Miami-Dade County auditors to David Leahy, then the county elections supervisor, recommended that all data from touch-screen machines be backed up on CD's or elsewhere. Professor Jones said it was an obvious practice long considered essential in the corporate world.
"Any naïve observer who knows about computer system management and who knows there is a requirement that all the records be stored for a period of months," Professor Jones said, "would say you should obviously do that with computerized voting systems."
Buddy Johnson, the elections supervisor in Hillsborough County, which is one of the state's largest counties and which also uses touch-screen machines, said his office still had its data from the 2002 elections on separate hard drives.
Mr. Kaplan of the Miami-Dade elections office could not immediately explain on Tuesday afternoon the system crashes in 2003.
Martha Mahoney, a University of Miami law professor and member of the election reform group, said she requested the 2002 audit data because she had never heard an explanation of the supposedly lost votes that the A.C.L.U. documented after the Reno-McBride election.
"People can never be sure their vote was recorded the way it was cast, but these are the best records we've got," she said. "And now they're not there."
-------- ENERGY
-------- alternative energy
National Renewable Energy Lab Breaks Ground on Research Facility
July 28, 2004
GOLDEN, Colorado, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-28-09.asp#anchor5
Construction of a new research building at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) began Tuesday with a ground breaking ceremony. When the new Science & Technology Facility is completed in 2006, the research focus will be on solar photovoltaics, hydrogen and other promising renewable energy technologies.
NREL Director Richard Truly, who hosted the event, said, "We have had a long standing need for more state-of-the-art laboratory space here at NREL, and that's what this innovative facility will provide us. Our emphasis with this facility is squarely on shortening the time it takes to get beneficial technologies into the marketplace."
The new laboratories are designed to allow researchers from different disciplines to interact and share data while they work. The facility will allow individual labs to be combined to form large, open spaces for collaborative research.
The Science & Technology Facility features advanced energy efficiency and green building concepts. The architecture makes use of natural light wherever possible, and is coupled with an automated system that pares electric use by dimming unnecessary supplemental lighting. Heating, cooling and ventilation systems are designed for efficiency.
David Garman, Department of Energy (DOE) acting under secretary of energy and assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said, "This new facility will extend DOE's and NREL's research capabilities and hasten the day when we reach our goal of providing the kind of clean, affordable energy solutions that can be used by all Americans."
Middle school students from area schools joined the dignitaries to wield shovels that turned the first dirt on the project. The young people are past winners of DOE sponsored science competitions or have participated in NREL education programs.
James Spigarelli, chairman and CEO of Midwest Research Institute, which with Battelle, operates NREL for the Department of Energy, said "It is most fitting that our sons and daughters are helping break new ground for our energy future. They are the ones who will continue what we have started here today."
----
Australian Wind Industry To Prime Minister, Don't Blow It
July 28, 2004
LAUNCESTON, Tasmania, Australia, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2004/2004-07-28-01.asp
On the opening of the international wind energy conference, AUSWIND 2004, today in Launceston, Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon warned that Australia risks losing out on a multi-billion dollar wind energy boom.
Lennon told delegates to AusWIND 2004 that the Tasmanian government understands the deep concerns within the renewable energy industry following the release of the Howard Government's Energy White Paper in June. He said Tasmania's representations to the federal government have been ignored.
"Tasmania is a leading generator of wind power but our efforts are being undermined by the Howard Government," Lennon said.
"It is a disappointing and short-sighted attitude that is jeopardizing a proposed wind farm blade manufacturing plant in North-West Tasmania by Danish company Vestas," Lennon said. "Vestas considers that there is now substantial market uncertainty, which stems from not having confirmed long-term orders from electricity generators."
Lennon said the federal Mandatory Renewable Energy Target should be raised significantly or investment would stagnate after 2007. It would mean Australia's overall share of renewable energy was unlikely to increase by even one percent on 1997 levels by 2010, the premier said.
"Wind energy cannot be called alternative energy any more," said CEO of the European Wind Energy Association Corin Millais. "Last year the global wind industry turnover was over $A14 billion and the industry employed 95,000 people."
"This decade one-third of new generating capacity in the European Union will be provided by wind power," Millais told delegates.
In Australia today, wind farms generate over 200 megawatts of electricity - enough to power all of the homes in Canberra. By the end of the year this installed generating capacity will have doubled.
Launceston was chosen for this year's AUSWIND venue in order to take advantage of the opportunity to visit Australia's first turbine nacelle assembly plant owned by Vestas Australia at Burnie; the Haywards tower manufacturing factory at Launceston; and Tasmania's first wind farm at Woolnorth.
A plant to produce turbine blades is about to be built in Victoria.
Millais emphasized that Australia has a potentially large role to play in the global industry, "We are at the beginning of a boom and the global wind industry is projected to be worth over $A200 billion in total by 2012. Australia is well positioned to play a major part in the global wind energy boom," he said.
Australian Wind Energy Industry President Ian Lloyd-Besson warned that the Howard Government's White Paper on Energy failed to remove obstacles to the Australian industry's growth.
"There are currently over A$8 billion of wind energy projects proposed for Australia and over $5 billion of that investment is now at risk." said Lloyd-Besson.
The wind sector investment is expected to provide thousands of jobs, mainly in hard-hit rural and regional areas. "Wind energy today is one of the fastest growing energy technologies in the world," Lloyd-Besson said. "While global wind energy is flying high, the Australian sector risks being stuck on the ground without strong political support."
The Australian wind energy industry is calling on the Howard government to increase its Mandatory Renewable Energy Target from the current level of one percent to 10 percent by 2010, a position that has support from environmental groups.
The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) Council Tuesday called on Prime Minister John Howard and his government to "get serious about climate change" and raise the national target figure for renewable energy generation.
"A national target and roadmap for emission reductions would stimulate real action now and avoid more dramatic, disruptive and expensive changes later on," the ACF Council said.
The winds of Australia may be variable, but they are strong enough to generate enough clean energy to reduce Australian emission of greenhouse gases responsible for climage change.
Rick Maddox, vice president of the Australian Wind Energy Association, says that the geographical diversity of Australia's wind farm sites, subject as they are to varied weather patterns, helps to smooth out the effect of variable winds on the electricity grid.
"Debate over the amount of backup generation that may be required as wind penetration increases cannot mask the fact that whenever wind farms are operational, which is most of the time, they are a clean and sustainable contribution to our nation's rapidly increasing energy needs," Maddox wrote last week in a letter to the editor of the Melbourne newspaper, "The Age."
Maddox cited a report commissioned by the Australian Greenhouse Office last year which found that the National Electricity Market is able to support installed wind capacity of up to 50 percent of the minimum demand in a local area, provided that the progessive development of wind farms is managed in a dispersed fashion to allow for the diversity benefits of wind variability.
The newest Australian wind energy project is also the country's most innovative - it is located in Antarctica and the turbines are spun by the most powerful winds on the planet.
In June, the installation and commissioning of the first of two wind turbines planned for Australia's Antarctic Mawson Station was completed in is the first attempt by any nation to use wind power generation in Antarctica on a large scale, to reduce the use of diesel fuel.
The turbines, which must deal with winds in excess of 250 kilometers per hour, were provided and installed by the German company Enercon, and the system's technology was developed and installed by Powercorp Pty Ltd of Darwin.
The fierce Antarctic climatic conditions, with strong, gusty winds and freezing temperatures, place enormous stresses on wind turbine rotors and cause frequent mechanical failures. The logistics of installing efficient turbines posed significant challenges. But now that it is in place, the Mawson wind turbine system is capable of providing nearly a megawatt of renewable power to the research station.
----
U.S. to Unveil Plan to Harvest Methane With 7 Countries
July 28, 2004
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/politics/28methane.html
The Bush administration plans to announce an agreement today with seven countries to slow global warming and harvest an otherwise wasted fuel by capturing emissions of methane, a heat-trapping gas, from landfills, coal mines and oil and gas fields and pipelines.
Climate scientists said it was a worthwhile effort, but criticized the administration for opposing restrictions in emissions of carbon dioxide, the dominant human-generated gas linked to rising temperatures.
The agreement would mainly work by funneling money and expertise from wealthy countries that have already started stanching their methane leaks to poorer ones, where small investments could quickly produce benefits, both in curbing climate change and conserving methane, a clean-burning fuel that now goes to waste, administration officials said.
Michael O. Leavitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the administration would propose spending $53 million over the next five years, although he said the project had not yet been included in any budget request.
He said the goal of the participating countries - Australia, Britain, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico and Ukraine - would be to inspect sites for leaks and, by 2015, capture nine million metric tons of the gas annually, to sell (methane is the main ingredient in natural gas) or to burn directly as a source of heat.
Russia plans to participate as well, but has not formally joined the partnership, White House officials said.
Scientists and private environmental groups said there was still a need to cut carbon dioxide.
The administration is opposed to requiring reductions in carbon dioxide, focusing instead on slowing the growth of emissions through voluntary programs, Mr. Leavitt said.
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Lack of Funds Delaying Toxic Waste Cleanups
Number of Superfund Sites Growing While Federal Resources Drained by Other Needs
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19679-2004Jul27.html
The federal government's toxic waste cleanup program is delaying projects across the country because funding is decreasing at a time when the number of sites and other demands are increasing, according to state and federal officials.
A slew of new Superfund waste sites, coupled with such needs as funding emergency responders to terrorist attacks, has drained federal resources in the past few years. As a result, officials in a number of states, including Illinois and Texas, are putting cleanup plans on hold, to the dismay of some local residents.
A top adviser to the Environmental Protection Agency said yesterday that these slowdowns do not pose a threat to public health, though he acknowledged that the program has expanded beyond what lawmakers envisioned 25 years ago when they started it.
The Superfund program requires polluters to pay for the toxic waste problems they create. But when companies go bankrupt, the federal government takes on the cost.
"It's under a lot of stress, given the changing nature of what we're asked to do," said Philip Angell, senior adviser to EPA Administrator Mike Leavitt. He added: "That doesn't mean sites are sitting out there posing a risk to public health. . . . All of them have been stabilized." In the past few years, Angell noted, the EPA has had to contend with mining contamination in such places as Libby, Mont., which could cost as much $100 million to restore. Of the approximately 100 contaminated sites being cleaned up, 10 account for half of Superfund's long-term budget.
"These are hugely expensive sites," he said.
With cleanup costs rising -- according to a recent EPA inspector general report, restoring 156 hardrock mining sites alone could cost between $7 billion and $24 billion with as much as $15 billion coming from the EPA -- other projects rank lower in terms of priority. In Granite City, Ill., for example, state officials are still seeking money to remove carcinogens and other contaminants left in the soil and groundwater by Jennison-Wright Corp., a wood treatment manufacturer that went bankrupt in 1989.
Illinois requested $12 million two years ago to address the problem, according to state project manager Fred Nika, and EPA officials have said they will provide $3.6 million by the end of September. But the money has yet to materialize.
"It delays the cleanup. It just sits there, a continuing source of contamination, and it's an eyesore," Nika said. When asked if the site posed an environmental health risk, he responded, "If it wasn't, it wouldn't be on Superfund list."
In Jasper, Tex., the EPA has stabilized contamination from another wood treatment producer, but officials hope to remove additional waste. Robert Sullivan, the federal site manager, said officials are still awaiting federal money.
"Funding is just not as great as the amount of work that continues to escalate on the other side," Sullivan said.
These delays have alarmed residents, including Rebecca Jim, who lives and works near Tar Creek, Okla., where mining companies left pilings of lead and zinc reaching 200 feet high. The government has spent 15 years and nearly $132 million restoring residents' front yards and playgrounds with uncontaminated soil. But studies over the past decade have shown that as much as 38 percent of the children living there have elevated levels of lead in their blood.
"We still have a creek that runs orange," Jim said. "Our people are sicker. We want things better, to clean up all the waste so it won't continue to harm us for the next four to five generations."
Part of the problem stems from the fact that two taxes that contributed to the Superfund trust fund -- one on crude oil and certain chemicals, another one on larger corporations -- expired in 1995 and have not been renewed. As a result, all the money for cleanups this fiscal year has come from funds appropriated by Congress, instead of from the trust fund. The EPA has asked for $150 million in cleanup funds for the past two years but received just $23 million last year. Superfund's current budget is lower than at any time since 1988.
"This shows the need for a long term stable source of funding," said Ed Hopkins, director of the Sierra Club's environmental quality program. "The Bush administration is not responsible for sites being on the list, but they are underfunding the program. That means these communities are exposed to contaminants."
Hopkins wrote a report, released yesterday, showing that the EPA says people may be vulnerable to health-threatening chemicals at 111 Superfund sites, and that groundwater is vulnerable to contamination at 251 Superfund sites.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is on the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the Sierra Club's report "shows that by emasculating the Superfund program, lives are in danger."
But Angell of the EPA called the Sierra Club's report "dishonest; both the words 'possibility' and 'may' say it all. EPA would never let that happen."
-------- genetics
Panel Sees No Unique Risk From Genetic Engineering
July 28, 2004
By ANDREW POLLACK
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/science/28study.html
Genetically engineered crops do not pose health risks that cannot also arise from crops created by other techniques, including conventional breeding, the National Academy of Sciences said in a report issued yesterday.
The conclusion backs the basic approach now underlying government oversight of biotech foods, that special food safety regulations are not needed just because foods are genetically engineered.
Nevertheless, the report said that genetic engineering and other techniques used to create novel crops could result in unintended, harmful changes to the composition of food, and that scrutiny of such crops should be tightened before they go to market.
"The most important message from this report is that it's the product that matters, not the system you are using to produce it," Jennifer Hillard, a consumer advocate from Canada who was on the committee that wrote the report, said in a telephone news conference. Committee members said the genetically engineered foods already on the market are safe.
The study, "Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Effects," is somewhat vague on how regulations should change, but rather deals more with the science needed to determine whether food from genetically engineered crops and animals might be harmful.
It does not, for instance, explicitly recommend mandatory reviews of new genetically engineered foods by the Food and Drug Administration. It says that assessments should be made on a case-by-case basis. Right now, companies that create such crops voluntarily consult with the F.D.A.
The report suggests that in some cases, surveillance might be needed after a food gets to the market to check for possible health effects, something not done now. It also calls for some information on the composition of genetically modified foods to be made public rather than kept proprietary.
Both sides in the polarized debate about genetically engineered foods found things to like and not like in the report.
"They've clearly identified that there are significant problems with our technological ability to both identify changes that might happen in G.E. crops as well as to evaluate what those changes might mean," said Doug Gurian-Sherman, a senior scientist at the Center for Food Safety in Washington, which opposes biotech crops.
But backers of biotech were heartened by the report's determination that the risks of biotech foods are not unique. Michael Phillips, vice president of agricultural science and regulatory policy of the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said in a statement that the report "should lay to rest the few naysayers who continue to question the safety of these crops."
The report was commissioned by the three agencies that regulate genetically engineered crops: the F.D.A, the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency. It was produced by a committee of mostly academic scientists led by Bettie Sue Masters, of the department of biochemistry at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.
Genetic engineering involves the transfer of a specific gene from one organism to another. Cross-breeding, by contrast, involves the mixing of thousands of genes, most unknown. Another breeding technique is to bombard plants with radiation or expose them to chemicals to induce hundreds of random mutations in hopes of finding one that will confer a desirable trait.
The report said that genetic engineering was more likely to cause unintended effects than the other techniques used to develop plants except for the mutation-inducing technique.
Right now, crops produced by techniques other than genetic engineering go through virtually no regulatory scrutiny.
-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)
Failure in Cancun Haunts WTO
Trade Leaders Meet in Effort to Patch Differences Between Rich and Poor Nations
By Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 28, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A19432-2004Jul27?language=printer
GENEVA, July 27 -- Ten months after a global trade meeting in Cancun, Mexico, collapsed in acrimony between rich and poor countries, senior world trade officials have gathered here to warnings that the fate of the international trading system is on the line if they can't compromise this time.
The four-day meeting at the World Trade Organization's headquarters is intended to advance negotiations for a far-reaching agreement to lower trade barriers and reduce other forms of government interference in global markets. Inaugurated in the Persian Gulf city of Doha, Qatar, in two months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the discussions began in a mood of international cooperation and were scheduled to produce a final agreement by the end of this year.
But hanging over the proceedings is the specter of last year's fiasco at Cancun. That meeting broke down when the United States and other wealthy nations clashed with Brazil, India, and a group of developing countries over several issues, including the reluctance of rich nations to dismantle their farm-subsidy programs. Another impasse, many trade experts contend, would threaten the viability of the WTO, which polices much of the commerce among nations, resolves most international trade disputes and serves as the main forum for market-opening initiatives.
"A second such failure could severely undermine confidence in the Doha Round and even in the WTO and the system it oversees," WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi wrote in a commentary published in Tuesday's International Herald Tribune.
Such admonitions by WTO officials are standard before important meetings, but observers echoed the sentiment. "This is more than just about the round," said Naotaka Matsukata, a trade specialist at the law firm of Hunton & Williams and a former adviser to U.S. Trade Representative Robert B. Zoellick. "The real issue at the Geneva meeting is about the relevance and future of the WTO."
To a considerable degree, negotiators are trying to paper over differences with vague language that leaves the toughest issues to be resolved later. But even some carefully drafted provisions are jeopardizing the talks. One particularly nettlesome proposal concerns how far rich countries will have to go in lowering barriers that protect "sensitive" farm products -- for example, rice in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and dairy products in Norway and Switzerland.
"That's an issue that could bring the whole thing down," said a WTO official who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions. "The G-10 are going ballistic," he added, referring to a group of wealthy food importers, including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Norway and Switzerland, that strictly limit foreign competition to shelter their farmers. Although those countries are pleased with a part of the draft agreement that would allow them to designate a large number of products as "sensitive," they are upset over another paragraph that would require them to make "substantial improvement" in the openness of their markets in each product area.
This week's meeting is not intended to complete a deal to lower tariffs or change trade rules. It is supposed to forge a "framework" that would set the parameters for future negotiations. For example, before jointly agreeing to cut tariffs in a certain sector, negotiators must decide on what formula they will use -- whether, for example, all countries will cut more or less equally, or whether countries with the highest tariffs will cut substantially more.
But as Cancun vividly showed, even the seemingly modest goal of agreeing on a framework is laden with obstacles. The WTO has 147 member countries and operates by consensus. To strike an agreement, each government must perceive that it stands to gain more in the form of enhanced global opportunities for its industries, companies and farmers than it stands to lose by exposing its producers to international competition.
Broadly speaking, the main goal of many developing countries is a significant cut in the subsidies that the United States, the European Union, and other rich-country governments give their farmers. Those subsidies can cause crop surpluses that depress prices worldwide and hurt farmers in developing countries. Such a change would fall hard on American cotton growers, European sugar farmers and others that receive direct government support.
In return, the United States and the European Union demand that the developing countries cut tariffs and scrap quotas on agricultural and industrial goods, which would help U.S. and European exporters because products could be shipped more freely and at lower costs across national borders. About 32 of the poorest nations would be exempt from such requirements under the current draft accord.
Zoellick drove home the point in a written statement issued Monday before leaving for Geneva: "We will not accept a deal to put the round back on track simply for the sake of a deal. . . . There must be substantial new openings for trade in agriculture, goods and services."
At a news conference here, Kamal Nath, India's minister of commerce and industry, took a hard line against the idea that countries like his should cut tariffs simply because rich countries reduce their domestic subsidies. "To say, 'I'll do the right thing provided you give me market access' I think is very ill-conceived," he said.
In some areas, general accord has been reached, raising hope that posturing will give way to compromise by the end of the week. The current draft would mandate the elimination of all subsidies that go directly for exported farm products "by a credible end date," leaving open the precise time. Similarly, in response to pressure from developing countries, the E.U. and Japan have abandoned their demand that this round of talks produce new WTO rules concerning issues such as international investment.
Yet other major disagreements remain. France is adamant that European concessions on agriculture have gone too far, and haven't been repaid with adequate compromises from other countries. Since the European Union represents its 25 member nations on trade, Paris can't veto a deal single-handedly, but it has substantial influence.
Another significant issue involves farm subsidies that don't go directly for exported products. "Developing countries feel there is an escape clause [in the current draft], allowing the U.S. in particular to continue with certain types of subsidies" that support crop exports indirectly, said Martin Khor, director of the Third World Network, a group critical of rich-country trade policies.
Accordingly, no one here discounts the possibility that this week's meeting will end in discord. If it does, the WTO's existing rules will stay in effect, "and the talks will just drift," said Jeffrey J. Schott, a trade expert at the Institute for International Economics in Washington. "But what won't just drift is the perception of whether it's better to do business in the WTO or in bilateral or regional negotiations," such as the recently approved free-trade agreements that the United States reached with Australia and Morocco. "I think you would then call into question the viability of the WTO as a negotiating forum. That's a real risk."
That, in turn, could adversely affect the WTO's "crown jewel" -- its system for arbitrating trade disputes among nations, according to Peter D. Sutherland, a former director-general of the organization. In a Financial Times column this month, Sutherland asked whether the global trade system can continue to function well "if the institution within which it is embedded -- and on whose rules its judgments are based -- ceases to command the respect of governments and businesses."
--------
WTO lets Libya apply to join
(AP)
July 28, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/business/20040727-093708-6502r.htm
GENEVA (AP) - Oil-rich Libya yesterday was accepted as a candidate for membership in the World Trade Organization, its latest success in moving from pariah state to international respectability.
WTO members agreed unanimously to allow Libya to start negotiations to join the body that sets global rules on international trade. The process is likely to take several years.
Libya first applied for membership in December 2001, but the issue had never been formally put to the WTO before because it was clear that the United States would oppose the request. Under WTO rules, all decisions are made by consensus.
But Libya has been slowly moving back toward international acceptance since leader Moammar Gadhafi gave up his nuclear weapons program, revealed secrets about the nuclear black market and took responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103, promising to pay compensation to relatives of the 270 victims.
Washington has resumed formal diplomatic ties with the country, which has been ruled by Col. Gadhafi for 35 years.
Libyan Ambassador Najat al-Hajjaji said it was important for her country to join the WTO.
"Sometimes developing countries might not get all the benefits they need, but it is something that we cannot stay outside. It is a disadvantage to the country to stay outside of this organization," she said.
The WTO, which has 147 members, sets legally binding rules for trade that are designed to give all countries an equal opportunity to sell their exports. It is negotiating a new "round" that would cut import duties and reduce subsidies. Members hope this will give a boost to the world economy.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Peace activists say cops picking on them
July 28, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040728-110456-7955r.htm
Boston, MA, Jul. 28 -- Peace activists protesting the Iraq war at the U.S. Democratic convention claim police are picking on them, the Boston Herald said Wednesday.
"Peace activists say the FBI has been harassing and intimidating them with visits across the country including an incident in Boston Saturday," the newspaper said.
"It's a problem because people are being targeted specifically because they are against the Democrats and the Republicans," Rachael Perrotta of Democracy Uprising from Chicago told the Herald. The group is planning a march from the Democratic National Convention being held this week in Boston down to the Republican National Convention late next month in New York City.
FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz declined to comment to the Herald on the allegations, but she said; "We don't harass. If an investigation is conducted, it would be conducted in a professional manner."
--------
LETTER FROM WASHINGTON
World Bank Challenged: Are Poor Really Helped?
July 28, 2004
By CELIA DUGGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/28/international/28lett.html?position=&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1091051122-Sr3tKAHAeW6FtMVeEQTMUg
WASHINGTON - Wealthy nations and international organizations, including the World Bank, spend more than $55 billion annually to better the lot of the world's 2.7 billion poor people. Yet they have scant evidence that the myriad projects they finance have made any real difference, many economists say.
That important fact has left some critics of the World Bank, the largest financier of antipoverty programs in developing countries, dissatisfied, and they have begun throwing down an essential challenge. It is not enough, they say, just to measure how many miles of roads are built, schools constructed or microcredit loans provided. You must also measure whether those investments actually help poor people live longer, more prosperous lives.
It is a common-sense approach that is harder than it sounds, just like the question it seeks to answer: Does aid really work?
A small band of development economists, who a year ago founded the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have become influential advocates for randomized evaluations as the best way to answer that question. Such trials, generally regarded as the gold standard in social policy research, involve randomly assigning people eligible for an antipoverty program to get the help or not, then comparing outcomes to see whether those who got the help fared better than those who did not.
It is the same approach that has helped drug companies figure out what medicines are effective and Americans decide how best to reform welfare. Advocates for rigorous evaluations hope to make aid more effective, not by directing money to particular countries, but by spending it on programs proven to work.
The Poverty Action Lab scholars have made startling discoveries in their own randomized evaluations.
Adding an extra teacher to classrooms in rural India did not improve children's test scores. But hiring high-school graduates who were paid only $10 to $15 a month to give remedial tutoring to groups of lagging students in a Bombay slum markedly improved reading and math skills.
A series of education experiments in Kenya found that providing poor students with free uniforms or a simple porridge breakfast substantially increased attendance. But giving them drugs to treat the intestinal worms that infect more than a quarter of the world's population was more cost effective, with a price tag of only $3.50 for each extra year of schooling achieved. Healthier children are more likely to go to school. "You can't answer the general question: Does aid work?'' said Esther Duflo, an economist and co-founder of the Poverty Action Lab."You have to go project by project and accumulate the evidence.''
The World Bank, a lumbering giant that employs more than 1,200 Ph.D.'s, is beginning to listen to critics like her. This summer, it is organizing large-scale impact evaluations, including randomized trials, of programs to upgrade slums, improve the performance of schools and keep children healthy and in class. The programs will be tested in dozens of countries.
François Bourguignon, the bank's chief economist, said he hoped this new effort would help the bank, other donors and developing countries "learn what does and does not work."
Rigorous impact evaluations should become part of the bank's culture, he said.
That will require deep change. A recent in-house review of bank projects during the past four to five years found that only 2 percent had been properly evaluated for whether they made a difference, according to Mr. Bourguignon. When Lant Pritchett, an economist who has spent a dozen years at the bank, pondered why there was so little good evidence on the impact of projects it financed, a tune from an old game show spoof that his Mom used to sing popped into his head: "It pays to be ignorant, to be dumb, to be dense . . ."
Bank economists have recently produced assessments of huge development initiatives that acknowledge weaknesses in the evidence.
A critical review of the bank's $7 billion portfolio of programs that involve local communities in their design and management concluded recently that "there are, unfortunately, a dearth of well-designed evaluations of such projects."
Another review of a $1.3 billion initiative in India found similar problems. Bank economists in New Delhi examined more than 200 studies of projects in India that ranged from teacher training to school construction, enrollment drives to textbook revision.
They concluded that none of the studies were rigorous enough to measure whether the initiatives made a difference, except for one that found it increased enrollment by a disappointing 1.3 percent. "The World Bank spent more than a billion dollars without knowing why they were doing what they were doing - that's the tragedy,'' said Abhijit Banerjee, an M.I.T. economics professor and co-founder of the Poverty Action Lab.
But even as aid agencies lagged in conducting stringent evaluations, Professors Banerjee and Duflo at M.I.T., Michael Kremer at Harvard and other economists associated with the lab have been conducting randomized trials of antipoverty programs in India, Kenya, South Africa, Peru and the Philippines.
Even they acknowledge that random evaluations are not a panacea. For example, a program that works in Asia may not work in Africa. Still, they say, the trials offer the best evidence.
"This rigorous testing has made a huge difference in medicine and has improved human welfare due to better drugs,'' said Professor Kremer. "If we could use randomized evaluations to really find out what works, foreign aid donors could implement better health and education policies and so could developing countries.''
Mr. Pritchett, a veteran bank economist, tried to explain why rigorous evaluations were such a rarity in the culture of the bank. Its highly trained, well-meaning professionals too often think they know the solutions. "They have too little doubt,'' he said.
They also worry that modest, proven gains for the poor will lose out to inflated, unproven claims for, say, tax cuts to the rich or a new weapons system - a concern he shares. "You want to know what works and what doesn't, but until you subject the full range of government spending to the same discipline, why are you disadvantaging things for poor people?'' he asked.
But Professor Banerjee is optimistic that reliable evaluations will give advocates ammunition to lobby for increased foreign aid.
He pointed to the success of a rigorously studied Mexican program that paid poor mothers a small sum if they kept their children in school and got them immunized. The model has spread across Latin America in large measure because a large randomized trial, published in 2001, showed that the children who participated were healthier and stayed in school longer.
"In the development business,'' he said, "it would be really good to get away from the need to have people promising miracles.''
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Kucinich blasts holding cage for protests
July 28, 2004
(UPI)
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040728-120939-2448r.htm
Boston, MA, Jul. 28 -- Dennis Kucinich has blasted the holding cage where demonstrators are confined during the Democratic Convention, the Boston Herald said Wednesday.
All demonstrations are being confined to an area surrounded by high fences and heavy police presence around 100 yards from the FleetCenter where the convention is being held.
"It somehow doesn't fit to have a concentration camp open and call it a free speech zone," the Ohio congressman, who has been waging an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, told the paper. "In Boston of all places we need to be sensitive to issues of liberty."
Kucinich also described the so-called "protest pen" as "a slap in the face to Boston cops," the Herald said. "It's a kind of insult to Boston police to assume the only way they can control protestors is to have everything buttoned down," he told the paper.
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Medea Benjamin Dragged Off DNC Floor in Handcuffs For Unfurling "End the Occupation of Iraq" Banner
Wednesday, July 28th, 2004
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/28/1327236
As Teresa Heinz Kerry gave her prime-time address that never mentioned Iraq, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin attemped to bring an anti-war message onto the floor of the convention. Moments later police were dragging her out of the Fleet Center. [includes rush transcript] As Teresa Heinz Kerry spoke last night, on the floor of the convention, Medea Benjamin from Global Exchange and CodePink unfurled a pink colored banner that read "End the Occupation of Iraq." That apparently was not one of the DNC-approved messages of the night because within moments of the banner being unfurled, police were called in to remove Medea Benjamin.
Benjamin was dragged off the convention floor and thrown out of the FleetCenter. She said that the DNC was asked whether they wanted her arrested and that they decided that would not look good.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: As Teresa Heinz Kerry spoke last night on the floor of the convention, another woman, Medea Benjamin, from Global Exchange and Code Pink was speaking out. She unfurled a pink-colored banner that read "End the occupation of Iraq" that apparently was not one of the D.N.C.-approved messages of the night because within moments of the banner being unfurled, police were called in to remove her.
POLICE: Clear the aisles.
POLICE: Please clear the aisles.
MEDEA BENJAMIN: End the occupation! Bring the troops home! End the occupation! Bring the troops home! Where's free speech?
AMY GOODMAN: Medea Benjamin dragged off the convention floor and thrown out of the Fleet Center. She said that the Democratic National Convention was asked whether they wanted her arrested and they decided that that would not look good.
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Behind Barbed Wire, A 'Free Speech' Corral
Washington Post
By Paul Farhi
July 28, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19457-2004Jul27.html
BOSTON, July 27 -- Bob Kunst is working up a head of steam. "Do you think this is a real election?" he thunders into the microphone from the stage of the Democratic Convention's protest pen. "This is a phony thing. We're being sold a bill of goods!" Kunst, a 62-year-old activist from Miami Beach, has passion and a few good points to make about democracy and the Democratic ticket. But even at noon on a day so fine it feels like there's no weather at all, the masses aren't rallying outside the FleetCenter. In fact, let's do a quick count: Not including a couple of reporters and a dozen cops and National Guardsmen working security, there's exactly . . . no one listening. The convention delegates and media types arriving at a security gate outside the FleetCenter are so far away that Kunst is merely an amplified ghost, heard but unseen.
This is not entirely Kunst's fault. The officially designated "Free Speech" zone and all-purpose protest area for this celebration of the Democratic way isn't exactly front and center. It's wedged between a parking lot for buses and a bunch of trailers, and set beneath the blue-green steel supports of a condemned stretch of the T, Boston's mass-transit line. The area's perimeter is marked by a sawtooth pattern of Jersey barriers, and it's caged top to bottom with cyclone fencing and barbed wire. A black plastic tarp keeps officially credentialed types in the FleetCenter compound from seeing inside the pen.
It feels dank and grimy and sullen. You expect orange jumpsuits, gun towers and clanging metal gates.
Many of the protesters expected at the convention have shunned the pen, taking their drums and causes to the more wide open spaces on the Boston Common. The disadvantage, of course, is that the Boston Common is a mile and a half from FleetCenter, which means it's not much better than Siberia for attracting the 15,000 media people inside.
Much of the energy inside the protest pen over the past two days has been expended on protesting the pen.
Along with a few antiabortion statements chalked on the asphalt, convention demonstrators have scrawled their rage on almost every available surface, including the speaker's podium:
"A Pen? It's a Prison."
"How is this free?"
"Is this what democracy looks like?"
"Protest Prison."
"Shame."
Jes Richardson, who has just arrived in the pen, takes one look at what he has gotten himself into and declares, "This is awful. It worries me. It worries me that it has come to this."
Richardson is 56, from Marin County, Calif., and seems like a rather sunny fellow. He's certainly a peaceful one. For the past few months, he has been lugging a 9 1/2-foot papier-mache likeness of Mahatma Gandhi around the country in his Honda Civic (the head, he explains, fits in the back seat and the body goes on the bike rack). He has been to seven "swing" states, registering voters along the way, but he's not stumping for any candidate. The wheeled puppet is Richardson's way of advocating peace. In addition to a nine-foot staff, the giant Gandhi comes with a sign with the Indian leader's most famous quote, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world."
The cops guarding the pen let Richardson wheel Gandhi inside, but they made him take down the staff and the sign. So now Gandhi's hands hold nothing, but remain balled, as if he's ready to box.
What would Gandhi think?
Up on the small stage, which fronts an area no larger than a townhouse development's tot lot, Kunst is finishing up his lengthy polemic. He's wearing a T-shirt that says "FedUp, No more [expletive]." The unprintable last word is a corruption of the president's name.
Kunst is bitter. He followed all the rules, he says. He shows a reporter the permit he got from the city, which entitled him to speak for exactly 50 minutes at a scheduled hour. But he never counted on the pen, which he describes as the most extreme crowd-control measure he has seen in decades of marches and protests. Barbed wire? He remembers it once before.
"In Europe," he says, at a vigil at the Nazi death camps.
Soon, another protester takes his permitted place at the microphone, a boombox at his side. To a thumping beat, and no one at all, he sings "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."
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