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NUCLEAR
Bomb Materials at Campus Reactors
Nuclear Fuel Pieces Still Missing From Humboldt Bay
PG&E Says Can't Find Missing Nuclear Fuel Rod
India President Justifies Nuke Program
US: Iran Says Can Make Uranium for Nuke in a Year
Official Says Iran Could Make Nukes
Iran threatens to destroy Israel's nuclear reactor
Israel's security strategy
Downer tells North Korea it might not hold the winning hand
Rumsfeld Waits for 'Go' on Missile Defense
Nuke bomb plot foiled
FBI Agent: Ex - Nuke Plant Unsafe for Refuge
Sealed Documents on Ex-Nuke Plant Sought
Feds take N.M. out of facility decision
Nuclear Data Found Missing From New Mexico
Audit: Plutonium Program Behind Schedule
Giuliani: Don't whitewash danger
NRC nixes hearing delay; state pushes for fed help
Union OKs Contract at Vt. Nuclear Plant
MILITARY
Halliburton Oversight Criticized
Iran Disquieted by Nearby U.S. Presence
Iraqi Government Gives Sadr a Final Chance to End Uprising
Cleric Requests Talks on Pullout
In Discord, Iraqis Select Interim Assembly
Iraqi Government Gives Sadr a Final Chance to End Uprising
Sharon, Arafat Face Challenges in Ranks
Despite Setback, Sharon to Proceed With Withdrawal
Israel AG Says Shift Barrier to Avoid Sanctions
Sharon Rebuffed by Party, as Arafat Admits Making Mistakes
Pakistan Publishes Terror Suspects' Photos
U.S. Soldiers Kill 2 Detainees In Quelling Riot at Abu Ghraib
Jail deaths overshadow Abu Ghraib report
The spying-as-science myth
Bush Turns to Part-Time Troops
Kerry Decries Bush's Military Realignment
Kerry Criticizes President's Troop Plan
General's Speeches Broke Rules
POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
Wen Ho Lee Reporters Held in Contempt
Reporters Ruled in Contempt Over Wen Ho Lee Sources
Judge Tells U.S. to Release Data on Detainees It Holds Overseas
Feds Admit Terror Evidence May Be Flawed
AG: Hague fence ruling may lead to sanctions against Israel
Concern lingers over new scanners
Hazmat Workers Train for Trouble
Immigrants Face Loss of Licenses in ID Crackdown
Activists Condemn FBI Tactics Before DNC
Police Turn Up Volume for GOP Convention
Afghan cleric dies in police custody
POLITICS
Former Iraq Arms Inspector Faults Prewar Intelligence
Abuse Inquiry Faults Officers on Leadership
A 'War President' Reinforces His Military Positions
GOP Legislator Assails Iraq War
Republican Now Opposes War in Iraq
OTHER
Groups Chide U.S. on Mercury Regulations
Fuel stations may pose child cancer risk, says study
Native Hawaiians Sue the Army to Keep Out Strykers
A Secretive Bank Faces Calls for Transparency
IMF: Costa Rica should reduce public debt
ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Group Asks Court to Allow Central Park Protest
Past Arrests Could Play a Role in Prosecution of Protesters
Doctor May Get Life for Violating Iraq Sanctions
Let There Be Protests
China Detains Buddhist Leader Americans Ejected From Temple Site
-------- NUCLEAR
-------- accidents and safety
Bomb Materials at Campus Reactors
August 19, 2004
New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/opinion/19thu3.html
While experts worry that loosely guarded nuclear materials in foreign countries might fall into the hands of terrorists, six civilian research reactors at American universities continue to use weapons-grade uranium that could go a long way toward making a nuclear bomb. Although the reactors may not be particularly tempting targets for terrorists or criminals, they are disturbingly accessible ones - their security is far less rigorous than that imposed by the government for its own bomb-grade uranium stockpiles. It is time for the Energy Department to accelerate the universities' conversion to less dangerous fuels.
As described by Matthew Wald in last Sunday's Times, the highly enriched uranium was supplied to research reactors in this country and abroad in past decades as a spinoff of the government's Atoms for Peace program during the cold war. More recently, as concerns about nuclear proliferation replaced the national fear of losing the arms race, the Energy Department has spent millions of dollars to develop a less dangerous alternative fuel and to convert research reactors so they can use it.
But as of July 30, according to the Government Accountability Office, only 39 of some 105 research reactors around the world had switched to low-enriched uranium. The six American campus reactors in this country, along with two others in industry and government, have not yet been converted because the government has failed to provide the necessary funds. Five other domestic research reactors can't be converted yet for technical reasons.
The six campus reactors may not pose a major risk. Each contains less uranium than would be needed for a bomb, and the fuel is dangerously radioactive, making it hard to handle. But the failure to convert them sends the wrong signal to the rest of the world at a time when the United States is trying to persuade the owners of foreign research reactors to switch to safer fuels.
Spencer Abraham, the energy secretary, has announced a $450 million program to retrieve nuclear materials sent around the world for research purposes by the United States and Russia. That worthwhile program would gain more credibility if this country showed the way by converting all of its own research reactors.
The stumbling block has been money. The Energy Department has already converted 11 research reactors in this country at a cost of about $10 million, but it claims that the remaining six would cost $5 million to $10 million apiece.
The State Department, which wants the reactors converted, contends that the Energy Department has deliberately overstated the costs to avoid pressure to complete the conversions. If so, that would be a shortsighted budgetary maneuver. At whatever price, expenditures to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism are a good investment.
--------
Nuclear Fuel Pieces Still Missing From Humboldt Bay
August 19, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO, California, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-19-09.asp#anchor6
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) is still searching for three missing pieces of spent nuclear fuel, company officials notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Monday.
The company originally notified the regulatory agency of the missing fuel pieces on July 16 based on a discrepancy in records of the Humboldt Bay Power Plant (HBPP) Unit 3.
The pieces are each about 18 inches long and were cut from a single spent fuel rod used in a fuel assembly in 1968.
On Monday the HBPP Plant Staff Review Committee reviewed the company's search results and concluded that a "thorough and complete" search of all easily accessible spaces in the spent fuel pool had not located the missing fuel segments.
Though it remains probable that the unaccounted for fuel segments will ultimately be found in the spent fuel pool or shown to have been shipped to a facility licensed to reprocess or store nuclear materials, PG&E is conservatively considering these segments as missing, the company told the regulators.
Now PG&E says it has started a search of the less accessible areas of the spent fuel pool and will continue to review its plant records, nuclear materials shipping records, plant and waste repository records, and interviews of plant personnel to locate the missing fuel segments.
"No evidence has been uncovered to support the possibility of theft or diversion of the unaccounted for fuel segments," the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) stated.
Due to the high radioactivity of the material, to be handled safely, the segments would have to be encased in a heavy shielded container and moved with special handling equipment. Since plant start-up, HBPP has been equipped with a system of radiation monitors for the refueling building where the spent fuel pool is located with alarms capable of alerting plant personnel of the movement of highly radioactive material if the fuel segments were removed without being in a shielded container.
"This could not have occurred casually without plant staff or security personnel observing the movement," the regulatory agency said.
Three possible scenarios exist, the NRC reasons. The highest probability is that the fuel segments are in a spent fuel pool area that is not readily accessible, and will be located during a more detailed search of these locations.
The second highest probability is that the fuel segments were shipped offsite to an appropriately controlled and restricted facility for either analysis or reprocessing.
The least probable location, but not yet capable of being ruled out, is that the fuel segments were inadvertently included in a shipment to a licensed, monitored, and restricted low-level radioactive waste facility.
"Since these possible locations are licensed, monitored and restricted radiological control areas, the public health and safety has not been adversely affected," the NRC said.
----
PG&E Says Can't Find Missing Nuclear Fuel Rod
REUTERS USA:
August 19, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26679/story.htm
SAN FRANCISCO - Utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said yesterday it had not yet found the missing pieces of a used nuclear fuel rod at its Humboldt Bay Power Plant near the city of Eureka in northern California.
The utility, a unit of PG&E Corp., said it updated the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on its investigation regarding the missing fuel, first reported to the NRC on June 29, and was continuing its investigation.
Workers have completed a search of easily accessible areas in the plant's storage pool for radioactive fuel without success and a review of records plus interviews with former workers have not turned up the location, the company said.
The used fuel consisted of three, half-inch diameter by 18-inch long segments, weighing a total of about 4 pounds, which were cut from a single, 7-foot fuel rod in 1968.
The Humboldt Bay Plant is now closed after the reactor operated from 1963 to 1976. It was the seventh licensed commercial reactor in the U.S. and produced 65 megawatts, or enough power for about 65,000 homes.
PG&E said it "continues to believe" the missing fuel is either safely stored in the pool or was shipped from the plant to a facility licensed to take radioactive material.
"There is no evidence that the used fuel segments were shipped to a radioactive waste disposal site; however, in an effort to exhaust all scenarios, plant staff are investigating this as a remote possibility," the utility said.
"It is unlikely that the fuel is some place where it's not supposed to be," said David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group.
Lochbaum said that pieces of fuel rods have been lost at other power stations and accounting measures for the material were designed for "bundles" of fuel, not for individual rods.
"It's likely they are still in the pool or were shipped off site to a licensed waste dump," he said.
PG&E also said there was no evidence that the fuel was stolen.
-------- india / pakistan
India President Justifies Nuke Program
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 19, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A17216-2004Aug19.html
SRINAGAR, India - India's president on Thursday defended the country's nuclear missile program as necessary to maintain peace during a visit to the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir.
"When all around the nation countries have nuclear weapons," India cannot just sit and pray, said President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, referring to neighboring Pakistan and China.
Security was tightened for Kalam's visit to Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state.
More than a dozen Islamic rebel groups have been fighting since 1989 for Muslim majority Kashmir's independence from predominantly Hindu India or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir.
"Strength respects strength. Whatever we have done in defense is only to defend our freedom," Kalam said. "Our nuclear policy enunciates `no first use.' That means defending the country is the foremost mission."
Kalam, a former missile scientist, was part of the team that planned India's 1998 nuclear tests. That drew matching tests from Pakistan - and sanctions against both by several other countries. Most of the sanctions have since been lifted.
-------- iran
US: Iran Says Can Make Uranium for Nuke in a Year
by Saul Hudson
REUTERS USA:
August 19, 2004
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/26674/story.htm
WASHINGTON - A hawkish U.S. official said yesterday that Iran has warned it could make enough bomb-grade material in a year to produce a nuclear weapon, a threat that may boost a U.S. push to report Tehran to the United Nations.
In recent weeks, Iran has intensified its standoff over its nuclear programs and the United States has said it is increasingly likely the U.N. Security Council would take up the case against the Islamic republic for possible sanctions.
U.S. Under Secretary of State John Bolton said Iran had sought in negotiations with European powers to pressure them to ease their opposition to its suspected weapons programs.
"They've told the EU three (Britain, France and Germany) that they could produce, they could enrich enough uranium for a nuclear weapon within a year and they could produce nuclear weapons within the range of our own assessment, which is a way of threatening the Europeans to get them to back down," the senior official said at a Washington think tank session on Iran.
U.S. officials with access to intelligence estimates say Iran can achieve a bomb in three to five years and the United States believes that would be a danger in the Middle East, notably to its close ally Israel.
Oil-rich Iran says its nuclear programs, which the U.N. nuclear watchdog has been monitoring, are for peaceful energy projects.
Bolton, a hawk in the Bush administration who is skeptical talks with Iran will be successful, said the Europeans had assured the United States they would not bow to the pressure.
The European Union three have been negotiating with Iran and share information with the United States on the talks, although they have given few details publicly about high-level meetings they held last month, diplomats said.
The three won a promise from Iran last year to suspend uranium enrichment.
But Iran was angered when the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency issued a tough rebuke over cooperation with its inspectors in June. And last month, it said it would resume the manufacture, assembly and testing of enrichment centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium for weapons.
Despite reluctance among the 35-nation IAEA to ratchet up the diplomatic pressure on Iran by referring it to the Security Council, Bolton said that move was "long overdue" and the watchdog had an opportunity to do so at a meeting next month.
"The odds of referring the issue to the Security Council whether in September or at some point in the near future are rising rapidly," he said.
--------
Official Says Iran Could Make Nukes
August 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-US-Iran.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Iran has informed British, French and German officials it could produce weapons-grade uranium within a year and a nuclear weapon no more than three years after that, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton said Thursday.
``These Iranian assertions give the lie to their public contention that their nuclear program is entirely civil and peaceful in purpose,'' Bolton said in an interview.
Bolton, who plays a leading role in U.S. efforts to contain the spread of nuclear and other dangerous weapons, said Iran was making veiled threats in an effort to head off U.N. consideration of sanctions or other forms of punishment.
The United States is expected to request U.N. Security Council action if the International Atomic Energy Agency condemns Iraq at a board of governors meeting Sept. 13 in Vienna.
Bolton said the administration was consulting with British, French and German officials, as well as with Russia, Japan and other governments, in preparation for the IAEA meeting.
Meanwhile, at a news conference, U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said the Europeans were providing ``very good cooperation'' on Iran.
However, Rice said there was no agreement yet on how to proceed against Iran in an effort to stop its development of nuclear weapons.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters at President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Tex., that ``what the Iranian government needs to do is to end its pursuit of nuclear weapons.''
``That's what our priority is when it comes to Iran,'' McClellan said. ``Germany, France and the British are making it very clear to the Iranians, as well.''
At the State Department, spokesman Adam Ereli dismissed a threat by Iran's defense minister to attack the United States if U.S. troops in Iraq threatened Iran.
Ereli said the minister, Ali Shamkhani, was responding to ``unwarranted concerns.''
U.S. troops are in Iraq at Iraq's invitation and as a result of U.N. resolutions to help support the stability and security of Iraq, he said.
``So there is no cause for seeing them as threatening,'' Ereli said.
In an interview with pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, Shamkhani was asked how Iran would respond if the United States were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
``We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us,'' he said. ``There are differences of opinion among military commanders (in Iran). Some commanders believe preventive operations is not a model created by Americans...or is not limited to Americans,'' he said. ``Any nation, if it feels threatened, can resort to them,'' Shamkhani said.
Bolton, in a speech Tuesday, said the Bush administration would keep using diplomacy to try to stop Iran's drive for nuclear weapons, but there was no sign yet that Iran -- or North Korea -- had decided to follow Libya's lead and abandon its dangerous goal.
``The path we are pursuing is the path of diplomacy,'' Bolton said.
He said the administration was working with European and other nations to seek a peaceful end to more than 18 years of a large-scale nuclear program by Iran that poses a ``grave threat'' in the Middle East and beyond.
If diplomacy failed, Bolton suggested organizing an international isolation of Iran or intercepting vessels carrying nuclear technology to Iran.
-------- israel
Iran threatens to destroy Israel's nuclear reactor if Israel attacks Iran's
Aug 19, 2004
ALI AKBAR DAREINI (AP)
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/040817/w081798.html
TEHRAN, Iran - Accompanied by a warning that its missiles have the range, Iran said Tuesday it would destroy Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor if the Jewish state were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
"If Israel fires a missile into the Bushehr nuclear power plant, it has to say goodbye forever to its Dimona nuclear facility, where it produces and stockpiles nuclear weapons," the deputy chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards, Brig.-Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, said in a statement.
Bushehr, a coastal town on the Persian Gulf, is the site of Iran's first nuclear reactor. Built with Russian assistance, it's due to come online in 2005.
Iran says its nuclear program is strictly for generating electricity. But Israel and the United States strongly suspect Iran is secretly building nuclear weapons.
Israel has not threatened to attack the Bushehr reactor, but it has said it will not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb. In 1981 Israeli fighters destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction outside Baghdad because it feared Iraq would acquire a nuclear weapon.
Israel has never confirmed nor denied having nuclear weapons, but it is widely believed to be a nuclear power. Its reactor at Dimona in the Negev Desert is said to be the source of plutonium for its alleged nuclear warheads.
Zolqadr did not say how Iran would attack Dimona, but the head of the Revolutionary Guards' political bureau, Yadollah Javani, said Iran would use its Shahab-3 missile.
"All the territory under the control of the Zionist regime, including its nuclear facilities, are within the range of Iran's advanced missiles," Javani said in a separate statement.
Iran announced last week it had successfully test-fired a new version of the Shahab-3, which has a range of about 1,300 kilometres. Israel is 965 kilometres west of Iran.
U.S. officials say the missile, whose name means shooting star in Farsi, is based on the North Korean No Dong rocket. Iran says Shahab-3 is entirely Iranian-made.
With help from the United States, Israel has developed the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system. It is said to be capable of intercepting and destroying missiles at high altitudes.
----
Israel's security strategy
August 19, 2004
Washington Times
By Louis Rene Beres
http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20040818-091705-3446r.htm
The core of Israel's active defense plan is the Arrow anti-ballistic missile program. On July 29, an Arrow ABM successfully intercepted and destroyed its target at a test range in California. This was the 12th Arrow intercept test and the seventh test of the complete Arrow system. According to Israel's Ministry of Defense, "The target trajectory demonstrated an operational scenario and all the Arrow system components performed successfully in their full operational configuration."
These test results are significant. They indicate not only continuing close cooperation between Washington and Tel Aviv, but also the intrinsic technical promise of Israel's ballistic-missile defense. But now very serious decisions need to be made. Still, faced with a steadily nuclearizing Iran, Israel must consider whether it can rely upon a suitable combination of deterrence and active defenses or whether it must also prepare for pre-emption.
On its face, it would now appear that Israel's pre-emption option is substantially less urgent. If the Arrow is truly efficient in its reliability of intercept, even an irrational Iranian adversary armed with nuclear and/or biological weapons could be dealt with effectively. If Israel's nuclear deterrent were immobilized by an enemy state willing to risk a massive "countervalue" Israeli reprisal, that state's ensuing firststrike could still be blocked by Arrow. So, why pre-empt?
The answer lies in untenable assumptions. Ballistic-missile defense cannot be appraised simply as "reliable" or "unreliable." Operational reliability of intercept is a continuous variable, and any ballistic-missile defense system - however successful in its tests - will always have "leakage." Whether or not such leakage would fall within acceptable levels would depend primarily upon the kinds of warheads fitted upon the enemy's incoming missiles. Moreover, the Arrow's recent success in intercepting a Scud might not be as easily replicated with faster and more advanced Iranian targets. In evaluating its pre-emption option vis-a-vis Iran, Israeli planners will need to consider the expected "leakage rate" of the Arrow.
A very small number of enemy missiles penetrating Arrow defenses could be acceptable if their warheads contained only conventional high explosives or even chemical high explosives. But if the incoming warheads were nuclear and/or biological, even an extremely low rate of leakage would be unacceptable. A fully zero leakage rate would be necessary to protect Israel adequately against nuclear and/or biological warheads, and such a zero leakagerate is unattainable. This means that Israel cannot depend entirely upon its antiballistic missiles to defend against any future WMD attack from Iran, and that even a very promising Arrow system would not obviate Israel's pre-emption option.
A rational adversary will need to calculate that Israel's secondstrike forces are substantially invulnerable to first-strike aggressions. And this adversary will now require many more missiles for an assuredly destructive firststrike against Israel than would be the case without Arrow. Israel's Arrow will at least compel a rational adversary to delay any intended first-strike attack until this adversary can deploy a fully robust nuclear and/or biological offensive missile force.
Israel still faces a number of state enemies whose undisguised preparations for the Jewish state are authentically genocidal. Nowhere is it written that Israel must sit back passively and simply respond after a nuclear and/or biological attack has been inflicted upon its civilian populations. Israel has the same right accorded to all states in world politics to act pre-emptively when facing certain forms of existential assault. Known formally as "anticipatory self defense," this general right is strongly affirmed in the national security strategy of the United States, issued by President Bush on Sept. 20, 2002.
Israel must continue to develop, test and implement an interception capability to match the growing threat dictated by enemy ballistic-missile capabilities. Simultaneously, it must continue to prepare for possible preemptions and to enhance the credibility of its nuclear deterrent. Regarding such enhanced credibility, Israel must fully operationalize a robust secondstrike force, sufficiently hardened and dispersed, and optimized to inflict a decisive retaliatory salvo against high-value targets.
Arrow is necessary for Israeli security, but it is not sufficient. To achieve a maximum level of security, Israel also will have to take appropriate preparations for pre-emption and deterrence. Together with the United States, Israel exists in the crosshairs of a far-reaching Arab/Islamist jihad that is profoundly theological and that will not conform predictably to relevant rules of international law.
Under no circumstances can Israel and the United States now afford to allow this seventh-century view of the world to be combined with 21st-century weapons of mass destruction. It must be a matter of highest priority for the president of the United States to recognize and reaffirm this country's fully overlapping security interest with the state of Israel.
Contrary to the advice given in a recent report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations, this presidential imperative should extend to any lawful and presumptively effective acts of anticipatory self-defense that Israel would need to undertake for its national survival.
Louis Rene Beres is professor of International Law at Purdue University and chairman of Project Daniel.
-------- korea
Downer tells North Korea it might not hold the winning hand
August 19, 2004
By Hamish McDonald
Sydney Morning Herald
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/08/18/1092765022006.html?from=top5&oneclick=true
In a cavernous North Korean Government palace whose name "Mansudae" means "a life of 10,000 years" Australian Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, yesterday entered a diplomatic time warp where an obsolete regime believes that time is on its side.
After four hours of talks with North Korea's Foreign Minister, Paek Nam-sun, and its titular head of state, Kim Yong-nam, Mr Downer could fall back only on the time-honoured jargon that discussions about disarming the Pyongyang regime of its nuclear weapons had been "productive".
He is still unclear whether a North Korean delegation will turn up at the fourth round of six-nation talks to be held in Beijing in late September or October.
"That remains to be seen. I hope so," he said, adding: "They haven't said they won't."
With their capital's usual austerity tempered by thick summer greenery and humidity, North Korean leaders have been perceived as relaxing in the belief they have almost seen out the Bush Administration in Washington without serious regime-threatening pressure. Advertisement Advertisement
Somewhere out in the granite mountains that can be seen from the viewing platform atop the 170-metre-high Juche Tower - commemorating the "self-reliance" philosophy of the regime's late founder' Kim Il-sung - are stored a handful of plutonium bombs and possibly centrifuges that can enrich uranium to weapons grade.
Somewhere else, in the closely guarded state compounds of Pyongyang itself, is Kim's reclusive son, Kim Jong-il, who is the country's supreme leader, heading its powerful 1.1 million-strong military and its communist organisation, the Workers Party of Korea.
He is masterminding an international poker game, using the nuclear cards to win the economic support and diplomatic recognition needed to keep the dynastic Stalinist regime in business, far beyond its Cold War use-by date.
The other five countries in the six-nation negotiations - China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the US - are trying to persuade Mr Kim's Government that it can dismantle the nuclear weapons programs and that aid money, security guarantees, diplomatic recognition, and lifting of US and Japanese sanctions will follow.
At the last round of Beijing talks in June, the US bent considerably, and allowed that its east Asian allies could begin shipping fuel oil and other aid to the North once it had frozen its nuclear activities, as long as dismantling started within three months.
Mr Downer flew into Pyongyang from Beijing on Tuesday evening, and left yesterday afternoon for Hong Kong. The modest goal for his 20 hours in Pyongyang was to try to inject some vitality into six-nation talks that seemed to be stalling.
In particular, he hoped to persuade the North Koreans the US presidential elections in November could result in a tougher line from Washington, whoever won.
While not predicting a loss for Mr Bush, he is understood to have pointed out that Democratic contender John Kerry's foreign policy team is stacked with former officials who helped negotiate the 1994 agreement with North Korea that foundered in 2002 with the discovery of Pyongyang's secret uranium enrichment effort.
How strongly this message gets back to Kim Jong-il is something Mr Downer will never know for sure.
However, he did manage to get the ministers and high officials he met to discuss the detail of the US proposals and outline their concerns about them. He will be conveying these concerns to Washington and other capitals. "This is going to be a long, hard process," Mr Downer said.
-------- missile defense
Rumsfeld Waits for 'Go' on Missile Defense
Final Assessment To Precede Alert Status
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13216-2004Aug18.html
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Aug. 18 -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday that he is still working out the rules dictating when and under whose authority to fire a new system to protect the United States from missile attack, and is awaiting a final assessment about the system's readiness to begin operations.
The remarks by Rumsfeld and other senior defense officials at a conference on missile defense indicated that the decision to put the novel and politically controversial system on alert is still weeks away.
The timing is being watched closely by proponents and critics of missile defense against the backdrop of the presidential campaign in which the speed and cost of deployment have become issues. The first interceptor missile was loaded into a silo in Alaska last month, and five more are due for installation by mid-October.
President Bush declared last week that the system will become operational later this year, reaffirming a goal he set two years ago. On Tuesday, he chided those who want to shrink and slow the program -- a thinly veiled attack on Democratic nominee John F. Kerry, who has called for reduced spending on missile defense.
But the program has been plagued by a series of testing delays -- most recently, the postponement this week of a critical flight test after the discovery of a faulty computer in the interceptor's booster.
Maj. Gen. John Holly, who is overseeing development, said here Wednesday that postponement of the test would not necessarily force a delay in start-up of the system.
"We've never set a prerequisite event prior to going on alert," the general told reporters. "We're continuing to accumulate information and data on a daily basis, and as we get closer to a place where we think it will be appropriate to brief the leadership, we will do that."
In a separate interview, Holly said he plans to submit a final readiness assessment by mid-September.
Administration officials have said the initial system will serve a dual purpose: It will provide a rudimentary defense against a potential North Korean missile attack, and it will enable the Pentagon to conduct more rigorous and diverse testing.
How defense officials plan to balance the demands of keeping the system on alert while also conducting tests has remained in question. Rumsfeld said Wednesday that if he had to choose between maintaining the alert status or running tests, he would opt for testing -- provided there was no missile crisis at the time.
"My attitude would be, take it off [alert], do the developmental activity, keep learning from this," Rumsfeld said at a news conference.
Earlier, addressing the gathering here of hundreds of military, government and contracting officials, Rumsfeld hailed the system's construction as "the triumph of hope and vision over pessimism and skepticism."
-------- terrorism
Nuke bomb plot foiled
Ben English - London
19 aug 04
UK Herald Sun
http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,10488709%255E663,00.html
A GANG of British terror suspects has been charged with plotting to launch a "dirty bomb" or mini nuclear blast on London.
The attacks, on targets such as Heathrow and the Parliament, were planned to coincide with similar strikes on major buildings in the US.
The leader of the group is believed to be Osama bin Laden's UK general, Dhiren Barot.
Born into a respected family of Kenyan expatriates, Barot, 32, was raised a Hindu before being converted to radical Islamism in his 20s and becoming one of al-Qaida's European linchpins.
Barot and seven other members of the suspected al-Qaida sleeper cell were in custody last night after they were charged with conspiracy to murder and other terror-related crimes.
The men, aged 20 to 32, were arrested in a series of raids on August 3.
Police discovered detailed reconnaissance plans of landmark American buildings including the New York Stock Exchange, the Prudential Building in New Jersey, the International Monetary Fund in Washington and Citigroup's New York headquarters.
But investigators made a more chilling find.
Manuals on the use of radioactive materiel and explosives that have convinced intelligence chiefs the gang was planning to launch a dirty bomb were also found.
A dirty bomb is made with radioactive material wrapped around a core of high explosive.
Detonated in a densely populated city, it can kill thousands from radiation sickness and leave the area uninhabitable.
The five charges included conspiracy to murder, possession of documents likely to be useful for an act of terrorism and conspiracy to commit public nuisance.
That last charge specified the gang was planning to use radioactive materials, toxic gases, chemicals and/or explosives to cause disruption, fear or injury.
The charges were the first official confirmation that the suspects were linked to a high profile security scare in the US earlier this month.
US Attorney-General John Ashcroft said US agents had worked closely with Britain.
Of more than 600 terror suspects arrested since the September 11 attacks, fewer than 100 have been charged and just 15 terrorism convictions have been upheld.
Charged with conspiracy to murder were Dhiren Barot, 32, Omar Abdur Rehman, 20, Zia Ul Haq, 25, Abdul Aziz Jalil, 31, Nadeem Tarmohammed, 26, Moammed Naveed Bhatti, 24, Quaisar Shaffi, 25, and Junade Feroze, 28.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- colorado
FBI Agent: Ex - Nuke Plant Unsafe for Refuge
August 19, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rocky-Flats-Nuclear.html
DENVER (AP) -- An FBI agent who said he was ordered not to discuss his role in a 15-year investigation of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant warned Wednesday against creating a wildlife refuge at the site, saying it would be too dangerous.
Jon Lipsky, who led a 1989 raid on the plant after being tipped off about secret illegal burning of radioactive waste, said he was ordered by superiors to abandon his plans to talk about the investigation at a news conference.
The news conference was called to discuss a report written by former Rocky Flats employee Jacque Brever accusing the Department of Energy of lying about the extent of contamination at Rocky Flats, about 10 miles west of downtown Denver.
The department plans to convert the site into a wildlife refuge in two years after a $7 billion cleanup is complete.
Brever's report said so much radioactive waste was disposed of clandestinely at Rocky Flats that some contaminated areas are not part of the cleanup.
``I can tell you that Jacque's report is accurate,'' said Lipsky, saying he was speaking as a private citizen.
FBI spokesman Joe Parris confirmed Lipsky had been told not to talk about the investigation because he had not followed standard procedure and asked for permission. Parris said Lipsky could have faced sanctions had he discussed it.
Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons until production was shut down after the 1989 raid. A federal grand jury investigated allegations of safety violations by the contractor and the Department of Energy.
The grand jury wanted to indict eight, including two corporations, but the Justice Department declined. The grand jury's report remains sealed.
One of the plant's operators at the time, Rockwell International Corp., pleaded guilty to 10 hazardous waste and clean water violations in 1992 and paid an $18.5 million fine.
Brever prepared her report for Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who had asked for a detailed account of her concerns about Rocky Flats.
Speaking with difficulty because of thyroid cancer she believes she contracted while working at Rocky Flats, Brever said employees dumped contaminated waste in a duck pond that is not listed among the areas being cleaned.
Energy Department spokeswoman Karen Lutz said officials have reviewed Brever's report and some of the areas Brever cited have been cleaned up or will be. Lutz said a cleanup of the duck pond will begin in the next three weeks.
``The Department of Energy is very confident that the cleanup of Rocky Flats is thorough, safe and protective,'' Lutz said.
Neils Schonbeck, a professor of biochemistry at Metro State College in Denver who has studied Rocky Flats since 1988, said the government's acceptable limit of 50 picocuries in topsoil at Rocky Flats is far too high. Schonbeck said visitors could stir up dust and put dangerous levels of plutonium in the air.
``Even rain can mobilize plutonium'' he said.
On the Net:
Fish and Wildlife Service refuge plan: http://rockyflats.fws.gov/
Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center fact sheet: http://www.rmpjc.org/2002/FlatsCleanup-Facts.html
--------
Sealed Documents on Ex-Nuke Plant Sought
By ROBERT WELLER
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 19, 2004; 7:58 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16837-2004Aug19.html
DENVER - State and federal agencies have asked to see sealed files of a grand jury that investigated alleged environmental crimes at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant after an advocacy group said cleanup plans were dangerously incomplete.
The Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment requested the files from U.S. Attorney John Suthers, spokesmen for the agencies said Thursday.
U.S. attorney's spokesman Jeff Dorschner said Suthers has received at least one of the requests, but he did not know when Suthers would respond.
The request came a day after an FBI agent who led a 1989 raid at Rocky Flats warned against plans to turn the site, about 10 miles west of downtown Denver, into a wildlife refuge, saying it would be too dangerous.
Agent Jon Lipsky said he had been ordered by superiors not to comment on his investigation, but he said concerns raised by the advocacy group, the Ambushed Grand Jury Citizens' Investigation, were valid.
"I am happy that we are the catalyst and hope they will not certify the site as clean until they have gone back and looked at the areas we have pointed out to them," said Caron Balkany, co-author of a book compiled by the group, "The Ambushed Grand Jury."
Jacque Brever, a member of the group and a former employee of Rocky Flats, released a report this week accusing federal officials of lying about the extent of contamination at the site.
Brever's report said so much radioactive waste was disposed of clandestinely at Rocky Flats that some contaminated areas are not part of the cleanup.
Rocky Flats made plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons until production was shut down after the 1989 raid. A federal grand jury investigated allegations of safety violations by the contractor and the Department of Energy.
The grand jury wanted to indict eight, including two corporations, but the Justice Department declined. The grand jury's report and investigative files remain sealed.
One of the plant's operators at the time, Rockwell International Corp., pleaded guilty to 10 hazardous waste and clean water violations in 1992 and paid an $18.5 million fine.
The Department of Energy plans to convert the site into a wildlife refuge after a $7 billion cleanup is complete.
-------- new mexico
Feds take N.M. out of facility decision
BEN NEARY
The New Mexican
August 19, 2004
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/3224.html
Ruling that state regulators missed a critical filing deadline, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday it won't allow New Mexico government agencies to press concerns about waste disposal and other issues during the licensing process for a proposed uranium-enrichment plant near Hobbs.
A company called National Enrichment Facility -- a consortium of European energy companies with some minor American partners -- proposes to build the $1.8 billion enrichment plant. Until recently, the company called itself Louisiana Energy Services.
Without commenting on the merits of the state's points, the NRC denied requests from both the Environment Department and the attorney general's office to press several specific concerns about the plant. The NRC said the state failed to submit its contentions correctly earlier this year.
New Mexico Environment Secretary Ron Curry blasted the NRC decision Wednesday. "I think it shows a very neglectful attitude toward the state of New Mexico and toward the elected officials in New Mexico," Curry said.
Curry said the plant requires several state environmental permits apart from the federal license.
The NRC has agreed to allow Curry's department and the attorney general's office to pursue only a few other contentions regarding the plant: issues of radiation monitoring and the concern that storing waste in steel cylinders at the site poses a risk. The NRC has set a fast-track schedule for considering the permit application.
Among other concerns, the NRC denied the state the right to raise questions about waste disposal and whether the company's foreign ownership poses a risk that it would walk away from the plant if it proves economically nonviable.
Glenn Smith, a lawyer with the AG's office, said Wednesday that his office is still reviewing the commission's order and considering its options. "We think it's very unfortunate that, in terms of something as significant as an uranium-enrichment facility that's going to be generating deadly radioactive waste as a byproduct that the voices for the state wouldn't be allowed to participate more fully in the matters that are at issue," Smith said.
Two citizen groups, Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Public Citizen, filed their contentions on time. Under the NRC's order, they will take the lead on critical questions of waste disposal at the plant during the permitting process.
"I'd say that the commissioners are clearly wanting to keep the state as far out of the process as they possibly can," NIRS executive director Michael Mariotte said Wednesday of the commission order.
Mariotte said his group is accepting public donations to support its work on the uranium-plant permit. He said the private groups have nowhere near the financial resources of the state in pressing contentions in the federal permitting process.
NIRS was instrumental in blocking earlier plans to build the plant first in Louisiana and then in Tennessee.
Currently no facility in the United States processes radioactive waste that the enrichment plant would generate in its production of fuel for nuclear reactors.
Marshall Cohen, vice president of the National Enrichment Facility, said Wednesday the company remains confident that private industry will build a waste-treatment facility in time to handle waste from the New Mexico plant.
Cohen said the company remains committed to its pledge to Gov. Bill Richardson that it won't leave waste in New Mexico for long-term storage. Regardless of the NRC decision, he said, it's possible the company and the state can draft a binding agreement on that point that could be presented to the NRC for inclusion as a condition in the final federal permit.
Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., had floated legislation last year that would have required the U.S. Department of Energy to take waste from the private plant. That provision died with the senator's energy bill.
The state's congressional delegation and Richardson voiced support for the enrichment-plant project last year. However, Richardson said last winter that he would withdraw his support for the plant unless Congress specified that waste from the plant would be removed from New Mexico.
To date, Congress has not specified that waste from the plant would be removed from the state.
Richardson has refused repeated requests for an interview in recent weeks to explain whether he will withdraw his support in light of the congressional inaction. National Enrichment Facility early this year gave $10,000 to Richardson's political action committee, Moving America Forward.
National Enrichment Facility recently announced it has retained Washington Group International, the same company that manages the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad, to build the uranium plant.
Washington Group International made a $17,000 donation to Richardson's 2002 election campaign, The Associated Press reported that year.
Billy Sparks, a Richardson spokesman, said Wednesday that Richardson "strongly feels that the state's concerns particularly relating to storage and long-term disposal need to be addressed thoroughly, prior to any licensing decisions.
"The governor will continue to push for assurances throughout the regulation process," Sparks said. He said Richardson's ultimate support of the plant will depend on the outcome of the waste-disposal issue.
"The major issue is that the governor has said that he will not support any long-term storage of radioactive waste in the state of New Mexico," Sparks said. "He has consistently stated that that's his primary concern."
Gay Dillingham, the chairwoman of the New Mexico Environmental Improvement Board, on Wednesday called the NRC ruling a slap in the state's face. The EIB sets environmental regulations in New Mexico.
If the company was serious about getting waste out of New Mexico, Dillingham said, it would include a promise to do so in its federal license application. "Instead, the application asks for storage on-site for the life of the project," she said.
Dillingham said she would support the state's political leaders withdrawing their support of the uranium-plant project.
"To protect citizens, the state needs transparency and a seat at the table to perform due diligence, period," Dillingham said.
----
Nuclear Data Found Missing From New Mexico
August 19, 2004
ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Nuclear-Security.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- An inventory has found another case of missing data involving nuclear weapons, this time at the Energy Department's regional office in Albuquerque, N.M., the department disclosed Thursday.
The Energy Department said that an ``accounting discrepancy'' involving three copies of a ``controlled removable electronic media'' -- or CREM -- was found at the regional office as part of the nationwide inventory of such devices.
The inventory was ordered a month ago after two CREM data devices were reported missing at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, also in New Mexico. The Albuquerque facility, part of the DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration, coordinates activities with the Los Alamos weapons lab.
Bryan Wilkes, an NNSA spokesman, said that the inventory discovered three copies of a single CREM unaccounted for. He declined to elaborate further except to say the device contained information involving nuclear weapons.
NNSA Administrator Linton Brooks said that all classified work involving the computer data storage devices has been halted at the Albuquerque office, pending completion of the investigation.
``I am disappointed that we have found another case of lax procedures in protecting classified information,'' said Brooks in a statement.
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham on July 23 ordered that work involving CREM -- disks or other removable computer storage devices -- be halted at all the government's nuclear weapons facilities until inventories of the devices are conducted and new security procedures put in place.
The missing device at the Albuquerque office was discovered as part of that inventory, said Wilkes.
Meanwhile, investigators, despite extensive searches, have yet to find the two CREM devices that were reported missing at the Los Alamos laboratory in the New Mexico mountains 100 miles north of Albuquerque. The investigation into that incident was continuing.
No one was suggesting that the classified information -- either at Los Alamos or in the DOE regional office -- had been stolen or that the disappearances involved espionage. However, DOE officials have been concerned about lax procedures and security involving the handing of such devices.
``I expect NNSA employees, both federal and contractor, to adhere to the highest standards of performance'' when using such data in removable computer devices, said Brooks.
Aside from this latest case, the nationwide CREM inventory review so far has produced no incidents or discrepancies, said Wilkes.
Many of the sites including the Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina, the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and the Pantex facility in Texas have resumed normal operations, according to the department.
Concerns over security and safety at the nuclear weapons lab came to a head in July, after two computer disks containing classified information were reported missing at the Los Alamos lab. Almost all work at the lab was shut down and 23 employees were suspended as a result of the investigation into the security lapses.
National Nuclear Security Administration www.nnsa.doe.gov
Los Alamos National Laboratory http://www.lanl.gov
----
Audit: Plutonium Program Behind Schedule
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 19, 2004; 5:34 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16501-2004Aug19.html
WASHINGTON - A decade-old program to secure plutonium and other fissionable material at Los Alamos National Laboratory is years behind schedule, increasing the likelihood of accidents and workers' exposure to radiation, according to an Energy Department audit.
The program to "stabilize" fissionable material, including plutonium, at the government's weapons research lab in New Mexico was supposed to have been finished two years ago. But it now is targeted for completion in 2010, with its expected cost ballooning to at least $183 million, or 75 percent more than the original price tag.
The delays and failures to meet milestones outlined for the program have increased "the possibility that containers (of vulnerable radioactive materials) could leak and workers could be exposed to radiation resulting in serious health consequences," said the report by Gregory Friedman, the department's inspector general.
The report noted an incident at Los Alamos last August in which two workers were exposed to plutonium 238 while examining a degraded package of contaminated rags. The department fined the lab $770,000, but it won't have to pay because by law the lab manager, the University of California, is immune from such penalties as a department contractor.
While some progress has been made in recent years in repackaging and disposing of the radioactive material at Los Alamos, "stabilization has not been accelerated to the level anticipated," Friedman wrote. He cited a failure to fully fund the program and management shortcomings.
Unless the effort is given a higher priority "radioactive materials at the laboratory may continue to deteriorate and negatively impact the safety and health of workers," Friedman wrote Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in a letter dated Aug. 16 and made public Thursday.
Many of the inspector general's concerns mirror issues raised by the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, an independent advisory panel, in a letter to Abraham last February.
The board urged the department to speed up its processing and repackaging of thousands of items containing fissionable or radioactive materials- many of them left over from Cold War-era nuclear research.
The accident last August "should have reinforced the urgency" of the task at hand, yet neither the department nor Los Alamos officials have demonstrated "an appropriate sense of urgency" about addressing the total inventory of radioactive and fissionable materials at the site, said the advisory group.
Its report said that of 5,718 items in need of attention, 1,403 have been dealt with as of Sept. 31, 2003. They include radiation-contaminated rags, non-weapons grade plutonium oxides, steel drums of uranium-tainted materials, and items simply labeled "excess material" from weapons-related work, but which are viewed as low risk.
And even more items have yet to be inventoried, according to the inspector general's findings and the advisory board. At least 155 additional containers not considered in the stabilization plans have since been found, auditors said.
Responding to the inspector general's report, Michael Kane, an associate administrator at the National Nuclear Security Administration, said he "generally agrees" with the inspector general's findings. NNSA is responsible for the Energy Department's nuclear programs,
"While the auditors are correct the laboratory is behind schedule in some areas, they have exceeded scheduled expectations in other areas," Kane wrote in a letter formally replying to the report.
Kane also said that while the program has been underfunded in the past by as much as 40 percent in the late 1990s - funding has increased each year since 2001 and full funding is anticipated beginning in 2006.
Kevin Roark, a spokesman at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, referred questions about the inspector general's report to the NNSA. "The report speaks for itself," he said.
The Energy Department in 1995 ordered nuclear facilities including Los Alamos to better secure their fissionable and radiaoctive materials from Cold War-era activities. It directed the job be completed by 2002, a deadline that was later extended to 2005 and more recently to 2010.
On the Net:
Energy Department Inspector General:http://www.ig.doe.gov
Los Alamos National Laboratory:http://www.lanl.gov
-------- vermont
Giuliani: Don't whitewash danger
Aug 19, 2004
Rutland Herald
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040819/NEWS/408190318/1018/OPINION&template=printart
Editor's note: Rudolph Giuliani, former mayor of New York City, is visiting Brattleboro Thursday on behalf of Entergy Corp., the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant. Raymond Shadis and Peter Alexander of the New England Coalition have written the following open letter to Giuliani:
Dear Mr. Giuliani,
The people of the Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts counties and towns in the vicinity of Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee power station live in the increasingly longer and ever darker shadow of the region's only viable terrorist target. No other industrial operation in the region offers a comparable threat to our precious environment and to the well-being of this and future generations. Our people are in need of accurate information about nuclear accident probabilities and consequences. They, and their emergency response officials, need more effective and realistic radiological emergency planning, and additional emergency response resources.
Instead, Entergy Corp., trading on your high public profile in the hours and days following the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11, invites our civil servants and elected officials to join you in a public relations gimmick, an invitation-only dinner where you can offer up soothing reassurances; post-dessert. What a tragic comedy! Our people need real information so as to protect themselves and their beloved environment and Entergy's answer is to let them eat cake. Yellowcake, as it were.
Hopefully, given your witness that two planes brought down the enormous World Trade Center towers, your script will not include assurances that Vermont Yankee structures are terrorist-proof. Surely, Entergy has told you that the reactor's spent fuel pool, suspended 80 feet above the ground, now holds 2,671 waste nuclear fuel assemblies totaling more than 930 tons. Hopefully, you have by now read the relevant U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission reports: NUREG/CR-5042 and NUREG-1738, which make it clear that the Vermont Yankee Mark I secondary containment does not appear to have significant structures to prevent aircraft penetration, and which model spent fuel pool accident long-term fatalities for a plant identical to Vermont Yankee of more than 25,000 in a 500-mile radius even with successful evacuation.
Any information, useful to our region's planners and first-responders that you may have acquired in your brief tenure as Entergy's emergency response "expert" could better be transmitted in printed or recorded form.
So all kidding aside, you are here to shore up Entergy's credibility collapse by the strength of your celebrity. In the two years since Entergy purchased Vermont Yankee, area residents have been treated to high-handed, patronizing, conflicting statements, and deceit sufficient to send public trust plummeting. Area officialdom may relish their Entergy dinner, but their constituents have lost their appetite for sham.
Mr. Giuliani, you would be well advised to serve small portions, but otherwise enjoy your visit to our beautiful region.
----
NRC nixes hearing delay; state pushes for fed help
Aug 19, 2004
Rutland Herald
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artikkel?SearchID=73181246598045&Avis=RH&Dato=20040819&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=408190377&Ref=AR
The Douglas administration said it will push ahead on seeking a formal federal hearing on Vermont Yankee's controversial power increase despite a setback Wednesday.
Gov. James Douglas and the state's entire congressional delegation had asked federal regulators for more time. If additional pertinent information about the condition of the nuclear reactor turned up during the current special engineering inspection, they said, they wanted it included in the hearing.
David O'Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public Service, said the state had anticipated the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruling, and had been preparing to file for the hearing on Aug. 30, the deadline for such a request.
The NRC, in a three-page order released Wednesday, said it wouldn't extend the deadline beyond Aug. 30, and that if a current special inspection turns up information, there are other ways to include the information.
The review of a proposed power increase must be restricted to information provided by Entergy Nuclear, the NRC stated.
The NRC has never held a hearing on so-called power uprates, which have ranged from minor adjustments in power generation to major retooling such as that proposed at Vermont Yankee.
Vermont Yankee is the oldest, and smallest, nuclear plant to request such a power increase.
Entergy Nuclear wants to produce another 100 megawatts of power from the 32-year-old reactor and has already started the retrofitting needed, gambling that it will get federal approval.
Sen. James Jeffords, I-Vt., the ranking member on the Senate committee that oversees the NRC, said in a statement that he is not happy with the ruling.
"I am disappointed that the NRC did not grant an extension of the hearing deadline," Jeffords said. "However, the NRC has said that if the inspection turns up new information, constituents may file a late request for a hearing or amend an existing hearing request. I expect them to stick to that commitment and give any new or revised hearing requests serious consideration."
O'Brien said his department remains unconvinced that it has enough information about a key alteration in a backup safety system and would pursue the hearing.
The focus of the state's concern currently is a plan to change the way Entergy Nuclear calculates the pressure in the reactor's containment in the event of an accident the so-called "containment over-pressure."
Some nuclear critics said the calculation is a departure from "we don't have enough information to decide that," he said.
"We need more information," O'Brien said. "We don't have a comfort level yet."
The state first raised its concerns about the containment pressure calculations in December, and received an answer only a month ago. That information still didn't answer its questions, O'Brien said.
NRC spokeswoman Diane Screnci said that if new information does become known after the inspection, the state has the option of using that process later. But Screnci conceded that she doesn't know if such a hearing has ever been granted.
The special engineering team is at the Vernon reactor for its second week. It will work in the NRC's main office next week, and return to Vermont Yankee for the fourth week of its inspection.
O'Brien said he met with members of the inspection team Wednesday in Vernon and said he was impressed with team members' knowledge and nuclear industry experience.
He said one team member had 37 years of experience and another had 20 years, working on a variety of reactors. He said William Sherman, the department's nuclear engineer, was working closely with the special engineering team.
O'Brien said it was unknown which exact systems the team was focusing on, in part to keep Entergy Nuclear engineers on their toes.
"But they certainly are paying attention to containment over-pressure," he said.
The special engineering inspection was a condition placed on state approval of the power increase by the Public Service Board.
Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com.
Raymond Shadis Staff Technical Advisor New England Coalition Post Office Box 98 Edgecomb, Maine 04556 207-882-7801
----
Union OKs Contract at Vt. Nuclear Plant
Thu Aug 19, 2004
(AP)
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040820/ap_on_bi_ge/vt_yankee_union_4
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. - Unionized workers at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant on Thursday accepted a three-year contract with reactor owner Entergy Nuclear, the company said.
Officials said the agreement was approved by members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local representing 148 of the plant's 500 workers. The vote total was not released.
Union members had threatened to strike at midnight Thursday. Terms of the new deal were effective Friday, Entergy public affairs director Brian Cosgrove said.
Union officials did not return repeated telephone messages.
Cosgrove said details of the agreement would not be disclosed but "the new contract increases the affected workers' wages and maintains benefits."
Health care and wages were sticking points in negotiations. Union members had said Entergy planned to increase workers' health care costs by 500 percent over the next three years, and that the salary increase proposed by the company would not keep pace with inflation.
The union went on strike twice in the last three decades, in 1974 and 1979, Cosgrove said.
-------- MILITARY
-------- business
Halliburton Oversight Criticized
By Robert O'Harrow Jr. and Vanessa Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page E01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13456-2004Aug18.html
An Army official responsible for administering the giant logistical contract with Halliburton Co. for food, housing and other services in Iraq and Kuwait said yesterday that his command has not had enough trained people to properly oversee the arrangement.
Col. Tim Considine, deputy commander for the Army Field Support Command, made his remarks in response to questions about a confusing series of events on Monday and Tuesday, in which the Army waffled on whether to withhold some payments to subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Inc. because of persistent questioning from Pentagon auditors about billing.
On Monday, the day after a regulatory deadline for imposing such sanctions, Halliburton reported that its officials had been told they would get more time to justify billing claims. On Tuesday morning, the company released a statement saying the Army said it would withhold 15 percent of payments on future invoices, pending negotiations over bills. Later Tuesday, the Army announced it would put off any decision about withholding until next week.
Considine said officials decided to give Halliburton more time to learn more about the impact of sanctions on the ability of the company and its subcontractors to provide troop support. Considine said his operation has been stretched so thin by managing the contract that it did not have time to address such things until after Sunday's deadline.
Considine said the Army Field Support Command was unprepared at the outbreak of war in 2003 to manage what has become the largest contract of its kind. The Army has obligated $5.7 billion on the contract so far, and it has issued checks for $4.3 billion. "We ramped up for this fight so quickly, we weren't properly resourced early on. . . . It has stressed our resources," he said. "We have really struggled."
Democrats yesterday seized on the extension, the third this year, as evidence that the Army and the Bush administration have given special treatment to Halliburton, where Dick Cheney was chief executive before he was elected vice president.
The company faces investigations and audits examining whether KBR and its subcontractors overcharged the government for fuel, food and other services in Iraq under the contract for logistics support, known as LogCAP.
Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), the Democratic candidate for vice president, used a speech about an employment and training program in Louisiana to suggest the possibility of undue outside influence on the decision.
"Did somebody make a phone call? I don't know what happened but something happened," he said. "This is what I know: Halliburton's getting their money but the jobs centers aren't getting theirs. How about somebody making a phone call for the job centers and the career centers?"
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) said: "The Bush administration's policy with Halliburton seems to be 'Don't worry about overcharging, don't worry about bilking the U.S. taxpayers, and certainly don't worry about getting paid.' "
Considine said he consulted frequently on Tuesday with his boss, Brig. Gen. Jerome Johnson, before the decision was made to put off the deadline. But Considine said he has not heard of any outsider calling or trying to influence his decision. "There's been no political pressure whatsoever," Considine said.
Considine blamed Halliburton for some of the confusion this week, saying company officials misinterpreted statements by him and others at the Army Field Support Command. Over the weekend, Considine said, he sent a KBR official an e-mail suggesting the Army would put off the deadline. But nobody in the Army told Halliburton anything definitive before the company put out a news release saying the deadline had been extended, he said.
On Tuesday, he said, Army officials said in a meeting with Halliburton officials that they would move ahead with the withholding but wanted more information about the impact. Halliburton then released a statement saying sanctions were taking effect. Even though an Army spokeswoman affirmed the gist of the Halliburton release, the Army appeared to reverse itself a few hours later.
"KBR jumped the gun and heard what they wanted to hear," in part because "they have some concerns about the [company's] stock price," Considine said.
A Halliburton spokeswoman disputed Considine's account, but decline to elaborate. "We stand by the accuracy of everything we've said," Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said in a statement. "We had a duty and responsibility to update the market since the suspension of the withhold expired Sunday. We passed on truthfully and accurately the information we received."
Halliburton is supposed to submit paperwork today that describes the impact if the Army withholds 15 percent of payments. The company said on Tuesday that Halliburton would not be unduly harmed financially because it would in turn withhold some payments to its subcontractors.
-------- iran
Iran Disquieted by Nearby U.S. Presence
August 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iran-US.html
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran's defense minister expressed his government's disquiet about the U.S. troop presence in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, and hinted that some Iranian generals believe they should strike first if they sense an imminent U.S. threat.
In an interview with pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera, Ali Shamkhani was asked how Iran would respond if America were to attack its nuclear facilities.
``We will not sit to wait for what others will do to us,'' he said. ``There are differences of opinion among military commanders (in Iran). Some commanders believe preventive operations is not a model created by Americans ... or is not limited to Americans. Any nation, if it feels threatened, can resort to that.''
Shamkhani spoke in Farsi with an Arabic voiceover. Al-Jazeera provided a transcript of Shamkhani's Farsi comments to The Associated Press on Thursday.
President Bush has labeled Iran part of an ``axis of evil'' along with North Korea and prewar Iraq, but U.S. officials have said recently they are sticking to diplomacy, not force, to try to end what they call Iran's drive for nuclear weapons. Iran, which says its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, has become more defensive about a U.S. campaign to get U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran for its nuclear activities.
``The moment the great Satan (America) decides to take military action against us, that moment will be the end of all our nuclear obligations,'' Shamkhani said, referring to Iran's cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Earlier this month, Iran confirmed it had resumed building nuclear centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium to weapons grade, and declared it should have the right to nuclear technology that has both peaceful and weapons uses.
On Tuesday, the deputy chief of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard said Iran would destroy Israel's Dimona nuclear reactor if the Jewish state were to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Israel has not threatened to attack, but it has said it will not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb. In 1981 Israeli fighters destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction outside Baghdad because it feared Iraq would acquire a nuclear weapon.
In his interview with Al-Jazeera, Shamkhani also spoke of Israel. ``It's certain to us that Israel won't carry out any military action without a green light from America,'' he said. ``So, you can't separate the two.''
The nuclear issue is only one of many on which Iran and the United States are at odds. The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the U.S.-backed shah of Iran.
Iran opposed the U.S.-led war in Iraq and now fears the United States is cementing its influence in Iraq. It also fears U.S. influence in Afghanistan, where another U.S.-led campaign ousted the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks.
``I say the presence of Americans is not a sign of strength. Americans are a hostage to their own presence,'' Defense Minister Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera.
The United States fears Iran wants to establish a fundamentalist Shiite regime in its own image in Iraq. U.S. and Iraqi officials have accused Iran of fomenting violence and instability in Iraq, charges Iran denies.
``The Iranian government will never pursue turmoil and unrest in Iraq,'' Shamkhani told Al-Jazeera.
-------- iraq
Iraqi Government Gives Sadr a Final Chance to End Uprising
August 19, 2004
By JOHN F. BURNS and SABRINA TAVERNISE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/international/middleeast/19CND-IRAQ.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 19 - Iraqi government officials said today that Moktada al-Sadr has a final chance to disarm his militia and carry out other steps to end a stand-off at one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines and two weeks of fighting in Najaf with American forces.
Displaying the brinkmanship that has made him one of the United States' most powerful adversaries in Iraq, Mr. Sadr, a rebel cleric, sent last-minute messages of conciliation on Wednesday that appeared to have staved off an imminent assault on his fortress in the country's holiest Shiite shrine.
But today, one of Iraq's ministers of state, Kasim Daoud, warned Mr. Sadr that he would face a military strike within hours unless he followed through and met conditions for ending his uprising.
He said in Najaf that the government wanted to hear from Mr. Sadr personally and that it was determined to impose a military solution unless he abandoned violence, handed in weapons and left the Imam Ali Mosque.
"We will take military action to do what is right and end this abnormal phenomenon and to make it a lesson to all outlaws all around our beloved Iraq," Mr. Daoud said.
Iraq's prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said later at a news conference in Baghdad that Mr. Sadr still has a final chance to disarm his militia. Dr. Allawi's troops have not begun any siege of the shrine and the immediate area, but were doing smaller "clean-up operations" in areas that they apparently already control.
For two weeks, Mr. Sadr has led his militia force, known as the Mahdi Army, in some of the deadliest fighting with American troops since the invasion 16 months ago. But faced with a deadline of hours from Iraq's interim government on Wednesday to back down or face attack by Iraqi troops, he abruptly signaled a change of course, and suggested he would accept demands to vacate the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, disband his militia and transform it into a political party.
Dr. Allawi said today there was still time for that to happen.
"We have left the doors open," said Dr. Allawi. He added: "There is a lot of space for him to join the political process."
Not for the first time in his months of confrontation with American troops, Mr. Sadr's apparent backing down came hedged with uncertainties, among them that he spoke only through aides, and that they were vague on what exactly he had agreed to. One of his spokesmen in Najaf told news agencies that Mr. Sadr was insisting, before any concessions, on a cease-fire that would require American and Iraqi troops to pull back from positions around the shrine, a move that would yield territory won in recent days.
Dr. Allawi said that Iraqi forces would take pains to avoid a showdown at the sensitive site, a place of pilgrimage for millions of Shiites. "We are going to use all the peaceful means in order to preserve the holy shrine until we take the deterrent measures against him," he said.
"We would like for him to declare his intentions," Dr. Allawi said. "What is his position? We only have heard from some people who work with him.
"We haven't heard from him directly. We would like to hear from him a final position before we move to the next phase."
News agencies reported that seven Iraqi police officers had been killed in a mortar attack on their station in Najaf.
Mr. Sadr's offer was met with applause by delegates gathered in Baghdad on Wednesday to select a national assembly.
But among senior officials in Washington and Baghdad, Mr. Sadr's move was met with deep skepticism.
"I don't think we can trust al-Sadr," said Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser. Iraq's defense minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, issued a statement calling Mr. Sadr's initiative "strange," after his earlier intransigence, and demanding that he substantiate his offer by having his militiamen "immediately deliver their weapons" to Iraqi forces around the shrine.
Even as American and Iraqi officials were weighing Mr. Sadr's intentions, a menacing new dimension was added to the Najaf crisis by a report on Al Jazeera television that Iraqi militants calling themselves the Martyrs' Squad had captured an American journalist, Micah Garen, and threatened to kill him within 48 hours if United States forces did not pull out of Najaf.
On Wednesday night, the Arab news channel showed video images of a man identified by Al Jazeera as Mr. Garen, kneeling in front of five masked men with rifles. Mr. Garen, 36, whose family home is in New Haven, is an independent documentary filmmaker who spent much of the last year in Iraq researching a film and articles on the looting of Iraq's archaeological heritage.
He was seized by two armed men on Friday outside a gun shop in Nasiriya, 230 miles south of Baghdad. Nasiriya is one of a network of towns and cities across the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq that have been roiled by the spreading insurrection Mr. Sadr and his militia have stirred since the fighting began in Najaf.
Mr. Sadr's latest about-face on Wednesday came after Defense Minister Shaalan flew to Najaf on an American military helicopter on Wednesday and announced that an attack on the Imam Ali Mosque was imminent. Answering Iraqis who have condemned any American involvement in an assault on the shrine, Mr. Shaalan said the attack would be led by Iraqi troops, with "no U.S. intervention" other than air support and tanks to control roads leading to the shrine.
The ultimatum was reinforced by Mr. Allawi, who issued a statement on Wednesday assigning responsibility for the government's decision to Mr. Sadr's intransigence, after the cleric snubbed a delegation of Iraqi religious and political leaders who had traveled to the shrine with an appeal for an end to the rebellion.
Dr. Allawi, once a stalwart of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and later leader of an exile group in London, has been almost as changeable in his pronouncements on the Najaf fighting as Mr. Sadr. He has issued ultimatums, then withdrawn them and resumed negotiations, only to return to threats to settle the confrontation by force. His latest statement, though, seemed unequivocal.
John F. Burns and Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article and Alex Berenson from Najaf. Iraqi employees of The New York Times, whose names are withheld for their security, also contributed reporting from Najaf.
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Cleric Requests Talks on Pullout
Sadr Signals He May Accept Plea to Leave Shrine, Dissolve Militia
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11178-2004Aug18?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Aug. 18 -- Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr signaled that he would accept a plea from Iraqi political leaders to dissolve his militia and vacate the sacred Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, but he asked for further negotiations with Iraq's interim government to work out details, according to a letter from Sadr's office that was delivered Wednesday to a political conference here.
Sadr's offer did not specify any conditions, but it also did not indicate when he planned the pullout from the shrine and the dissolution of his militia. His correspondence, a response to a communique issued this week by delegates at the political conference, arrived in Baghdad shortly after Iraq's defense minister warned of a "decisive battle" if Sadr's fighters did not surrender within hours.
Although fighting in Najaf did not escalate after the warning, it did not subside either, as U.S. forces continued to battle Sadr's militiamen in neighborhoods around the shrine.
U.S. and Iraqi officials expressed skepticism about whether Sadr would follow through, particularly with the pledge to disband his militia. Sadr has agreed several times in the past to peace deals with Iraqi officials, only to renege on them later.
"We're taking this with a big grain of salt," said a U.S. official familiar with the Sadr confrontation. "He's made a lot of promises before and he's broken all of them."
Sadr's offer came in a letter delivered by Jalil Shamari, a delegate to the political conference and a member of the Dawa party, a prominent Shiite organization that is not affiliated with Sadr. Shamari, who told reporters that he had received the letter from Sadr's representatives in Baghdad earlier in the day, said the offer was "an entrance to negotiation."
"A delegation from the government will go to Najaf or a delegation will come from Najaf to the government to start the negotiations, which we hope will end the crisis," he said.
Iraq's Defense Ministry responded to Sadr's letter by ordering members of his militia, the Mahdi Army, to lay down their weapons and leave the shrine immediately. The ministry said militiamen would be granted amnesty only if they ended their rebellion in Najaf, about 90 miles south of Baghdad, and other cities.
At the political conference, Sadr's offer was greeted warmly by the more than 1,000 delegates, whose efforts to resolve the crisis in Najaf dominated a meeting convened to select an interim national assembly.
On Monday, the conference issued a communique demanding that the cleric join the political process, disarm and dissolve his Mahdi Army, and vacate the shrine in Najaf. An eight-member delegation from the conference went to Najaf on Tuesday to deliver the demands but failed to meet with Sadr as fighting continued around the shrine.
On Wednesday, to rousing applause from delegates, Shamari said: "Today Moqtada Sadr accepted the three items that are in the letter coming from your national conference with the desire to stop bloodshed in Iraq and to build a new Iraq, which needs the effort of everyone."
"We ask of the conference to make peace, because real courage is to choose the path of peace and use it to build our beloved country," Shamari said. "I'd like to ask this conference for a mechanism to follow up this issue."
One of Sadr's spokesmen, Ahmed Shaibani, warned that withdrawal from the shrine would require "some preparation."
Even if Sadr disbands his militia, keeping its adherents disarmed is likely to be a long and complicated process. U.S. officials say many, if not most, members of the Mahdi Army are young men who joined up not out of religious fervor but because the militia offered them a job and a chance to vent their anger at the U.S. occupation. International experts on militias, including U.N. officials, have suggested that financial incentives might be needed to encourage compliance. The news of Sadr's letter broke at the conference hours after Defense Minister Hazim Shalan said that the cleric had only hours to vacate the shrine in Najaf. "They have a chance," Shalan told reporters after meeting local officials in the holy city.
"In the next few hours they have to surrender themselves and their weapons. We are in the process of completing all our military preparations," he said. "We will teach them a lesson they will never forget."
Sadr's aides condemned the threat. "The statements of the so-called defense minister are not suited with what the delegation came with," Abdul Hadi Darraji, Sadr's spokesman in Baghdad, told al-Arabiya television. "There is a clear accord from the side of Sayyid Sadr. I think that the statements of the defense minister are personal statements." Sayyid is a title of respect.
Shalan had spent Tuesday closeted with senior military commanders just outside Najaf, poring over plans for military operations in the city. The plans were to be presented Thursday to the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz.
Overnight, one Marine was killed and another was wounded by mortar shells fired from beside the shrine into the nearby Valley of Peace cemetery, where U.S. forces continued to engage militiamen in sporadic clashes.
U.S. commanders responded by firing a 155mm howitzer toward the shells' point of origin -- closer to the mosque complex than had been previously authorized for artillery fire.
"That was a first," said Maj. Bob Pizzitola, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 5th Regiment of the Army's 1st Cavalry Division, which is fighting in the cemetery with Marine support.
"It was closer than I thought they'd allow, but it was safe," said Maj. David Holahan of the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has been commanding the fight in Najaf.
Meanwhile, M1-A1 Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles continued to roam Najaf's old city, a district of houses and shops along narrow streets south and east of the shrine. Combat was sometimes heavy, witnesses said, as the 1st Cavalry's 7th Regiment sought to assert its presence in the quarter.
Twenty-four people were reported wounded or dead before noon, including six women and four children, said Falah Muhanna, the head of Najaf's Health Directorate.
Iraq's interim government has emphasized that any military move to push Sadr's forces out of the shrine would be led by Iraqi forces. But U.S. armor, helicopters and warplanes in recent days have ventured close to the sacred site.
"As for entering the shrine, it will be 100 percent Iraqis," Shalan said. "Our sons of the National Guards are well-trained for the breaking-in operation and it will be easy within hours."
Elsewhere in Iraq, the U.S. military announced it was deploying reinforcements to put down a rebellion near the city of Kut, southeast of Baghdad. In earlier fighting there, four civilians were killed and four injured when they were caught in crossfire between the U.S. forces and insurgents, according to a military statement.
Vick reported from Najaf.
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In Discord, Iraqis Select Interim Assembly
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A19
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11962-2004Aug18?language=printer
BAGHDAD, Aug. 18 -- The selection of Iraq's interim national assembly, envisioned as an introductory exercise in legislative democracy, dissolved into bitter feuding Wednesday as a slate of independent candidates withdrew from the contest, handing a controversial victory to a bloc dominated by large political parties.
Some political independents stormed the stage and later angrily walked out of the meeting hall where a national conference of more than 1,100 Iraqi leaders had convened for four days to elect an assembly. Independents said their quest for representation was sabotaged by major political parties expected to support interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
After the withdrawal of the independents, conference organizers approved a slate of candidates from the major parties without a secret vote. Four cardboard ballot boxes placed on the stage remained unused, and many delegates abandoned the meeting hall to collect their $100 per diem payments instead of participating in a show of hands.
"There was no transparency," growled Ismael Zayer, a newspaper publisher who had helped organize the slate of independent candidates that withdrew. "The parties didn't give us a chance. They played this game in the most unfair way."
The interim assembly will have authority to veto decisions by Allawi's government until it is replaced following national elections scheduled for January. For the first three days of the conference to choose the body, the process seemed to live up to its promise as a model of accommodation among Iraq's diverse constituencies of Shiite and Sunni Muslims, Arabs and Kurds, sheiks and professionals.
Under rules set by conference organizers, delegates were not able to run for election to the 100-member assembly as individuals. Rather, they had to form 81-member slates that would be voted on by delegates. The 81 would be augmented by 19 Iraqis who had served on the former U.S.-appointed Governing Council.
Each slate was required to meet quotas designed to ensure adequate representation of Iraq's provinces, tribes, civil society groups and ethnic minorities. At least 25 percent of members had to be women.
Independents and leaders of small parties said the process was inequitable because the country's five largest political parties banded together behind closed doors to form one slate. With the five parties working together, the independents said, there was no way others could compete.
Delegate Mansour Kenaan, who walked out with a dozen others from the southern port city of Basra, accused the political parties of "a conspiracy behind closed doors."
"We have been shut out!" screamed Aziz Yasiri, the leader of a small Shiite party.
The five parties whose members dominate the winning slate include the Iraqi National Accord, which is led by Allawi. Two are Shiite religious parties: the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa party. The two largest ethnic Kurdish parties, the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, round out the slate. The five parties had led the opposition to the government of Saddam Hussein from exile before his ouster by U.S.-led forces 16 months ago.
Many members of the winning slate, called the Iraqi National Union, are well known among their constituencies but lack nationwide recognition. Composition of the new assembly, including the breakdown between Shiites and Sunnis, was not released by conference organizers.
U.N. officials advising Iraq on the selection of the assembly had recommended a different process that would have provided more opportunities for independents and smaller parties, but it was rejected by Iraqi political leaders who organized the conference, according to sources involved in the process.
The conference started Sunday after a two-week delay to attract more participants. The gathering was supposed to be limited to 1,000 members, but political advisers from the United Nations asked organizers to invite 300 additional people, many from religious and ethnic groups that were deemed underrepresented.
Fouad Masoum, the chairman of the conference, defended the use of slates and blamed the independents and small parties for not building a stronger political coalition. "It was democratic, but the problem was the opposition wasn't united," he said.
Iraqi political leaders contend that having a few large parties dominating the assembly will make it easier to forge coalitions and build consensus. "An assembly full of independents would get nothing accomplished," said a senior Shiite politician.
Zayer contended that the large parties conspired to send low-ranking members to join the list of independent candidates. Shortly before the vote, several members of the independent list dropped out, forcing Zayer and others to scramble to find replacements. When they could not keep their group together, they decided to withdraw.
"We didn't have enough time and we didn't have the means," he said at the conference. "We are making this sacrifice for all the people of Iraq. We would have liked to be in a stronger position and a dignified opposition holding its head up high -- and we will be that in the future."
Even before the withdrawal, the selection process was roiled by disputes. Two Chaldo-Assyrian Christians squabbled over who should represent their small community. A man from a small Muslim sect demanded that he be given a seat. And several delegates from Basra began screaming after they learned that the Iraqi National Union slate had only one member from their city.
"Where are the martyrs?" shouted Esraa Saad, a middle-aged woman whose voice pierced the hall.
"Basra has been marginalized," added another resident. "Its children have been killed. Basra wants more representation. It is the source of oil."
As disorder ensued, the chairman of the session, Walid Shaltagh, sought to restore order. "Ladies and gentlemen, you are the representatives of the Iraqi people," he implored. "What you are asking for is right, but not in this unseemly way . . . not in this chaotic way."
When the Basra delegation learned that it was not getting any more seats, about a dozen members stormed out.
----------
Iraqi Government Gives Sadr a Final Chance to End Uprising
August 19, 2004
The New York Times
By JOHN F. BURNS and SABRINA TAVERNISE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/international/middleeast/19CND-IRAQ.html?pagewanted=all
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 19 - Iraqi government officials said today that Moktada al-Sadr has a final chance to disarm his militia and carry out other steps to end a stand-off at one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines and two weeks of fighting in Najaf with American forces.
Displaying the brinkmanship that has made him one of the United States' most powerful adversaries in Iraq, Mr. Sadr, a rebel cleric, sent last-minute messages of conciliation on Wednesday that appeared to have staved off an imminent assault on his fortress in the country's holiest Shiite shrine.
But today, one of Iraq's ministers of state, Kasim Daoud, warned Mr. Sadr that he would face a military strike within hours unless he followed through and met conditions for ending his uprising.
He said in Najaf that the government wanted to hear from Mr. Sadr personally and that it was determined to impose a military solution unless he abandoned violence, handed in weapons and left the Imam Ali Mosque.
"We will take military action to do what is right and end this abnormal phenomenon and to make it a lesson to all outlaws all around our beloved Iraq," Mr. Daoud said.
Iraq's prime minister, Ayad Allawi, said later at a news conference in Baghdad that Mr. Sadr still has a final chance to disarm his militia. Dr. Allawi's troops have not begun any siege of the shrine and the immediate area, but were doing smaller "clean-up operations" in areas that they apparently already control.
For two weeks, Mr. Sadr has led his militia force, known as the Mahdi Army, in some of the deadliest fighting with American troops since the invasion 16 months ago. But faced with a deadline of hours from Iraq's interim government on Wednesday to back down or face attack by Iraqi troops, he abruptly signaled a change of course, and suggested he would accept demands to vacate the Imam Ali shrine in Najaf, disband his militia and transform it into a political party.
Dr. Allawi said today there was still time for that to happen.
"We have left the doors open," said Dr. Allawi. He added: "There is a lot of space for him to join the political process."
Not for the first time in his months of confrontation with American troops, Mr. Sadr's apparent backing down came hedged with uncertainties, among them that he spoke only through aides, and that they were vague on what exactly he had agreed to. One of his spokesmen in Najaf told news agencies that Mr. Sadr was insisting, before any concessions, on a cease-fire that would require American and Iraqi troops to pull back from positions around the shrine, a move that would yield territory won in recent days.
Dr. Allawi said that Iraqi forces would take pains to avoid a showdown at the sensitive site, a place of pilgrimage for millions of Shiites. "We are going to use all the peaceful means in order to preserve the holy shrine until we take the deterrent measures against him," he said.
"We would like for him to declare his intentions," Dr. Allawi said. "What is his position? We only have heard from some people who work with him.
"We haven't heard from him directly. We would like to hear from him a final position before we move to the next phase."
News agencies reported that seven Iraqi police officers had been killed in a mortar attack on their station in Najaf.
Mr. Sadr's offer was met with applause by delegates gathered in Baghdad on Wednesday to select a national assembly.
But among senior officials in Washington and Baghdad, Mr. Sadr's move was met with deep skepticism.
"I don't think we can trust al-Sadr," said Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser. Iraq's defense minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, issued a statement calling Mr. Sadr's initiative "strange," after his earlier intransigence, and demanding that he substantiate his offer by having his militiamen "immediately deliver their weapons" to Iraqi forces around the shrine.
Even as American and Iraqi officials were weighing Mr. Sadr's intentions, a menacing new dimension was added to the Najaf crisis by a report on Al Jazeera television that Iraqi militants calling themselves the Martyrs' Squad had captured an American journalist, Micah Garen, and threatened to kill him within 48 hours if United States forces did not pull out of Najaf.
On Wednesday night, the Arab news channel showed video images of a man identified by Al Jazeera as Mr. Garen, kneeling in front of five masked men with rifles. Mr. Garen, 36, whose family home is in New Haven, is an independent documentary filmmaker who spent much of the last year in Iraq researching a film and articles on the looting of Iraq's archaeological heritage.
He was seized by two armed men on Friday outside a gun shop in Nasiriya, 230 miles south of Baghdad. Nasiriya is one of a network of towns and cities across the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq that have been roiled by the spreading insurrection Mr. Sadr and his militia have stirred since the fighting began in Najaf. Mr. Sadr's latest about-face on Wednesday came after Defense Minister Shaalan flew to Najaf on an American military helicopter on Wednesday and announced that an attack on the Imam Ali Mosque was imminent. Answering Iraqis who have condemned any American involvement in an assault on the shrine, Mr. Shaalan said the attack would be led by Iraqi troops, with "no U.S. intervention" other than air support and tanks to control roads leading to the shrine.
The ultimatum was reinforced by Mr. Allawi, who issued a statement on Wednesday assigning responsibility for the government's decision to Mr. Sadr's intransigence, after the cleric snubbed a delegation of Iraqi religious and political leaders who had traveled to the shrine with an appeal for an end to the rebellion.
Dr. Allawi, once a stalwart of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and later leader of an exile group in London, has been almost as changeable in his pronouncements on the Najaf fighting as Mr. Sadr. He has issued ultimatums, then withdrawn them and resumed negotiations, only to return to threats to settle the confrontation by force. His latest statement, though, seemed unequivocal.
John F. Burns and Sabrina Tavernise contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article and Alex Berenson from Najaf. Iraqi employees of The New York Times, whose names are withheld for their security, also contributed reporting from Najaf.
-------- israel / palestine
Sharon, Arafat Face Challenges in Ranks
Israeli Party Rejects Leader's Proposals;
Palestinian Acknowledges Corruption
By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A16
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10585-2004Aug18?language=printer
RAMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 18 -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat both confronted challenges from within their ranks Wednesday in speeches that aimed to quash growing internal rebellions over their leadership and policies.
Sharon made an impassioned plea for unity at a convention of his Likud Party in Tel Aviv Wednesday night, but members of the party's Central Committee rejected two measures intended to broaden support within his governing coalition for withdrawing Jewish settlers and Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.
Likud members voted 843 to 612 against bringing the centrist Labor Party into the government, and they turned down Sharon's request to expand his coalition by negotiating "with any Zionist party" by just 12 votes, 765 to 753, Likud Party spokesman Shmuel Dahan said.
It was the second rebuke to Sharon by his party in four months. In May, Likud members overwhelmingly rejected his disengagement plan for Gaza in a nonbinding referendum. In his speech on Wednesday, Sharon once again said he would not bow to his party's wishes, declaring, "The Likud will conduct negotiations with all Zionist parties for expanding the coalition."
Warning that his party was headed toward "the verge of division and disintegration," Sharon told an alternately jeering and cheering crowd: "We have to decide whether the Likud will continue to lead the state united with responsibility, or the Likud will be led by an extreme, irresponsible, rebellious opposition."
Earlier, in an address to the Palestinian parliament at his compound in Ramallah, Arafat acknowledged corruption within the Palestinian Authority and, in a rare concession, said he was among those who had made mistakes, although he offered no concrete proposals for change.
"Some people in some institutions have misused their positions and were unfaithful in their jobs," Arafat said during a nearly 90-minute speech to the Palestinian Legislative Council, which frequently has complained about his unbridled power and failure to implement reforms.
"This includes everyone," he said, adding, "Everyone has made his own mistakes."
Yossi Alpher, co-founder of Bitterlemons.org, a Palestinian-Israeli Internet dialogue site, said Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan was the catalyst for political unrest on both sides. The proposal has not only triggered the right-wing revolt in Likud, but also has sparked bitter power struggles among Palestinians over who would eventually rule the impoverished and besieged coastal strip.
"For the last 20 years, whenever an Israeli government became destabilized, it was because of the Palestinian issue and the government's behavior towards the Palestinians, and now it's the same set of dynamics that's destabilizing Arafat's rule as well," Alpher said.
While Arafat could probably afford to ignore the challenges, Alpher said, Sharon will do so at his peril, because the opponents of his disengagement plan -- especially inhabitants of Jewish settlements in Gaza and the West Bank -- are highly motivated, well-funded and "the most energetic group on the political scene." They could bring down his government, he said.
The speeches and internecine strife came as the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, approaches its fifth anniversary. More than 2,700 Palestinians and about 980 Israelis have been killed in the conflict, and serious peace efforts collapsed more than a year ago.
Arafat has been the target of unprecedented criticism from within his Fatah political movement, as younger leaders demand a greater share of political power, far-ranging reforms and a crackdown on corruption. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed faction of Fatah, recently called on Arafat to relinquish some of his powers and demanded that corrupt officials be fired and prosecuted.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia resigned in July, complaining of "a level of chaos that we've never seen before," then withdrew his resignation when Arafat agreed to give him control over the Palestinian police and to consolidate about 12 security forces into three branches.
During his speech, Arafat said the Palestinian Authority "should open doors wide to the younger generation." He said a top priority should be reorganizing the security apparatus and "putting an end to the state of security chaos," but he made no proposals.
Even as Arafat conceded that some Palestinian officials had abused power and that he was among those who had made mistakes in not strengthening government institutions, independent lawmaker and former cabinet member Abdul Jawad Salah shouted, "You are the one who protected them!"
A flustered Arafat jabbed his finger toward Salah and shot back: "Be careful! Be careful!"
"He's not part of the reform, he's part of the corruption," Salah said after the speech, which was delivered in a refurbished meeting hall across from Arafat's battered offices.
Sharon's internal battles began in earnest in May, with the referendum defeat of his Gaza disengagement plan. His continued pursuit of the plan has divided the party, and he had to fire two ministers from the ultranationalist National Union party to get the plan through his own cabinet. Two ministers from the hard-right National Religious Party also quit, leaving Sharon's coalition with just 59 votes in the 120-seat parliament.
His government has been subjected to almost weekly no-confidence votes, spurring Sharon to reach out to Labor and other parties to broaden his coalition.
Before the balloting Wednesday night, many Likud members at the convention who said they were voting against Sharon explained that they simply could not stomach an alliance with Shimon Peres, the Labor Party chairman and architect of the 1993 Oslo peace accords.
"Peres will have an appeasement policy vis-a-vis Arafat and continue with the Oslo accords that are long dead," said Yitzhak Ben Gad, 60, a real estate agent and former deputy mayor of the coastal town of Netanya. "He thinks in terms of a new Middle East, but the Middle East we live in is old, and nothing has changed."
Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
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Despite Setback, Sharon to Proceed With Withdrawal
August 19, 2004
By STEVEN ERLANGER
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/international/middleeast/19CND-MIDE.html?hp
JERUSALEM, Aug. 19 - The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, said today that he would press ahead with his plan to pull soldiers and settlers out of the Gaza Strip despite the repudiation of his own party in nonbinding votes late last night.
Mr. Sharon, who has lost his parliamentary majority, wants to bolster his coalition by bringing in other parties, especially Labor. But his own Likud Party, unhappy over his willingness to dismantle settlements, voted by a large margin to block a coalition with Labor. And by a much smaller margin - 5 votes out of 1,563 cast - they voted down his compromise proposal, to open coalition negotiations with any "Zionist" party.
Mr. Sharon, who is not directly elected in this parliamentary system, was weakened by the dual rebuff, especially after a similar vote in May. The events make new general elections more likely, but analysts say Mr. Sharon may also try to tough it out with the implicit support of Labor through the spring.
Parliament is out of session until October, and Mr. Sharon himself headed off on a 10-day vacation at his farm, after authorizing his office to say: "The prime minister is continuing with the disengagement and diplomatic process. He will find a solution to the problem. He will try to build a stable coalition government."
Mr. Sharon left Jerusalem with a present from the Supreme Court, which voted 6 to 1 to uphold a June decision by the attorney general not to indict Mr. Sharon and his son Gilad in a bribery case involving a failed real-estate deal in Greece. The former state prosecutor had recommended indictment.
A Sharon business associate, David Appel, has been charged with bribing Mr. Sharon, but under Israeli law, the prosecution would have to prove criminal intent on Mr. Sharon's part to convict him of accepting a bribe. Gilad Sharon received a high salary and bonuses for his consultancy work for the project.
But Mr. Sharon has much else to contemplate. He can break his own party apart and try for a thorough realignment in Israeli politics. He can pursue a larger coalition without Labor by talking to religious parties, but the largest of them, Shas, could force another partner, the anti-clerical Shinui party, to quit the coalition.
Even if Mr. Sharon wants new elections before the scheduled date of 2006, he must be careful. The country's president, Moshe Katsav, himself a former Likud minister, must endorse a new election law, and then only if he decides no one else in the current parliament can form a government - and it's just possible that Mr. Sharon's party rival and current finance minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could cobble together a majority of the religious and the right.
Under the law, Mr. Sharon could get to new elections by failing to pass a budget, said Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Hebrew University. "But that would be perceived as a trick," he said, and elections are unpredictable.
The president of the Palestinian Authority, Yasir Arafat, has also faced a challenge to his authority from a younger generation that wants more democracy, transparency and orderliness in political and daily life in the West Bank and Gaza. On Wednesday, Mr. Arafat admitted some error and pledged support for reform, but late Wednesday night, he refused to sign decrees that would put his personal power behind specific proposals.
He told legislators who had prepared the decrees, which would put his personal authority behind moves to streamline the security services and investigate corruption, that his speech was "enough and that there is no need for any signatures," said Azmi Shouabi, one of the meeting's participants. Another, who asked not to be named, said that Mr. Arafat was annoyed and said, "What I said was very clear," and indirectly threw them out of his office.
The lawmakers agreed to meet Mr. Arafat again and submit a report to the legislature next week.
Dan Meridor, a former Likud politician, said that Mr. Sharon and Likud are at "an important crossroads, but it's hard to say how it will develop. It's the second time he's been slapped by the party, and last night he lost both resolutions. And so to just overlook it is not so simple, but he could."
Mr. Sharon's largest problem is that his Gaza disengagement policy is not what most Likud members want, said Nahum Barnea, a columnist with Yediot Aharonot. On vacation, Mr. Sharon "will rethink his plans," Mr. Barnea said. "He's committed to continuing negotiations with Labor and his disengagement plan. But it's hard. He's weakened, and he could really split Likud. And when you're weaker, people tend to raise the price."
As for Likud, he said, "they wanted to sterilize Sharon, not to kill him." Still, he will be perceived as weaker, even in the eyes of the Americans.
Aides to Mr. Sharon say that he wants "to drive the car of this government until it won't run any more" before calling new elections. But they admit that the car may now be running on flat tires and more people are shooting at the radiator.
"Sharon may not see it as a catastrophe if Likud split," Mr. Ezrahi said. "He could head a huge center block that would back his policies, if he could only get these guys in Likud off his back."
The temptation is that Mr. Sharon, Labor's Shimon Peres, and Shinui's Tommy Lapid, all of them over 75, and all of whom largely agree on Gaza and the dismantling of some settlements, combine to run on a single party list in the next election, marginalizing the far right and the religious parties.
But Mr. Barnea thinks that is a very unlikely outcome, given the complexities. And Mr. Sharon seems to understand that he needs at least some religious party to deal with the honest agonies of the Israeli settler population.
--------
Israel AG Says Shift Barrier to Avoid Sanctions
August 19, 2004
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/international/international-mideast-israel-barrier.html
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's attorney general urged the government Thursday to swiftly reroute its barrier in the occupied West Bank to minimize the risk of international sanctions after the World Court deemed the project illegal.
``It is hard to exaggerate the negative ramifications the World Court ruling will have on Israel, even in matters that diverge from the specific issue of the barrier,'' Menachem Mazuz wrote in an 84-page report to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
``The decision creates a different legal reality for Israel in the international arena, one liable to be used as a catalyst for actions against Israel in international and national forums, even sanctions,'' he added.
Mazuz recommended that the path of the barrier, which Israel says is meant to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers but which Palestinians denounce as a disguised bid to annex territory, be redrawn in line with a ruling by Israel's own High Court.
It ordered the government in June to shift sections of the barrier to avoid cutting off Palestinian villagers from their land. But it also ruled Israel had the right to build a barrier for security reasons on territory it considers ``disputed.''
Israeli officials said amended plans drafted after the High Court ruling would shift the massive wire-and-concrete construction closer to the Israeli-West Bank boundary.
Mazuz recommended the Israeli government ``make a great effort, as soon as possible, to adjust the route of the fence and the arrangements for those living along it in accordance with the High Court ruling.''
He also said that the new route should be anchored by a decision of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's cabinet.
``Such a decision will deliver the message that Israel is implementing international law in the building of the barrier according to rulings of its own court,'' Mazuz said, according to a statement released by the Justice Ministry.
The International Court of Justice, a U.N. body based in The Hague, ruled that the barrier was illegal wherever it stood on land Israel captured in war and said it should be torn down.
The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution echoing the World Court's decision and Palestinian leaders are now seeking U.N. Security Council action to hit Israel with sanctions.
Palestinians say the barrier is an attempt by Israel to set a de facto border that would deny them a viable state as envisaged by a U.S.-backed ``road map'' peace plan.
--------
Sharon Rebuffed by Party, as Arafat Admits Making Mistakes
August 19, 2004
New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/international/middleeast/19mideast.html?ex=1093876638&ei=1&en=7f9a781a7d3b8b0c
AMALLAH, West Bank, Aug. 18 - The leaders of Israel and the Palestinians faced deep dissension in their constituencies on Wednesday, with Yasir Arafat making a rare admission of personal error to those seeking change, and Ariel Sharon suffering a rebuff from his own party. Mr. Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, lost a nonbinding vote in his Likud Party regarding his intention to expand his coalition to carry out a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. His plan to withdraw from Gaza unilaterally and to dismantle some Israeli settlements overturns Likud dogma and has split the party. At its convention in Tel Aviv, that idea of including the opposition Labor Party or other parties in a new coalition government was rejected.
Mr. Sharon, an intensely pragmatic politician, will move forward without his party's clear support, his aides say, but he will be weakened without it, having lost his parliamentary majority, and he might be forced to call new elections.
In Ramallah, Mr. Arafat, the Palestinian president, admitted in a rare, televised speech that he and his Palestinian Authority had made serious mistakes. But Palestinian legislators pressing for change said that his comments were vague and unsatisfactory.
Mr. Arafat tried to address the unrest in Gaza that has produced one of the strongest challenges to his authority since he returned from exile a decade ago. A younger generation of Palestinians has denounced the chaos, lack of security, overlapping institutions, administrative corruption and long-postponed elections over which Mr. Arafat has presided, trying to push him to put his personal credibility behind serious changes.
"We must show the courage to recognize our mistakes," he said. "There is no one free from mistakes, from me on down. Even the prophets made mistakes," he said.
But in a speech of more than an hour, presented with vigor, humor and occasional wit, Mr. Arafat deflected calls from the audience, sitting in a large hall in his headquarters here, for specific commitments to specific measures.
In Tel Aviv, Mr. Sharon, in a pinstriped suit and blue tie, spoke about the party's responsibility to the nation, and to him, as its leader. "We must sound a different voice from within the Likud, a stronger, much clearer one. A national voice. A responsible voice," he said.
But a vote by some 1,450 party leaders specifically to ban a coalition with Labor won by more than 200 votes. Mr. Sharon lost a compromise proposal, authorizing him to negotiate a new coalition with any "Zionist party," by a margin of only 19 votes, which might make it easier for him to ignore it.
He said he would move to expand his coalition by talking to any party that believed in Israel, not ruling out religious parties. Mr. Sharon is also holding talks with the religious Shas party, the country's fourth-largest. Shas represents ultra-Orthodox voters who largely share Likud's views on security and whose leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, has publicly placed the value of human life above the retention of every inch of the biblical land of Israel. Shas could represent an alternative to Labor, and could help Mr. Sharon with Israeli settlers torn between their perceived loyalties to religion and Israel.
In May, Mr. Sharon suffered a similar embarrassing defeat when Likud members voted against his Gaza disengagement plan in a nonbinding referendum. But he seems now, as then, determined to press ahead, even if it means reshaping Likud.
Back in Ramallah, a committee of Palestinian legislators has prepared a list of decrees for Mr. Arafat to sign that would accelerate changes and streamline the Palestinian security forces, some of the legislators said today, but they expressed doubt that Mr. Arafat would agree to sign.
Mr. Arafat blamed Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land for much of Palestinian troubles, but he said that the occupation was not the whole cause.
"We must not blame everything on the occupation," he said. "What we can do, we shall do."
Without naming names, he conceded, "Some mistakes have been made by our institutions and some have abused their positions and violated the trust placed in them," he said. Then a dissident legislator, Abdul Jawad Saleh, interrupted to say, "You are protecting them, Abu Amr," Mr. Arafat's nom de guerre. Mr. Arafat answered, "I'm protecting them?" And he warned Mr. Saleh to "stop sleeping" and twice to "be careful."
Mr. Arafat also admitted that "no real effort" had been made to enforce law and order and said, "More efforts and support should be made for the security of the people."
Again without specifics, Mr. Arafat said, "We need to move together to correct and reform all the mistakes." And he said he fully supported the efforts of the prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, whose resignation he rejected a few weeks ago.
The parliament speaker, Rawhi Fatouh, who introduced Mr. Arafat, addressed him directly after his speech, saying: "We need from you some formal decisions with your signature about issues you raised in the speech. The most important thing we need is your signature, and then we can start a revolution of reform that you, Abu Amr, will be leading. It will be called the presidential document for reform."
Mr. Arafat did not respond. The last time he made a similar confession of error was in mid-2002, when he called for new elections and sweeping change, neither happened.
Change-minded legislators like Mr. Saleh were disappointed. "Arafat is not serious, or he would have been specific,'' he said. "The point is not to admit vague mistakes but to be specific and then correct them."
Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, said: "He said all the right things about reform and democracy. But people were waiting for more specifics."
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a longtime Palestinian spokeswoman and legislator, said: "It's a first step. Changing a political system, with long-held and ingrained ways of thinking, is not easy."
-------- pakistan / india
Pakistan Publishes Terror Suspects' Photos
August 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Pakistan-al-Qaida.html
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) -- Pakistan published photos Wednesday in newspapers across the country of six terror suspects -- including a senior al-Qaida operative -- it says were behind attempts to assassinate the nation's president and offered a large reward for their capture.
The identities of the men highlighted the chilling nexus between several homegrown Pakistani militant groups and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network. The government says al-Qaida had a hand in two December assassination attempts against President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, as well as a July attempt against prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz.
Musharraf identified the main suspect as Abu Faraj al-Libbi, a Libyan national. The government had never published a photo of him until Wednesday.
Al-Libbi appears in the photo as a dapper looking man with a short beard. He is wearing a Western suit and tie in the photograph, above a 20 million rupee reward offer, or $344,800.
The other suspects, all identified as Pakistan's ``Most Wanted Terrorists,'' are Mati-ur Rehman, Amjad Hussain, Qari Ehsan, Omar Aqdas, and Mansoor -- whose alias is Chota Ibrahim. All are Pakistani and known to be linked with Pakistan's Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militant group.
It was not clear exactly what the other five men are wanted for or what role -- if any -- they had in the assassination attempts.
The advertisements promised anonymity for any informants and gave phone numbers and e-mail addresses to contact authorities. Some posters were printed in English and some in Urdu, Pakistan's other official language.
Hussain, who is best known as Amjad Hussain Farooqi, is also wanted for his part in the 2002 kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. In some accounts, Hussain recruited three Yemenis for the task and supervised it. In others, he carried out the butchery himself.
Hussain is also believed linked to al-Qaida's former No. 3, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003, and to two Pakistani militant groups -- Lashkar-e-Jangvi and Jaish-e-Mohammed. The reward for Hussain is identical to that for Al-Libbi.
``Al-Libbi and Farooqi were the masterminds of the attacks against Musharraf,'' Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said.
Musharraf was not hurt in either attack, but 17 people died in the second attempt on his life, when terrorists tried to blow up his motorcade on a road near the capital, Islamabad.
Musharraf has earned the ire of extremists because of his support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Pakistan has arrested more than 550 al-Qaida suspects, turning most over to the United States. More than two dozen suspects have been arrested in Pakistan in recent weeks, including a computer expert known as Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian al-Qaida member wanted for the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa.
The arrests and information gleaned from the men led authorities in Britain and the United Arab Emirates to more suspects and was a key factor in the decision by U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to issue a terror alert Aug. 1 in New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.
Also Wednesday, a cleric who is a member of the opposition MMA political coalition said that Qari Noor Mohammed, a militant arrested by intelligence agents last week, died in custody. He allegedly playing a role in last month's assassination attempt against Aziz.
Mohammed was captured from Faisalabad, an industrial city in Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. On Wednesday his body was found at a hospital in the city, said Sardar Mohammed Zafar, a senior cleric in the area.
Zafar said he received an anonymous tip from someone who told him to pick up Mohammed's body from the Allied Hospital. He charged that the body had signs of torture.
There was no immediate comment from the government, but a police official, Sheikh Amir, said the man died of a heart attack and denied the torture allegations.
-------- prisoners of war
U.S. Soldiers Kill 2 Detainees In Quelling Riot at Abu Ghraib
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A20
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11987-2004Aug18.html
BAGHDAD, Aug. 18 -- U.S. military police killed two detainees at Abu Ghraib prison early Wednesday after a riot broke out in a tent camp at the sprawling facility west of the capital, a military spokesman said.
The brawl was one of the deadliest skirmishes at Abu Ghraib since the U.S. Army began holding suspected insurgents, or security detainees, there last year. Five detainees were wounded by other detainees, said Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, spokesman for detention operations in Iraq.
Johnson said the fight started when a group of detainees with tent poles attacked an individual in Camp Ganci, one of the prison's two outdoor tent compounds. The brawl quickly escalated, drawing 200 to 300 men, he said.
U.S. military police responded by ordering the detainees to stop fighting, Johnson said. The detainees threw rocks at the guards, who fired back with rubber bullets, he said.
"That had no effect on quelling the disturbance," he said. "A decision was made that this detainee's life was at risk, so shotguns aimed at those behind the violence were used."
Johnson said the rules of engagement at the prison allow military police to use deadly force in such a situation. In this case, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the compound gave the permission, he said.
The incident is being investigated, he said, and "the circumstances surrounding that decision" to employ deadly force will be reviewed.
The last time military police at the prison used lethal force to stop a disturbance was on Nov. 24, when three detainees were killed and several injured during a riot in Camp Ganci.
The U.S. military is holding about 2,200 detainees at Abu Ghraib, down from a peak of more than 7,000 earlier this year. Some detainees were abused at Abu Ghraib last fall, and seven soldiers with the 372nd Military Police Company were charged in connection with the incidents.
The abuses occurred in the prison's so-called hard site, cell blocks that have since been taken over by the Iraqi corrections department to house its inmates. The U.S. military has moved all of its detainees to the tent camps on the prison grounds.
Camp Ganci, the older tent camp at Abu Ghraib, is being razed to make way for a new compound that will house detainees being prepared for release. About 500 security detainees are housed in what remains of Camp Ganci; the majority of detainees live in a newer section called Camp Redemption, which has air-conditioned tents and other amenities that Ganci does not.
Tent poles are often used as weapons during altercations in the camps, and the guards who enter the tent compounds to break up the fights are unarmed, their only protection provided by armed guards in watchtowers.
"When you see these guys walking around with tent poles, it's not a good sign," said Sgt. Wassman, who declined to give his first name.
Wassman said tensions often run high in the camps, though they rarely escalate into full-scale riots. "We've got Shiites on one side and Sunnis on the other," he said, "and then you've got people who just don't like someone because he's ugly or got an extra piece of bread."
--------
Jail deaths overshadow Abu Ghraib report
Shocking mistreatment at the jail was exposed early this year
Aljazeera
Thursday 19 August 2004
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DA858B79-7E56-4CFB-A4DC-BC87ADEB2AD5.htm
Two Iraqi inmates have been shot dead at Abu Ghraib, the focus of a US inquiry that reportedly implicates dozens of troops, contractors and CIA officials in the jail's notorious abuse scandal.
The US military said on Thursday that five Iraqis were wounded in addition to the two killed when a fight broke out among hundreds of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison on Wednesday.
The statement issued by the US Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Florida, did not make clear how the prisoners died, but said that "lethal force" was used by US troops to bring the early morning disturbance under control.
"The altercation among the detainees broke out at about 5:45am, when guards observed a large group of security detainees attacking another detainee, using rocks and tent poles," the Central Command release said.
"Guards attempted to intervene with verbal warnings, but the situation continued to escalate and the number of detainees involved swelled to over 200, resulting in the use of non-letahal rounds to disperse the group.
"When this failed to quell the situation and it was determined that a detainee's life was still at risk, lethal force was authorised, and the situation was brought under control," the US Central Command statement said.
Abuse scandal report
Earlier on Thursday, reporting on the US army's inquiry into Abu Ghraib abuse, The New York Times and USA Today quoted Pentagon officials as saying that Major General Fay was expected to blame at least two dozen military intelligence personnel, civilian contractors and CIA officers for wrongdoing.
US soldiers used 'lethal force' to restore order in the notorious jail
Previously, seven rank-and-file members of the 372nd Military Police Company were charged in the prisoner-abuse scandal.
The scandal surfaced in January after a military policeman turned over shocking photographs and videos of the mistreatment to investigators.
But the sources told the Times that Fay's report found no evidence of direct culpability above the colonel who commanded the military intelligence unit at the prison.
'Failed leadership'
It does not find that top military commanders condoned the abuses, but it does fault them for failure of leadership.
"Commanders should have exercised more oversight"
Pentagon official quoted by New York Times
"Commanders should have exercised more oversight," said one Pentagon official. "The emphasis on detainee operations was just not there."
The sources did not say whether the report found misconduct among civilian contractors working as interrogators at Abu Ghraib, but it does cite the role of US Justice Department officials and recommends further investigation of their actions, a Pentagon official told USA Today.
Fay's investigation is one of seven that are still under way or have been conducted into the abuse and murder of prisoners under US occupation in Iraq and in Afghanistan.
Reuters quoted US defence officials on Thursday as saying that the investigation report, expected to be sent to Congress next week, recommends discipline against military intelligence troops ranging from administrative reduction in rank and loss of pay to further investigation that could lead to military trials.
"I think it will find that military police weren't the only ones doing anything wrong," said one defence official of the Abu Ghraib abuse and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners, which sparked fury in the Arab world and international condemnation.
-------- spies
The spying-as-science myth
No bureaucracy can be 'fixed' to take advantage of intellectual competition
Cato Institute
By LEON HADAR
August 19, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/ocregister/spying-as-science.html
The 9/11 Commission report on U.S. intelligence failures subscribes to the notion that there is a way in which the government can "fix" the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other information-gathering agencies. The authors assume that if only a competent group of CIA analysts had been able to gain access before 9/11 to the available information on Islamic terrorist groups, the Bush administration would have been able to thwart the attacks on New York and Washington.
In a way, those who prepared the commission's report imagine that the U.S. intelligence agencies can be transformed into something akin to efficient information-gathering and analysis systems. Sophisticated technology and skilled spies will retrieve every piece of data on terrorism that is out there. Highly educated researchers, fluent in the many dialects of Arabic and Urdu, will examine the facts and figures, and superintelligent analysts will draw the right conclusions. And based on that flow of information and analysis, a group of dedicated public servants and honorable statesmen, led by an independent and impartial "intelligence czar" will recommend the correct policies to the White House and ensure that 9/11-like catastrophes never happen again.
It's that kind of belief in the possibility of individuals and organizations knowing enough to predict human behavior and to alter its outcome that was criticized by the renowned economist Friedrich Hayek as "hubris" - that is, the pride which challenges the gods.
The winner of the Nobel Prize in economics and one of the leading intellectual forces behind free-market economics in the late 20th century didn't focus much attention on national security policy or government intelligence agencies. But Hayek, throughout his life, attacked what he called "scientism" - the imitation in the social sciences, including economics and political science, of the methods of the physical sciences. It was the limitations of human knowledge that in Hayek's view, made the market so important because it created, conveyed and revealed information in a way no other human institution, and certainly no government agency, could ever emulate.
The free-market model presumes that the flow of data, knowledge and ideas can permit consumers to gain access to complete and accurate information on the basis of which they can make the reasonable choices. As Hayek argued, a market of information and ideas, free from the control of government and other centralized powers, results in a competitive discovery process that cannot be predicted in advance. His ideal model was based on cooperative and competitive behavior among individuals, households and enterprises that appears haphazard and anarchic but that helps produce accurate information and efficient results.
The government's intelligence agencies are the ultimate antithesis to this model of a free market of information and ideas. If anything, they represent the ideal of "scientism" and social engineering that was disparaged by Hayek. By definition, these institutions are public monopolies that collect and manipulate information. They represent the most secretive, restrictive and tightly controlled bureaucracy in a government that abhors the notion of a "spontaneous order" that results from the competition of ideas.
That is the nature of the beast - a system that is bound to create a "group-think" mentality and to downplay and dismiss information that doesn't fit the agenda of policy-makers.
Even under the best of circumstances in which the CIA is able to recruit the best and the brightest, it will never be able to predict the outcomes of global political and economic phenomena. If anything, as the case of Iraq's alleged WMD demonstrates, the monopoly over information and political authority that the intelligence agency has could end up distorting the free flow of information and ideas.
Proposing that we can "fix" this system to make it an open, objective and independent information-processing system is not very different than arguing that we can make a centralized economy more efficient, or that we can liberalize a communist government. Boys will be boys - and intelligence agencies will continue to be politicized, incompetent and wasteful government bureaucracies. And, occasionally, they will even get lucky. As a result of sophisticated technology, the courage of an American agent or a defection by an enemy spy, they may end up providing a marginal advantage to the U.S. government during time of crisis and war.
Instead of trying to "fix" the CIA, Americans would be better off by electing hubris-free presidents and lawmakers who don't go to war, invade other countries, and try to change the world based on the kind of incomplete information and distorted analysis that a government agency provides.
-------- us
Bush Turns to Part-Time Troops
New Educational Benefits for Guardsmen, Reservists Proposed
By Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A04
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11154-2004Aug18.html
CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis., Aug. 18 -- President Bush proposed new educational benefits for National Guardsmen and reservists on Wednesday, using a campaign appearance here to appeal to part-time troops disillusioned by extended tours of duty in Iraq.
Bush said those who serve more than 90 consecutive days on active duty in the Guard and the reserves would be given enhanced payments for schooling, and he said rules would be changed to make it easier for children in military families to change schools when the families move. "We'll continue to stand side by side with those who wear the uniform and with the family members of those who wear the uniform," the president said at an open-air rally for Republican faithful in western Wisconsin.
As he has done in other recent rallies, Bush tucked the policy proposals into a stump speech that harshly criticized Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and said the senator from Massachusetts took a "blame America" approach to terrorism. "He says that going to war with the terrorists is actually improving their recruiting efforts," Bush said, adding: "It's wrong to blame America for anger and the evil of these killers. We don't create terrorists by fighting back. You defeat the terrorists by fighting back."
Bush was referring to a statement Kerry made two weeks ago in which he said: "I believe this administration, in its policies, is actually encouraging the recruitment of terrorists. We haven't done the work necessary to reach out to other countries. We haven't done the work necessary with the Muslim world."
In another assault on Kerry that has become a standard part of Bush's speeches, the president ridiculed Kerry's Iraq position. "Now, almost two years after he voted for the war in Iraq, and seven months after switching positions to declare himself the antiwar candidate, my opponent has found a new nuance," Bush said. "He now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq."
Bush's statement that Kerry had called himself "the antiwar candidate" is based on an interview on MSNBC's "Hardball" show earlier this year in which host Chris Matthews asked Kerry if he was "one of the antiwar candidates." Kerry replied that he was, "in the sense that I don't believe the president took us to war as he should have." Kerry added: "Was there a way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable? You bet there was, and we should have done it right."
As Bush made his appeal to military families here, Kerry made a similar pitch at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati. "Military families are going through difficult times these days; many of their loved ones are in faraway places, leaving them to care for their families alone," he said.
Invoking his service in Vietnam and the more than 940 Americans killed in Iraq, Kerry added that "you and I, who once left our families and our shores to defend the principles that make America great, understand more than most the cost of keeping our country free."
The dueling appeals to military families underscored the importance of foreign affairs in this year's presidential campaign. According to a new poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, national security and foreign affairs are viewed by voters as more important than the economy for the first time since the Vietnam War.
The cost of Bush's proposals are modest. A White House spokesman said the expanded education benefits for the nearly 150,000 guardsmen and reservists now mobilized would be paid for with existing funds. Bush's fiscal 2005 budget anticipates spending $10 million on "voluntary reciprocity" programs for preventing disruptions to children of military personnel who move.
Traveling with Bush was Karen Hughes, a key figure in his 2000 election who joined the campaign this week at a salary of about $15,000 per month. "I took the training wheels off today," said Hughes, who will travel with Bush for the rest of the campaign.
Bush's visit to Wisconsin, on the eve of a week-long Texas vacation, was his 13th as president to this state, one of about 15 states considered battlegrounds for the election. After the Chippewa Falls rally, Bush took a bus tour through rural Wisconsin, his third this year, stopping at a cheese factory and at the training camp of the Kansas City Chiefs football team. In the afternoon, Bush fielded friendly questions from supporters at a waterside rally in Hudson, Wis., before attending a third campaign event in St. Paul, Minn.
In Hudson, two supporters told Bush they were praying for him, and one named an opponent rarely mentioned on the campaign trail. "The enemy that we need the greatest freedom from right now happens to be Satan," the supporter said.
Bush rapidly changed the subject.
--------
Kerry Decries Bush's Military Realignment
By Lois Romano
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A06
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10702-2004Aug18?language=printer
CINCINNATI, Aug. 18 -- Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry on Wednesday assailed President Bush's plan to dramatically reduce the number of troops stationed around the globe, calling the realignment a potential threat to the nation's security.
"Nobody wants to bring the troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars. But it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way," Kerry said in an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the same organization to whom Bush pitched his plan Monday to recall as many as 70,000 troops from Cold War-era bases in Europe and Asia.
Further escalating the campaign battle over national security, Kerry said that it is particularly wrong-headed to pull a third of the U.S. ground troops from South Korea.
"Why are we unilaterally withdrawing 12,000 troops from the Korean Peninsula at the very time we are negotiating with North Korea -- a country that really has nuclear weapons? This is clearly the wrong signal to send at the wrong time," Kerry said.
Kerry maintained that the Bush proposal would also reduce forces at a time when the United States is battling al Qaeda in 60 countries. "Let's be clear -- the president's vaguely stated plan does not strengthen our hand in the war against terror," he said. "And in no way relieves the strain on our overextended military personnel. It doesn't even begin until 2006, and it takes 10 years to achieve. This hastily announced plan raises more doubts about our intentions and our commitments than it provides real answers."
In response, the Bush-Cheney campaign sent out a statement by retired Gen P.X. Kelley, former commandant of the Marine Corps, and it organized a teleconference with Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, both of whom support the plan.
"John Kerry's opposition to troop realignment demonstrates a backward-looking view that blindly embraces the status quo and ignores the realities of the post-9/11 world," Kelley said. "The threat America faces today is fundamentally different than the threats America's military was configured to face during the Cold War."
Bush's troop realignment plan is part of a broad military shift that administration officials say will make U.S. forces more flexible at a time when national security threats are less predictable. Over the next decade, about a third of the 230,000 soldiers based overseas would return to bases at home, and massive military facilities in Germany and other allied nations would be downsized or closed. Smaller, lightly staffed bases and supply stations would be established in Eastern Europe. They could be used for rapid deployments to the Middle East or other trouble spots.
Kerry received his most enthusiastic response from 6,000 VFW members when he strongly advocated improving health care, disability and other benefits for veterans. But overall, he was received here far less enthusiastically than was Bush, who generated two standing ovations during his speech. By contrast, Kerry's audience offered cordial and polite applause, with one detractor heckling the Massachusetts senator.
Both campaigns are assertively courting the nation's 26 million veterans, a traditionally Republican constituency with which Democrats hope they can make gains because of Kerry's military record. The VFW has 2.6 million members.
After the speech, a number of veterans said that they believe the Democrat is promising far more than he could deliver. "John Kerry said exactly what veterans wanted to hear today," said Alan Hall, a Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean War. "But how is he going to pay for it all?"
Robert Belding, a Persian Gulf War veteran, said he boycotted the speech because Kerry's "promises don't reflect his Senate record. He says he supports troops, and then he votes against the $87 billion request to help them."
The comments of some veterans indicated that GOP efforts to paint Kerry's commitment to national security as new and politically expedient are resonating.
"I heard he missed 75 percent of his votes on the intelligence committee," said World War II veteran Gerald Kulligan, echoing the e-mails being sent out by the Bush campaign. "Who wants a president who works 25 percent of the time?"
Some said they have not forgiven him for protesting the Vietnam War when he returned from the war in 1969. "That was a bad time for guys coming back, and he come back and was hooked with Hanoi Jane," said Elmo Pennington, a Vietnam War veteran, referring to Jane Fonda's war protests. "He never made no friends with that."
Still, others here mobbed Kerry at the stage and praised his push for veterans benefits and his comments protesting the troop realignment. "As a Korean War veteran, I don't think we can pull out of Korea," said Jack Carney of Florida.
Kerry in the past 10 days has been put on the defensive on national security with a barrage of partisan challenges to his Vietnam service record, his war wounds, his commendations for valor and his fitness to serve as commander in chief.
Clearly trying to recapture his voice on an issue that figured heavily at the Democratic National Convention last month -- his military service during the Vietnam War and his commitment to soldiers -- Kerry talked about his Senate work on Vietnam prisoners of war and the missing in action, and repeatedly tried to identify with the group, of which he is a member.
He also twice mentioned Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a decorated Vietnam War veteran who campaigned with Bush recently. Kerry pointed out that in a Senate hearing on Tuesday, McCain questioned the troop plan, saying, "I'm particularly concerned about moving troops out of South Korea when North Korea has probably never been more dangerous than any time since the end of the Korean War. I hope, as some critics allege, this is not a retreat to fortress America."
In discussing benefits, Kerry pledged to take care of those who serve, advocating better health care by keeping VA hospitals open.
He also reiterated his pledge to ensure that veterans can draw their pensions and disability benefits simultaneously. Today, veterans must give up a dollar of their pension for every dollar of disability assistance that they receive.
"In recent days, you have heard from some who have claimed that the job is getting done for veterans," Kerry said. "Well, just saying the job is getting done doesn't make it so."
--------
Kerry Criticizes President's Troop Plan
August 19, 2004
By JODI WILGOREN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/politics/campaign/19kerry.html
CINCINNATI, Aug. 18 - With repeated references to his own service in Vietnam, Senator John Kerry told fellow members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars here on Wednesday that President Bush's plan to move 70,000 troops out of Europe and Asia was vague and ill-advised in view of the North Korean nuclear threat.
"Nobody wants to bring troops home more than those of us who have fought in foreign wars," Mr. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee, told some 6,000 veterans gathered for the V.F.W.'s annual convention, where Mr. Bush announced the plan on Monday. "But it needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way. This is not that time or that way."
The deployment debate, played out over two days in this imporant swing, was the latest in a string of disagreements over military policy than have dominated the presidential campaign in recent weeks.
Mr. Kerry said he was worried that the withdrawal, now under way, of 12,000 troops from the Korean peninsula would destabilize that area "at the very time we are negotiating with North Korea, a country that really has nuclear weapons."
Having himself called for pumping 40,000 more troops into the armed forces to relieve National Guardsmen and reservists serving overseas, Mr. Kerry said Mr. Bush's proposal "in no way relieves the strain on our overextended military personnel." He quoted Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who is much loved in military circles, and said, "This hastily announced plan raises more doubts about our intentions and our commitments than it provides real answers."
As Mr. Kerry outlined his differences with the president on national security and veterans' domestic concerns alike, however, he highlighted how his complicated history - participating in and then protesting the Vietnam War - both helps and haunts him with a crucial constituency in a wartime election.
While some of the graying men whose hats are covered with pins commemorating their combat tours slapped "Veterans for Kerry" stickers on their shirts, others bitterly recalled Mr. Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony, in which he described atrocities by American soldiers. About half the veterans in the front part of the auditorium remained seated during ovations after Mr. Kerry's introduction and conclusion, a contrast to the warm reception Mr. Bush received in the same hall two days before.
A heckler shouted "Liar!" several times, and some of Mr. Kerry's lines received only polite applause.
"He won his Bronze Star when he was 23 years old, I won my Bronze Star when I was 19 - I know what that takes, he's a hero," said Raymond Hackett, 54, an Air Force veteran from Old Lyme, Conn. "But he said for 35 years he stood with us - he hasn't. There's a lack of sincerity here."
Mr. Hackett and several other veterans interviewed were particularly peeved at a section of the speech Mr. Kerry added at the last minute that described the Vietnam era as "a time when the war and the warriors became confused." In contrast to a television interview four months ago in which he said his use of the word "atrocities" back in 1971 was "a little over the top," Mr. Kerry offered no hint of an apology on Wednesday.
"Had he gone a little further to say, 'I confused the warrior with the war,' there may have been some forgiveness, but he didn't go that far," said Terry L. McKinney, 67, a Navy veteran from Pontiac, Ill.
But as some denounced Mr. Kerry's criticism of the Vietnam War, others in the audience saluted his service in it, responding favorably to his repeated reminders that he had worn the same uniform that they did. Even Mr. Kerry's mixed reception as he criticized the Iraq war was notable because the V.F.W. typically tilts Republican and tends to stand behind an incumbent commander in chief.
"Kerry went and served his country; that means so much to me," said a 70-year-old Korean War veteran, George H. Cox of Spencerville, Ohio, drawing a contrast with Vice President Dick Cheney's draft deferments in the Vietnam era. "He's an American first. He served his country. These other people just talk about it."
Mr. Kerry has done far more to mobilize veterans than most other Democrats, making them a mainstay of his nominating convention last month. A new poll from Quinnipiac University in the swing state of Pennsylvania shows him with a four-point lead over Mr. Bush among veterans and military households, a margin only slightly smaller than his advantage in the survey over all.
In his 35-minute speech here, Mr. Kerry made at least two dozen references to his military service, promising that "as president, I will wage war with the lessons that I learned in war." He mocked Mr. Bush's refrain, during his speech here, that the administration is "getting the job done" on veterans' issues like health care and housing.
"Just saying that the job is getting done doesn't make it so," Mr. Kerry said, promising to end the practice of deducting disability pay from military pensions. "The job will be done when 500,000 veterans are not excluded from the V.A. health-care system. The job will be done when we're not closing V.A. hospitals."
He added, "The job will be done when there are no homeless veterans on the streets of America."
In response to Mr. Kerry's criticism of troop redeployments, Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, told reporters in a conference call organized by the Bush campaign that he did not "see any foundation for suggesting" that the president's plan was "anything but in the overall security interest of our country and our allies," noting that the governments of South Korea and Germany had endorsed it.
Mr. Bush's campaign spokesman, Steve Schmidt, also reminded reporters that Mr. Kerry said two weeks ago that he believed "we could significantly change the deployment of troops" in Europe and Korea as well as the Middle East.
And Gen. Paul X. Kelley, the retired former commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement distributed by Mr. Schmidt that Mr. Kerry's was "a backward-looking view that blindly embraces the status quo and ignores the realities of the post-9/11 world."
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General's Speeches Broke Rules
Report Says Boykin Failed to Obtain Clearance
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A23
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14262-2004Aug19.html
A Defense Department investigation has determined that Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, the Pentagon's senior military intelligence official, violated three internal regulations while delivering controversial speeches that linked the war on terrorism to what he depicted as an enduring battle against Satan, according to a copy of the probe obtained yesterday by The Washington Post.
The 10-month internal investigation, conducted by the department's deputy inspector general for investigations, confirmed news accounts that Boykin said in his speeches that President Bush had been placed in his post by God, that radical Muslims hate America because it "will never abandon Israel" and that the U.S. military is recruiting a spiritual army that will draw strength from a greater power to defeat its enemy.
Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin drew criticism for talking about the war on terrorism in religious terms. (U.S. Army)
Arab and Muslim groups sharply criticized these remarks when they were initially publicized last year, accusing Boykin of bigotry and saying he was unfit to keep his post. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) and the committee's senior Democrat, Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), demanded an inquiry and called for Boykin to step down while it proceeded.
But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, speaking at the time, praised Boykin for "an outstanding record" and kept him in his post. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard B. Myers likewise defended Boykin and told reporters that "at first blush, it doesn't look like any rules were broken" because "there is a very wide gray area" of what the rules permit.
The inspector's report, which is dated Aug. 5 but has not been released by the Pentagon, concludes otherwise. It found that Boykin failed to obtain clearance for his remarks, failed to clarify that his remarks were personal and not official, and failed to report reimbursement of travel costs from one of the sponsoring religious groups.
"We recommend that the Acting Secretary of the Army take appropriate corrective action with respect to LTG Boykin," the report says. But it adds that the Army should also take into consideration as a "mitigating factor" that Boykin said he repeatedly asked military lawyers about the propriety of making the speeches and he recalled no one advising him to obtain advance clearance for his remarks.
The report said investigators accepted that Boykin made these legal consultations in "good faith."
A spokesman for Warner said he has a copy of the report and plans to review it this week. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the recommendation is awaiting a decision by acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee and "it would be inappropriate to speculate on what his actions might be."
But a senior Defense official who is familiar with the report's contents, speaking on the condition of anonymity because no decision has been reached, said the report is seen as a "complete exoneration" that ultimately found Boykin responsible for a few "relatively minor offenses" related to technical and bureaucratic issues.
Although it was the substance of Boykin's remarks and not his regard for Pentagon rules that aroused controversy, the report pointedly steered clear of comment on the appropriateness of Boykin's injection of religion into his depiction of the military's counterterrorism efforts, including his claims that a "demonic presence" lay behind the actions of radical Muslims.
The report said only senior officials could assess Boykin's judgment or fitness for his job as deputy undersecretary for intelligence and war-fighting support, in which he coordinates all defense intelligence activities, oversees training and determines the allocation of Pentagon intelligence resources.
The investigation determined that Boykin spoke about his involvement in the war on terrorism at 23 religious-oriented events since January 2002, wearing his uniform at all but two. His audiences -- mostly at Baptist or Pentecostal churches -- ranged from small groups to more than 1,000. Boykin's remarks followed a pattern, the report said, and he showed slides prepared with the help of two military aides. But it concluded that their assistance was legal because it was "insignificant."
Boykin should have obtained clearance for his remarks, the report said, partly because his remarks were drawn from information he acquired on the job, what he said was potentially of wide interest and relevant to national security policy, and his uniform and title could have induced listeners to believe he was acting as an official department spokesman.
The senior Pentagon official said that it is not regular practice for top Defense Department officials to submit speeches of a personal nature for review and clearance.
-------- POLICE / PRISONERS / COURTS / JUSTICE
-------- courts
Wen Ho Lee Reporters Held in Contempt
By Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A02
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13508-2004Aug18.html
A federal judge yesterday held reporters from four major news organizations in contempt for refusing to name confidential sources in their reports on a nuclear scientist once accused of being a spy.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson said that reporters for the Associated Press, the Cable News Network, the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times must tell attorneys for Wen Ho Lee the names of federal officials who gave them confidential information about the former nuclear-weapons scientist. The judge fined the news organizations $500 a day each until they provide the names, but said payments can be delayed pending appeals.
A reporter for The Washington Post might become subject to the order once he is deposed in Lee's pending civil lawsuit, which accuses federal officials of illegally leaking confidential information that harmed his reputation.
It was the second time in two weeks that a federal judge in Washington has held a reporter in contempt for refusing to name confidential sources. In the other case, U.S. District Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan held Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in contempt for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity.
Unlike that case, the possibility of jail time is not at issue in Lee's lawsuit. Attorneys for the various news organizations vowed to file immediate appeals.
"It's becoming a perilous time for journalists who rely on information provided under terms of confidentiality," said Floyd Abrams, the attorney for reporters James Risen and Jeff Gerth of the New York Times. "The upcoming rulings by the Court of Appeals in Washington will send an important message about journalists being able to do their jobs, particularly about reporting on the functioning of government."
The cases were the first of their kind to be adjudicated in Washington since 1981. Lee's case pitted the rights of the media against the scientist's right to pursue evidence that could prove his claims. Depositions by Lee's attorneys of government officials yielded no useful information, said Jackson, who has deemed the journalists' accounts to be central to proving Lee's claims of Privacy Act violations.
Lee contends that officials from the Justice Department, FBI and Energy Department leaked private information about him and his family when he was under investigation for allegedly spying for China while employed at the Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory in New Mexico. Several news organizations named Lee as the chief suspect.
He was charged in December 1999 with 59 counts of mishandling classified information and violating the Atomic Energy Act, and jailed for nine months pending trial. But the FBI later acknowledged the probe had been flawed, and allegations of spying collapsed. Lee pleaded guilty in September 2000 to a single felony charge of downloading nuclear weapons data to portable tapes and was freed.
Lee's attorneys turned to Jackson last year when they decided to seek the reporters' depositions. In a ruling in October, Jackson ordered that the journalists must appear for depositions and "truthfully answer questions as to the identity of any officer or agent of defendants . . . who provided information to them directly about Wen Ho Lee."
Although the journalists showed up for depositions, they refused to name their sources. They invoked First Amendment defenses that have been upheld by the courts that allow journalists not to identify confidential sources. That led to a hearing before Jackson yesterday, in which he heard arguments on the contempt matter.
Since Jackson already had rejected the media's First Amendment arguments, the outcome of yesterday's 90-minute hearing was a foregone conclusion. "We knew this would be the ruling, but we are pleased Judge Jackson understands this is a matter of principle, not an affront to the court," said Charles D. Tobin, attorney for former CNN reporter Pierre Thomas, who now is with ABC.
Lee's attorneys had suggested the judge impose daily fines of $1,000 per reporter; attorneys for the news organizations argued against a contempt finding and said that if fines were imposed, they should be minimal, perhaps $1 a day. In his ruling, Jackson said that $1,000 seemed too punitive and that $1 seemed "insufficient to ever coerce compliance." So he said he was "splitting the difference" with the $500-a-day penalties.
The other journalists in the case are Associated Press reporter H. Josef Hebert and Robert Drogin of the Los Angeles Times. The Post reporter is Walter Pincus.
-------
Reporters Ruled in Contempt Over Wen Ho Lee Sources
August 19, 2004
The New York Times
By JACQUES STEINBERG and MICHAEL JANOFSKY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/national/19lee.html
A federal judge in Washington held five journalists in contempt of court yesterday for refusing to disclose the names of confidential sources who might have given them information about Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the scientist at Los Alamos nuclear laboratory who had once been suspected of espionage.
The judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson of Federal District Court in Washington, ordered that each journalist, including two from The New York Times, be fined $500 a day. But Judge Jackson immediately suspended the imposition of those penalties pending the reporters' appeals.
The journalists are Jeff Gerth and James Risen of The Times; Robert Drogin of The Los Angeles Times; H. Josef Hebert of The Associated Press; and Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN and now ABC News.
Lawyers for all five defendants said last night that they intended to appeal the judge's order to the United States Court of Appeals in Washington. A lawyer for Dr. Lee, Brian A. Sun, said last night that he was pleased by the order and confident that it would be upheld.
Judge Jackson's order is one of several issued recently by federal judges that some legal experts say have weakened long-cited protections for gathering and publishing news.
Last week, another federal judge in Washington held a reporter for Time magazine in contempt for refusing to identify a confidential source in a criminal investigation, one involving the leak of the name of a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer, and ordered the reporter jailed.
Dr. Lee, who was indicted on 59 felony counts but who later pleaded guilty to a single count of mishandling nuclear weapons information, is suing the government under the Privacy Act over leaks from his confidential record. For his suit to proceed, he has to first identify who might have divulged information from his employment files.
In ruling on Dr. Lee's request, Judge Jackson said he was not persuaded by the journalists' invocation of "reporter's privilege." Citing that principle, which is grounded in a concurrence in a 1972 Supreme Court case known as Branzburg, lower-court judges have generally held that a reporter need not be required to testify about confidential or unpublished material, unless it goes to the heart of a particular case and cannot be otherwise obtained.
Instead, Judge Jackson found that each reporter had violated his order of Oct. 9 that had compelled each to give the names of his confidential sources to Dr. Lee.
A lawyer for The New York Times, George Freeman, said, "The Times continues to believe, as we have for decades, that confidential sources are critical for us to give the public as broad a perspective as possible on the important issues of the day, particularly when they concern the actions of government."
Judge Jackson issued his ruling only hours after hearing testimony from lawyers for the five journalists and Dr. Lee, who sat quietly and almost motionless throughout the arguments. He left the courtroom without responding to reporters' questions.
Several lawyers argued that nothing their clients wrote or said about Dr. Lee had violated his privacy rights. Nathan E. Siegel, representing Mr. Hebert of The A.P., insisted that Mr. Hebert did little more than write what other news organizations had already reported.
"You subpoenaed the wrong reporter," Mr. Siegel said. "No one leaked any information to him."
Mr. Sun argued that Dr. Lee found himself in "an odd situation," having been damaged by personal information leaked to reporters yet virtually helpless to make them divulge the leakers' names.
--------
Judge Tells U.S. to Release Data on Detainees It Holds Overseas
August 19, 2004
By SUSAN SAULNY
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/politics/19detain.html
A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered the government to release information on the treatment of detainees held at military bases or other facilities overseas, including official policies and records requested months ago by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.
The judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, signed the order on Tuesday. It was made public yesterday and was hailed as a victory by the A.C.L.U., which originally sought the information last October.
In June the organization and various other civil liberties groups filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation among other agencies, demanding the release of the information.
Judge Hellerstein gave the government until next Monday to release about 70 documents. It must also produce a log with explanations for documents that it says are exempt from release, that cannot be located or that will be produced after the deadline.
Beyond the documents they have specified, the civil liberties groups say there are hundreds of papers that probably fit within the scope of the request but that they do not know enough about to identify.
By Aug. 30, Judge Hellerstein wrote, the government and the civil liberties union are to present a joint plan for processing such information, and in early September the court will hold a conference with the parties to resolve any remaining issues.
"We filed this request almost a year ago now, before the Abu Ghraib scandal broke," said Jameel Jaffer, the A.C.L.U.'s lead lawyer on the case. "We are concerned that the ongoing secrecy around the government's detainee and interrogation policy is something that's enabling abuse to continue."
He added, "One of the reasons we think it is important to get these documents as quickly as possible is that we want the chance to correct the policies if they are inconsistent with international or domestic law."
According to a transcript of a hearing held Aug. 12, a government lawyer suggested that the delays had been caused by the broad nature of the request and the tedious work involved in producing the information.
"The agencies have been in the process of searching for potentially responsive documents," said the lawyer, Sean Lane, an assistant United States attorney. "The next step in the process is to process what they have, determine whether they are in fact responsive to the request. That's when production can be made."
Judge Hellerstein responded, "I think there is a faster way to do it."
Later he added: "The information may be unpleasant, the information may be exempt or producible. To allow a process of this nature to go on for so long as to be a part of a lawsuit doesn't seem to be an exercise in good sense and judgment."
--------
Feds Admit Terror Evidence May Be Flawed
August 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Mosque-Raid-Evidence.html
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- A key piece of evidence against a jailed mosque leader accused of supporting terrorism has come into question, with federal prosecutors acknowledging that a note found in a terrorist camp may have been mistranslated. Yassin Muhiddin Aref is charged with aiding a government informant in a sting operation involving a fake plot to buy a shoulder-fired missile to assassinate a Pakistani diplomat.
The translation discrepancy stems from a notebook that the FBI said was found in a terrorist camp in northern Iraq last summer. The indictment said an entry in Arabic script referred to Aref as a ``commander'' and listed his former address and phone number in Albany.
However, FBI translators now have a copy of the original entry and disagree with the earlier conclusion, saying the word was in the Kurdish language, not Arabic, and actually means ``brother,'' prosecutors told the judge in a letter.
Aref is the imam of the Masjid As-Salam mosque in Albany. Also charged earlier this month in the sting operation was Mohammed Mosharref Hossain, 49, one of the mosque's founders.
The notebook was cited last week by Magistrate David Homer as part of his rationale for refusing to set bail for Aref.
Defense attorneys say the translation error undermines the entire government case, and that both men should get out on bail. ``It's a travesty,'' lawyer Terence Kindlon said.
U.S. Attorney Glenn Suddaby said authorities are not yet sure which translation is correct, but said it doesn't change the case.
``It doesn't change their behavior. It doesn't change the significance of where this notebook was found,'' he said Tuesday.
Aref, an Iraqi Kurd, and Hossain, who is from Bangladesh, face up to 70 years in prison if convicted. Also Tuesday, prosecutors said they would try to restrict the release of some information relating to the case.
``The United States believes that disclosure of this material would raise issues of national security that the court should address before any of this material is provided to the defense,'' Suddaby said in a court filing.
--------
AG: Hague fence ruling may lead to sanctions against Israel
Haaretz
By Yuval Yoaz
August 19, 2004
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/466870.html
Attorney General Menachem Mazuz presented Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with a report Thursday issued by a team of prosecutors probing the ramifications of an International Court of Justice decision that declared the West Bank security fence a violation of international law, saying that the Hague ruling could lead to sanctions against Israel.
The Attorney General wrote in his statement that, "It is hard to exaggerate the negative ramifications the International Court ruling will have on Israel on many levels, even on matters that lie beyond the separation fence. The decision creates a political reality for Israel on the international level, that may be used to expedite actions against Israel in international forums, to the point that they may result in sanctions."
Mazuz added that the Hague ruling "could reflect gradually on the decisions of the courts in Israel with regards to administering military authority in the West Bank and the building of the separation fence."
Mazuz recommended that Israel's spokespersons emphasize the fact that Israel acts according to the International Court ruling although the state believes it was based in partial evidence.
The Attorney General recommended the government make a supreme effort to make plans for the route of the separation fence comply with the ones specified in the High Court of Justice ruling.
Mazuz said this would minimize tension building on the international legal front. The Attorney General also suggested the new route defined by the High Court of Justice should be backed by a government decision which would send out the message that Israel is implementing international law regarding the separation fence in accordance with local courts.
High Court: gov't must assess Hague ruling Earlier Thursday, The High Court of Justice ordered the government to produce within 30 days a statement on last month's International Court of Justice decision that declared the West Bank security fence a violation of international law.
The panel also ordered the government to specify the possible ramifications of the ICJ ruling on Israeli policies governing construction of the fence.
The court issued the order as a part of its hearings on a petition submitted by residents of the West Bank village of Shukba, near Ben-Gurion International Airport. The petitioners are challenging a government land expropriation, issued for the construction of the separation fence.
"At a certain point in time we will have to deal with the ruling of the World Court in The Hague, and the current petition is an appropriate opportunity to do so," said Supreme Court President Aharon Barak.
In a June ruling, the court found that a 20-mile section of the barrier near Jerusalem required changes in order to avoid infringing on the rights of Palestinians.
The next month, the International Court in The Hague handed down a non-binding advisory opinion declaring the entire fence illegal and saying it should be torn down.
Israel has said it will ignore both that ruling and a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling on it to carry out the court's decision.
But Defense Ministry officials have since said that some sections of the fence would be moved.
In the ruling announced Thursday, Justices Barak, Eliahu Mazza and Mishael Cheshin accepted the stance of the petitioners, who claimed the government had to assess the implication of the Hague ruling. The petitioners were represented by attorney Mohammed Dakhla.
Dakhla argued that the Hague ruling changed the legal status surrounding the fence's construction, requiring Israel to build the fence on land within the pre-1967 Green Line border.
Dakhla further stated that Israel continued to expropriate lands in Palestinian villages indiscriminately, even after a High Court ruling that forces Israel to reroute 30 km of the fence near the village of Beit Suriq.
The court will continue considering the petition, but stopped short of issuing an injunction that would halt construction of the fence near Shukba.
Instead, the court said the government could continue construction if it undertook to remove the fence and compensate the villagers in the event the court ruled in favor of the petitioners.
-------- homeland security
Concern lingers over new scanners
Their use is growing, but whether they can detect materials used to make devastating weapons is a worry
BY EARL LANE
August 17, 2004
Newsday
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/health/ny-hsradi153932281aug17,0,6545493.story?coll=ny-health-headlines
WASHINGTON - The federal government is putting hundreds of new radiation detection machines at ports and border crossings, but experts say the devices are far from perfect and stress the need to prevent dangerous nuclear materials from being stolen in the first place.
Detectors called radiation portal monitors, pillar-like arrays through which trucks and shipping containers can pass, already are in place at northern border crossings and are being deployed at major ports as well. Several are operating at a container shipping facility in New Jersey and others are being deployed at all container facilities in the port of New York and New Jersey.
The devices can screen the contents of a truck or shipping container for emissions from radioactive material that terrorists might use in a "dirty" bomb to contaminate an area, specialists said in recent interviews.
But the chances are low, they said, that such detectors, which scan for gamma rays and neutrons, can pick up emissions from a well-shielded cache of highly enriched uranium - material that could be used in a devastating nuclear bomb.
Sounding nuisance alarms
The portal machines also are prone to nuisance alarms on shipments of materials with low levels of radioactivity, from cat box litter to bananas, and can be triggered by those who recently received radioactive tracers in medical procedures.
The detectors, which must be calibrated to take into account the natural background radiation from rocks, soil and cosmic rays, can be set to minimize nuisance alarms.
"They adjust the detectors so the alarms are tolerable," said Page Stoutland, head of a program for radiological and nuclear countermeasures at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. "In doing that, have they made the detector such that it will miss legitimate threats? That's the concern."
One study of monitoring systems installed at an Austrian border crossing reported about 13 nuisance alarms a day at a truck lane during January to June 2000 due to materials such as fertilizer and ceramics. About 900 trucks a day passed through the checkpoint.
A federal government expert on radiation detection, who asked not to be identified, said the newly deployed detectors at U.S. sites "are definitely getting nuisance alarms regularly." He said the rates for such machines typically are about one alarm per several thousand vehicles or containers.
Specialists said the alarms typically are cleared quickly when inspectors check the manifest for products that might trigger them or do more elaborate scans with portable monitors that can identify the species of radioactive isotope triggering the signal.
"We have not had any backlogs as a result of these so-called nuisance alarms," said Beth Rooney, manager of port security for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Combination of strategies
Federal authorities also are quick to note that radiation portal monitors are but part of a multilayered detection strategy that includes other technology, such as machines that use gamma rays to give an X-ray-like image of the interior of a shipping container. The strategy also emphasizes increased vigilance at ports abroad where shipping containers originate, close scrutiny of shipping manifests and input from intelligence agencies.
Still, taking all aspects of port security into account, including radiation monitors, a mathematical analysis last year by a Stanford University group concluded there is only a 9.75 percent chance of detecting a shielded nuclear weapon made of either plutonium or highly enriched uranium in a container from an untrusted shipper. For a certified shipper, the study estimates a probability of 24 percent.
Lawrence Wein, lead author of the study, said the United States relies too heavily on a tracking system to identify shipping containers that will be given the closest scrutiny by customs authorities.
Stephen Flynn, a former Coast Guard commander who is now with the nonprofit Council on Foreign Relations, said targeting of at-risk containers often depends on cargo manifests that contain errors and do not fully reflect all of the movements of a particular container. "The cargo manifest is the weakest document in the process," said Flynn, a co-author of the Stanford study.
Steven Fetter, a specialist on nuclear proliferation at the University of Maryland, was skeptical about the precision of the probability estimates in the Stanford study but said the study's finding on the difficulty of detecting a shielded nuclear weapon, particularly highly enriched uranium, is well taken. "The marginal effort should be put into locating and locking up" highly enriched uranium, Fetter said.
The many tons of the material still being stored at sites in the former Soviet Union remain a major concern. Matthew Bunn, a specialist on nuclear trafficking at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, said only about 22 percent of some 600 tons of bomb-grade materials stored in the former Soviet Union is currently under the strict security sought by the United States. For the 2005 budget, the Bush administration asked for less money to help tighten security of Russian nuclear materials: $238 million compared with the $258.5 million currently appropriated by Congress.
As of December of last year, an International Atomic Energy Agency database listed 540 confirmed incidents during the previous decade of trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials, mostly from the former Soviet Union and neighboring states. Of those, 17 involved highly enriched uranium or plutonium. Since 1995, none of the cases involved more than 1 percent or 2 percent of the amount needed to make a bomb, but the agency sees little reason for complacency.
Few containers scanned
While there are many ways terrorists might try to smuggle radioactive materials into the United States, critics have complained that only about 2 percent of the more than 6 million cargo containers that enter the U.S. each year are examined. Scanning of whole containers relied largely on conventional X-ray machines and other imaging devices (which might detect a suspiciously shielded package) rather than portal detectors specifically designed to find radioactive materials.
Bill Anthony, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection - an arm of the Department of Homeland Security - said the percentage of containers scanned by imaging devices now is approaching 6 percent and that represents containers selected as high risk for potential problems. Under the new initiative to deploy radiation monitors, he said, the goal is to be able eventually to scan 100 percent of incoming "goods, people and conveyances" at U.S. ports.
Experts say the quality of radiation portal monitors has been improving since a 2000 Austrian study found half of the machines tested failed to meet minimum requirements. A team at Brookhaven National Laboratory has been testing off-the-shelf portal monitors under a program started in April of last year. Carl Czajkowski, head of the program, said many of the monitors tested in the early months did not operate correctly, whether for faulty wiring or other correctable manufacturing problems. Problems have declined in recent tests, he said.
Developing new devices
Data processing methods can reduce the number of nuisance alarms for portal detectors and new models can give more clues on the possible contents of a container, experts said. But readily detecting well-shielded highly enriched uranium awaits a new generation of devices, they said, such as detectors under development that would actively "interrogate" containers by bombarding them with neutrons.
Richard Oxford, director of strategic accounts for Thermo Electron, a maker of radiation detection equipment, called such neutron screening "the Holy Grail" for spotting highly enriched uranium. But he said it will be costly.
Dennis Slaughter, a nuclear physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory who is on a team that is developing a neutron scanner, agrees. He said the machines could initially cost as much as $3 million compared with as little as $50,000 for a standard portal monitor. Researchers must show the devices can scan a cargo container quickly without risk to personnel or illegal immigrants who might stow away in a container.
Another approach is to scan containers with high-energy, dual-beam X-rays that should distinguish materials with heavy nuclei such as uranium, according to Dolan Falconer, chief executive officer of ScanTech, a Georgia company that is developing such a device. Flynn argues that "rather than the super, high-end stuff, the money would be better spent putting radiological devices in the [container] boxes." Small sensors, if made cheaply enough, could be placed in every shipping container to monitor for radiation and relay data in real time as the ship is still at sea, he said.
--------
Hazmat Workers Train for Trouble
Preparation Makes Team More Ready
By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page DZ08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11519-2004Aug18?language=printer
The call was like hundreds of others received by D.C. firefighters in the last few years: A woman in a downtown lobbying office had opened an envelope containing white powder and scattered the substance all over herself.
Minutes after arriving at the scene on a recent Thursday, fire officials quickly ran through a threat assessment: The woman was not showing signs of ill health. She had not reported receiving threats. Her employer was not a high-risk target. They determined that it was either a hoax or an innocent mistake.
Even so, as police officers, bystanders and federal agents looked on, two specially trained D.C. firefighters donned protective masks, boots, gloves and breathing tanks. Looking like astronauts, they waddled into the building, carrying electronic meters and test tubes to help them confirm whether the substance was harmful.
The two firefighters, who emerged 20 minutes later with proof that their assessment had been correct, are members of the Hazardous Materials Unit in the D.C. Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services.
They are the District's first line of response to chemical, biological or nuclear attack. Fire officials say they have spent much of the last few years trying to improve the team's ability to handle such incidents. Just three years ago, in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a private consulting firm found that the hazmat team suffered from "a lack of funding, training, staffing, equipment and top fire management support." The consultants said the team was deficient in 10 areas that they measured.
Last August, serious questions were again raised about the team's abilities when 12 of 14 firefighters failed a proficiency exam that tested their knowledge of handling hazardous materials scenes and using and caring for their equipment, fire officials said.
Since the failures, the department has revamped the unit, sending most of the old technicians to other assignments and recruiting new firefighters to fill their slots. The department has dispatched the new hazmat team to out-of-state seminars about nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and started a cross-training program to give them more emergency skills. In all, fire officials say they have spent about $50,000 on training the new team members.
With the 2001 terrorist attacks and deadly anthrax mailings casting a not-so-distant shadow over their work, the 24-member hazmat team simply cannot afford to take chances with training or with how it responds to incidents, fire officials said.
"We want a professional response," said Battalion Chief Larry Schultz, who oversees the special operations division, which includes the hazmat unit. "What we do in the first 20 minutes will determine, to a large extent, how many people will live and how many will die."
Observers say the team has improved in the last year.
"They are better off than when they failed the test," said D.C. Council member Kathy Patterson (D-Ward 3), who chairs the council's judiciary committee. "I'm not sure there is anything more important than hazmat training in the post-September 11 world."
Before the anthrax mailings began here in October 2001, leaving five dead and sickening 17 others, the hazmat unit mostly responded to calls about fuel spills and natural gas leaks. Since then, the team has handled 2,100 incidents -- about 35 to 40 percent of which dealt with suspicious powders, odors or chemicals, officials estimated.
During those call-outs, team members enter a potentially contaminated building to determine the nature of a substance. Then they must figure out ways to contain any biological and chemical agents and decide how to treat victims.
While working to rescue people and assess the threat, firefighters must also collect the substance for law enforcement authorities, most often the FBI.
The team has jurisdiction throughout almost all of Washington, except for the Capitol and a few other federal buildings. In the anthrax attacks, the team backed up U.S. Capitol Police officers, who have their own unit.
When authorities discovered ricin, a toxin, in a Senate mailroom early this year, the D.C. hazmat team operated decontamination centers for law enforcement officials entering and leaving the building during the investigation, officials said.
Schultz and other commanders said the department has dispatched unit members to seminars and other instruction programs to learn new skills. Firefighter Jim West, for example, recently worked with sarin gas and VX nerve agents at an Alabama training center, and Lt. Robert Callahan has been sent to Nevada to better understand radiation.
The department has also pushed the team to learn how to respond to other emergencies, such as building collapses and other urban hazards.
"We need to be prepared for anything," Schultz said.
The training has often been tedious and academic, requiring firefighters to master chemistry and study textbooks on biological warfare. That has been a challenge for many who joined the department to experience the adrenaline rush of running into a raging blaze.
They said they must approach hazardous materials incidents in the opposite fashion: taking time to plan their attack and containment strategies.
"There's a lot more thinking than straight action," said firefighter Jack Spencer, who joined the unit five months ago. "It's different than working on a fire ground. It's a lot more technical."
On a recent steamy morning, firefighter Earl Tolbert practiced getting into a suit for the first time and practiced decontaminating himself after entering a building laced with chemical or biological agents. He had just been certified as a hazardous materials technician. The department has about 240 members who are certified to deal with hazardous materials. Fire officials say those 240 are backups for the hazardous materials team. Firefighters on other engines and trucks also need to understand how to deal with weapons of mass destruction because they might arrive on the scene before hazmat members, officials said.
As experienced team members coached him, Tolbert went step by step through the decontamination process. Clad in the white suit and breathing through his oxygen tank, he waddled into a special tent and was showered with water. Then he stepped into a small wading pool and was scrubbed with a special cleaning solution by his colleagues.
Finally, 10 minutes later, he was allowed to take off his mask.
"We drill so you can't miss a step," said Capt. Mike Bashore, the commander of the hazmat team. "It's very methodical, step by step. If you miss a step, someone could get contaminated."
In addition to the constant training sessions, the team also treats each call-out as a drill to hone skills needed in a real-life crisis.
In the recent response to the downtown lobbying firm, hazmat team members Callahan and Ruth Cade entered the building with their electronic meters and test tubes and took an elevator to the ninth floor. There, they entered the offices and found an envelope stuffed with what appeared to be white powder.
They ran their first battery of tests to make sure no chemicals were in the room. Then they put the substance into test tubes to make sure they were not dealing with a biological agent.
All the tests came back negative, they said.
They radioed their results to Schultz, who was waiting outside.
When Callahan and Cade emerged from the office building and removed their disposable suits, their blue T-shirts and pants were soaked with sweat.
"We don't cut corners," Callahan said.
Later, the two firefighters leaned over sophisticated testing gear to determine the identity of the substance.
The complex molecular name surprised them, forcing the firefighters to flip through chemical dictionaries and hazardous materials textbooks for information. An FBI agent finally got the answer after calling a bureau chemist: The powder was a form of ground-up plastic.
After the test, the firefighters turned the envelope and other material over to the FBI, which responds to every call for a suspicious powder in the District.
Schultz conceded that firefighters didn't need to conduct that second round of tests to determine the nature of the substance. They had already determined that the substance was not harmful. And, if prosecutors wanted to bring charges against a hoaxster, they would need to run a more sophisticated analysis at a crime laboratory.
But Schultz and the firefighters said they wanted to give the startled lobbyist peace of mind.
She had been nervous and was having trouble breathing, a normal reaction of people worried that they might have been exposed to a toxic substance, Schultz said.
To the woman and others in her situation, Schultz said, the scare was not a dry-run or a drill.
To her, it was all too real.
-------- immigration / refugees
Immigrants Face Loss of Licenses in ID Crackdown
August 19, 2004
By NINA BERNSTEIN
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/nyregion/19license.html?pagewanted=all&position=
Legislatures across the country have been wrestling publicly with a hot-button issue: whether to make it harder or easier for illegal immigrants to be licensed as drivers. The struggle to reconcile public security, road safety and the reality of millions of illegal immigrant workers has led to fierce disagreement and widely different laws - even as the 9/11 commission has urged the adoption of national standards.
In New York, home to an estimated 500,000 of the nation's 10 million illegal immigrants, there has been little public debate. But behind the scenes, officials at the State Department of Motor Vehicles have begun a crackdown on license fraud that will take away the driver's licenses of as many as 200,000 immigrants who cannot prove that they are here legally.
There was scant reaction in January when the state started mailing out the first of a half-million letters threatening to suspend the licenses of drivers whose Social Security numbers did not match federal records. Fear and protest spread in places like Westchester County and Staten Island as the letters reached longtime immigrant drivers who depend on their cars to work as landscapers, construction workers or housecleaners.
And the outcry grew as immigrant advocates learned of cases in which bewildered immigrants who responded in person to motor vehicle offices had their licenses confiscated on the spot for lack of a Social Security number.
Today the protests, and explanations by the crackdown's authors, will be presented in Manhattan at the first public hearing on the policy, by the State Assembly's Transportation Committee.
It is late in the process: though only about 600 licenses have been suspended so far, state officials said that in November, a second wave of notices would begin suspending the licenses of those who have not responded, at the rate of 4,000 a day.
State officials say 250,000 licenses are in line to be suspended, and immigrant advocates estimate that 200,000 of these are held by immigrants unable to satisfy the state's requirement.
State officials say they are not aiming the effort at immigrants, just seizing on new technology to enforce an old law - a 1995 requirement that the state collect the Social Security numbers of all driver's license applicants. That measure was added in many states to improve child-support enforcement, as part of the nation's welfare overhaul. But New York is the only state where motor vehicle officials are using enhanced computer abilities to verify all the Social Security numbers collected over the years.
The results have been eye-opening, Raymond P. Martinez, the state motor vehicles commissioner, said in an interview. "
The public is going to be shocked when they find out how many people's Social Security numbers were used by other people unbeknownst to them," he said, putting the figure at more than 100,000, including one number that was used by 57 people.
Among those whose licenses have already been suspended are United States citizens who were hiding criminal driving records behind multiple identities, he said. And in an era of terror alerts, when driver's licenses are used to enter buildings, he added, "We now have the ability to verify who is who."
But critics say the enforcement will fall mainly on illegal immigrants who are hard-working members of society - and to local D.M.V. clerks with no understanding of complicated immigration laws.
"Nobody has considered the bureaucratic nightmare that they're creating," said Margaret Stock, an associate professor of national security law at the United States Military Academy at West Point, who is writing a paper on the driver's license issue. "It's actually harmful to national security to deny licenses to people on the basis of immigration status."
Ms. Stock, who is also a lieutenant colonel in the military police of the Army Reserves, said there was a better chance of tracking a terrorist with a driver's license than one without. Moreover, she said, "immigration status is a moving target - someone legal today can be illegal tomorrow and someone illegal today can be legal tomorrow," so motor vehicle offices can end up issuing and denying licenses to the wrong people.
Yet thousands of illegal immigrants denied driver's licenses will continue to drive, she said, and probably add to the number of hit-and-run accidents and uninsured drivers already on the road.
The real problem, she said, is that since 9/11, officials have been trying to turn the driver's license into "a backdoor national identity card." But, she added, "driver's licenses are really about road safety."
Because of the heightened fear of detention or deportation these days, it remains uncertain whether illegal immigrants will come forward to testify at today's hearing at 250 Broadway, said Gouri Sadwhani, executive director of the New York Civic Participation Project, an immigrant and labor organizing group. But two people whose licenses were abruptly seized by a motor vehicle clerk shared their accounts with a reporter on the condition that only their first names be published.
Luis, 34, a construction worker who has long been employed by a Connecticut subcontractor building multimillion-dollar homes in places like Greenwich, said he was so alarmed by the letter he received in January that he drove from his home in Port Chester, N.Y., to D.M.V. headquarters in Albany.
Trying to prove his identity, he presented his taxpayer ID number, credit card, rent receipts, utility bills and car insurance. But he said a clerk who demanded a Social Security number took his license and refused to return it. "I started pleading," he recalled. "I said I need my license - I need my license to work, I need my license to support my family and I need my license to live," he recalled.
But after threatening him with detention for putting the wrong number on his application years ago - probably his tax ID number, he said - the clerk walked away. State motor vehicle officials said that they could not discuss the case without Luis's full name.
"It's like the D.M.V. has cut off my arms and legs," he said last week in the immaculate apartment that he, his wife and their 3-year-old son shared with three other immigrants from Ecuador. His earnings, which must support two children left with grandparents in Ecuador, as well as his family here, typically ran $20,000 to $25,000 a year, he said. But they have dwindled since his boss learned that he had lost his license.
Still, Luis said, there is no going back. In Ecuador, he and his wife were so desperate for work to support their children that they left them behind and walked much of the way to the United States.
And he is still driving. He carefully steered his old minivan past the flashing lights of a parked police car on a rain-slicked street in Port Chester on Friday evening, as he worried aloud that his insurance would soon be canceled.
But Gloria, a Colombian woman who has lived in Queens since 1991, said she had not driven since the January day when her license was confiscated at the Whitestone motor vehicle office. She had been a licensed driver for 11 years, she said, selling Mary Kay cosmetics from her car to help support her daughter, an American citizen by birth, while working weekends as a baby-sitter for a family of lawyers living on Sutton Place in Manhattan.
"I feel humiliated because I think there's no reason to take it from me," she said. "I was a good driver; I never got a ticket for a red light or passed a stop sign. I always had insurance."
Like many immigrants in what some call a gray zone of legality, she has a petition for a green card pending, sponsored by her 76-year-old mother, now a lawful permanent resident. But under present immigration rules and backlogs, family sponsorship can take many years to bridge the gap between citizens and unlawful immigrants in the same family. Meanwhile, Gloria has no way to fulfill the state's requirements to get back her license.
The hardest part has not only been the loss of earnings - about $1,000 a month in cosmetic sales - but the effect on her mother and her daughter, now 12, she said. Only last week, her mother, who is frail and speaks no English, begged her to accompany her on a flight to Florida to visit relatives. But without a driver's license as a photo ID, it was too risky.
"My daughter was crying and saying please don't go," Gloria said. "She feels so afraid about what happened to me now."
Anthony Ramirez contributed reporting for this article.
-------- police
Activists Condemn FBI Tactics Before DNC
August 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Activists.html
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- FBI interviews and surveillance of at least a dozen political activists in Kansas and Missouri prior to the Democratic National Convention amounted to intimidation, contends the American Civil Liberties Union.
The FBI and activists said agents carried out the interviews while investigating potential attacks on news vehicles at the Democratic convention in Boston. Spokesmen for the bureau said the interviews are routine when authorities receive credible information involving potential violence, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But the ACLU, which is representing three activists, contends the FBI was trying to intimidate political protesters under the cloak of counterterrorism.
``The overt nature of the surveillance was very intimidating and, I think, done with the intent of frightening them,'' said Denise Lieberman, legal director of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri.
Three activists from Missouri received subpoenas to appear before a grand jury for an investigation into domestic terrorism the day they planned to travel to Boston, ending their plans to protest, Lieberman said.
Also, four FBI cars followed the men for five days, she said.
Pete Krusing, a spokesman for the St. Louis bureau of the FBI, denied the interviews were aimed at discouraging protest.
``It's not just because they're a protester or they may be a protester,'' he said. ``There has to be some indication that they have knowledge or they may have knowledge about some activity.''
U.S. Attorney Jim Martin said he couldn't confirm there was a grand jury investigation or comment on a specific case.
In Kansas City, Nate Hoffman and Jeff Kinder, both 21 and students at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, said they were approached by FBI agents July 23.
Kinder said they asked him if he intended to do anything violent at the conventions and whether he heard of anyone planning violence. He said he didn't know anything -- and still doesn't.
``Everybody I know is trying to build a mass movement, and you can't build a mass movement in America by blowing stuff up,'' he said.
Hoffman met agents in a Kansas City coffee house but refused to answer their questions without a lawyer. ``They told me that in their experience that when somebody didn't want to talk to them that meant they probably had something to hide,'' he said.
The agents gave him a business card. Hoffman never called.
``You always hear that when you become politically active, you're put on some list. But it doesn't become real until you get a visit from the FBI,'' Hoffman said.
Jeff Lanza, a spokesman for the FBI in Kansas City, said he couldn't comment on whether agents had talked to Hoffman and Kinder but said the bureau had interviewed about a dozen people in the Kansas City area and Lawrence, Kan.
``Ultimately, we were looking for the people who wanted to carry (the attacks) out, but to do that, you have to talk to people who might have knowledge of the plan,'' Lanza said. He added that the bureau is no longer conducting interviews locally.
--------
Police Turn Up Volume for GOP Convention
By TOM HAYS
The Associated Press
Thursday, August 19, 2004; 7:08 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16737-2004Aug19.html
NEW YORK - Forget the megaphones. Police will have a much more high-tech - and louder - option to make themselves heard over the din of Manhattan traffic and noisy protesters outside the Republican National Convention.
It's called the Long Range Acoustic Device, developed for the military and capable of blasting warnings, orders or anything else at an ear-splitting 150 decibels.
Authorities on Thursday unveiled a mini-arsenal of devices and counterterrorism equipment they're getting ready for the convention, which opens a week from Monday.
The sound machines are being tested at an airfield in a remote section of Brooklyn along with other devices such as hand-held radiation detectors - for a possible "dirty bomb" - and mechanical barriers strong enough to stop a moving vehicle in its tracks.
At the Brooklyn training site on Thursday, police practiced disarming a truck bomb at a checkpoint. Scores of officers also made mock arrests of police academy cadets who posed as protesters.
Chanting "no justice, no peace," the cadets surrounded a bus full of "delegates" before officers in riot gear raced in, slapped on plastic "flex cuffs" and led them away to vans.
The demonstration was intended to show how the nation's largest police department hopes "to put a comprehensive security net over Madison Square Garden and the rest of the city," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.
"I think you'll see we're prepared."
The department recently bought two of the 45-pound acoustic sound machines for $35,000 apiece, and plans to mount them on Humvees posted outside Madison Square Garden. It would mark the first time the instrument - which can beam sounds for 300 yards or more - has been used by a civilian force.
"We believe we'd be able to use them in a number of scenarios," said Paul Browne, the police department's chief spokesman.
Two possible uses cited by Browne: directing crowds to safety following a terrorist attack or other calamity, and reminding protesters where they're allowed to march and rally.
The military, which has used the machines in Iraq, bills them as a "non-lethal weapon" designed to disperse hostile crowds or ward off potential foreign combatants by delivering prerecorded warnings in several languages and, if needed, an earsplitting screeching noise. But police insist the latter feature won't be used at the convention.
"It's only to communicate in large crowds," Inspector Thomas Graham of the department's crowd control unit said Thursday.
Graham said police had tried out the device in Times Square, and found it delivered clear, even sound over four blocks. Decibel readers will be used to keep the volume at a safe level, he added.
Still, Bill Dobbs of United for Peace and Justice, which has planned a massive anti-war demonstration on the eve of the convention, called the sound system "a potential Big Brother nightmare."
Police "are trying to use technology and machinery to control every aspect of life on the street, rather than relax a little and let a part of democratic society unfold," he said.
Mobile metal barriers - a variation of those installed outside government buildings, courthouses and embassies - will form a series of checkpoints around the arena. Once a bus, truck or car is secured between two barriers, it will be screened for bombs or other contraband by cameras that provide real-time video images from underneath.
The department also will deploy a new fleet of motor scooters to cut through gridlock should trouble arise. Hand-held radiation detection devices will help officers patrolling the streets and subways to guard against a "dirty bomb."
--------
Afghan cleric dies in police custody
August 19, 2004
The News International
http://jang.com.pk/thenews/aug2004-daily/19-08-2004/main/main6.htm
ISLAMABAD: An Afghan Islamic cleric who died in custody in Pakistan on Wednesday had signs of torture on his body, an intelligence official said.
Pakistani security forces arrested Qari Mohammad Noor along with three associates last week in a raid on an Islamic school, or Madrassah, in the central city of Faisalabad.
Intelligence officials said Noor, who was suspected of helping al-Qaeda members find accommodation in Faisalabad, died in police detention and an autopsy found he had wounds on his body. "He has signs of torture and wounds on his body," one of the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A statement from Faisalabad police chief Abid Saeed said Noor was brought to a hospital on Wednesday where "apparently he died of heart failure". "A joint team (of police and other security agencies) is conducting investigation into the mysterious death," said the statement carried by official APP news agency.
Saeed earlier told Reuters that Noor was suspected of involvement in "anti-state activities". He gave no other details. The statement said a three-member medical board conducted an autopsy and its final report was being awaited. It said Noor was an Afghan national.
Noor was arrested as part of a crack-down launched since the arrest in Pakistan last month of an al-Qaeda computer expert, Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan. Khan has proved a key source of information on the identity of operatives from Osama bin Laden's organisation and its plans to launch attacks on British and US targets. His arrest has led to the detention of more than 60 suspected militants in Pakistan.
News of Noor's death came as Pakistan published pictures of six "most wanted terrorists" on Wednesday, and offered $340,000 each for information leading to the arrest of two militants wanted for assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf.
Meanwhile, a joint team is conducting investigation into the mysterious death of Qari Noor Muhammad of Masjid-e-Mubarak, Gaoshala (Factory Area) at a hospital in the city.
Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Police Faisalabad Abid Saeed informed on Wednesday and confirmed that Qari Noor Muhammad hailed from Afghanistan. He was brought to the emergency of the Allied Hospital at about 2.30pm on Wednesday and apparently died of heart failure. A three-member medical board conducted the post-mortem, the final report of which is still awaited, the DIG said.
-------- POLITICS
-------- investigations
Former Iraq Arms Inspector Faults Prewar Intelligence
August 19, 2004
By PHILIP SHENON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/politics/19panel.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 - A former Bush administration official who led the fruitless postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq told Congress on Wednesday that the National Security Council led by Condoleezza Rice had botched intelligence information before the war and was "the dog that did not bark" over Iraq's weapons program.
In uncharacteristically caustic remarks about his former colleagues, the weapons inspector, David Kay, said the National Security Council had failed to protect President Bush from faulty prewar intelligence and had left Secretary of State Colin L. Powell "hanging out in the wind" when he tried to gather intelligence before the war about Iraq's weapons programs.
"Where was the N.S.C?" Dr. Kay asked, suggesting that the president had come to depend too heavily on information supplied by Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, and that the president needed to reach out to others for national security information.
"Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole truth," Dr. Kay told the Senate intelligence committee at a hearing called to discuss the findings of the Sept. 11 commission.
"I think this is particularly crucial and difficult to do in the intelligence area,'' he continued. "The recent history has been a reliance on the N.S.C. system to do it. I quite frankly think that has not served this president very well."
Dr. Kay added: "The dog that did not bark in the case of Iraq's W.M.D. weapons program, quite frankly, in my view, is the National Security Council."
A spokesman for the council did not return phone calls seeking comment on the remarks by Dr. Kay, who was appointed by the Bush administration last year to hunt for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq. He resigned early this year after concluding that there were no stockpiles of such weapons.
Dr. Kay did not identify Ms. Rice by name in his often-impassioned testimony. But his remarks were clearly aimed at her performance and reflected a widespread view among intelligence specialists that Ms. Rice, perhaps Mr. Bush's most trusted aide, and the National Security Council have never been held sufficiently accountable for intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the Iraq war.
His criticism of the council, which is responsible for coordinating the work of national security agencies in the government, mirrored that made earlier this year by Richard A. Clarke, Ms. Rice's former top counterterrorism deputy, who accused her of paying little attention to dire intelligence threats throughout the spring and summer of 2001 that Al Qaeda was about to strike against the United States.
Dr. Kay has said in the past that faulty prewar information about Iraq's weapons programs represented a serious failure of American intelligence agencies. But his comments on Wednesday appeared to go much further, both in their vehemence and in Dr. Kay's willingness to single out particular agencies for blame, notably the National Security Council and the C.I.A.
"Iraq was an overwhelming systemic failure of the Central Intelligence Agency," Dr. Kay said. "Until this is taken on board and people and organizations are held responsible for this failure, I have a real difficulty in seeking how a national intelligence director can correct these failures."
He was referring to a proposal by the Sept. 11 commission for the appointment of a national intelligence director to oversee the work of the government's 15 spy agencies, including the C.I.A. and several within the Defense Department.
A C.I.A. spokesman, Mark Mansfield, said after the hearing that "Kay's comments are perplexing and have changed remarkably over time - he ought to look at some of his own past statements and then perhaps he wouldn't be in such a rush to criticize."
In his sharp attack on the National Security Council, Dr. Kay said that the council had failed, in particular, to provide Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell with the intelligence information they needed before the war about Iraq's weapons capabilities, especially after both had expressed some skepticism about the extent of Iraq's weapons programs.
"Where was the National Security Council when, apparently, the president expressed his own doubt about the adequacy of the case concerning Iraq's W.M.D. weapons that was made before him?" Dr. Kay asked.
"Why was the secretary of state sent to the C.I.A. to personally vet the data that he was to take the Security Council in New York, and ultimately left to hang in the wind for data that was misleading and, in some cases, absolutely false and known by parts of the intelligence community to be false?" he continued. "Where was the N.S.C. then?"
--------
PRISONERS
Abuse Inquiry Faults Officers on Leadership
August 19, 2004
The New York Times
By THOM SHANKER and KATE ZERNIKE
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/politics/19abuse.html?pagewanted=all&position=
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 - A high-level Army inquiry has found that senior American commanders created conditions that allowed abuses to occur at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by failing to provide leadership and enough resources to run the jail, according to Pentagon and military officials.
But the inquiry found no evidence of direct culpability above the colonel who commanded the military intelligence unit at the prison, these officials said. They would only speak anonymously because the report is still being reviewed and may be revised. It is expected to be delivered to Congress early next week.
The investigation, opened by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, is expected to blame at least two dozen military intelligence personnel, civilian contractors and Central Intelligence Agency officers for wrongdoing, officials said. Military medical personnel who witnessed abuse or learned of it when treating injuries among detainees, but did not report it up the chain of command, are also cited.
The soldiers could face disciplinary action ranging from criminal charges to administrative punishments, which reduce pay and rank and can be a career-ending blot, especially on the record of an officer.
Until now, seven soldiers attached to a military police unit have been charged with abuse of detainees at the sprawling prison, near Baghdad. Some have said they were acting on orders of military intelligence officers.
While the Fay report does not conclude that top commanders condoned wrongdoing in any way, it does fault them for failures of leadership.
"Commanders should have exercised more oversight," said one Pentagon official. "The emphasis on detainee operations was just not there."
The report is one of several investigations of Abu Ghraib prison. The scandal, which tarnished America's reputation around the world, broke in January after a soldier turned in photographs showing detainees in sexually humiliating positions.
The report's findings were described by more than a half-dozen Pentagon and military officials who have been briefed directly about it or have had it summarized for them by superiors.
These officials cautioned that the huge document - thousands of pages - is quite complicated in assessing actions by those above the level of soldiers and officers actually at the prison, and that it goes into a great number of issues raised by the Abu Ghraib scandal.
Senior officers in Baghdad at the time of the abuses, under the command of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, were found to have had no role in ordering or permitting the abuse, nor did senior Pentagon officials in Washington, officials said. "There was no direct policy directives out of the Pentagon that caused this," said one official. "And Sanchez did not send orders to abuse detainees."
Even so, military commanders in Baghdad are criticized for not sufficiently supervising the prison systems throughout Iraq, according to officials briefed on the findings.
Without adequate oversight and discipline, an environment was created in which shifting guidelines for control over an estimated 45,000 detainees, and evolving rules for interrogations, could be interpreted freely and even disregarded.
"They were experimenting with techniques," said one official. "The draft guidance was left open to interpretation."
Another official said the report found abuses fell into two categories: intentional abuses of a violent or sexual nature, and those that occurred through misinterpretation or misapplication of evolving procedures.
The inquiry attributes the lack of attention to operations to a collision of unanticipated events on the battlefield of Iraq last autumn, when the worst abuses occurred: An unexpectedly tenacious insurgency drew most of the attention of senior commanders while, at the same time, combat sweeps of suspected insurgents generated a pool of detainees that far exceeded the military's ability to guard them and interrogate them.
The Fay report initially focused on the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, the unit that worked at the prison under the command of Col. Thomas M. Pappas. But senior officials decided it was important to broaden the inquiry. So a more senior officer, Lt. Gen. Anthony R. Jones, was brought in as required by military protocol to interview General Sanchez, also a three-star officer. The senior officer responsible for issuing the report is Gen. Paul J. Kern.
Bryan Whitman, the Pentagon's deputy spokesman, said late Wednesday that the report was nearing completion but refused to discuss details of pending inquiries.
"It's a very comprehensive and thorough report, not only of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, but also, given General Kern's broader authority, of the organizations and individuals more senior to the 205th," he said.
So far, one of the seven military police soldiers charged with the abuses has pleaded guilty in exchange for his testimony against the others. Lawyers for the remaining six have argued that they were simply following orders from military intelligence superiors.
Extensive testimony in several hearings over the past few months to determine whether the soldiers should face courts-martial has produced no evidence that the soldiers were under direct orders.
At a recent hearing for Pfc. Lynndie R. England, who appears in photographs grinning and holding a leash around the neck of a naked and crawling prisoner, soldiers testified that Colonel Pappas had sent orders that military police should be used to "set the conditions" for interrogations. But military intelligence officials at the prison testified that this meant finding out information about their personal lives that interrogators might use to prompt statements, not the kind of sexual humiliation seen in the photographs.
But the testimony has described a prison in chaos, where prisoners were routinely left naked and threatened by growling dogs. The prison was so crowded that interrogations were taking place in showers.
Records and sworn statements indicate that medics had some of the earliest and strongest clues that prisoners might be being mistreated, but said nothing until the investigation into abuses began when a whistleblower came forward in January. Medical records obtained by The New York Times show that medics had gone to the area of the prison where the abuse occurred several times to stitch suspicious wounds.
One medic noted in November that a patient had "blood down the front of clothes and sandbag over head" and three facial wounds requiring 13 stitches.
Several inquiries into prison abuse have been completed or are expected to issue reports in the next few months.
The first, by Maj. Gen Antonio M. Taguba, found that soldiers in the 372nd Military Police Company had committed "sadistic, blatant, and wanton" criminal acts. While his investigation was limited to the conduct of military police soldiers, his report said he strongly suspected that they had been influenced if not directed by military intelligence units under Colonel Pappas and Lt. Col. Steven Jordan, who led the interrogation unit.
At hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee in May, several skeptical senators raised questions about whether the soldiers had been influenced by direction from above and perhaps from the Pentagon. But a report in July by the Army's inspector general, Lt. Gen. Paul T. Mikolashek, concluded that the mistreatment was limited to the actions of a few soldiers and the failure of a few leaders to supervise them.
At least two investigations are to report soon: one by the Navy's inspector general, looking at detention and interrogation procedures at American-run facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and a panel led by former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, which was appointed by Secretary Rumsfeld and is to oversee all the other reports and identify areas left to examine.
Thom Shanker reported from Washington for this article and Kate Zernike from New York.
-------- propaganda wars
POLITICAL MEMO
A 'War President' Reinforces His Military Positions
August 19, 2004
By RICHARD W. STEVENSON
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/politics/campaign/19bush.html
ST. PAUL, Aug. 18 - Nearly three years after the Sept. 11 attacks transformed him into what he calls a "war president," and 76 days before an election that will probably turn in large part on national security issues, George W. Bush is still trying to burnish his credentials as commander in chief.
On Monday, he endorsed the most far-reaching redeployment of American troops in decades, saying the military had to be reconfigured from its cold war posture to confront the more fluid threats of a new century.
On the campaign trail in Pennsylvania on Tuesday he raised his longstanding support for a national missile defense system, a program that is especially popular among conservatives. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld followed up on Wednesday with a speech on the same topic, saying that the early progress in deploying the antimissile system "represent the triumph of hope and vision over pessimism and skepticism."
Campaigning in Wisconsin on Wednesday, Mr. Bush proposed a small-bore way of updating the military to adapt to the stresses of long deployments. He called for increasing tuition subsidies for National Guard members and reservists, and giving grants to states to help the children of military personnel make the transition to new school systems when they move from base to base.
Mr. Bush's emphasis on military matters appeared intended to position him as an innovative, forward-looking commander in chief whose vision extends well beyond the problems he has had bringing Iraq under control.
But Mr. Bush has shown no signs of running away from his record on Iraq. On Wednesday, as he has for several weeks, Mr. Bush said he would have invaded Iraq even if he had known that the United States would not find stockpiles of banned weapons - and kept up his effort to batter his Democratic opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as an equivocator when it comes to the war.
"If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy," Mr. Bush told an audience on Wednesday in Chippewa Falls, Wis., on a day when Mr. Kerry was attacking his military strategy. "This isn't going to happen on my watch."
In political terms, the challenge for Mr. Bush is not so much to solidify his standing as the nation's commander in chief as it is to make sure he appears stronger and more reliable than Mr. Kerry. As Mr. Bush's political advisers often say, elections are about choices and comparisons.
Heading into the campaign, Mr. Bush's advisers had expressed confidence that whatever happened in Iraq - indeed, whatever happened in the effort to combat terrorism - it would work to Mr. Bush's advantage by focusing attention on what they called his steady leadership and experience.
But Iraq has proved a treacherous battlefield that punished Mr. Bush politically after he prematurely suggested that the mission there had been accomplished. The 9/11 commission's hearings and its reports put Mr. Bush on the defensive at times over his handling of the threat from terrorism.
And the emergence of Mr. Kerry as the Democratic nominee gave Mr. Bush, who spent the Vietnam War at home in a noncombat role as a Texas Air National Guard pilot, an opponent who is a decorated Vietnam veteran.
The upshot is that Mr. Bush's standing among voters on national security matters is not what he and his advisers had hoped it would be heading into the Republican Convention in New York, which the White House had once assumed would be a perfect setting to showcase the president's standing as commander in chief in a post-9/11 world.
A poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and the Council on Foreign Relations gave Mr. Bush a 58 percent approval rating for his handling of threats from terrorism. But his approval rating for his handling of foreign policy stood at 42 percent and his rating for his handling of Iraq was 43 percent.
Perhaps the most worrisome finding of the poll for Mr. Bush was that on most issues related to the war, terrorism and foreign policy, swing voters leaned distinctly toward positions held by Mr. Kerry.
Those were the voters Mr. Bush was most seeking to reach as he rolled by bus through Wisconsin and Minnesota on Wednesday, finishing the day with a raucous rally here, where he was introduced by Mayor Randy Kelly of St. Paul, a Democrat who endorsed him earlier this month.
In many ways, the issues Mr. Bush focused on this week - reconfiguring the military and exploiting the nation's technological advantage through development of a weapons system to shoot down incoming missiles - speak to a broader debate that has been overshadowed to some degree by the deep divisions over Iraq.
What effect, for example, would removing American troops from Europe have on NATO, the pre-eminent alliance of the last half-century? How far can the United States go in asserting Mr. Bush's policy of pre-emption in the face of opposition or disquiet from abroad?
"Bush supporters and Kerry supporters are taking sides in the longstanding debate over the relative importance of 'hard' versus 'soft' power," three analysts at the Council on Foreign Relations, Lee Feinstein, James M. Lindsay and Max Boot, said in a commentary on the new poll findings. "Will the U.S. be safer and more prosperous if it is feared, or if it is loved? Are America's military strength, and the willingness to use it, what count most, or is America's reputation abroad equally important?"
The task facing Mr. Bush, the analysts said, "is either to persuade these voters that hard power is what will keep them safe or convince them that he too understands the importance of soft power."
But politics is rarely an either/or business. On the trail on Wednesday, Mr. Bush offered something to both sides, disputing the notion that he is a cowboy unilateralist but also leaving no doubt that he would continue to flex American military muscle when he deemed it necessary.
Noting that 40 nations had helped the United States in Afghanistan and 30 in Iraq, Mr. Bush told the audience in Chippewa Falls: "I'll continue to work with those alliances. But I'll assure you, I will never turn over America's national security decisions to leaders of other countries."
-------- us politics
GOP Legislator Assails Iraq War
Nebraskan Criticizes Administration as He Ends 13th Term
Associated Press
Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page A05
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12098-2004Aug18.html
LINCOLN, Neb., Aug. 18 -- A senior Republican has broken from his party in the final days of his House career, saying he believes that the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified and that the situation has deteriorated into "a dangerous, costly mess."
"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action," Rep. Doug Bereuter wrote to constituents. "Left unresolved for now is whether intelligence was intentionally misconstrued to justify military action."
Bereuter, 64, is a senior member of the House International Relations Committee and vice chairman of the House intelligence committee. He is stepping down after 13 terms to become president of the Asia Foundation, effective Sept. 1.
The letter, sent to constituents who have contacted him about the war, was reported by the Lincoln Journal Star on Wednesday. "I felt I should send you a forthright update of my views and conclusions on the subject before I leave office," Bereuter wrote.
In 2002, Bereuter spoke in support of a House resolution authorizing President Bush to go to war.
Bush has continued to say the war was justified because Saddam Hussein represented a threat to the United States, his neighbors and Iraqis.
In addition to "a massive failure or misinterpretation of intelligence," Bereuter said, the administration made other errors in going to war despite warnings about the consequences.
"From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force," he said. "Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world."
Bereuter said that as a result of the war, "our country's reputation around the world has never been lower, and our alliances are weakened."
Lincoln City Council member Jeff Fortenberry (R) is facing state Sen. Matt Connealy (D) to succeed Bereuter.
--------
Republican Now Opposes War in Iraq
August 19, 2004
By CARL HULSE
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/politics/19repub.html
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 - Representative Doug Bereuter of Nebraska, a respected Republican voice on intelligence issues who is retiring from Congress, is telling his constituents that he now considers the war in Iraq a mistake despite his earlier support for the invasion.
In a four-page letter being distributed to constituents who call or write about the war, Mr. Bereuter said that initiating the pre-emptive military strike was not justified because of what he described as a massive intelligence failure.
"I've reached the conclusion, retrospectively, now that the inadequate intelligence and faulty conclusions are being revealed, that all things being considered, it was a mistake to launch that military action, especially without a broad and engaged international coalition," he wrote.
Mr. Bereuter, who announced earlier this year that he was leaving Congress as of Aug. 31 after 26 years in the House, is the vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and had been at times mentioned as a potential chairman. He is also a senior member of the International Relations Committee.
An aide to Mr. Bereuter said that he could not disclose how many constituents had received copies of the letter, which was dated August 2004, and that the congressman was declining interviews about his change of heart. Mr. Bereuter's letter was first reported by The Journal Star, a newspaper in Lincoln, Neb.
Republican leadership aides did not respond to a request for comment on Mr. Bereuter's switch on an issue where most Republicans strongly back the president. But on CNN, Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican who previously served on the House panel with Mr. Bereuter, said, "Doug has the right to his opinion, and that is what makes our country so great."
-------- OTHER
-------- environment
Groups Chide U.S. on Mercury Regulations
August 19, 2004
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Mercury-Contamination.html
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) -- Environmentalists and two Maryland Democratic congressmen chastised the Bush administration Wednesday for proposed regulations they said will not do enough to reduce mercury contamination of Maryland rivers, lakes and the Chesapeake Bay.
``The Bush administration is trying ... by regulations to undo congressional law,'' Rep. Benjamin Cardin, who represents Maryland's 5th District, said. ``Mercury is a dangerous air pollutant. There is no question about that.''
Mercury is a toxin that interferes with development of the brain and the nervous system in fetuses, said Sarah Tomeo, a field representative for U.S. PIRG, a nonprofit, public interest advocacy group that is active in environmental issues.
Tomeo said the federal Centers for Disease Control estimates that because of mercury poisoning, 630,000 children are at risk each year for a range of problems including brain damage, learning disabilities, attention deficit and heart problems.
``This is no time for the Bush administration to be weakening health protections,'' she said.
EPA Administration Mike Leavitt said earlier this month that the regulations proposed by his agency will protect children and pregnant women without causing undue economic harm to coal-producing states.
Energy plants, especially those that burn coal, are a major source of mercury pollution
The Natural Resources Defense Council sued the EPA in 1992 trying to force it to regulate hazardous air pollutants from power plants. As a result, Carol Browner, who headed the EPA during the former Clinton administration, directed in late 2000 that mercury be regulated as a toxic hazardous substance requiring utilities to install ``maximum achievable control technology'' at each of nearly 500 coal-fired power plants in the nation.
Natural resources groups contend the regulations proposed by the Bush administration will weaken the federal Clean Air Act requirements.
``In my view, they are illegally trying to stop enforcement'' of the Clean Air Act, Cardin said.
Rep. Christopher Van Hollen from Maryland's 8th District, in a statement read by one of his aides at a news conference at the Annapolis City Dock, said instead of enforcing Clean Air Act requirements, the Bush administration ``is now surreptitiously trying to gut it -- by regulatory slight-of-hand, slow-walking enforcement and cynical double speak.''
Leavitt said the EPA still views mercury as a toxin. The former Utah governor has been re-examining the agency's mercury plan since his appointment to the EPA last November. The plan envisions a 70 percent cut in mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants by 2018, from the current 48 tons a year to 15 tons.
Beth McGee, senior scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said the reductions in mercury contamination proposed by the EPA ``are not enough, and they are not soon enough.''
``Maryland and the bay states may be among the big losers,'' she said.
--------
Fuel stations may pose child cancer risk, says study
Thursday, August 19, 2004
By Reuters
http://www.enn.com/news/2004-08-19/s_26608.asp
LONDON - Living near a fuel station may quadruple the risk of acute leukemia in children, research published on Thursday showed.
French scientists who carried out a study of more than 500 infants found that a child whose home was near a fuel station or vehicle-repair garage was four times as likely to develop leukemia as a child whose home was further away.
And the longer a child had lived nearby, the higher the risk of leukemia seemed to be, showed the research, published in the Occupational and Environmental Medicine journal.
The prevalence of childhood leukemia is four in every 100,000 children, but it is the most common type of childhood cancer in developed countries, say the researchers.
Few clear risk factors have been identified for the childhood variant, but exposure to benzene in the workplace has been identified as a possible factor in leukemia in adults, the authors say.
The risk appeared to be even greater for acute non-lymphoblastic leukemia, which was seven times more common among children living close to a fuel station or commercial garage, the research showed.
----
Native Hawaiians Sue the Army to Keep Out Strykers
August 19, 2004
HONOLULU, Hawaii, (ENS)
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/aug2004/2004-08-19-09.asp#anchor4
Three Native Hawaiian organizations filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army in federal court Monday over plans to transform the 2nd Brigade of the Army's 25th Infantry Division (Light) into a brigade built around the new 24 ton Stryker fighting vehicle.
The suit against Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee challenges the Army's failure to consider any location other than Hawaii for the Stryker transformation, as the organizations claim is required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
In its environmental impact statement on bringing the the Strykers to Hawaii issued in May, the Army acknowledged that transforming the 2nd Brigade would destroy Native Hawaiian cultural sites, prevent the exercise of traditional practices, and harm Hawaii's fragile and unique native ecosystems, as well as the endangered plants and animals that depend on them.
The three organizations, 'Ilio'ulaokalani Coalition, Na 'Imi Pono, and Kipuka, are represented by Earthjustice, the nonprofit, public interest environmental law firm.
"Native Hawaiians have a unique spiritual relationship to the 'aina [land] and as a result a kuleana [responsibility] to preserve and protect the natural and cultural resources of Hawaii for future generations," explained Vicky Holt Takamine, president of 'Ilio'ulaokalani. "Transformation will cut us off from these resources, these sacred sites, which are vital to the perpetuation of the Hawaiian culture."
Beau Bassett of Kipuka said, "Transformation would expand military training lands on Oahu and the Big Island by over 24,000 acres, further cutting us off from cultural sites we need to access if the next generation is ever to fully understand or practice our culture." Kipuka is an association of young Native Hawaiians.
The Army refused to consider any location where the transformation of the 2nd Brigade could take place in a more culturally and environmentally responsible manner. This despite the fact that the Army's EIS identified seven major Army installations in the western United States devoted to training U.S. Army forces, including three installations already undergoing transformation to receive Stryker brigades.
"For years, the community showed up at the Army's public meetings to testify that they should look at transforming the 2nd Brigade at Fort Lewis in Washington State, where the 25th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade - which has already transformed into a Stryker brigade - is stationed," said William Aila of Na 'Imi Pono, an association of Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners.
"The alternatives analysis is considered the heart of the environmental impact statement because it is the key to informed decisionmaking, the basic goal of the National Environmental Policy Act,"argued Earthjustice attorney David Henkin.
"Whether you think Stryker is a good idea or not, you have to agree that, before the Army carries out an project like transformation, which it admits will be environmentally destructive, it should at least look at its options to be sure that Hawaii is the best place to do it. That is what both common sense and the law require and what the Army failed to do here."
The lawsuit does not seek to limit current military training at existing military facilities in Hawaii.
It seeks to prevent the Army from going forward with activities related to transformation of the 2nd Brigade until the Army completes an environmental impact statement that adequately considers a range of alternate locations outside Hawaii for transformation. Stryker vehicles are already in use in military operations in Iraq.
-------- imf / world bank / wto (economics)
A Secretive Bank Faces Calls for Transparency
August 19, 2004
By DOREEN CARVAJAL
International Herald Tribune
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/business/worldbusiness/19bank.html?pagewanted=all&position=
LUXEMBOURG - The world's largest and most obscure public bank rises above the Kirchberg Plateau here in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg like a cream and concrete layer cake, sheltering a potent blue-chip financial institution that has, ever so discreetly, managed to outspend and outborrow the much better known World Bank in Washington.
Like the World Bank, the European Investment Bank is a nonprofit institution whose member-owners are governments - in this case, the 25 nations of the European Union. On almost any given day at the bank's hushed, art-filled headquarters, its executives borrow millions in the international money markets - a ceaseless torrent of everything from euros to Polish zlotys - and lend it out again, financing power stations in Northern Ireland and shiny trams in Barcelona, oil pipelines in Pakistan and geranium plantations in Kenya.
Most of the people who ultimately benefit from the projects have no idea that the European Investment Bank is behind them.
But without the bank and its immense resources - it advanced more than 42 billion euros in loans last year ($51.8 billion) - many of them would not have flourished.
Those who know about the bank are not necessarily grateful. Critics call the bank a phantom power, the most secretive public institution lending money around the world, and say that its lack of transparency has made it possible for conflicts of interest to remain unchecked.
The bank zealously guards its documents, and reveals little information about an activity that accounts for a third of its lending, so-called global loans. Until now, it has refused to disclose information about the backgrounds or votes of part-time board members who make decisions about loans that may affect their own business interests. Nor is the bank forthcoming about some outside activities of its executives.
But it has come under increasing scrutiny from a mixed assortment of critics - environmental advocates, a former banker, a fired civil servant - who have individually sought to piece together a record of the bank's decision-making.
Critics cite several examples of potential conflicts of interest connected with the bank's lending activities:
¶The bank's published records indicate that an open-pit copper mine in Kansanshi, Zambia, benefited from a low-interest loan of 34 million euros ($42 million). The bank did not disclose that a chief shareholder in the open-pit mine was also a joint owner of a copper mine whose chairman was a member of the bank's board.
¶In Italy, bank records show that a cultural organization, the Treccani Institute, received a 22-million-euro loan to publish new encyclopedias and digitize its database. One board member of the institute was a director of the bank.
¶In France, the bank approved a loan of 100 million euros ($123 million) earlier this year to help Air France buy 15 Airbus A-318 aircraft. One of Air France's board members was a director of the bank.
In other cases, members of the European Investment Bank's board presided over commercial banks that received millions of euros from the European bank in the form of credit lines or global loans. The commercial banks act as intermediaries, relending the money in smaller amounts to local borrowers and collecting fees in the process.
In one case, a French-Belgian commercial bank, Dexia, received more of the global loans than rival banks in France over a five-year period ending this year. During the term, Dexia's chairman was on the European bank's board.
Executives of the bank say that it has safeguards against self-dealing. "Directors have to report positions elsewhere" to the bank, the bank's spokesman, Orlando Arango, said. "At the beginning of each board meeting, members must declare their potential conflicts of interest, as well as leave the room before discussion begins."
Created in 1958 under the Treaty of Rome, the bank has evolved into an international financial player on the strength of its ability to borrow very cheaply and its willingness to make long-term loans at low rates for capital projects, backed by 163 billion euros ($201 billion) in subscribed capital from its member nations and its freedom from the need to return a profit to shareholders.
"They're kind of this ghost bank of Europe," said Hannah Ellis, who has been pressing for more information as a representative of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group, in London.
"They have this unusual status of being a bank and a public institution," Ms. Ellis said, "and they tend to play off both roles when it suits them."
The bank was originally created mainly to help knit Europe together by financing development in its poorer regions, and Europe is scattered with landmark projects that it backed, including the soaring Vasco da Gama Bridge in Lisbon and the high-speed rail tunnel linking France and Britain.
But the bank long ago outgrew its original, fairly modest ambition, and its objectives have expanded to include support for research, health and education, and economic development inside and outside Europe. It now makes loans in more than 150 countries, with 10 percent of its lending outside Europe. It is considering whether to take a role in financing the reconstruction of Iraq and whether to back Galileo, a proposed European satellite navigation system to compete with the American-run Global Positioning System.
As its purpose evolves, the bank is moving into a shimmering postmodern steel and glass building meant to be a symbol of openness.
"The mission of E.I.B. is to bring long-term financial support to projects that contribute to the policy objectives of the European Union," the bank's president, Philippe Maystadt, said. "It's a bank, but not an ordinary bank."
Mr. Maystadt, who has run the bank since 2000, said that one pillar of his strategy was transparency. But critics say the bank lags comparable institutions like the World Bank that are also facing pressure to become more open. The World Bank's board, for example, is considering a proposal to release minutes of its private meetings and votes.
Ann Florini, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington research group that focuses on economics and foreign policy, said that typically, institutions like the European bank follow a "diplomatic model."
"Everything is secret till there's a reason to release it," Ms. Florini said.
But she said the approach tended to breed suspicions that "if they're secretive, they have something to hide," and that the bank would be better off operating more openly.
A coalition of some 60 advocacy groups, including Friends of the Earth and the CEE Bankwatch Network, have been pressing the bank to release more information.
Last fall, a small Dutch bank, ASN, sold off its holdings of European Investment Bank bonds - some 4 million euros' worth - as a form of protest; it did the same with its World Bank bonds.
The European bank makes its lending decisions at a monthly meeting of its board, which has 26 part-time directors and 16 alternates.
Last year, the board approved about 300 loans, deciding the size, the interest rates, the repayment terms and the guarantees.
The bank's policy is to keep details of the board's votes secret. But it is clear that as the bank's scope has widened, its loan priorities have been interpreted broadly.
Today even the wealthiest areas can qualify for its help, including tiny Luxembourg, one of the most prosperous nations in the world. In 2002 a local company, Cargolux, received a 73.6 million euro loan to buy Boeing cargo jets.
According to Ewald Nowotny, a former vice president of the bank, the Cargolux loan sparked a contentious debate behind the scenes.
"Couldn't they go to the capital markets and get it commercially? Yes, of course," Mr. Nowotny recalled of the discussions. Even so, he said, "every country wants to see that some loans go to its own country."
Mr. Maystadt, a former finance minister of Belgium whose understated manner is as low-key as the bank he heads, said that its basic rule was to finance projects only if the bank could add unique value.
Within limits, he said, the bank is becoming more open. In June, he added, its board endorsed a new policy calling for the bank to post short biographies of new directors on its Web site, and to publish information about abstentions from board votes. But the policy will not be applied retroactively to current directors or past votes. "We are not interested in publicity," Mr. Maystadt said. "I think it's a long tradition in the bank. It was low profile, but that means also sometimes there was some isolation."
Earlier this year, the bank's relationship with the European Parliament was severely tested by a Spanish legislator, Monica Ridruejo. A former executive in the banking industry, Ms. Ridruejo drafted a report that criticized the European Investment Bank for failing "to comply with good corporate governance rules."
Ms. Ridruejo also tried, without success, to obtain information about the revenue that commercial banks earned by acting as intermediaries for the European bank.
"These global loans are subsidizing the banking community," Ms. Ridruejo said. "The banks that get these loans are not passing on the good interest rates to the beneficiaries, so they get an additional profit."
Other members of the Parliament objected to Ms. Ridruejo's draft, which they characterized as a publicity stunt, and it was transformed with amendments that praised the bank for transparency.
As that debate was winding down, another was brewing. A Luxembourg accountant, Robert Dougal Watt, who had been dismissed from the European Union's financial watchdog, the Court of Auditors, after he disclosed evidence of nepotism at the court, came across information about a senior bank executive's outside business activities that seemed to violate the bank's ban on "professional activity outside the bank" without authorization.
In Luxembourg public business records, he found that Patrick Klaedtke, then the bank's financial controller and now its chief of information technology, had held a series of board positions at five small, interconnected holding companies, including one, Simon S.A., where his board term was scheduled to run through 2006.
Asked about the matter, a spokesman for the bank at first denied that Mr. Klaedtke had served on any company boards. But Marius Kaskas, another director of the five companies, confirmed that Mr. Klaedtke, who he said was a longtime friend, had joined the boards as a favor to him.
Mr. Klaedtke now says that he had an old verbal agreement with Mr. Kaskas, a relationship that "slipped my mind." He said he had never attended meetings at the companies and knew nothing about their activities. Mr. Kaskas said that Mr. Klaedtke would be dropped from the boards.
In the case of the loan to the Zambian copper mine, it is the outside affiliations of a member of the bank's board, not an executive at the bank, that have drawn criticism. Barrie Ireton, chairman of Koncola Copper Mines, served on the board at the time the loan was approved; a joint owner of Koncola, ZCCM Investment Holdings, also owned a 20 percent stake in the mine that benefited from the loan.
In an interview, Mr. Ireton said that although it was common for members of the bank's board to declare an interest in a project at the outset of a loan approval meeting and then go on to take part in discussions about it, he did not participate in the discussion of the copper-mine loan, and abstained from the vote.
"I was being rather a purist, perhaps," he said.
Mr. Ireton said he could not recall another case in which a board member withdrew from the approval process as he had.
With such a large board, Mr. Ireton said, the directors do not always know the backgrounds of their colleagues - like Pierre Richard, the chief executive of Dexia, the French-Belgian bank who is also a director of Air France.
Dexia received three global loans totaling 450 million euros in the last two years, and Air France received loans this year to buy aircraft.
Mr. Richard's press office said he was unavailable for comment and referred questions to the European Investment Bank.
Earlier this spring, the European bank's entire board resigned, so that it could be reshuffled to include representatives of new nations joining the European Union. The bank has not made announcements about the backgrounds of the new members.
Mr. Richard, it turns out, is no longer on the board; now he is an expert consultant to the bank.
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IMF: Costa Rica should reduce public debt
(UPI)
August 19, 2004
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040819-120800-5020r.htm
Washington, DC, Aug. 19 -- The International Monetary Fund said Thursday that Costa Rica needs to reduce the size of its public debt.
In its latest assessment of the country, the Washington-based IMF pointed out public debt has risen to 55 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, and called for both a reduction in spending and improved tax collecting methods.
"Rolling back tax revenue earmarking, strengthening the finances of the pension system, keeping the wage bill under control, and improving the performance of the public enterprises" should be priorities for the Costa Rican government, the IMF said.
But at the same time, the IMF lauded the country's efforts to strengthen debt management and approved "efforts to lengthen debt maturities and to develop the market ... to reduce the need for foreign currency instruments."
The IMF assesses the state of the economies of all its member countries on a regular basis.
-------- ACTIVISTS
Antiwar Group Asks Court to Allow Central Park Protest
August 19, 2004
By DIANE CARDWELL
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/nyregion/19protest.html
The group planning what could become the largest demonstration marking the Republican National Convention took the city to court yesterday in its quest to rally in Central Park the day before the convention begins.
With less than two weeks left to plan for the event, lawyers for United for Peace and Justice, an antiwar coalition, filed a complaint in State Supreme Court in Manhattan seeking to force the city to grant a permit for 250,000 people to rally in Central Park on Aug. 29, saying its refusal to do so violates the state Constitution.
At a hearing yesterday, Justice Jacqueline W. Silbermann refused to dismiss the suit, as the city requested, and set another hearing for Monday.
"The city's refusal to permit protesters in the park can only be based on its hostility to the point of view being expressed by them," Jeffrey Fogel, legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and the lead lawyer in the suit, said at a news conference in his downtown offices. "When the city opens up its parks and allows its use for corporate sponsors and cultural events, it cannot then discriminate against those who wish to discuss political ideas in the parks as well."
For more than a year, the group has sought to rally on the Great Lawn after a march past Madison Square Garden, where the convention is to be held. City officials have repeatedly denied the group's requests, saying that such a massive gathering would severely damage the turf. After agreeing at first to the city's alternative proposal to rally on the West Side Highway, the group backed out last week and resubmitted a request for the park, this time including the North and East Meadows, which the city swiftly rejected.
The suit contends that the city has allowed large-scale cultural events to take place in the park, including a 1997 Garth Brooks concert on the North Meadow attended by 250,000 people and a Paul Simon concert on the Great Lawn in 1991 attended by 750,000.
But city officials have argued that they have not closed the park to political protest, only to political protests over a certain size, because the lawns, renovated since those events, and their surrounding plantings cannot sustain the potential damage of so many demonstrators' feet. Indeed, officials have agreed to smaller protests throughout the convention, to be held Aug. 30 to Sept. 2, including one for a rally of 50,000 people at the East Meadow.
"I'm not surprised, I'm disappointed," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said during a news conference. "If they had planned to go to court all along, why didn't they do it? It would have been in everybody's interest. They have the right to do it, and we'll follow whatever the court orders."
But city lawyers said the suit was without merit and sought to have it dismissed. At the hearing, Jonathan Pines, a lawyer for the city, argued that the suit came too late and only after the group had backed out of a deal. "The threshold question is why are we here now, 11 days before 250,000 people are going to appear, wherever they are going to appear," he said, at one point adding, "They should not be allowed to muddy the waters, undo a deal that was done."
The United for Peace and Justice complaint comes as a similar suit is set for a hearing tomorrow in Federal District Court in Manhattan. It stems from the denial of a permit to the National Council of Arab Americans for a rally of 75,000 people on the Great Lawn, below its official capacity of 80,000, on Aug. 28. City officials said they were surprised by the suit because the group declined to discuss alternative locations.
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Past Arrests Could Play a Role in Prosecution of Protesters
August 19, 2004
By SUSAN SAULNY
The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/nyregion/19arrest.html
Something unusual happened in State Supreme Court in Manhattan in April, when more than a dozen antiwar protesters who had been convicted of disorderly conduct were to be sentenced.
Prosecutors took the rare step of asking the court to unseal records of four of the protesters' prior arrests on civil disobedience charges that had been dismissed. The court granted the request.
According to the decision, by Justice John Cataldo, "It is well established that sentencing courts may take into consideration prior criminal conduct for which a defendant has never been tried or convicted, if, and only if, the information presented with regard to those crimes is demonstrated to be reliable and accurate."
Still, several defense lawyers, including Stephen W. Edwards, who is representing the protesters in question, have said that they could not remember an instance in which sealed records known as A.C.D.'s, or cases Adjourned in Contemplation of Dismissal, were resurrected in such a way, in order to penalize people at sentencing.
The vast majority of nonviolent protesters are charged with something like disorderly conduct, a violation, and their cases get an A.C.D. The disposition requires defendants to stay out of trouble, usually for a few months, and then the charges are dropped.
An appellate review of Justice Cataldo's ruling is expected this fall.
The issue has gotten renewed attention, most recently this week, with an article in The Daily News, because of the approach of the Republican National Convention. Many protests - lawful and unlawful - are expected to coincide with the political convention in New York.
Protesters who think their prior arrests on minor violations have been sealed and dismissed might be in for a surprise. And, some defense lawyers say, protesters who get swept up in mass arrests and who would have accepted A.C.D.'s as a quick way to exit the criminal justice system might not, thinking that the charge might somehow be revived. With as many as 1,000 arrests expected a day, the result would be judicial gridlock.
"Unsealing the records of A.C.D.'s which have been dismissed is fundamentally wrong as a matter of due process," said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a brief in support of the defendants. "The statute provides that the case is dismissed and sealed after six months. To allow it to be used is to allow a mere accusation to be used as evidence. And that should not pass muster as a matter of due process."
Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said she could not comment on how prosecutors plan to handle arrests of protesters during the convention, as it would be speculation.
But in speaking about the antiwar protesters who were arrested in the spring, she said: "We only unsealed the records of people who had previous protest arrests, just so that the court would have a full picture of the defendants' backgrounds. That's why we requested that they be unsealed."
The case originally involved 16 men and women who were arrested for a street protest against the war in Iraq and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. They had blocked the busy intersection of Fifth Avenue and 47th Street on a weekday morning.
Of the 16, Mr. Edwards said, 10 have been sentenced to community service and 2 received community service plus fines. The remaining four defendants are involved in the appeal of Justice Cataldo's decision.
"At this point, it's impossible to tell what's going to happen in the months after the convention," said Ron Kuby, a civil rights lawyer. "As a defense lawyer, instead of simply accepting an A.C.D., now we'll go ahead and we'll litigate every single case."
Ms. Lieberman said: "The issue is far from closed."
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Doctor May Get Life for Violating Iraq Sanctions
by Madeleine Baran
The NewStandard
August 19, 2004
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/baran.php?articleid=3381
In the eighteen months since central New York oncologist Rafil Dhafir was arrested and charged with violating the U.S. embargo against Iraq, he has been sitting in a Syracuse jail, ignored by most of the national media, as prosecutors continue to add charges threatening him with a maximum sentence of almost 300 years in prison.
Having been denied bail for a fifth time on Aug. 16, it appears Dhafir will remain behind bars until his Sept. 27 trial date.
Now that a new motion for dismissal has attracted some attention, Dhafir's supporters are hoping the case - which some say is the most complicated and questionable prosecution of a Muslim charity in the post-Sept. 11 era - may be the last chance to see the case thrown out before it reaches trial.
Federal investigators arrested Dhafir, a 56 year-old U.S. citizen born in Iraq, in February 2003, after what they boasted was a three-year investigation into his charity, Help the Needy. Dhafir, the organization's founder and president, says Help the Needy sent humanitarian aid to Iraq, which was under severe sanctions supported by the U.S. government at the time. The flow of food and medical supplies was severely restricted.
Prosecutors allege that Dhafir passed at least $160,000 of the money raised by his charity to friends and relatives in his home country, in violation of an act prohibiting Americans from sending money to Iraq. Humanitarian aid in other forms could be legally distributed with a license from the U.S. government. Help the Needy, like many other Iraq charities, had no such license.
However, prosecutors have not claimed that any of the Help the Needy donations funded either the Iraqi government or terrorist groups. In fact, evidence uncovered in a government investigation appears to indicate that money went toward food and other supplies for needy families.
As the investigation continued, links to terrorism never materialized, but prosecutors added additional charges, including allegations that Dhafir filed a false nonprofit request with the IRS, billed Medicare for chemotherapy sessions at his clinic when he was not present, and made false statements to a medical auditor. In April, prosecutors charged Dhafir with using a portion of Help the Needy money to purchase real estate in Syracuse.
Judges have now denied Dhafir bail on five occasions, stating that the doctor, who has strong ties to central New York, is a "flight risk." Dhafir has not been able to have private access to a lawyer because, he says, his Muslim faith prohibits him from consenting to the requisite strip search. If he continues to refuse the search, he may not be able to attend his own trial. Dhafir says he is not guilty of any of the charges.
Since his arrest 18 months ago, Dhafir's case has been an enigma. Unlike others who have violated the embargo against Iraq, including members of the peace group Voices in the Wilderness, Dhafir is facing serious prison time. And, unlike other Muslims denied bail and facing potentially even more serious charges, like Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, Dhafir has attracted little widespread attention or support.
Motion for Dismissal
In a motion filed July 29, Dhafir's lawyer, Deveraux Cannick, requested that all charges against Dhafir be dismissed, based on claims that the federal government targeted Dhafir for "selective prosecution." The defense alleges that other concerned American citizens who have also violated the embargo against Iraq have not been criminally prosecuted, and have instead received small civil penalties.
In fact, the best-known organization providing aid to needy Iraqis, Voices in the Wilderness, has never been criminally charged, and has only received fines for its numerous - and very public - violations of the embargo.
"Other people did the same thing and they were treated differently, to say the least," said Dhafir friend and supporter Mohamed Khater. "Did any one of them spend a day in jail? No."
The motion also notes that 57 corporations have violated sanctions imposed on various countries but also received only small fines, even though some companies worked directly with the governments of the countries being punished. The motion mentions a number of corporate fines, including $50,000 for ExxonMobil's exports to Sudan and about $14,000 for ChevronTexaco's deals with Cuban and Iraqi officials.
Such fines are common. In 1995, for example, Halliburton paid $1.2 million to the U.S. government and $2.61 million in civil penalties for shipping oilfield equipment to Libya in violation of a U.S. trade embargo. Rather than receiving prison sentences, corporate officials convicted of violating international sanctions - even on a relatively massive scale - typically receive monetary fines.
The defense argues in the request for dismissal that "the government singled [Dhafir] out for prosecution because of his race, religion and cultural background."
In a February interview with The NewStandard, Dhafir expressed similar sentiments. "People should realize that this is a trumped up charge," he said. "This is part of a campaign against Muslims and Arabs."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Olmsted said the motion lacked merit, and noted that members of Voices in the Wilderness did not live in the same district, and therefore would not be subject to prosecution by the prosecutors handling the Dhafir case. He added that most activists tend to send supplies, not money, and that he considers sending money to be a more serious offense. "The attempt to restrain money going into Iraq is more urgent," he said. "You can't convert a pallet of penicillin into anything else."
Dhafir maintains that he only sent material aid to Iraq, never money.
Insinuations of Terror Continue
David Weissbrodt, former member of the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, believes the case could fit into a larger pattern of increased prosecutions for embargo violations under the Bush administration.
Weissbrodt cited recent crackdowns on Muslim charities and on U.S. citizens charged with violating the Cuba embargo as examples. "[The government] is using to the hilt every single tool," he said, "and ignoring any protections of the Constitution or international law except when they are compelled to do so."
Although Dhafir has not been charged with any terrorism-related crimes, politicians have continually linked his case to the government's so-called "war on terror." Earlier this month, in fact, New York Governor George Pataki grouped Dhafir with two Muslims in Albany charged with trying to purchase shoulder-fired missiles, and a group of Muslim men convicted for attending an al-Qaeda training camp.
"We saw with the arrest in Syracuse of money-laundering efforts to help terrorist organizations, and today we see here, again," Pataki said, "those among us who seek to help terrorists to conduct horrible acts against the people of America and against our freedom." Pataki concluded with a forward-looking public reassurance, "And we'll continue to be aggressive and proactive in going after those who would look to do us harm."
In a statement emailed to Syracuse area activists, Cannick, Dhafir's attorney, said he was "extremely disappointed" with Gov. Pataki's comments, and added, "You would think that he or his staff would check the facts before making statements that suggest that Dr. Dhafir's case, or Dr. Dhafir himself, has any involvement with terrorism. But if trying to feed hungry people and provide aid to dying children makes him a terrorist, then so be it."
Defense Strategies
As the trial date nears, activists in Syracuse say they hope to attract greater public attention, arguing that, without national outcry, Dhafir will likely be convicted and spend the rest of his life in prison for charges that normally result in fines.
"If we can raise the specter of what's going on with Dr. Dhafir to a national level, I think the government will balk," said local activist Madis Senner, who runs a Web site devoted to freeing Dhafir. However, he added, echoing the thoughts of many local activists, "That's a big wish."
Some local activists say they have been hampered in their efforts in part because of actions by the defense. Several activists said Cannick, Dhafir's attorney, told them to call off a protest supporting Dhafir late last fall. Senner said Cannick told local activists, "Don't do any rallies, letter writing, nothing." Senner commented, "I think everybody questioned that."
Until this past week, Cannick also did not allow reporters to interview Dhafir. Back in February, after Cannick failed to return numerous phone calls, Dhafir's friends arranged for this reporter to interview him. At the time, Dhafir appeared eager to tell his story and, until this month, it was the only media interview he had participated in since his arrest.
For nearly a year and a half there did not appear to be any campaign by the defense to publicize the case. Since February, Cannick has not returned repeated calls for interviews with The NewStandard.
However, Dhafir's supporters say the strategy appears to be changing as the trial date approaches. "I think [Cannick's] gotten friendlier to the media," Senner said. "We'll get people out there raising noise and making commotion." Khater added that Cannick may have decided to change his strategy once he realized how many false allegations the government has spread about the case.
Local activists are planning rallies in support of Dhafir. Senner has enlisted people who have violated the embargo against Iraq but never been jailed for it to contact U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue and the local media with their stories.
In the meantime, Khater, who visits Dhafir each week, said the doctor is "in good spirits" and remains certain that he will be vindicated.
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Let There Be Protests
Editorials
Washington Post
Thursday, August 19, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13728-2004Aug18.html
PROTESTERS AT the Democratic presidential convention in Boston were kept in "free speech zones" -- cages, really -- that were so constrained and remote from delegates that most protesters avoided them altogether. At the coming Republican convention in New York, things will be a little looser, as a consequence of a federal court ruling, but only a little. And plans for a large antiwar demonstration in Central Park have been stymied by the city's refusal to issue a permit. Officials initially said they feared damage to the park's Great Lawn and more recently have cited safety concerns. They instead have offered protesters a stretch of the West Side Highway, which they first accepted and then rejected; the matter landed in court yesterday.
The city's gardening concerns seem frivolous, and the protesters ought to be able to use the park; the security concerns behind many of the restrictions are more serious. Terrorism fears are legitimate, and some of the protest groups include people with histories of violent behavior at demonstrations. The First Amendment does not give protesters the right to disrupt proceedings. Certain restrictions are necessary and appropriate.
But something precious is threatened when demonstrators -- even rowdy, obnoxious and possibly misguided demonstrators -- are kept at such distance from the objects of their protest. What's at risk is democracy, and it deserves a bit more respect. As has been widely noted, the parties now try to shape their conventions as extended infomercials, in which the forms of party process are playacted to validate preordained results. City police should not be deployed in a fashion that ensures that the infomercials do not suffer from any technical glitches, unruly moments or dissonant voices. This may not be the intent of the security measures, but marginalizing dissent is the effect. Somehow, even in an era of terrorism, America needs to do better.
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China Detains Buddhist Leader Americans Ejected From Temple Site
August 19, 2004
Washington Post
By Philip P. Pan
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A11214-2004Aug18?language=printer
BEIJING, Aug. 18 -- Chinese authorities have detained a prominent, U.S.-based Buddhist leader in connection with his plans to reopen an ancient temple complex in Inner Mongolia province and have forced dozens of his American followers to leave the region, local officials said Wednesday.
The U.S. Embassy here said it has requested an explanation from the Chinese government and plans to protest the treatment of the Americans, several of whom accused police of physically removing them from the temple and seizing their property.
The embassy also urged the Chinese government to respect the rights of the detained spiritual leader, Yu Tianjian, 53, a Chinese citizen who holds a U.S. green card and has been the abbot of the Dari Rulai Temple in Los Angeles for nearly five years. His students consider him a "living Buddha," or an enlightened teacher who has been reincarnated, and the "dharma king," or leader, of a branch of Buddhism with perhaps millions of adherents worldwide.
Yu's detention is the latest sign of an official crackdown on unauthorized religion in China that appears to have intensified in recent months. Eight Roman Catholic priests were arrested in a raid last week in Hebei province, a U.S.-based rights group said Wednesday, and another U.S.-based rights group reported the conviction of three underground Protestant leaders in Henan province this month on charges of "providing state intelligence" to overseas organizations.
Yu, also known as Dechan Jueren, was detained Aug. 11 after being called to a meeting by officials in Kulun county, where his organization, the Buddhist Foundation of America, had spent the past year and more than $3 million renovating an 800-year-old temple, said one of his aides, Dan Kendall.
Kendall said officials told Yu's students that he had been charged with "promoting superstition." A government official in Kulun reached by telephone confirmed that Yu had been detained for "some type of religious activity," but referred questions to local police, who would not comment on what one officer described as a "secret operation."
Yu's arrest occurred three days before the planned reopening of the Xingyuan temple complex in Kulun, located about 375 miles northeast of Beijing. Scores of Tibetan Buddhist monks had traveled to Kulun for the celebration, and more than 100 Buddhist adherents from the United States, Canada and Japan -- many of whom had donated money to help restore the facility -- were on their way.
But after Yu's detention, local authorities cut power and water service to the temple, military police forced about 70 monks into buses and drove them away, and other officers dragged Kendall and six of Yu's other American students out of the complex, Kendall said. Police then hauled away two truckloads of valuable statues, religious artifacts and other personal property from the temple, he said.
The U.S. Embassy said police interrogated one American citizen at a local hotel, then released the person.
Kendall said the raid was a surprise because Yu had received government permission to renovate the temple and hold the celebration. "They welcomed us up there with open arms, but I guess they changed their minds," he said. "They took our money and kicked us out."
The foreigners who had traveled to China for the festival -- advertised on the Internet as "an unprecedented gathering of five dharma kings" and hundreds of other spiritual leaders and teachers -- were stopped at roadblocks in the region and barred from even seeing the temple.
"We paid thousands of dollars to come here, and many of us have donated a lot of money to this temple to be opened," said one traveler, Marcia Small, of the Toronto area. "We're not getting what we paid for."
A local religious affairs official, who spoke on condition he be identified only by his surname, Li, declined to comment on Yu's status and said the government was responsible only for ensuring the safety of the visitors and sending them home. "The activities are over," he said. "The guests were relatively satisfied."
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