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NUCLEAR
Diplomacy Fails to Slow Advance of Nuclear Arms
Sudan says Eritrean soldiers massing along common border
US mulling 'many means' to keep nukes out of Iran
Rice Says World Is Determined to Prevent a Nuclear-Armed Iran
Iran says developing new missile as measure against Israel
UN nuclear inspectors return to Iraq
Iran's Looming Missile-cum-Nuclear Threat Sparks Fresh Tensions
Israel Distributes Radiation Pills
Army starts distributing radiation antidote
Bikini and the Hydrogen Bomb: A Fifty Year Perspective
Russia Concerned on Threat from U.S. Defense Shield
Al Qaeda's Pre-Election Plot
Ukraine starts commercial operation of new nuclear power unit
Ukraine Launches New Atomic Reactor
Nevada Ponders Superfund Status for Mine
MILITARY
Bomb Kills 2 Soldiers in Afghanistan
6 G.I.'s Wounded in Afghan Attacks
Sudan Accepts African Troops, but No Peacekeepers, in Darfur
Arab League Says Sanctions Would Worsen Sudan Crisis
Agent Orange, the Next Generation
Marines, Insurgents Clash for Third Day
Marines Pushing Deeper Into City Held by Shiites
Iraqi Leader Appeals to Militants in Visit to Battle-Torn Najaf
Iraq Issues Warrants for Chalabi, Nephew
Outlaw Militia Plays Role of Ad Hoc Police Force
Sadr Aide Says Iraqi PM "Acting Like Saddam"
Two Palestinians Quit Cabinet Posts; Gaza Youth Is Killed
Israeli finance minister plans 300m dollar cut in defense budget
Ordered to just walk away
The lies that led to war
Kurds Are Seizing Property of U.N. In Iraq,
Hearing Recesses in England Case
Rwandan Accused in Genocide Wins Suit for U.N. Pay
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Iraq Reinstates Capital Punishment
Iraq Reimposes Death Penalty for Certain Crimes
Iraq Death-Penalty Decision Condemned
Homeland Security badge unites agencies
What, Us Worry? The New State of Disbelief
New Alert Shows That Intelligence Weaknesses Remain
New Technology Filling Defense Arsenal
Officials: Capitol Among New U.S. Terror Targets
Impervious Shield Elusive Against Drive-By Terrorists
Sensing the Eyes of Big Brother, and Pushing Back
Concerns with Patriot Act mount
Terror Suspect's Arrest Opens New Inquiries
Impervious Shield Elusive Against Drive-By Terrorists
U.S. Says Man Had Ties to Plot to Disrupt Vote
POLITICS
Terror suspect tells of 'abuse'
Iraq Orders Al Jazeera to Close Office in Baghdad for a Month
Iraqi Leader Orders Temporary Closing of Al Jazeera's Bureau in Baghdad
Kerry Defends Position on Iraq
Congress Split on Pace of Intelligence Reforms
OTHER
Homeless, Advocates Worry About Convention
IMF considers more loans to Turkey
ACTIVISTS
Iraq is the new Vietnam as pop protest returns to the airwaves
Lab rally to mark atomic bombings
ACLU SUIT: Police deny spying claims
-------- NUCLEAR
Diplomacy Fails to Slow Advance of Nuclear Arms
August 8, 2004
New York Times
By DAVID E. SANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/politics/08nuke.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
KENNEBUNKPORT, Me., Aug. 7 - American intelligence officials and outside nuclear experts have concluded that the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts with European and Asian allies have barely slowed the nuclear weapons programs in Iran and North Korea over the past year, and that both have made significant progress.
In a tacit acknowledgment that the diplomatic initiatives with European and Asian allies have failed to slow the programs, several senior administration and intelligence officials say they are seeking ways to step up unspecified covert actions intended, in the words of one official, "to disrupt or delay as long as we can" Iran's efforts to develop a nuclear weapon.
But other experts, including former Clinton administration officials, caution that while covert efforts have been tried in the past, both the Iranian and North Korean programs are increasingly self-sufficient, largely thanks to the aid they received from the network built by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former leader of the Pakistani bomb program. "It's a much harder thing to accomplish today," said one senior American intelligence official, "than it would have been in the 90's."
Mr. Khan has also worked against the Bush administration in North Korea. A new assessment of North Korea has come in one of three classified reports commissioned by the Bush administration earlier this year from the American intelligence community. Circulated last month, the report concluded that nearly 20 months of toughened sanctions, including terminating a major energy program, and several rounds of negotiations involving four of North Korea's most powerful neighbors have not slowed the North's efforts to develop plutonium weapons, and that a separate, parallel program to make weapons from highly enriched uranium was also moving forward, though more slowly.
The desire to pursue a broader strategy against Iran's nuclear ambitions is driven in part, officials say, by increasingly strong private statements by Israeli officials that they will not tolerate the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon, and may be forced to consider military action similar to the attack against a nuclear reactor in Iraq two decades ago if Tehran is judged to be on the verge of making a weapon. (In contrast, North Korea's neighbors, especially South Korea and China, are seeking stability first, and disarmament as a longer-term goal, diplomats from the region say.)
"The evidence suggests that Iran is trying to keep all of its options open," said Robert M. Gates, the director of central intelligence under President Bush's father, who recently headed a detailed study of Iran that was critical of what it called the administration's failure to engage the country. "They are trying to stay just within their treaty obligations" while producing highly enriched uranium, said Mr. Gates, who is now the president of Texas A&M University, "and I think they can go with a weapon whenever they want to."
Mr. Gates and other outside experts were interviewed at a four-day conference on the challenges of nuclear terrorism and the spread of other unconventional weapons held at the Aspen Institute last week. Separately over the past few weeks, five senior officials from the administration and Asian and European nations, all with varying access to the intelligence about the Iranian and North Korean programs, were interviewed about the current status of those programs. Not surprisingly, their judgments about the exact progress the two countries have made were not always in accord.
The new report on North Korea, which has circulated among senior American officials and has been described to The New York Times, appears to have been written far more cautiously than the National Intelligence Estimate that erroneously described advanced weapons programs in Iraq. It describes in detail vast gaps in American knowledge. For example, it acknowledges that the whereabouts of North Korea's stockpile of more than 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods has been a mystery since early 2003, but also concludes that the North has had plenty of time to reprocess the rods into enough fuel for six to eight additional weapons. North Korea is judged to have two to six weapons already.
For its part, Iran has begun to assemble the necessary ingredients and perhaps the same crude, Chinese-origin bomb design that the Khan network sold to Libya - and may be just a few years away, intelligence experts have said.
Taken together, the intelligence conclusions pose both security and political challenges for President Bush, who is visiting here this weekend to attend a wedding and visit his parents at their seaside estate.
Mr. Bush has said he will not "tolerate" either country becoming a nuclear power, ignoring, at least publicly, the near certainty that North Korea has already reached that status. But he has never defined that term, or set deadlines. He is already under attack by the Democratic presidential candidate, Senator John Kerry, for allowing both countries to move forward in their programs while the White House concentrated on the one member of what Mr. Bush has called the "axis of evil," Iraq, that turned out to have virtually no evidence of a continuing program.
While the intelligence report on North Korea, which has also been described to some allies, was cautiously worded - the product, said to one official who has seen it, of "a chastened intelligence community" - it makes it clear that North Korea now probably has enough weapons-grade plutonium to test a weapon in the future, which would allow it to demonstrate its capacity. While it retained raw nuclear material under a 1994 accord with the Clinton administration, that material was under close surveillance until the inspectors were thrown out on Dec. 31, 2002.
"The conventional wisdom now is that they have completely reprocessed all of it," said Gary Samore, who headed nonproliferation efforts at the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton and has conducted a detailed assessment of North Korea for the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "They had a huge window of opportunity when we were invading Iraq, and they appear to have made maximum use of it."
He noted that many analysts in the intelligence agencies believed that a "whiff" of a nuclear byproduct detected by an American spy plane off the coast of North Korea last year was evidence that the reprocessing was under way. But others note that the experiment was never successfully repeated. They say it is possible North Korea ran into difficulty in the chemical process of converting spent fuel into bomb material. "You can't assume a linear progression," said one senior American official.
Mr. Bush has said little recently about the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, in sharp contrast to his regular recitations about the danger posed by Iraq in the period before the war last year. When he and his aides do speak about the problem in public, they still refer to progress but mostly progress in getting other countries to put pressure on Iran and North Korea.
"It's very frustrating," said one former official who left the Bush administration recently and believes that the administration has failed to draw clear "red lines" beyond which North Korea would not be allowed to expand its arsenal. The official noted that Mr. Bush and his aides had been talking as if North Korea and Iran would follow the model of Libya, which disarmed earlier this year in an effort to re-integrate its economy with the West. But, the official argued, Iran does not need to do that because it has robust trade with Europe, and North Korea still receives considerable aid from China.
In the past two weeks Iran announced that it was resuming the production of centrifuges needed to produce highly enriched uranium though it has said it is still "suspending" actual enrichment activities. While the United States has threatened to take the issue to the United Nations Security Council, it has yet to win support from many allies.
North Korea has publicly rejected a new American initiative to allow international aid to flow gradually to the country in return for speedy disarmament and giving inspectors the right to examine any suspected site.
Several of Mr. Bush's aides have said they expect little concrete progress before the presidential election. The Iranians appear to be betting that Mr. Kerry, if elected, would talk directly to their leaders. Mr. Kerry has also said he would engage in bilateral discussions with North Korea; Mr. Bush has insisted on multilateral talks.
"They are doing what they can to delay the Iranian program and preparing military options," said one official who has dealt with the Israeli government on the issue, providing no details about what they might be. But it is unclear that the Israelis have the military reach to strike Iran's facilities. Moreover, American intelligence officials say, Iran learned from the Iraqi experience and has spread its nuclear facilities around the country, including in crowded urban areas as a defense against such a strike.
-------- africa
Sudan says Eritrean soldiers massing along common border
KHARTOUM (AFP)
Aug 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040808124837.k3tx0i4u.html
Sudan has accused neighboring Eritrea of reinforcing its troops along their border to support an imminent offensive by Sudanese opposition forces based on Eritrean soil, the Sudan Media Center reported Sunday.
The Center, an information outlet with close ties to the government, quoted the governor of the eastern state of Kassala, General Farouq Ahmed Nour, as saying that the move "comes in the context of a plot aimed at escalating military operations" in the east of the country.
The aim of the plan, he claimed, was to support an offensive planned by eastern Sudanese opposition forces based in Eritrea.
"The Eritrean reinforcements indicate a major plan expected to be carried out by rebel forces consisting of the Free Lions, the Darfur rebels and the Beja Congress backed by the government of (Issaias) Afeworki," Nour said.
The governor added that the opposition forces were being trained and armed by Eritrean authorities.
"The eastern front has now become a target of Eritrean military operations against Sudan," Nour asserted. As a result of these developments, Sudanese forces stationed in and around the Gulsah border area have been instructed to remain there indefinitely, according to Nour.
He also pointed out that those forces have been placed on a higher state of alert. "We have taken the necessary arrangements to face any emergency," said Nour.
Khartoum has consistently accused Asmara of supporting opposition groups bent on overthrowing the government of President Omar el-Beshir, a charge Eritrea vehemently denies.
The latest charge comes as Sudan is under strong international pressure over its heavy-handed treatment of unrest in Darfur, which lies in the west of the country neighboring Chad.
-------- iran
US mulling 'many means' to keep nukes out of Iran
WASHINGTON (AFP)
Aug 08, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040808140118.p1yt4j7n.html
White House national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Sunday said the United States could not rule out taking covert action against Iran to disrupt its nuclear weapons program.
"We will use many means to try to disrupt these programs," Rice told NBC television. "The president will look at all the tools that are available to us."
Rice was asked about a New York Times report that quoted unnamed senior US officials as saying they were seeking to step up covert actions against Iran "to disrupt or delay as long as we can" Tehran's nuclear weapons drive.
"We are having diplomatic successes, but these are very tough problems," Rice said.
"For a long time ... we were the only who ones who seemed to think that Iran really did have an aggressive program to try to develop nuclear weapons," she said.
"We are now getting stronger (International Atomic Energy Agency) action against them. We believe in September we will get a very strong statement out of the (IAEA) board that Iran will either be isolated or it will submit to the will of the international community."
US Secretary of State Colin Powell said last month that it was "more and more likely" that Iran would be referred to the UN Security Council by the IAEA as a possible prelude to sanctions.
The United States has accused Iran of wantonly flouting international calls to curb its nuclear activities, saying Tehran is engaged in a "direct challenge" to the UN's nuclear watchdog.
The European Union's "big three" -- Britain, France and Germany -- have been pressing Iran to cease working on the nuclear fuel cycle in exchange for increased trade and cooperation and the guaranteed supply of nuclear fuel from abroad.
Such work is permitted under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but fears persist that once fully mastered, a country possessing such technology can easily divert it into military usage.
Many diplomats believe that even if Iran is not working on nuclear weapons now, it would like to have the option in the future. Tehran, meanwhile, denies charges it is seeking to develop a nuclear bomb.
Iran has agreed to temporarily suspend enrichment pending the completion of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) probe, but is working on other parts of the fuel cycle and has recently resumed making centrifuges used for enrichment.
----
Rice Says World Is Determined to Prevent a Nuclear-Armed Iran
August 8, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iran.html?hp
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With Iran stepping up its nuclear program, a top White House aide said Sunday the world finally is ``worried and suspicious'' over the Iranians' intentions and is determined not to let Tehran produce a nuclear weapon.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice also said the Bush administration sees a new international willingness to act against Iran's nuclear program. She credited the changed attitude to the Americans' insistence that Iran's effort put the world in peril.
She would not say whether the United States would act alone to end the program if the administration could not win international support.
Iran's foreign minister, Kamal Kharrazi, announced a week ago that his country had resumed building nuclear centrifuges. He said Iran was retaliating for the West's failure to force the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency to close its file on possible Iranian violations of nuclear nonproliferation rules.
Kharrazi said Iran was not resuming enrichment of uranium, which requires a centrifuge. But, he said, Iran had restarted manufacturing the device because Britain, Germany and France had not stopped the investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
``The United States was the first to say that Iran was a threat in this way, to try and convince the international community that Iran was trying, under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, to actually bring about a nuclear weapons program,'' Rice said on CNN's ``Late Edition.''
``I think we've finally now got the world community to a place, and the International Atomic Energy Agency to a place, that it is worried and suspicious of the Iranian activities,'' she said. ``Iran is facing for the first time real resistance to trying to take these steps.''
Bush, in his 2002 State of the Union address, included Iran with North Korea and Iraq in an ``axis of evil'' dedicated to developing nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.
Since then, North Korea has publicly resumed its nuclear development program. In Iraq, invading U.S.-led forces have found no such programs after President Saddam Hussein was deposed.
Iran announced in June that it would resume its centrifuge program. Afterward, the U.S. official whose job is to slow the global atomic arms race, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, told Congress that Iran was jabbing ``a thumb in the eye of the international community.''
On NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' Rice reasserted that the world has fallen in line on Iran and said she expects next month to get a very strong statement from the IAEA ``that Iran will either be isolated, or it will submit to the will of the international community.''
She also said, ``We cannot allow the Iranians to develop a nuclear weapon. The international community has got to find a way to come together and to make certain that that does not happen.''
(SUBS 11th graf, `Bush, in his xxx to correct 2003 to 2002)
--------
Iran says developing new missile as measure against Israel
By Gideon Alon,
Haaretz, and The Associated Press
08/08/2004
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/461582.html
Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani said Saturday that Iran is developing its Shihab-3 missile as a measure against Israel's missile power, which Tehran concluded tests of last year.
The missile is thought to be capable of carrying a 1,000-kilogram warhead over a distance of some 1,300 kilometers, allegedly bringing Israel within missile range.
While Shamkhani denied any kind of nuclear military activity by Iran, he said his country would not leave its people without defense.
"That's why we have to invest on nuclear defense preparation," he added without elaborating.
Last week, the commander of the Air Force's Air Defense Corps, Brigadier General Ilan Biton, briefed the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on the successful test of the Arrow anti-missile system. Biton noted that "the Arrow has very good capabilities to disable Scud missiles, but its ability to intercept Iranian made long-range Shihab missiles was merely 'good.' There is room for improving the capabilities," he said.
MKs attending the meeting had said they understood from Biton's briefing that the Arrow did not provide protection from Shihab missiles, but only from Scuds and long-range Katyusha rockets. The director of the Israeli plant that manufactures the Arrow told the committee that Israel currently has a stock of a few dozen operational missiles.
The White House has been trying to haul Iran before the United Nations Security Council based on accusations that the Persian state has been trying to build nuclear weapons against its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations. Iran maintains its nuclear program is entirely peaceful, geared toward production of nuclear energy.
-------- iraq / inspections
UN nuclear inspectors return to Iraq
The search for WMDs in Iraq has proven futile
Sunday 08 August 2004,
Agencies (Aljazeera)
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/887734B9-B166-47C7-A17B-817A62BD33DC.htm
UN nuclear inspectors have visited Iraq to complete an inventory of the country's declared nuclear material.
The visit - the first since last year's US-led invasion of Iraq - was aimed at ensuring that declared nuclear material already under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards was not being used for undeclared activity.
IAEA spokesman Melissa Fleming said the visit had nothing to do with weapons inspections.
"WMD? It was not the purpose of their trip," she said.
Inspectors from the IAEA and the United Nations Monitoring Verification and Inspections Commission (UNMOVIC) left Iraq just before the US-led attack on the country in March last year.
Pretext for war
Although the war was fought under the pretext of unearthing and destroying Iraq's stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, no such weapons have been found and many analysts predict none will be found.
IAEA Director-General Muhammad al-Baradai said the mission was essential "to draft the final report on the absence of WMDs in Iraq so that the international community can lift the remaining sanctions on Iraq".
The IAEA and UNMOVIC were the two UN agencies charged with searching for WMDs in Iraq. The IAEA led the search for nuclear weapons while UNMOVIC looked for biological and chemical weapons.
----
Iran's Looming Missile-cum-Nuclear Threat Sparks Fresh Tensions
DEBKAfile
Special Military Report
August 8, 2004,
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=888
Saturday night, August 7, Iranian defense minister Admiral Ali Shamkhani came out with a disturbing announcement. He said Iran will soon test an improved version of its new ballistic Shehab-3 missile whose 1300-km range covers every part of Israel.
"These improvements do not only concern its range, but other specifications as well," said the Iranian minister, adding "The Israelis are trying hard to improve the capacity of their missiles, and we are also trying to improve the Shehab-3 in a short time." He offered no details on either upgrade, saying only: "We will improve the missile and when we test it, in the very short future, we will let you know." If attacked, Iran would not leave its people without defense, he stressed.
Shamkhani also denied any Iranian cooperation with North Korea in missile technology - as suggested in Washington - stressing that the Islamic Republic does not need it.
In between emphasizing defense, Shamkhani issued a dire warning to Israel not to dare attack its nuclear sites.
DEBKAfile notes that the Shehab-3 missile's first unveiling was accompanied by the pledge: "We will wipe Israel off the map," a theme that recurs every Friday sermon in Iran's mosques and its official pronouncements. In view of the Tehran hardline regime's admitted strategic commitment to Israel's destruction, Iran's nuclear program combined with the development of its Shehab-3 is seen by policymakers in Jerusalem as the greatest threat to Israel's existence since 1948.
Iran's processing facilities for enriching the uranium necessary to building nuclear weapons are carefully dispersed in several subterranean sites. They are built in bunkers, often tens of meters deep, under densely populated urban centers, in the hope of deterring the Americans and the Israelis from attacking them.
Nonetheless, the Iranians do not feel safe. The defense minister believes Israel is developing a new type of depth bomb able to penetrate buried sites or wipe out electronics with electro-magnetic energy bursts. Tehran's defense specialists are also keeping a watchful eye on the war tactics employed by the US military before, during and since the invasion of Iraq and against the Iraqi guerrilla war. They regard the Iraq precedent as a potential dress rehearsal for a possible US military operation against Iran.
Iranian military chiefs avidly read American publications on new weaponry - for instance, US Air Force research on a 9.5 tonne Massive Ordnance Air-burst Bomb capable of hitting mountain bunkers, whose warhead is as powerful as a small nuclear bomb. This weapon is designed to replace the biggest conventional US bomb, the 7.5 tonne Daisy Cutter, used at least twice in Afghanistan against mountain caves.
The Iranians are also worried by the airborne GBI-28 bunker busters the Americans used in the capture of Baghdad and in another airborne or cruise missile-carried BLU-114B bomb that is capable of knocking out the electricity grids of whole cities. There are reports of an "E-bomb" under development, whose microwave beams can massively damage electronic circuitry over a large area.
International media, furthermore, have reported at least one Israeli Dolphin submarine carrying cruise missiles with nuclear warheads to be lurking in waters just outside the Persian Gulf between the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. Israel's Ofek 4 spy satellite is also able to track Iran's nuclear activities.
Iran is concerned by these new weapons and devices because they are armed with deep underground penetration capabilities, or geared to crippling electric and electronic systems in urban areas. Iran's subterranean nuclear plants are therefore potentially vulnerable - even in their subterranean lairs under cities. Iran's regime and military leaders live in fear of waking up one morning to find that an Israeli or an American strike has wiped out their nuclear option just when it is closest to their grasp.
Although Tehran's highly effective procrastination maneuvers have paid off so far in keeping diplomatic, military and economic hurdles at bay, defense minister Shamkhani finds it necessary to issue a warning threat to Israel. In the last ten days, these threats have intensified as a result of certain key developments inside Iran.
One, According to DEBKAfile's Iranian sources, Iran's radical spiritual ruler Ali Khamenei convened a high-powered secret conference Sunday, August 1, to underline a policy of nuclear brinkmanship in the face of the US-led international outcry against its nuclear weapons program. The decision to tough it out was endorsed by the assembled leadership group of former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, secretary of the national security council and liaison on nuclear matters with international institutions Hassan Rouhani, Iran's former delegation to the IAEA Ali Akbar Salehi, head of foreign affairs commission of NSC Seyyed Hossein Moussavian and also defense minister Shakhmani.
A tough line against America automatically begets a doubly aggressive attitude towards Israel.
Two, Some of the new Shehab-3 missiles have been deployed secretly in central Iran - both as a shield for the nuclear plants against air, ground or naval attack and as a retaliatory option against attackers.
Knocking out this deployment would leave the industry susceptible to attack and nullify Iran's deterrent.
The comment by Israel's air defense commander that Israel's Arrow II anti-missile missile system successfully tested last week against a Scud would not be effective against an Iranian multiple warhead Shehab 3 was taken with a pinch of salt by the ayatollahs who live in suspicion of trickery. But it does leave teasing questions about what Israel can do to prevent the deployment of the soon-to-be tested improved Shehab-3 batteries pointing in the direction of the Jewish state.
Sunday, August 8, the New York Times reported: American intelligence officials and outside nuclear experts have concluded that the Bush administration's diplomatic efforts with European and Asian allies have barely slowed weapons programs in Iran and North Korea over the past year and both have made significant progress. Senior administration and intelligence officials, the paper reports, say they are seeking ways to step up unspecified covert actions.
The NYT report is sourced to Kennebunkport, the Bush family's summer residence.
The Shakhmanei threat and this report come together with the distribution in southern Israel Sunday, August 8, of Lugol radiation antidote capsules to people living in the triangle formed by Israel's nuclear center at Dimona, Arad and Eilat on the Red Sea. Home Command soldiers are handing these iodine dose packages - not to be opened until ordered - round homes in Dimona, Yeruham, Arara, Kseifa and Bedouin Negev settlements. Instructions in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and Amharic are attached. Distribution centers will also stock the antidote and extra doses made available for growing families.
Lugol is being handed out in case of an accidental leak from the Dimona reactor, say Israeli officials. They are talking less about the danger of nuclear fallout from a possible strike by an Iranian Shehab-3 missile.
In the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein did shoot a Scud missile against Dimona. It carried a warhead packed with cement for smashing through the reactor's dome but missed its target and fell in the sand without causing damage.
-------- israel
Israel Distributes Radiation Pills
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
August 8, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Israel-Radiation-Pills.html
DIMONA, Israel (AP) -- Israeli soldiers began distributing radiation sickness pills Sunday in towns near one of Israel's two nuclear reactors, as a precautionary measure in case of radioactive leaks.
Security officials said the tablets have long been held in storage for distribution in case of emergency, but after two years of talks with Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, the Cabinet recently decided that those in risk areas should have the pills at home, to cut down on reaction time in the event of an accident.
Distribution began Sunday in Dimona, where one reactor is located, and in other nearby towns and villages in southern Israel's Negev desert, a military statement said. Security officials said a further round was planned at a later date for the area near the Nahal Sorek plant, southwest of Jerusalem.
Dimona resident Tali Peretz told Israel Army Radio the distribution should have been ordered years ago.
``It shouldn't take a committee two years to reach the very simple conclusion that it is not possible at a moment of crisis distribute the tablets to almost 200,000 residents,'' she said.
The pills are an iodine compound that blocks absorption of radioactive material by shutting down the thyroid gland.
The army statement made a point of stressing the safeguards surrounding Israeli nuclear facilities.
``Reactors in Israel are operated and maintained in accordance with the highest safety standard and are continuously supervised by professionals,'' it said.
Israel has had nuclear technology for decades but refuses to comment on reports it has nuclear bombs, saying only that it will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons to the region.
In 1986, former Dimona technician Mordechai Vanunu provided photographs and descriptions of the reactor to The Sunday Times of London. Based on Vanunu's material, experts said at the time that Israel has the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Vanunu was released in April after serving 18 years in an Israeli prison for treason. He remains subject to restrictions, including a ban on meeting foreigners and leaving the country.
----
Army starts distributing radiation antidote
August 8, 2004
By Nir Hasson,
Haaretz Correspondent,
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/461606.html
The IDF Home Command started distributing Lugol, an antidote to radiation, in areas close to the Nuclear Research Center in Dimona on Sunday. The antidote is intended to protect residents from radioactive fallout from any missile attack on the nuclear station, or in case of a reactor accident. The pills are iodine capsules that reduce the absorption of radioactive iodine and bolster the body's immune system. They will be distributed every day for the two weeks between 4 P.M. and 8 P.M.
The pills are being distributed in Dimona, Yehorham, Ar'ara and Kseifa, and the unrecognized Beduin villages Al-Hawashla, Abu-Krinat, Al-Azzma and others in the Negev. In the second stage, a few weeks later, the pills will be distributed in Arad and the towns and communities of the Dead Sea and the Arava - Neveh Zohar, Hatzeva, Not Hakikar, Idan and Tamar.
The mayor of Arad, Motti Brill, objects to the pills being distributed in his town. A former engineer in the Nuclear Research Center, Brill says that based on his personal knowledge of the center, there is no need for Lugol pills and the distribution would seriously damage Arad's image.
Soldiers will provide each family with the pills and a leaflet in Hebrew, Arabic, English, Russian and Amharic explaining their purpose and how to keep them. The Home Front Command cautioned people not to open the packages or take the pills unless they get explicit instructions to do so.
Every person will get a pack of five Lugol capsules and family packages will include extra tablets according to the IDF estimate of a family's projected growth in the next five years, a Home Front officer said. Packets of pills will be distributed to public institutions, schools, hotels and plants. "Each citizen will have an extra pill waiting for him somewhere in case the incident happens in the morning when people are not home," the officer said.
Dimona resident Tali Peretz told Israel Army Radio the distribution should have been ordered years ago.
"It shouldn't take a committee two years to reach the very simple conclusion that it is not possible at a moment of crisis distribute the tablets to almost 200,000 residents," she said.
-------- pacific
Bikini and the Hydrogen Bomb: A Fifty Year Perspective
August 08, 2004
by Tomaki Juda and Charles J. Hanley
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=17&ItemID=6005
[2004 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Hydrogen Bomb test at Bikini that has rendered the island and nearby atolls uninhabitable ever since. Two earlier Japan Focus articles portrayed the impact of the blast on the crew of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon, and the subsequent course of the anti-nuclear movement. The two articles presented here detail the consequences of atomic and hydrogen bomb testing on Bikini and neighboring atolls, including the consequences for displaced people, the continued failure of the U.S. government to clean up the radioactive islands, and the long stalled negotiations with the U.S. government to compensate the people of Bikini.]
"If Bravo had been set off in Washington and the fallout headed northeast, everyone from Washington to Boston would be dead": Statement by Senator Tomaki Juda on the 50th Anniversary the H-Bomb Test on Bikini
Today, March 1, is the 50th anniversary of the Bravo shot -- the largest U.S. nuclear test in history. It is a sad day for us and for our friends and relatives all around the Marshall Islands. That test, that day -- like radiation itself -- still lingers in the Marshall islands after half a century, and, like radiation, it will not go away.
Most people here know the story of our people. It is in history books, government reports, and films. Next Saturday, March 6, will mark the 58th anniversary of the day that we were moved off our islands by the U.S. Navy for Operation Crossroads, the first tests of atomic weapons after World War II.
We were first moved to Rongerik, where we nearly starved to death, then to Kwajalein, and then finally to Kili in 1948. Sadly, Kili remains home to most Bikinians, and life there remains difficult. Kili is a single island, while Bikini Atoll has 23 islands and a 243-square mile lagoon. Its land area is more than nine times bigger than Kili. To make matters worse, our population is 15 times larger today than what it was in 1946. Kili has no sheltered fishing grounds, so our skills for lagoon life are useless on Kili. In the past, we sailed our outrigger canoes to lands, fish and islands as far as the eye could see. Today, we are prisoners, trapped on one small island, with no reef and no lagoon.
Meanwhile, between 1946 and 1958, the United States tested 23 atomic and hydrogen bombs at Bikini, including the 1954 Bravo shot, which was, at the time, the largest manmade explosion in the history of the world. It is hard to imagine the deadly force of Bravo:
It was equal to the force of nearly 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.
It created a fireball four miles wide that vaporized the entire test island and parts of two others, leaving a hole in Bikini's lagoon one mile wide and 200 feet deep.
It destroyed most of the buildings on an island 14 miles across the lagoon to the south.
It was so powerful that it caused the concrete detonation bunker on Eneu Island, 24 miles away, to move off its foundation.
At Kwajalein, 250 miles away, there were high winds, and the buildings shook as if there had been an earthquake.
As we all know, there was a so-called "unexpected" shift in the winds, sending fallout east instead of north, right over Bikini Island and downwind to Rongelap and Utrik.
The deadly fallout covered an area of 7,000 square miles. How large an area is that? Let's put it this way: If Bravo had been set off in Washington and the fallout headed northeast, everyone from Washington to Boston would be dead.
In fact, President Eisenhower told a press conference in late March of that year that U.S. scientists were "surprised and astonished" at the size of the Bravo shot.
And what about our people? We have been exiles from our homeland since 1946, except for a brief period after President Lyndon Johnson announced in 1968 that Bikini was safe and the people could return. Many of us returned and lived there until 1978, when medical tests by U.S. doctors revealed that we had ingested the largest amounts of radioactive material of any known population.
History sadly repeated itself in late August 1978, as U.S. ships once again entered our lagoon and the Bikini people packed up and left. What went wrong? AEC scientists estimated the dose of radiation we would receive on Bikini, but they made an error in arithmetic, which threw off their calculations by a factor of 100. "We just plain goofed," one of the scientists told a reporter at the time.
Only one good thing resulted from Bravo. It was so awful and frightening that it set off a huge international debate that eventually led to the U.S. moratorium on atmospheric nuclear testing and the U.S.-Soviet Union Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by President Kennedy shortly before he was killed in 1963.
The tragedy of Bravo continues to haunt our people today. Fifty years have gone by, but Bravo is still with us. From March 1, 1954 until today, our islands remain heavily contaminated with radiation. We wait and we wait, not knowing when we can return home.
Now you know why March is a time of sadness and memory for the people of Bikini. Thank you.
This article appeared at YokweOnline, February 29, 2004. Hon. Senator Tomaki Juda, youngest son of King Juda, who was the traditional Bikini leader, was elected Mayor in 1972 and served until 2000 when he was elected Senator.
"The megatonnage [of U.S. nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands] was equal to exploding 1.6 Hiroshima atomic bombs a day for 12 years": Bikinians Hope to Return Home after Fifty Year Exile
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
EJIT, Marshall Islands. A harmony of soulful voices and hopeful words drifted up from the whitewashed church and out over the island.
"Standing ... Standing ... I'm standing on the promises of God."
Women with flowers in their hair, men in neat Sunday shirts, joined in the hymn to a promised future. Children crowding the concrete floor listened. Beneath a pew, in the morning heat, a dog lay panting.
The pastor, stepping up to his pulpit, commended the 100-strong congregation for their undying faith. We are like the children of Israel, Lannij Johnson told the people of Bikini.
But outside, in the church's shadows, another Bikinian sounded a less faithful note.
"The children of Israel wandered in the desert for only 40 years," Alson Kelen, 36, reminded a visitor. Already the people of Bikini _ "the children of America," they call themselves _ have wandered for 58, and their journey, more than ever, looks like an exodus without end.
On March 17 in Washington, 7,000 miles east of here, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously adopted a resolution hailing the half-century "strategic partnership" with these people of the mid-Pacific, a partnership in which they lost their home islands to U.S. nuclear bomb tests, and from which they fear Washington may soon walk away.
The resolution noted "the cost of preserving peace." But the U.S. government, after $191 million disbursed since the 1970s, is offering nothing new to the Bikinians, no further compensation to revive hopes that Bikini atoll might be purged of lingering radioactivity, and Bikinians might return to the abandoned islands.
Jack Niedenthal, Bikinian by marriage and a spokesman for the islanders, believes that Washington, while spending billions elsewhere around the world, has not repaid its debt here.
"When you look at what they're doing in Iraq, in Afghanistan ..." He paused. "We're their friends, and here we sit a half-century later. We're sitting here."
The House resolution commemorated the day, March 1, 1954, when the United States set off a hydrogen bomb test, dubbed Bravo, at the western end of Bikini atoll -- 23 coral islands ringing a 25-mile-wide lagoon in the northern Marshalls. It was the biggest U.S. nuclear blast in history.
The islanders had been evacuated eight years earlier, at the start of the U.S. testing program. Their chief, known by the single name Juda, said then they were agreeing to it because he'd been told that the bombs would produce "kindness and benefit to all mankind," and his people could return after the tests.
Because of shifting winds, and because U.S. bomb-makers had vastly underestimated the power of the monstrous Bravo explosion, it unexpectedly dumped heavy fallout on the main island of Bikini, and even farther away on inhabited atolls, Rongelap and Utrik, whose people have been afflicted by severe medical problems ever since.
In all, between 1946 and 1958, the United States detonated 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands, then a U.S. protectorate under the United Nations. The megatonnage was equal to exploding 1.6 Hiroshima atomic bombs a day for 12 years. Twenty-three tests took place at Bikini, and four of its islets were vaporized.
By 1948, the wandering Bikinians had been settled on rockbound Kili, a tiny, undesirable island in the southern Marshalls, where they grew dependent on U.S. handouts of canned food. In the 1970s, reassured by U.S. scientists, some returned to Bikini, but they were re-evacuated in 1978, having absorbed dangerous amounts of radioactive cesium. The Americans had mistakenly judged Bikini to be safe.
Many of those evacuees landed here on uninhabited Ejit, a palmy, half-mile-long island in Majuro atoll, capital of the Marshalls, which today are an independent nation closely tied to the United States.
By island standards, life here is comfortable -- telephone, electricity, even $25-a-month cable television for those who can afford it. But the water supply, via catchment rainwater, often runs low, and the simple cinderblock housing is cramped, in a settlement one can walk across in three minutes.
Because of a high birthrate and marriages to people from other islands, the count of "official" Bikinians has exploded, to more than 3,000, since Chief Juda led 167 off the island in 1946. About 1,000 live on isolated Kili, some 400 on Ejit, and others on the main island of Majuro or in the United States, where 300 students are in schools.
In exile, a culture of atomic victimhood has evolved.
Ejit's schoolchildren, in their rudimentary classrooms, sport orange T-shirts emblazoned with an atomic bomb's mushroom cloud, a Bible, and the trusting motto ascribed to Juda: "Men Otemjej Rej Ilo Bein Anij," Marshallese for "Everything is in the hands of God."
Those hands will lead them back to Bikini, islanders believe. And "if it is cleaned completely, they would go back 100 percent," said the late chief's son, Tomaki Juda, 60, the Bikini senator in the Marshalls' legislature.
Younger generations hear almost mythical tales of a pristine Bikini, where fish abounded in the lagoon, and outer islands covered with coconut, pandanus and breadfruit trees fed the people.
"Yes, I'd like to live there," Rosalina Jakeo, 25, told a visitor to Ejit, where she was found idly strumming a ukulele outside her house. "Compared to this" -- she gestured around crowded Ejit -- "it's a nice place."
After church, Jake Risino, 19, said she'd often heard from her parents about Bikini, 500 miles away, and she'd like to go there. "It's my home." But what about the 1-year-old daughter on her hip? No, she said, "I want her to get educated and go to America."
Younger Bikinians, like Risino, are quick to discard the dream and recall the reality when asked about the future.
"It would be kind of scary to live there," said a Bikinian schoolteacher, Berman Caleb, 25. "I don't know if it's safe."
More and more, America is the promised land.
A few Bikinians have congregated -- for work, through family connections -- in such places as Springdale, Ark., and Costa Mesa, Calif.
But people here say the shy, poorly educated islanders aren't likely to emigrate individually in great numbers, even though Marshallese have open access to the United States and even minimum-wage jobs there might multiply their incomes.
Over the years, Washington financed a patchwork of compensation funds for Bikinians and other Marshall Islanders affected by nuclear testing, including years of medical monitoring and care for Rongelap and Utrik islanders who developed high rates of cancer and other medical problems.
One remaining trust pays $220 a quarter to each Bikinian -- $4,400 a year for a family of five.
That trust was drawn from $75 million in reparations payments made under a "compact of free association" that the Marshall Islands negotiated with Washington in gaining independence in 1986. This was to be a "full and final" payment on all nuclear claims.
Other U.S. money enabled the Bikinians in the mid-1990s to do preparatory work for a "big scrape" -- removal of 15 inches of cesium-laced topsoil from 100 acres of Bikini island, the atoll's main living area. But that work halted when the Bikinians opted for a strict U.S. standard for decontamination, a more expensive approach.
Then, in 2001, a Majuro-based Nuclear Claims Tribunal, created under the compact, held that the Bikinians should be awarded an additional $563 million in damages, including $251 million for restoring Bikini.
Because that tribunal had less than $10 million available, the Marshall Islands government petitioned Congress, asking that the U.S. government make those payments. In 2002, Congress asked the Bush administration to review the request.
The administration is expected to finally report on the issue this summer, said Brian Kennedy, spokesman for the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction. He said the committee would then decide "how and if" to take action.
A State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the petition had been put aside for two years as government experts dealt with a higher priority: renegotiating general financial aid for the Marshalls after the 15-year accord expired in 2001.
Niedenthal sounds pessimistic. "It looks like the U.S. is walking away from things," said the 46-year-old Harrisburg, Pa., native and one-time Peace Corps volunteer in the Marshalls.
He said he also was worried by another new development: The U.S. Energy Department has cut funding for its field missions to check radiation and the environment in Bikini.
"They shut it down without telling us," said Hinton Johnson, an Ejit member of Bikini's governing council.
Energy Department spokesman Jeff Sherwood confirmed in Washington that environmental sampling at Bikini was suspended, saving $1.5 million this year, while a backlog of earlier work is analyzed. But he says it will be resumed at some undetermined point.
A leading champion of the Bikinians is the president of the Marshalls, Kessai Note, a Bikinian himself, first elected in 2000 to lead this nation of scattered atolls and 57,000 people.
The Americans "could have done more to help the Bikinians," Note, 53, said in an interview at his Majuro office. At a Bikinian funeral the night before, he said, "I spoke of injustice. These are people who have been away from their homeland for 50 years. That's a lifetime. And it doesn't look like they'll return anytime in the near future."
Kelen Joash, 74, a Sunday regular at Pastor Johnson's church, has more faith.
"America can do it," said Joash, who was 16 when taken from Bikini. "Maybe it can't be Bikini, but maybe the U.S. can find someplace else for us -- big enough for a growing population."
After all, he added, reaching back to hopeful words first heard when he was young, "we're the children of America."
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Russia Concerned on Threat from U.S. Defense Shield
10.08.2004
Moscow News
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2004/08/10/starwars.shtml
Russia says a United States deal with Denmark to upgrade a radar in north-western Greenland has raised fresh security concerns over Washington's planned missile defense shield, known as 'son of star wars', Reuters reports.
In 2001, Moscow argeed to a U.S. decision to abandon the bilateral 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and develop a missile defense system after Washington said it wanted to defend itself against strikes from states like Iran or North Korea.
"The United States has more than once assured us that the future missile defense system will not be targeted against Russia," Reuters quoted the Russian Foreign ministry as saying in a statement. "However, the very geography of the radar in Greenland gives us reasons to think that even at this stage the U.S. missile defense could potentially threaten Russia's national security."
The deal, which the United States signed Friday, allows Washington to upgrade the Thule radar to use it in a chain of similar U.S. installations stretching from Alaska to Australia designed to avert potential missile attacks against North America.
Reports earlier this year that Washington planned to deploy elements of its missile shield on the territories of new NATO members in Eastern and Central Europe alarmed Moscow.
"Russia will carefully analyze the situation from the point of view of its own security and reserves the right to take all appropriate measures to maintain it on an appropriate level," Reuters quoted the ministry statement as saying.
The Russian military has said it does not believe the U.S. missile shield will be effective and said it will not be a major security problem for Moscow in the next 25-30 years.
-------- terrorism
Al Qaeda's Pre-Election Plot
Exclusive: With an eye on striking America, bin Laden's network is hard at work. On the trail of its targets and tactics
August 8, 2004
Newsweek
By Daniel Klaidman and Evan Thomas
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5636197/site/newsweek/
Aug. 16 issue - It's called the president's Daily Threat Report (PDTR), or, in bureaucratic shorthand, the Putter. The document is so secret that only about a half-dozen people in the U.S. government are allowed to see it. When the Putter contains especially sensitive information, a red stripe runs down the side. At 6:40 a.m. on Friday, July 30, Fran Townsend, the president's homeland-security adviser and counterterror chief for the national-security staff, opened up her red-striped Putter and received a jolt.
For several months, the U.S. government had been picking up reports from its spies, electronic intercepts and "liaison services" (friendly intelligence services) of a Qaeda plot to strike the American homeland before the November election. High-level Qaeda operatives had been traveling from around the world to the outlaw wilds along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, apparently to meet and plan, NEWSWEEK has learned. These terror summits had an uncanny resemblance to the Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000 that firmed up the 9/11 plot. But no one seemed to know the essential details: What were the targets? When would Al Qaeda strike? And were the attackers already in the United States?
The Friday-morning Putter revealed that an undercover operation on the far side of the world was starting to bear fruit. In mid-July, the Pakistanis, working with the CIA, had arrested a Qaeda operative named Mohammed Neem Noor Khan and "flipped" him-turned him into an undercover agent who could lead investigators right into the Qaeda network. The 25-year-old computer engineer was a Qaeda facilitator, a midlevel logistics man who knew and communicated with the top operatives meeting to plan an attack on the United States. In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Townsend recalled thinking, "This is the real deal"-a chance to crack the plot.
It was the break the Feds had been praying for, but, unfortunately, also a chance to further bewilder the American public, who have been made fearful, cynical or just plain dizzy by trips up and down the threat ladder. In an effort to sort out what to believe, NEWSWEEK spoke with most of the senior intelligence officials involved in assessing what they call the "pre-election" plot. Constrained by secrecy and a desire to put a positive spin on the story, these officials were not entirely forthcoming, but they did reveal enough to gauge the seriousness of the Qaeda plot. The more difficult question is whether the public revelations not only unduly frightened the American people but, in the long run, made them less safe. U.S. officials firmly deny it, but a knowledgeable British source argues that, by going public, Bush administration officials compromised an ongoing surveillance operation that ultimately could have uncovered more about Al Qaeda operations around the world. Top U.S. intelligence officials do concede that they are often faced with difficult trade-offs-move now, and disrupt the plot? Or keep watching and waiting in hopes of learning more?
There can be little doubt that Al Qaeda is trying to strike the American homeland before Nov. 2. "We are in the midst of Al Qaeda efforts to attack the U.S. on a scale as big or larger than 9/11," says John Brennan, chief of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the interagency operation that consolidates threat information (and produces the Putter). The decision to raise the threat level to Code Orange ("high") last week was not, as partisans and conspiracists suggested, a Republican political stunt intended to slow John Kerry as he came out of the Democratic convention. But the announcement was clumsily handled, and the confusing press accounts that followed mostly obscured a larger and more important story.
The uncomfortable truth is that a frantic, multibillion-dollar, global intelligence effort has not been able to answer-definitively, at any rate-the scariest and most basic question: are there Qaeda operatives inside the United States? "We have to assume there are," says Townsend. "But we don't know. The reports are mixed." Certainly, at least a few Qaeda operatives have entered America at some point since 9/11. The FBI is hotly investigating whether Khan was one of them. And Khan's arrest has already led to the detention of some major Qaeda operatives in England and Pakistan, and will flush out still more in days to come.
But will the current crackdown roll up a sleeper cell in America? Or did the news of his arrest tip off other operatives, still unknown, who have gone to ground, possibly inside the United States? Presumably, the targeted institutions are now safe, or at least safer. But do the terrorists have a Plan B to simply shift to a different set of targets? Even with Osama bin Laden on the run and much of its former leadership dead or in jail, Al Qaeda's central command remains surprisingly strong. But have some of its operating cells simply slipped below the radar?
Townsend, a no-nonsense former mob prosecutor who wears Jimmy Choo spike heels (which typically go for about $450 a pair) and a bejeweled ring shaped like an American flag, is one of a core group of top officials who devote their lives to heading off the next attack. After reading the Putter that Friday morning, Townsend picked up the secure phone and called FBI Director Robert Mueller. "I was just about to call you," said Mueller, who had been reading his own copy of the Putter. From her basement office in the West Wing, Townsend hastened upstairs to see her boss, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice. They had barely begun to talk when President George W. Bush, out on the campaign trail, called in from Air Force One. He, too, had been briefed on the alarming intel, and he began asking questions, trying to make sure, Rice told NEWSWEEK, "that we were on top of it."
By midmorning, most of the key officials from the CIA, Defense and Homeland Security were seated in the White House Situation Room or piped in by videophone. Khan, it turned out, owned a laptop computer with a trove of information on its discs and drives. The CIA was still working feverishly to download and decode the computer's files, reported Acting CIA Director John McLaughlin, but the initial findings were ominous. Al Qaeda, it appeared, was aiming at financial targets in New York and a city in a foreign country (NEWSWEEK sources declined to identify which one). By the next day, Saturday, July 31, the CIA had identified five buildings: the New York Stock Exchange in downtown Manhattan and the midtown Citigroup building; the Prudential Financial building in Newark, N.J., and the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. The buildings had been carefully cased: Al Qaeda scouts had delivered pages of detail on traffic patterns and structural weaknesses. McLaughlin later told NEWSWEEK that he was struck by the "sophistication" and "professionalism" of the reports.
The decision to go public was a no-brainer, several top officials insisted to NEWSWEEK. "It would have been unconscionable not to tell the New York Stock Exchange, or the World Bank, or Citigroup 'People have been casing your buildings and you need to be concerned about security'," says Rice. But the administration bungled the alert. On Sunday, Aug. 1, Tom Ridge, the decent, well-intentioned but politically tone-deaf head of the Department of Homeland Security, coupled his announcement of the buildings targeted by Al Qaeda with a plug for the president's antiterror policies. Ridge's sense of urgency and risk was underscored when police carrying machine guns began patrolling the streets and subways around the targets as well as the area around the Capitol in Washington. Civilians naturally assumed that Qaeda agents had been recently lurking nearby and might still be there, with bombs ready to blow up.
Only the next day did the press learn that the buildings had been cased three or four years earlier-before 9/11. (At a press briefing that Sunday, a "senior intelligence official" did say that the casing operation "dates from before 9/11," but he went on to emphasize that Al Qaeda planning "probably continues even today," and most reporters failed to pick up on the nuance.) The headlines on Tuesday were full of "never mind" stories, downplaying the risk, which in turn set out the government spinners to insist that no, no, the threat really was serious. On Wednesday, the papers were full of warnings that Al Qaeda typically takes years to plan and stage an operation. The fact that Al Qaeda had cased the buildings some years before might only mean that it was finally ready to attack.
No wonder the public was confused. In fairness to the government, officials have to walk a fine line. They can't fail to warn the public of a genuine threat (and get blamed for it later); at the same time, they don't want to create panic or blow sensitive ongoing operations. Mixed signals-and wrong guesses-are inevitable. Perhaps the only way to understand what the government knows-and does not know-about the threat is to start at the beginning, with the first disclosures that Al Qaeda might still have sleeper cells in the United States after 9/11 or be trying to recruit or infiltrate new martyrs and helpers for another "spectacular" against the American homeland.
The operational mastermind of the 9/11 plot was a man named Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, referred to in government documents as "KSM." In March 2003, KSM was captured in Pakistan. Subjected to the classified but presumably persuasive interrogation methods of the CIA, KSM began talking-but selectively. Intelligence officials believe that he was most interested in protecting the identities of Al Qaeda operatives inside the United States. "He would throw out a bone to delude people into believing he was cooperating," says one former senior U.S. law-enforcement official who regularly reviewed the interrogation reports. (According to the 9/11 Commission Report published last month, an internal agency analysis was titled "Khalid Shaykh Mohammed's Threat Reporting-Precious Truths Surrounded by a Bodyguard of Lies.")
KSM did lead investigators to an Ohio truckdriver named Iyman Faris, who had a cockamamie scheme to cut down the Brooklyn Bridge (abandoned when the "weather is too hot"-i.e., police surveillance was too intense, and the cables proved too thick for wire cutters). But he was cagey about his plans for post-9/11 attacks, insisting, for instance, that a list of ZIP codes found in his notebook was only to help him find some e-mail addresses.
KSM coughed up some other names. "Foremost among these individuals is Abu Issa al-Britani, a Pakistani-born extremist who holds a passport from the United Kingdom," reads a secret FBI report obtained by NEWSWEEK. Al-Britani is better known as Esa al-Hindi, trained in bin Laden's terror camps and the author of a fiery tract, "The Army of Madinah in Kashmir," which exhorts martyrs to join the worldwide jihad with "stealthy modern-day war stratagems," including "germ warfare."
In 1999 and again in 2000, KSM-and, possibly, Osama bin Laden himself-dispatched al-Hindi as part of an advance team to case targets in New York. In the summer of 2000 several Qaeda men-including a pair of the 9/11 hijackers, Muhammad Atta and Marwan Al-Shehhi-were cruising about New York looking for symbols to destroy. They were instructed to inspect what their instructions called "Jewish areas" like the Diamond District in midtown, as well as the New York Stock Exchange. According to the intelligence document obtained by NEWSWEEK, al-Hindi was also "cleared for an operation against London's Heathrow airport that was scheduled for June 2003." (The Heathrow attack never came off.)
KSM was apparently interested in recruiting African-Americans inside the United States. According to the intelligence document, al-Hindi noticed that a local British imam employed African-American bodyguards with families in Montana. "KSM tasked him with traveling to Montana to recruit the bodyguards' family members," according to the report, which does not reveal whether al-Hindi may have succeeded in this somewhat bizarre mission.
Since 9/11, al-Hindi has been living in Britain at least some of the time. Once his name surfaced in the KSM interrogations last year, he became a figure of considerable interest to U.S. and British intelligence. An elusive man who uses different aliases, he has apparently been the subject of on-and-off surveillance. After the Pakistanis and CIA captured Khan in mid-July, al-Hindi's name popped up again-potentially as a central player in the "pre-election" plot.
It appears that al-Hindi was the author of some of those detailed surveillances of the five financial institutions. Was he also a key figure in alleged new plots to blow them up? Though the casing was done before 9/11, the CIA was able to determine that the reports on the surveillance were actually written up after the attacks-and that someone called them up on Khan's computer as recently as last January. NEWSWEEK has learned that someone accessed what one senior government official guardedly (and vaguely) referred to as "preparatory material" as recently as two or three weeks ago.
A British intelligence source, speaking on background to NEWSWEEK, was indignant that Americans blew a chance to secretly watch al-Hindi while he continued to move around and make contact with other Qaeda operatives. An old intel rule is "Let the plot run." Historically, the British have been astonishingly patient, even coldblooded, about not revealing their sources. During World War II, British intelligence allowed U-boat wolf packs to attack convoys rather than prematurely reveal that the Allies had broken the German codes.
A senior U.S. intelligence official tells NEWSWEEK that the British did not know al-Hindi's whereabouts when his name came up in the meetings of top officials two weekends ago. Indeed, they were worried that he might actually accelerate plans to strike once his casing reports were revealed. (The British found al-Hindi on Tuesday and arrested him, along with a dozen others suspected of Qaeda ties.) According to all the top federal officials interviewed by NEWSWEEK, there was no real debate. Regardless of the risk of alerting al-Hindi or others, the public must be notified of the threat. The only question was how.
Cooperation between the Feds and local officials has long been a source of miscommunication or misunderstanding. Since 9/11, the Feds have tried to work more closely with the locals, though old tensions die hard (at a White House counterterror meeting observed by NEWSWEEK, a senior official asked a staffer, "Have we shared with the state and locals?" The answer came back, "Maybe more than we should"). Still, almost as soon as the Putter made its rounds of Washington high officialdom on Friday, July 30, the decision was made to bring New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly into the loop.
The Feds regard Kelly as a bit of an independent operator. After the Madrid bombings in March, Kelly sent New York City detectives to Spain to learn important details, like the type of cell phones used by the terrorists. The presence of New York City cops at the overseas crime scene did not endear them to the FBI, in part because the New York cops apparently got there first. "We want every bit of information that we can get to better protect the city. We're very parochial. We're focused on New York," Kelly told NEWSWEEK.
On Sunday, Aug. 1, when Kelly heard, via videophone, Tom Ridge's plan to go public with the threat, the New York police commissioner was unenthusiastic. Kelly refused to comment about what was said on the call, but a New York law-enforcement source familiar with the discussion said, "Ridge was rolling with that 'the president has to level with the American people' kind of crap." At the meeting, Kelly worried aloud that naming the targets would not make the city any safer.
But in Washington, officials argued that keeping a low profile-by, for instance, alerting just the security officers for the targeted institutions-wouldn't work. The story would inevitably leak and cause an even bigger fuss because the government would be accused of hiding dangers from the public.
The U.S. government cannot come right out and admit this, but following the old rule of waiting and watching may not be tenable, given how little the intelligence community really knows about Al Qaeda and its possible presence inside the United States. Interviewed by NEWSWEEK, Townsend said that the intelligence community believes Al Qaeda has filled the positions vacated by KSM and others captured or killed. The talent level may not be as high, she says, but the organization goes on. The CIA and its foreign counterparts have identified some of the Qaeda operatives, but they are in the dark about others.
Gary Bald, the assistant FBI director for counterterrorism, told NEWSWEEK that the bureau has "over 500" Qaeda-related cases in the United States. Many of these will, as bureau officials say, "wash out." Most of the others are not suspected "sleeper" agents but possible sympathizers and facilitators. In recent weeks, the FBI has been knocking on a lot of doors in Muslim neighborhoods in the United States, asking questions like "Do you know of any Muslims who have had access to hazardous materials?" (Some Arab groups encourage cooperation; others advise silence and calling a lawyer.)
But the bureau has had a hard time getting a fix on an actual Qaeda network. Staffers on the 9/11 Commission debated, sometimes hotly, whether the 9/11 hijackers had the benefit of a support network inside the United States. The report cites "worrisome evidence" that two of the key 9/11 hijackers may well have had accomplices. The intelligence community is feverishly looking for links between these possible Qaeda supporters and the new plots against U.S. financial institutions. Khan, the computer engineer captured in Pakistan, was in e-mail or phone contact with several people in America, says a senior intelligence official, but "it might have been his completely innocent great-aunt," says the official.
The FBI has long been reluctant to investigate mosques in the United States, but last week agents arrested an Islamic cleric who had been caught in a sting operation seeking to fund the purchase of a shoulder-fired missile launcher. The Feds have long had their suspicions about the imam, Yassin Muhiddin Aref, whose phone and e-mail were tapped by federal investigators. He was overheard speaking to contacts in Ansar al Islam, a terrorist group based in Iraq with ties to Al Qaeda. (U.S. troops found an address book at the Ansar al Islam camp with Aref listed as a "commander.") But his Kurdish dialect was so obscure the Feds had trouble getting quick translations.
So it goes in the shadow wars. Every morning, when she arrives at her basement office in the West Wing shortly after 6:30 a.m., Fran Townsend hopes to have more news of breakthroughs appear in her red-striped Putter. Her office is a tad morbid: a giant overhead photo of the hole left of the World Trade Center after 9/11 decorates her walls; a model of the Twin Towers, with gashes in the side, sits on her desk. She is known for pushing the bureaucracy; her motto, she says, is "Get it done." The mother of two children, ages 9 and 2 1/2, she is away from home a lot. But, Townsend says with a smile, "I'd rather fight the fight today so my kids don't have to worry about it."
With Mark Hosenball, John Barry and Michael Isikoff in Washington, Peg Tyre and Mehammed Mack in New York, Rana Foroohar, Sarah Sennott and Emily Flynn in London
-------- ukraine
Ukraine starts commercial operation of new nuclear power unit
08.08.2004,
ITAR-TASS
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=1109848&PageNum=0
NETESHIN, Khmelnitsky Region, August 8 (Itar-Tass) - Ukraine on Sunday received an additional reliable power source. On an instruction from Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma who flew to Neteshin, the city of Ukrainian nuclear power specialists, they put into commercial operation the second power unit of the Khmelnitsky nuclear station. From now on, the unit started supplying electricity to the Ukrainian energy system.
On giving the order of "raising the capacity of the second power set up to the commercial load", Kuchma said that "Ukraine has confirmed once again its high technological potential by putting into operation the new power block at the Khmelnitsky nuclear station".
The commissioning of the second power unit at the Khmelnitsky station gives a possibility to generate annually 6-6.5 billion kilowatt-hours of safe and cheap electricity. According to managing director of the Khmelnitsky power station, "the state of security of power unit No. 2 was confirmed by implementation of measures on raising security and modernization".
The second power block of the station will run on improved fuel TVS-A and will be a pioneer among Ukrainian reactors VVER-1000 with the first full load of a new fuel. Ukraine purchased improved assemblies from the Russian TVEL company, supplying nuclear fuel to 13 countries, including Western Europe, the CIS and the Baltics. Around 17 percent of the world nuclear fuel market belongs to this Russian company, a monopoly in production of advanced nuclear fuel for power stations.
--------
Ukraine Launches New Atomic Reactor
August 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Ukraine-Nuclear.html
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) -- Ukraine, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, launched a new atomic reactor Sunday, and a second reactor is set to open later this year, a news agency reported.
President Leonid Kuchma, joined by other top officials, attended the startup of reactor No. 2 at the Khmelnitskyi plant in western Ukraine.
Kuchma gave the order to the reactor's staff to ``raise the capacity of the .... power unit up to the commercial load,'' the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
A new reactor at the Rivne nuclear power plant, also in the west, is set to be completed later this year.
The European Union pledged to finance safety upgrades at both reactors through an $83 million loan. The money will be in addition to a $42 million program recently approved by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for the same purpose.
Ukraine has committed to modernizing its 13 operating nuclear reactors. The former Soviet republic shuttered Chernobyl, site of the 1986 accident, but is asking Western donors for an additional $350 million to replace a shelter securing the destroyed reactor.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
Nevada Ponders Superfund Status for Mine
August 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Uranium-Cleanup.html
RENO, Nev. (AP) -- Pressured by a ranking senator from Nevada and the Environmental Protection Agency, Gov. Kenny Guinn says he might reconsider his opposition to a federal Superfund cleanup declaration for a huge abandoned mine contaminated with toxic waste and uranium.
Guinn, other state officials and local politicians have contended that the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection is making progress at the former Anaconda copper mine bordering Yerington, an agricultural town in northern Nevada, and that one-time Anaconda parent Atlantic Richfield Co. is cooperating.
They also fear the stigma of the area being labeled a Superfund site, a designation that would turn over responsibility and enforcement authority to the federal government.
Federal experts, however, said the recent discovery of unusually high levels of radiation in soil samples at the mine is a sign that federal help is needed.
``We realize the cleanup is going to be much more significant than any of us anticipated,'' said Bob Abbey, Nevada director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Guinn's spokesman, Greg Bortolin, told The Associated Press last week that the Republican governor ``is open-minded and is receptive to the possibility of a Superfund listing as a result of the information that continues to come to light.''
Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid, D-Nev., said state regulators lack the muscle to force ARCO to clean up the hundreds of acres of toxic waste, some of it radioactive, Reid said.
``This is big business overwhelming a little state and the state doesn't have the power to fight them,'' said Reid, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate.
``This is a cesspool full of very, very toxic substances and (ARCO) should write a check to clean it up. The only way they will do that is if it is declared a Superfund site,'' Reid said.
Dan Ferriter, ARCO's environmental manager in charge of the site, took exception to Reid's criticism, saying the cleanup already is subject to ``fairly extreme'' regulatory oversight.
``We are doing much, much more than would be required for a mine closure by the state of Nevada and we are doing more than we would at most Superfund sites,'' Ferriter said Friday.
Early groundwater tests at the 3,600-acre site showed uranium at up to 200 times the U.S. drinking water standard, apparently the result of decades of chemical processing of copper ore in acid leaching ponds. Uranium was also present in the copper ore.
One new soil sample shows alpha radiation levels nearly 200 times more than natural background levels, and four other samples are in the range of 25 to 90 times normal, the BLM reported last month. More tests are pending.
Anaconda Copper Co. mined the site from 1953 to 1978. ARCO is responsible for the cleanup because it once owned Anaconda and a more recent owner of the site has gone bankrupt. ARCO has spent about $50,000 since January testing wells and providing bottled water to about 40 households near the mine, Ferriter said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Bomb Kills 2 Soldiers in Afghanistan
Reuters
Sunday, August 8, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48720-2004Aug7.html
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 7 -- Two U.S. soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed Saturday when their vehicle struck an improvised explosive device in southern Afghanistan, a statement issued by the U.S.-led military said.
A third soldier was wounded in the blast in Ghazni province, south of Kabul, the capital, according to the statement. The wounded soldier was flown to Kandahar airfield hospital and was in stable condition.
About 20,000 U.S.-led troops are stationed in Afghanistan hunting for Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, including Osama bin Laden.
Officials also said two people died Friday in an attack on a convoy of election workers. At least 30 gunmen shot at vehicles from the joint Afghan-U.N. electoral body as they passed through Char Cheno, a district of central Uruzgan province, Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan told the Associated Press. A dozen people have been slain preparing for the Oct. 9 elections.
Khan said two members of the voter registration team were killed and all four vehicles were destroyed after being strafed with assault-rifle and machine-gun fire.
The United Nations identified the victims as Mohammed Hashim, a training officer, and driver Mohammed Hussein. A third worker was missing.
The United Nations condemned "the murderous attack," spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.
--------
6 G.I.'s Wounded in Afghan Attacks
August 8, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/international/asia/08kabul.html?pagewanted=all
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 7 _ - Two American soldiers and their Afghan interpreter were killed on Saturday when the vehicle in which they were traveling in hit an "improvised explosive device" in southern Afghanistan, a statement issued by the American military said, according to Reuters.
A third soldier was wounded in the blast in Ghazni province, around 160 miles southwest of Kabul, the statement said.
Six American soldiers were wounded Friday in two attacks by suspected Taliban insurgents in Zabul Province, in the south, the American military announced Saturday.
In Uruzgan Province, a four-vehicle convoy of election workers on a mission to register voters was ambushed by suspected Taliban fighters on Friday, and two workers were killed, according to Afghan officials quoted by The Associated Press.
The provincial governor, Jan Muhammad Khan, said all four of the vehicles were destroyed when at least 30 militants opened fire with assault rifles and machine guns. Guards in the convoy shot back, forcing the attackers to retreat, and one guerrilla was captured, Mr. Khan said.
A man identifying himself as a Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi, called Agence France-Presse and claimed responsibility for the attack.
In one of the attacks on American soldiers on Friday, four were wounded when about 10 insurgents attacked their convoy with rocket-propelled grenades in a remote mountain area, Day Chopan, where the Taliban still have a presence. The soldiers returned fire.
Two soldiers were badly wounded and were awaiting evacuation to the American military hospital in Germany, the military said.
In the other attack, insurgents set off a roadside bomb near Zabul's provincial capital, Qalat, as an American Humvee was passing, The Associated Press reported.
Two soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack, but they quickly returned to duty.
-------- africa
Sudan Accepts African Troops, but No Peacekeepers, in Darfur
Sunday, August 8, 2004
By Nima Elbagir
Reuters
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48722-2004Aug7.html
KHARTOUM, Sudan, Aug. 7 -- Sudan will allow African troops to protect observers in the country's troubled western region of Darfur, Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said Saturday, but he stressed that any peacekeeping role would be limited to Sudanese forces.
"We have to make a distinction between three categories. The presence of observers, the presence of protection forces for those observers and the presence of peacekeeping forces," Ismail said in Khartoum, the capital, when asked whether Sudan would accept African peacekeepers. "We don't have a problem with either the first or the second categories. As far as the third category is concerned . . . this is the responsibility of the Sudanese forces."
Ismail said that Darfur was a regional problem and that Sudan was discussing it with organizations such as the African Union and the Arab League, due to hold an emergency meeting Sunday.
As many as 50,000 African villagers have been killed and 1.5 million displaced in Darfur by an Arab militia, called the Janjaweed, that has terrorized the region. U.N. and U.S. officials have called the situation the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
Under the terms of a U.N. Security Council resolution, Sudan has about three weeks remaining to demonstrate that it is serious about disarming the Janjaweed, or face possible sanctions.
The African Union is proposing sending as many as 2,000 troops to protect its cease-fire monitors in Darfur and to serve as peacekeepers, but has yet to send an official request to the Sudanese government.
Ismail said he had signed a Sudanese-U.N. pact pledging safe areas for the villagers uprooted by the fighting, which U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan sent to Security Council members on Friday. The pact also pledges to work to disarm the militia and stop actions by Sudanese government troops in civilian areas.
The pact was expected to be signed Monday, but Ismail said that "it was signed in the early hours of Friday morning in my office."
Human rights and aid groups accuse the Arab-led government of arming and supporting the Janjaweed, initially to suppress a rebellion by two African groups that took up arms last year to protest discrimination against the region's African tribes.
The government denies the charge and says the Janjaweed are outlaws.
A U.N. investigator said Friday that the Sudanese government was largely to blame for the Darfur humanitarian crisis and responsible for large numbers of killings in the region.
Ismail said the Sudanese advisory council for human rights would reply to the investigator's report in due course.
Also Saturday, the governor of one state in the region, Northern Darfur, said 210 African rebels had surrendered. But a spokesman for a rebel group, Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, said the statement was "totally wrong."
Abu Garda said the government and the Janjaweed had attacked civilians and rebel troops four days ago in violation of a cease-fire agreement signed by both sides in early April.
--------
Arab League Says Sanctions Would Worsen Sudan Crisis
August 8, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-sudan.html
CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League said on Sunday it opposed sanctions against Sudan, which faces an unspecified U.N. embargo if it does not take action to rein in marauding militias in its western Darfur region.
Sudan has about three weeks left to show it is serious about disarming Arab militias in Darfur, where the United Nations estimates violence has killed 50,000, or face unspecified sanctions under a U.N. Security Council resolution.
But the Arab League said sanctions would ``would only result in negative effects for the whole Sudanese people and complicate the crisis in Darfur.''
Sudanese First Vice President Ali Osman Mohamed Taha told the BBC Sudan was doing its best to meet the deadline, but ``due to logistical problems and limitations we have at the moment, I don't think the time frame is practical.''
Darfur rebels accuse Khartoum of sending the Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, to crush their uprising and force non-Arabs off their land. The U.S. Congress has called the Janjaweed campaign a genocide.
Fighting in Darfur has displaced one million people and left two million short of food and medicine, creating what the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The Cairo-based Arab League, where Arab ministers on Sunday held an emergency meeting on Darfur, rejected in a statement hints of any ``forced foreign military intervention in the area.'' Both Britain and Australia have said they could send troops to Darfur.
Khartoum and the United Nations have agreed a plan to disarm the Janjaweed and other outlawed groups, improve security in Darfur and address the humanitarian crisis.
Jan Pronk, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative to Sudan, told the meeting it was also up to two Darfur rebel groups to contribute to security and to ``exercise restraint.''
``The government of Sudan has made commitments, the ball is in the government of Sudan's court to fulfil those commitments,'' he added.
PEACE TALKS
A long-smoldering conflict between nomadic Arab herders and African villagers erupted in early 2003 when the Darfur rebels took up arms against Khartoum.
Efforts to bring the parties to negotiations broke down in July when Khartoum would not meet rebels' terms for talks.
The Arab League called on the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) to drop the terms, which included the disarmament of the Janjaweed.
The African Union said on Sunday that Khartoum and the two rebel groups had agreed to resume talks in Nigeria on Aug. 23.
SLA leader Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur told Reuters from Darfur he would send a high-level delegation to the talks, but JEM Secretary-General Bahar Idriss Abu Garda said rebel leaders were due at a conference in Germany on Aug. 23.
The AU said its chairman, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, would mediate the talks between Khartoum and the rebels, resuming a dialogue started in Addis Ababa on July 15.
Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail said the government would participate in the talks without conditions.
The 53-member AU is proposing to send up to 2,000 troops to protect its cease-fire monitors in Darfur and serve as peacekeepers. But Sudan said on Saturday that while African troops could protect AU monitors, its own troops would handle peacekeeping.
The Arab League called on its members, especially those who are members of the African Union, to take part in the AU team observing the April 8 cease-fire between the rebels and the government.
Ismail told the Arab ministers Khartoum had deployed 10,000 police and 40,000 soldiers in Darfur.
-------- chemical weapons
Agent Orange, the Next Generation
August 8, 2004
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/nyregion/08orange.html?pagewanted=all&position=
n 1984, after years of battles over science and damage tabulations, seven American chemical companies settled a huge class-action suit by Vietnam veterans who claimed that the defoliant Agent Orange caused cancer, birth defects and a nightmarish brew of other health problems.
The companies paid out $180 million. By 1997, after the last payments had been made, 291,000 people had received benefits. The settlement was reached after a federal judge persuaded the companies to buy themselves out of protracted litigation. It was called a landmark legal peace on a brutally contentious issue, and it was supposed to be the final word from the courts on Agent Orange, a defoliant containing the deadly substance dioxin.
But today, a new cast of plaintiffs, this time Vietnamese as well as American, has returned to the same American court seeking justice and dollars. One suit filed on behalf of as many as four million Vietnamese says their land and people were so poisoned by Agent Orange that supplying it to the military amounted to war crimes by the chemical companies.
In other suits, American veterans say they have only now come to learn of their devastating health problems, with the money gone.
The claims are more than empty reminders of an old fight. Judge Jack B. Weinstein, whose aggressive handling of the Agent Orange case in Federal District Court in Brooklyn in the 1980's brought him wide attention and considerable anger, has said that the Vietnamese suit raises serious issues. The United States Supreme Court has said that the new cases by American veterans cannot be automatically barred.
The chemical companies say fairness dictates that the time for the legal battle they thought they had ended a generation ago has come and gone. They claim the science still does not prove that Agent Orange was responsible for any of the medical horrors its name has long brought to mind.
Whatever the fate of the suits, the revival of the Agent Orange battle means that these days, there are ghosts in the Brooklyn federal courthouse - of a divisive war, of modern battle tools, of hard feelings by people in two countries who were caught up in combat long ago.
"Doesn't it ever end? When will Agent Orange become history?'' said Kenneth R. Feinberg, a Washington lawyer who was a special master in the Agent Orange case 20 years ago and recently ran the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund.
Lawyers for Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Hercules and more than a dozen other chemical companies named in the legal battle say that the claims of war crimes by the companies are unsupportable. They note that the companies were ordered by the Pentagon to make Agent Orange and say that if there is to be any compensation to Vietnam, it should be a result of negotiations between the two governments.
The lawyers also say that the new suits are as baseless as the old. A lawyer for Dow, Andrew L. Frey, said in an interview that people suffering life's random hardships sued because "it's human nature to look for something to blame.''
But in recent interviews in Vietnam and the United States, people who say they are victims of Agent Orange echoed one another in the strength of their conviction that a wrong is yet to be fully righted.
In a sparsely furnished Hanoi apartment, one of the Vietnamese plaintiffs, a doctor, described working since the war with people she believed were victims of Agent Orange. Many were spurned for years, said the doctor, Phan Thi Phi Phi, because of a belief in Vietnam that people who had malformed children were paying the price of their ancestors' immoral lives.
Dr. Phi Phi, a small woman who spoke softly, said she was a victim herself. During the war she worked in a mobile hospital in an area of South Vietnam that was a target of American spraying. She had four miscarriages, she said, and nearly died. Agent Orange, she said, "destroys human life for many generations.'' Joe Isaacson, a school administrator and Vietnam veteran from Toms River, N.J., has been fighting cancer since the 1990's. His simmering anger about Agent Orange sounded much like Dr. Phi Phi's. "We didn't know,'' he said, "that it was more dangerous than the enemy.''
In a modest house on a quiet street in Haiphong, east of Hanoi, a frail former soldier for North Vietnam, Nguyen Van Quy, remembered the acrid odor when it rained along the Ho Chi Minh trail. That smell, he said, was a sign that Agent Orange had killed all life, down to the roots of plants that hungry soldiers ate in the wide, dead areas along the trail.
Mr. Quy, 49, has cancer and two children born with birth defects. Someone, he said, should be held accountable. "Somehow,'' he said, "our misery, our hardship can be lessened.''
By telephone from Cape Coral, Fla., not long after Mr. Quy had spoken in Haiphong, Daniel R. Stephenson remembered the foul smell too, and the black hillsides. He is a Vietnam veteran who struggles with the pain of multiple myeloma that he believes came from exposure to Agent Orange. "It'll kill vegetables, but it'll also kill other things, too,'' he said.
Judge Weinstein, now 82, has said over many years that he does not believe lawyers can prove that Agent Orange causes specific diseases, other than a minor skin irritation. He repeated that recently in a tentative ruling on the claims of Mr. Isaacson and Mr. Stephenson.
But lawyers for the plaintiffs argue that there is new scientific evidence about the dangers of Agent Orange that was not available in the 1980's. Gerson H. Smoger, a lawyer for Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Isaacson, said Judge Weinstein's understanding of the scientific information was outdated.
William H. Goodman, a New York lawyer handling the suit for the Vietnamese, said his clients deserved to present their case against Agent Orange. "We have generation after generation suffering from its consequences,'' he said.
The scientific issue remains one of the most debated over Agent Orange. In recent years, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences has said there is an "association" between exposure to Agent Orange and some diseases, including soft-tissue sarcoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Guided partly by the institute's list of diseases, the Department of Veterans Affairs gives Vietnam veterans compensation for many illnesses that it presumes were caused by exposure to Agent Orange. But the chemical companies say the "association" finding provides nothing like the clear proof required to establish in court that Agent Orange is the cause of any serious disease.
The Institute of Medicine also says there is inadequate evidence to determine an Agent Orange association with many of the diseases cited by veterans, including many types of cancer and most birth defects.
But some public health experts say it would be wrong for the courts to assume that the level of scientific knowledge has remained static. Since the 1984 settlement, said Jeanne Mager Stellman, a Columbia University public health professor, "There is much more evidence about dioxin-contaminated herbicides.''
Dr. Stellman, who was a consultant to the special master in the Agent Orange case years ago, added that most experts agree that Agent Orange is one of the planet's most deadly substances. As they did in the 1980's, the chemical companies argue that the courts need not decide the issue of what the health effects of Agent Orange may be. They say the companies cannot be held liable because they were ordered by the Pentagon to make Agent Orange. Under sovereign immunity, the American government cannot be sued; government contractors are often shielded from suits as well.
In February, Judge Weinstein said he planned to rule for the companies. He said his decision would take effect in October unless he was persuaded to change his mind. He said the companies were contractors who were ordered to supply herbicide that met specifications set by the military. Plaintiffs' lawyers have long said the chemical companies knew more than the government about the dangers of Agent Orange and should not qualify for protection.
Judge Weinstein said he planned to rule that the veterans could not proceed with their case against the chemical companies because of the government-contractor shield. He added that he thought it doubtful that the Supreme Court, which permitted the veterans' case to go forward by a 4-to-4 vote, "has fully considered the significance of reopening these Vietnam War issues."
But Judge Weinstein also said from the bench this spring that he was not sure whether, when considering the war-crime claim, the "I was told to do it" argument could protect the chemical companies.
The companies' lawyers answered that chemical executives could not possibly have intended to commit war crimes when they supplied Agent Orange in the 1960's since, even now, there is debate about whether it is as harmful as the suits claim.
Judge Weinstein said he expected to make his final rulings in October and they would likely set the stage for appeals in both the veterans' and the Vietnamese cases.
The veterans' suits before Judge Weinstein involve only Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Isaacson. But there are at least nine other cases in Federal District Court in Brooklyn filed by other veterans who say they became ill after the settlement fund was depleted. Judge Weinstein said hundreds of other cases could follow.
The companies say that reopening the case will reduce the chances of settlements in other cases. Businesses offer settlements in mass injury cases, they say, to ensure total peace - and the end of litigation. "If future claimants are not bound by settlements, companies will be more likely to litigate than settle,'' said William A. Krohley, a lawyer for Hercules. In the Brooklyn courthouse, the cases are moving at the slow pace of the law. In other places, people who say Agent Orange devastated their lives are trying to make sense of the legal battle that is a remnant of a long-ago war.
Mr. Isaacson, 56, the New Jersey school administrator, has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. He was grateful, he said, that his 17-year-old daughter was healthy. He was an Air Force crew chief who worked on the planes that sprayed Agent Orange to clear away the jungle. "I am sure,'' he said, "there could have been other methods that wouldn't have hurt the veterans."
In Haiphong, Mr. Quy, the former North Vietnamese soldier, seemed weak as he mentioned the acrid spray from the American planes.
Listening as he spoke was his teenage son, whose face moved in spasms, and his daughter, who could not speak. His wife, Vu Thi Loan, cried quietly. "We were unlucky,'' she said. "We have to endure our hardship and there is no other way.''
Doan Bao Chau contributed reporting from Vietnam for this article.
-------- iraq
Marines, Insurgents Clash for Third Day
Iraqi Leader Offers Amnesty to Fighters
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 8, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47644-2004Aug7?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Aug. 7 -- Clashes between U.S.-led forces and fighters loyal to Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr continued for a third day in the holy city of Najaf and the large Shiite slum in Baghdad called Sadr City, where gunmen set up illegal checkpoints and ran openly through the streets with weapons.
Officials at three hospitals in Najaf said 23 civilians were killed and 121 wounded in the day's fighting, which subsided at night. It was the fiercest combat in months and posed a daunting challenge to Iraq's interim government as it struggles to bring stability to a country wracked by a violent, persistent insurgency.
As part of a plan to defuse the situation, Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Saturday offered amnesty to insurgents who turn in their weapons and provide information to local police. The amnesty program, which Allawi had promised since taking office on June 28, will last 30 days and will not apply to those suspected of major crimes such as murder, rape and destruction of property. It also does not apply to people already in custody.
In another development, the interim government closed the Baghdad offices of Arab satellite network al-Jazeera for a month, banning it for allegedly inciting violence.
On Saturday night, nearly a dozen bombs exploded in the center of the capital near the fortified compound that houses the interim government and the U.S. Embassy. Such late-night explosions have become more frequent in recent days; two hotels in Baghdad housing foreign journalists and contract workers were attacked Thursday and Friday nights. No one was injured.
In Najaf, an uneasy calm settled over the city after dark. Members of Sadr's militia left the vast Wadi al-Salam cemetery, where they had taken up positions during the last three days to launch rockets and grenades. The Marines, who had been fighting the militants along with the Iraqi police and National Guard, said large caches of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenades and explosive-making materials, were found in the cemetery.
The Marines said Sadr's militia had used the cemetery as an operating base, violating the conditions of a truce negotiated in June after a two-month uprising that left hundreds dead.
The militia, known as the Mahdi Army, "kidnapped their enemies, including innocent civilians, bringing them to the cemetery for torture, execution and burial," the U.S. military said in a statement.
Ghalib Hashim Jazaeri, Najaf's chief of police, said Iraqi security forces staged an unsuccessful raid on Sadr's home in Najaf on Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported. "We surrounded the house, but he was not at home," he said.
U.S. and Iraqi security forces said fighting broke out on Thursday after members of the militia attacked an Iraqi police station. As the Iraqi forces asked for help from the Marines, the violence escalated rapidly, spreading to other cities in the south and to Sadr City in the capital.
Through his associates, Sadr called on his militia to rise up against the U.S. military and its allies. Insurgents responded, taking to the streets and battling coalition forces.
It was not clear whether the fighting had ended in Najaf on Saturday night or would resume at daybreak. The streets were virtually empty as the sun went down, except for a group of gunmen who chanted Sadr's name as they rode around in the back of a U.S. military truck that they apparently had seized. The city had no electricity or power, and a large market in the center of the city was burned to the ground.
The U.S. military said Friday that more than 300 militant fighters were killed in the first two days of clashes. A spokesman for Sadr in Baghdad denied the claim.
Allawi said Iraqi security forces arrested more than 1,200 people in connection with the fighting. He said the military operations were not aimed at Sadr or his followers and that he did not believe the insurgents were members of Sadr's Mahdi Army -- a statement that angered some of Sadr's top associates.
"We think these are gangs, and they use his name as cover," Allawi, a Shiite, said at a news conference. "I have been receiving positive messages from Sadr. That is why we don't think the people that are committing the crimes in Najaf and elsewhere are his people."
Ahmed Shaibani, Sadr's spokesman in Najaf, denounced Allawi, saying if he were a true Shiite Muslim, he would not participate in the U.S.-backed interim government. "He should support the Islamic resistance whether it is Sadr or another resistance," Shaibani said in a telephone interview. "He is the prime minister of an Islamic country."
A group of influential Shiite political leaders also lashed out at Allawi and the interim government for not backing Sadr and his militants. Members of the Shiite Political Council, formed three months ago to represent 38 political parties, urged the government not to respond to the militia forces with violence.
"We ask the government not to lose its balance when facing the incidents in Najaf city," said Abdul Karim Muhammadawi, a former member of the now-disbanded Governing Council, and current member of the Shiite political group. "We tell the government that this case should be solved through political solution not military."
Ali Yassiri, Sadr's political coordinator in Baghdad, said the interim government should negotiate for peace. "It has been three days now of abusing human rights," he said. "A huge terrorist activity is being imposed on Najaf City and Sadr City. We put responsibility on the U.S. government and occupation and the governor of Najaf," who ordered the militiamen out of the city.
Al-Jazeera covered the developments in Najaf on Saturday, broadcasting live images of Sadr's militia members toting guns. It also broadcast a video that appeared to show an American man being beheaded but turned out to be a hoax.
Iraqi government leaders have complained repeatedly about al-Jazeera's practice of broadcasting videos showing kidnapped foreigners, alleging that the Qatar-based channel has ties to the captors.
On Saturday, the government shut down al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices. Allawi said an independent committee had been reviewing al-Jazeera's coverage of Iraq for a month and determined that it was contributing to the escalating violence.
Falah Naqib, Iraq's interior minister, accused the network of becoming "a venue for the terrorist, criminal factions."
"Instead of being a neutral means of reflecting truth, it opted to . . . spread fear among the peaceful Iraqi citizens," Naqib said at a news conference. "They give a bad picture on Iraq. They encouraged the criminals to increase their operations. We want to protect our people from Jazeera."
Jihad Ballout, a spokesman for the network, asked the government to reconsider the decision. "It badly affects the media and the Arab audience," Ballout said. "Nevertheless, we will try our best to cover the Iraqi field one way or another, because the Arab audience is interested in the situation in Iraq."
On the streets of Baghdad, there was mixed reaction to news of the government's actions against al-Jazeera.
Sabri Aleyesker, 47, who sells women's shoes in the Karada commercial district, said he watched al-Jazeera because it was not a mouthpiece for any one group or government. The government "closed it because they speak the truth," Aleyesker said.
But Saad Alfartousy, 37, said blocking al-Jazeera was "the best thing our government has done."
"They don't like Iraq, and they make the Iraqi people angry, and they push them to fight," he said. "Thank God, a thousand times, that they closed this channel."
Special correspondents Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Bassam Sebti, Luma Mousawi and Omar Fekeiki in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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Marines Pushing Deeper Into City Held by Shiites
August 8, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/08/international/middleeast/08iraq.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 7 - American marines drove deeper into the heart of the Shiite holy city of Najaf on Saturday as they fought Moktada al-Sadr's rebel militiamen, and there was little sign that American commanders, who said they were taking orders from the new Iraqi government, intended to heed appeals for a cease-fire from clerics and others claiming to represent Mr. Sadr.
In three days of fighting, including mostly sporadic battles on Saturday, the marines and supporting units from the new American-trained Iraqi security forces have pushed well into the old city, an area the Americans had avoided in their months of on-and-off fighting with the Mahdi Army, Mr. Sadr's black-uniformed militia. The main battleground has been an ancient cemetery alongside the Imam Ali mosque, a golden-domed shrine that is one of the holiest places for the world's Shiite Muslims.
Reports from Najaf told of a city now largely deserted, at least in the center, where American commanders say they have killed more than 300 militiamen. But spokesmen for Mr. Sadr say the toll is only 40.
The American command in Baghdad said Saturday afternoon that the latest casualty figures from the battlefront showed that two marines and one American soldier had been killed, and that fewer than 20 had sustained serious wounds.The leader of Iraqi forces in the fight, Gen. Ghalib Hadi al-Jazaery, said Saturday that his troops had surrounded Mr. Sadr's house in Najaf in an attempt to capture him, but that the cleric was gone.
Much hangs on the Najaf fighting, and on lower-intensity skirmishes in the past 72 hours in other urban areas across central and southern Iraq, where Mr. Sadr's firebrand populism attracts support among young, mostly impoverished Shiites. The central question appears to be whether the decision to confront the militiamen, and to do it in an area of the highest religious sensitivities, will win the support of Iraq's Shiite majority or provoke a potentially crippling backlash against the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which took formal power from the Americans when the country resumed its sovereignty on June 28.
On Saturday, after remaining silent during the first 48 hours of fighting, Mr. Allawi gave a news conference in Baghdad in which he appeared intent on reinforcing his appeal to Iraqis as the strongman many have said they wanted during the 15 months of lawlessness and insurgency that followed the American invasion last year.
He turned aside appeals for a cease-fire, saying prisoners taken during the fighting included "more than 1,000 criminals," at least 400 of whom had been released from prisons under an amnesty declared by Saddam Hussein six months before he was toppled from power.
"What has occurred in Najaf is pitiful," the 59-year-old prime minister said. Referring to the militiamen, he continued: "These attacks have aimed at destabilizing the government. These people are trying to deprive our people of their freedom and progress. Our country has gone through too many wars, and too much hardship, and I'm confident our people will choose the path towards peace and prosperity."
Specifically, Mr. Allawi described the fighting as an attempt to undermine the new government's efforts to improve security, to strengthen the flagging economy and to prepare for parliamentary elections scheduled by the end of January. A fully elected government is planned by January 2006. At one point, he invited Mr. Sadr, the rebel cleric, to abandon reliance on his militia and to run in the January elections, something Mr. Sadr has hitherto contemptuously rejected.
Mr. Allawi, a Shiite who trained as a physician and joined Mr. Hussein's ruling Baath Party as a student, but defected to the exiled opposition 20 years ago, showed some of the political deftness he will need if he is emerge from the tangled machinations of Shiite politics as a contender for power in the elections.
He suggested at the news conference that the militiamen fighting in Najaf, whom the Americans say have mostly worn the black outfits of Mr. Sadr's militia, might not be Sadr loyalists at all, but "people using his name."
Mr. Allawi said he had been receiving "positive messages from Moktada al-Sadr," but he gave no details and did not clarify whether he was referring to private communications or to discussions that were held in Baghdad earlier on Saturday between representatives of Mr. Sadr and the United Nations. In Tehran, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, condemned the new wave of violence in Iraq, especially in the Shiite holy city, The Associated Press reported.
"The United States has reached a dead-end in Iraq and is acting like a wolf caught in a trap," he said, "trying to terrify some by either brawling or showing its claws. But the Iraqis' will and determination will not let the U.S. gulp down a big morsel such as Iraq," he was quoted as saying.
Beheading Tape Was a Hoax
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 7 (AP) - An American who made a hoax videotape of his beheading at the hands of Iraqi militants said Saturday that he did it at a friend's house in California using fake blood.
The man, Benjamin Vanderford, 22, said he began distributing the video on the Internet months ago in hopes of drawing attention to his campaign for city supervisor. When his political aspirations waned, he thought the video would serve as social commentary.
"It was part of a stunt, but no one noticed it up until now," Mr. Vanderford said. "I did this for a couple of reasons. One is to attract attention. But two is to just make a statement on these type of videos and how easily they can be faked." On the tape, Mr. Vanderford sat on a chair in a dark room, his hands behind his back, trembling and rocking back and forth. Then the tape showed a hand with a knife cutting at the man's neck, but did not show any militants.
"We need to leave this country alone; we need to stop this occupation," he said on the video, adding that he had been offered for exchange with prisoners in Iraq. "Everyone's going to be killed this way."
The videotape was posted on a militant Web site and broadcast on Arab television on Saturday.
Alex Berenson contributed reporting from Najaf for this article.
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Iraqi Leader Appeals to Militants in Visit to Battle-Torn Najaf
August 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
NAJAF, Iraq (AP) -- Protected by about 100 guards, Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi visited the war-shattered city of Najaf on Sunday, calling on Shiite militants to lay down their weapons after days of fierce clashes with U.S. forces.
Nearby, gunfire and explosions echoed through the streets, marking the fourth day of clashes in this holy city and other Shiite areas of Iraq. Hours later, U.S. helicopter gunships pounded the massive Najaf cemetery, a militant hideout and the scene of much of the fighting, witnesses said.
Scattered attacks across the country Sunday killed at least 19 Iraqis and wounded dozens of others, including four U.S. soldiers. A U.S. soldier also died Saturday in ``a non-combat related incident,'' the military said Sunday.
Throughout the night, explosions -- apparently from mortar barrages -- rocked a downtown Baghdad neighborhood where foreign journalists and contractors stay. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
As the violence continued, the government reinstated the death penalty in its latest effort to beat down the 15-month-old insurgency -- marked by car bombings, sabotage, gunbattles and kidnappings -- that has destabilized the country and held back reconstruction efforts.
``It is our human obligation toward our people and country, who are being threatened day and night by the terrorists and organized crime, to bring stability and security to them,'' Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin said.
Also Sunday, Iraq's chief investigating judge said arrest warrants had been issued for Ahmad Chalabi, a former Governing Council member with strong U.S. ties, on counterfeiting charges, and for his nephew Salem Chalabi, head of the Iraqi tribunal trying Saddam Hussein, on murder charges. He is a suspect in the June murder of a top finance ministry official.
Meanwhile, militants said they had abducted Faridoun Jihani, the Iranian consul to the Iraqi city of Karbala. The kidnappers, who called themselves the ``Islamic Army in Iraq,'' warned Iran not to interfere in Iraq's affairs, but did not threaten Jihani or make any demands, according to Al-Arabiya television.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry confirmed Jihani disappeared Wednesday night on the road from Baghdad to Karbala.
Jihani, shown in a video sent by the militants to Al-Arabiya, would be the second senior diplomat taken hostage in recent weeks, following the brief kidnapping of Egyptian diplomat Mohammed Mamdouh Helmi Qutb last month. Scores of other foreigners have been kidnapped as leverage to force foreign troops and businesses from the country.
Most troubling for the government, however, was the Shiite violence that began Thursday after the collapse of a series of truces that ended a two-month uprising in early June. The U.S. military says hundreds of militants have been killed in the latest violence; the militiamen put the number far lower.
Though a deadline for militants to withdraw from Najaf, the center of the worst violence, expired Saturday, masked gunmen still patrolled the streets of the old city Sunday. The Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also controlled the Imam Ali Shrine compound, one of the most revered sites in Shiite Islam.
The U.S. military said it had renewed an offensive Sunday against Mahdi Army militants who were using the city's massive cemetery as an operations base and weapons depot. Witnesses said the military attacked the cemetery with helicopter gunships. Military spokesmen said they were taking care to minimize damage.
Many nearby residents fled their homes. Power was out in the old city, which was surrounded by U.S. troops and Iraqi forces, residents said.
At least two Iraqi national guardsmen were killed and 15 people injured during Sunday's fighting, hospital officials said.
Allawi, who was protected by a mix of U.S. forces, foreign security contractors, Iraqi national guardsmen and Iraqi police, firmly rejected compromise with the militants during his brief visit Sunday morning.
``We think that those armed should leave the holy sites and the (Imam Ali Shrine compound) as well as leave their weapons and abide by the law,'' he said. Some 400 yards away, gunfire and explosions rang out from clashes. U.S. helicopter gunships circled overhead.
``The situation will be defused soon,'' he said.
Allawi's delegation did not meet with al-Sadr, and the cleric's aides rejected his demands.
``We hoped his visit would have calmed the situation and that he would have come with something new, but he did not do that,'' said Ahmed al-Shaibany, an al-Sadr aide. ``He confronted the Mahdi Army with bad talk, especially his call to leave the city and turn over their weapons, which is strange and can never happen.''
In violence in other Shiite areas, a U.S. Army OH-58 observation helicopter made an emergency landing in Baghdad near the Sadr City neighborhood after being attacked, said U.S. Capt. Brian O'Malley of the 1st Brigade Combat Team. No casualties were reported.
The helicopter, with its cockpit destroyed and covered in dust, was hauled away by the military.
The Mahdi Army later attacked a Baghdad district council building with rocket-propelled grenades and gunfire, wounding three U.S. soldiers, O'Malley said.
Clashes in Sadr City killed four people and injured seven Sunday, the Health Ministry said.
In the southern city of Amarah, a gunbattle between al-Sadr militants and police killed four Iraqis and wounded 23 others, the Health Ministry said.
Iraqi officials said they had reluctantly reinstated the death penalty, suspended by the U.S. occupation administration, as an important weapon against militants and hard-core criminals.
``This is not an open door to execute anyone and everyone, or people whom the government dislikes. This is not Saddam's law,'' Minister of State Adnan al-Janabi said.
It was unclear how the new death penalty law would affect Saddam, currently awaiting trial on war crimes charges. It was also unclear whether the death penalty would apply to people who had committed crimes during its suspension.
The announcement came a day after the government issued a limited amnesty to persuade minor criminals to abandon violence.
In other violence Sunday:
-- Mortar explosions in central Baghdad late Sunday wounded at least 11 people.
-- Insurgents attacked a U.S. patrol in Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad, wounding one U.S. soldier, said Maj. Neal O'Brien, a military spokesman. The troops killed one attacker.
-- Also in Muqdadiyah, masked gunmen attacked police, killing one policeman and three civilians, said local police chief Col. Amer Kamel.
-- Near Samarra, U.S. soldiers killed two people who were trying to plant a roadside bomb and wounded a third.
-- A roadside bomb exploded in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing one woman and injuring three children, police said. Another roadside bomb, in Baqouba, killed an Iraqi National Guard soldier, a hospital official said.
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Iraq Issues Warrants for Chalabi, Nephew
August 8, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq-Arrest-Warrants.html
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Iraq has issued arrest warrants for Ahmad Chalabi, a former Governing Council member with strong U.S. ties, on counterfeiting charges, and for his nephew Salem Chalabi -- head of the tribunal trying Saddam Hussein -- on murder charges, Iraq's chief investigating judge said Sunday.
The warrant was the latest strike against Ahmad Chalabi in his removal from the centers of power. A longtime Iraqi exile opposition leader, he had been a favorite of many in the Pentagon but fell out with the Americans in the weeks before the U.S. occupation ended in June.
Both men denied the charges, dismissing them as part of a political conspiracy against them and their family.
Salem Chalabi, named as a suspect in the June murder of Haithem Fadhil, director general of the finance ministry, called the accusation ``ridiculous.'' His uncle said the charges were ``outrageous'' and ``manufactured lies.''
Ahmad Chalabi was somewhat marginalized when he was left out of the new interim government that took power June 28 but has since worked to reposition himself as a Shiite populist. At the helm of the war crimes tribunal for Saddam, the Ivy League-educated Salem Chalabi remains a central figure in Iraq.
``They should be arrested and then questioned and ... if there is enough evidence, they will be sent to trial,'' Judge Zuhair al-Maliky said.
In Washington, the Bush administration had no comment about the charges against the Chalabis. ``This