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NUCLEAR
Dual-use: perils of proliferation
Australia's Nuclear Waste Still in Limbo
US senators visit Cumbria to see BNFL's armed ships
Depleted uranium still a danger, speaker says
Iraq Gave Up on Nukes in 1991, Had No WMD - Expert
Iraqi Nuclear Scientist Denies British Uranium Claim
Jordanian experts affirm presence of Zionist nuclear radiation
Israel Plans New Test of Arrow Missile - Killer
Energy-hungry Japan's nuclear policy 'unaffected by accident'
Blind spots of inspection
Fukui gov. calls for nuclear freeze
Australian foreign minister says he will visit North Korea
Nuclear Negotiators Hold Informal Talks on N.Korea
Russia to boost defense orders by 40 percent in 2005: Putin
Stop nuke tests, Japanese mayors urge Russia
Russia tests intercontinental ballistic missile
Persistent Diplomacy Needed for Nonproliferation Advances
FDA Wary Of Importing Drugs Because Of Terrorism Risk
Brooks aims to 'clarify' Bush nuke moves
Federal study finds no public health risk at Livermore lab
Bush Defends Nuclear Waste Plan in Nevada
Oyster Creek wants rule waived
Nuclear Lab's Missing Disks May Not Exist
Keeping Track Of Crucial Lab Materials
Bush, Kerry skirmishing in the West
MILITARY
Rumsfeld Tours Afghan Reconstruction Site and Previews Election
State Dept.: Sudan Genocide Hard to Prove
US and France Begin a Great Game in Africa
Death is in the air, villagers say
Constitutional crisis looms in Cambodia
Azerbaijan Gives No Hint of Sending More Troops for Iraq
US helps Uzbekistan fight spread of bio weapons
Britain Rejects Guantanamo Detention Comparisons
Audit Faults Halliburton Estimates
Halliburton Is Faulted by Pentagon on Accounts
Pentagon faults Halliburton for Iraq accounting
EADS wins contract for Romania's border security
Ominous Calm Settles Over Baghdad
Showdown Looms in Najaf
U.S. Pushes New Offensive in Najaf in Bid to Cordon Old City
Baghdad a tale of two cities
Rumsfeld: Iraq Security Forces Expanding
US bombing of Iraqi city of Kut kills 84, wounds 176: hospital
Israel's Abu Ghraib
Militants' Blast Kills 2 Palestinians by Israel Checkpoint
An Israeli Uproar, and Arrest, Over an Unlikely Friendship
Israeli helicopters fire into camp
Israeli Troops Hold BBC Crew During Undercover Raid
UN slams Mid-East peace failure
Tables turn on US conman
The island idyll and the US occupation
Pakistan to release 41 Indian prisoners
Russia to boost defense orders by 40 percent in 2005
Georgia risks war over separatists
Shooting intensifies in Georgia region
China Calls For Cooperation With US, Japan In Space Programs
Democrats Don't Plan to Block Confirmation of C.I.A. Nominee
Beheaded man 'not CIA agent'
CIA pick began agency career in Cold War
Panel Headed by CIA Nominee Was Singled Out in 9/11 Report
Security for the Homeland, Made in Alaska
US Set to 'Grin and Bear' Chavez Victory
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Judges back Blunkett on detention of 'terror 10'
Groups Ask Court for Prisoner Abuse Info
Feds told to release prison torture files
US Congressmanīs Appeal On Behalf Of Pollard
U.S. negotiates freeing suspect Hamdi
4 Baggage Screeners Arrested; TV Stars Were Among Victims
New Strains and New Rules for Agents Along Mexican Border
U.S. to Overlook Minor Visitor Overstays
Golden Noses Are in Demand, and They Don't Work Just for Food
Asia Letter: He isn't from Al Qaeda, but who would know?
U.S. Nears Deal to Free Enemy Combatant Hamdi
Deal to Release Detainee May Be Close
Al Qaeda Figures Say 9/11 Defendant Was Unaware of Plot, U.S. Tells Court
In Athens, It's Safety At All Costs
POLITICS
9/11 Families Get a Fighter From the Ranks
Pentagon Caution on 9/11 Panel's Intelligence Changes
The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story
Washington Post Says Iraq Coverage Flawed
Kurtz Explains His Critique of 'Wash. Post' Iraq Coverage
Boehlert Takes Helm Of Intelligence Panel
ENERGY
Oil Prices Up Despite Saudi Offer
OTHER
Report Says U.S. Is Draining Wetlands Groups Cite Year-Old Policy
Britain Grants License to Make Human Embryos for Stem Cells
ACTIVISTS
Veterans of Iraq war found anti-war organization
-------- NUCLEAR
Dual-use: perils of proliferation
Janes Intelligence Digest,
12 August 2004
http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid040812_1_n.shtml
An increasingly troubling aspect of nuclear weapons proliferation is the acquisition of equipment that could be used for either civilian or military purposes or so-called 'dual-use' technology.
The widespread suspicion that certain countries, most notably Iran, are developing nuclear weapons under cover of a civilian programme puts the onus on those countries to prove that their programmes are confined to peaceful civilian nuclear power applications and are not simply a covert step towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons. As a dangerous new phase of international nuclear proliferation opens, the key question remains whether the two activities can ever truly be separated.
Most of the materials required for the development of a civilian nuclear power programme are actually dual-use. Both civilian and military programmes are conducted in large industrial complexes where nuclear power and nuclear weapons production can be inexorably linked, using often identical technologies.
Scientists can divert infrastructure and fissile materials - uranium or plutonium - intended for use in an ostensibly peaceful programme to produce weapons-grade versions of those materials. Equipment can either be purchased on the international market (as Iran has done) or built indigenously in order to refine uranium or extract plutonium for either end-use. North Korea, India, Pakistan and South Africa all managed to develop weapons through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle. Of these, only the last has renounced its nuclear weapons programme.
While Western countries in general have moved away from the strategy of building new nuclear power for generating electricity or are merely replacing old power plants, many developing countries may come to rely on it increasingly as concerns grow about future oil shortages and global warming due, in part, to fossil fuels. Eighteen of the 27 nuclear power plants now under construction are in Asia. ...
-------- australia
Australia's Nuclear Waste Still in Limbo
August 12, 2004
CANBERRA, Australia, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-12-05.asp
The Australian government is searching the country for a nuclear waste dump site on Commonwealth land, either onshore or offshore, because none of the states or territories wants national radioactive waste on their land. Seven Aboriginal women from South Australia say it was their campaign that turned back the nuclear dump planned for the desert outback, although they have little money, do not speak English, and cannot read or write.
In July the government decided to abandon its plan to establish a national low level waste repository at site 40a near Woomera in South Australia after the state won a Federal Court case in June blocking federal "compulsory urgent acquisition" of the site.
There are no nuclear power generating stations in Australia, but the Lucas Heights research reactor near Sydney generates waste.
Prime Minister John Howard said the Commonwealth government is seeking commitment from all states and territories that they will adopt world's best practice in the management and disposal of their own radioactive waste materials in their own jurisdictions.
South Australia Premier Mike Rann expressed the joy of South Australians at the Commonwealth government's retreat, saying "It's a great day for our state. It's a victory for common sense."
But no one is happier than Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, seven senior Aboriginal women from South Australia who spent their lives campaigning against the Woomera dump from 1998 when the government's plan to site it on their territory was first announced. They had little money, and they cannot read or write, but they achieved their objective - the waste will not be coming to Woomera.
Eileen Unkari Crombie is one of the seven women who successfully fought the nuclear waste dump planned for their country. (Photo courtesy Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta) "People said that you can't win against the Government. Just a few women," they wrote in an open letter released today from their hometown of Coober Pedy. "We just kept talking and telling them to get their ears out of their pockets and listen. We never said we were going to give up. Government has big money to buy their way out but we never gave up."
"We told Howard you should look after us, not try and kill us. Straight out. We always talk straight out. In the end he didn't have the power, we did. He only had money, but money doesn't win."
Emily Munyungka Austin, Eileen Kampakuta Brown, Eileen Unkari Crombie, Ivy Makinti Stewart, Tjunmutja Myra Watson, Eileen Wani Wingfield, and Angelina Wonga campaigned the only way they could - they put their lives on the line to keep nuclear waste out of their territory.
"We been everywhere talking about the poison," they wrote. "Canberra, Sydney, Lucas Heights, Melbourne, Adelaide, Silverton, Port Augusta, Roxby Downs, Lake Eyre. We did it the hard way. Always camping out in the cold. Travelling all over with no money. Just enough for cool drink along the way. We went through it. Survivors."
Angelina Wonga on the road campaigning against the Woomera nuclear waste dump (Photo courtesy Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta) "We even went to Lucas Heights Reactor. It's a dangerous place, but we went in boldly to see where they were making the poison - the radiation," they wrote.
The women objected to the waste dump for many reasons. First, they had all lived through the above ground testing of nine British atomic bombs in their homeland. Angelina Wonga said of one test day in the 1950s, "We seen a bomb went out from the South. And said, 'eh, what's that?' And when we see the wind blowing it to where we were sitting down. Nobody got a warning, nobody. That was the finish of mother and father. They all passed away through that. I was only there. Buried the grandmother. I was the only one left."
The proposed design of the Woomera nuclear dump, the details of which were never made public, was to bury the waste in shallow trenches that the Bureau of Science acknowledged would not prevent leakage of water, nor human, animal or plant intrusion.
The women feared that the radioactivity would contaminate the large reserves of groundwater in the Great Artesian Basin. "The desert lands are not as dry as you think! said Eileen Wani Wingfield. "There's a big underground river here. We know the poison from the radioactive waste dump will go under the ground and leak into the water."
They believe the waste dump would "seed the industry's expansion by allowing continued and increased production of nuclear waste" and would have allowed an "out of sight, out of mind" response to the waste problem.
The transportation of waste across Australia is a major concern, they said. "It's too dangerous, the trucks bringing it all the way here," wrote Austin on the group's website. Communities across Australia on the proposed transport route declared their shires to be nuclear free zones.
The Australian Greens worked to defeat the South Australia waste dump, forging a close bond with the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta in the process.
Eileen Wani Wingfield says sacred sites exist in the area that was planned for the nuclear dump. (Photo courtesy Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta) "We showed that Greenies and Anangu can work together," wrote the Aboriginal women. "Greenies could come and live here in Coober Pedy and work together to stop the dump. Kungkas showed the Greenies about the country and the culture. Our Greenie girls are the best in Australia. We give them all the love from our hearts. Family you know. Working together - that's family. Big thank you to them especially. We can't write. They help us with the letters, the writing, the computers, helped tell the world."
But the problem itself - the waste - remains.
Prime Minister Howard said in a recent radio broadcast, "I've got to find a solution. We've got to find somewhere for the waste. I mean the people who are saying it shouldn't be in South Australia, they presumably say it should be somewhere else in Australia. I'm sure they will accept that people living somewhere else in Australia will adopt the same attitude. Now if that goes on, we will never have a solution."
The federal government wanted low-level and intermediate level nuclear waste from throughout Australia to be deposited at a single dump. Now that will not happen.
The operating licence for the new reactor at Lucas Heights to replace the aging research reactor is conditional on solving the waste issue.
"We won't be able to go ahead with rebuilding the reactor," Howard said, who is about to call an election.
Although the polling date has not been set, candidates are already on the campaign trail. The Greens candidate for Macarthur, Jennifer Hanson, has called for the construction of Sydney's new nuclear reactor to be halted following the Howard Government's decision to abandon plans for the waste dump in South Australia.
"The reactor cannot go ahead without a nuclear waste dump. No community in Australia wants one, so construction of the new reactor must be halted," said Hanson. "The government should admit defeat, cancel the project and shut down the existing reactor."
Australia is a major producer of uranium that fuels nuclear reactors around the world. Australian uranium provides about 25 percent of world uranium supply from mines.
There are three operating uranium mines in Australia - Ranger in the Northern Territory, Olympic Dam and Beverley in South Australia and a fourth that is cleared to start construction in South Australia. They all manage their waste on-site.
The problem remains, but for the women of Coober Pedy it is time to relax.
"We are happy. We can have a break now," they wrote. "We want to have a rest and go on with other things now. Sit around the campfire and have a yarn. We don't have to talk about the dump anymore, and get up and go all the time. Now we can go out together and camp out and pick bush medicine and bush tucker. And take the grandchildren out."
-------- britain
US senators visit Cumbria to see BNFL's armed ships
12/08/2004
Cumbria News & Star (UK)
http://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/viewarticle.aspx?id=123757
AMERICAN senators visited Barrow docks to see the armed BNFL ships that will carry plutonium from the US next month, say anti-nuclear campaigners.
A party of eight senior US politicians from Washington flew into Walney airfield last Thursday to visit the BNFL shipping terminal.
Armed Atomic Energy Authority police covered the terminal and the Stars and Stripes flew as the senators went aboard one of BNFL's two armed convoy ships, the Pacific Pintail.
It has cannons front and rear and normally sails with a dozen armed nuclear police.
Both Pacific Pintail and its sister vessel Pacific Teal are expected to sail as early as next month for Charlston in the USA, to pick up what Cumbrians Opposed to a Radioactive Environment (Core) calls "neat plutonium dioxide".
The plutonium has been recovered from redundant US nuclear weapons.
The 5,000 tonne BNFL ships - the only dedicated nuclear freighters of their type in the world - will carry the plutonium to France in a giant steel flask.
It will then be converted into Mox fuel assemblies.
-------- depleted uranium
Depleted uranium still a danger, speaker says
By JOAN HAINES,
Bozeman, MT, Chronicle Staff Writer
August 12, 2004
http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2004/08/12/news/uranium.txt
Dennis Kyne, a sergeant and medic in the U.S. Army during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s, said the Army made him and his men sick, and is continuing to make soldiers ill during the current Iraq conflict.
"I want you to understand how little (the Army) cared about the troops," Kyne told 25 people attending his talk Tuesday night at the Bozeman Public Library. The talk, centering on the use and effects of depleted uranium in ammunition, was sponsored by the Bozeman Peace Seekers. Anthrax vaccinations before the Gulf War made some soldiers sick, Kyne said. Waiting in desert tents for 90 days for vehicles to arrive resulted in several suicides. Soldiers ingesting tiny particles of sand into their lungs added to the illnesses.
Then, Kyne said, when the soldiers advanced on Baghdad, "we walked into depleted uranium. That's what made everybody so sick."
Depleted uranium is an armor-piercing metal used on the tips of many conventional weapons, including bunker-penetrating missiles and anti-tank missiles. It is radioactive, and can end up as a fine dust when exploded, Kyne said.
Depleted uranium consists of waste left over from making nuclear weapons, a Christian Science Monitor article stated.
"Bombs liberate themselves all over the place," Kyne said. "They don't just hit armored vehicles. The soldiers walked into the fallout."
A doctor working for the U.S. Department of Defense, Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, said adverse effects of depleted uranium have not been proven, according to an Aug. 6 article on Kyne published in the Aspen Daily News.
Kilpatrick also has said there is no such thing as a "Gulf War Syndrome" because soldiers who are sick have such a wide variety of symptoms, according to the Aspen paper.
But Kyne said uranium particles were in the sand, and soldiers could breathe them in.
"The half-life of uranium is 4.5 billion years," he said. "It damages the gene pool."
Although Kyne is criticizing the military, he said he believes he's still carrying out his military duties.
"The soldier's job is to protect democracy, he said. "I still think I'm following my orders."
A retired Montana State University chemistry professor in the audience, Reed Howald, said tiny particles of Uranium 38 would be "particularly hazardous" in a weapon that struck a tank.
"It might very well account for what we call 'Gulf War Syndrome,'" Howald said.
Another man in the audience, Clinton Cain, a retired mining engineer, said the depleted uranium issue should be addressed by Montana's congressmen.
"I don't understand why our congressional delegation doesn't tell the American people they're using spent uranium in shells if it's true," Cain said.
Joan Haines is at citydesk@dailychronicle.com
-------- iraq / inspections
Iraq Gave Up on Nukes in 1991, Had No WMD - Expert
August 12, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-iraq-nuclear.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Iraq abandoned plans to develop nuclear weapons in 1991 and had no usable weapons of mass destruction during last year's U.S.-led invasion, according to the man who oversaw Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.
``Everything was destroyed such that the program couldn't be restarted at the time at all and never restarted,'' Jafar Dhia Jafar said of Iraq's nuclear plans on the BBC's Newsnight program late on Wednesday.
Washington and London justified the Iraq war on the basis that Saddam at the very least had biological and chemical weapons and was prepared to use them.
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq more than a year after President Bush declared an end to major combat. British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the weapons may never be found.
Jafar, called the father of Iraq's nuclear bomb program, said Saddam could have used biological and chemical weapons in the 1991 Gulf War but chose not to.
``They were not available in 2003 because they had been destroyed and the program was never reconstituted or reactivated, none of the programs,'' he said.
It was unclear from where Jafar spoke to the program.
----
Iraqi Nuclear Scientist Denies British Uranium Claim
The Associated Press
Aug. 12, 2004
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/ap20040812_408.html
LONDON - Iraq did not seek uranium in Africa in the 1990s because it already had a good supply, the father of Iraq's nuclear program said.
Jafar Dhia Jafar, who headed Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that his country had 500 tons of yellow cake uranium at the time. He dismissed a claim made in a British intelligence dossier published in September 2002, that Iraqis were shopping for uranium after 1998, when U.N. weapons inspectors left Iraq, including Niger.
"We had 500 tons of yellow cake in Baghdad at the time so why should we go buy another 500 tons from Niger?" Jafar said in the BBC interview, broadcast Wednesday.
President Bush included the claim about African uranium in his State of the Union speech in January 2003, against the advice of U.S. intelligence officials. Some documents which allegedly supported the claim that Iraq sought uranium in Niger were subsequently exposed a forgeries, though British officials have continued to insist they had independent evidence.
As he had said at a news conference in Beirut in March, Jafar said Iraq had no active nuclear program in the last years of Saddam's regime.
"The facilities of the program were damaged during the war" in 1991, Jafar said in the BBC interview.
"Iraq did not have would not have had the resources under sanctions to continue with the program," he said.
"Saddam took a decision in July 1991 to abandon the program and destroy what remained of its equipment. We had orders to hand over the equipment to the Republican Guards, to the Special Republican Guards, and they had orders to destroy the equipment that we handed over to them."
Jafar added: "Everything was destroyed, such that the program couldn't be restarted at the time at all and never restarted."
-------- israel
Jordanian experts affirm presence of Zionist nuclear radiation on common border
Aug 12, 2004,
Palestine Information Center, UK
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/am/publish/article_7248.shtml
Amman - Jordanian experts have affirmed that the common borders with occupied Palestine were affected by Zionist nuclear radiation and poisonous waste.
A Jordanian source, acquainted with the recent studies to detect Zionist nuclear radiation and its impact on Jordan, yesterday told 'Al-Ghad' local newspaper that his country was affected by Zionist nuclear radiation in north and central Jordan.
He said that the radiation came from Zionist factories in Galilee mountains that were specialized in enriching plutonium used in manufacturing nuclear arms.
The expert underlined that the radiations were more dangerous that those emanating from the Dimona atomic reactor.
----
Israel Plans New Test of Arrow Missile - Killer
August 12, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-israel-iran-arrow.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel plans a new test of its Arrow II missile-killer to boost the system's speed and accuracy in the face of mounting ballistic threats from arch-foe Iran, Israeli defense sources said on Thursday.
The Arrow II passed its first live test in July by downing a Scud missile off the coast of California. Now Israel seeks to pit it against a threat more closely resembling Iran's upgraded Shahab-3, which Tehran said it successfully tested on Wednesday. ``We will put the Arrow through another live run in the near future, pushing the envelope on all its capabilities,'' a senior defense source said, without elaborating.
Israel's biggest newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said the next test of the Arrow II, a $2.2 billion project partly funded by the United States, would again take place in California.
Iran calls its missile program a deterrent -- especially against the Jewish state's assumed nuclear arsenal. Tehran also denies U.S. and Israeli charges that it is seeking to develop nuclear warheads which could be delivered by the Shahab-3.
``The accusations and allegations raised by some of the countries against the Islamic Republic of Iran -- all of them are totally baseless and unfounded,'' Iranian Supreme National Security Council Secretary Hassan Rowhani said on Thursday during a visit to Australia.
Using a radar dubbed Green Pine, the Arrow II is designed to detect incoming threats and destroy them with its own missiles at altitudes of more than 50 km (30 miles) within three minutes.
Despite the successful July 29 test against the Scud, the Arrow II may not yet be ready to reliably take on much faster missiles such as the Shahab-3, independent analysts say. Based on a North Korean design and modified with Russian technology, the Shahab-3 is thought to have a range of 810 miles, which would allow it to strike anywhere in Israel.
Amid media speculation that Israel may try to halt Iran's nuclear program by carrying out air strikes on some of its atomic facilities, Iranian officials have said Tehran would retaliate promptly and strongly to any such attack.
The Arrow II is the world's only anti-ballistic system capable of intercepting missiles at atmospheric level, an advantage considered critical to preventing devastating fallout from non-conventional warheads.
Military sources said Israel has more than 200 Arrow IIs -- costing $3 million apiece -- deployed at two air force bases.
Half the Arrow II's research, development and production costs have been borne by the United States, Israel's main ally. State-owned Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd developed the system.
-------- japan
Energy-hungry Japan's nuclear policy 'unaffected by accident'
TOKYO (AFP)
Aug 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040812052223.vgtwnyr5.html
Japan's deadliest nuclear plant accident, which occurred this week, has fuelled public concern about nuclear power but Tokyo, with few energy options, is unlikely to drop its reliance on this source of energy, officials and analysts say.
Four workers were killed Monday and seven others injured, two critically, when steam escaped from a ruptured pipe at a plant operated by Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO) in Mihama 350 kilometres (220 miles) west of Tokyo.
Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was quick to point out that the accident -- the first directly involving operations at a running nuclear power plant that caused fatalities -- did not involve a radiation leak.
KEPCO later admitted that the pipe that caused the leak in a turbine room had not been properly inspected for 28 years.
Environmental groups, including Greenpeace Japan, have argued that the latest fatalities underlined the need for Tokyo to abandon its nuclear programme and shut down its ageing nuclear plants to avoid another tragedy.
The world's worst nuclear accident involving radiation since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster also occurred in Japan: in September 1999 two workers were killed at the Tokaimura uranium fuel-reprocessing plant northeast of Tokyo.
About 320,000 people were evacuated in the incident.
Public mistrust deepened further in summer 2002 when Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the world's largest private electricity company and provider of a third of Japan's electricity, was found to have falsified safety reports since the late 1980s.
"Japan has had a lot of nuclear plant-related scandals. The public has become very sensitive about the issue," said Masaharu Fujitomi, chief of the Asia Pacific Energy Research Centre, a government-affiliated body.
"The latest accident scared the public and may put a brake on some projects. But I am not sure if Japan can really stop using nuclear energy," he said.
Tokyo has few energy options, having almost no natural energy resources, and government officials said there were no plans to abandon nuclear power.
"The cause of the accident must be investigated before we study the lessons to be learned from the sad and serious accident," said a nuclear energy policy official at the Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.
He added: "As for now, we have no change to our policy."
The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, which groups the 10 major Japanese utilities, also said it had no plan to change the nuclear-based strategy.
"That's because there is no change to Japan's need for nuclear power," said a federation spokesman.
But on Thursday the governor of Fukui prefecture, where Monday's accident occurred, said the renewed safety concerns could force a delay in KEPCO's plan to use recycled uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel at another plant in Fukui by March 2008. "The big premise was safety, so we will discuss it once the safety issues have been resolved," governor Issei Nishikawa said.
Japan relies on nuclear power for one third of its electricity, and the ratio is expected to go up to 40 percent by 2010.
The Middle East supplies virtually all Japan's oil, which accounts for 11 percent of electricity generation, according to power industry figures, leaving it heavily exposed to oil price fluctuations.
Tokyo has worked to diversify its energy sources and reduce its dependence on imported fuel ever since the oil shock of the early 1970s.
By 2010 it plans to have 16 to 18 nuclear reactors built or converted for its "plu-thermal" programme, which uses plutonium as a fuel in light water reactors.
Hironobu Unezaki, assistant professor of energy science at the Kyoto University, said power utilities will face pressure to boost safety and must do a better job of informing the public about the pros and cons of nuclear energy projects.
"The latest accident should not have too much impact on the very foundation of Japan's nuclear policy because it did not affect radioactive parts of the power plant," Unezaki said.
"What we need is for the (KEPCO) utility and the government to explain why this happened and ways to prevent it," Unezaki said.
----
Blind spots of inspection
Japan Times
Aug. 12, 2004
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/geted.pl5?ed20040812a1.htm
The nuclear plant accident that occurred Monday in Mihama, Fukui Prefecture, is a shocking reminder that the nation's nuclear safety inspection system is flawed. Four maintenance workers in a building housing steam turbines were killed and seven others were injured, some critically, when high-temperature steam blew off from a ruptured condenser pipe. In terms of the number of deaths, it was the worst accident in the history of the nation's nuclear power program.
This is the second time in Japan that a nuclear accident has claimed the lives of workers. In 1999, two men died of radiation exposure at a nuclear-fuel reprocessing facility in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture. At the time, residents in the vicinity were ordered to evacuate to avoid possible exposure to radiation.
Fortunately, no radiation leaks occurred this time because the pipe that ruptured is not directly connected to the reactor. The cause of the damage has yet to be determined. A thorough investigation is required, all the more because similar accidents could occur in other light-water nuclear plants or in thermal power plants that likewise generate electricity by steam turbines.
According to the Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), the pipe in question -- which carries high-pressure, high-temperature water from the turbine to the steam generator -- is about 56 centimeters in diameter and is made of carbon steel with a designed thickness of about 10 millimeters. Company officials say the workers were exposed to superhot steam released from a broken section of the pipe.
An inspection by the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, an affiliate of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, reveals that the steel of the damaged part has thinned to approximately 1.4 millimeters. The agency believes this may have been caused by the gradual abrasion of the steel due to high-pressure, high-temperature water flows, as well as by certain weaknesses in the structure and quality of the piping.
Even more disturbing is the fact that the condenser pipe had never been inspected since the reactor went into operation in December 1976. In 1986, it should be noted, a similar steam-pipe accident occurred at a nuclear plant at Surry, in the U.S. state of Virginia, killing four workers.
The problem seems to be that equipment in the steam-generating secondary system, unlike those in the primary loop that recycles water through the reactor core, is not subject to regular inspection under existing laws. In other words, secondary-loop equipment is left to voluntary inspection by individual operators.
According to KEPCO, secondary equipment such as condenser piping is visually inspected every day. As for detailed items that do not permit such cursory inspection, such as pipe thickness, one-fourth are checked every 10 years. So it takes 40 years to complete a full round of inspections. On Tuesday, the company acknowledged that it should have conducted a detailed inspection of the pipe much earlier, saying it was informed of a potential problem by a maintenance contractor last November. Police are reportedly looking for evidence of professional negligence resulting in death and injury.
KEPCO, the nation's second-largest power supplier, has had a nuclear accident before. In February 1991, a broken steam-generator tube at the No. 2 reactor in Mihama -- Monday's tragedy occurred at No. 3 -- caused massive leaks of radioactive water from the primary coolant system.
Monday's accident proves yet again that Japan's aging nuclear plants face a host of technical problems. Of the 52 commercial reactors now in operation, 20 went on stream in the 1970s. In the case of pressurized-water reactors -- the same type as those at the Mihama plant -- it has been revealed that stress corrosion cracks have developed in steam generators and reactor-container covers. As for boiling-water reactors, similar cracks have been found in reactor shrouds and recycling pipes.
Power companies, as well as the government, are at pains to extend reactor service life to 60 years from the original 30 to 40 years. What's more, under the so-called "pluthermal (plutonium thermal) project," these plants are expected to start burning plutonium recovered from spent nuclear fuel.
It would be wrong to make light of the latest incident just because it did not cause radiation leaks. With or without radiation exposure, safety remains a blind spot of sorts in Japan's nuclear power industry. What is needed is a fundamental review of the inspection system, including the rule that doesn't require a full-dress plant inspection until after 30 years of operation.
--------
Fukui gov. calls for nuclear freeze
Mainichi Shimbun,
Japan, Aug. 12, 2004
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040812p2a00m0dm007000c.html
FUKUI -- Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa said Thursday that plutonium thermal use and fast-breeder reactor projects in the prefecture should be frozen until safety of nuclear facilities are ensured.
"(The deadly accident that occurred at Mihama Nuclear Power Plant Monday) could damage the public's trust in the government's nuclear power policy," Nishikawa told reporters after meeting Thursday with Yosaku Fuji, president of Kansai Electric Power Co. (KEPCO), the operator of the plant.
"Unless safety can be ensured, which is the foundation for the plutonium thermal use plan, progress on the project should be halted," he said.
The governor also insisted that operations of the Monju fast-breeder reactor in Fukui Prefecture, which have been suspended since a 1995 accident, should not be resumed.
"The latest accident is a problem that affects the entire nuclear power policy. It's out of the question (to resume operations of Monju) until the problem is solved," he said.
KEPCO has been pressing forward with its plutonium thermal use project, in which mixed oxide fuel comprising uranium and plutonium is used as fuel in nuclear power plants. It had been suspended for about four years since relevant data were found falsified in 1999, but was resumed in March this year with Gov. Nishikawa's approval.
The operations of the Monju fast-breeder reactor, owned by Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, have been suspended since a sodium leakage accident in December 1995. The operator of the reactor has completed legal procedures for resuming operations and is waiting for endorsement by Gov. Nishikawa.
-------- korea
Australian foreign minister says he will visit North Korea to urge Pyongyang to abandon nuclear program
Thursday, August 12, 2004
SYDNEY, Australia (AP)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/08/12/international2220EDT0806.DTL
Australia's foreign minister said Friday he will tell North Koreans during an upcoming visit that they must abandon any nuclear ambitions before receiving more aid from the West.
Alexander Downer is due to make a two-day visit to the reclusive communist nation next week.
"The strategy this time is to say to them 'Yes, you will get some aid, you will get some economic rewards but first of all you must dismantle your nuclear programs,"' Downer told Sydney radio station 2GB. "They've got to understand that that's going to be the sequencing of it this time around."
Although not part of the six-nation dialogue aimed at defusing nuclear tensions, Downer indicated Australia is in a good position to deal with the North.
"We are a country in the region and this is a problem that needs to be solved in the region," he said. "And given ... our good relations with many countries of Asia but also our alliance relationship with the United States we can bring a particular perspective to bear here."
Downer warned that a failure to halt North Korea's nuclear program could trigger a regional nuclear arms race.
Tensions flared in 2002 when Washington said North Korea admitted operating a secret uranium-based nuclear program in violation of a 1994 agreement.
While the North has acknowledged it has a program based on plutonium, it has denied the U.S. claim about a uranium program -- a sticking point in negotiations.
Little progress has been made in the last three rounds of six-nation talks held in Beijing, which also include Japan, Russia and South Korea.
----
Nuclear Negotiators Hold Informal Talks on N.Korea
August 12, 2004
REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-korea-north-talks.html
SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean and U.S. negotiators met in New York at a foreign policy conference but did not try to reach a consensus on resuming talks about the North's nuclear programs, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said on Thursday.
Ri Gun, Pyongyang's deputy chief negotiator at the six-party talks on the North's nuclear problem, was in New York for a conference hosted by the nongovernmental National Committee on American Foreign Policy.
Officials from five of the countries involved in the talks, including deputy U.S. chief delegate Joseph DeTrani, also attended.
``The discussions were interesting and frank,'' Ri was quoted by Yonhap as telling reporters after the second day of meetings on Wednesday. ``But it was just an exchange of opinions.''
Asked whether there was agreement on holding the next round of six-party talks, he said: ``We will continue to discuss that issue.''
A U.S. embassy spokesman in Beijing said: ``As we indicated earlier, no bilateral meetings were scheduled nor did any take place.''
Officials said there may be consultations on the scheduling of a round of working-level meetings by the six countries during Ri's trip on his way back to the North, possibly in China, whose ambassador on Korean issues recently visited Seoul and Tokyo.
A spurt of diplomacy in July and early August had raised expectations that the two Koreas, the United States, China, Japan and Russia would send deputy chief negotiators to Beijing as early as this week to pave the way for a fourth round of negotiations on dismantling the North's nuclear programs.
But there has been no announcement of the working-level meetings the six countries agreed to hold at the end of the third round of talks in June.
-------- russia
Russia to boost defense orders by 40 percent in 2005: Putin
MOSCOW (AFP)
Aug 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040812153206.3qpn01w6.html
President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia would boost its military procurement budget by 40 percent next year, news agencies reported.
"We plan to increase the budget for defense orders by 40 percent, which amounts to 70 billion rubles (2.5 billion dollars, 2.1 billion euros)," ITAR-TASS quoted Putin as saying.
He added that military expenditures "will see overall growth" next year.
The report contained no detailed breakdown from Putin on how the extra spending would be allocated.
The procurement budget covers everything from MiG jets and new rockets to boots, food and other basic supplies for the cash-strapped and demoralized military.
Putin has placed his close ally, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in charge of army reforms and has since promoted him to head the massive military infrastructure, demoting the status of the general chiefs of staff.
Ivanov, who once served in the KGB, became Russia's first civilian defense minister in 2001, but has struggled against entrenched and powerful generals in his bid to introduce reforms.
Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin have issued repeated instructions to transform the army, now bogged down in a guerrilla war in Chechnya but originally built for fighting the United States during the Cold War, into a smaller, more mobile force.
Ivanov reported Thursday that the Russian armed forces would take on 50,000 professional soldiers and officers next year.
The plan has been opposed by generals who fear that a switch from mandatory conscription to contracted military service would decimate the numbers of Russian soldiers, and by implication senior commanders as well. Russia had initially planned to eliminate the draft by 2000. Now the plan has been pushed back by at least a decade.
----
Stop nuke tests, Japanese mayors urge Russia
August 12, 2004
The Mercury, South Africa
http://www.themercury.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=284&fArticleId=2184675
Tokyo: The mayors of two Japanese cities that were devastated by the world's only atomic bomb attacks urged Russia yesterday to halt tests of its nuclear arsenal, saying they set back efforts to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.
Russia has had a self-imposed ban on full-scale nuclear tests since 1990, but conducts subcritical nuclear weapons testing - in which plutonium is blasted with explosives too weak to set off an atomic explosion - on the Arctic archipelago of Novaya Zemlya.
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito said they had sent letters to Russian President Vladimir Putin to protest against the tests.
The world's first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima by a US aircraft during World War 2. The blast, on August 6 1945, killed or injured 160 000 people.
Three days later another atomic bomb levelled Nagasaki, killing about 70 000 people. On August 15 1945, Japan's surrender ended the war.
Akiba said Russia's experiments would "destroy the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and open the door to the ... use of nuclear weapons to destroy humankind".
A review of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty is to take place in New York in May next year, and anti-nuclear countries are pressing for an agreement that would eventually abolish nuclear arms by 2020.
The treaty went into effect in 1970 and has been signed by 187 countries, including the United States and Russia. It prevents nuclear powers from giving nuclear weapons technology to others. -
----
Russia tests intercontinental ballistic missile
August 12 2004
Sydney Morning Herald
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/smh25.html
Russia successfully launched an intercontinental ballistic missile in a test firing yesterday, the Strategic Missile Forces said in a statement.
The RS-18 missile blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and hit a set target in the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian Far East, about 6700 kilometres east of Moscow.
The missile, also known as the SS-19, was launched to determine whether its service life could be extended. It has been in service for 27 years.
The launch was the fifth this year by the Strategic Missile Forces and a total of 10 launches have been scheduled for 2004, the Interfax news agency reported.
Earlier this year, Russian military forces suffered two embarrassing failures of ballistic missile launches from submarines during highly publicised naval manoeuvres.
Later in February, Russia said it had successfully tested a space vehicle that could lead to weapons capable of penetrating missile defences. Details remain sketchy, but military analysts believe the device is a manoeuvrable ballistic missile warhead.
----
Persistent Diplomacy Needed for Nonproliferation Advances
US Embassy, Tokyo,
August 12, 2004
http://tokyo.usembassy.gov/e/p/tp-20040812-22.html
Aggressive and persistent diplomacy is needed more than additional funding to expand the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program effectively, according to one of the program's authors.
Senator Richard Lugar (Republican of Indiana), who along with former Senator Sam Nunn wrote the legislation enacted in 1991, said that while he appreciates that both U.S. presidential candidates are supportive of the program and there have been calls to greatly increase its funding, "In the short run, increasing funding does not ensure that Russia's vast WMD arsenal will be reduced faster or more efficiently than current capabilities." Lugar made his remarks in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington August 11.
The original Nunn-Lugar program used U.S. technical expertise and money to safeguard, deactivate, and destroy weapons of mass destruction in countries of the former Soviet Union. In 2003, President Bush signed the Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act, which allows a portion of the program's funding to be used wherever nonproliferation opportunities appear.
"At this stage," Senator Lugar said, "diplomatic breakthroughs with resistant Russian authorities are almost a prerequisite to putting major funding increases to work." He explained that more funding could be used to increase the missile dismantlement capacity at Surovatikha, for example, but that would only be useful if Russia was willing to deliver more than the four missiles a month they currently turn over for destruction.
He noted that although the Russian government has opened many facilities to the Nunn-Lugar program, others remain closed. "Convincing Russia to accelerate its dismantlement schedules, to conclude umbrella agreements that limit liability for contractors, and to open its remaining closed facilities are the most immediate challenges for Nunn-Lugar," he said. "Whoever wins election in November must make the removal of these roadblocks a priority. As the roadblocks are removed, Congress and the president, as well as our allies, must commit the funds necessary to exploit the openings."
"This is an instrument begging to be used anywhere that we can achieve diplomatic breakthroughs," he added.
The senator presented a list of 12 items toward which "the winning presidential candidate ... must bring the full weight of U.S. diplomatic and economic power to bear." The list, he said, is daunting and "illustrates that the uncertain work of nonproliferation requires flexibility, persistence, creativity, and allied cooperation."
The items include:
-- Achieving the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of North Korean's nuclear program. Lugar named this item as the nation's foremost nonproliferation priority;
-- Rallying the international community to apply significant pressure on Iran to end its nuclear weapon ambitions;
-- Convincing Russia to bring its short-range, more portable, tactical nuclear weapons into the Nunn-Lugar program;
-- Working with Russian authorities to end bureaucratic roadblocks to nonproliferation and securing their ratification of the Nunn-Lugar Umbrella Agreement, which protects nonproliferation contributions from being taxed by the Russian government, and protects U.S. contractors -- who are doing much of the most difficult work -- from liability in case of an accident;
-- Convincing Russia to open all of its biological weapons facilities and provide full disclosure of its chemical weapons stockpiles, as well as finalizing a plutonium disposition agreement with them;
-- Using confidence-building measures and supporting cooperation between India and Pakistan to bring about nuclear agreements there;
-- Controlling nuclear materials worldwide;
-- Urging U.S. allies to meet their financial pledges for actual nonproliferation projects in the Global Partnership Against Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction; and
-- Expanding the programs for employment of former weapons scientists into the commercial sector of U.S. and European companies.
"The war on terrorism proceeds in a world awash with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and materials," Lugar said. "The minimum standard for victory in this war is the prevention of any terrorist cell from obtaining weapons or materials of mass destruction."
Following is the text of the senator's remarks
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, vulnerability to the use of weapons of mass destruction has been the No. 1 national security dilemma confronting the United States. After many years, the events of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent public discovery of al-Qaeda's methods, capabilities, and intentions finally brought our vulnerability to the forefront.
The War on Terrorism proceeds in a world awash with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and materials. Most of these weapons and materials are stored in the United States and Russia, but they also exist in India, Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Sudan, Israel, Great Britain, France, China, and perhaps other nations.
We must anticipate that terrorists will use weapons of mass destruction if allowed the opportunity. The minimum standard for victory in this war is the prevention of any terrorist cell from obtaining weapons or materials of mass destruction [WMD]. We must make certain that all sources of WMD are identified and systematically guarded or destroyed.
The Nunn-Lugar Program
To combat the WMD threat in the former Soviet Union, our country has implemented the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Since enactment in late 1991, Nunn-Lugar has devoted American technical expertise and money for joint efforts to safeguard and destroy materials and weapons of mass destruction. To date, the weapons systems deactivated or destroyed by the United States under these programs include:
-- 6,312 nuclear warheads;
-- 537 ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles];
-- 459 ICBM silos;
-- 11 ICBM mobile missile launchers;
-- 128 bombers;
-- 708 nuclear air-to-surface missiles;
-- 408 submarine missile launchers;
-- 496 submarine launched missiles;
-- 27 nuclear submarines; and
-- 194 nuclear test tunnels.
In addition:
-- 260 tons of fissile material have received either comprehensive or rapid security upgrades;
-- Security upgrades have been made at some 60 nuclear warhead storage sites;
-- 208 metric tons of Highly Enriched Uranium have been blended down to Low Enriched Uranium;
-- 35 percent of Russia's chemical weapons have received security upgrades;
-- Joint U.S.-Russian research is being conducted at 49 former biological weapons facilities, and security improvements are underway at 4 biological weapons sites;
-- The International Science and Technology Centers, of which the United States is the leading sponsor, have engaged 58,000 former weapons scientists in peaceful work;
-- The International Proliferation Prevention Program has funded 750 projects involving 14,000 former weapons scientists and created some 580 new peaceful high-tech jobs;
-- Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan are nuclear weapons free as a result of cooperative efforts under the Nunn-Lugar program.
These successes were never a foregone conclusion. Today, even after more than 12 years of work, constant vigilance is required to ensure that the Nunn-Lugar program is not encumbered by bureaucratic obstacles or undercut by political disagreements.
[Former U.S. Senator] Sam Nunn [of Georgia] and I have devoted much time and effort to maintaining the momentum of these programs. We have worked in cooperation with uncounted individuals of great dedication serving on the ground in the former Soviet Union and in our own government. Nevertheless, from the beginning, we have encountered resistance to the Nunn-Lugar concept in both the United States and Russia. In our own country, opposition often has been motivated by false perceptions that Nunn-Lugar money is foreign assistance or by beliefs that Defense Department funds should only be spent on troops, weapons, or other warfighting capabilities. We also have encountered latent and persistent Cold War-attitudes toward Russia that have led some Nunn-Lugar opponents to be suspicious of almost any cooperation with Moscow. Until recently, we also faced a general disinterest in nonproliferation that made gaining support for Nunn-Lugar funding and activities an annual struggle.
Explaining and promoting the Nunn-Lugar program has been complicated by the fact that most of its accomplishments have occurred outside the attention of the media. Although progress is measurable, it does not occur as dramatic events that make good news stories. At Surovatikha, for example, Russian solid fuel SS-18 and SS-19 missiles are being dismantled at a rate of four per month. This facility will grind on for years, until all the designated missiles are destroyed. At Shchuchye, the United States and Russia are building a chemical weapons destruction facility that will become operational in 2007. It will destroy about 4.5 percent of Russia's currently declared chemical weapons stockpile per year. This is a painstaking business conducted far away from our shores. As such, building a knowledgeable coalition in favor of nonproliferation programs has never been easy.
Nunn-Lugar in the Presidential Campaign
Presidential campaigns are one of the best barometers of public and media interest in a particular issue. By this measure, nonproliferation enjoyed very little cachet prior to the September 11 attacks.
In 1995 and 1996 when I was running for the Republican presidential nomination, I made combating nuclear terrorism a centerpiece of my campaign. On the campaign trail, I spoke of the risks of nuclear proliferation and explained what we were doing with the Nunn-Lugar program. For example, like the other Republican presidential candidates, I traveled to Dallas in August 1995 to bid for the backing of activists at the "United We Stand America" Conference --- a convocation of the independent political movement begun by Ross Perot during his 1992 presidential candidacy. I delivered a 20-minute speech on nonproliferation, saying, "Nothing threatens the lives of American citizens more than unsecured nuclear materials and weaponry in the hands of Third World fanatics and terrorist groups."
I found that this was not an issue that moved voters or generated media interest. In December 1995, I ran a four-part series of television ads dramatizing the dangers of nuclear terrorism. In those ads I stated: "Ready or not, the next president will be forced to deal with (nuclear terrorism)." Some observers denounced the ads as "fear-mongering." More charitable commentators described my focus on nonproliferation issues as an eccentric preoccupation of a candidate who was too interested in foreign affairs.
The 1996 presidential campaign provides a benchmark of the slow evolution of public attention to catastrophic terrorism. We had already seen the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the March 1995 sarin gas attack in a Tokyo subway by the Aum Shinrikyo cult, the April 1995 Oklahoma City truck bombing, and the November 1995 incident in which Chechen terrorists threatened to detonate a package containing radioactive Cesium 137 in a Moscow park. Despite these frequent reminders of our vulnerability, neither the public nor the media paid attention to proliferation issues.
The general disinterest in this topic was underscored by an April 11, 1996, Pew Research Center poll entitled "Public Apathetic About Nuclear Terrorism." The poll found that 59 percent of Americans surveyed professed "not to be worried" about nuclear terrorism. Only 13 percent "worried a great deal" about the prospect. The summary of the poll stated: "Most Americans acknowledge the fact that terrorists could strike a U.S. city with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, yet few worry about the possibility ... The poll confirms the lack of public engagement on this issue experienced by Senator Richard Lugar, who made this the central issue of his unsuccessful Republican presidential campaign."
Even by 2000 -- two years after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania -- the presidential campaign was almost devoid of discussion of nuclear terrorism and nonproliferation. In three extensive presidential debates, the issue of nonproliferation never came up except for brief mentions of the need to contain Iraq by then-Governor George W. Bush. A comprehensive feature on the candidates on the CNN website cataloged 121 stated positions of Al Gore and 105 of George Bush. None of these 226 positions dealt with nuclear terrorism or nonproliferation strategies. The only mentions of nuclear issues were the opposing positions of the candidates on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and Missile Defense and Vice President Gore's statement that he would continue the Clinton policy on North Korea.
I recall this history to illustrate how much political discourse has changed since the September 11 attacks. We have turned a corner -- the public, the media, and the candidates are paying more attention now. Not only are both major 2004 presidential candidates supportive of the Nunn-Lugar program, they have delivered major speeches on counterproliferation and their representatives are sparring over who is more capable in this area. During the recent Democratic primary season, we even experienced a bidding war in which candidates competed to offer the most effusive endorsements and the largest funding increases for the Nunn-Lugar program and other nonproliferation efforts. Howard Dean and John Edwards called for a tripling of funds devoted to Nunn-Lugar, while John Kerry called for a "major" increase in funding without specifying an exact amount. The recent 9/11 Commission Report weighed in with another important endorsement of the Nunn-Lugar program, saying that "Preventing the proliferation of [weapons of mass destruction] warrants a maximum effort -??by strengthening counterproliferation efforts, expanding the Proliferation Security Initiative, and supporting the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program."
As one of the founders of the program, I am gratified that it has become a featured issue in the debate over national security policy. Although resistance to the program still exists in the U.S. government, we have achieved a rough political consensus on the need for Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs. Perhaps as important, a much higher percentage of policymakers are taking an interest in the Nunn-Lugar program and other nonproliferation efforts.
Nunn-Lugar On the Ground But this emergence from relative obscurity has been accompanied by misconceptions. Exuberant calls to triple funding for Nunn-Lugar are appreciated for their enthusiasm, but they do not reflect how the program works or what is needed most.
In particular, observers of the program must understand that in our immediate future, funding is only one of the limitations on our nonproliferation progress. I support all the funding for the Nunn-Lugar Program that can be used effectively. Nunn-Lugar represents an enormous value for our national security dollar. But in the short run, increasing funding does not ensure that Russia's vast WMD arsenal will be reduced faster or more efficiently than current capabilities.
At this stage, diplomatic breakthroughs with resistant Russian authorities are almost a prerequisite to putting major funding increases to work. Although the Russian government has opened a remarkable number of facilities to the Nunn-Lugar program, others remain closed. Convincing Russia to accelerate its dismantlement schedules, to conclude umbrella agreements that limit liability for contractors, and to open its remaining closed facilities are the most immediate challenges for Nunn-Lugar. Whoever wins election in November must make the removal of these roadblocks a priority. As the roadblocks are removed, Congress and the president, as well as our allies, must commit the funds necessary to exploit the openings.
Another limitation on the usefulness of increased funding in Russia is the engineering dynamics of assembly-line dismantlement. Every project has its own engineering challenges that require a specialized infrastructure. In cases where that infrastructure is mature, incremental increases in funding may be hard to absorb productively. For example, the only way increased funding could be useful to the dismantlement of SS-18s and SS-19s at Surovatikha would be to construct additional dismantlement capacity to complement the current infrastructure that can destroy four missiles a month. But at this stage, Russian authorities have indicated that they are not prepared to deliver more than four missiles a month to Surovatikha. Russian agreement would be necessary both to construct a new facility and to make such a facility worthwhile by supplying it with missiles at a faster rate.
Complicating our efforts is the fact that the Russian government is not a monolith. The president, the Foreign Ministry, the military, local base commanders, and even local governments near dismantlement sites all exert influence on the cooperation and access that we receive. In my travels in Russia, I have often encountered situations where Russian authorities have blocked or complicated visits to sensitive sites. For example, in 2002, I led a small delegation to the city of Kirov, to meet with personnel of a nearby biological weapons facility. We had obtained permission to visit Kirov from the Foreign Ministry. But after boarding our 12-seat aircraft in Moscow, we were informed that we could not take off because the runway at Kirov had not been inspected to determine if it could handle our plane. We knew that the runway at Kirov routinely accommodated airliners the size of 737s. Unnamed officials somewhere in the Russian bureaucracy had tried to shut down our visit. We eventually reached Kirov, but we were not allowed into the biological weapons facility.
This fragmentation of government, however, also has worked in our favor. I visited the Perm missile base in the foothills of the Urals in 2003 to attempt to build support for the destruction of liquid fueled SS-24s and SS-25s. The Governor of the Perm region, Yuri Trutnev, has been a vocal advocate of using the missile base as a dismantlement facility for the ICBMs. When I visited there I witnessed an example of the evolution of Russian democracy. Governor Trutnev arranged for a joint press conference with me at the airport that was designed to underscore the regional economic benefits of a missile dismantlement facility and to address environmental concerns raised by local interest groups. Like most politicians, he is hoping to draw jobs and money to his region, and he sees a Nunn-Lugar dismantlement operation as a source of steady work for his constituents.
Encouraging these positive forces within Russia is one of the reasons why I have traveled frequently to Nunn-Lugar sites. Russian military and political leaders as well as local economic interests want to know that the U.S. is engaged and committed to the program. The appearance of American officials strengthens the hand of Russians who have embraced the Nunn-Lugar program and improves our chances of gaining access to new dismantlement opportunities.
Taking Nunn-Lugar Global
The Nunn-Lugar Program has established a deep reservoir of experience and talent that could be applied to nonproliferation objectives around the world. The original Nunn-Lugar bill was concerned with the former Soviet Union, because that is where the vast majority of weapons and materials of mass destruction were. Today, we must be prepared with money and expertise to extend the Nunn-Lugar concept wherever it can be usefully applied.
I can attest to the energy and imagination of technicians, contract supervisors, equipment operators, negotiators, auditors, and many other specialists who have been willing to live in remote areas of the former Soviet Union to get this job done. This is an instrument begging to be used anywhere that we can achieve diplomatic breakthroughs.
The utility of the Nunn-Lugar concept rests not only with raw numbers of weapons destroyed. It also has been an important vehicle for communication and cooperation. The Nunn-Lugar Program continued as a constant in the U.S.-Russian relationship even when other aspects of the relationship were in decline. It has improved military-to-military contacts and established greater transparency in areas that used to be the object of intense secrecy and suspicion.
During the last Congress, I introduced the Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act, which allows $50 million in Nunn-Lugar funding to be used outside the former Soviet Union. President Bush signed the legislation into law in 2003. This Act allows us to take advantage of nonproliferation opportunities wherever they may appear. President Bush has embraced the Nunn-Lugar concept and has endorsed efforts to apply it worldwide. Russia will continue to be a major focus but emerging risks must also be addressed in the Middle East and Asia. In addition, Nunn-Lugar concepts and experience may be valuable in addressing specific vulnerabilities involving radiological material that could be used in dirty bombs. Nunn-Lugar has developed a unique capability to meet a variety of proliferation threats. But the program needs firm policy guidance and aggressive diplomacy to engage potential partners.
Seeking Breakthroughs in Nonproliferation
So what is the nonproliferation agenda for the winning presidential candidate? In my view, he must bring the full weight of U.S. diplomatic and economic power to bear on pursuing at least the following 12 breakthroughs. Admittedly, this is a daunting list. No president will achieve every objective enumerated here. He will have influence over all of them, but he will have absolute power over none of them. The list illustrates that the uncertain work of nonproliferation requires flexibility, persistence, creativity, and allied cooperation. It also illustrates how many different areas present grave risk to our national security.
1. Achieve the Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible Dismantlement of North Korea's Nuclear Program. North Korea must be the No. 1 nonproliferation priority. It may have as many as six nuclear weapons, and Pyongyang is notorious for selling its weapons technology to anyone with ready cash. To achieve a complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program, the North must freeze and disable all its nuclear weapons, components, and facilities, and place all of its fissile material under safeguards. We must also pursue a phased, verifiable agreement to eliminate the weapons program and terminate its export of ballistic missiles. In doing so, we should insist that an exhaustive and creative verification methodology is at the heart of any agreement. Realistically, I do not expect North Korea to immediately embrace an intrusive inspections and dismantlement program. But the Bush Administration has done the right thing by suggesting using the Nunn-Lugar program as a model for future action.
2. Establish International Will to End Iran's Nuclear Program. Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program, no matter how loudly they may deny it. Our challenge is to rally the international community, which largely shares our views on that fact, to apply significant pressure on Teheran to verifiably abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions. If Iran does not immediately change course, we should insist that the issue, now before the International Atomic Energy Agency, be referred to the United Nations Security Council for action. To compel Iran to abide by its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which includes submitting to full inspections and safeguards, the Security Council must be prepared to impose the entire range of sanctions -- diplomatic, economic, and military.
3. Bring Russian Tactical Nuclear Weapons into the Nunn-Lugar Program. For all the successes we have had in dismantling Russian intercontinental missiles and strategic warheads, Moscow refuses even to discuss the issue of tactical nuclear weapons, which in many ways may be even more dangerous. They're more portable, and they're usually stored closer to potential flashpoints. Moscow should fully account for its stocks of tactical nukes as a first step toward bringing them into Nunn-Lugar.
4. Control Nuclear Materials Worldwide. The United States must lead a new effort to contain the weapons-grade material outside the former Soviet Union that poses a threat to international security. We must help develop a comprehensive program that will address each facility that possesses high-risk material, eliminate stockpiles of spent reactor fuel that can be reprocessed, make a risk assessment of the world's scores of research reactors and their vulnerability, and promote efforts to convert research reactors to low-enriched uranium fuel. The Bush administration has made an important start with Secretary Abraham's announcement in May of the Global Threat Reduction Initiative, which is aimed at securing a broad range of vulnerable nuclear and radiological materials around the world. This will compliment President Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative, which expands our ability to interdict illegal shipments of such materials.
5. Win India and Pakistan Nuclear Agreements. The border between India and Pakistan has been called the most dangerous place in the world. We must devote sustained efforts to promote confidence-building measures and to support the encouraging steps these two nuclear-armed foes have already taken on their own. We can promote exchanges between Pakistani and Indian security experts, and offer assistance on export controls, border security, and the protection, control and accounting of nuclear arsenals. This will require some diplomatic and administrative skill to stay within our NPT obligations.
6. Open Russia's Biological Weapons Facilities. We are making progress in converting Russia's biological weapons facilities to peaceful uses and in employing its former bioweapons scientists. But there is a major gap in the program: four former Soviet military facilities have not opened their doors to inspection. We must make it a priority to close that gap.
7. Secure Full Russian Disclosure of its Chemical Weapons Stockpile. While we have made hard-won progress in preparing for the destruction of Russia's 40,000-ton stockpile of known chemical weapons, Russian obstinacy has slowed the process. At Shchuchye, where destruction won't begin until 2007, I saw nearly two million warheads and artillery shells, many of which were so compact they could easily be concealed in a briefcase. But Moscow refuses to disclose the full extent of its chemical weapons stocks, casting a shadow over the program. It makes certification under the Nunn-Lugar program problematic and has required new legislation and presidential waivers to keep funding on track.
8. Transform the Russian Bureaucracy to End Roadblocks to Nonproliferation Cooperation. Even with adequate funding and high-level agreements, the Nunn-Lugar Program still faces roadblocks erected by Russian bureaucrats and military officers. They have denied access to sites, refused to provide tax-free status to participating countries, and failed to extend the necessary liability protections to G-8 partners, all of which stymies progress. Russia still has 340 tons of fissile material that has not been adequately secured, and 70 warhead sites that need more protection. Our government must keep pressure on President Putin to demand action and make the changes necessary to get it.
9. Win Focused Commitment from U.S. and European Companies to Engage Weapons Scientists. We have long recognized that economic hardship and desperation could drive some weapons scientists into the arms of well-financed rogue states or terrorist organizations. The tens of thousands of scientists we have employed are mostly working at government-sponsored or government-subsidized jobs, but a number of American companies have shown the way forward by employing some of these well-trained individuals. We must capitalize on this success by commercializing the process and move many more of these men and women into sustainable private sector jobs where they can put their skills to profitable civilian use.
10. Secure Russian Ratification of the Nunn-Lugar Umbrella Agreement. This agreement underpins all U.S. threat reduction programs in the former Soviet Union. It protects contributions to weapons clean-up from being taxed by Russian authorities, and protects U.S. contractors -- who are doing much of the most difficult work -- from liability in case of an accident or other mishap. Without these guarantees, work would halt. We have negotiated an extension of the agreement, successfully fending off Russian attempts to weaken it. Ratification by the Duma is critical to maintaining a solid foundation for this complex effort, and earlier this year Senator Joe Biden and I wrote a letter to Russian leaders urging quick action. Yet President Putin has so far failed to present the extension for a vote.
11. Finalize a Plutonium Disposition Agreement. Russia has 134 metric tons of dangerous, long-lived plutonium that is not currently covered by any cooperative threat reduction program. An effort to destroy this material is still blocked by the same issues of liability, accountability, and access that once hindered the Nunn-Lugar Program on weapons dismantlement.
12. Ensure the Fulfillment of Global Partnership Pledges. Under President Bush's leadership, the G-8 summit in 2002 formed the Global Partnership Against Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, nicknamed "10 Plus 10 Over 10." The United States agreed to provide $10 billion in cooperative threat reduction funds over the next 10 years if our partners would add another $10 billion. We've done our share, and many of our allies are off to an excellent start. But overall, our partners' pledges are $3 billion short. Moreover, not enough of the money that has been pledged has been allocated for actual Global Partnership projects. We have identified important dismantlement objectives, such as chemical weapons stocks and non-strategic nuclear submarines, which need this funding. Our allies must turn pledges into projects.
I am confident that whoever is elected in November would find substantial public support for this set of initiatives. The American public wants the president to engage in foreign affairs to improve the security of the United States. A June 2004 New York Times/CBS poll found that 38 percent of Americans surveyed said that foreign policy was "the issue they most wanted to hear the candidates discuss during the campaign." This compared to corresponding polls by the same polling organization that found only one percent of Americans in 1996 and three percent in 2000 viewed foreign policy as the most important problem facing the country.
The American people expect their government to be working day and night to find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction. So do I. Our political leadership and nonproliferation experts must engage Russia to unlock the last doors to the dismantlement of its weapons programs. Further, they should scour the globe to identify and create opportunities to dismantle dangerous weapons programs outside the former Soviet Union. Persistent diplomacy at the highest levels of our government is needed each day if we are to succeed.
-------- terrorism
FDA Wary Of Importing Drugs Because Of Terrorism Risk
Acting Commissioner Concerned About Safety, Quality Of Prescriptions
August 12, 2004
Bakersfield Channel
http://www.thebakersfieldchannel.com/health/3647826/detail.html
WASHINGTON -- "Cues from chatter" gathered around the world are raising concerns that terrorists might try to attack the domestic food and drug supply, particularly illegally imported prescription drugs, acting Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Lester M. Crawford says.
In an interview with The Associated Press, Crawford said Wednesday that he had been briefed about al-Qaida plans uncovered during recent arrests and raids, but declined further comment about any possible threats.
"While we must assume that such a threat exists generally, we have no specific information now about any al-Qaida threats to our food or drug supply," said Brian Roehrkasse, spokesman for the Homeland Security Department.
Crawford said the possibility of such an attack was the most serious of his concerns about the increase in states and municipalities trying to import drugs from Canada to save money.
"We get our cues from chatter that occurs around the world, which is related to us by the intelligence community, and also from past incidents and things that happened domestically," he said.
Crawford noted the 1982 Tylenol case, in which packages of the extra-strength variety of the leading painkiller were removed from store shelves on Chicago's west side, filled with cyanide and returned to stores for purchase. Seven unsuspecting consumers were killed, and the incident prompted widespread adoption of tamperproof packaging.
"I would think that's something they would be looking at," Crawford said of terrorists. "Nothing like that has happened," he added. "But it is a source of continuing concern."
FDA is under mounting pressure -- and faces a lawsuit filed by the state of Vermont -- to soften its opposition to importing drugs from Canada, which is seen by many consumers and state and local government officials as a way to shave thousands to millions of dollars from drug bills.
The FDA has held fast, saying it is concerned about the safety and effectiveness of the illegally imported drugs. So far, however, the agency has done little more than issue warning letters. And Crawford said the agency has not decided whether to vigorously defend itself against the Vermont lawsuit.
The agency's jitters about Canadian prescription imports are many. According to Crawford, some drugs are shipped without proper refrigeration, some have the wrong potency and some are counterfeit, lacking active ingredients.
Crawford's top concern is that terrorists could strike at drugs.
He said he was briefed about the al-Qaida threats uncovered by recent arrests and raids. Asked whether the briefing covered potential terror strikes against products the agency regulates -- including food and drugs -- Crawford declined further comment.
Two recent product tampering episodes the agency faced this summer ended without injury or death.
Baby food, which Crawford said was probably singled out for its "shock" effect, was laced with ground castor beans in Irvine, Calif. The contamination source is unclear; no arrest has been made. Ricin, a deadly toxin, is made from castor beans.
And a shipment of lemons from Argentina allegedly impregnated with an unidentified "harmful biological substance" was barred from entry at the Port of Newark, N.J., on Aug. 6. The U.S. Coast Guard, Homeland Security Department and the FDA worked on the investigation, freezing the lemons to preserve the contaminant.
"There was nothing we could find in there," Crawford said.
On other issues, Crawford said:
- A second review links antidepressants with higher suicide rates among children. While outside observers who have read both reports say they contain enough detail for the FDA to recommend Prozac as the first drug of choice for depressed youths, Crawford said the agency will wait until its advisory committee meets in mid-September to give the FDA an expert basis for action.
- The agency approved two new injectable drugs, pentetate calcium trisodium and pentetate zinc trisodium, that speed the body's ability to rid itself of radioactive contamination. The drugs are the first products approved to treat contamination with plutonium, americium or curium, which could be released by a "dirty" bomb.
- Before year's end, the agency will provide regulations that define low-, reduced- or carbohydrate-free items. The FDA is leaning toward educating the public by highlighting healthier foods with a "starburst" tag or color-coded label.
-------- u.s. nuc weapons
Brooks aims to 'clarify' Bush nuke moves
August 12, 2004
By Thom J. Rose
UPI Correspondent
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040811-055622-5998r.htm
Washington, DC, Aug. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. National Nuclear Security Administrator Linton Brooks countered what he called ill-informed charges Wednesday that the Bush administration is seeking new types of nuclear weapons and neglecting non-proliferation efforts.
"Our policy has been commonly misunderstood and occasionally distorted," Brooks said at a Washington conference on nuclear issues.
Brooks said he and his agency have not combated misunderstandings about their direction aggressively enough and vowed to do his best to set the record straight.
Some observers said Brooks' speech went beyond clarification, however, and represented a concrete step away from the administrations' original goals.
"It's quite clear that they have changed their policy," said Christopher Paine of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "They clearly wanted a whole range of new weapons."
Brooks denied any such ambitions, saying representations of administration weapons research have often been exaggerated.
The stories to which Brooks has objected concern administration efforts to allow research for lower-yield nuclear weapons and hardened earth-penetrating bombs designed to destroy underground targets with minimal collateral damage.
"We sought and gained repeal of the so-called prohibition on low-yield warhead development, which banned research that quote 'could lead to' designs of less than five kilotons," Brooks said. "We did this to get the freedom to explore new concepts without the chilling input on scientific inquiry."
Research programs into both low-yield nuclear bombs and earth-penetrating nuclear weapons were approved by Congress and are currently being carried out.
The administration's proposed 2005 budget contains $9 million to investigate new nuclear-weapons concepts, including smaller nuclear bombs. The National Nuclear Security Administration has requested $27 million for 2005 and just less than $485 million over five years to research earth-penetrating nuclear bombs.
Brooks stressed, however, that further research does not imply that such a weapon could be built in the near future. Any move to go beyond researching low-yield bombs to actually developing them would require congressional approval.
Sidney Drell, a professor emeritus of physics at Stanford University and longtime adviser to the U.S. government on nuclear issues, said that any consideration of low-yield weapons should be avoided.
"Do we really want to support a policy which makes nuclear weapons more usable?" Drell asked at the conference.
Brooks said the United States has always had some low-yield weapons and they have not reduced barriers to nuclear war.
"U.S. research programs (into low-yield weapons) would not blur the lines between nuclear and conventional weapons or make nuclear use more likely," he added.
Brooks said recently funded research into earth-penetrating bombs came at the request of military leaders who have seen potential uses for them against rogue states that hide sensitive sites deep underground. He stressed that the research is preliminary and does not imply that the United States will actually produce new earth-penetrating nuclear bombs.
"Whether it's actually worth doing, we don't know yet," Brooks said. "We don't think we should make a decision until the study is completed."
Some analysts have accused the Bush administration of seeking nuclear weapons that would inflict less collateral damage in an effort to make possible pre-preemptive nuclear strikes against threatening nations.
Brooks dismissed that charge as far-fetched.
"Nuclear pre-emption with a low-yield weapon is fanciful," he said. "I've never heard anyone in the administration who could foresee circumstances under which we would consider nuclear preemption."
Beyond accusations that the administration's research might lower the threshold for nuclear war, the Bush White House has been criticized for potentially compromising non-proliferation efforts with its moves to consider an expanded nuclear capacity.
"By words and deeds, the United States has to be careful not to weaken this non-proliferation system that is already under stress." Drell said. "We have to stop the attitude that nuclear weapons are OK for us, but they're bad in somebody else's hands."
Brooks said he did not think the administration's nuclear moves have encouraged rogue states or terrorist groups to heighten their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. "It seems to me much more plausible that these drives are a response to the overall strength of the United States," Brooks said.
"The one area where I think we have to worry is in ensuring international support among our friends and allies for our non-proliferation commitments and programs," Brooks added.
He said that better public explanations of the administration's true goals would mitigate that damage, however.
Brooks received several questions about the United States' refusal to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would ban further nuclear testing.
"There is no date in the future at which we plan to resume nuclear testing," Brooks said. He added, however, that the aging U.S. stockpile might make it necessary at some point to verify the effectiveness of U.S. nuclear weapons and said it would be unwise to prevent the United States from performing the tests necessary to do that.
Drell disagreed, saying, "I see no need for any thought of resuming testing.
"All our allies in NATO, including Britain and France, have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. I think it's time for the U.S. to reconsider this," Drell added.
(Please send comments to nationaldesk@upi.com.)
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- california
Federal study finds no public health risk at Livermore lab
But local group's leader says research tied to 'junk science'
Carrie Sturrock,
San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2004/08/12/BAGJ086GNP1.DTL&type=health
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory does not pose an apparent public health risk, a federal study has concluded, sparking anger among people in the community who called the assessment flawed.
The study, conducted by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, is the first complete federal public health assessment of the laboratory. The findings, which were sharply criticized by some community members, pleased administrators at the laboratory, which is managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy.
"There are no public health impacts from our operations and they don't expect there will be," Bert Heffner, manager of environmental community relations at the laboratory, said Wednesday. "Our monitoring of data over the past 40 years has confirmed that, but it's always good to have a federal agency with a dispassionate third-party view put you under scrutiny."
While the assessment -- which included various studies conducted over the last decade -- was released June 29, the agency planned to hold a public forum in Livermore Wednesday night to answer questions.
The study disappointed Marylia Kelley, executive director of Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), who called the methodology used in parts of the assessment "junk science." Her group had been part of a site team to help the federal agency assess the lab, but she now plans to resign.
"They have disregarded our input at each and every turn," she said. "To use us to give some imprimatur of community acceptance is unacceptable to my group. ... This report doesn't have any practical application other than for Livermore lab to wave it around and say, 'Some agency likes us.' "
The lab was placed on the Superfund National Priorities List in 1987 after volatile organic compounds were found in the groundwater and nearby drinking wells. The lab's Site 300 in Tracy has low levels of radioactive contaminants, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Agency for Toxic Substances looked at all possible contaminants at the main site, including plutonium and tritium, and officially deemed the lab "No Apparent Public Health Hazard."
"This conclusion means that although community exposures to site-related contaminants may have occurred, or are occurring, the resulting doses are unlikely to result in any adverse health effects and are consequently below levels of public health concern."
Kathy Setian, a Superfund project manager for the EPA, said she found the report to be reasonable. The lab will remain on the Superfund list and continue to clean up the contaminants in the groundwater, which is not considered a health hazard because no one is drinking it.
"It's not a question of whether it's being used for drinking water today, " Setian said. "If it's allowed to go untreated and migrate on its own, it could hit the water supply wells."
The report can be found at www-envirinfo.llnl.gov/ATSDR_Livsite_pha_final.pdf
E-mail Carrie Sturrock at csturrock@sfchronicle.com.
-------- nevada
Bush Defends Nuclear Waste Plan in Nevada
August 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush.html
LAS VEGAS (AP) -- President Bush on Thursday defended his decision to use Nevada's Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump, an unpopular move in a swing state that he won four years ago.
``I said I would make a decision based upon science, not politics. I said I would listen to the scientists, those involved with determining whether or not this project could move forward in a safe manner and that's exactly what I did,'' Bush told supporters in this city 90 miles southeast of the proposed waste site.
Bush accused Democratic Sen. John Kerry of pandering to Nevada voters by playing both sides of the issue, part of a broader effort to cast the Massachusetts senator as someone who bends to the political winds.
``He says he's strongly against Yucca here in Nevada, but he voted for it several times,'' Bush claimed.
That is not exactly true.
Each time Kerry has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca Mountain, he has voted against it. But he has voted for some measures that had provisions to allow nuclear dumps there. Some 16 years ago, Kerry voted for an overall budget bill that included a provision favoring putting the nuclear waste in Nevada.
Kerry visited Las Vegas earlier this week, and said that Bush broke a campaign promise to ensure science and not politics determined his decision whether to ship waste to Yucca Mountain.
Dozens of scientific studies remain incomplete and a recent federal appeals court ruling raised questions about whether the waste repository will be built, or at least meet its target of 2010 to begin operation.
Bush said he was pleased to ``allow this process to be appealed to the courts and to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.''
``I will stand by the decision of the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,'' Bush said.
Bush's visit here was his second in two months. Though Nevada has only five electoral votes -- a tiny slice of the 270 needed to win the presidency -- it has become a hotly contested prize in an election that is so close.
A poll of likely Nevada voters in late July showed the race essentially tied.
From Nevada, Bush was jetting to Santa Monica, Calif. for a Republican National Committee fund raiser, his 12th visit to California. He has not been there in five months, a measure of the pessimism in Bush's camp about winning California's 55 electoral votes.
While in California, the president and the first lady stopped by former first lady Nancy Reagan's home in Bel Air. After meeting with her for about 30 minutes, the three emerged from the house and the president told reporters that he and Mrs. Bush were ``honored to pay our respects.''
``I'm so glad you came,'' Mrs. Reagan said. Her husband, former President Reagan, died in June.
Recent polls show Kerry holds a lead of about 11 percentage points, despite Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory in last year's gubernatorial recall election. Schwarzenegger was introducing Laura Bush at Thursday night's fund raiser.
Kerry also campaigned in Southern California on Thursday, saying Bush's tax cuts failed to spur job creation.
Bush defended the tax cuts in his speech at a Las Vegas union hall, which the Bush campaign packed with hundreds of Republican supporters.
``All I ask is to be careful about all of this talk about taxing the rich,'' Bush said. ``The so-called rich hire accountants and lawyers to maybe not pay as much. And therefore in order to meet all of these promises, guess who ends up getting stuck with the bill? The working people.''
It was Bush's latest attempt to court a friendly labor union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. Most labor unions lean strongly Democratic.
-------- new jersey
Oyster Creek wants rule waived
8/12/04
Asbury Park Press
By NICHOLAS CLUNN MANAHAWKIN BUREAU
http://www.app.com/app/story/0,21625,1024672,00.html
The owner of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant yesterday asked the federal government for permission to operate beyond the expiration of its operating license if its application for a renewed license is still pending.
If AmerGen Energy, the nuclear plant owner, applied to renew its license at least five years before the expiration date, the temporary extension would have been automatic under federal law. But Oyster Creek doesn't intend to submit its formal application until next year, four years before the 2009 expiration date.
AmerGen said the application was delayed, however, because its ownership was changing. AmerGen had been jointly owned by Exelon, an American holding company, and British Energy. In December, Exelon purchased British Energy's interest.
AmerGen said it normally would take 30 months for a renewal licensed to be processed. Under that timetable, Oyster Creek would know before the current license expired if the renewal application was approved or denied.
But the company wants insurance, said company spokesman Pete Resler. Because many people oppose the renewal, the application could take longer, he said.
Saxton calls for study
Meanwhile, Rep. H. James Saxton, R-N.J., said he will call for Oyster Creek's closure unless an independent study determines that the plant can operate safely under a renewed license. He plans to introduce a bill next month that would order the National Academy of Sciences to study the plant's fitness and prohibit the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission from relicensing Oyster Creek until it obtains the academy's recommendations.
"Everyone knows that this is the oldest plant in the country, and because of that, extra effort should be expended to give it a closer look," he said during a telephone interview with the Asbury Park Press.
Also yesterday, a spokesman for U.S. Sen. Jon S. Corzine, D-N.J. said the senator will take a stance on the licensing issue and that he has met with both plant officials and critics.
AmerGen intends to submit its renewal application to the NRC by mid-2005. An approved application would allow the plant to operate for an additional 20 years beyond its current 40-year operating license, which expires in April 2009.
Located off a rural stretch of Route 9, Oyster Creek produces 9 percent of New Jersey's electricity, enough to power 600,000 homes. The plant also employs 450 workers and last year pumped $52 million into Ocean County's economy, according to plant figures.
Saxton yesterday added himself to a list of elected officials, public interest groups and concerned citizens critical of AmerGen's licensing plan. Resolutions either opposing relicensing or seeking an immediate shutdown of Oyster Creek have been passed in 17 of Ocean County's 33 towns.
Gov. McGreevey last month called for AmerGen to permanently close Oyster Creek in 2009, as did an eight-day Asbury Park Press editorial page series in June. The scrutiny surrounding Oyster Creek has been unprecedented, according to industry observers.
If the NRC denies AmerGen's request for insurance, and safety review and public input requirements pertaining to the renewal application process aren't complete by April 2009, then the company will close Oyster Creek, said Resler. Environmental reviews, however, could occur during a special operating period, according to AmerGen's terms.
The license renewal process proceeds along two tracks -- one for safety issues and another for environmental issues. It could take as long as 30 months to complete.
An NRC denial of the temporary permit would not alter AmerGen's plan to seek renewal. The company hopes to receive a decision from the NRC by the end of the year, Resler said.
Adamant opponent
Brick Mayor Joseph C. Scarpelli, a staunch renewal opponent, called on the NRC yesterday to deny AmerGen's request.
"If they are not ready, then they should begin the decommissioning process," he said.
The timing of AmerGen's request and Saxton's announcement were coincidental. Although Saxton said he's been "concerned about the generating facility for some years," especially following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a tour of the plant and meetings with government officials helped seal his opinion.
The congressman met twice with NRC Chairman Nils J. Diaz, but was particularly moved by Gerald Nicholls, director of the state Department of Environmental Protection Division of Environmental Safety and Health.
Saxton said he became "very uncomfortable" when Nicholls told him about the renewal application process. Plant owners, Nicholls told Saxton, are responsible for identifying and solving plant weaknesses. Then, the NRC either approves or denies the plant's solution or recommends another, based on its studies.
"The NRC should not review itself or operations it has previously overseen and approved," Saxton said. "An independent study would give us an unbiased assessment."
According to a draft bill Saxton plans to introduce, the federal government would fund a safety assessment performed by the National Academy of Sciences. The academy would study Oyster Creek's conformance to safety requirements, grade its performance and evaluate its self-assessments. It would then compile a report and forward copies to Congress and the NRC.
Saxton said he may consider revising the bill so that every nuclear power plant would be required to undergo an academy review.
Corzine, meanwhile, is attempting to gather input from as many people as possible before taking a stance on Oyster Creek's licensing plans. On Aug. 2, he met separately with AmerGen officials and renewal critics, according to his spokesman.
Nicholas Clunn: (609) 978-4597 or nclunn@app.com
-------- new mexico
Nuclear Lab's Missing Disks May Not Exist
August 12, 2004
New York Times
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/politics/12lab.html
SANTA FE, N.M., Aug. 11 - A simple clerical error may be to blame for the security alarm that led to the shutdown of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, people inside and outside the laboratory say.
In interviews on Wednesday, employees and people who have spoken with Los Alamos managers said it appeared that two computer disks said to contain classified information and to be missing had never been created. Through an oversight, they continued, the disks were still assigned bar codes that were entered into the laboratory's inventory for tracking classified material.
Through spokesmen, both the laboratory and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which is involved in the search for the disks, refused to comment on the assertions, which were first reported Tuesday by KRQE-TV in Albuquerque.
Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, said in a statement posted on his Web site on Tuesday that "it may be that what we have here is a false positive - the system says something is missing when it is not."
Mr. Domenici, who toured the laboratory on Monday with its director, G. Peter Nanos, added, "This entire situation only reinforces that we need to improve the inventory system."
Peter Stockton, an investigator with the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group in Washington, said the staff of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Los Alamos's work, was told by managers last week that the disks had never been made.
"At first I couldn't believe they were serious," Mr. Stockton said. "But then it's not likely they're making this up. It's been seven weeks and they're taking a huge pummeling. It's an indication of what a mess their control over classified information is."
The disks were reported missing on July 7. Eight days later, Mr. Nanos halted all classified work at Los Alamos, and on July 16 he ordered all work to stop indefinitely. Since then, the laboratory's 12,000 employees and contractors have been reviewing all safety and security measures before being allowed to resume work.
Kevin Roark, a spokesman for Los Alamos, said Wednesday that all "low risk" operations were back in business and that new criteria were being drawn for the resumption of classified and hazardous work. The laboratory, which costs $4 million to $5 million a day to operate, should be fully operational in October, he said.
The reports that disks were missing led to the suspensions of 23 scientists, brought accusations of incompetence from Congressional critics and threw into question the University of California's longstanding contract to manage the laboratory. Los Alamos, one of the nation's premier nuclear-weapons laboratories, has been under heavy criticism for years over accusations of lax security and safety measures and improper financial controls.
The management contract will be open for bidding next year. The University of California, which has managed Los Alamos since its inception 61 years ago, says it has not decided whether to compete for the contract.
Dr. Charles Keller, an astrophysicist who is a retired weapons scientist at Los Alamos, said Wednesday that he had spoken with several employees over the past week about the seeming disappearance. The consensus, Dr. Keller said, is that someone tried to save time by creating the paperwork for the disks before they were actually made.
"You can imagine people trying to streamline things," he said. "Maybe the information fit on fewer disks than was anticipated. I'm not saying that's how it happened, but it's what people do when they're trying to make their work run smoothly.''
"Every day, researchers have to make a decision between following all the rules or getting something done," Dr. Keller went on. "The rules were made with the best of intentions, but it gets to the point that there are so many forms to fill out, so many rules to follow, that the process grinds to a halt."
The laboratory spokesman, Mr. Roark, said the inquiry into the reported disappearance was continuing, and added, "As soon as we have some definite results that have been validated by an outside party, we'll make an announcement." He would not name the third party.
Bill Elwell, a spokesman for the F.B.I. in New Mexico, said: "Right now we have a pending investigation. And until that's completely done, we're not going to say anything."
----
Keeping Track Of Crucial Lab Materials
August 12, 2004
Albuquerque Journal Editorial
http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/1OP8-12.HTM
Just over a month after two computer information storage disks were reported missing from the top-secret Weapons Physics Directorate at Los Alamos National Laboratory, people in the know are questioning whether the disks are missing or never even existed.
After meeting with lab director Pete Nanos Monday, Sen. Pete Domenici issued a statement: "It may be that what we have here is a false positive -- the system says something is missing when it is not. ... It is better to find out the inventory is wrong than that the disks were actually missing," the New Mexico Republican said.
He's certainly right about that; it will be much better if this latest scare about the security of nuclear weapons secrets at the lab turns out to nothing more than a clerical error.
But consider the repercussions so far:
- Scientific research and classified work at Los Alamos have been shut down for almost four weeks at a cost to taxpayers that Nanos has estimated will run into the hundreds of millions.
- The use of classified computer storage media at national laboratories has been stopped nationwide until each facility is able to validate its inventory.
- More than a dozen lab workers have been placed on paid leave and may lose clearance to work with classified material.
- Congressional support for the University of California, which has run the lab for more than half a century, has further eroded.
Some people are questioning whether Nanos overreacted, but when nuclear secrets are involved, uncertainty demands extreme action.
Los Alamos officials decline to comment on the possibility the disks do not exist, saying the findings will be made public when there is "some definitive resolution."
Clearing up uncertainty will be a big part of the resolution, a big step toward restoring lab credibility with the public, and with Congress. Fixing the inventory process will be another big step.
Meanwhile, anti-nuclear activists are using this down time at the lab to push for a better accounting of discrepancies between two databases -- one used at the Department of Energy, the other at the lab -- that track plutonium at Los Alamos.
Government records show the two methods for tracking plutonium are off by about 1,700 pounds, but the material is likely not weapons-grade plutonium.
Two activist groups have urged Nanos to resolve this discrepancy before resuming full operations at the lab.
In his Tuesday statement, Domenici wrote that "Los Alamos' system of tracking its classified inventory is clearly a mess if we cannot tell if classified material is missing."
If the missing material is plutonium, it's a mess with a very long half-life.
This would be a good time to put efforts to resolve the plutonium discrepancy back onto the front burner, even if the problem can't be resolved before the lab resumes full operation.
===
'Plutonium Discrepancy' Cited
Albuquerque Journal
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
By Adam Rankin Journal Staff Writer
Anti-nuclear activists see the current work stand-down at Los Alamos National Laboratory as the perfect time for managers at the nuclear weapons facility to get their plutonium accounting into order.
Since at least 1996, Department of Energy officials have been concerned about a discrepancy in the way plutonium is tracked between two different databases used by both DOE and the lab. In fact, government records for LANL show the two methods differ by as much as 765 kilograms roughly 1,700 pounds.
The plutonium gap includes a mix of plutonium sources and is likely not all pure plutonium and not all weapons-grade, though it is impossible to determine based on the records.
The discrepancy at LANL is by far the largest at any of DOE's laboratories. The next closest is the Savannah River Complex in South Carolina, with a discrepancy of 391 kilograms.
"Los Alamos operations are in a work stand-down supposedly until all safety and security issues are resolved this fits right in," Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico, said in a telephone interview.
"It is one thing to have the loss of nuclear design information, but it is another to have such a large amount of plutonium unaccounted for," he said.
Coghlan and Joni Arends, director of Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, joined Arjun Makhijani, president of the Maryland-based Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in a letter urging LANL director Pete Nanos to resolve the discrepancy before resuming full operations.
Makhijani said LANL and DOE should be as serious about fixing their past plutonium accounting problems as they are about finding LANL's missing disks, if the disks are even missing.
"I am not saying that it (plutonium) is lost, it may be that there are completely innocent explanations... the likely explanation is it is in the waste, and we can't determine it," he said.
But LANL is "the lead lab in terms of security, and if they can't get their waste numbers right, who is going to do it?" Makhijani asked.
Nanos shut down all work at LANL on July 16 following the discovery that two Zip disks may have disappeared. He said work wouldn't resume until all employees follow safety and security procedures.
LANL spokesman Kevin Roark said: "We are satisfied with our accounting systems. We're following the rules when it comes to accounting for materials that go into the waste stream."
Calls to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which is responsible for overseeing the security of the nation's nuclear materials, were not immediately returned.
Makhijani said LANL's failure to resolve the plutonium accounting discrepancy stems from the same arrogance that Nanos termed a behavioral problem and caused him to halt all work.
And he said a DOE task force formed to track down and resolve the discrepancy "essentially melted away" in the late 1990s, without resolving anything.
Makhijani asked what people would think if other nuclear countries had a plutonium discrepancy and said, "It is just in the waste, trust us."
====
IEER Press Release
For further information, contact:
Dr. Arjun Makhijani IEER (301) 365-6723
Jay Coghlan NWNM (505) 989-7342
Joni Arends CCNS (505) 986-1973
For immediate release,
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
LOS ALAMOS HAS "IMMENSE" PLUTONIUM INVENTORY DISCREPANCY - 150 BOMBS WORTH EXPLANATION SOUGHT FOR 765 KILOGRAM DIFFERENCE IN WASTE ACCOUNTS; GROUPS CITE POTENTIAL SECURITY, ENVIRONMENTAL AND SAFETY ISSUES; URGE CONTINUED "STAND DOWN" UNTIL LAB, ENERGY DEPT. DATA ARE RECONCILED
All operations involving plutonium at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) should continue to "stand down" until "an immense discrepancy in the accounts for how much plutonium is in the waste at LANL" is reconciled, according to a letter from watchdog groups delivered today to LANL Director G. Peter Nanos.
According to the letter, "The Department of Energy (DOE) reported a discharge to waste from LANL of 610 kilograms of plutonium; Los Alamos indicates a figure of 1,375 kilograms . . . a discrepancy of 765 kilograms, the equivalent of 150 nuclear weapons. This is unacceptable by any imaginable standards and constitutes a crucial safety, environmental, and security issue."
The letter was sent by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), Nuclear Watch of New Mexico and Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety. Copies were simultaneously delivered to DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and key members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives.
Calling the accounting discrepancy "huge," it continues, "If the LANL number is anywhere close to correct, then there may be very serious implications regarding the lack of d ue care in minimizing losses of an extremelyexpensive, proliferation-sensitive, and dangerous material. On the other hand, if the 1,375 kilograms that is now booked as waste is not, in fact, in the waste, the security implications are obvious." Plutonium is both a core ingredient for modern nuclear weapons and a cancer-causing contaminant for humans.
The LANL plutonium accounting discrepancy was first noted in a 1996 DOE memorandum, which the letter signers posted on the internet. An agency working group set up to address the issue at that time never issued a report. "To the best of our knowledge, LANL has yet to explain the large plutonium accounting discrepancy or address its security implications," the signers stated.
"It is completely unacceptable for a discrepancy of 150 bombs worth of plutonium to remain on the books eight years after it was first discovered," the letter to Nanos concluded. "Since you have already stood down LANL on other security and safety issues, we request that you seize this moment and immediately appoint an independent task force to investigate this issue until it is resolved."
The full letter to LANL Director G. Peter Nanos and the 1996 DOE memorandum identifying LANL's plutonium accounting issue are posted at http://www.ieer.org
Lisa Ledwidge Outreach Director, United States, and Editor of Science for Democratic Action Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER)
PO Box 6674 | Minneapolis, MN 55406 USA tel. 1-612-722-9700 | fax: please call first | ieer@i... | http://www.ieer.org
IEER's main office: 6935 Laurel Ave. Suite 201 | Takoma Park, MD 20912 USA | tel. 1-301-270-5500 | fax 1-301-270-3029
-------- us nuc waste
Bush, Kerry skirmishing in the West
President, challenger debate nuclear waste, economy
Aug. 12, 2004
The Associated Press
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5684929/
President Bush on Thursday won the embrace of two California Republican icons, Nancy Reagan and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, hoping their glow would rub off on him in a state that remains hostile territory to him.
advertisement At a Los Angeles fund-raiser that brought in $3 million for the Republican National Committee, Bush praised Schwarzenegger for his performance following last year's gubernatorial recall election.
"He came to this important state and he got the job done," Bush told donors. "That's how I hope people view me as well as the president. I came to the capital and got the job done."
Earlier Thursday, in Nevada, Bush defended his decision to use the state's Yucca Mountain as the nation's high-level nuclear waste dump, an unpopular move in a swing state that he won four years ago.
"I said I would make a decision based upon science, not politics. I said I would listen to the scientists, those involved with determining whether or not this project could move forward in a safe manner and that's exactly what I did," Bush told supporters in this city 90 miles southeast of the proposed waste site.
Bush: Kerry pandering to Nevadans Bush accused his presidential rival, Democratic Sen. John Kerry, of pandering to Nevada voters by playing both sides of the issue, part of a broader effort to cast the Massachusetts senator as someone who bends to the political winds.
"He says he's strongly against Yucca here in Nevada, but he voted for it several times," Bush claimed.
That is not exactly true.
Each time Kerry has faced the simple choice of voting whether or not to send waste to Yucca Mountain, he has voted against it. But he has voted for some measures that had provisions to allow nuclear dumps there. Some 16 years ago, Kerry voted for an overall budget bill that included a provision favoring putting the nuclear waste in Nevada.
Kerry cites Bush on waste site
Kerry visited Las Vegas earlier this week, and said that Bush broke a campaign promise to ensure science and not politics determined his decision whether to ship waste to Yucca Mountain.
Dozens of scientific studies remain incomplete and a recent federal appeals court ruling raised questions about whether the waste repository will be built, or at least meet its target of 2010 to begin operation.
Bush said he was pleased to "allow this process to be appealed to the courts and to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."
"I will stand by the decision of the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission," Bush said.
Bush's visit here was his second in two months. Though Nevada has only five electoral votes - a tiny slice of the 270 needed to win the presidency - it has become a hotly contested prize in an election that is so close.
A poll of likely Nevada voters in late July showed the race essentially tied.
Kerry dismisses Bush sales-tax plan
In California, Kerry said Thursday that Bush's musing about a national sales tax is an insult to financially struggling voters and would amount to "one of the largest tax increases on the middle class in American history."
The Democratic presidential nominee, during a speech at California State University, Dominguez Hills, tried to reverse partisan stereotypes by portraying the Republican president as the tax raiser and himself as a tax cutter.
Kerry said if Bush wants to create a national sales tax without increasing the deficit, people will end up paying at least 26 percent more for purchases on top of state and local sales taxes.
-------- MILITARY
-------- afghanistan
Rumsfeld Tours Afghan Reconstruction Site and Previews Election
August 12, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/international/asia/12rumsfeld.html
JALALABAD, Afghanistan, Aug. 11 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made an unannounced trip on Wednesday to a provincial reconstruction headquarters here to view preparations for October's presidential election and to review efforts to counter insurgents and the narcotics trade.
"It is so clear that the Afghan people are winning the struggle to rebuild this nation," Mr. Rumsfeld said during his seventh visit to Afghanistan since an American-led coalition routed Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts. His return, made with Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was meant to show that the Bush administration had not forgotten its first front in the campaign against terror, even as considerably more troops and money are devoted to Iraq.
Mr. Rumsfeld's helicopter clattered below the rim of a narrow desert canyon, its walls of near-vertical strata shoved upward in a prehistoric tumult; the nation has been in a different kind of tumult lately, with decades of war and political turmoil and instability that the new government in Kabul and its American allies have vowed to end.
During his visit to a provincial reconstruction team, one of 16 in Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld was shown examples of progress.
A unit of the new Afghan National Army based here snapped to attention. It was composed of soldiers of a broad ethnic and regional mix. It was the government's goal to end past reliance on the security forces run by local warlords who drew their ranks from clans or tribes.
Brig. Ahmad Khalid, commander of a new antinarcotics task force also based here, said his soldiers have rolled up almost two dozen opium laboratories and halted an undisclosed number of shipments.
"We focus on the laboratories and the traffickers, not the growers," he said of a mission that has been crafted not to punish individual Afghan farmers trying to eke out a living.
Maj. Lou Sand, an American who is the reconstruction team's deputy commander, said the region was hit in a rash of attacks by insurgents from mid-June to mid-July, including a car bombing that killed two Afghan election workers outside the gates of the base. But it has been quieter for the past three weeks, said Major Sand, a reservist with the 401st Civil Affairs Battalion out of New York.
To that end, the military has deployed to the base six "A Teams" - the 12-member Green Beret units that are the heart and soul of Army Special Forces - to gather intelligence on insurgents and to carry out attacks ahead of the Oct. 9 election.
During his daylong visit to Afghanistan, Mr. Rumsfeld also toured the United Nations election headquarters in Kabul, where young Afghans plugged voter registration information into a warehouse-size room filled with computers.
At a news conference with Mr. Rumsfeld in Kabul, Hamid Karzai, the Afghan leader who is seeking the presidency by popular vote, said 9.4 million people had registered, more than 40 percent of them women.
Mr. Rumsfeld avoided inserting himself into Afghan presidential politics, structuring his day to include separate meetings with Mr. Karzai and a chief rival, Marshal Muhammad Qasim Fahim, the powerful vice president and defense minister whom Mr. Karzai dropped from the ticket in July.
Marshal Fahim has said that he would not support Mr. Karzai in the election, and would back the former education minister, Yunus Qanooni.
Mr. Rumsfeld said his discussions with Marshal Fahim did not stray from military affairs: disarming and demobilizing militias, building the Afghan National Army and halting the narcotics trade.
-------- africa
State Dept.: Sudan Genocide Hard to Prove
August 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Sudan-Darfur.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As human rights groups demand action against Sudan, the State Department is informing Congress it is difficult to establish that the Khartoum government is trying to destroy the non-Arab community in Darfur.
And even if Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has been weighing a judgment for weeks, decides that Sudan and Arab-led militia in the province are committing genocide, the Bush administration would not be required to take legal action, the department said in an informal analysis obtained by The Associated Press.
Still, a finding of genocide could spur the international community to take more forceful and immediate action to respond to ongoing atrocities, the analysis said.
Asked about a report by Amnesty International this week that the Sudanese government was pressuring people not to report human rights abuses in Darfur, the State Department's deputy spokesman, Adam Ereli, said he would have no comment on it and other reports.
``We continue to watch the situation carefully,'' Ereli said Wednesday. ``We are continuing to collect information.''
The U.N. Security Council on July 30 gave Sudan 30 days to rein in the Janjaweed militia and facilitate relief to black Africans uprooted from their homes in Darfur or face the prospect of sanctions.
However, most penalties that the United Nations or the United States could impose would have a negligible impact on the Sudanese government and the militia, said a U.S. official who keeps close watch on the humanitarian situation in the African country.
Freezing Janjaweed's bank accounts in the United States is considered by U.S. officials to be mostly an empty gesture, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Travel curbs would not apply to diplomats who work at the United Nations, but an international arms embargo might have an impact, the United States has determined, the official said.
Business with Sudan by American firms already is banned because Sudan is listed by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism.
Meanwhile, since Sudan joined the Genocide Convention last January, like all parties it would be obliged to prevent and punish acts of genocide on its territory.
The State Department analysis, being distributed informally to congressional offices during the summer recess, accuses Sudan of atrocities in Darfur but does not conclude whether they amount to genocide under the international accord.
Conditions that must be met for a declaration of genocide include killing or deliberately trying to bring about the physical destruction of a group and taking those actions against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
In Sudan, the analysis said, this means determining whether the Arab militia or supporters of the Sudanese government have the specific intent to destroy the non-Arab members of certain groups.
In the past, the State Department has concluded that genocide occurred in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Burundi.
In London, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday that despite Sudan's promise to improve security in Darfur, Sudanese troops and government-backed militia of Arab nomads continue to attack African farm communities, killing, raping and stealing with impunity.
In Brussels, Belgium, the European Union said Tuesday it would be up to U.N. experts to determine whether atrocities in Darfur amount to genocide.
An EU delegation went to the region last week, then reported on Monday that atrocities were being committee on a large scale but declined to classify them as genocide.
----
US and France Begin a Great Game in Africa
by Julio Godoy
August 12, 2004
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/godoy.php?articleid=3291
PARIS - France and the United States have begun a new race to compete for favors with undemocratic regimes in Africa. The competition is growing particularly in the oil-rich North and West Africa.
The French government announced last month that it is due to sign a military pact with former colony Algeria that would include weapons and technology transfer, training and intelligence sharing.
The agreement was negotiated by French Defense Minister Michele Alliot-Marie on a visit to Algiers July 19. Alliot-Marie, the first French defense minister to visit Algeria since the end of the bloody war of independence in 1962, said the "historic" agreement will "turn a page" in French-Algerian history.
Foreign minister Michel Barnier visited Algiers earlier in July to discuss new cooperation. Finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy followed his colleagues later in the month to approve a $2.5 billion aid package.
France has invited Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika to commemoration of the liberation of south France from Nazi occupation in 1944, in the face of protests from French veterans of the war of independence.
Analysts say these moves seek to secure access to Algerian oil and gas resources to counter similar efforts by the U.S. government.
"The French government wants to counter the diplomatic advances achieved by the Bush government in Algeria in particular, and in West Africa in general," says Francois Gčze, an expert in French-Algerian relations. In an article in Le Monde written with Algerian-born scholar Lahouari Addi who lives in France in exile, Gčze condemned the "French alliance with a criminal regime."
Gčze told IPS that the Algerian government has detained and tortured opposition leaders for more than a decade now. But given the anti-terrorism climate, Algeria represents what "the 'great' Western countries wish for in the Arab world" - a government ready to cooperate with the United States whatever its domestic record.
France has been building diplomatic relations across oil-rich West Africa. This includes Gabon ruled by Omar Bongo since 1966, Congo Brazzaville ruled by Denis Sassou-Nguesso who came to power in 1997 following a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and Angola where former independence hero José Eduardo dos Santos has been in power since 1979.
In a recent instance of new "cooperation" the French government dealt with dos Santos to protect French citizen Pierre Falcone charged with transfer of weapons to Angola. Dos Santos named Falcone Angolan ambassador to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquartered in Paris. The appointment would provide him diplomatic immunity.
It is no coincidence that the United States has been following a similar strategy of supporting military dictators in Africa while seeking access to natural resources in their countries.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Angola and Gabon in 2002 in the first trip ever by such a high-ranking U.S. official to these countries. Last year, U.S. President George W. Bush visited Senegal, Nigeria, Botswana, Uganda and South Africa.
In March this year, the U.S. government invited top ranking military officials of Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia to the U.S. European command headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. The command center also covers 48 African countries.
The Stuttgart summit covered representation from the Middle East through the Maghreb (Arabic North Africa) to the Gulf of Guinea. This is a region sitting above a giant sea of underground oil.
Two weeks before the March meeting, Gen. Charles F. Wald, deputy commander at Stuttgart had toured Angola, Nigeria, Tunisia, Algeria, Ghana, South Africa and Gabon among other African countries.
"Every place I go in Africa, where we talk about the war on terrorism, there is a resonance and an agreement that we have something in common," Wald said during the visit. The threat extremists pose to democratically elected governments is "universally understood," he said. But of the countries he visited, only South Africa has a democratically elected government.
Earlier this week the U.S. government indicated its interest in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea in announcing a military cooperation program with Nigeria. Gen. Robert Fogleson, commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe, said at the announcement: "This region is important to the stability of the United States ... because of the petroleum ... and so it's no surprise to me that if the U.S. Navy, the U.S. government wanted to exercise, that they will take the areas that are of great importance to them."
Analysts believe that over the next five years a quarter of non-Gulf oil on the world market will come from sub-Saharan Africa.
----
Death is in the air, villagers say
Sudanese planes bring bombs, not help
Millions of insects may pose new threat
Aug. 12, 2004
LEVON SEVUNTS
SPECIAL TO THE TORONTO STAR,
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1092262212898&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060724
MUSBAT, Sudan-Osman Muhammad Haroun knows exactly who to blame for the air strike that destroyed his ancestral compound and nearly killed his family.
The name he invokes is not Janjaweed, the notorious militia blamed for much of the violence here in Darfur. It is Antonov, the make of plane used by Sudan's army.
"It was a Sudanese army Antonov bomber," said Haroun, a village headman who, with his nine children, wife and elderly parents, has lived under trees since Feb. 27. They avoid breaking cover for fear of more of the deadly bombs that pounded their community.
"We are always on the lookout for Antonovs," he says, swooping his hand like an aircraft. "When the Antonov comes, everybody lies on the ground. Nobody moves, not even the animals. My children, my wife and my parents live with snakes and scorpions because of the government of Sudan."
The Janjaweed are nomadic Arab horsemen recruited early last year by Sudan to help defeat two rebel groups in Darfur. What followed were waves of brutality as black African villages were pounded from the air and then overrun by Janjaweed and, witnesses say, Sudanese troops who killed, raped, torched and looted.
Sudan has denied complicity in the attacks, which have killed an estimated 30,000 and forced at least 1.2 million from their homes. But in a statement Tuesday the United Nations accused Sudan of fresh helicopter raids.
Yesterday, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Sudan, Jan Pronk, told reporters those reports were still being checked, Reuters reports.
"So far in all my talks I am meeting a government that is seriously trying to keep the promises made," to disarm the Janjaweed and set up safety zones for villagers before a deadline of Aug. 29 or risk U.N. sanctions, Pronk said.
But Human Rights Watch said new atrocities disprove Sudan's claims that security is returning to the western region.
"In many rural areas and small towns in Darfur, government forces and the Janjaweed militias continue to routinely rape and assault women and girls when they leave the periphery of the camps and towns," the New York-based group said in a report released yesterday.
Darfur villagers nervously watching the skies for bombers might soon see another unwelcome sight - locusts. Pest control experts said millions of the insects might be headed toward the region, Reuters reports.
"Swarms could get into Sudan any day, but we of course don't know when," said Clive Elliott, senior officer in charge of the locust group at the Rome-based U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Two major locust swarms have devastated areas of neighbouring Chad, devouring crops, vegetation and pastures.
At a gathering of the leaders of most of Darfur's tribes yesterday, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said they would be called on to help replace violent lawlessness with stability.
"The following stage will witness a boosting of the tribal leadership so that it may contribute to the maintaining of security in Darfur and disarmament," a witness told Reuters al-Bashir said.
But, according to villagers here, who say death is more likely to come from an Antonov than the Janjaweed, al-Bashir is the last person in the world they can count on to protect them.
Umda Ali Suleiman Hasib, an 86-year-old leader of a Zaghawa tribe in the village of Alisko, said his people are victims of an ethnic cleansing campaign.
"Our only fault is that the colour of our skin is black," said Hasib, pinching his forearm. "Omar Bashir wants to drive away the African population of Darfur and settle it with Arabs."
Hasib holds al-Bashir personally responsible for the plight of his people.
"Before Omar Bashir came to power, we lived peacefully with our Arab neighbours," said Hasib. "They never stayed in one place for long and if we had problems we always solved them with their tribal elders.
"But since Omar Bashir came to power things have been getting worse."
He said al-Bashir wants to repay powerful Arab tribes for supporting him by settling Arabs in lands populated since ancient times by the Zaghawa, Fur and Massalit black African tribes.
Hasib, who says the 3,700 people in his care are perilously close to starvation, laughs off a suggestion the government will ever allow international aid to reach rebel-held areas.
"They are the ones who bombed us, who shot us while we were running and hiding from them," he said.
"Do you think they'll now give us food? Our only hope is Allah."
Levon Sevunts is a Canadian journalist travelling in Africa.
-------- asia
Constitutional crisis looms in Cambodia
Asia Times
Aug 12, 2004
By Julio A Jeldres
http://atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/FH12Ae03.html
PHNOM PENH - Nearly a month after being sworn into office, Prime Minister Hun Sen is in complete control of the administration, police and army of Cambodia and has been able to put together a rather expanded government with the help of the royalist Funcinpec party. But observers fear that the new arrangements are not helping to establish Cambodia's democratic institutions firmly, and a constitutional crisis looms over the proposed abdication of King Norodom Sihanouk. As if that weren't enough, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has painted a grim outlook for the country's economy in 2005 as government corruption and poverty threaten social unrest in the kingdom.
A seasoned Cambodia watcher might rapidly conclude that the kingdom's endemic political conflicts do not have an end, and that while the country has made some advances in the development of democratic structures and institutions, it has also taken some dramatic steps backward.
One of these was the recently announced new coalition government between the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) of Prime Minister Hun Sen and the royalist Funcinpec party led by King Sihanouk's second son, Prince Norodom Ranariddh.
On July 15, almost a full year after inconclusive general elections were held, leaving the country without a working government, the National Assembly met for the first time since the elections and passed a controversial amendment to the 1993 constitution allowing the simultaneous swearing-in of Hun Sen as prime minister and Prince Ranariddh as president of the National Assembly.
According to the 1993 constitution, Prince Ranariddh should have been sworn in first and then would have appointed the new prime minister. However, it appears that Hun Sen did not trust the prince to do so and thus insisted on amending the constitution, an action that was carried out under the threat of parliamentarians losing their seats if they did not go along with their leader's designs without debate. Normally such a parliamentary procedure is also undertaken by secret vote, but on this occasion it was done by a showing of hands.
King Sihanouk, who left the country in mid-January and has said that he will not return until the politicians solve their problems, refused to sign the decree in order to make the amendment legal and suggested that the acting head of state, CPP president Chea Sim, could either sign or not sign the amendment according to the dictate of his conscience. Chea Sim, who leads a faction that opposes Hun Sen within the CPP, refused to sign for reasons that have yet to be fully explained and was promptly escorted out of the country under armed guard, leaving his deputy to sign the controversial amendment.
While King Sihanouk has in the past announced his abdication and then subsequently changed his mind, on this occasion, observers agree that the king is serious and will finally abdicate as he did back in 1955. The king is said to be very distressed by the state of the country, with the poorest getting poorer and the richest getting richer through corrupt deals and the abuse of authority.
The king's abdication could have far-reaching constitutional consequences because Cambodia's 1993 constitution is written around the person of the king, whom the constitution describes as the "symbol of the unity and continuity of the nation", the "guarantor of Cambodia's independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity" and, in particular, the "guarantor of the people's rights and liberties". There are other clauses in the constitution that give the king responsibility for guaranteeing the independence of the judiciary as well as the regular functioning of the government and the army.
The constitution states that the king is king for life, but it does not say anything about a possible abdication of the monarch, which has been interpreted by Prime Minister Hun Sen as the king's inability to abdicate. Other Cambodian legal observers suggest, however, that King Sihanouk, both as a Cambodian citizen and as a human being, is perfectly entitled to abdicate his post of head of state.
King Sihanouk requested, late last week, that the government provide him with a clarification that it is not illegal for him to abdicate and has stated that he will not return to Cambodia until he is given such clarification.
An appeal by the leader of the parliamentary opposition, Sam Rainsy, for the constitution to be amended allowing for the abdication of the king and for the leaders of the three main political parties to travel to Beijing and ask the king to reconsider his proposed abdication, has been turned down by Hun Sen, who claimed he had more pressing things to do than to worry about the king's abdication. So it appears that the king will remain in Beijing for the foreseeable future.
In a letter to Rainsy on August 4, King Sihanouk thanked him for his initiative, adding that he would not change his mind regarding his decision to abdicate and that he wishes to have a successor "who is clean [non-corrupt] and gentle and who will strive to serve the country and the nation".
The king's remarks in his letter to Rainsy have once again brought up the debate over the formation of the Crown Council, the body that is supposed to elect a new king after the abdication or death of the current monarch.
The 1993 constitution clearly stipulates that legislation establishing the Crown Council needs to be passed by the National Assembly, but 11 years after the constitution was implemented, the Crown Council is still a myth. Twice, a parliamentarian from the opposition Sam Rainsy Party has presented draft legislation to the Permanent Committee of the National Assembly, where it has remained blocked on the instructions of political leadership.
Should King Sihanouk abdicate, the country could be engulfed by a constitutional crisis, as the Crown Council has not been formalized by the National Assembly and, therefore, could not elect a new sovereign in the seven days allocated by the current constitution.
In addition to these problems, the IMF has painted a grim outlook for the country's economic growth, falling from 5.2% in 2003 to 4.3% in 2004 and an expected 1.9% next year. The IMF report suggests that government corruption and the growing income disparity threaten social unrest in the kingdom. Speaking at a press conference last Thursday, the IMF representative in Cambodia, Robert Hagemann, said the high poverty rates were particularly troubling since Cambodia had received more aid per head than any other low-income country in recent years.
Julio A Jeldres is a former senior private secretary to King Norodom Sihanouk and chairman of the Khmer Institute of Democracy (KID) in Phnom Penh.
--------
Azerbaijan Gives No Hint of Sending More Troops for Iraq
August 12, 2004
By THOM SHANKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/international/europe/12CND-AZER.html
BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug. 12 - The government of Azerbaijan, the only Muslim nation contributing foreign troops to American-led coalition forces in Iraq, has no intention at present of withdrawing its 150 soldiers from the stabilization effort there.
But senior Azeri officials, after meetings here today with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also gave no public indication that they will send additional troops as part of a distinct mission to protect United Nations facilities and staff in Iraq.
In a joint news conference with Mr. Rumsfeld, the Azeri defense minister, Gen. Col. Safar Abiyev, said his nation remained committed to the Iraqi mission.
"Azerbaijani peacekeepers are already in Iraq, and they have their mandate to fulfill and they will continue to carry out their tasks," General Abiyev said.
Azerbaijan, a secular Islamic nation with a majority Shiite population, also has about two dozen soldiers in Afghanistan.
Mr. Rumsfeld stressed that he made no specific request for a contribution of more troops for the American-led military missions in Iraq and Afghanistan during a visit here that began with a meeting with President Ilham Aliyev.
The United Nations is seeking contributions of about 4,000 troops to protect its facilities and staff in Iraq. So far, United Nations officials have held talks with, among others, Azerbaijan, Nepal and Pakistan.
Senior officials in Azerbaijan gave no indication today that they were ready to commit troops to the United Nations effort.
Separately, the United States continues to seek troops for the larger Iraq stabilization mission, and has been stung by decisions from some nations - most recently Spain, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Honduras - to withdraw their small numbers of soldiers from Iraq.
Azerbaijan, which has granted landing and overflight rights to American forces, sits beside the Caspian Sea, which is a transit route for terrorists, black-market weapons and narcotics.
--------
Nepal army offensive continues
bbc
12 August, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3550630.stm
A Nepalese army offensive against Maoist rebels has entered its third day, but there are no reports of any casualties.
The soldiers are targeting two villages in Accham, some 600km (375 miles) from the capital, Kathmandu.
Rebels are said to have assembled there ahead of a planned assault on government targets.
About 9,000 people have died since the Maoists began fighting to replace the monarchy with a republic in 1996.
A Nepalese army spokesman said that the fresh offensive was mainly on ground, aimed at forcing the rebels to surrender.
Aerial patrol of the two remote villages was also continuing, he said.
Civilians in the area had earlier been asked to take precautions to avoid getting caught in the firing.
The main Maoist leader of the remote Achham hill district told the BBC that the rebels were fully prepared to fight.
He said there had not been any direct clashes with the soldiers, or any casualties.
We urge the blockade of all entry points to Kathmandu Maoist statement
Violence has escalated since talks between the government and the rebels broke down last summer.
A senior army official in the western town of Nepalgunj told the BBC that air and ground operations were being launched at rebel shelters in the villages of Kamal Bazar and Vinayak in Achham district.
Locals have been urged to avoid getting caught in the fighting.
Capital blockade
The BBC's Sushil Sharma in Kathmandu says the latest army push is believed to be aimed at pre-empting planned rebel attacks on targets elsewhere in the country.
The Maoists want an end to the monarchy The rebels organised rallies, which were attended by a large number of people, in the area in July.
Meanwhile, the rebels have threatened to prevent food and other supplies from reaching Kathmandu unless the government agrees to their demands.
In their first ever call for a blockade of the country's capital, Maoist leaders said vehicles should stay off the roads leading to Kathmandu from 18 August.
"We urge the blockade of all entry points to Kathmandu," the Maoists said in a statement, quoted by Reuters.
"Anyone threatening the call will themselves be responsible for the consequence arising from such defiance."
Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister Bharat Mohan Adhikari has said the government was willing to revive the peace talks.
"We are prepared to go to any length for peace talks with the Maoists," Mr Adhikari told Reuters.
Last month, King Gyanendra named a multi-party government and asked it to begin peace initiatives with the rebel. He also asked the government to hold long-delayed parliamentary elections in the country by April 2005.
"This government has come to fulfil a very historic mission-to establish peace," said Mr Adhikari.
-------- biological weapons
US helps Uzbekistan fight spread of bio weapons
TASHKENT (AFP)
Aug 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040812133045.dseec8o3.html
The United States has boosted financing to help Uzbekistan fight the threat of the spread of biological weapons still stored in the Central Asian region, a senior Uzbek official said Thursday.
The Uzbek announcement came after a visit here by the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Richard Myers, as Washington continues to press on with a campaign to secure and destroy weapons of mass destruction in struggling ex-Soviet states.
Myers "informed us of the decision to increase the financing of joint projects by 21 million dollars," Uzbek Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Norov said after meeting the US general.
The latest allocation supplements 39 million dollars (31 million euros) that Washington earmarked for joint projects with Uzbekistan in 2001 aimed at preventing proliferation of biological weapons, Norov told journalists.
Among other things the money will be used to develop a system for monitoring infectious diseases, Norov said.
The allocation comes despite an announcement by Washington in July that it was freezing direct aid to this controversial ally due to a lack of political reform by the hardline leadership of Uzbek President Islam Karimov.
Previous non-proliferation projects between the United States and Uzbekistan have included cleaning up a Soviet-era biological weapons facility on an island in the Aral Sea that is split by the Uzbek-Kazakh border.
-------- britain
Britain Rejects Guantanamo Detention Comparisons
August 12, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-security-britain.html
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain defended on Thursday its detention without charge of suspected terrorists as necessary to avert a possible ``major tragedy'' and rejected media comparisons with the U.S.-run Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba as absurd.
Ten foreigners held under Britain's emergency post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism laws lost an appeal on Wednesday against their detention. Some have been detained without charge for nearly three years.
Writing in the Independent newspaper, Home Secretary (Interior Minister) David Blunkett said the Court of Appeal's finding that he had acted lawfully should put an end to concerns that detainees' rights were not being respected.
But lawyer Gareth Peirce, who represented several of the detainees, said earlier the judgment legitimized torture by allowing the government to use evidence obtained by mistreatment.
The suspects had argued some of the secret evidence against them may have been obtained by the United States through torture at Guantanamo Bay or in Afghanistan.
Blunkett said as home secretary it was his job to prevent foreign nationals ``who we believe are international terrorists, but are unable to deport, from remaining at large in the UK.''
``When the security service have done their job ... what am I to do with those they have identified as a risk to national security? Ask the same security service to spend day and night actually tracking them in the hope they will be able to stop them before a major tragedy occurs?,'' Blunkett wrote.
``I'm not going to gamble with people's lives.''
SPECIAL POWERS
The 10 who brought the appeal are among 17 foreigners officially designated suspected international terrorists by the home secretary. Blunkett said 12 of these were still being detained.
Under the special powers, the government does not have to prove the detainees committed a crime, only that authorities have ``reasonable grounds'' to suspect they might pose a threat.
Blunkett said the detentions also served the purpose of protecting the detainees.
``The only reason I've not removed detainees from the UK is because I'm protecting their human rights -- they might face torture or death if removed to their homelands,'' he said.
The Independent wrote a hard-hitting editorial on Tuesday attacking the home secretary and comparing the ``legal limbo'' of the 12 men being held in the high-security Belmarsh jail to the fate of British nationals still detained at Guantanamo Bay.
``Yes, they have been detained in circumstances where they cannot currently be removed, but to compare our situation with Guantanamo Bay is absurd and not comparing like with like,'' Blunkett responded on Thursday.
Human rights activists have denounced the United States' handling of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, which holds some 600 inmates, as a violation of international law. Most have been held for more than two years without access to lawyers or courts -- a ``legal black hole.''
Blunkett said detainees held under Britain's anti-terrorism laws had a right to a lawyer, could leave the country at any time if they chose to do so, and could appeal through the courts.
-------- business
Audit Faults Halliburton Estimates
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58329-2004Aug11.html
A new Pentagon audit of Halliburton Co. concluded that the company has not done an adequate job of estimating and justifying costs for services in Iraq, where subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root Inc. has earned billions of dollars as the leading private contractor.
It recommended that government contracting officials require the company to make corrections within 45 days, according to a summary of the report made available yesterday.
The Wall Street Journal, which reported the audit agency's findings Monday, said auditors found that $1.8 billion billed for work in Iraq and Kuwait had not been adequately accounted for. The report is the latest in a series of questions raised by auditors and in Congress about whether Halliburton is properly charging and accounting for all of its work providing support for the military and in the reconstruction of Iraq's oil fields.
If the issues raised in the new report are not resolved, the government could withhold up to 15 percent of outstanding payments to KBR under federal procurement rules that mandate that contractors provide clear justification, in writing, for their bills.
Though the company warned in recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that withholdings could "affect our liquidity," a spokeswoman downplayed the prospect yesterday, saying Halliburton would suspend payments to subcontractors if its own payments were withheld. Spokeswoman Wendy Hall said Halliburton disagrees with the report's findings. In an e-mail, she said that they are "simply not true," adding, "We believe these issues will be resolved in our favor."
She suggested that the company is being targeted for extra attention because Dick Cheney was its chief executive before being elected vice president. "Only in an election year, when Halliburton is being covered in a political context as opposed to business, does a DCAA audit dispute become a news story."
The Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John F. Kerry responded to news of the audit report yesterday by saying questions about Halliburton's practices have become a powerful election-year issue, at least with undecided swing voters who have participated in campaign-sponsored focus groups.
Tad Devine, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, said Halliburton has become "a flashpoint" for voters concerned that the administration has favored special interests at the expense of the public.
"This is a tired old political attack," Cheney's campaign spokeswoman, Anne Womack, said of the Kerry campaign's comments. "There's no substance to it."
--------
THE CONTRACTOR
Halliburton Is Faulted by Pentagon on Accounts
August 12, 2004
By ELIZABETH BECKER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/politics/12haliburton.html?pagewanted=all
WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 - An internal Pentagon audit has found that the Halliburton Company failed to adequately account for some of the $4.2 billion it has received so far for providing logistical support to troops in Iraq and Kuwait.
If the accounting system of Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary working in Iraq, is not corrected, the Pentagon may begin withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in payments, according to a statement it released Wednesday.
The audit, which was completed Aug. 4 and first reported in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, found that the KBR accounting system was inadequate in nearly every way in dealing with the costs of providing food, shelter and other support for the troops in what is the single biggest project under contract in Iraq. The audit has not been released.
KBR gave the military inadequate cost estimates, incomplete and inadequate reviews of those estimates, poor employee training and "a lack of current, accurate and complete cost and pricing data," according to the Pentagon, which gave the company 45 days to come up with a new plan.
It was the latest in a series of warnings the Pentagon has issued to KBR since January 2003 about problems in its cost estimates. The Pentagon backed away from two earlier threats to withhold funds, but said this time that it could begin withholding payments as early as Sunday.
Lt. Col. Rose-Ann Lynch, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said she could not confirm how much of the $4.2 billion was in dispute. The Journal put the figure at "more than $1.8 billion."
Halliburton - the largest corporate recipient of government Iraq - related contracts, worth a total of some $8 billion - disputed the findings.
"We disagree with the report," a spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said in an e-mail message. "This audit has nothing to do with the amounts we have billed the government or which costs will ultimately be determined allowable for our work in Iraq."
Ms. Hall said the audit was being used for political purposes. Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995 until becoming Mr. Bush's running mate in 2000, and since the company won its multibillion-dollar contracts last year, Democrats have been charging that the Bush administration has given Halliburton special treatment.
"Only in an election year, when Halliburton is being covered in a political context as opposed to business, does a D.C.A.A. audit dispute become a news story," said Ms. Hall, referring to the Defense Contract Audit Agency of the Pentagon.
A statement issued by the Kerry-Edwards campaign called the report "another Halliburton scandal" costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
"Each time this happens, it raises more credibility issues for this administration about the cozy relationship that Halliburton seems to enjoy with the White House," said Phil Singer, a spokesman for the campaign. "This isn't just about Dick Cheney but about George Bush; it's his administration.''
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, dismissed the Democrats' comments as "the same old political attacks that they've been waging for a long time."
The issue was being examined by the Defense Department, he said, adding, "There are oversight measures that are in place."
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and ranking minority member of the House Committee on Government Reform, issued a statement contending that the Pentagon was showing favoritism to Halliburton by not immediately withholding funds.
"Even after eight critical audit reports by three different government agencies, the Pentagon is still waiving procurement rules and extending deadlines for Halliburton to submit accurate cost information," he said. Mr. Waxman also said the Pentagon was withholding the audit from Congress.
At recent Congressional hearings, lawmakers have divided along party lines over the issue of waste and cost overruns in contracts in Iraq.
Representative Thomas M. Davis, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the reform committee, said that he was as devoted to rooting out waste as the other members, but that it should not be a partisan issue.
The Pentagon audit recommended that Halliburton begin providing detailed cost and pricing data for any bills over $100,000.
Ms. Hall, the Halliburton spokeswoman, said she was confident that the issues would be worked out.
Even if the Pentagon begins to withhold money, she said, the company's finances will not be hurt because Halliburton will simply withhold payments to its subcontractors, a possibility written into their contracts.
--------
Pentagon faults Halliburton for Iraq accounting
Aug 12, 2004
WASHINGTON (AFP)
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040812155451.vmra9jfq.html
An internal Pentagon audit has faulted US oil services group Halliburton for failing to account for some of the 4.2 billion dollars it has been awarded for logistical contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.
The Pentagon, in a statement received Thursday, has warned Halliburton it might start withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in payments to the Houston-based company unless it reforms the accounting system of its Kellogg Brown and Root subsidiary.
The audit, concluded August 4, highlighted a series of problems in KBR's accounting system related to the costs of providing food, shelter and other support to American troops in Iraq.
KBR gave the military "inadequate cost estimate development, (and) incomplete and inadequate management review of cost estimates" among other problems, the audit found.
The Pentagon has given Halliburton 45 days to come up with a new accounting plan.
The audit was first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday which pegged the disputed sum at over 1.8 billion.
Halliburton disagrees with the report and says it is the victim of election year politics.
"We disagree with the report, and we will respond to it within the timelines provided by the government's multi-step process," Halliburton said in a statement.
"Normally, these kinds of audit reports are part of a lengthy but routine process that is amicably resolved. Only in an election year, when Halliburton is being covered in a political context as opposed to business, does a DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) audit dispute become a news story," the company said.
It is the latest salvo in a series the Pentagon has fired at Halliburton since January of last year about problems over its cost estimates.
It also comes just over a week after Halliburton said it will pay 7.5 million dollars to settle charges of misleading accounting when Vice President Dick Cheney ran the company.
Cheney, who was not accused of any wrongdoing, gave sworn testimony to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and "cooperated willingly and fully" in the investigation.
The SEC charges followed Halliburton's failure to disclose a 1998 change to its accounting practices. Cheney was Halliburton chief executive from 1995 to
-----
EADS wins contract for Romania's border security
PARIS (AFP)
Aug 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040812170146.0e3dhk2n.html
European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company said Thursday it had won a contract alongside Siemens and other partners worth over one billion euros (1.22 billion dollars) to provide Romania with an integrated system for border security.
The project is designed to allow Romania to meet the demands of accession to the European Union, with the first phase of the project due to be completed by end-2006 in time for Romania's EU entry on January 1, 2007, it said.
The entire project is scheduled for completion by December 2009.
EADS said it would team up with Germany's Siemens and other, unnamed, partners to provide Romania's border with administration centres, surveillance systems, command control software, communications and information technology (IT) infrastructure as well as technical training centres.
A company spokesman said EADS' share of the deal represented about two thirds of the total.
EADS sources earlier told AFX News, the financial news service of AFP, that the contract was worth about 650 million euros to the company.
The contract, signed in Bucharest, relates to an integrated border security system, incorporating hardware, software, computers, radars and vehicles, EADS said in a statement received in Paris.
An EADS source said earlier that the company was confident of obtaining more such orders from eastern European countries seeking to meet EU standards for border control.
"All the countries joining the EU are prospective candidates. We've had contact, of course, with other eastern European countries... It's looking encouraging, but there's nothing we can speak about today," the source said.
-------- iraq
Ominous Calm Settles Over Baghdad
A Week of Fighting in Capital, Najaf Has Residents Fearing the Worst
By Jackie Spinner and Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58055-2004Aug11.html
BAGHDAD, Aug. 11 -- Saif Shamari made his usual morning run on Wednesday to buy goods at a warehouse on Sinak Street, a commercial strip that is normally bustling with shop owners hauling crates of merchandise. But when he arrived, Shamari found the warehouse doors shuttered and the street deserted.
Like Sinak Street, much of Baghdad was subdued on Wednesday after militia fighters loyal to Moqtada Sadr, a militant Shiite Muslim cleric, warned that they would carry out attacks throughout the capital.
Those attacks had not come by dusk, and there were few reports of roving bands of Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters. But it was clear that seven days of fighting between U.S.-led forces and the Mahdi Army in southern Iraq and in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood have frightened a city already unnerved by months of violence.
"All we want is to make our country stable," said Shamari, a slight 23-year-old. "I think the only solution is to make the coalition forces leave Iraq. Today is like a day off. . . . There are no police in the street."
The standoff with Sadr comes as Iraq's interim government is grappling with a violent insurgency that many Iraqis had hoped would disappear once the U.S.-led occupation relinquished political authority June 28. Gunmen on Wednesday killed a regional head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of Iraq's largest Shiite political parties. The official, Ali Khalisi, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Mahmudiyah, 15 miles south of Baghdad.
Meanwhile, an Islamic Web site posted video footage that appeared to show militants in Iraq beheading a dazed man identified as a CIA agent. The authenticity of the video could not be verified. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the CIA had accounted for all its employees, the Associated Press reported.
More than 80 foreigners and several Iraqis have been kidnapped in Iraq in recent months by insurgents demanding that their countries pull out troops or private workers.
In Anbar province west of Baghdad, two U.S. Marines were killed when a CH-53 helicopter crashed Wednesday night. Three people aboard were injured and evacuated to a military medical facility. The cause of the crash was under investigation, a Marine statement said.
On Wednesday, Baghdad seemed to be holding its collective breath as residents waited for possible repercussions of the fighting in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, 90 miles south of Baghdad, where Marines and Army troops continued to battle Sadr's forces near the gold-domed Imam Ali shrine.
Shop owners in the capital opened late and closed early. In areas usually jammed with customers, restaurants were half full. Many of those who did venture out were stockpiling food to last for up to four days, a practice usually reserved for when the country is on the verge of war.
"People just feel it's not the right time to go out," said Jawad Katham, 26, who sells cold drinks from a stall in the Zayouna district. "I used to stay here until midnight. Last night, I quit at 9."
For the most part, fighting in Baghdad has been contained to Sadr City, the large Shiite slum in the northeast part of the capital where nearly 40 percent of the city's populace lives. Residents, spurred by reports of fighting near holy sites in Najaf, have taken up arms on recent nights and threatened to fight alongside the militants if necessary.
"We will never stop," pledged Mohammad Qasim, 21, of Sadr City. "We want to kick the Americans out of the country."
Fighting early Monday and Tuesday night in Baghdad killed eight people and wounded 69, according to the Iraqi Health Ministry. In the cities of Kut, Meisan, Basra and Diwaniyah, 22 people were reported killed and 150 others wounded.
Sadr issued a statement through Ahmed Shaibani, a spokesman in Najaf, calling on members of his militia to "continue defending your country and holy sites even if you see me captured or killed." Shaibani said that even if U.S. forces defeat the militia in Najaf, "the resistance will still exist in other parts of Iraq."
Moderate Shiites have condemned Sadr and his militia for the latest violence, though some said they understood the frustration behind the fighting.
"There is no electricity, no water and many people who do not have jobs," said Alaa Dabagh, 49, a store owner in Baghdad's Karrada district. "I wish to God Sadr never did this. But maybe in my mind I can see that Sadr is trying to force the Iraqi government to do something for the people."
Many in Zayouna, a wealthy neighborhood favored by officials in toppled president Saddam Hussein's government, had little good to say about Sadr's followers.
"Allawi went to Najaf to offer peace," said Rafa Abdel Rahman, 43, referring to a visit by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on Sunday. "But these people are hopeless. They are hoodlums and street people. Saddam knew how to deal with them: with force."
Special correspondent Luma Mousawi contributed to this report.
--------
Showdown Looms in Najaf
Fear of Backlash Intensifies as U.S. Delays Final Push
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A18
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55568-2004Aug11.html
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 11 -- U.S. Marines and soldiers prepared on Wednesday for what was expected to be a decisive battle for the holiest city in Iraq, but as darkness fell the sense of imminence receded abruptly. An armored column idling at the main gate turned back, and commanders said preparations for the offensive were being extended.
The American-led force may have been awaiting final approval from Iraq's political leader for a combat operation that top Marine commanders said would clear Shiite Muslim militia fighters from the city of 600,000. Since occupation authorities transferred political power to an interim Iraqi government at the end of June, major military operations must be approved by Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
Early Thursday, the sound of heavy gun battles resonated throughout the city, the Associated Press reported. It wasn't clear whether the stepped-up fighting signaled the beginning of a major offensive.
Military planners have been vexed by intelligence reports that the militiamen, who have fought U.S. and Iraqi security forces here for a week, had rigged explosives in the shrine of Imam Ali, the most sacred site in the Shiite branch of Islam. The reports indicated that the insurgents, who have been using the shrine as a refuge and staging area, would wait until advancing U.S. forces drew near, then detonate the charges and blame the resulting destruction on the Americans.
Military officials said the reports had not been confirmed. "The fear is that the intelligence might not be right in fact, but in effect -- that he has something catastrophic planned for the mosque that he will blame on the U.S.," one commander said, referring to Moqtada Sadr, the radical cleric who leads the loosely formed Mahdi Army militia.
The sensitivity of any U.S. military action here was underscored by a warning from the supreme leader of neighboring Iran, who called American operations in Najaf "one of the darkest crimes of humanity."
"The United States is slaughtering the people of one of the holiest Islamic cities, and the Muslim world and the Iraqi nation will not stand by," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in an address broadcast on Iranian state television, according to the official government news agency. With its overwhelmingly Shiite population and theocratic government, Iran regards itself as the leader of the Shiite world.
"These crimes are a dark blemish which will never be wiped from the face of America. They commit these crimes and shamelessly talk of democracy," Khamenei said. "Shame has no place in their vocabulary."
As he spoke, Marines and soldiers busied themselves cleaning weapons, refitting equipment and loading ammunition, food and -- vital in the extreme desert heat -- water and ice into the armored vehicles that might soon carry them to a final battle with Sadr's militiamen.
"Iraqi and U.S. forces are making final preparations as we get ready to finish this fight that the . . . militia started," Col. Anthony M. Haslam, commanding officer of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon. "The desired end state is one of stability and security, where the citizens of Najaf do not live in fear of violence or kidnappings, and where the city of Najaf can once again return to peace and prosperity."
The statement came one day after U.S. forces circulated through Najaf with loudspeakers urging residents to evacuate the city for their own protection and advising members of the Mahdi Army to lay down their arms. The Marines are backed by three battalions from the Army's 1st Cavalry Division.
The latest crisis began a week ago, when militiamen attacked several of the city's police stations. The Mahdi Army, named for a messianic figure in the Shiite tradition, then began using the Ali shrine and the vast adjoining cemetery as a firebase.
U.S. commanders have made clear that the shrine is off-limits to American forces, who are forbidden to fire heavy munitions in its vicinity. But Iraqi and U.S. officials calculate that Iraqi forces could clear the militiamen from the shrine, and an elite battalion of the Iraqi National Guard has been training with the Marines during the last week.
A Marine statement said the training "will foster an efficient, effective, cohesive team as [the Iraqi National Guard] leads the fight in ridding their city of those who break the rules of law and order."
--------
U.S. Pushes New Offensive in Najaf in Bid to Cordon Old City
August 12, 2004
The New York Times
By ALEX BERENSON and TERENCE NEILAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/international/middleeast/12CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 12 - A day after holding back from a full-scale assault on Najaf's old city, American troops began offensive operations today in an attempt to set up a cordon around the old city's outer limits.
Brig. Gen. Erv Lessel, deputy director of operations for the Multi-National Force in Iraq, said in a statement that assaults were being mounted by coalition and Iraqi forces on areas in Najaf and the nearby town of Kufa.
The aim was to restrict the movement of guerrillas loyal to the rebel Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr and isolate them in the holy Imam Ali shrine in Najaf and the mosque in Kufa, which the rebels are using as a base of operations, the general said. Care was being taken to avoid any damage to holy sites, he added.
At a news conference in Baghdad, Falah al-Nakib, the interior minister, said the forces in Najaf were operating in the city center and were not fighting near holy Shiite sites, including the shrine. "The operations are continuing in the city and will continue until the militias evacuate the shrine either by force or by surrendering to authorities and take advantage of the amnesty," he said.
He added that the Iraqi national guard and the police, supported by the coalition air force "confiscated large amounts of weapons and captured about 1,200 individuals, some of them non-Iraqi nationalities. This operation lasted until today and the Iraq national guard and the police were able to reach the premises of the shrine."
In Baghdad, he said, the Iraqi national guard and the police "were active in Sadr City," a slum area named after his family. "It was isolated by blocking entrances."
Maj. David Holahan, executive officer of the First Battalion, Fourth Marine Regiment, said, "Major operations to destroy the militia have begun," in Najaf, The Associated Press reported.
Thousands of American troops are taking part, he said.
According to a CNN report, marines raided the home of Mr. Sadr in Najaf today, but the cleric was not inside. There was no independent confirmation of the report.
Mortar fire and sporadic gunfire broke out in the Najaf cemetery, with one mortar round wounding two American soldiers.
By late afternoon, five civilians were killed, according to Nabil Mohammed, a health worker in Najaf quoted by The A.P.
Fighting between Sadr supporters and coalition forces killed at least 72 Iraqis in Kut on Wednesday, the Health Ministry said, Reuters reported.
The ministry said 25 people were had been killed in clashes in Baghdad and 21 in other cities in the past 24 hours, the agency said.
A British soldier was killed and another wounded during protests in the southern city of Basra, the British Ministry of Defense in London said.
Violence across the country since Wednesday morning has killed at least 172 Iraqis and wounded 643, the Health Ministry said.
Marine and Army officers here have repeatedly made hawkish statements that Mr. Sadr's militia would soon be forced to disband or be destroyed. On Wednesday, military officers said they were preparing for a major assault, but later abruptly held back from those plans. Officers declined to discuss what had caused them to change their plans and said they were still preparing for an attack that could come at any time.
"We never said what time we would do it," said Maj. David Holahan, second in command of the Marine battalion in Najaf.
American forces have an overwhelming military edge in firepower and in numbers over Mr. Sadr's guerrillas. But Mr. Sadr's control of the Imam Ali Mosque here has frustrated American efforts to crush his movement. American commanders worry that the mosque could be damaged by fighting, or even destroyed by sabotage from Mr. Sadr's side, causing outrage among Shiites, who constitute the majority of Iraqis.
American commanders are walking both a military and political tightrope in Najaf. They have tried to draw out the Sadr militia and have threatened to destroy it if it does not disband. But again on Wednesday, the Americans hesitated to attack the militia in its base in Najaf's old city, where the mosque is situated.
The tensions in Najaf are the first major test of the relationship between the American military and Ayad Allawi, who became prime minister of the interim government in June and whose approval is needed for any attack on Mr. Sadr.
Dr. Allawi came to Najaf on Sunday saying he would not negotiate with Sadr forces. But his assent to an all-out assault is another matter, and it is not known whether he will approve attacking Mr. Sadr in Najaf's old city.
As the battle drags on, American forces faced new calls from Iraq's interim vice president and Shiite political groups to stop the fighting.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for Mr. Sadr vowed that the cleric would continue his fight in Najaf.
"The battles will last till the last drop of our blood," Talal al-Saadi, the spokesman, said at an interview in Baghdad. "We will never withdraw and won't leave."
Over the last year, Mr. Sadr, a 31-year-old cleric whose father, Muhammad, was honored by poor Shiites, has become the leading opponent of the American Army, though he is a divisive figure, opposing both the Americans and the current government. Inside Najaf, residents said they had grown frustrated with Mr. Sadr and with the stalemate.
While fighting has been mostly confined to the enormous cemetery on the western edge of the city, sporadic clashes have occurred elsewhere, too, and on Tuesday American troops warned residents to evacuate much of the city.
Now the streets of Najaf and Kufa, a town a few miles to the east that is another Sadr stronghold, are largely deserted. Some families have fled the cities, while others are staying indoors, where they are often short of electricity in 120-degree heat. Many families are running out of food, and prices are rising because of sporadic shortages, said a store owner who asked to be identified as Abu Nabaa, or father of Nabaa.
"The people of Najaf are so tired and fed up with these battles," Mr. Nabaa said in a telephone interview. Najaf, which is dependent on spending by Shiite pilgrims traveling to the Imam Ali shrine, prospered last year after the Americans eased restrictions on pilgrims imposed by Saddam Hussein. Now the pilgrimages have again ground to a halt.
"Najaf's people and tribes hold him responsible for what is going in their city now," Mr. Nabaa said of Mr. Sadr. "I can say that 90 percent of the people here hate him."
Mr. Sadr seems to have more supporters in Kufa, where he used to preach. Men clad in the back robes of his Mahdi Army militia moved freely through Kufa's streets, according to an Iraqi employee of The New York Times who visited there on Wednesday.
Qasim Fakhir, who said he was a member of the Sadr militia, said the Shiites must confront the Americans in Najaf. "Once we are given an order to fight, the whole world will not stop us from doing so," he said.
Terence Neilan in New York and Iraqi employees of The New York Times, whose names are being withheld for their safety, contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Baghdad a tale of two cities
The Times
August 12, 2004
By James Hider, Baghdad
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10416885%255E2703,00.html
IRAQ'S capital is splitting into two cities: one, to the south and centre, is governed by the US-backed Iraqi administration, with a police force, national guard and basic infrastructure; the other, to the north, is Sadr City, where rebel militiamen stand on almost every corner, manning checkpoints and tracking the cautious progress of US tanks.
The US armour is a threatening presence rather than a law enforcer; the real power lies with the Kalashnikov-toting rebels, who have marched into police stations and stripped officers of their weapons and body armour.
The guerillas are constantly on the lookout -- for Americans, for spies, for anything that does not fit into the life of Baghdad's vast Shia slum. Paranoia is everywhere.
Spotting my white face, a gunman shouts at our driver to stop. Two guerillas point their assault rifles through the window. They tell me to get into their car, without my driver or translator.
I refuse and Ali, my translator, pushes his way into their beaten-up Passat with me. Gunmen crowd inside. One sits on the roof, my phone is confiscated and we speed off to "the office".
We are driven past streets where militiamen rig roadside bombs for the approaching Americans to one of dozens of bases where suspects are brought for "security checks". The base is deep inside the slum, home to 2 million people and a bastion of Moqtada al-Sadr supporters.
The 4pm-to-8am curfew seems to have had little effect on the rebels' hold of this city within a city. But the Mehdi Army does not seem content with merely dividing Baghdad: a spokesman for Sadr said yesterday that it aimed to split the Shia-dominated south from the Sunni and Kurdish areas to the north.
Back in the operations base in Sadr City, an older man with a polite manner questions us about whom we work for, where we are from and what we are doing. After 45 minutes, he orders his men to escort us out of Sadr City, warning us not to return without the appropriate papers.
--------
Rumsfeld: Iraq Security Forces Expanding
Aug 12, 2004
Associated Press
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=516&ncid=731&e=10&u=/ap/20040812/ap_on_re_as/us_iraq
KABUL, Afghanistan - Iraqi security forces should grow by 50,000 trained and equipped personnel during the next three or four months, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said as he acknowledged the forces so far have had a mixed record on the battlefield.
Some Iraqi units are simply unequipped to take on heavily armed insurgents, the defense secretary said during a trip this week to Oman and Afghanistan. Still, they are going on joint patrols with U.S. forces more frequently.
"It shows they are not hiding in their barracks," Rumsfeld said.
He said about 110,000 security and military forces have received complete equipment sets and training. That's slightly more than half of the 206,000 people who have been recruited.
"The next step is Iraqi patrols with us in the background. The faster that gets done the better off everyone is going to be," Rumsfeld said.
In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the U.S. general in charge of recruiting and training the Iraqi forces outlined a plan to reduce the visible U.S. military presence in the country by gradually allowing Iraqi security forces to assume control of local policing.
"When various conditions are met, Iraqis will take over what's called local control, where they are conducting security operations on their own, with coalition forces in the area, backing up as required," said Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, speaking by telephone from Iraq.
"At some point after that they will go to regional control, where they're basically carrying out security operations in a province or a region, on their own, with coalition forces more removed," he said. He could not predict when that would occur.
Petraeus took over the Office of Security Transition last month after what is generally regarded as an unsuccessful first use of many of Iraq's new security forces during uprisings in April. While some units fought alongside U.S. forces, others refused and some deserted.
Army Maj. Gen. Paul D. Eaton, who headed up reconstituting Iraq's military until last month, characterized the earlier training effort as misguided in that it focused on creating individual police officers rather than a senior cadre of officers capable of leading others.
In addition, shortages of equipment and trained personnel have hampered the ability of the U.S.-led coalition to create effective Iraqi security forces. But Petraeus said that is changing.
"You don't just snap your figures and have trained and equipped and organized military and police units stand up out of the desert," he said.
Creating functional internal security forces in Iraq is critical to bringing tens of thousands of American, British and allied troops home.
Critics say the effort is coming a year too late, and that the best chance to head off the insurgency was to put trained Iraqi security forces on the street from the start. Pentagon officials say Saddam-era Iraqi military and security personnel who did not join the insurgency simply evaporated into the populace, forcing the U.S.-led coalition to start from scratch.
The Iraqi Police Service constitutes the largest of the internal security forces. While more than 88,000 have been recruited, fewer than 30,000 have completed training, and about 3,500 are currently in a training program, the Pentagon said.
They only have about 12,000 of the 45,000 radios the Pentagon says they need.
Still, "the effort to assist the Iraqis with the organizing, training, equipping and employment of their security forces is generating increasing momentum," Petraeus said. "This is the result of equipment beginning to flow, although there is still much to come in, of infrastructure being completed, and of training shifting into higher gear."
In one 24-hour period recently, U.S., British and other coalition forces conducted about 1,700 patrols. Iraqi forces accompanied 268 of those patrols, according to Lt. Gen. Norton Schwartz, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Schwartz also noted a few cases in which Iraqi forces, working separate from foreign military personnel, had located some weapons caches and detained suspected insurgents. Still, officials acknowledged it would be some time until Iraqi security forces could stand on their own.
-----
US bombing of Iraqi city of Kut kills 84, wounds 176: hospital
KUT, Iraq (AFP)
Aug 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040812170350.4tvl64e1.html
Heavy overnight US bombing of Kut killed 84 people and wounded nearly 180 others, a day after clashes between Iraqi police and Shiite militiamen in the southern city, a hospital official said Thursday.
"There were 84 people killed and 176 wounded," said Qassim al-Mayahi, head of Al-Zahra hospital in Kut, although the health ministry said earlier that 75 people were killed in the bombing and 148 wounded.
Many of the dead and wounded were women and children, said another official at the hospital.
Police Colonel Salam Fakhri said the bombing started at 1:00 amWednesday) and lasted until 3:00 am.
"The bombing was concentrated in Al-Sharkia district as the US military felt there were a lot of Shiite militiamen in that area. It also has an office of (radical Shiite Muslim cleric and militia chief) Moqtada Sadr," he said.
Hours after the bombings, militiamen attacked and set ablaze Al-Balda police station in central Kut, killing one policeman and wounding nine others, said police Lieutenant Waqar Bashir.
Iraq's interior ministry said police arrested nearly 100 members of Sadr's militia in Kut on Thursday.
A total of about 400 militiamen of Sadr's Mehdi Army have been killed, captured or wounded in Kut, interim Defence Minister Hazem al-Shalan told a Baghdad news conference.
Sadr's private militia has since last week been locked in heavy fighting in the holy city of Najaf, west of Kut, where a major US offensive backed by Iraqi security forces to flush them out was launched on Thursday.
Kut fell briefly to Sadr loyalists during the militia's earlier uprising against the US-led occupation of Iraq in the spring.
There has been a heavy US patrol presence since Wednesday in Al-Sharkia, a densely populated Shiite district whose simple mud houses pancaked in the overnight bombing.
"We were sleeping when there was loud noise of planes above us and suddenly there were explosions," said local resident Ibrahim Sultan. "The explosion damaged my house and killed my son."
Al-Sharkia was in misery by sunrise, with grown men, women and children wiping away the tears before the wreckage of their homes as others mourned the loss of relatives.
"We never expected to see so many bodies. Our hospital beds are full and many wounded are still lying in the corridor," said Arar.
"At least 15 wounded are in the operation theatre, many of whom will have to have their limbs amputated."
Lying in the corridor was fruit-seller Karim Ghadban who was brought in unconscious, after one of his relatives was killed and eight wounded in the bombing, four of them children.
"We were sleeping on the roof as there was no electricity at night. And when I woke up I was in the hospital," Ghadban said.
Sadr's Kut office was also flattened in the bombing, said partisan Sheikh Mohammed Yihyiah.
"Our office has been destroyed because it was in the same district, fortunately there were was no one in the office, that's why we have no casualties. Perhaps they thought it would be full of militiamen," he said.
The bombing followed a day of clashes between Iraqi police and Sadr loyalists in which at least two national guardsmen and three policemen were wounded.
On Wednesday, Iraqi police and security forces battled insurgents who attacked Kut's city hall, police stations and national guard barracks, the Polish-led force in the area said in a statement.
There were casualties on both sides, it said, without giving a toll.
Mehdi Army fighters had blocked off streets and besieged the governor's office in the eastern part of the town, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, as US planes flew overhead.
Governorate spokesman Majid Hameed said the province's governor had received a death threat for refusing to bow to demands from Sadr supporters that Kut secede from Iraq with other Shiite provinces of the south and centre.
The US-led multinational force said in the area had "increased its combat readiness" to support Iraqi security forces.
-------- israel / palestine
Israel's Abu Ghraib
An open-ended hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, due to begin next week, aims to expose appalling conditions and systematic abuses
Jonathan Cook
12 - 18 August 2004
Al-Ahram
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/703/re4.htm
In a last-minute attempt to head off a mass hunger strike among Palestinian political prisoners, Israel partially reversed this week its policy of blocking most family visits to inmates. Prison authorities declared that an extra 600 prisoners would be allowed to see close relatives.
Yaakov Ganot, head of the Israel Prison Service (IPS), instructed the 20 Israeli jails holding Palestinian security prisoners to compile lists of those who had been denied visits for more than a year.
Ganot took his decision after Palestinian prisoners submitted 57 demands for improvements in detention conditions, with the restoration of visiting rights top of the list. A hunger strike is due to begin next week.
The plight of the 8,400 Palestinian political prisoners has attracted little attention outside Israel, even though there have been warnings from human rights groups about the dire conditions they endure and reports of abuse at the hands of guards, including a widespread policy of strip searching and severe beatings for those who refuse.
The number of security prisoners being held since the outbreak of the Intifada in September 2000 has risen from 800 to more than 8,000, with Palestinian detainees evenly split between military holding centres and Israeli jails. One in eight prisoners is being held under administrative order, without trial or even charges being laid.
The huge surge in prison population has overwhelmed Israel's jails, leaving many inmates sleeping on cell floors or in makeshift accommodation such as tents. In the Russian Compound in Jerusalem up to 16 prisoners are crowded into four metre by four metre holding cells. There are regular reports of rat and insect infestations, hygiene conditions are often deplorable, recreation facilities are non-existent and access to open-air yards is rarely offered.
Prisoners' basic rights are largely ignored. Lawyers are barred from talking with their clients for long periods, in several prisons the authorities have refused to provide a building for prayer and inmates have been blocked from using the Open University.
In June, Ganot ordered that all security prisoners still studying for their Palestinian Authority matriculation be barred from taking the exams.
But even the publicity surrounding the trial of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade leader Marwan Barghouti, which ended with his receiving five life sentences in June, failed to ignite interest in the subject of the conditions in which he and thousands of other inmates are held.
Attempts to publicise prisoners' problems have been severely hampered by a series of crackdowns by the Israeli police on the main organisation promoting the interests of security prisoners, Ansar Al-Sajin (Friends of the Political Prisoners).
Their lawyers are regularly blocked from meeting with prisoners, and the group's head offices, based in the Galilean village of Majd Al-Krum, have been repeatedly closed down with the director, Mounir Mansour, arrested.
Behind the scenes, the International Committee of the Red Cross has been putting pressure on Israel to abide by its international obligations, especially on ensuring family visits.
Israel violates the Geneva Conventions by transferring many prisoners from the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza into Israel. In many cases authorities then refuse to issue permits to families of prisoners, claiming they pose a security threat to Israel. Without such permits Palestinians are barred from entering Israel.
Every week the Red Cross tries to arrange visits for a handful of families, although any members aged between 15 and 50 are normally refused permits.
According to the prison authorities, a revised set of conditions for assessing the threat posed by family members means the entry prohibitions on 600 families will be cancelled. "Wherever we can accommodate the inmates, we do our best to," said Sharon Gutman, a Prison Authority spokeswoman.
But the decision is unlikely to halt the hunger strike. Many hundreds of prisoners will still be refused family visits, and even those who are allowed to see their relatives will have to do so separated by a glass partition.
Many prisoners have complained to their lawyers that even when their families are allowed to see them -- often after being held up for many hours at checkpoints -- they are strip- searched, offered no visitor facilities and allowed only a few minutes of contact.
Apart from partially relenting on the harsh visiting restrictions, the IPS has refused to countenance other reforms. "The Prison Authority will not budge in conceding to these demands because the security of Israel is at risk," Gutman said.
A key demand is that an extensive system of monetary fines for prisoners is ended. At the moment, the authorities dock hundreds of shekels from each prisoner every time he commits one of a long list of "offences". These include singing inside a cell, hanging a picture on the wall, being late for roll calls, not reporting a crack in a cell wall, having a pen or letter on one's person or not shaving.
The money is deducted from the prisoners' "canteen", a pot to which an inmate's family, friends, charities and even the Palestinian Authority contribute and which pays for his toiletries, cigarettes, clothes, stationery, blankets and extra food. Families are not allowed to bring any food into the jails.
According to statistics revealed in the Knesset by Arab member Azmi Bishara in June, some 50,000 shekels ($12,000) were deducted from the 360 inmates of Shatta prison in the Lower Galilee in the first six months of this year.
Another major grievance concerns the authorities' refusal to provide proper medical services to inmates. There has been a steady flow of reports of seriously ill Palestinian detainees being denied access to doctors, or of prison doctors refusing to treat them.
Ghanim Baransi, a 24-year-old from the Israeli-Arab town of Taibeh near Tulkarem, is trying to sue prison authorities after his hand had to be amputated. He was refused treatment for six months after being shot by police who mistook him for a suicide bomber.
Baransi, who is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, is at least able to turn to Israel's civilian courts. Other security prisoners are less lucky.
After visiting detention centres, Arab Knesset member Abdul-Malik Dehamshe has raised several cases of sick inmates. In February Dehamshe protested that Raed Saadi, a prisoner in the Negev desert tent encampment known as Ketziot, was losing sight in his right eye because he had been denied surgery. In June Dehamshe asked for the early release of a long-standing prisoner, Mikdad Khatib, a diabetic from the Balata refugee camp, who had lost 20 kilogrammes since his incarceration.
Another elderly prisoner, 70- year-old Wasfi Mansour, who suffers from heart disease and diabetes, was moved without warning from Shatta prison after his case was taken up by Friends of the Political Prisoners. The group's lawyer was subsequently prevented from seeing Mansour.
But the most inflammatory grievances concern the authorities' refusal to install public telephones inside jails and the related policy of strip-searching inmates.
Deprived both of family visits and access to telephones to maintain contact by other means, prisoners have been smuggling small mobile phones into jails. As a result, prison authorities have been strip-searching inmates to find the phones.
Authorities claim the phones are being used to authorise and plan attacks by militant groups. Inmates say that if Israel installed prison phones their calls could be controlled and even monitored and that the need for the trade in mobile phones would end.
Strip-searching has resulted in an increasingly hostile environment in many jails and several violent attacks by guards on prisoners. The worst incidents have occurred in two neighbouring prisons in the Lower Galilee, Shatta and Gilboa jails.
Last month the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel decried an incident, following a fight between an inmate and a guard, in which a special unit, the Nachshon, stormed a ward in the Gilboa prison and sprayed tear gas into the cells. The ward's prisoners were forcibly removed from their cells, they had their hands tied behind their backs and were forced to kneel in the yard in the midday sun. Severe beatings with batons resulted in more than a dozen prisoners being badly injured.
Another disturbing incident, which occurred in January, only came to light recently after the mother of one of the inmates concerned was able to visit her son.
Diana Hussein, aged 44, found out that her 18-year-old son, Rabiah, and two other prisoners had been left unconscious by a beating from guards after they refused to undergo a strip search in Shatta jail during a Muslim religious festival. According to reports, the guards then attempted to rape the three inmates.
Rabiah was placed in isolation for several weeks and refused access to a doctor. Unable to walk, he had to be carried to the bathroom for many days by other inmates. His mother says he is still in severe pain and has difficulty moving. "The doctors are refusing to treat him and giving him only Acamol [a mild, paracetamol-based pain killer]," she said.
Rabiah, from Deir Hanna in the Galilee, is one of 120 Palestinian citizens of Israel who are security prisoners. His mother therefore enjoys visiting rights denied to most other prisoners' families. Under threat from prison staff, Rabiah tried to conceal the attack from her. She only learnt of it after a letter was smuggled out of the jail and published in the Arab press identifying the hometowns of the three victims. Rabiah is the only political prisoner from Deir Hanna.
"I lost my mind when I read the story," she said. "I knew it must be him but I had to wait another 10 days till I was allowed to visit him. I sent letters to every Israeli official I could think of but none of them replied."
Diana says the scandal of Israel's prisons should be properly investigated.
"I see the row about what went on with the Americans in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but no one seems to care about the abuses of prisoners inside Israeli jails."
----
Militants' Blast Kills 2 Palestinians by Israel Checkpoint
August 12, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/international/middleeast/12mideast.html?pagewanted=all&position=
JERUSALEM, Aug. 11 - A Palestinian bomber detonated explosives 200 yards from a busy checkpoint at the northern edge of Jerusalem on Wednesday, killing two Palestinian passers-by and wounding about 20 people, including 6 Israeli border police officers, 3 of them seriously.
The last attack inside Israel was on July 11, when a bomb planted next to a bus stop in Tel Aviv killed an Israeli soldier and wounded five other people. The last suicide bombing inside Israel was in mid-March, in the southern port city of Ashdod; it killed 10 Israelis.
Israeli officials said that an hour before the late afternoon explosion, they had hard intelligence that at least one Palestinian bomber was headed toward Jerusalem. The police and army went on high alert and set up additional checkpoints near the Kalandia crossing, which thousands of Palestinians use every day on the way to work in Jerusalem.
The officials said that as Israeli soldiers approached a suspicious car on foot, there was an explosion. The bomb was in a bag like a backpack left by the roadside, said the Israeli police spokesman, Superintendent Gil Kleiman, and was detonated by remote control as the police neared.
He said the bomber apparently "saw the police presence and fled, leaving the bag by the side of the road,'' Superintendent Kleiman said in an interview on Wednesday night. "Our intelligence said the bomber was headed for Jerusalem.''
One Palestinian was later arrested in the West Bank on suspicion of involvement in the bombing, he said, but he would not provide details.
At the scene, two cars were smashed together and burned, but neither appeared to have been distorted from an explosion inside.
Zacaria Zubeidah, the leader in Jenin of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a militant part of Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the attack in a telephone call to a Palestinian journalist in Jenin. He said that 44 pounds of explosives had been detonated by remote control and that the target was the Kalandia checkpoint. He said he regretted the deaths of the Palestinians. He did not mention the Israelis.
Superintendent Kleiman disputed Mr. Zubeidah's claim, saying that Israeli intelligence believed the intended target of the bomb was farther inside Jerusalem and that the explosion was premature. "We suspect the sudden appearance of the police caused the explosion,'' he said.
Later, Mr. Zubeidah told The Associated Press that in fact the bomber had been headed for Jerusalem and was forced to abandon the bomb as the police closed in. "We found ourselves forced to detonate it at the spot,'' he said.
About 30 yards from the explosion, a deep trench cuts through the main road between Ramallah and Jerusalem, intended for the "separation barrier'' that is to divide Jerusalem from the West Bank. But construction of that part of the barrier was halted by a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision, and large chunks of concrete for the foundation of the barrier lie beside the road.
"The explosion occurred just where the construction of the fence was stopped by a court order a few weeks ago,'' Superintendent Kleiman said with some disgust. "As police, we've been pushing for this fence for a long time. It's a political decision, of course, but it's already a godsend. "
"The terrorists' intent is to continue to try, but they're not succeeding in crossing over into Israel,'' he continued. "So if it's not a metal or concrete fence that stops terrorists, it will be a human fence, like those six border police wounded today.''
Capt. Jacob Dallal, an Israeli Army spokesman at the scene, agreed. "This is the most common route of the terrorists from Ramallah to Jerusalem,'' he said. "It's easy to go around the main road here - it's porous. That's why we say that building the fence, barrier or wall, whatever you call it, is essential. It is designed to force everything through the Kalandia checkpoint.''
The use of a remotely detonated bomb is a step backward for the militants, giving them less control over where and when an explosion will occur, said Boaz Ganor, an analyst with the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Tel Aviv.
"A remote detonation would show that the terrorists are having trouble infiltrating suicide bombers, or that members of a cell did not want to die,'' Mr. Ganor said.
He praised the quality and timeliness of Israeli intelligence, which he said has improved a great deal since the second intifada began in 2000. "You see it in two ways, first in defensive actions like today and also in targeted assassinations,'' he said.
"It's always a competition between the terrorist and the counterterrorist, to find the technology or the methods to counter the other side,'' he said. "It never ends.''
The dead, both Palestinian passers-by, were identified as Salah Abu Sneineh, about 60, and Ayed Mustafa, 45. Three other members of Mr. Abu Sneineh's family were wounded, including a child, Mahdi, about 6, who was described by Ramallah hospital officials as being in serious condition. At least seven more Palestinian bystanders were hurt, with five of them taken to Jerusalem hospitals, the police said.
Of the six border officers wounded, three were in serious condition and one of those was "in very bad condition,'' Superintendent Kleiman said.
The Israelis have been active in the arrest and killing of suspected Palestinian terrorists in Jenin, Nablus and Gaza, and Palestinians have vowed revenge.
Ely Karmon, another analyst at the Institute for Counter-Terrorism, said that it was clear that the Palestinians had the organization and will to commit further suicide attacks and continued to try, but that "the successes of Israeli security forces are growing.'' The bomb on Wednesday was "less than perfect,'' he said, "but it still kills and wounds."
Before dawn on Wednesday, an Israeli helicopter fired a missile into the Khan Yunis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, wounding 15 people, as gunmen confronted Israeli soldiers demolishing Palestinian homes near a Jewish settlement.
The army said that it was carrying out an operation against Palestinian militants in Khan Yunis and that the helicopter had fired at an "open area" to repulse armed men.
Palestinian medics said most of the wounded were civilians, including two children and a woman. At least one gunman was among the casualties. One person was in critical condition.
--------
An Israeli Uproar, and Arrest, Over an Unlikely Friendship
August 12, 2004
By GREG MYRE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/international/middleeast/12israeli.html
JERUSALEM, Aug. 11 - The improbable friendship between Tali Fahima, a 28-year-old Israeli woman, and Zacaria Zubeidah, one of the most wanted Palestinian militants, began last year with a telephone call made out of curiosity. Now she is under arrest on suspicion of helping to plan an attack against Israel, and her case is a front-page story in Israel.
Ms. Fahima, the daughter of Moroccan immigrants who was then a legal secretary with no history of political activism, sought out Mr. Zubeidah because she wanted to understand what motivated Palestinians to commit acts of violence against Israelis.
"I had to ask why a man goes ahead and does this," she said in a March interview with Israeli television. "There is a reason for this. A man doesn't wake up one morning and decide, 'O.K., I'm going to carry out an attack.' "
Ms. Fahima was arrested Monday as she was making her latest journey into the West Bank, to see Mr. Zubeidah in Jenin. As she was being led in handcuffs to a court hearing on Tuesday, she angrily defended him.
"He does not plan attacks," she said. "Even if he does, so what? They live under occupation. Do you even know what that means?"
"Don't worry, they are just trying to keep me away from friends I have there, from Zacaria," she continued. "I will never turn Zacaria in. He is a freedom fighter."
On Wednesday, Mr. Zubeidah claimed responsibility for a bombing near the Kalandia checkpoint at the northern edge of Jerusalem. The bomb was intended for Israelis, he said, but it killed two Palestinians and wounded about 20 people, including Palestinians and Israeli border police officers.
Ms. Fahima and her lawyers say the case against her is baseless. She has made friends in Jenin, including Mr. Zubeidah, and was working on a project to build a computer center in the town's refugee camp, said Gaby Lasky, one of her lawyers. But she has had nothing to do with the violence, Ms. Lasky added.
The Israeli security services, which interrogated Ms. Fahima for several days in May and then released her, received court approval on Tuesday to hold her until Aug. 19 for further questioning. No charges have been filed, and the Israeli authorities have declined to discuss details of her case.
Last summer, Ms. Fahima became intrigued by Mr. Zubeidah after reading an article about him, and asked a reporter for his phone number. She called, they spoke, and soon after, she was making solo visits to the chaotic town of Jenin even though Israel prohibits its civilians' traveling to Palestinian areas.
Meanwhile, Mr. Zubeidah, who is in his late 20's, has made himself one of the most prominent and most hunted Palestinians over the last couple of years.
As the Jenin leader of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, linked to Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction, he has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks, and Israel describes him as a leading terrorist.
His mother and brother were both killed during Israeli raids into Jenin in recent years. He says he has survived five attempts on his life, and is often in hiding.
But when he is not underground, he runs an aggressive self-promotion campaign that includes frequent interviews with visiting journalists.
Mr. Zubeidah is a lanky man whose face has been darkened by burns from the accidental explosion of a homemade bomb. He is perhaps the most powerful figure in a lawless town, and he relishes his status.
"I am the highest authority," he said in a recent interview with The New York Times.
While he and his faction are loyal to Mr. Arafat, they are also waging a vigilante campaign against corruption among Palestinian officials.
A year ago, Mr. Zubeidah's men kidnapped and beat up the governor of Jenin, prompting him to flee to Jordan. Twelve days ago, Mr. Zubeidah and his gunmen torched the governor's office, and brought along a cameraman to film the destruction. But they were careful to pay respects to their leader: they removed portraits of Mr. Arafat before setting the building on fire.
The Israeli news media picked up on Ms. Fahima's story last spring, and shortly afterward, she was dismissed from her job as a legal secretary in Tel Aviv. Israelis who recognized her on the street began insulting her, according to a friend, Lin Dorvat.
"She didn't expect this kind of reaction," Ms. Dorvat said.
She was born in Israel and grew up in Kiryat Gat, a modest, working-class town in southern Israel. She served in the army after high school, as is required of most Israelis, Ms. Dorvat said. "Tali said she came from a family of strong women, and that her mother taught her to have strong opinions," she added.
"What really troubled Tali was the suicide bombings,'' Ms. Dorvat continued. "She would say, 'How is it possible that they hate us this much?' She felt the only way she could find out was to go and meet people on a human level."
Ms. Fahima has never belonged to left-wing peace groups, Ms. Dorvat said, and in recent elections she voted for the right-wing Likud Party led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
In the Israeli press, Ms. Fahima is often described as a paramour of Mr. Zubeidah, who is married and has two small children. But she has denied any romantic involvement.
Since Mr. Zubeidah is often in hiding and away from home, Ms. Fahima spent much of her time in Jenin at his family home, with his wife and children, according to Fathi Natoor, a Palestinian journalist in Jenin.
"I used to think that this is not legitimate, that this war is wrong, that he shouldn't be fighting," Ms. Fahima said of Mr. Zubeidah in the television interview in March. "Today, I understand what he does."
--------
Israeli helicopters fire into camp
Reuters
Aug 12, 2004
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/news_world_story_skin/441402%3fformat=html
Israeli helicopters have fired two missiles on the outskirts of a Palestinian refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, witnesses say, hours after a Palestinian car bombing in the West Bank killed two people.
A military source denied missiles had been fired and said Israeli helicopters had fired light gunfire into open areas around Rafah refugee camp, a militant stronghold and frequent scene of Israeli raids, during a "routine search" for gunmen.
There were no immediate reports of casualties, but witnesses said it caused some electric blackouts in the area. Israel has often raided Rafah to arrest militants and destroy tunnels on the Egyptian border that Gaza gunmen had dug to smuggle in weapons.
Israel plans to evacuate Jewish settlers from Gaza in 2005 and Palestinian militants seek to portray this as a victory. Israel is bent on preventing that by smashing Palestinian armed factions first.
Israel's latest air strike occurred hours after a Palestinian car bomb exploded at a West Bank checkpoint near Jerusalem, killing two Palestinians and injuring 19 people, including six Israeli border policemen.
--------
Israeli Troops Hold BBC Crew During Undercover Raid
Aug 12, 2004
JERUSALEM (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=5961307
- Israeli soldiers detained three journalists working for the British Broadcasting Corporation during an undercover military operation in the West Bank city of Nablus, military officials and the BBC said.
A BBC crew who had been filming a Palestinian doctor as he made house calls was forced to sit for four hours at gunpoint by Israeli troops, said Nicholas Springate, the BBC's Jerusalem bureau chief.
The soldiers demanded the journalists hand over phones, confiscated their videotape and denied their requests to be allowed to contact their bureau or Israeli authorities, he said.
"The BBC will be issuing a formal statement and complaint," said Springate.
Military officials said the BBC journalists and two Palestinians had unwittingly walked into a building where the Israeli undercover operation was under way to hunt for militants following an alert prompted by Wednesday's suicide bombing near Jerusalem.
They said the undercover troops had been afraid Palestinian gunmen in the streets might get wind of their presence in the building, and had put the journalists under guard and taken away their phones until the operation ended to maintain secrecy.
"Unfortunately, there was no other way the soldiers could have acted without exposing themselves and endangering themselves," said army spokeswoman Maj. Sharon Feingold, adding the situation was explained to the journalists at the time.
The Israeli army said it had apologized to the BBC for the incident and had launched an investigation.
-----
UN slams Mid-East peace failure
BBC
By Susannah Price
12 August, 2004
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3557342.stm
Both sides were blamed for the continuing tension and violence A senior UN official says the Israelis and Palestinians have both failed to protect civilians or make progress towards reforms under the roadmap.
Undersecretary General for Political Affairs Kieran Prendergast said Palestinian reform continued to be slow and mostly cosmetic.
Last month the Palestinians threatened to bar top UN Middle East official Terje Roed Larsen from their territory.
Mr Roed Larsen had criticised the Palestinian Authority.
This was a depressingly familiar briefing which outlined the lack of any real progress on resuming the Middle East peace process.
Mr Prendergast said the violence had continued over the past month with more than 50 Palestinians killed and at least 20 Israelis injured.
He blamed both sides, saying Israeli civilians were being attacked mostly by rockets and Palestinians civilians were victims of Israeli military operations.
'More balanced'
Mr Prendergast said the lack of political will meant progress on the implementation of Palestinian reform was still slow.
He pointed out that although Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had announced he would regroup his security services to help restore law and order, this had not happened on the ground.
The briefing was welcomed by the Palestinian delegation despite the criticism as being more balanced than that given by Mr Roed Larsen last month.
The UN envoy was accused by the Palestinians of going too far in his criticism of the Palestinian Authority which, he had warned, was in danger of collapse.
Mr Prendergast also criticised Israel, saying that settlement activities were continuing in the Occupied Territories as well as extrajudicial killings.
He underlined his belief that the road map backed by the UN, Russia, the EU and the US was a realistic way to move out of what he called the current hopeless situation.
-------- nato
Tables turn on US conman
Anthony Loyd in Kabul meets the victims of an American bounty hunter whose personal war on evil fooled everyone
August 12, 2004
The Australian
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10416737%255E2703,00.html
ALERTED by the crash of his compound gates being forced open, the thump of running feet and gunshots, Maulawi Siddiq, 48, rushed from his house in alarm.
From a window beside him a bearded gunman, dressed in a badged US army uniform and Afghan pukul hat, leapt into his path, assault rifle raised, yelling: "Hands up."
Siddiq had just had his first encounter with Jonathan K. Idema, aka "Mad Jack", criminal, fraudster and fantasist, at present shackled in a Kabul cell facing charges including torture and illegal detention.
But if Siddiq was fooled, then so too were the US Special Forces and NATO explosive experts who swarmed into the yard in Idema's footsteps, in the apparent belief they were operating in support of a legitimate anti-terrorist operation rather than as the stooges of a maverick trickster launching a personal war on terror.
"I was very frightened," Siddiq recalls. "Following Jack there were about 20 American special forces tramping into my yard. I could see my brother and our guests standing with their hands against the wall. Their morning tea and furniture were thrown on the ground about them.
"I was blindfolded and pushed back into the yard. I could hear many other soldiers rush in and start throwing my books and possessions around as they searched. There were helicopters in the sky and many vehicles outside."
The raid, on June 24, was the third time that month NATO peacekeepers had accompanied Idema on one of his operations. According to a NATO official in Kabul, it took little more than a call on a mobile phone from Idema and the uniformed attire of his seven-man band, self-named the "Sabre Seven", to convince them to back his raids.
"We thought we were operating with a legitimate special forces group," the officer admitted yesterday. "We had no reason to believe any different until much later when the coalition commander told us Idema wasn't even in the military."
Coalition and NATO troops withdrew from the raid just before dusk as Siddiq and seven male family members were taken, hooded and bound, by the Sabre Seven to an improvised prison in one of the three houses that Idema was renting in Kabul.
They were not Idema's first prisoners, and they were beaten and abused here for 12 days.
But Mad Jack had overreached himself, and the reign of the Sabre Seven was near its end. For Siddiq is a senior Afghan judge and the deputy director of the country's appeal court.
When outraged family members and high-ranking friends complained to the US embassy that US troops had arrested a leading figure in the legal establishment, an investigation was launched.
On July 5, as Siddiq and his fellow captives sweltered, hooded and bound, in Idema's basement, Afghan security forces raided it. That night, in captivity in the capital's secret police headquarters, it was Mad Jack's turn for some questions.
His trial was due to start in Kabul overnight. He and two other US civilians, Brett Bennet and Edward Carabello, and four Afghans face a variety of charges, including torture and false imprisonment, that could earn them up to 16 years in jail.
A search of their properties has netted weapons, US uniforms, radios, computers and a wealth of video footage and photographs.
Idema, in his preliminary court appearance three weeks ago, claimed that his actions had the full support of coalition forces, and he was in regular contact with Pentagon officials "at the highest level", a charge hotly denied by the Americans, who have not given him legal aid.
Afghan investigators who have interrogated Idema are baffled by his funding.
"He was quite well organised and had to have a source of income," investigator Abdul Fatah says. "He is an anti-terrorist but we don't know for whom. It is possible he was just banking on getting the $US25million ($35 million) for catching Osama (bin Laden)."
Idema's trial is bound to embarrass the coalition.
That a former convict with a long criminal record for fraud could enter Afghanistan repeatedly since 2001, styling himself as a former green beret anti-terrorist expert (insiders say he was dishonourably discharged from the US army in the 1980s) and fool journalists, Afghan commanders and coalition officers alike hardly testifies to their professionalism.
-------- pacific
The island idyll and the US occupation
For six decades, the inhabitants of Okinawa have lived alongside thousands of US troops. But new plans for military expansion have provoked furious resistance.
independent.co.uk
David McNeill reports
12 August 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/story.jsp?story=550443
Natsume Taira is a mild-mannered, bespectacled parson and pacifist in the Martin Luther King mode, but he warns he will not be pushed too far. "If the authorities come back with more people we'll be waiting for them," he says. "I'm not a violent man but they're not going to get through."
It is a baking hot day in Henoko, a tiny fishing village in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture. For 110 days, the reverend and 8,000 supporters have been coming to this sun-bleached beach to fight off government engineers trying to begin drilling surveys for a proposed offshore helicopter base for the US military.
As the protest has dragged on, engineers and protesters, many in their sixties, have scuffled. White-haired pensioners have gone toe-to-toe with security guards and taken to canoes and wetsuits to block the invaders. "I'm full of anger," 64-year-old Sakai Toyama says. "How can they do this to this place? We already put up with so much."
Okinawans live in one of the most beautiful places on earth, a string of pristine islands dosed with ecological Viagra, anointed in tropical sun, bathed in the azure-blue waters of the Pacific, and coated with a lush carpet of green, spiked with palm trees.
The region has two claims to fame: the world's longest life-span and one of the world's largest concentrations of US military bases. The Americans invaded in 1945, mounting a savage attack that wiped out a third of the local population and left 50,000 US troops killed or injured. They never left.
In 1972, the islands reverted to Japanese rule but most of the bases stayed. The bases already occupy a fifth of the main island and include Kadena, the biggest and most active US Air Force base in east Asia, and Futenma, which occupies 25 per cent of the second-largest city, Ginowan.
Now, after years of promises by Tokyo and Washington to scale down the military presence, the plan to build the Marine base, 1,500m by 600m, over a coral reef off Henoko to replace an older base in Futenma has enraged the people. Takuma Higashionna, a fisherman, says: "They're going to steal our livelihood and destroy the local environment, and we're not going to stand for it."
Mr Higashionna has just returned from San Francisco where he filed a suit against the US Defence Department, claiming the base threatens the habitat of the imperiled dugong, a gentle sea mammal classed as a "natural monument".
More than 50,000 US military personnel and dependants, including 17,600 Marines, are on Okinawa, which has a population of 1.3 million; the US military controls much of the land, sea and air, including all air traffic up to 6,000m. Over the years, Okinawa has sent off troops to wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, and if war with China or North Korea comes, US troops from Okinawa will fight it, whether the Okinawans like it or not.
Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant and author of Okinawa: Cold War Island, says: "It is simply unimaginable that an ally would do this sort of thing. It's just an accident waiting to happen.
"When [US Secretary of Defence] Donald Rumsfeld visited Okinawa last November, he was told by the island's governor, 'You people are on the active volcano and when it explodes it is going to bring down your entire strategy in Asia in much the way the fall of the Berlin Wall did for the USSR'. Building a 39th military base in Okinawa is absurd."
The past four weeks or so have been typical, the people say, just low-level stuff: On 8 July, a Marine major charged with the rape of a Filipina base worker was convicted of molestation. On 16 July, an Okinawan was hurt in a hit-and-run accident traced to a soldier at Camp Hansen. On 23 July, a drunken off-duty Marine hit a policeman. On 8 August, another Marine attacked a taxi driver. The day before, the US Air Force had admitted that a 2.5kg piece of metal embedded in the garden of a house had fallen from an F18C fighter in June. The Okinawa Times made it the lead story and asked: "What if children had been playing in the garden?"
Nothing major happened; nothing like the rage that overtook the island in 1995 when two Marines and a sailor kidnapped and raped a 12-year-old girl and left her for dead, a crime that capped years of brutal sex crimes. This is what happens, said the thousands who came out in Okinawa's largest protest, when you train young men barely out of their teens to kill like machines on a crowded island that does not want them.
The gang rapists knew that if they made it back to base before the police found out, they were safe under the Status of Forces Agreement that protects US forces here, which is why most of the rage was directed at the Japanese government that foists 75 per cent of all US military bases in Japan on this little speck in the Pacific. Islanders believe they are bearing the burden of Japan's military alliance with the US and, with it, America's military strategy for east Asia.
Shoichi Chibana is Malcolm X to Natsume Taira's Martin Luther King, a firebrand famous on the island for burning the Japanese flag on national television. "The Japanese government wants US military protection but it knows they can never move these bases to the mainland because there they would be kicked out," he says.
These days, Mr Chibana fights for the return of 236sq m of ancestral land, part of 530,000sq m leased by Tokyo to the US military. "Here, we're powerless so they get away with it. This is the best place in the world for the US military. They love it here. The Japanese government pays them Ĩ6,700bn (Ģ32bn) a year. They pay for their houses, their fuel, water, cars. The only thing the government doesn't pay is the salaries of the soldiers."
The 1995 protests were a watershed and forced the US and Japanese governments to agree to return Futenma Marine Corps air base to Okinawa within five to seven years. The agreement was timed to greet the arrival of Bill Clinton, then US president, who had come to Japan to renew the US-Japan security treaty. Mr Clinton shook hands with the then Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto and the protesters left the streets. Today, the return of Futenma is still 16 years away and another base is being built.
Military planes constantly roar overhead and the narrow roads are choked with green machines. The soundtrack to this pounding symphony of moving machinery is Limp Bizkit, Nickelback and Slipknot, the music that leeches from cars driven by military personnel and the bars that cater to them. Most of these bars are on a strip outside the main gate to Camp Hansen in the village of Kin, where riots against the bases in the 1970s shook the shaky truce between the military and the people to its core.
In one bar, the Japanese mama-san, who claims she knew R Lee Emery, the pit-bull drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket, says the Henoko protesters are "idiots", adding: "The bases bring revenue."At 7pm, the bar is starting to fill with big, tattooed men with boy's faces.
Major Michael Brown, the veteran convicted of molesting the Filipina base worker in July, said about the Kin strip during his trial: "GIs go to the bars and drink like fish, get into fights, and pay mama-sans for the company of young ladies. Deals are made for hand-jobs, blow-jobs, full, unadulterated sex, and just about anything in between."
The area around the strip has been the site of dozens of rapes and attempted sex assaults; few Okinawan women will go there after dark. The word many islanders use to describe this situation is "occupation".
Tatsuno Kuba, a mother raising four children in the shadow of Kadena, says: "Why should they be able to stay and take all the best land? Some people say the US soldiers are shut up in the bases, but they can come out anytime they like to drink and play and grab local women. We're locked out of our land.
"They train people to kill behind those fences. I can hear them shouting all the time. Every day my house fills up with the smell of gasoline, the windows shudder and the engines drown the kids' lessons. And the planes roar over so close. It's only a matter of time before they kill someone again."
Like most islanders, she knows planes regularly crash inside and outside the bases. In the worst, in the 1950s, a jet fighter hit a school, killing 17 children and injuring 121.
The Japanese government has responded to the anger by pouring in cash from the public trough, and backing political conservatives such as the present governor, Keiichi Inamine, who replaced the fiercely anti-base Masahide Ota, who wrote in the Asahi newspaper: "When local people are denied free use of their own land, air and sea how could they be considered citizens of a free nation?"
The refrain from Tokyo and from the Governor's office is that if the bases go the economy will collapse. Mr Ota says: "Base-related revenues make up only 5 per cent of the total. There would be jobs for 10 times more people if the US forces were to vacate their bases in urban areas and the returned land was developed." He believes Okinawa could earn much more from tourism. "The bases are hampering the development of Okinawa's economy, not sustaining it."
The Henoko movement arrives at a crucial time. Washington is experimenting with plans for a more mobile, decentralised military, and, with South Korea increasingly chafing against the US presence there, Japan is seen as the key regional centre of control.
Mr Johnson says: "The US must prevent what happened in Korea, which is the more genuine anti-American democracy, and the Americans there are just hated. Rumsfeld is not worried about democracy but he knows Okinawa is prone to something that may be outside the control of the government."
Douglas Lummis, a former Marine and now political scientist who lives in Okinawa, says: "People have been saying for years, 'Of course we don't want the bases'. Then they lower their voices and say, 'But what can we do'. Now they have something. I think the Henoko battle will be won and it will energise the anti-base movement."
The Rev Taira says the islanders have had enough. "The soldiers get drunk and crash their cars. There are four accidents a day; two rapes a month. Almost every person on Okinawa has a family member who has been assaulted. Then the soldiers go off to kill poor people in Iraq and Afghanistan. It makes my blood boil."
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan to release 41 Indian prisoners
Islamabad, Delhi vow to eliminate terrorism; Pakistan to free 406 more prisoners on confirmation of their national status
The News International
By Mariana Baabar
August 12, 2004
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2004-daily/12-08-2004/main/main1.htm
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan, as a goodwill gesture, has decided to release 41 Indian prisoners languishing in its jails as their identity has been confirmed. It further pledged to free 406 more prisoners, most of them fishermen, once their national status is known.
Pakistan announced the decision soon after the two-day talks between the two countries on combating terrorism and drug trafficking concluded here on Wednesday. Both the sides reaffirmed their determination to combat terrorism and emphasised the need for complete elimination of this menace.
According to a joint statement issued at the end of the talks, Interior Secretary Tariq Mahmud and his Indian counterpart Dhirendra Singh assessed as positive the increasing cooperation and information sharing between narcotics control authorities of the two countries and agreed to work towards an MoU to institutionalise cooperation in this area. There would be specialised officers in the two high commissions to work on drug trafficking.
The Indian side, however, according to diplomats, expressed concern over an alleged increase in infiltration in occupied Kashmir since June. They said Pakistan was not initiating long-term steps to prevent the influx as the two countries vowed for "complete elimination" of terrorism.
Pakistan denies these claims and said that a policy has been formulated from the very top and the government is ensuring that no one is able to cross the Line of Control (LoC). The Indians were, in fact, reminded that their own military commanders had publicly said that influx had gone down substantially.
Home Secretary Dhirendra Singh, who led the Indian delegation at the talks, earlier called on Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat and held talks on mutual concerns over issues relating to terrorism.
Muhammad Anis adds: Reiterating Pakistan's resolve to eliminate terrorism, Interior Minister Faisal said the two-day dialogue between home secretaries of Pakistan and India would help reduce doubts and misunderstandings on some important issues. "The talks have ended on a positive note and the two-day process augurs well for the future of such dialogues," the minister said while talking to The News.
However, he said one should not be optimistic or expect resolution of long-standing issues within a short time but the success depended on engaging each other in the process of dialogues. "It is very important to remain engaged in a dialogue process which helps remove doubts," he added.
He said during the talks Pakistan reiterated its pledge to move towards achievement of durable peace in the region. "Pakistan has highlighted those efforts, which it has been making for the last couple of years," he added. Faisal said Pakistan's efforts have been very meaningful and have resulted in lessening tensions between the two countries. "Pakistan has been maintaining a gesture of accommodation in the last several months and initiated a series of measures which have effectively contributed towards lessening tension and helped a great deal in boosting confidence level," he maintained.
He said Pakistan expects that India would reciprocate to Islamabad's measures in order to strengthen the foundation on which the future of this dialogue depends. Faisal said the two countries needed to adopt meaningful and pragmatic approach towards addressing contentious issues and at the same time ensure that significant progress is achieved in the areas of convergence of opinion and common interests.
-------- russia / chechnya / georgia
Russia to boost defense orders by 40 percent in 2005: Putin
MOSCOW (AFP)
Aug 12, 2004
http://www.spacewar.com/2004/040812153206.3qpn01w6.html
President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that Russia would boost its military procurement budget by 40 percent next year, news agencies reported.
"We plan to increase the budget for defense orders by 40 percent, which amounts to 70 billion rubles (2.5 billion dollars, 2.1 billion euros)," ITAR-TASS quoted Putin as saying.
He added that military expenditures "will see overall growth" next year.
The report contained no detailed breakdown from Putin on how the extra spending would be allocated.
The procurement budget covers everything from MiG jets and new rockets to boots, food and other basic supplies for the cash-strapped and demoralized military.
Putin has placed his close ally, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, in charge of army reforms and has since promoted him to head the massive military infrastructure, demoting the status of the general chiefs of staff.
Ivanov, who once served in the KGB, became Russia's first civilian defense minister in 2001, but has struggled against entrenched and powerful generals in his bid to introduce reforms.
Putin and his predecessor Boris Yeltsin have issued repeated instructions to transform the army, now bogged down in a guerrilla war in Chechnya but originally built for fighting the United States during the Cold War, into a smaller, more mobile force.
Ivanov reported Thursday that the Russian armed forces would take on 50,000 professional soldiers and officers next year.
The plan has been opposed by generals who fear that a switch from mandatory conscription to contracted military service would decimate the numbers of Russian soldiers, and by implication senior commanders as well.
Russia had initially planned to eliminate the draft by 2000. Now the plan has been pushed back by at least a decade.
--------
Georgia risks war over separatists
August 12, 2004
By Fred Weir
The Christian Science Monitor
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0812/p06s01-wosc.html
MOSCOW - War clouds are gathering over the former Soviet Caucasus, as Georgia's ambitious US-backed President Mikheil Saakashvili moves to reunite his fractured nation by confronting two separatist provinces with close ties to Russia.
Unlike a previous cycle of vicious civil wars in the early 1990s, when the pro-Moscow republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia won de facto independence from Georgia, the current tensions threaten to draw Russia directly into any fresh conflict. The US, nervous over the security of a crucial oil pipeline slated to open next year across Georgia, backs Mr. Saakashvili's bid to restore central authority - as long as it doesn't erupt into open warfare. Many Russian experts argue that Saakashvili ought to concentrate on solving Georgia's massive economic and social problems, and cooperate with Russia to find a negotiated settlement for Abkhazia and South Ossetia that addresses the historic complexities of these regions.
But others warn the region is a powderkeg that could explode, despite the best intentions in Moscow and Washington. "Georgia is the No. 1 flash point between the US and Russia just now. There are competing interests there which could be managed if Russia and the US cooperate closely, but could easily fly out of control if they don't," says Vitaly Naumkin, director of the independent Center for Strategic and International Studies in Moscow.
Saakashvili, a US-educated lawyer, has set out to reverse Georgia's reputation as a failed state since coming to power in the peaceful "Rose Revolution" that overthrew former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze last November. He was elected in January, with over 90 percent of the vote, on pledges to end Georgia's official corruption, rebuild the economy, and reunify the country.
He scored a major success in May by peacefully driving out the strongman of another wayward Georgian region, Adjaria, and bringing it back under central government control.
Saakashvili insists his goal is to extend the democratic "Rose Revolution" and rule of law to all of Georgia. "These current tensions in South Ossetia began as a result of our successful and resolute efforts to put an end to the criminality and illegality that for too long was the norm in the South Caucasus," Saakash- vili said during a visit to the US last week.
Daily gun battles are reported from South Ossetia, a mountainous region of about 100,000, which straddles the most important pass through the Caucasus Mountains and enjoys very close relations with the neighboring Russian republic of North Ossetia. Saakashvili last week replaced the usual squads of border police in the area with US-trained Georgian troops. Violent incidents between them and Russian "peacekeeping" troops appear to be multiplying.
Russian news agencies reported that Georgian forces shelled the South Ossetian capital city of Tskhinvali with mortars on Tuesday. "The main purpose of these actions is to create an unbearable psychological climate and scare the population of South Ossetia," said Irina Gagloyeva, a spokesperson for the South Ossetian government.
Saakashvili accuses Moscow of meddling in South Ossetia, with the eventual aim of annexing it. On Tuesday he charged that Russian secret services have passed out 5,000 Russian passports to local people in the past week alone. "We are facing purposeful actions of very serious people which include elements of the misappropriation of the territory of another country," Saakashvili told journalists Tuesday.
Tensions are also rising in Abkhazia, a mainly Muslim republic of about 95,000, which, like South Ossetia, is ethnically and linguistically distinct from Georgia. Abkhazia also won its independence - with covert Russian aid - following a brutal civil war in the early '90s. The tiny republic is a subtropical Black Sea zone of beaches and snow-capped mountains, where about 700,000 Russians vacation each summer.
In early August Saakashvili ordered the Georgian navy to blockade the region and open fire on any "smugglers" trying to dock. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov lashed back, saying any attack on a Russian vessel would be tantamount to "piracy" and might draw a military response from Moscow.
Experts say that Russian President Vladimir Putin, who cooperated with Saakashvili's drive to reincorporate Adjaria into Georgia last May, may find himself hobbled by a myriad of ties that have developed between Russia and the two secessionist Georgian republics over the past decade. Most Abkhazians and South Ossetians have taken out Russian citizenship and earn their living by trading with Russia. Abkhazia draws its main income from Russian tourism.
"Russian policy under Putin is much more responsible than it was under (former President Boris) Yeltsin," says Irina Zvigelskaya, a professor at the official Institute of Foreign Relations in Moscow. "But we cannot walk away from these people and the interdependences that have built up between them and Russia, and Saakashvili is not making Putin's position easier by launching all these provocations."
But Saakashvili is doing what he must, says Viktor Kremeniuk, deputy director of the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies in Moscow. "Any chance for Georgia's future prosperity depends on the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline," which is slated to begin pumping Caspian oil to Western markets next year. If instability reigns in Georgia potential sabotage will remain a key concern.
"Security of the pipeline is a major reason the US is backing Saakashvili's efforts to restore state sovereignty over all of Georgia," Mr. Kremeniuk says. "Saakashvili has the support, he has the energy and he needs to accomplish reunification before he can work out an economic strategy to get his country back on track."
-----
Shooting intensifies in Georgia region
AP
August 12, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=533584.html
TBILISI, Georgia Georgian forces and South Ossetian separatists exchanged intense gun and mortar fire for the second consecutive night Wednesday, and officials said at least eight people were wounded.
South Ossetian officials called the shooting there especially fierce.
The fighting came as Georgia's defense minister was wrapping up three days of talks in Moscow intended to calm tensions over South Ossetia and another Georgian rebel region, Abkhazia.
Irina Gagloyeva, a spokeswoman for the South Ossetian government, said Georgian forces had opened fire on two villages near its main city, Tskhinvali, around midnight. Five people were wounded and several houses were seriously damaged, she said.
But Gigi Ugulava, Georgia's deputy security minister, said South Ossetian separatists had fired on ethnic Georgian villages of the region. Colonel Alexander Sukhitashvili, a spokesman for Georgian police in South Ossetia, said two Georgian police officers and a villager had been wounded.
Ugulava also accused Russian peacekeepers, deployed as a buffer force in South Ossetia, of joining in the attack.
The chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, Colonel General Yuri Baluyevsky, angrily dismissed that allegation.
President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia has vowed to reunite his country by reining in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Georgian officials have accused Russia, which has close ties to both rebel provinces, of meddling.
Adding to the tension, Saakashvili has warned Russian tourists not to travel to Abkhazia's lush Black Sea coastline without being cleared by Georgian migration and customs, and he has ordered the Georgian Coast Guard to fire on any boats that fail to stop for a check.
In a gesture of defiance, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian ultranationalist leader, traveled by boat to Abkhazia on Wednesday accompanied by several dozen lawmakers from his party.
-------- space
China Calls For Cooperation With US, Japan In Space Programs
Beijing (XNA)
Aug 12, 2004
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-04zx.html
A top Chinese space official said China is willing to cooperate with the United States and Japan in space programs on exploration and finding resources.
During a briefing on China's geospace exploration program in cooperation with Europe, Sun Laiyan, director of the China National Space Administration, said China hopes to cooperate with nations who have space exploration programs.
He denied Western media's reports that China has military ambitions in its space programs.
China is already working with other countries on space projects. For example, China is developing three of the eight small satellites for the world's first planned constellation of eight man-made satellites.
Sun said his administration and European Space Agency have agreed to increase cooperation in space science programs following smooth development of "Double Star Program."
China plans to launch its second manned space flight next year and a fly-by lunar satellite by 2007. In 2003, Chinese astronaut Yang Liwei landed safely on earth on Oct. 16 aboard the Shenzhou-5 after orbiting the Earth 14 times onthe 21 hour mission, making China the third country after Russia and the United States able to put people in space.
-------- spies
Democrats Don't Plan to Block Confirmation of C.I.A. Nominee
August 12, 2004
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/politics/12goss.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 - A dozen Senate Democrats suggested Wednesday that they would not oppose President Bush's nomination of Representative Porter J. Goss as director of central intelligence, but they vowed to use his confirmation hearings to amplify their concerns over fatal intelligence failures under this administration.
Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he expected to open the confirmation hearings the first week of September. He also predicted that Mr. Goss, a Florida Republican, would be confirmed.
In interviews, none of the Senate Democrats disputed that prediction. In fact, no Democratic senator declared an intention to oppose the nomination outright. Many said they were unhappy with what they perceived as Mr. Goss's excessive partisanship, but they said they would withhold judgment until the hearings.
At the same time, Senator John Kerry, the party's presidential nominee, signaled that he would not make this nomination a major campaign issue. On Tuesday, Mr. Kerry released a low-key, noncommittal statement calling for "fair, bipartisan and expeditious confirmation hearings," and on Wednesday he said nothing on the campaign trail about the nomination.
Privately, some Democrats said the nomination put them in a difficult political position. The C.I.A. has already gone two months without a replacement for George J. Tenet as director. The Democrats said that if they opposed the Goss nomination they expected that the White House would cast them as obstructionists who were delaying prosecution of the war on terror.
They said they had learned that lesson the hard way. In 2002, the Democrats opposed a proposal to eliminate some protections for employees of the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans took that as an opening to portray certain Democrats as opposed to protecting the nation.
One of those Democrats was Senator Max Cleland of Georgia. Republicans ran a television commercial showing pictures of Mr. Cleland, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and said Mr. Cleland "voted against the president's vital homeland security efforts 11 times." Mr. Cleland lost his seat. "They've got the trump card," a top Senate Democratic aide said of the Republicans. "And the reality is, that despite all the intelligence problems with this White House, we do need a C.I.A. director."
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said the president might have been "looking for a fight" by nominating a politician. But, Mr. Schumer said, Democrats can avoid falling into that domestic-security kind of trap by accepting Mr. Goss, if the president accepted the recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.
"The best way for Democrats to stay true to their principles is not to go after Goss, who I believe is a decent guy, but by focusing on the restructuring, which is more important than any single person," Mr. Schumer said.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the intelligence committee, hinted at that position as well. Mr. Rockefeller said that naming a politician as director of central intelligence was a "mistake." But he also said that would not be his only criterion for judging Mr. Goss.
"We must consider this nomination within the context of the larger reform debate, which is the overriding intelligence issue facing our country," Mr. Rockefeller said.
Jeremy Rosner, a Democratic pollster who served on the National Security Council staff under President Bill Clinton, said the Democrats had better issues to take before the public than the Goss nomination.
"There are better fights to pick," Mr. Rosner said. "This is relatively obscure to the main event," he added, referring to the war in Iraq.
Some Democrats offered other reasons to support the nomination.
Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana and also a member of the intelligence committee, said: "I think in general presidents should be able to staff their own administrations, absent any deficiency. And if you don't like the way the administration is functioning, then you hold the president accountable."
Congress should block a nomination only when the appointee has demonstrated unreasonable allegiance to ideological or partisan ties, Mr. Bayh said.
"My impression is that does not apply to Porter Goss," Mr. Bayh said, adding, "I think that there will be some members of our caucus who feel that he is too partisan."
Senator Richard J. Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and a member of the committee, might be in that category. He called Mr. Goss "a good person and a good congressman," but said, "I'm just not sure he's the right person for the job."
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, also noted Mr. Goss's partisanship.
"I am concerned about the political appointment of someone who has been a strong partisan defender of the president and of the agency," Mrs. Clinton said on Tuesday. "But I'm going to wait to see how his appointment is presented."
Virtually every Democrat interviewed said he or she would keep an open mind on the nomination, which allows them to keep the door open in case anything unexpected comes up but not reveal now that they intend to pass on a nomination battle.
While Republicans slightly outnumber the Democrats on the committee and in the Senate as a whole, Democrats could block the nomination with a filibuster.
Still, Democrats said they had not had a chance to discuss their positions with their colleagues, because many are on vacation, and asserted that they intended at the least to pose tough questions to Mr. Goss.
Senator Jack Reed, Democrat of Rhode Island, said Mr. Goss "deserves an opportunity to demonstrate his qualifications for the job" and noted that he has strong credentials. "But," Mr. Reed said, "one criticism of the C.I.A. is that it has been overtly politicized, so the burden of proof is on Porter to show that his behavior has not been and will not be influenced by politics."
Of the potential for the Republicans to portray the Democrats as weak on intelligence if they oppose the nomination, Mr. Reed said, "I'm sure the Republicans will try to do that, but that doesn't relieve us of our responsibility."
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, a member of the committee, said, "Everyone on the Democratic side is aware of what happened in the last election cycle on homeland security, but I sure hope that Democrats aren't accused by anybody of being obstructionist just by asking tough questions."
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, a member of the intelligence committee, said he would focus on whether Mr. Goss was too close politically to President Bush to give him objective advice.
"If Porter Goss can give us an independent analysis, I'll vote for him,'' Mr. Levin said. "If I have doubts about that, then I can't support him. But I won't base my vote on the politics of this. The stakes are too great.''
Another factor in the Democrats' position, perhaps not incidental, is that Mr. Goss is from Florida, one of the most important swing states in the November election.
Mark Glassman contributed reporting for this article.
--------
Beheaded man 'not CIA agent'
Agence France-Presse
August 12, 2004
http://www.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,10419016%255E1702,00.html
A US official denied today that a CIA agent had been beheaded in Iraq, as claimed by an Islamist website that broadcast a video purporting to show the decapitation.
"The man depicted in the video is not a CIA official," the official said, on condition of anonymity.
"No CIA official is missing," the official said, adding that the Central Intelligence Agency knows the whereabouts of everyone on its payroll.
An Islamist website today showed a videotape which it said was of a US national and CIA agent being beheaded by members of a Islamic militant group in Iraq.
In the poor-quality video, whose authenticity could not be verified, a young Western-looking man is seated on a chair surrounded by five hooded gunmen, one of whom uses a long knife to cut through the man's neck and then brandishes the head.
The same site shows a dozen photographs of the operation to kill the "CIA agent".
During the four-minute video, an identity card is shown with the purported American's photograph and the mention "visitor".
But the gunmen's words are unintelligible, apart from their cry of "Allah Akbar" (God is great) when the head is cut off.
---------
CIA pick began agency career in Cold War
August 12, 2004
By John Rice
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20040811-104208-2158r.htm
MEXICO CITY - There was plenty for a young CIA officer to do when Porter J. Goss, almost fresh out of Yale, arrived in Latin America in the early 1960s.
The eight-term Republican congressman nominated Tuesday to head the CIA apparently spent most of his career as a clandestine operative in the region, with postings to Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, though the dates for his service in each country remain vague.
Cuba was the dominant issue. Its 1959 revolution - at first a broadly based movement to topple a dictator - was sharply veering toward the left, putting a major Soviet ally just 90 miles off U.S. shores in the middle of the Cold War.
Details of Mr. Goss' career remain shrouded by four decades of secrecy. Neither he nor the CIA have given any but the sketchiest description.
Mr. Goss apparently joined the CIA just out of Yale, where he earned a degree in ancient Greek in 1960.
He worked in Miami, which was becoming a magnet for Cuban emigres. Some were recruited by the CIA and trained for what turned out to be one of the agency's greatest disasters: the 1961 invasion of Cuba that was crushed by Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs.
A year later, the world narrowly averted nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis involving the United States and Soviet Union.
During a 2002 interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Goss joked that he performed photo interpretation and "small-boat handling," which led to "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits." He acknowledged he had recruited and run foreign agents.
The Bay of Pigs plan had been inspired partly by a successful CIA-backed overthrow of Guatemala's populist government in 1954. That helped set off Guatemala's 34-year civil war, which was growing as Mr. Goss worked in the region.
It also sent a then-obscure Argentine wanderer, Ernesto Guevara hurrying to Mexico City. There "Che" Guevara met and joined up with Mr. Castro's guerrillas as they returned to Cuba in 1956 to start the revolution.
Mr. Goss arrived in Mexico City a few years later. Mexico was both Cuba's closest friend in the Americas and one of the CIA's great playgrounds.
It was the only country in the region to snub Washington's calls to cut ties with Mr. Castro's government. But it also allowed CIA operatives to watch flights to and from Cuba, as well as the Soviet and Cuban embassies in the Mexican capital.
That monitoring allowed U.S. officials to photograph Lee Harvey Oswald entering the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City not long before he assassinated John F. Kennedy.
As Cuba was openly trying to spread revolutions around the hemisphere, U.S. espionage helped track down Che Guevara's rebel band in Bolivia in 1968. He was captured and killed.
Mexico, meanwhile, was growing turbulent itself. The government preached a populist, sometimes quasi-socialist politics, but largely cooperated with the United States and crushed leftist dissent.
A few scattered radicals took up arms and became guerrillas in the cities and mountains in the 1960s. They grew greatly in number after the government's security forces massacred student demonstrators in 1968 just before that year's Olympics.
Mr. Goss apparently left the region in the late 1960s for London. During a 1970 trip to Washington, he collapsed in his hotel room, suffering from a mysterious blood infection that affected his heart and kidneys.
He survived but his career as a field operative was over. He retired from the CIA in 1971.
---------
Panel Headed by CIA Nominee Was Singled Out in 9/11 Report
Commission says House Intelligence Committee held few terrorism hearings before attacks.
Los Angeles Times
By Greg Miller
August 12, 2004
http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes252.html
WASHINGTON - The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, headed by Rep. Porter J. Goss, held fewer hearings on terrorism before the Sept. 11 attacks than other congressional panels concerned with the issue, according to an examination by the commission investigating the strikes.
The finding raises questions about the level of attention that terrorism received from the committee under the leadership of the Florida Republican, whom President Bush nominated Tuesday as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
In a section of its final report that is critical of Congress, the Sept. 11 commission singled out Goss' committee, saying it held "perhaps two" hearings on the issue from January 1998 up until the attacks.
By contrast, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held eight hearings on the subject during that period. The Senate and House armed services committees each held nine hearings on terrorism from 1998 to 2001, while the foreign relations panels in both chambers each held four.
A spokesman for the House Intelligence Committee defended Goss, saying the Sept. 11 commission's findings were misleading because they did not take into account times when terrorism came up during hearings on other matters. The spokesman also noted that in 2001, before the attacks, the committee created a working group that held several meetings on the topic.
"I think [Goss] was definitely focused on the issue of terrorism," the spokesman said on condition of anonymity. "I think the committee was pretty well abreast of the situation."
But the committee's record and the implicit criticism in the Sept. 11 commission report are likely to be seized upon by Democrats, who have indicated that they will challenge Goss on a range of issues during confirmation hearings, expected to begin next month.
Goss, a onetime CIA operative, has served as chairman of the House intelligence panel since 1997. His stewardship has been questioned by critics who say he did little to tackle intelligence problems that have plagued the nation's spy agencies and contributed to failures in recent years.
Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, the committee's top Democrat, raised the issue during a hearing Wednesday, complaining that the Republican-controlled panel had failed to implement meaningful reforms in the nearly three years since the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Three years is ample time for Congress to act, and the time to act is now," Harman said.
Her comments came during a session that focused on reform proposals from the Sept. 11 commission. Among them is a recommendation to create a new national intelligence director who would outrank the CIA chief and oversee all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies, including those now controlled by the Pentagon.
The commission's final report included a blistering critique of Congress that called its oversight of the intelligence community "dysfunctional."
At a time when intelligence agencies were expressing increasing alarm about terrorism, "the overall level of attention in the Congress to the terrorist threat was low," the report said. Neither the House Intelligence Committee nor its Senate counterpart raised "public and congressional attention on [Osama] bin Laden and Al Qaeda" prior to the attacks, it said.
Despite the language in the report, key members of the commission were complimentary toward Goss during Wednesday's hearing.
Commission Chairman Thomas H. Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey, said he wanted to "make it clear" to Goss and other members that the panel's criticisms of Congress related to "the system and not to any person."
Commission Vice Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana, said Goss had "led this committee very skillfully" in his seven years as chairman.
But Hamilton also noted that Goss served as chairman longer than perhaps only one other member in the panel's history, underscoring the record Goss would have to defend in confirmation hearings.
The White House cited Goss' tenure on the committee and his nine years as a CIA clandestine officer in the 1960s and early 1970s as his principal qualifications for the CIA director's job. He would succeed George J. Tenet, who left the post last month after seven years.
Records show that the House Intelligence Committee held dozens of hearings on a range of topics in the three years before Sept. 11. Among them were hearings that focused on such matters as Iraq's weapons activities and the CIA's role in the mistaken U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in 1999 in the war against the former Yugoslavia. Others covered broader topics, such as counter-narcotics and computer encryption.
At least one hearing that focused on terrorism was a September 1998 session on Al Qaeda's bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania a month earlier.
Goss stepped down as chairman of the House committee Tuesday, after his nomination was announced, but he remained a member and attended Wednesday's hearing.
Though the Senate is expected to confirm Goss, his nomination has been criticized by Democrats, who said it was a mistake for the White House to select a partisan figure for the CIA job.
Goss, 65, has angered Democrats by departing from the nonpartisan tradition of the intelligence committee to attack Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry in recent months.
Goss' words were turned on him Wednesday by filmmaker and Bush critic Michael Moore, who released a transcript of an interview with Goss that was taped but not used in Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."
"I couldn't get a job with the CIA today. I am not qualified," Goss told Moore on March 3, according to the transcript of the interview. "I don't have the language skills.... We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background, probably. And I certainly don't have the technical skills, as my children remind me every day."
Goss was referring to the qualities the CIA now emphasizes in its efforts to recruit analysts and case officers, not the qualifications for director.
-------- us
Security for the Homeland, Made in Alaska
August 12, 2004
By LESLIE WAYNE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/business/12guard.html?pagewanted=all&position=
As the Pentagon shipped thousands of military police to Iraq over the last year, it had to move quickly to replace guards at important installations around the country, including Fort Bragg, N.C., and West Point. So it turned to the private sector and quietly awarded multimillion-dollar contracts without putting out competitive bids.
The winners hailed from Alaskan corporations representing native tribal groups that are uniquely eligible to win Pentagon contracts in unlimited amounts without having to compete against other companies. But perhaps the main beneficiaries were their minority partners, two big security firms, Wackenhut Services and Vance International.
The Pentagon has made no public announcements of the contracts, in which the joint ventures are being paid $194 million to protect 40 properties. If options to extend them are exercised, the contracts' value could reach $500 million, according to Army documents obtained by The New York Times from officials briefed on the arrangement.
So far, there have been no complaints about the performance of the private guards, who have been moving on to Army bases over the last year to protect gates and patrol grounds.
But the prominent roles of Wackenhut, which is working with an Alaskan native corporation called Alutiiq, and Vance, a partner of the Chenega Corporation, also of Alaska, have raised a variety of concerns, from the way the contracts were awarded to questions about whether the established security companies that are doing much of the work are appropriate for the job.
"The intent of the law is to help minority businesses, yet these are major corporations who wouldn't otherwise need help getting contracts," said Danielle Brian, executive director for the Project on Government Oversight, a Washington nonprofit group that studies military spending. "You have a law that was set up to benefit native American companies."
The government's urgency was clear: 4,100 soldiers were to be shipped overseas. They would be replaced by 4,385 private security guards. Beginning in early 2003, the Army began to survey which bases would get the private guards and approached the Alaskan companies and their partners, which ultimately received the awards.
Military officials have told Congress that the no-bid arrangement was made to get "boots on the ground" quickly in Iraq, according to one Army document. The document also said that given the Iraqi call-up, "contract security guards are a viable manpower option."
"The reason for the privatization of gate guards is to free up the war-fighter from doing garrison support and do what they are trained to do, which is go and fight," said Jerome Kelly, a spokesman for the Installation Management Agency, a division of the Army that manages military bases. The Army began to let the contracts in late 2003.
Besides the lack of competition, the awards have raised other concerns. Government investigators have repeatedly cited Wackenhut for security lapses at other federal installations it was hired to protect. And Wackenhut is foreign-owned, which means it is prohibited from some sensitive post-9/11 security contracts like airport screening.
"There is an irony in that Wackenhut is foreign-owned and a lot of the profits will be going overseas," Ms. Brian said.
Vance International has received several high-profile assignments, including the Athens Olympics, as well as having received $1.1 million so far to provide security for the Bush-Cheney campaign. The company was founded by the former son-in-law of President Gerald R. Ford, Chuck Vance, who has since left the firm.
"We have to be careful," said Representative Lane Evans, Democrat of Illinois, who is investigating the arrangement. "This is a real vulnerable area. We are awarding contracts to one company that has a really bad track record and now they are being handed out on a nonbid basis. We want to make sure no harm will be done."
In January, the inspector general of the Energy Department cited Wackenhut, a subsidiary of Group 4 Securicor, which is based in London, for serious improprieties in conducting antiterrorism drills at a Tennessee weapons complex. It has been criticized in several other inspector general reports for other security lapses in the last three years. The company contends that the reports are misleading and inaccurate.
Even so, the concerns have stymied a similar no-bid deal involving the Energy Department and the same contractors. A $40 million "sole source" no-bid contract awarded to Alutiiq and Wackenhut earlier this year to provide security at nuclear laboratories in Idaho was withdrawn following opposition from the state's Congressional delegation.
"By joining up with Alutiiq, Wackenhut can get to sole-source work instead of having to compete for it," said John Revier, a legislative director for Representative Mike Simpson, Republican of Idaho. "Alutiiq had no experience in the field, and we did not want to experiment when it comes to securing nuclear material."
In the case of the military bases, critics also say that the no-bid process lacks oversight and that the security companies involved are exploiting a loophole that allows them to avoid open competition in a crucial area of national security. Under the law, no Alaskan even has to be employed under these contracts.
But the companies defended their role, saying they had helped fulfill a need for security at a critical moment.
"The Army had a most severe problem," said James L. Long III, chief executive of Wackenhut Services in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. "You literally had thousands of military police, national guardsman and reservists working as gate guards. The military had to do something. So private security companies can fill the void."
As for the government's criticism of Wackenhut, Mr. Long said, some of the reports referred to parts of Wackenhut that are not handling the Army base contracts. In addition, he said, Wackenhut was doing what it was told to do.
Vance International, a subsidiary of the SPX Corporation, a technology company in Charlotte, N.C., dismissed criticism of its ties to Republican political figures. The ties, said Nicolle Watson, a spokeswoman, "probably had little or no relationship" to its success in landing the Pentagon contracts.
Ms. Watson said Vance specialized in security for special events and had worked for both the Republican and Democratic national committees. "We're bipartisan," she said.
Federal procurement law requires "full and open" competition" for government contracts, with some exceptions for small contracts awarded to minorities and small businesses as well as in situations where there is insufficient competition and only two or three bidders exist.
Contracts for 10 other military installations, including Fort Campbell in Kentucky and the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, were bid out competitively. In all, 17 companies, including Wackenhut and Vance, bid for the business. Both Wackenhut and Vance were among the losers on the contracts.
But in a growing number of cases, including Iraq, where Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract to provide a range of services, the absence of competitive bidding has become subject to debate.
"What we are seeing with the no-bid Iraqi contracts is not an aberration, but is becoming the norm," said Dan Guttman, a procurement expert at the Washington Center for the Study of American Government at Johns Hopkins University. "They always cite a short-term need for no-bid contracts. But in the long run, you end up with no accountability, no oversight and no alternatives if the performance is not good."
The Alaska native corporations that Wackenhut and Vance are working with were created in 1971 to settle claims by Alaskan natives in the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and to help improve standards of living.
Senator Ted Stevens, the Republican chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, has long championed these corporations. After they fell into financial trouble in the 1980's, Mr. Stevens pushed through legislation giving the Alaska native corporations special benefits not available to other minorities - mainly no limits on the size of the contracts and no requirements that members of the minority group be hired. Most federal minority set-aside contracts have a $5 million ceiling.
As a result, the corporations have flourished, with the money flowing back to tribal accounts, where individual tribal members are the shareholders. The Anchorage-based Chenega, for instance, said it had revenue of $233 million a year and a broad array of federal contracts, from construction projects at military bases to information technology services for several agencies
On the Army military base contracts, both Chenega-Vance and Alutiiq-Wackenhut have been hiring local residents near the military installations to be the guards. Under Pentagon rules, responsibility for overseeing the contract rests with the Alaska native corporation and the Pentagon has no legal relationship with either Vance or Wackenhut.
Federal rules require that 51 percent of the work be done by the Alaska native corporation. While profit-sharing deals may differ, Mr. Long of Wackenhut, said Alutiiq would receive more than 50 percent of the profit with his company taking the remainder.
Jeff Hueners, chief operating officer of Chenega, said: "We are well into executing our contract. Chenega had a security group as part of one of our core lines of business. We knew Vance in the marketplace and so we made a link with them.
"We are a professional services provider for the federal government," he added, "and we are providing a high level of service under the contract. It's good for Chenega and good for the government."
At the United States Military Academy at West Point, Alutiiq-Wackenhut has been hiring from the local community, including many retired New York City police officers, to protect the installation's 16,000 acres. According to a West Point spokesman, Lt. Col. James Whaley, the new guards were "quite talented" and "take pride" in their jobs.
At the Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania, home to the Army War College, a spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Merideth Bucher, gave similar high marks to the Alutiiq-Wackenhut guards.
"They are a very, very professional guard force," Colonel Bucher said. In one case, when local police were engaged in a high-speed chase, the security guards quickly installed barriers that prevented the vehicles from entering the barracks.
-------- venezuela
US Set to 'Grin and Bear' Chavez Victory
Inter Press Service
by Jim Lobe
August 12, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=3295
Just days before Venezuelans vote on whether to recall Hugo Chavez, U.S. officials and analysts appear increasingly resigned to at least another two and a half years of a government headed by the fiery populist.
They have watched Chavez surge in the polls in the past few weeks and, what with a leaderless opposition united only in its contempt for the president, they now see Fidel Castro's biggest foreign admirer as likely to prevail, if not in the plebiscite itself, then in new elections that must take place within 30 days of the recall vote.
"He's definitely got momentum on his side," conceded one Bush administration official, who admitted that Washington is unlikely to be happy with the outcome.
In fact, some analysts here prefer a clear win by Chavez at this point, rather than a close finish that could provoke charges of fraud from either or both sides, particularly if observers from the Organization of American States (OAS) and the Carter Center hedge their own assessment as to whether the election was free and fair.
The possibility of civil conflict breaking out in one of Washington's most important and reliable sources of imported oil at a time when global oil prices are hovering around historic highs is a nightmare that George W. Bush's political handlers would rather not face less than three months before the November elections here.
"The administration really doesn't have any good options for bringing pressure to bear on Chavez at this point if he does win," according to William LeoGrande, a Latin America expert at American University here. "The last thing it wants to do is alienate another big oil producer. If Chavez wins, they're just going to have to grit their teeth and live with him."
"If the oil is flowing and U.S. investors are happy, this administration isn't going to do much," Michael Shifter, a Venezuela expert at the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a prominent think tank here, told IPS. "What the U.S. wants above all else is stability."
Sunday's recall election marks the third attempt by a diverse and generally pro-Washington opposition to unseat Chavez, who was first elected on a tide of revulsion against the corruption of the two establishment parties that had dominated Venezuelan politics since the 1950s.
The first attempt took place in April 2002, when a business-dominated group attempted to grab control during an apparent barracks coup that was put down by loyal officers and demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of the urban poor who have long been Chavez's most fervent supporters.
Public statements by U.S. officials in support of the government established by the coup-plotters, as well as a record of U.S. political and financial support for some opposition groups that supported the coup before it collapsed badly, embarrassed Washington and further aggravated already-strained relations between Chavez and the Bush administration.
A second attempt was mounted in December 2002, when management staff at the country's sprawling Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) launched a prolonged strike that was eventually settled by an accord on the terms of the pending recall election. The agreement was mediated by the OAS and the Carter Center, whose assessment of the fairness of Sunday's election will likely be the decisive factor in determining whether or not serious violence breaks out in the country and how the Bush administration will itself react.
"After it endorsed the 2002 coup, the administration was really burned and forced to back off and put all of its eggs in the OAS-Carter Center process," said John Walsh, a Venezuela analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a human-rights group.
"If the OAS and the Carter Center judge the process, warts and all, as clean enough to bestow legitimacy on Chavez, the U.S. is going to be very hard-pressed to take a different position, much less bring other countries in the hemisphere along with it," he added.
To win, the opposition must not only get more "yes" than "no" votes in the plebiscite, but they must also get more votes than the roughly 3.8 million Chavez received in 2000. And even if the opposition gets over those two hurdles, most analysts here do not see anyone emerging from its ranks who can defeat him in a two-person race.
"The opposition hasn't united around a single candidate or put forward a coherent platform that would likely be persuasive to someone who voted for Chavez," according to Walsh.
"The administration has little confidence in the opposition," according to Shifter, "and frankly, they don't inspire a lot of confidence."
Chavez has benefited both from the opposition's shortcomings and from the record oil prices. The latter "has given him the resources not only to reduce PDVSA's outstanding debt, but also throw almost $2 billion in new resources into social programs for the poor," according to Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA).
"In recent years the poor had become more apolitical because they came to see Chavez as just one more leader who has deceived them, but now that he has put more resources into social and education programs and subsidized food markets, his natural constituency has returned to him," said Birns, who has generally defended the Venezuelan leader against some of the more strident attacks mounted by the administration and right-wing critics here.
Those attacks, which have been featured prominently in the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Washington Post, and U.S. News and World Report, include reports that Cubans are working inside Venezuela's paramilitary and intelligence apparatus; that the government is supporting left-wing guerrillas in Colombia and other nearby Andean countries; that it is creating a new "axis of evil in the Americas" with Cuba, Brazil and Argentina; and providing identity documents and refuge to Middle Eastern terrorist suspects.
Despite such alarms, some of which have been fostered by hardliners from within the government, the Bush administration, having been burned in 2002 and now consumed by Iraq and its "war on terror," has shown no appetite for new adventures south of the border.
Birns, for example, noted that Washington may have provided only about $4 million to opposition sectors, a fraction of the $20 million it devoted to the campaign to get Violeta Chamorro elected president in Nicaragua, a country with only about 15 percent of Venezuela's population, in 1990.
As much as the administration's ideologues favor "regime change" in Venezuela, Bush's policy has been guided by its need for stability and no oil-market disruptions, according to Walsh.
"This has been Chavez' formula for staying in power," according to Shifter. "He lets the oil flow and then he rails against the U.S. and the Bush administration, and he can get away with the latter because of the former. The irony is that it's Bush's policies that have given Chavez higher oil prices to win this referendum. He trashes Bush but he should be grateful."
"You can't underestimate the power of oil," said LeoGrande, who noted that the other historical example of Washington "gritting its teeth and living with" a left-wing government in Latin America took place when, like today, access to oil was a top priority in a world threatened by military conflict.
Thus, after imposing a boycott on Mexican oil after President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized it in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt - worried about diminishing global supplies and rising prices - resisted stronger action as urged by U.S. oil companies and suggested by historical precedent. Instead, he lifted the boycott and negotiated a reparations deal that ensured continued access to Mexican oil as the United States prepared to enter World War II.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Judges back Blunkett on detention of 'terror 10'
12/08/2004
telegraph.co.uk
By George Jones, Political Editor
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=ZUSTINVIABBRDQFIQMFSM5WAVCBQ0JVC?xml=/news/2004/08/12/nterr12.xml&sSheet=/portal/2004/08/12/ixportal.html
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, welcomed yesterday's rejection by the Court of Appeal of a challenge brought by 10 suspected terrorists to their detention without charge or trial.
The court ruled that the Government acted legally by detaining the men, all foreign nationals backed by civil liberties groups, who have called their treatment "Britain's Guantanamo Bay".
Most have been held since 2001 and are currently in Belmarsh prison, south London, although two have exercised the option to leave Britain rather than remain in custody.
Their lawyers will now pursue an application to appeal to the House of Lords.
Mr Blunkett said he was pleased with the Appeal Court's decision to uphold his view that the men were "suspected international terrorists who pose a threat to our national security".
But Gareth Peirce, the men's solicitor, described the judgment as "terrifying". She said: "It shows we have completely lost our way in this country legally and morally."
She said foreign nationals could be detained on mere suspicion of being a threat to national interests, which could include economic interests as well as security.
The 10 men were detained under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism and Security Act, which came into force after the September 11 attacks in America.
Under the emergency powers, the Government must show only that it has "reasonable grounds to suspect" that foreign nationals have links to terrorism before issuing certificates to hold them.
Last October, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) ruled that the Home Secretary had "sound material" to support his decision that the 10 were a risk to national security.
Their lawyers argued that evidence obtained by alleged torture in US-run detention camps was "morally repugnant" in a democratic society and should have been excluded by the SIAC. But the appeals were rejected in a ruling by three senior judges.
Lord Justice Pill said nothing had been brought to the attention of the court that amounted to a "misuse of state power" requiring the detention order to be discharged.
Lord Justice Laws said rules on the abuse of state power prevented Mr Blunkett relying on any evidence "obtained by torture which the state has procured or connived at".
But that principle did not prohibit him from relying "on evidence coming into his hands which has or may have been obtained through torture by agencies of other states over which he has no power of direction".
Mr Blunkett acknowledged there had been speculation about whether the cases relied on material from other countries that may have been obtained using torture.
He said: "We unreservedly condemn the use of torture and have worked hard with our international partners to eradicate this practice. However, it would be irresponsible not to take appropriate account of any information which could help protect national security and public safety."
He said there was no evidence in any of the appeals that the material he relied upon had been obtained by torture or other treatment in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Mr Blunkett said that the remaining detainees were "free to leave the UK voluntarily at any time".
He had used the special detention powers "sparingly" and only in the most serious circumstances "to prevent foreign nationals who we believe are international terrorists, but are unable to deport, from remaining at large in the UK".
--------
Groups Ask Court for Prisoner Abuse Info
August 12, 2004
(Inter Press Service)
by Eli Clifton
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/clifton.php?articleid=3294
WASHINGTON - Human rights, veterans and civil liberties groups on Thursday will urge a federal court to order the U.S. government to release records on the alleged mistreatment of prisoners at U.S. military bases and other detention facilities overseas, including Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace.
The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in New York on June 2, charges that federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) failed to comply with two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests made in October 2003 and May 2004.
"The government has continued to stonewall our efforts to get these documents," said Amrit Singh, staff attorney at the ACLU.
"The government has continued to say it will process these in its own time but it has been over 10 months so we have been forced to go to court," she added in an interview.
When the FOIA requests were filed, the agencies involved - which also included the departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State - rejected a request to expedite them, arguing the requests did not involve "questions about the government's integrity which affect public confidence" and that failing to act on an expedited request would not "endanger the life or safety of any individual."
Other records, it said, should not be released at all.
The FOIA, first filed in October 2003, asked the agencies to immediately process and release all records of the abuse or torture of detainees in U.S. custody and any records of investigations into those deaths.
A similar FOIA request was filed in May 2004, partly in response to growing public outcry against human rights violations by U.S. soldiers, resulting from the leak of prisoner abuse photos at Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad and from firsthand reports from inmates.
According to media reports, more than 30 detainees have died in U.S. custody since late 2001; at least 16 of them have been classified as homicides.
The FOIA also requested all records regarding policies that govern the interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody and the sending of detainees to other countries known to use torture, a process known as "rendition."
In addition, the groups requested records describing any measures taken by the administration to address concerns expressed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which, according to reports, repeatedly complained to U.S. authorities about the treatment of detainees under its control at multiple facilities, including Abu Ghraib, the site of an ongoing prisoner abuse investigation.
"Now, more than ever, the government must give a proper accounting for its actions," said CCR Human Rights Fellow Steven Watt in June. "If the United States is to regain any credibility in the realm of human rights, the administration must make its actions, its rules and its records completely transparent to the public."
The June filing of the lawsuit followed an explosion of media articles - as well as several congressional hearings - about the treatment of detainees following the leak of the photographs and videos depicting sexual and physical abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib.
Since the original leak, evidence of "systemic" mistreatment, as the ICRC put it in a February memorandum [pdf] obtained by the Wall Street Journal, has steadily accumulated regarding conditions in a number of detention facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay.
An August 2004 report by the CCR details the claims of three British detainees at Guantanamo Bay who were held in U.S. captivity for two and a half years.
The men claim that abuses at Guantanamo included sexual humiliation, the injection of drugs during interrogation, forcibly shaving prisoners, guards kicking the Islamic holy book, the Koran, holding prisoners in total isolation for over a year and denying medical care to prisoners who refused to cooperate with interrogators.
Military tribunal hearings began recently to determine if individual detainees at the base should be considered enemy combatants.
This first round of hearings comes after most of the remaining 500-plus detainees at the base have been held for over two years with little or no contact with the outside world and no chance to appeal their detention.
The administration of President George W. Bush has repeatedly argued is has no obligation to offer the protections of the Geneva Convention to "unlawful combatants" in its "war on terrorism," including those held at Guantanamo, but officials have also insisted they have done so as a humanitarian gesture.
"You [Bush] have stated in eloquent terms that human dignity is non-negotiable, but you have tolerated a U.S. system of interrogation that is specifically designed to degrade, humiliate and destroy the human dignity of prisoners to obtain information," the heads of nine major U.S. human rights groups, including Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, as well as PHR, said in a May 7 letter.
"[Now] there are suggestions in news reports that high-level government officials may have condoned what went on," said Singh, stressing the importance of getting government documents relevant to the abuse allegations as quickly as possible.
Government memos that appear to be designed to justify the use of torture have come to light in recent months, flaming the controversy over the abuses.
In an unprecedented action last weekend, the American Bar Association, the largest U.S. lawyers group, criticized what it called "a widespread pattern of abusive detention methods" that "feed terrorism by painting the United States as an arrogant nation above the law."
The groups that will go to court Thursday clearly believe at least some responsibility for the abuses lies with the top leadership. Their complaint notes the "growing evidence that the abuse of detainees was not aberrational but systemic, that in some cases the abuse amounted to torture and resulted in death, and that senior officials either approved of the abuse or were deliberately indifferent to it."
--------
Feds told to release prison torture files
Reuters News Service
Aug. 12, 2004
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2733062
NEW YORK - The U.S. government has less than two weeks to start giving civil rights groups documents about the torture of prisoners held by U.S. forces at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and other facilities, a federal judge ordered Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said prosecutors must start handing over certain papers identified by the American Civil Liberties Union by Aug. 23 unless they can show the documents cannot be found or they are subject to certain exemptions.
The ACLU and other civil rights organizations filed suit in Manhattan federal court in June, charging that the U.S. Department of Defense and other federal agencies failed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for records documenting torture and abuse.
-----
US Congressmanīs Appeal On Behalf Of Pollard
IsraelNationalNews
Aug 12, 2004 / 25
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=67252
American Congressman and Democratic Whip Anthony D. Weiner, representing New York's Queens and Brooklyn boroughs, is requesting that the White House pardon jailed Israeli agent Jonathan Pollard.
"Mr. President, the time has come to free Jonathan Pollard. As he celebrates his 50th birthday in jail, I respectfully urge you to grant him clemency and send him home to Israel," Rep. Weiner wrote in an August 7th letter to US President George Bush.
The following are further excerpts from Mr. Weiner's letter:
"Today is Mr. Pollard's 50th birthday. This is the 19th year he has celebrated his birthday in prison. No other person convicted of espionage on behalf of an United States ally has ever been imprisoned for so long.
"Mr. Pollard has admitted he broke U.S. laws. He has expressed sorrow for what he did. Mr. Pollard cooperated fully with the investigation into his activities and he waived his right to a jury trial. He has served more than enough time for the crime of passing information to an ally.
"The life sentence which Jonathan Pollard is now serving is not a reflection of the severity of the crimes he committed, but rather the result of ineffective counsel.
"...I hope that your administration will ensure that Mr. Pollard's security-cleared legal counsel is given an opportunity to review [sentencing] documents so that they can present an effective and viable clemency application...."
Representative Weiner, whom the Forward newspaper has called one of the 50 most influential Jewish Americans, made headlines on Israel National News two years ago, when, in honor of missing IDF soldier Guy Hever's birthday, he delivered a speech in Congress saying, "[The US] government should be far more aggressive in demanding the release of Israel's missing men. Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, is our closest ally in that region. In 1991, when Americans were held hostage in Lebanon, Israel went to extraordinary lengths to help secure the release of those hostages. As Syria and others in the region who have benefited from American aid and military assistance equivocate as to whether to assist America in its war on international terror, Israel has always been by our side."
-----
U.S. negotiates freeing suspect Hamdi
(UPI)
Aug. 12, 2004
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040812-072752-5293r.htm
-- The Justice Department said Wednesday it is negotiating a deal to free Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been held as an enemy combatant without a lawyer since 2001.
Under a Justice Department proposal, Hamdi would renounce his U.S. citizenship and return to Saudi Arabia, where he would be placed under travel restrictions.
"It is not unusual in the course of armed conflicts for prisoners to be released" at war's end, the a department official said.
The Supreme Court ruled last term Hamdi and other enemy combatants have a right to a hearing, something the department opposed. The proposed deal represents a reversal of the government's previous position.
Hamdi was captured with pro-Taliban forces in northern Afghanistan in 2001 and taken to the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He was moved to the Navy brig at Charleston, S.C., in April 2002 when it was discovered he was born in Louisiana shortly before his family moved back to Saudi Arabia.
-------- homeland security
4 Baggage Screeners Arrested; TV Stars Were Among Victims
August 12, 2004
By COREY KILGANNON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/nyregion/12jfk.html
They were hired by the federal government to screen luggage for explosives and weapons at Kennedy and La Guardia Airports, but the authorities said these agents had their eyes on other items: money, jewelry and other valuables.
Three screening agents for the Transportation Security Administration were arrested yesterday at La Guardia, and one was arrested on Friday at Kennedy, on charges that they stole items from luggage set up by investigators conducting a sting operation.
After many passengers - including Chevy Chase, Joan Rivers and Susan Lucci - complained of missing items over the past six months, investigators set up the sting, a law enforcement official said yesterday. The sting was conducted by investigators from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department, and the Transportation Security Administration, which is run by the Department of Homeland Security.
The Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, whose office also helped investigate, accused the four employees of "betraying their oath to protect our nation's air transportation system" and called it "particularly troubling that individuals responsible for ensuring the safety and security of our nation's airlines and protecting us from terrorism would engage in the conduct that this investigation has uncovered."
In April, officials from American and Continental Airlines contacted the Port Authority police about the many complaints. In a sting, investigators planted valuables and cash in luggage and used concealed cameras planted in the screening areas to observe the employees.
The three screeners arrested at La Guardia were Jamie Maldonado, 42, of the Bronx; and Nelson Caraballo, 41, and Carmita Williams, 42, both of Brooklyn. On Friday, Clarence Henry, 51, of Brooklyn, was arrested at Kennedy Airport. The workers were charged with larceny, tampering with public records and falsifying business records. Mr. Henry was arraigned on Friday and the other three were scheduled to be arraigned last night in Queens Criminal Court.
Investigators said that on Aug. 4 and 5 at the American Airlines Terminal 9 at Kennedy, Mr. Henry took $40 in planted cash from luggage, as well as gold and silver watches and rings.
He told detectives that he had stolen jewelry, watches and money from many bags since February, the authorities said. Detectives found a $20 bill in his wallet that had been planted in a bag.
Officials said that detectives who searched Mr. Henry's home found 18 watches, two cigarette lighters, several pens and 12 pawn shop tickets, along with four rings that had been planted in bags by the authorities.
Telephone messages left with Mr. Henry's Legal Aid lawyer, W. Steven Banks, got no response. Names of lawyers for the other three defendants were not available.
Ann E. Davis, a spokeswoman for the T.S.A., called the arrests "an anomaly, but one we take very seriously."
"We have a zero-tolerance policy for any criminal activity in the workplace and by engaging in this, these workers have done a disservice to the 45,000 screeners we have nationwide," she said.
"We conduct a 10-year criminal background check and do F.B.I. fingerprinting," she said, "but we don't have a crystal ball."
Screeners operate explosives detection equipment and X-ray machines to check carry-on and checked baggage for explosives and weapons at airports, she said. In February, 2002, the Transportation Security Administration took over screening at airports, and now have about 45,000 screeners working at 450 airports nationwide, she said.
-------- immigration / refugees
New Strains and New Rules for Agents Along Mexican Border
August 12, 2004
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/national/12border.html?pagewanted=all&position=
HOUSTON, Aug. 11 - The thick scrub along the Rio Grande in McAllen, Tex., within shouting distance of Reynosa, Mexico, is strewn with discarded bits of clothing and black trash bags used as flotation devices, remnants of countless trips across the river by illegal immigrants.
Sometimes the evidence is fresher - like a damp-haired Candida Mercedes Melendez Castillo, 28, from Chinandega, Nicaragua, who popped out of the brush the other day at noon just as the United States Border Patrol was passing through with a reporter in tow.
"I am not a bad person," Ms. Castillo said in a quavering voice, claiming that her trip to find work had taken her seven days and that she had crossed the river alone, with no help.
She was promptly taken into custody by a surprised information officer, Eddie Flores, an 18-year veteran agent, and run through fingerprint and other security checks, emerging clean to await deportation proceedings that could take weeks.
Such procedures are about to change under new Department of Homeland Security rules announced Tuesday that would give border officers broad authority in many cases to bypass immigration courts and quickly deport illegal immigrants other than Mexicans or Canadians. While it may initially add to the paperwork of border agents, Mr. Flores said, "it will speed things up."
Clearly, as recent interviews in McAllen and the latest deadly smuggling incident show, the nation's southern border is under siege. Monday evening, eight illegal immigrants and their smuggler died when their car plunged into an irrigation ditch in McAllen, three miles from the Rio Grande. The day before, 79 illegal immigrants were found huddled inside a tractor-trailer stopped outside Fort Worth.
On any given day, close to 300 illegal immigrants are apprehended by the 1,500 Border Patrol officers in the busy McAllen sector while an unknown number of others make it through. With 284 miles of open river to guard, along with 19 South Texas counties from Wharton County, below Houston near the Gulf of Mexico, to the Falcon Dam on the Mexican border below Laredo, the nine stations of the sector are stretched thin in the best of times. Tied with El Paso, more or less, in the apprehension of illegal immigrants from Mexico, the McAllen sector arrests two out of every three illegal non-Mexican immigrants entering the United States and leads in the seizure of marijuana and cocaine shipments, border officials say.
Now, in addition to tracking illegal immigrants and drug smugglers, using weapons as varied as night-vision cameras and horseback patrols, the agents are particularly on terrorism watch, a high-stakes mission, officials say, given the huge traffic - legal and illegal - from Mexico.
The task was highlighted July 19 when Border Patrol agents at McAllen-Miller International Airport stopped a New York-bound woman, Farida Goolam Mahomed Ahmed, 48, whose South African passport with no visa or United States entry stamp was found to have three pages torn out. Her bags held a pair of wet jeans. She later admitted sneaking in from Mexico and tearing out the record of her travels, the F.B.I. said, and is being held pending further investigation. The South African Embassy in Washington said Wednesday that Ms. Ahmed is Pakistani, although a family member denies she is.
Intelligence officials say that Ms. Ahmed was not on a watch list and is not known to be tied to extremist groups but that checks of flight manifests appear to show her taking 200 overseas flights through the Persian Gulf and elsewhere in the last few years.
The small McAllen airport, serving only Continental, American and Northwest Airlines, is one area of enhanced antiterrorism enforcement with Border Patrol agents scrutinizing all non-American passengers.
"We're getting real familiar with the documents," said Jesus I. Solis, an agent on duty one recent afternoon, who voiced confidence that he could detect alterations and forgeries.
Two of Mr. Solis's fellow agents detained Ms. Ahmed, although the missing passport pages were only noticed by the F.B.I. days later.
Illegal immigrants often give themselves away at the airport, Mr. Solis said. Some are led in by the human smugglers called coyotes. "You can tell," Mr. Flores said. "They look like a child with the parent."
Others he said, "hide in the rest room until the last minute." The nervous look of many gives them away, he added.
Apprehended Central and South Americans often try to pass themselves off as Mexicans because the repatriation is more lenient, Mr. Flores said. Mexicans with no record of previous violations are granted voluntary return, sent back across the border after their fingerprints are taken and a record made. Others with no prior record of illegal entry are sent to detention centers pending immigration hearings until their home countries can provide travel documents, a process that could take weeks under the old rules.
Two Texas congressmen heading the House Border Caucus, Solomon P. Ortiz, a Democrat, and Henry Bonilla, a Republican, complained in a letter to President Bush on Monday that a shortage of bed space was leading to the release of detainees into communities along the border.
Now, however, under the new domestic security procedures, to be tried out first in Tucson and Laredo, illegal immigrants who are not Mexican or Canadian and who are caught within 100 miles of the border and within 14 days of their arrival, could be expelled by the border agents without court hearings.
Ms. Castillo, the woman who stepped out of the bushes, was versed enough in immigration law to assert that she was Mexican, a claim that Agent Flores dismissed with one look at the passport he fished out of her duffel. "Anything that comes out of their mouths is generally not the truth," he said. "You can't hardly believe what they say."
But later he voiced sympathy, saying: "You feel for them, but you got to do what you got to do. They may be involved in criminal activity. You can't take anything at face value."
At the Border Patrol's office in McAllen, Ms. Castillo's fingerprints were sent through the new F.B.I. Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, which almost instantaneously ran them through a database of millions on file and reported no matches. Under the existing rules, she was held for a hearing.
The McAllen station was already strengthened in 1997 as part of Operation Rio Grande to curtail illegal crossings and drug smuggling. Now, the underbrush along the river is seeded with hidden sensors and the sandy paths threading the woods are routinely swept clean to record footprints that agents can follow using old-fashioned Indian tracking skills called sign cutting.
Tall light poles illuminate the river bank and cameras keep the area under surveillance. Far inland, hastily erected checkpoints known as Functional Equivalents of the Border and carrying court-sanctioned search authority use traffic cones to funnel vehicles into single lanes for easier surveillance.
Agents patrol with helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, river boats, all-terrain vehicles, bicycles and distinctive white-and-green sport utility vehicles. In addition, the Border Patrol here, as elsewhere, has reactivated horseback patrols. "It's quiet, that's one advantage," said a mounted agent, Marco Ponce de Leon, as he rode with three colleagues. "And you're high up, you can see a lot."
Nearby, another agent, William Wasser sat parked within sight of Reynosa's business district across the river. Hours earlier, a dozen Brazilians walked out of the woods and, seeing him, calmly surrendered.
"It may not seem too interesting," Mr. Wasser said of his stationary duty, "but if we're not here, it would be just impossible."
--------
U.S. to Overlook Minor Visitor Overstays
August 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Border-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government said Thursday it no longer will treat foreign visitors harshly just because they stayed too long on previous trips.
Effective immediately, foreigners allowed to enter the United States on passports -- those from visa-waiver countries, many in Europe -- will not be handcuffed, searched or denied entry if it turns out they had stayed a few days longer than they should have on earlier visits, a Homeland Security Department official said.
In the past, these people ``were treated as criminals,'' said Robert Bonner, Customs and Border Protection commissioner.
The visa-waiver program lets citizens from 27 nations that are U.S. allies to enter the country without a visa.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, foreigners who had stayed longer than allowed have been denied re-entry and taken into custody if a return flight to their home country was not immediately available. This treatment has caused some outrage and negative publicity abroad, particularly in Britain.
``Hopefully this announcement will mean a reduction in the number of British citizens detained on arrival,'' a British Embassy spokesman said.
The new policy restores to inspectors some of the discretion curtailed after Sept. 11, 2001. Some of the Sept. 11 hijackers had overstayed their visas but were allowed re-entry into the United States, investigators have found.
Inspectors at major airports and other ports of entry will be allowed to decide whether the visitor is a security risk or public threat or plans to settle in the country illegally. If not, the officers can allow the visitor to enter the country for up to 90 days. For future visits, the traveler must have a visa.
Theresa Brown, director of immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said her organization has been concerned about the strict policy at ports of entry since the attacks.
``We had heard of cases of people being turned away, even for minor violations. I think it's appropriate to have flexibility for meritorious cases,'' she said.
Bonner said there are good reasons that some visitors stay longer in the United States than they were supposed to. That could include visiting a sick relative or a hospital stay.
An estimated 35 percent to 40 percent of the illegal immigrant population is made up of people who have overstayed.
``We can make judgments and exercise discretion to do something other than deny entry for minor technical violations of immigration laws and still do our priority mission and that is preventing terrorists from entering the United States,'' Bonner said. ``One does not come at the cost of the other.''
Bonner's agency did not immediately know how many people the new policy would affect. Between Oct. 1 and June 1, 6,500 of the 11 million visa-waiver travelers who were admitted to the United States were denied entry.
Information about how many of those who were denied entry had stayed too long were not immediately available.
The visa-waiver countries are: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
On the Net:
Customs and Border Protection: http://www.cbp.gov
-------- police
Golden Noses Are in Demand, and They Don't Work Just for Food
August 12, 2004
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/nyregion/12dog.html?pagewanted=all&position=
On an August day, the water truck stops in front of the only entrance for commercial vehicles at the United Nations. The sweating driver heaves open the side panels, revealing dozens of blue water-cooler bottles. Duke, a black Labrador retriever, and Steve Green, his handler, circle the truck.
Duke methodically sniffs the sides of the truck, but there is no need for him to venture inside. "The explosive scent, if there is one, is heavier than air," said Tim Adrat, another handler, waiting nearby with his dog, Blass, a tan Labrador retriever. "It would permeate the inside and also flow down to the ground."
If Duke sits and glances at his handler, it may mean trouble ahead. It is Duke's way of saying, "Explosive scent." The driver would be detained, the truck isolated and the police bomb squad summoned. But the truck smells clean, and it passes without incident to the thirsty General Assembly.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, government agencies, corporations, cruise ships and the worried wealthy have been willing to pay up to $125 an hour for bomb-sniffing dogs, and double that sum for short-term jobs. An annual contract, for one dog and his handler, can exceed $200,000. At the end of July, when the federal government announced a new terror threat, the small group of companies nationwide that supply such dogs reported a surge of interest.
Yet the fast-growing industry has no government regulation. Reputable firms worry about disreputable companies cutting corners. (A bomb-dog supplier was convicted of defrauding the federal government last year.) And bomb-detection veterans know that even the best dogs make mistakes. They can falsely identify benign objects as bombs. And they get tired.
"This is not Superman's dog," said John Harvey, a former bomb technician with the New York Police Department and the director of canine operations for Michael Stapleton Associates of Manhattan, Duke's employer. Stapleton, one of the largest in the business, has 55 bomb dogs today, up from 11 in 2001.
Mr. Harvey recalled one corporate client asking how long it would take for one dog to sweep the client's 51-story skyscraper for explosives. "A month," Mr. Harvey said, as the client sputtered.
The client, who wanted daily sweeps, did not realize that while the dog's sense of smell stays keen, he could lose focus in as little as 10 minutes. "Long before the 51st floor, the dog is not working anymore," Mr. Harvey said. "He's just on a leisurely stroll."
When dogs make mistakes, people suffer. In 2002, on the anniversary of Sept. 11, a Georgia woman said she overheard three men laughing about "bringing down" Miami. The woman alerted the police, who eventually stopped the men as they were driving two cars on Interstate 75 in Florida.
Bomb dogs were called in. A section of the highway was closed for 17 hours. The men looked Middle Eastern (one had a long beard and wore a skull cap). The dogs indicated the presence of explosives. The cars and everything in them were inspected; a backpack was blown apart as a precautionary measure. There were no explosives.
"Idiocy goes both ways on a leash,' said Dr. Lawrence J. Myers, who studies canine sensory functions at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Auburn University in Alabama. "This sort of thing can happen because the handler accidentally cues the dog."
David R. Kontny, canine director for the federal Transportation Security Administration, which has 330 bomb dogs used mainly at airports, said, "I would be hesitant to ever describe a dog as 100 percent 100 percent of the time." The agency urges the development of standards for private industry that would be similar to what he describes as the strict standards of law enforcement and the federal government.
"The problem with standards, if you could call it that, is that some in the private sector will not be able to meet or achieve those standards," he said. "But you're not talking about narcotics here. You're talking about explosives. You have to be confident that a dog is going to go in there and protect a stadium before you load it up with 60,000 people."
Could other animals do better? Pigs and raccoons have keen senses of smell. And the rat - specifically, the Gambian giant pouched rat, on a long leash - is used in Mozambique to sniff out the TNT in land mines.
"But dogs, being domesticated, pay more attention to people, " said Paul Waggoner, interim director of the Canine and Detection Research Institute, also at Auburn. "Not so the rat."
Dog noses are more perceptive than human noses and electronic ones, too. A dog's nose has about 220 million mucus-coated olfactory receptors, roughly 40 times as many as humans, scientists say. And unlike a machine, a dog can sniff out both the presence and the location of an explosive scent.
Bomb-sniffing dogs can be German shepherds, English setters and Belgian Malinois, but more often than not, they are Labrador retrievers, like Duke. The Lab, industry officials say, is strong, hardy and task-oriented.
Dogs specialize. Arson dogs sniff out kerosene and other accelerants. Tracking dogs pursue live human scents. Cadaver dogs seek out the dead. These are what are known as aggressive-response dogs, since they bark and scratch to signal an alert.
Bomb-sniffing dogs, however, are passive-response dogs that back away from the substance, sit and look at their handler. "You don't want the dog setting off the bomb, if there is one," said Thomas P. Green, managing director of Corporate Security Services Group of New Canaan, Conn., which provides dogs in New York for the federal Department of Homeland Security.
After months of training, bomb dogs are miniature chemical laboratories. Some dogs can recognize 20 or more scents, from plain forms of gunpowder stuffed into pipe bombs to trace amounts of manufactured plastic explosives, like C-4. The best dog trainers use scent distracters, like hiding samples in soda cans or coffee cups, as well as using old samples of, say, detonation cords, rather than factory-fresh ones.
Like Pavlov's dog, bomb sniffers are rewarded in order to imprint behavior, such as successfully recognizing a dangerous scent. For most of the industry, the reward is play. Duke, for example, loves to play with a rubber ball.
Other companies, like STK-9 of Carmel, N.Y., which provides dogs for financial institutions, favor food rewards. "If you don't eat, you learn very quickly," said Peter Major, the company's founder and a former dog trainer for the police in New York. "With play reward, the disadvantage is that a dog is always willing to eat, but he may not always be willing to play."
Such basic disagreements about method hint at how much the training of bomb dogs - a fully trained dog can fetch $8,500 or more - remains more art than science. For some in the industry, its fast growth and lack of certification standards are invitations to fraud.
In June 2003, Russell Lee Ebersole, a once-respected dog trainer from Hagerstown, Md., was convicted of fraud in telling federal agencies, including the State Department, that his dogs could detect bombs. According to trial testimony, his dogs and handlers could not find 50 pounds of dynamite hidden in a Washington parking garage. Trained dogs rarely miss the presence of explosives (one industry official stated flatly, "It never happens").
"There are no performance standards," said Dr. Waggoner, of Auburn's canine institute. The United States Police Canine Association rigorously certifies bomb dogs and their handlers with time trials and Olympic-style judging, he said. But that is only for law enforcement, not private industry.
William A. Lavelle, senior partner with Detection Support Services in California, is afraid that only a worst case will force the industry to face facts. "What is it going to take to get standards?" asked Mr. Lavelle, who is also chairman of the International Explosive Detection Dog Association, which is pushing for standards. "It'll take a handler and his dog getting killed to get standards."
Don Sterling, a bomb-dog trainer on Long Island for more than 40 years, is more blunt about the outlook for explosive detection companies. He said that dogs and handlers are so expensive that corporations cut back on them when the terror threat seems to recede. "This is not a growth industry," he said. "This not a long-term business, like a funeral parlor."
Still, bomb dogs can be invaluable, says Steve Vitale, canine director for GSS Security Services of Manhattan, which provides dogs for New Year's Eve in Times Square.
"If a dog finds an explosive one time," he said, "how much is that worth?
--------
Asia Letter: He isn't from Al Qaeda, but who would know?
IHT
Norimitsu Onishi
Thursday, August 12, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?file=533599.html
TOKYO In May, an immigrant from Bangladesh, Mohamed Himu Islam, was arrested, along with four other Muslim foreigners living here, for allegedly having ties to Al Qaeda.
Most of the charges amounted to nothing more than illegally staying in Japan, and none of the men - three from Bangladesh, one from Mali, one from India - came from countries famous for being factory mills for Al Qaeda membership.
Still, maybe the police knew something more, because they were clearly playing the arrests up to the Japanese media.
Accordingly, the arrests flew onto the front pages of all national newspapers and made the top news on television.
Magazines placed photos of some of the men next to those of Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda was here, or so it seemed.
Less than three months later, no one has been indicted on any Al Qaeda-related charge. Four of the men, sentenced for being in Japan without proper papers, appear to be facing deportation.
Meanwhile, Islam, also cleared of being a terrorist, is back living in his home in suburban Tokyo with his Japanese wife and their two children. With "Al Qaeda" stamped on his forehead, he is finding it impossible to rebuild his business and admits that he has even come close to committing suicide.
"I'm not Al Qaeda," Islam said. "I want to clear my name."
So far he has been unable to do so for the simple reason that the mainstream media here have almost completely ignored what happened after those arrests in May.
In the West, the media would have pounced on a similar story, especially one that the police had so hyped, with sober broadsheets dissecting the failures of the investigation and tabloids cutting to the chase with words like "botch-up" or "fiasco."
Here, there has been almost complete silence - so much so that average Japanese, while recalling the big headlines in May, are unaware that the arrested men, in fact, had nothing to do with Al Qaeda.
In a true sense, Islam found himself the victim of the collusion that exists in Japan between the authorities and the mainstream media.
A structure designed to protect the powerful while ignoring the powerless, it has allowed those who led this investigation to remain unaccountable while it nearly pushed Islam to jump off a bridge, and end what until recently had been a very happy life in Japan.
Islam's journey to Japan began in Montreal in the early 1990s, where he worked as a waiter at a Japanese restaurant called "Sakura." There, he met his future wife, Hiroko Kobayashi, who worked the cash register. Both had left their native countries a couple of years earlier.
In an interview at their apartment, Islam, 31, and Kobayashi, 37, spoke of how they chose to settle in Japan in 1995 and build a new life together. Islam switched effortlessly between English and Japanese.
After holding a series of odd jobs, Islam was introduced to the prepaid telephone card business. Almost all prepaid card users are foreigners who find them more affordable than a fixed or mobile phone, especially for overseas calls.
It is a niche business geared to the thousands of immigrants, legal and illegal alike, who provide Japan with cheap labor.
Islam eventually opened two prepaid card stores in Japan, one in Malaysia and another in Bangladesh. In Japan, he had a store in front of the U.S. military base in Yokosuka named Jhia International and his main store in Tokyo was called Ryo International. He also included "Ryo" in the names of his stores in Bangladesh and Malaysia.
Ryo is the name of his son, now 6; his daughter, Lilica, is now 2.
At a mosque where he prayed and also looked for prepaid card customers, Islam met the man who would lead him to his present predicament: Lionel Dumont, or Samir, as he was known in the Muslim community in Japan.
Dumont, a French citizen of Algerian descent, had been convicted of attacks and robberies as part of an Islamic militant gang in France and had been sentenced, in absentia, to life in prison.
Dumont, with suspected ties to Al Qaeda, had been living in Japan for several years, until at least September 2003.
As Samir, he became an on-and-off buyer of prepaid cards, just one in Islam's growing list of clients. Islam said he had not thought of him at all until last May when the man appeared suddenly on Japanese television.
Dumont, who had been arrested in Germany last December, was extradited to France in May. It was then revealed that he had been living for several years in Japan.
The revelation embarrassed the Japanese government, which had committed itself 100 percent to President George W. Bush's war on terror. It was particularly humiliating for the police authorities, who had set up antiterrorism task forces after the Sept. 11 attacks.
In the blinding media spotlight following the arrests, Islam was portrayed as the ringleader. The daily Yomiuri newspaper wrote, "behind the face of a businessman, did he also have another face as a supporter of terrorism?"
It also speculated that Islam had sent money to his country to support Islamic radicals.
In none of the newspapers was any police official quoted by name as making the accusations. All the information was clearly handed out in cozy press clubs, where the rules are mostly no name, no attribution - and no accountability.
After 43 days in jail, Islam was finally freed. His only sentence was to pay a $3,000 fine for employing two illegal foreign residents at his business, including his younger brother, Ahmed Faishal, 26, who was also arrested in May and now faces deportation.
But because his release and the lack of Al Qaeda-related convictions in the other four cases were all but ignored here, Islam was still branded as an Al Qaeda member.
He could not rebuild his business, which had collapsed during his imprisonment.
One evening he became so desperate that he stood on a bridge over the Arakawa River and stopped himself from jumping only when his son called him on his mobile phone and asked him what time he would be home for dinner.
Eventually, through the help of a Bangladeshi journalist here, Islam held a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan to clear his name.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Police released a written response to the press that was attributed to Seizo Sakai, the director of the third division of foreign affairs: "We investigated in a fair manner the case based on Japanese laws."
The newspapers ran tiny articles on Islam's news conference, burying them in the back pages.
He was particularly angry at one television network that ignored his conference but ran a segment on a monkey that, after suffering from an accident, had begun walking upright just like a human being.
"That monkey had the right to be on TV, but not me," Islam said. "I don't think I'm considered human here, because if I were human, I'd have human rights."
He continued: "I want Ryo to become a famous lawyer so that no law will run away from him. I'll wait 20 to 30 years, it's O.K. I'll relieve my pain then. He will clear my name and say that his father is not Al Qaeda."
-------- prisons / prisoners
U.S. Nears Deal to Free Enemy Combatant Hamdi
American Citizen Who Was Captured in Afghanistan Has Been Held Since 2001 Without Being Charged
By Thomas E. Ricks and Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58002-2004Aug11.html
The U.S. government, which has held Yaser Esam Hamdi incommunicado in a Navy brig for two years without charges, much of the time without a lawyer, indicated yesterday that it is nearing a deal that would free him altogether.
The government is negotiating with Hamdi's lawyers about "terms and conditions acceptable to both parties that would allow Mr. Hamdi to be released from . . . custody," according to documents filed in federal court in Norfolk. The legal papers, submitted jointly by federal prosecutors and Hamdi's attorneys, asked the court to stay all proceedings for 21 days while negotiations continue.
Terms of the release are still being hammered out but, according to people familiar with the situation, are likely to include that Hamdi renounce his U.S. citizenship, move to Saudi Arabia and accept some travel restrictions, as well as some monitoring by Saudi officials. In addition, he may have to agree not to sue the federal government over whether his civil rights were violated.
U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar in Norfolk has yet to rule on the request for a stay.
Hamdi was captured alongside pro-Taliban forces on the battlefield in northern Afghanistan in November 2001 and taken to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There he told investigators that he was born in Louisiana to Saudi parents. He subsequently spent most of his life in Saudi Arabia, but his family said he never renounced his U.S. citizenship.
Hamdi was moved to the Navy jail at Charleston, S.C., in April 2002 and has been held there since as an enemy combatant. The government has not charged him.
In June, the Supreme Court ruled that as a U.S. citizen, Hamdi must have access to the U.S. legal system. All of the justices except Clarence Thomas rejected the Bush administration's contention that the federal courts could exercise no supervision over such a case.
"We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation's citizens," Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote in a passage of the ruling that seemed to summarize the dominant view of the court.
The indication that Hamdi might be released soon is "a huge embarrassment for the administration," said Michael Greenberger, a Justice Department official in the Clinton administration who is now a law professor at the University of Maryland.
"I think it's a bombshell," said Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington lawyer who specializes in military issues. "I think it's the type of thing that gets judges very, very upset," especially after the government had argued vigorously for more than two years to hold Hamdi, he said.
Frank W. Dunham Jr., the federal public defender who represents Hamdi, said the filing indicates that the negotiations over Hamdi's possible release "have reached the point where they're serious enough that both sides feel it's worth going into court and suggesting that maybe nothing ought to happen for a short period of time."
Dunham would not say how likely it is that Hamdi would be freed but added that he thinks the government "is operating in good faith and with a certain element of common sense."
Asked about possible terms of a release, a Justice Department official pointedly noted that Hamdi also holds citizenship in Saudi Arabia and that there are ample precedents for the conditional release of prisoners during wartime.
The only other U.S. citizen being held as an enemy combatant is Jose Padilla, who was arrested in May 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare Airport and has been accused of plotting to set off a radiological bomb in the United States and blow up apartment buildings here.
The Justice official said that it was possible to discuss releasing Hamdi if he "no longer has intelligence value or is no longer a threat to national security."
"It's been three years, and it's a different time," said the official, who spoke on the condition that fuller identification not be used. "So it is appropriate to look at the options."
But some experts in national security law dismissed that view. "I think that's cosmetic," said Scott L. Silliman, director of Duke University's Center for Law, Ethics and National Security. "I think what they're doing is saying that Hamdi . . . is a case we just want to move off the headlines and dockets." The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond issued a short order last week sending the Hamdi case back to Doumar. If a stay is not granted or Hamdi remains in custody, it remains unclear how further court proceedings in the case would develop.
Pentagon officials, considered a major force in pursuing the case, declined to comment yesterday. "I'm aware of the filing, but I don't have a comment for you," said Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a spokesman for the Defense Department's general counsel, William J. Haynes II. "The Department of Justice is taking the lead on this one."
--------
Deal to Release Detainee May Be Close
August 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/national/12hamdi.html
NORFOLK, Va., Aug. 11 (AP) - Lawyers for the government and for Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan, informed a federal judge Wednesday that they were negotiating his release from custody.
In court papers filed jointly, the lawyers said they had been discussing terms of the release since the Supreme Court ruled on June 28 that the Bush administration could not indefinitely detain Mr. Hamdi as an enemy combatant.
The motion asks the judge, Robert G. Doumar of Federal District Court, to stay all proceedings in the case for 21 days so the lawyers can try to resolve the issue.
"The thought is, what does he need any further legal proceedings for if the government agrees to release him?" Frank Dunham Jr., Mr. Hamdi's lawyer, said in a telephone interview.
Mr. Dunham said he thought an agreement to release Mr. Hamdi was close.
Lawrence R. Leonard, the managing assistant United States attorney in Norfolk, did not return calls seeking comment.
Mr. Hamdi was born in Louisiana in 1980, while his Saudi father worked in the oil industry there. He grew up in Saudi Arabia.
He was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.
First sent to the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, Mr. Hamdi was transferred to a Navy brig in South Carolina, where the American authorities verified that he was an American citizen.
--------
Al Qaeda Figures Say 9/11 Defendant Was Unaware of Plot, U.S. Tells Court
By Shannon Smiley
The Washington Post
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A14
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56548-2004Aug11.html
BERLIN, Aug. 11 -- Two top al Qaeda operatives held in secret U.S. custody have said that a Moroccan man on trial in Hamburg on charges of helping the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers knew nothing of the plan for suicide attacks, according to a U.S. Justice Department statement read to the court Wednesday.
The statement summarizes information from interrogations of Ramzi Binalshibh and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who investigators say played central roles in organizing the hijackings.
The department cautioned that the two might have been "intentionally withholding information and employing counter-interrogation techniques," but said that both indicated the Hamburg-based cell that led the attacks was much smaller than German prosecutors contend. By this account, the defendant, Mounir Motassadeq, was friends with the hijackers but unaware of their plans.
Investigators have long tried to determine how the plotters kept such complex plans secret for so long. If the prisoners' statements are true, one method was to strictly limit the number of people with specific knowledge; some theories hold that some of the hijackers did not know they were on a suicide mission.
Motassadeq, 30, was convicted last year of membership in a terrorist organization and 3,066 counts of accessory to murder. In a setback for the German government's attempts to jail people it considers remnants of the Hamburg cell, an appeals court overturned that verdict and ordered a new trial, citing U.S. refusal to provide evidence from the al Qaeda prisoners.
In the second trial, the U.S. government has shifted course and is providing some unclassified evidence.
Prosecutors contend that through repeated acts such as paying bills for absent hijackers, Motassadeq was a knowing participant in the conspiracy, which he denies. The question of advance knowledge has emerged as the trial's central issue.
Stefan Oeter, a law professor at the Hamburg University Institute of International Affairs, called the Justice Department statement a turning point in the defense's favor. "All in all, the evidence reinforces the doubt" that Motassadeq knew about the plot, he said.
Under normal circumstances, Oeter said, the court would have an easier time determining whether the prisoners were lying to protect Motassadeq. But because the court cannot question the men directly and is forced to rely on select information from U.S. officials, it has little choice but to take the testimony at face value and decide in Motassadeq's favor, he said.
The U.S. statement says the two prisoners and a third in whom the court is interested, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian who formerly lived in Germany and is now in U.S. custody, will not be made available to the court. But it goes on to summarize what U.S. officials deemed to be relevant interrogation statements.
It says Binalshibh had listed men who had "no knowledge of and did not participate in any facets of the 11 September operational plan." They include Motassadeq and another Moroccan, Abdelghani Mzoudi, who was acquitted in Germany of identical charges. The statement also lists Said Bahaji and Zakariya Essabar, being sought under German arrest warrants, and Mohammed Haydar Zammar, a naturalized German and alleged al Qaeda recruiter arrested in Morocco in November 2001 and handed over to Syria, the country of his birth.
Binalshibh acknowledged visiting Motassadeq in his student housing two to three times a month, confirmed that Motassadeq received weapons training in Afghanistan and stated that Motassadeq transferred money to hijacker Marwan Al-Shehhi, who piloted one of the planes that hit the World Trade Center.
But the U.S. statement also says, "Binalshibh never told Motassadeq why Al-Shehhi needed the money, or where he was. Motassadeq, according to Binalshibh, was not aware of Al-Shehhi's whereabouts during Al-Shehhi's time in the United States," where he attended flight school.
According to the statement, Mohammed recognized a photo of Motassadeq as someone he met in Karachi, Pakistan, in late 2000 or early 2001, en route to a camp. It said they "discussed nothing operational, that they just talked about Motassadeq's Moroccan background and his Russian wife and that he was studying in Germany and was friends with Binalshibh and Mohamed Atta," often called the lead conspirator.
"Khalid Sheik Mohammed said that at no time did he personally tell Motassadeq about the 11 September attack or of the role played by Binalshibh, Atta and the Hamburg cell. Khalid Sheik Mohammed also stated that he did not believe Binalshibh would have told Motassadeq of the . . . operation because of security concerns."
In court Tuesday, defense attorney Josef Graessle-Muenscher said that any evidence from the prisoners would be tainted by U.S. abuse of prisoners. In a telephone interview after Wednesday's session, he called the U.S. statement "an extremely good, clear signal. . . . This is surprisingly much better evidence than we anticipated."
According to reports from Hamburg, federal prosecutor Walter Hemberger played down the evidence in court, saying that "people are being protected here."
-------- terrorism
In Athens, It's Safety At All Costs
$1.5 Billion for Security Is Most Ever for Games
By Amy Shipley and Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58111-2004Aug11.html
ATHENS, Aug. 11 -- Two days before the 2004 Olympics begin, about 70,000 Greek security forces are patrolling Athens and competition venues scattered around the country, while 1,000 security cameras and a couple of blimps are keeping an electronic eye on the proceedings. Greek fighter planes and NATO surveillance aircraft are guarding the skies. Patriot missile batteries have been installed to confront potential terrorist threats from above.
In the midst of international terror concerns, Greek government officials say they have gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure the safety of the Games. A seven-nation advisory group and NATO have lent their expertise and resources in an unprecedented cooperative effort of a scale unimagined when Athens won the Games in 1997.
But Greece alone has been left to pay the bill -- $1.5 billion, nearly triple the original projections. Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said Greece "asked and happily received the assistance, good advice and contributions of all our allies," but no nation or group offered to defray the costs, which traditionally have been borne by the host nation.
"No country in the world may face the security challenges of our era by itself," Karamanlis said during an interview at his residence. "As long as we organize collective, big, international events and as long as security is a common thread for all of us, we've got to find a balanced approach to share, or at least be part of, the bill."
The price tag is more than four times the security costs for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City and six times that spent for the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney. That, coupled with construction delays and other unexpected expenditures, has led to a cost overrun of some $1.7 billion, pushing Olympic-related expenses to at least $7.2 billion, according to recent estimates from government officials. The costs have contributed to a national budget deficit that has risen above the maximum permitted by the European Union.
"Greece has to make an effort to become an economically competitive country," Karamanlis said. "This, to an extent, has been aggravated, been burdened, by the cost of the Olympic Games."
The International Olympic Committee provided $905 million to the Athens Organizing Committee through its standard host city contract, though no moneys were earmarked specifically for security. The bottom line for these Games is difficult to predict given the cost overruns and sluggish ticket sales; as of Wednesday, more than 2 million tickets remained.
The centerpiece of the security apparatus is a $312 million command-and-control center built by a U.S. consortium that collects a constant stream of video, audio and other data beamed from around Greece, including eavesdropped telephone calls and conversations on street corners. Construction of the system was plagued by delays, however, and became functional only weeks ago.
Last week, Greek Public Order Minister George Voulgarakis said that the security measures were fully operational and working well. But others involved in the project said many kinks still had not been worked out and that the communications network was not as comprehensive as originally planned.
Although the security system is described as highly advanced, Greek officials have had little time to run tests on the network or to become familiar with its capabilities.
"The technology side is going to be very hard to manage, even if it is working perfectly," said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA official who oversaw security preparations for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. "How do you sort out 120 different video images that you're watching at once? I think the technology has its limitations and that your security is going to very much depend on the security that you have on the ground."
The Olympic security operations are geared toward preventing a large-scale terrorist attack intended to produce mass casualties, such as threats from a hijacked airliner, chemical weapons or hostage-seeking gunmen, according to Greek and Western officials.
Counter-terrorism officials from Greece and elsewhere in Europe said there have been no signs or specific intelligence indicating that such attacks are being planned. More likely, they said, was the chance that the Olympics would be targeted by one of Greece's many small anarchist or radical political organizations that regularly ignite pipe bombs and other small explosives in Athens.
On May 5, precisely 100 days before the Opening Ceremonies here, a police precinct in Athens was dynamited by a group calling itself Revolutionary Struggle. No one was injured in the blast, but in a statement delivered to a newspaper a few days later, the group said it carried out the bombing to show the "vulnerability" of Greece's security measures and to protest the coming influx of "wealthy" Western visitors and business leaders for the Olympics.
Mary Bossis, a Greek terrorism expert and an adviser to the government, said it was an embarrassment that Greek officials had been unable to make any arrests in that case despite spending so much on security measures and intelligence gathering for the Olympics.
"We have all these very expensive toys floating all over the place, but they have not proven their worth at all in terms of finding domestic terrorists," Bossis said. "There are a number of these groups and they have voiced their disagreements with the Olympics very loudly, but so far I haven't seen any ability by the authorities to arrest or identify any of them."
Olympics officials said Wednesday that they have been conducting emergency drills -- including practice evacuations of the newly built Olympic Stadium -- and remain confident that they have done everything possible to ensure the safety of the Games.
"Athens is ready," Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, chief of the Athens Organizing Committee, said Wednesday. "What we promised, we delivered."
Even so, some countries are taking security matters into their own hands. The United States, Australia, Israel and Britain are quietly planning to bring armed security guards to provide individual protection for athletes and dignitaries, in spite of a Greek ban on foreigners carrying weapons, according to officials and media reports from those countries.
The Times of London reported on Tuesday that British officials were transporting handguns to Greece in diplomatic pouches for its 130-member security contingent from Scotland Yard.
A U.S. embassy official declined to answer questions about whether U.S. security agents would be armed. Greek government leaders have denied the existence of any agreements to allow foreigners to wield guns.
For months, U.S. officials have pressed the Greek government to allow U.S. security personnel to assist in safeguarding the U.S. team, made up of more than 500 athletes. Greek and U.S. forces will accompany U.S. athletes and those from other nations on the buses that shuttle them to events. Though the vast majority of U.S. athletes are expected to stay inside the heavily guarded Olympic Village, those that don't will be protected by security details.
At least 100 FBI and State Department security personnel will be in Greece during the Games. The U.S. Olympic Committee has provided emergency masks for the U.S. Olympians, urged them to travel in groups when they go about the city and encouraged them to show restraint when wearing red, white and blue or Team USA gear outside of the venues or Olympic Village.
"Nobody can guarantee absolute security, but everything humanly possible to be done has been done," Karamanlis said. "I'm very confident the Games will be both successful and secure."
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
9/11 Families Get a Fighter From the Ranks
By Judy Sarasohn
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58069-2004Aug11?language=printer
April D. Gallop, a Pentagon survivor of Sept. 11, 2001, has become something of a persistent, if not familiar, figure on Capitol Hill. Like other survivors and relatives of the victims of the terrorist attacks, Gallop has lobbied for a full accounting of what happened and for other related issues.
Now she wants to formalize their role. Gallop, who has retired from the Army because of her injuries and is the single mother of Elisha, 3, has established the AEZ Consulting Firm to lobby on 9/11 families' issues as well as those affecting veterans and children.
She might eventually take on independent clients, but 9/11 always comes first.
"Our organization is for activism. It's not just to be a big lobbying company to get a lot of money," she said in an interview yesterday after observing the House Armed Services Committee hearing and joining in a lunch with lawmakers and other 9/11 folks.
AEZ Consulting is still in its organizational phase, Gallop said. "We're trying to make it formal, trying to be professional." There are at least 20 survivors and relatives of victims who have been actively lobbying "and more than 6,000 people . . . in varying degrees of recovery," she said.
If they can raise funding for their efforts, they would be able to bring more survivors and relatives to Capitol Hill to testify at various hearings, Gallop said. "But we're not going to stop if we don't get money."
Gallop was an Army specialist back in 2001, just returned from maternity leave and back at the Pentagon, her 2-month-old son in her arms, when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the building, exploding into flames. She is still dealing with painful spinal injuries, and while Elisha has some developmental delays and mild hearing loss, he's walking and running now.
"I don't want this happening to any child. . . . I have my challenges. But I'm trying to take my pain and turn it into activism," Gallop said.
She and the others are waiting to see what legislation develops on the 9/11 commission's recommendations, and then plan to throw themselves into lobbying on behalf of it. Said Gallop, "We're going to be a force to reckon with."
Based in the Heartland
The Heartland Partnership, a Peoria, Ill.-based community council for businesses, has turned to the Holland & Knight law firm here to help prevent the possibility of Peoria and Springfield losing their military facilities in next year's round of base closings.
Peoria has the 182nd Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard and Springfield is home to the 183rd Fighter Wing.
The two bases are "big parts of these communities" and Peoria and Springfield "want to do all that they can" to keep them, said John Buscher, a public policy adviser on the Holland & Knight team.
The team seems to be particularly well connected: There is former Republican representative Tillie K. Fowler (Fla.), who used to serve on the House Armed Services Committee and is still big on defense issues, and James Lariviere, a former staff member of House Armed Services and a colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve. Buscher previously was a lobbyist for United Airlines and earlier was an aide to then-Illinois Democratic Sens. Alan J. Dixon and Carol Moseley Braun.
Homework for Better Schools
A coalition of largely liberal-leaning groups yesterday launched a "mobilization" to make public education an election-year issue, at all levels of government.
The big event is Sept. 22, when the coalition hopes that thousands of teachers, parents and community leaders get together at house parties across the country to talk about the issues and organize to meet with lawmakers, register voters and otherwise mobilize to make public education a national priority.
The coalition includes the National Education Association, MoveOn.org, Campaign for America's Future, ACORN, the U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute and the NAACP National Voter Fund.
Although some of the groups are critics of President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative and some are supporters of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, members said the mobilization is nonpartisan.
"The success of this mobilization depends on it being issue-based," said Toby Chaudhuri of Campaign for America's Future.
The group will not endorse candidates, he said, but will "pressure officials at every level of government to make education a priority."
Leaping Lobbyists
Patrick Lehman, previously manager of government relations for Bayer CropScience, has joined the Grocery Manufacturers of America as director of federal affairs. He will focus on food safety, appropriations, the security of the food supply and commodity programs, and other issues.
"We believe his experience and knowledge about the regulatory process from seed to table will bring a new dimension to GMA's work with Congress," GMA chief executive C. Manly Molpus said in a statement.
The American Health Care Association has signed on James B. Smith Jr. as senior vice president for policy and government relations. Smith most recently served as vice president of federal government relations at the Advanced Medical Technology Association and earlier lobbied for the American Medical Association
Mary E. Arnold, most recently vice president of congressional and federal government affairs for AT&T, has moved over to SAP America Inc. to oversee the lobbying efforts and issues management of the business software solutions provider. Earlier, she worked for Lucent Technologies and Sen. Paula Hawkins (R-Fla.).
--------
TESTIMONY
Pentagon Caution on 9/11 Panel's Intelligence Changes
August 12, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/politics/12panel.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 11 - Senior Pentagon officials joined with prominent House Republicans on Wednesday in cautioning against a hasty move toward overhauling the nation's intelligence agencies in response to the Sept. 11 commission, which called in its final report for the appointment of a national intelligence director to oversee the work of spy agencies within the Defense Department.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, was among the lawmakers, including some Democrats, who expressed concern that the findings of the bipartisan commission might produce a politically motivated "rush to judgment" that would harm the military.
"Transferring D.O.D. national intelligence capabilities to an outside entity could end up dulling our military edge, which would ultimately make us less secure," Mr. Hunter said at an unusual midsummer hearing of the committee, called to debate the findings of the commission, including its call for the creation of a powerful intelligence director to oversee the nation's 15 intelligence agencies.
"If we allow a rush to judgment to be dictated by the need to simply get this done during an election cycle, then I think we're going to make ourselves more vulnerable and cause the nation more harm," the congressman said.
Despite the wariness of Mr. Hunter and other lawmakers, Congressional Republican leaders, with an eye on the November elections, have vowed to move within weeks on legislation to carry out many of the commission recommendations, which have become a central issue in the presidential campaign.
Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, has endorsed all of the recommendations. President Bush has endorsed many of them, although his plan calls for a national intelligence director with far more limited budgetary and personnel powers than was envisioned by the Sept. 11 commission.
Pentagon officials testifying before the Armed Services Committee said they, too, worried that a national intelligence director with direct authority over the workings of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other defense spy agencies could create a layer of bureaucracy that might hinder the sharing of intelligence with soldiers on the battlefield.
Stephen A. Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence, testified that while the Pentagon would "salute smartly and make it happen" if the White House and Congress agreed on an overhaul, any changes to intelligence gathering had to be made with "an assurance that the support that's going to be needed for the war fighter will be there when he picks up the phone and seeks it."
"I'm not saying that we ought not to be considering the changes,'' Mr. Cambone said. "What I'm saying is that once you think about what the change is, what problem do we create and can we resolve it in a way that we're happy?"
Maj. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, former commander of the Army's Fourth Infantry Division, who has recently led soldiers in Iraq, testified that there "was always a concern that we add bureaucracy that does not allow us to get immediate information" in a battle zone.
Testifying Wednesday at a separate hearing of the House Intelligence Committee, the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission said that the creation of the post of national intelligence director would pose no threat to the sharing of intelligence with troops on the battlefield.
"It's unimaginable to us that the national intelligence director would not give support to the war fighter, to our deployed forces, a high, if not the highest priority," said the vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, a former Democratic member of the House from Indiana. "Let me be clear: the war fighter must have tactical intelligence support. Our report takes no issue with tactical support."
The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a Republican and the former governor of New Jersey, said that the panel's recommendations for an overhaul of the nation's system of gathering and sharing intelligence were modeled on measures adopted by the Pentagon in the mid-1980's to force the military's four branches to work together in joint commands, the so-called Goldwater-Nichols reforms, named for the authors of the legislation mandating the widely praised changes.
"We consciously and deliberately draw on the military example," Mr. Kean said. "We can and should learn, because that was a very successful reform in the military two decades ago. We want all the government agencies which plan a role in counteterrorism to work together in a unified command."
The hearings in both the Armed Service and Intelligence Committees took a sharply partisan turn at times; House Democrats have questioned whether the White House and Congressional Republican leaders are stalling on the commission's recommendations.
"It's not a rush to judgment to fix gaps three years after 9-11, with bipartisan ideas that have been debated for decades," said Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee. "Three years is ample time for Congress to act, and the time to act is now."
-------- propaganda wars
The Post on WMDs: An Inside Story
Prewar Articles Questioning Threat Often Didn't Make Front Page
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58127-2004Aug11?language=printer
Days before the Iraq war began, veteran Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus put together a story questioning whether the Bush administration had proof that Saddam Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
But he ran into resistance from the paper's editors, and his piece ran only after assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, who was researching a book about the drive toward war, "helped sell the story," Pincus recalled. "Without him, it would have had a tough time getting into the paper." Even so, the article was relegated to Page A17.
"We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder," Woodward said in an interview. "We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier" than widely believed. "Those are exactly the kind of statements that should be published on the front page."
As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.
An examination of the paper's coverage, and interviews with more than a dozen of the editors and reporters involved, shows that The Post published a number of pieces challenging the White House, but rarely on the front page. Some reporters who were lobbying for greater prominence for stories that questioned the administration's evidence complained to senior editors who, in the view of those reporters, were unenthusiastic about such pieces. The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.
"The paper was not front-paging stuff," said Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks. "Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?"
In retrospect, said Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale. Not enough of those stories were put on the front page. That was a mistake on my part."
Across the country, "the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones," Downie said. "We didn't pay enough attention to the minority."
When national security reporter Dana Priest was addressing a group of intelligence officers recently, she said, she was peppered with questions: "Why didn't The Post do a more aggressive job? Why didn't The Post ask more questions? Why didn't The Post dig harder?"
Several news organizations have cast a withering eye on their earlier work. The New York Times said in a May editor's note about stories that claimed progress in the hunt for WMDs that editors "were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper." Separately, the Times editorial page and the New Republic magazine expressed regret for some prewar arguments.
Michael Massing, a New York Review of Books contributor and author of the forthcoming book "Now They Tell Us," on the press and Iraq, said: "In covering the run-up to the war, The Post did better than most other news organizations, featuring a number of solid articles about the Bush administration's policies. But on the key issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the paper was generally napping along with everyone else. It gave readers little hint of the doubts that a number of intelligence analysts had about the administration's claims regarding Iraq's arsenal."
The front page is a newspaper's billboard, its way of making a statement about what is important, and stories trumpeted there are often picked up by other news outlets. Editors begin pitching stories at a 2 p.m. news meeting with Downie and Managing Editor Steve Coll and, along with some reporters, lobby throughout the day. But there is limited space on Page 1 -- usually six or seven stories -- and Downie said he likes to feature a broad range of subjects, including education, health, science, sports and business.
Woodward, for his part, said it was risky for journalists to write anything that might look silly if weapons were ultimately found in Iraq. Alluding to the finding of the Sept. 11 commission of a "groupthink" among intelligence officials, Woodward said of the weapons coverage: "I think I was part of the groupthink."
Given The Post's reputation for helping topple the Nixon administration, some of those involved in the prewar coverage felt compelled to say the paper's shortcomings did not reflect any reticence about taking on the Bush White House. Priest noted, however, that skeptical stories usually triggered hate mail "questioning your patriotism and suggesting that you somehow be delivered into the hands of the terrorists."
Instead, the obstacles ranged from editing difficulties and communication problems to the sheer mass of information the newsroom was trying to digest during the march to war.
The Doubts Go Inside
From August 2002 through the March 19, 2003, launch of the war, The Post ran more than 140 front-page stories that focused heavily on administration rhetoric against Iraq. Some examples: "Cheney Says Iraqi Strike Is Justified"; "War Cabinet Argues for Iraq Attack"; "Bush Tells United Nations It Must Stand Up to Hussein or U.S. Will"; "Bush Cites Urgent Iraqi Threat"; "Bush Tells Troops: Prepare for War."
Reporter Karen DeYoung, a former assistant managing editor who covered the prewar diplomacy, said contrary information sometimes got lost.
"If there's something I would do differently -- and it's always easy in hindsight -- the top of the story would say, 'We're going to war, we're going to war against evil.' But later down it would say, 'But some people are questioning it.' The caution and the questioning was buried underneath the drumbeat. . . . The hugeness of the war preparation story tended to drown out a lot of that stuff."
Beyond that, there was the considerable difficulty of dealing with secretive intelligence officials who themselves were relying on sketchy data from Iraqi defectors and other shadowy sources and could never be certain about what they knew.
On Sept. 19, 2002, reporter Joby Warrick described a report "by independent experts who question whether thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq were intended for a secret nuclear weapons program," as the administration was contending. The story ran on Page A18.
Warrick said he was "going out on a limb. . . . I was struck by the people I talked to -- some on the record, others who couldn't be -- who were saying pretty persistently that these tubes were in no way suitable for uranium enrichment. On the other side were these CIA guys who said, 'Look, we know what we're talking about but we can't tell you.' "
Downie said that even in retrospect, the story looks like "a close call." He said the inability of dissenters "to speak up with their names" was a factor in some of his news judgments. The Post, however, frequently quotes unnamed sources.
Not all such stories were pushed inside the paper. A follow-up Warrick piece on the aluminum tubes did run on Page 1 the following January, two months before the war began. And The Post gave front-page play to a Sept. 10, 2002, story by Priest contending that "the CIA has yet to find convincing evidence" linking Hussein and al Qaeda.
That hardly settled the matter. On Dec. 12, 2002, investigative reporter Barton Gellman -- who would later win acclaim for his skeptical postwar stories from Iraq on WMDs -- wrote a controversial piece that ombudsman Michael Getler complained "practically begs you not to put much credence in it." The headline: "U.S. Suspects Al Qaeda Got Nerve Agent From Iraqis."
The story, attributed to "two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report" to the Bush administration "and its source," said in the second paragraph that "if the report proves true" -- a whopper of a qualifier -- it would be "the most concrete evidence" yet to support Bush's charge that Iraq was helping terrorists.
Gellman does not believe he was used. "The sources were not promoting the war. . . . One of them was actually against it," he said. "They were career security officials, not political officials. They were, however, wrong." Gellman added that "it was news even though it was clear that it was possible this report would turn out to be false."
But sources, even suspect ones, were the only game in town. "We had no alternative sources of information," Woodward said. "Walter [Pincus] and I couldn't go to Iraq without getting killed. You couldn't get beyond the veneer and hurdle of what this groupthink had already established" -- the conventional wisdom that Hussein was sitting on a stockpile of illegal weapons.
In October 2002, Ricks, a former national security editor for the Wall Street Journal who has been covering such issues for 15 years, turned in a piece that he titled "Doubts." It said that senior Pentagon officials were resigned to an invasion but were reluctant and worried that the risks were being underestimated. Most of those quoted by name in the Ricks article were retired military officials or outside experts. The story was killed by Matthew Vita, then the national security editor and now a deputy assistant managing editor.
"Journalistically, one of the frustrations with that story was that it was filled with lots of retired guys," Vita said. But, he added, "I completely understood the difficulty of getting people inside the Pentagon" to speak publicly.
Liz Spayd, the assistant managing editor for national news, says The Post's overall record was strong.
"I believe we pushed as hard or harder than anyone to question the administration's assertions on all kinds of subjects related to the war. . . . Do I wish we would have had more and pushed harder and deeper into questions of whether they possessed weapons of mass destruction? Absolutely," she said. "Do I feel we owe our readers an apology? I don't think so."
Digger or Crusader?
No Post reporter burrowed into the Iraqi WMD story more deeply than Pincus, 71, a staff member for 32 of the last 38 years, whose messy desk is always piled high with committee reports and intelligence files. "The main thing people forget to do is read documents," said Pincus, wielding a yellow highlighter.
A white-haired curmudgeon who spent five years covering the Iran-contra scandal and has long been an expert on nuclear weapons, Pincus sometimes had trouble convincing editors of the importance of his incremental, difficult-to-read stories.
His longevity is such that he first met Hans Blix, who was the chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, at a conference in Ghana in 1959.
"The inspectors kept getting fed intelligence by our administration and the British and the French, and kept coming back and saying they couldn't find" the weapons, Pincus said. "I did one of the first interviews with Blix, and like everyone else he thought there would be WMDs. By January and February [of 2003], he was starting to have his own doubts. . . . What nobody talked about was how much had been destroyed," either under U.N. supervision after the Persian Gulf War or during the Clinton administration's 1998 bombing of Iraqi targets.
But while Pincus was ferreting out information "from sources I've used for years," some in the Post newsroom were questioning his work. Editors complained that he was "cryptic," as one put it, and that his hard-to-follow stories had to be heavily rewritten.
Spayd declined to discuss Pincus's writing but said that "stories on intelligence are always difficult to edit and parse and to ensure their accuracy and get into the paper."
Downie agreed that difficulties in editing Pincus may have been a factor in the prewar period, because he is "so well sourced" that his reporting often amounts to putting together "fragments" until the pieces were, in Downie's word, "storifyable."
Some editors, in Pincus's view, also saw him as a "crusader," as he once put it to Washingtonian magazine. "That's sort of my reputation, and I don't deny it," he said. "Once I get on a subject, I stay with it."
On Jan. 30, 2003, Pincus and Priest reported that the evidence the administration was amassing about Baghdad hiding weapons equipment and documents "is still circumstantial." The story ran on Page A14.
Some of the reporters who attended the daily "war meetings," where coverage was planned, complained to national editors that the drumbeat of the impending invasion was crowding out the work of Pincus and others who were challenging the administration.
Pincus was among the complainers. "Walter talked to me himself," Downie said. "He sought me out when he was frustrated, and I sought him out. We talked about how best to have stories be in the kind of shape that they could appear on the front page." Editors were also frustrated, Downie said. "Overall, in retrospect, we underplayed some of those stories."
The Woodward Factor
Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials had no problem commanding prime real estate in the paper, even when their warnings were repetitive. "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," DeYoung said. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." And if contrary arguments are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far."
Those tendencies were on display on Feb. 6, 2003, the day after Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a multimedia presentation at the United Nations -- using satellite images and intercepted phone calls -- to convince the world that Hussein was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
An accompanying front-page story by DeYoung and Pincus examined Powell's "unprecedented release of U.S. intelligence." Not until the ninth paragraph did they offer a "however" clause, saying that "a number of European officials and U.S. terrorism experts" believed that Powell's description of an Iraqi link to al Qaeda "appeared to have been carefully drawn to imply more than it actually said."
Warrick focused that day on the secretary's assertion, based on human sources, that Iraq had biological weapons factories on wheels. "Some of the points in Powell's presentation drew skepticism," Warrick reported. His piece ran on Page A28.
Downie said the paper ran several pieces analyzing Powell's speech as a package on inside pages. "We were not able to marshal enough evidence to say he was wrong," Downie said of Powell. "To pull one of those out on the front page would be making a statement on our own: 'Aha, he's wrong about the aluminum tubes.' "
Such decisions coincided with The Post editorial page's strong support for the war, such as its declaration the day after Powell's presentation that "it is hard to imagine how anyone could doubt that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction." These editorials led some readers to conclude that the paper had an agenda, even though there is a church-and-state wall between the newsroom and the opinion pages. Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, not Downie, runs the opinion side, reporting to Post Co. Chairman Donald Graham.
In mid-March, as the administration was on the verge of invading Iraq, Woodward stepped in to give the stalled Pincus piece about the administration's lack of evidence a push. "We weren't holding it for any political reason or because we were being pressured by the administration," Spayd said, but because such stories were difficult to edit at a time when the national desk was deluged with copy. "People forget how many facets of this story we were chasing . . . the political ramifications . . . military readiness . . . issues around postwar Iraq and how prepared the administration was . . . diplomacy angles . . . and we were pursuing WMD. . . . All those stories were competing for prominence."
As a star of the Watergate scandal who is given enormous amounts of time to work on his best-selling books, Woodward, an assistant managing editor, had the kind of newsroom clout that Pincus lacked.
The two men's recollections differ. Woodward said that after comparing notes with Pincus, he gave him a draft story consisting of five key paragraphs, which said the administration's evidence for WMDs in Iraq "looks increasingly circumstantial and even shaky," according to "informed sources." Woodward said Pincus found his wording too strong.
Pincus said he had already written his story when Woodward weighed in and that he treated his colleague's paragraphs as a suggestion and barely changed the piece. "What he really did was talk to the editors and made sure it was printed," Pincus said.
"Despite the Bush administration's claims" about WMDs, the March 16 Pincus story began, "U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress," raising questions "about whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence."
Woodward said he wished he had appealed to Downie to get front-page play for the story, rather than standing by as it ended up on Page A17. In that period, said former national security editor Vita, "we were dealing with an awful lot of stories, and that was one of the ones that slipped through the cracks." Spayd did not recall the debate.
Reviewing the story in his glass-walled office last week, Downie said: "In retrospect, that probably should have been on Page 1 instead of A17, even though it wasn't a definitive story and had to rely on unnamed sources. It was a very prescient story."
In the days before the war, Priest and DeYoung turned in a piece that said CIA officials "communicated significant doubts to the administration" about evidence tying Iraq to attempted uranium purchases for nuclear weapons. The story was held until March 22, three days after the war began. Editors blamed a flood of copy about the impending invasion.
Whether a tougher approach by The Post and other news organizations would have slowed the rush to war is, at best, a matter of conjecture.
"People who were opposed to the war from the beginning and have been critical of the media's coverage in the period before the war have this belief that somehow the media should have crusaded against the war," Downie said. "They have the mistaken impression that somehow if the media's coverage had been different, there wouldn't have been a war."
--------
Washington Post Says Iraq Coverage Flawed
August 12, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Post-Iraq-Coverage.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Editors at The Washington Post acknowledge they underplayed stories questioning President Bush's claims of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in the months leading up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
In the story published Thursday in the newspaper, Post media critic Howard Kurtz writes that editors resisted stories that questioned whether Bush had evidence that Saddam was hiding weapons of mass destruction.
``We did our job but we didn't do enough, and I blame myself mightily for not pushing harder,'' assistant managing editor Bob Woodward says in the story. ``We should have warned readers we had information that the basis for this was shakier'' than many believed.
Pentagon correspondent Thomas Ricks told Kurtz, ``There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?''
Executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. said, ``We were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale.''
In his more-than-3,000-word story, Kurtz writes, ``The result was coverage that, despite flashes of groundbreaking reporting, in hindsight looks strikingly one-sided at times.''
A number of critics have faulted the American news media for not being more skeptical about the Bush administration's claims before the beginning of the war in March 2003. In the year and a half since Saddam was toppled, U.S. troops have yet to discover any weapons of mass destruction.
In a study published in March by the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, researchers wrote: ``If the White House acted like a WMD story was important, ... so too did the media. If the White House ignored a story (or an angle on a story), the media were likely to as well.''
In May, The New York Times criticized its own reporting on Iraq, saying it found ``a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been'' and acknowledging it sometimes ``fell for misinformation'' from exile Iraqi sources.
--------
Kurtz Explains His Critique of 'Wash. Post' Iraq Coverage
By Joe Strupp
August 12, 2004
Editor & Publisher
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000611326
NEW YORK Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post media writer who penned the lengthy Page One critique Thursday of the paper's pre-war coverage of weapons threats in Iraq, said the damning story was his idea and included no outside interference or directives from top editors.
"I assigned it to myself," Kurtz, who has held the media beat at the Post for 14 years, told E&P just hours after the paper hit doorsteps. "I felt there were lingering questions about the Post's coverage that had been touched on in other accounts, but no one had interviewed all of the editors and reporters involved to try to make an assessment of what the paper did, both right and wrong."
Kurtz said he began reporting for the piece about a month ago, with some interruptions for presidential campaign coverage -- including the Democratic National Convention that he attended in Boston. About 20 people were interviewed for the story, including Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., who talked to Kurtz for more than an hour.
"I got absolutely no interference from anyone in management and the piece was not even reviewed in advance by the top editors, including Len Downie," Kurtz said. "I thought Downie was rather candid in acknowledging that the paper had made some mistakes."
Downie, who is out of town, could not be reached for comment today. Post Ombudsman Michael Getler, who was not interviewed by Kurtz, also is on vacation.
The 3,000-word piece finds that the Post often underplayed stories raising doubts about the Bush administration's pre-war contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
"Given that other news organizations were doing self-examinations, the time seemed ripe for the Post to do the same thing," Kurtz added. "I happen to think the Post did a better job than many major news organizations on this story." (The New York Times in May ran a much shorter editors' note about shortcomings in its own coverage.)
Kurtz said he did not seek input from Getler because he wanted the story to involve those who took part in the coverage. "To the Post's credit, Michael Getler has written a number of pieces taking the Post to task," Kurtz said. "What I felt was missing was the kind of in-depth, comprehensive, talk-to-everyone-involved piece that would explain the nuances of how the Post did some good reporting, but also fell short in very significant ways."
The media writer, whose work most often appears in the Style section, said he was not surprised it ran on Page One this morning. But, he said he never lobbied for placement. "I did the best job I could and handed in the piece and let others decide," Kurtz explained. "I wasn't surprised where it ran given that front-page display was a major theme in the story."
Kurtz said he had gotten mostly favorable reaction in e-mails and phone calls so far Thursday. "Whether people agree or disagree with my findings, it is a healthy self-examination for the Post to lay out these questions," he said.
Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is senior editor for E&P.
-------- us politics
Boehlert Takes Helm Of Intelligence Panel
Associated Press
Thursday, August 12, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58067-2004Aug11.html
Republican leaders in Congress have asked a New York congressman in a tough reelection race to serve temporarily as chairman of the House intelligence panel, the lawmaker said yesterday.
Rep. Sherwood L. Boehlert took over as acting chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence after President Bush nominated Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) as CIA director.
Republican leaders could ask Boehlert to remain acting chairman until the end of session or quickly install a permanent replacement for Goss.
The latter move would exclude the New York lawmaker because no member of Congress is allowed to head two committees. Boehlert is chairman of the House Science Committee.
-------- ENERGY
-------- energy
Oil Prices Up Despite Saudi Offer
Washington Post
By Justin Blum
Aug 12, 2004
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=1802&e=2&u=/washpost/20040812/ts_washpost/a58189_2004aug11
Saudi Arabia sought to calm turbulent oil markets yesterday by offering to boost production, but after an initial drop in prices the cost of oil rose again by day's end.
The Saudis' failed attempt to jawbone prices lower suggests to many industry specialists that current conditions -- production at near capacity, surging demand and fears of terrorism -- are curtailing the long-established power of the kingdom in international markets.
"In a sense, it's a perfect storm," said Fareed Mohamedi, chief economist for PFC Energy, a District-based consulting firm. "Many factors have just all come together and pushed the Saudi ability to the wall."
Rising oil prices have become an issue in President Bush's reelection. The U.S. Federal Reserve on Tuesday blamed the run-up in oil prices for the recent sharp slowdown in the economy.
Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry has raised concern that U.S. dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter, leaves the United States vulnerable. At last month's Democratic convention, Kerry drew sustained applause when he declared, "I want an America that relies on its ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family."
The question of the Saudis' sway in world oil markets has assumed a role in the U.S. presidential election this year. Author and Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward stirred a political controversy several months ago when he reported in a book that the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, told Bush that the Saudis would "fine tune" oil prices to boost the U.S. economy before the presidential election.
Adel Jubeir, foreign affairs adviser to the Saudi crown prince, said in a conference call with reporters that yesterday's announcement was not intended to influence the political campaign. He dismissed the assertions in Woodward's book as "fiction."
"Our policy is to maintain prices at a moderate level," he said.
Saudi officials said the pledge of increased production was motivated by concerns that oil prices were too high and could depress the world economy and lead to a decline in demand.
White House spokesman Trent Duffy would not discuss the Saudi announcement, saying only that the administration works with oil-producing countries to ensure adequate oil supplies.
The Saudis said they could immediately produce an additional 1.3 million barrels a day of crude oil beyond the 9.3 million barrels they now pump, if needed. The government said that at least for now it would not expand production because its customers had not asked for more oil.
As word of an imminent Saudi announcement reached traders on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday morning, the price of benchmark U.S. crude oil for September delivery dropped by more than $1 per barrel. Traders said they originally thought there would be a flood of new oil on the market.
But prices later rose as traders dissected the Saudi statement and questioned how much capacity actually exists to produce the type of crude oil most easily processed into gasoline. The closing price of a 42-gallon barrel of oil was up 28 cents from Tuesday, to $44.80 per barrel, a near record. Adjusted for inflation, prices are below peaks in 1990.
Some analysts said they believed the Saudis could produce an additional 1.3 million barrels a day, while others were doubtful. But analysts in both camps said much of the additional oil likely would be a variety that is more difficult to convert to gasoline because of limited refinery capacity.
Meanwhile, other events are driving prices up. Demand has increased, mostly in China and the United States. The Paris-based International Energy Agency, which advises the United States and 25 other countries, increased its projections for oil demand for the rest of this year and next year. The agency said it had underestimated oil use for years.
The report said the current prices were a concern and are causing "economic damage."
Traders are fearful of supply disruptions resulting from terrorism or instability in several oil-producing countries. Yukos Oil Co., Russia's largest exporter, announced yesterday that it may have to halt production in one of its units because of a government freeze on its bank accounts, part of an ongoing dispute.
Moreover, as the Saudis reach their capacity, traders become more nervous because even less spare oil would be available in an emergency.
The rising price of crude oil in recent months has also pushed up the price of gasoline. Although retail prices have moderated recently, analysts expect prices to start rising again. The national per-gallon average price for regular gas was $1.865 yesterday, according to a survey by a contractor for the AAA automobile club. That is down several cents from a month ago but up from a year ago.
Analysts and traders said they were disappointed that the Saudi announcement lacked specifics. For example, in the conference call with reporters from Saudi Arabia, the foreign adviser could not identify which fields the additional crude could come from. In addition, he could not specify the type of crude oil that could be produced. A U.S. public relations firm working for the Saudis, Qorvis Communications LLC, also was unable to provide the information.
The Saudis do not release detailed information about oil production and capacity. Analysts cobble together estimates based on observations about oil tanker traffic and load along with other measures.
Matthew R. Simmons, chairman and chief executive of Houston-based Simmons & Co. International, an energy investment bank, said he did not believe the Saudi numbers. "They're basically lulling a lot of people into saying, 'We don't have anything to worry about,' " Simmons said.
Simmons said his conclusions are based on an analysis of data from technical papers and annual reports from Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, along with other information.
But James Burkhard, director of global oil markets for Cambridge Energy Research Associates in Massachusetts, said his firm believes that the Saudis can produce the extra 1.3 million barrels a day and that more than half of the additional production may be of the most desirable variety.
The fact that the Saudis did not disclose specifics of possible production alarmed traders.
"That creates doubt in people's minds," said Raymond Carbone, president of Paramount Options Inc. "I'm skeptical of the Saudis, and I think the market is going to stand firm."
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Report Says U.S. Is Draining Wetlands Groups Cite Year-Old Policy
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 12, 2004; Page A21
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57991-2004Aug11.html
The administration has allowed developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands under a policy adopted last year, according to a report issued yesterday by four environmental groups.
The study, based on Freedom of Information Act requests, represents the first accounting of how the administration's interpretation of a 2001 Supreme Court decision affected isolated wetlands in states from New Mexico to Delaware. The court ruled that isolated wetlands that do not cross state boundaries and are not navigable do not enjoy the same federal protections as other wetlands just because they serve migratory birds.
Last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency said under the ruling, they could not protect such wetlands unless they were connected to interstate commerce.
Environmentalists complained that the directive put millions of acres of rivers, streams, lakes and wetlands at risk, and the report identified more than a dozen cases in which the Corps of Engineers subsequently approved development in areas described as ecologically sensitive.
Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney Daniel Rosenberg, one of the report's authors, called the examples "the tip of the iceberg" and said, "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection."
Administration officials said that they are following the court's ruling and that critics are ignoring President Bush's drive to create, improve and protect 3 million acres of wetlands.
James L. Connaughton, who chairs the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, said the acreage in the report authored by NRDC, the Sierra Club, Earthjustice and the National Wildlife Federation pales in comparison. "Everybody loves what we're doing," Connaughton said, referring to the wetlands expansion plan. He called the report's findings "highly questionable."
The report included an account of a 120-acre stretch of wetlands on the northwest shoreline of Galveston Bay, identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2002 as "of national significance." After the Supreme Court decision, the Corps of Engineers ruled that only 19.7 acres qualified for federal safeguards, which allowed the Port of Houston Authority to build a shipping-container terminal there.
Local environmental groups and communities are challenging the project but lost recently in U.S. District Court. Environmental lawyer Jim Blackburn, who is handling the case, said the construction is destroying parts of a key water body connected to Galveston Bay by ditches and water flows over land.
Mark Sudol, chief of the regulatory branch of the Army Corps, said his engineers spent six months surveying the site and determined the fact that water flowed from the wetlands over ground did not qualify it as a connected waterway.
Local port authorities said the project would generate jobs, adding they were replacing the wetlands on a 3 to 1 basis.
"We've made an extensive effort to be an environmental steward," said Charlie Jenkins, manager of the container terminal project.
-------- genetics
Britain Grants License to Make Human Embryos for Stem Cells
August 12, 2004
By HEATHER TIMMONS
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/12/science/12clone.html?pagewanted=all
LONDON, Aug. 11 - British regulators on Wednesday issued the country's first license to use cloning techniques to generate a human embryo to produce stem cells that might be used for the treatment of disease.
The one-year license was granted to researchers at the Newcastle Center for Life, in northern England, who hope to develop tissues that will treat diabetes, Alzheimer's and other diseases.
The license allows them to insert cell nuclei taken from a patient's skin into human eggs from which the nuclei have been removed, a process known as therapeutic cloning. Stem cells created as the embryo grows can be converted to cells of the tissue type the donor needs repaired.
Stem cell research is controversial because the embryo must be destroyed to harvest the cells. A 2001 Bush administration decision limits researchers using federal money to existing stem cell lines. In July, the French Parliament banned human cloning for any purpose.
Three years ago, Britain became the first country to allow therapeutic cloning; Newcastle has won the country's first license. In February, South Korean scientists became the first to create a human embryo for therapeutic research.
Scientists involved in the Newcastle project say they hope to find some cures rapidly through therapeutic cloning.
"In 5 or 10 years, we'd like to be in a position where a patient with Parkinson's or diabetes could come to us, and we could take a skin cell from them and reprogram it," said Alison Murdoch of Newcastle's fertility center. Reinserting the altered cell could cure the disease.
Without the license enabling them to make new stem cells from patients' own cells, Newcastle scientists would be limited to working with existing stem cells, which are often the byproducts of failed in vitro fertilization and may be rejected by a patient's immune system.
Therapeutic cloning could also help in the development of universal donor cells, said Dr. Roger Pedersen, director of the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute.
In approving the project, British regulators said they considered all sides of the medical, ethical and legal debate. "This is an important area of research and a responsible use of technology," said Suzi Leather, chairwoman of the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority, the British agency that issued the license.
Britain finances some stem cell research as well as regulating it, making the research climate more consistent than it is in the United States, scientists say, where private money is available but there is little oversight. Cloning for reproductive purposes is banned in Britain.
Some analysts say that the acceptance of stem cell research hinges on the success of projects like Newcastle's.
"If you can use some sort of therapeutic cloning to, for example, fix diseases in sick children, it is going to be hard for detractors to say no," said June Scott, a fund manager at Sagitta Asset Management, who invests in pharmaceutical and biotechnology stocks.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Veterans of Iraq war found anti-war organization
by NewStandard Staff
Thursday, August 12, 2004
http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=812
Aug 11 - Following in the footsteps of their counterparts who fought in Veitnam, a group of veterans of the Iraq invasion and occupation announced the founding of Iraq Veterans Against the War.
"The conditions the people are living under [in Iraq], conditions that don't seem to be changing: no jobs, no electricity, no clean water," Sergent Kelly Dougherty of Colorado Springs who worked in a Military Police Unit, said to a crowd of war veterans and their allies gathered in Boston. "This is a war for empire. You want to support the troops? Demand that they be brought home from Afghanistan and Iraq, that they get the benefits they are entitled to."
Iraq Veterans Against the War's new website says it is a group of veterans from the invasion and occupation of Iraq "committed to saving lives and ending the violence in Iraq by an immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces." The group's statement also says its members believe "governments that sponsored these wars are indebted to the men and women that were forced to fight them and must give their Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen the benefits that are owed to them upon their return home."
The founders made their announcement during a meeting sponsored by Veterans for Peace, an anti-war organization founded in 1985, just before the Democratic National Convention got underway in the same city. The meeting was attended by hundreds of vets from US conflicts since World War II.
"You more than anyone else know what our loved ones go through," said Nancy Lessin co-founder of Military Families Speak Out, an organization of relatives of military personnel who are opposed to the war in Iraq. "Bush lied and who died? Nine hundred of our soldiers and thousands of Iraqis."
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